Classic Warrior DPS Spec, Builds, and Talents

DPS Warriors reach their maximum sustained damage potential when dual wielding, but if you have a really good two-hander (especially when you are Horde and have access to Windfury Totem), it also works after some slight talent modifications.

If you were looking for leveling builds, please refer to our leveling guide for Warriors.

For this build, you want to use the highest DPS one-hand weapons you can find. Once geared, in later phases and with lots of extra Hit chance in your gear, this is the highest DPS build in WoW Classic, and as such, you will need to watch your threat closely, lest you pull aggro from the tank. Try to activate Death Wish and Recklessness at a time where the boss will not die before they expire, but also close enough to the Execute phase that your maximum damage potential can be fully realized.

Due to the strict talent tree required to get Bloodthirst, Dual Wield Specialization, and Impale, the only preference points available are the ones we put into Improved Heroic Strike and Improved Battle Shout. You can replace these with some points into Improved Overpower, Piercing Howl, and Improved Cleave respectively.

While dual wield is stronger with perfect gear, it is generally easier to gear for two-hander talents, especially early on in WoW Classic, when Hit gear is hard to come by. Windfury Totem makes this build even stronger if you are a Horde player, but it can do insane damage even for Alliance players, as you can see in this video, by DunderJ.

This build relies on Improved Slam, and is otherwise similar to the previous one, minus the points Dual Wield Specialization. The way you should weave Slam into your rotation is by using it immediately after hitting an auto-attack, which you can time with Weapon Swing Timer, as explained in our Addon Page. For more information, check it out in action with this video, by Executus Gaming.

Warriors looking to do high PvE damage usually only spec lightly into Arms. Even at a light investment, regardless, this tree still has several useful talents:

Tactical Mastery is required for stance swapping to work. Without points in it, you would struggle to retain any Rage when stance swapping to Battle Stance for Overpower, and back to Berserker Stance, for example.

Anger Management generates 1 Rage every 3 seconds, which is not clear at all from reading its tooltip. This makes it a fairly good Rage generating talent and, combined with Bloodrage, enables you to jump into a fight with a decent amount of Rage already.

Improved Overpower makes your Overpower skill critical strike much more often. This can be useful to activate Flurry, but unless you do it while at low Rage, you risk losing a significant amount of Rage while stance dancing to Battle Stance, and then back to Berserker Stance.

Impale is a major damage contributor for Warriors, while only requiring an investment of 17 points into the Arms tree, allowing for deep Fury to still be reached.

Cruelty is a staple of all kinds of Warriors, as trading one talent point for 1% extra chance to critical strike is usually a good deal.

Unbridled Wrath suits dual wielding well, as the more often you attack, the more often you activate this talent for extra Rage.

Piercing Howl can provide a reliable source of soft crowd control in an emergency. Whether it is because the tank lost aggro on some enemies or because you need to run away to recover health, Piercing Howl will make things more manageable.

Improved Battle Shout is a nice damage boost for a full party of melee players. If you are able to provide it at little cost to your performance, it is a good idea to do so.

Improved Cleave is not quite as impactful as it sounds, since the damage increase only applies to the extra damage applied by Cleave and not the whole attack. Still, it is better than the alternatives for DPS, as long as you have another Warrior in your party with Improved Battle Shout.

Enrage is mostly taken to reach Flurry, as you should rarely be hit with critical strikes while dealing damage.

Improved Slam is used in the two-hander Fury build because Slam's damage scales very well with a slow weapon's high damage range, which you will generally be using in this build. It also adds a Rage dump that does not negate 2H Fury's slow, precious white swings, unlike Heroic Strike.

Flurry increases your damage substantially, as long as you are dealing critical strikes regularly. With good enough gear, you will eventually be able to keep this up nearly 100% of the time.

Bloodthirst provides an extra attack to further increase your damage, with a little bit of regeneration sprinkled in.

If you wish to deal as much damage as possible, you will never want to put any points into the Protection tree.