Spirit Cleave - 130 Warrior DPS @ level 32 - Never Eat/Bandage - Fastest Warrior solo leveling build

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
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With all the instance spamming melee cleave rage I realized something entirely overlooked. Solo cleave.

Edit: Tested this level 20-58 and was doing 50% MORE DPS than other warriors while basically NEVER EATING, VENDORING (almost) ALL BANDAGES.

Seriously, this build absolutely demolishes everything else you could do by 50% because it’s mechanically so different than the incremental gains you get from any other build.

Conventional theorycrafting incorrectly points to an obvious solution to gearing warriors while leveling. The faster you kill things, the less damage they do to you, the less down time you have. Warriors are known to be some of -the slowest- levelers because of their downtime. Thus people stack strength as it’s the main DPS stat for warriors. Sadly, strength while leveling IS TERRIBLE and fully stacking it only leads to a 10-20% increase in single target damage over someone with literally 0 bonus strength. So much of your damage comes from your weapon’s DPS (and later top end) that STR is nearly irrelevant, it’s just the only thing we got really, according to incorrect conventional theorycrafting.

While leveling to 60 I constantly compared my single target DPS to other warriors and they were only pulling 10-20% more DPS than me, with the vast majority being at roughly ~13% more single target DPS. Conventional theorycrafting would say that these people were doing 13% more DPS than me, so I’d have to make up for it with saving on downtime. I’m going to make an argument later about downtime, but I need to take this incorrect conventional wisdom approach and throw it out the window, because it’s absolute garbage. I did 50% more damage than other warriors, without considering downtime AND I had almost no downtime, because Sweeping Strikes Cleave is OP af and blows any single target dps out of the water.

So, how does it work? How can you do 50% more damage than other warriors given the same weapon and ZERO Strength/Agi/Crit and instead stacking SPIRIT and STAMINA!??!?!

From 20-40
Take your conventional and/or Fight Club
rotation of Rend > Heroic Strike, or
Rend > Sunder armor until 50% HP > Heroic Strike
And Replace it with:
Get to 50 Rage single target white swing -> Agro a second mob -> Macro [Sweeping Strikes + Cleave]->Berserker Stance/Berserker Rage->Cleave->Cleave->Cleave. White swing down the remaining single mob to generate rage for the next pull.

Sometimes for the last few cleaves, it can be worth not white swinging until you have enough rage to cleave. This is probably the only build where you want to sometimes cleave instead of whirlwind because of the bonus damage being quadrupled during sweeping strikes (and yes, level up Cleave).

This is the only build that can consistently get enough rage to cleave every attack during sweeping strikes and you can always whirlwind -after- Sweeping Strikes is finished.

The way this build get away with spamming the hell out of cleave, is by taking a ludicrous amount of damage while berserker rage is up. While Bersker rage is up at level 32, 333 damage taken =20 rage = 1 cleave. Take 666 damage during a zerker rage and you got 2 free cleaves!

So, you’re 32 you’ve just pulled two mobs and killed them in 23 seconds lost 500-1,000 HP. WHAT DO?! you could
A. Spend a bunch of money and sit forever eating terrible food that heals you for a measly 226 HP over 7 seconds because you’re a Strength warrior
B. Just /sit and let your 150 spirit regen heal you for ~600 WITHOUT FOOD. You always have the option of food, if you’ve gotten particularly low.

Why do I say heals per ~7 seconds? Well, you just killed 2 mobs in 23 seconds and you might as well wait for your Sweeping strikes/Berserker rage cooldown before pulling again. If you’re spirit build, 30 seconds after killing two mobs, you’re within 20% of your max HP and you’re pulling again.

More analysis/tips farther down in the thread and I’m working on a youtube video. Just have a ton of unexpected real life agro I need to deal with first.

And yes, it currently feels good to be 60 and #1 dps in my guild :smiley: , but that’s a story for another thread about another meta shattering strategy involving “the worst weapon in the game.”

Original Post:

I created a new troll warrior leveling Meta. You can call it “Spirit Cleave” or if you want to mock it… “Whale Warrior” since it’s focused on Spirit/Stamina (in that order)
This is a -literal- troll build. As in, it works significantly better on trolls.

Basically, you always cleave every attack, by having 2 minions always hitting you. You need enough stamina to pull 2 minions and not die. In very brief testing, after picking up the Wailing Caverns quest reward staff I’ve had 70-80% of my 2h swings cleave (I have enough rage from being smacked).

With 100 Spirit by level ~35 a troll regenerates ~220 Hp5 outside combat and ~22 Hp5 in combat. Any other race warrior would generate 200 outise 0 inside. The Barren’s 25 spirit buff from blood shards is OP AF.
According to wiki, warrior regen pre BC is (Spirit*0.8) + 6 per 2 seconds.
Which equals 2 Hp5 per point of spirit outside combat.

Once you hit 20 I’m pretty sure getting 5% parry will be the highest DPS increase you can get from early talents. Faster swing timer, although slightly less rage because of less damage taken xD. Allows for even shorter down time due to less damage taken overall.

Spend 20-30 seconds in combat, kill two mobs, then regen to full health/safe health by 30-40 seconds seems pretty OP for leveling speed.

Tips: Start each fight with 40+ rage so you can mash cleave. Focus whatever cleave target gets lowest first (the one that doesn’t parry/dodge). Once the first target dies white swing second target to death so you end with 40-60 rage.

This all might break down at higher levels… But it’s how I’m planning on playing come classic. Worse comes to worse it’s just an item switch over to regular leveling gear, talents are basically just typical arms, with the exception of possibly more talents in parry.

“Of the Whale” gear is probably not in high demand, so it might be cheaper on the AH.

Also, definitely level cooking. Stam/Spirit food buffs!

When Classic goes live and I can test this more, I’ll update this post with the results (good or bad). It may be just a niche thing only for a couple levels, who knows. I only -briefly- got to test it.

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Interesting

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This is a troll post or absolute rubbish at the very best.

The troll racial “regeneration” is so weak people constantly reported it as bugged to blizzard during vanilla because you couldnt even tell if it was working.

Troll priests have stacked stamina since day 1 and couldnt see a benefit or increase to regeneration either.

So either you are using retails numbers for troll regen after it was changed, private server numbers or you are flat out trolling, because you will not see any benefit from that racial at all in vanilla.

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This is why we need the downvote button back. Sure the OP’s idea might have a fatal flaw, but surely we can discuss a topic like adults can’t we?

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Oh, “absolute rubbish” isnt something an adult would say?

I dont remember saying that in school…

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Well I did start off by saying this was a -literal- troll post.
Second off, the numbers are based off a wiki. If they’re wrong, I’d LOVE to know. (can’t post links here). To be clear I did not test in nearly enough capacity to rule out personal bias or statistical errors. This is almost entirely theory.

And thanks to your insults, more people will see this wonderful post I made! Thanks for helping my dude!

Signed:
Your friend who has multiple max level (at the time) trolls
-Scriblet

Edit:

You mean spirit?
Also according to the wiki, Priests get Spirit*.1 health regen, 1/8th as effective as warriors that get Spirit*.8. It’d be really, really hard to notice anything on a priest. I know, my first character on vanilla retail was a priest. I broke meta on it too, I “tanked” with it similar to current meta melee cleave bringing 5 DPS to a 5 man (no designated tank/heal) from level 40-55 and kept everyone up with Vampiric Embrace.

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Sounds like a fun idea. I’m going to be playing a pally on a pvp server, so I won’t be able to do the fabled spirit warrior. I genuinely wish you the best of luck!

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I will die laughing if this works out considering Warriors have claimed for so long that they are slowest levelers!

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LOL Someone posts something unique as opposed to beating one of the long-dead horses lying around (layering, streamers, retail) and somebody still waddles in here to crap on it…

I think it’s an interesting experiment at the very least. Thanks for thinking outside the box, Scriblet.

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Spirit is an insane leveling stat, most people on here probably don’t know that.

DPS doesn’t matter, it’s about uptime and exp/hour.

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I tried stacking SPI/STAM on my troll warrior back in vanilla. It ended up being pretty terrible. The loss in damage made fights take much longer and the HP regen in and out of combat was pitiful. It was faster and less painful to alternate bandages and eating between fights.

It’s been a long time, though. So, I don’t remember many details. I think I was at or near 60 when I tried it.

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Most people don’t know jack about the game still and just regurgitate nonsense they heard in hearsay as truth.

With the “Not a bug” 43% haste from zerking at 40% life and the (altough over long periods of time) large amount of extra HP go sustain while grinding from increased + passive regen, Troll Warriors could very well level significantly faster than any other race.

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Im sorry that reporting to you that this has been done already and doesnt work is “crapping all over” an idea this guy hasnt even tried but thought sounded nice and got his info off some wiki page.

I dont consider spending gold when you dont have any to spare during your initial character leveling on worthless gear because this guy presented this theory as as fact acceptable.

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I believe you, I have no idea how this will fair at 50-60 -but- I think it will do a good job from 20-35 and I’m hoping it continues all the way up to 50. I’ve really only theorycrafted level 20-35, based on -relatively- easy to obtain quest rewards/high drop chance items out of Wailing Caverns/Black Fathom Depths, supplemented with 2-3 greens that have high spirit. I expect to run melee cleave instance grinding a couple times with friends but then take breaks to actually enjoy questing. I think if I could hit 70 spirit by level 30 I’d be very happy with the regen. Using 100 spirit as the example was because the math is easy for people to understand and really shows how ridiculous the OOC Hp5 gets with not -too- much effort.

The one reason the results may vary from yours at 50+ is because this build is entirely centered around duo pulling. At single target it won’t do enough white DPS to generate much in the way of rage. The DPS increase comes from the rage generated from 2 minions beating on your face and the extra swing speed from parries.

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Well while you can absolutely incorporate spirit into your gear, especially while stacking other sources of regen (life /5 gear, troll’s blood elixir, etc.) there is generally a TON of spirit on gear on your way to 60, even in your 50’s.

As such, it may be better to stack strength and spirit, as your max total life is kinda irrelevant because every point of extra life regen’d is essentially adding to your max life pool.

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You know what would be better than all that? Dual wield vs 1 mob at a time.

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Absolutely. As you level, you’ll always have a chance of getting that BOSS dps blue/green that won’t have Stamina or Spirit on it. As you get closer to 60, if you’re questing right, you’ll be slotting in some 2-3rd BiS pre-raid gear while still leveling. The reason I was focusing on Spirt/Stamina at level 20-35 is because you need enough stamina to survive 2 enemies beating on you long enough to kill both without getting critically low. If you have enough HP you could theoretically tripe tank + sweeping strikes cleave to hit all three.

I’m -very- curious what it would be to run around with 150+ spirit on a warrior at 60 while grinding for money and stuff. Not even sure if 150+ spirit is doable, might just be pipe dream. My memories of grinding on my warrior are mostly -after- getting raid gear, where these just got deleted so fast it didn’t matter. I also ran a ridiculous haste build (Non-troll, my biggest regret) that regularly had me attacking with ~.81-.83 swing speed. Made crusader proc 7-9 times a minute (I forgot if it was 5 MH 2 OH or 7 MH 2 OH… pretty sure it was 9) when fully raid buffed with windfury. It was probably like 4ppm crusader heals while soloing, but that healing added up fast.

^I’m betting this crusader PPM claim is going to give a certain person in this thread freak out. I fear if I tell them the item I used on my warrior -4 bosses into Naxxramass- they’d have a heart attack. Many called it “the worst item in the game” and I’m not talking about vendorstrike.

I actually leveled dual wield in vanilla when everyone said to got 2h. It was very fast -but- I always had BiS 1 hands from tanking 5 mans and it was my second character so I had money to always have the best sharpening stones and potions. Although in many cases I’d use ravager and dual box a raid geared 60 druid, keeping the highest applicable rank of thorns/MotW on me. Pull 10 mobs and wait for a ravager proc, while the druid stayed out of party so the warrior would get full XP.

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Yeah! We used to call this “the great lie” as in, don’t quest with str/agi, but spirit/stam instead and use staves, cleave, and SS. Good times, and it works too.

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Ya most people aren’t multibox cheating a pocket healer.

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I’m going to need to do some testing to find the Rage Conversion Value at level 20, 30, & 40. The only post I’ve been able to find on the topic is a blue post that describes how it worked Pre-BC at 60 and post BC at 70:

Rage Conversion Value (note: this number is derived from other values within the game such as a mob’s hit points and a warrior’s expected damage value against that mob):

Rage Conversion at level 60: 230.6
Rage Conversion at level 70: 274.7

For Taking Damage (both pre and post expansion):
Rage Gained = (Damage Taken) / (Rage Conversion at Your Level) * 2.5

Anyone have suggestions for mods to help figure this out?
Wishing for a blue post dream of exact values per level is probably beyond anything that’ll even happen in this mortal coil.

I’m probably going to have to just stand and get thwacked in the face for 500 damage, then subtract the amount of passive rage gained from time (Anger Management etc.). It’ll be a lot less precise because of rounding (unless rage is tracked to the decimal and is only displayed as whole numbers?)

Putting the numbers together (LOTS of estimations):

For lazy math, I’m going to assume ~500 Damage taken (at level 20) =~ 20 rage (1 cleave)
Based on some numbers I found on armor classes/HP value done by classic beta testers: At level 20 Mobs have on average ~562 HP (~450 hp x ~1.28% armor modifier.
A warrior at around level 20 will do ~40dps with Crescent Staff
Kill time while cleaving will be 14 seconds, rounded to 20 because my math is overstimating.
50 spirit + 6 base Hp regen x 1.1 troll = 116 Hp5 outside combat, 11 hp5 in combat.
During the 20 second fight window, 44 Hp regened.
During a 5 second Longjaw mudsnapper eating window ~50 hp regened from food, 154 from passive healing (33% bonus from sitting) (Mudsnappers used because they are SUPER CHEAP from ratchet)
During a 10 second repositiong window 232 hp regened.
Leading to a total of 480 HP regened in 35 seconds and 2 mobs killed. pretty close to the 500 damage taken target.

It takes ~5 cleaves (with one crit out of 10 attacks) to kill at least one target. Since it’s 2 chances to hit, you’ll likely get one of them dead within 6 total attacks (crescent staff hits for ~100).

Rage gained in 35 seconds:
~20 from being smacked for 500 damage (One Cleave!)
~15 from charge (improved)
~12 from blood rage (averaged by using it on cooldown)
~7 rage from anger management
~54 rage before considering white swings.

That’s almost 3 cleaves worth of rage, without white swings. Thinking about it being 5 cleaves to kill two targets made me realize that Cruelty talents (5% crit) are probably god tier for damage since averaged out at 10% crit, there’s a good chance -one- of those 10 attacks (2 mobs being cleaved 5 times) will crit, allowing you to sometimes do the job with only 4 cleaves. In testing, I was actually doing it with Cruelty rather than anger management. More white swing rage as well.

Really it’s about figuring out how many Mobs per Minute you can chain together with this strat. I’m betting 500 damage taken @20 is really inflated and a more reasonable target is 300-400, which would drastically reduce downtime. 50 spirit -is- a bit high on my estimate for level 20. Barrens 25 Spirit buff might make grinding mobs in that area (assuming there are enough to kill) worthwhile.

Someone outside here commented 500 damage might be as little as 13 rage. Still not a deal breaker

This is all just theory/speculation. Goal is to get kill/reposition time down to 30 second windows, allowing for 4 mob kills a minute. Even if it took 40 seconds windows, an average of 3 mob kills a minute still seems pretty good. Remember, spirit healing doesn’t require being stationary, you can still move/loot/mount

Past level 20:
Berserker Rage / Berserker stance is going to be absolutely nuts. I wouldn’t be surprised if this build can pull off 3-4 mobs at time with sweeping strikes/cleave and whirlwind. At the very least sweeping strikes is going to make your rage efficiency much better as you can get rage from white hitting while sweeping strikes does the work of cleaving. Parry talents become even more important when fighting 3+ mobs. Just need enough stamina/armor to survive survive 3 mobs. If you can keep a 40 second kill window and do 4 mob pulls… you’ve won the leveling game.

Wait… Completely forgot about the 200% single target dps when using cleave on 2 targets + sweeping strikes. That’ll be fun.

If this playstyle works up through level 45, the trinkey “Mark of the Chosen” will be OP. 2% chance on being struck to get +25 to all stats is huge. Having two mobs beating on you regularly should assure very high up time.

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