Hardcore has brought me back to the game. I watched a few videos about hardcore concerning class ranking and saw that everyone ranked warrior at the bottom. So, I decided to level a warrior to see just how hard it was.
I’m only level 14 so far, but it’s been pretty easy in my opinion. I haven’t died once. Another thing I did was test to see how much of a difference in survivability it was at level 14 having 5/5 Deflection (5% parry from Arms tree) vs not having it at all. It quite literally has increased my suvivability by 2x. Without it, it took 35 seconds for an enemy to get me down to 50% hp, but with the 5% parry, it takes twice that long to get down to 50%. So, are people just not taking enough defensive talents? My plan was actually to also go for the 5% block, 10% armor, and +10 Defense rating to be even more ridiculously defensive, but the 5% parry by itself is honestly more than enough.
But maybe I have you all pegged wrong - are you all saying Warrior is hard because of it’s lack of damage? I do see how mages plow through enemies. I can’t do that as a warrior, but a longer kill time is not what I would consider “hard”. The way it’s going so far, I will undoubtedly hit 60 with zero deaths, and this is my first try.
Beware of Defias Pillagers. Those two shot fire bolt spells laugh at parry.
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It’s not as hard as people make it seem, but it’s hard when you compare to classes like Mage, Priest, and Warlock. Due to how weapon skills and defense work, you’re forced to fight mobs your level, whereas a Mage or Warlock can easily fight mobs 2+ levels higher than them.
You are doing the right thing by going Arms first. Not only does parry improve your survivability, it improves your DPS as well because when you parry an attack, your next attack gets a big haste boost. Every Warrior should be specced arms to level 20 no matter what spec they plan to play, in order to get Anger Management for the hidden effect of 1 rage per 3 seconds while in combat.
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People bring this up all the time on the forums, but the length of time it takes to do something can definitely factor into its difficulty. Doing something that requires N-resources/second over a period of 10 seconds is easier than doing something that requires the same N-resources/second over a period of 15 seconds.
Having stated that, I think the question you are asking is more or less, “Is there a set of objective/measurable criteria to use to evaluate the difficulty of leveling classes or specs, if so, does it place warriors at the hardest difficulty?”
I don’t have a good answer to this, and I suspect that nobody else does either.
Give it time. I’ve never managed to get a warrior to higher level but I did one to mid 20’s or so. I find that the higher level you get, the harder it gets… and the down time is wearing.
My favourite is a druid and you get a lot of outs in the open world. Warriors feel like you get less of those, so maybe that’s why folks say it’s harder?
Just for science, you should report back every 10 levels or so and let us know how it’s going, and whether or not it’s stayed easy or you feel like it’s gotten more challenging 
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Most classes feel pretty good at level 14 besides maybe druid lol, it’s later levels that you’ll probably start to feel the pain. I haven’t leveled a warrior but I have leveled a Paladin, and I know that without all the self healing power they have, level 40+ would really start to get absurdly difficult to solo, and even with that stuff they’re still pretty slow. I think that’s what people mean about warriors, they do great damage but are gear reliant and lack a lot of self healing, escapes, and CC that other classes have in abundance. All stuff that won’t affect you as much until mid game and beyond.
Well, the way I look at it, rdps is likely to have a greater survivability than mdps simply because if the combat goes south from the get-go, they have a head start to run away, and have pets to run interference or have cc abilities. Mdps are in the thick of it. Try to run away and you get concussed. The hybrid classes have healing capabilites. Warriors have none of these things, so I can see why folks might think warriors are less likely to succeed. I don’t HC and have no plans to start, but of all the classes in Wow Classic (Vanilla), warriors are my fav.
Warriors have plenty CC, its just that they arent particularly great at escaping once they’ve used it.
War is more difficult, cuz it’s more difficult to get away with not being safe as a war. You also don’t have many abilities to use for your contingency plans. Putting talents in stuff like parry and block is exactly playing safer.
Good luck on the rest of your journey from 14-60
I must just suck at pulls when playing a warrior. Over the last week had 4-5 warriors die around 9-10 due to a bad pull.
If you don’t have health potions and get jumped by 2 equal level mobs, could be toast.
Word of advice from a warrior that raided and made it to 60 (lol).
-You must have a stack of 20health potions on you before you leave the city to do what you need to do. Sorry. Mandatory or basically “risk it”.
-You cannot let your weapon fall too far below your level. For a hunter it can be as far as 10+ levels on their bow but for you, maybe 3 levels.
-Whirlwind axe quest at level 30 is a chore unless you have someone that is going to just give you the mats, and do the final quest with you. (althought it is a memorable experience to do it for the first time, it’s high risk for HC) The axe also depending on how you level may not last as long as you think. Going into RFD and grabbing a Corpsemaker (and just doing dungeons for fun) is actually more effective with your time.
-Analyze the battlefield before you hit charge. Also, throwing your weapon is going to be how I personally would get used to pulling mobs and working my way into camps.
-Arms vs Fury. I like going fury two 1h weapons and then respec at level 40 to arms to get mortal strike. Arms is utilizing mortal strike, overpower, and slam quite a bit. If you don’t like that then go back to fury.
-If you want to stick with defensive options going prot might be more exciting to do dungeons in HC but Im not sure what your plan of attack is. Also I don’t think prot really “feels” good until you get some other talents like IMP revenge. It’s slow.
-Make sure to pick up first aid and remember you can use fear shout+bandage to get a quick heal off to save you.
-Race? Undead. Undead Female if you like to flip. Cannabalize skill is just nuts for leveling.
-Wear Melee DPS gear. If it’s leather or mail it doesn’t matter. Look for crit, attack power, str, stam. There isn’t like a 5% bonus in classic for wearing all armor of a certain grade so don’t worry about it. Armor value isn’t going to come too much into play if your not tanking. It’s best to go offensive here.
I’d say Warrior is middle of the road, I think shaman is a rougher level up.
It is easy for me. Warlock was most difficult for me.
Shaman is easy for me. Its based upon playstyle what one person is good at, another can be bad at. So it is what it is.
It’s not hard, nothing is hard to play in classic, but it’s very slow due to having to drink constantly. Outside of windfury’s stars aligning it sucks damage wise. It’s not tanky. It picks up around 40-45, but still doesn’t feel good til about 60.
Welp. That was short-lived. I died. And you won’t believe how it happened.
I have this crappy table from Walmart that my keyboard sits on. The supports are diagonal so that it can be folded. Sometimes the locking mechanism slips and the whole thing collapses. It just so happened to collapse while I was fighting gnolls in Westfall. My mountain dew cans went everywhere. My mouse fell off. I tried running with the keyboard, but once I managed to get the mouse back on the table, it spun my character around to a random direction, which hindered me running away properly.
Guess it’s time to buy a better table. Rest in Peace, little warrior.
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