Warriors Can't Kill Me!

Taking a temporary break from my other series, and returning to one I started a while ago, today we are discussing some arena (and BGs, to a lesser extent) counters for different classes -- specifically, warriors and the gigantic woodchoppers they usually carry in an attempt to deforest you.

1) Lookit their hands. Gladius, if you have said addon and you're in an arena, will tell you spec, but if not, you can get a spot idea by checking what they're packing in terms of destructive weaponry. weapon + shield = prot (rare but sometimes you'll see them), weapon + weapon = fury, one ginormous 2H weapon that's probably bigger than your sequoia cousins = arms. Now by and large, at least in a 2s bracket (and in 3s, I've noticed, though I play that bracket less), most warriors you see in arena tend to be arms. There may be a slot for prot in 5s as a damage soak and also the spell interrupts, but *shrug*.

2) L2Kite. Warriors are so kiteable, it's not even funny. *pause*. Ok, it's actually very funny. Laugh with me. The nice thing about warriors and other melee classes is that it opens up two forms of CC -- now you can use Entangling Roots and its instant-oh-crap-counterpart Nature's Grasp as an additional way to keep a warrior away from you. Because you know what warriors have when you're not in melee range? They have crap.

3) Travel Form. It's one of your best friends, especially against arms warriors, because they have two major things that will saw through your bark. First, the bladestorm. You cannot miss this, seriously. Even if you're asleep at the keyboard, it will reach through the screen and shake you violently until you wake up. The warrior goes into a spinning machine of death, and goes all red. RED is BAD. Just like how red means stop at a traffic light. Warriors are IMMUNE TO CC for the duration. So what you must do, is get the heck away from it. Now you could run...but the warrior can keep pace with you. Besides which, he's probably hamstrung you before he started. Travel form runs faster than a spinning warrior, which gets you distance. The act of shifting INTO travel form also removes movement-impairing effects (like hamstring). It's like two for the price of one!

4) Study this picture. Memorize it.

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Mortal Strike, this is called, and it is the other incredibly dangerous thing a warrior will do to you. It reduces the healing you take by 50%, and it lasts for, wait for it, ten seconds, with a six second cd. What this means is, if a warrior is pounding on you, and you do not GET SOME DISTANCE, there is nothing to stop them from keeping that debuff up on you continuously (following the basic rule that 10 > 6, cwutididthar).

Pro-tip: Warrior's got a MS on you. Hamstring, Bladestorm. You run like a good cheetah, rejuv yourself somewhere in the mix, and keep running. Your heals suck until that MS goes off. Run it out, and as soon as it wears off, swiftmend yourself. Matches against warriors, I find, frequently come down to me watching me and my partner's debuffs and carefully timing the important heals to go off in the little windows of non-MS that you manage to snag. You will never be totally free of them (well, until the warrior is dead, obviously), but you can create windows by making it very hard for the warrior to stay on top of you. Druids are *the* most mobile healer in the game, and if you don't use that mobility you're losing a major tool. Also, when the warrior is bladestorming, he's very dangerous to be around...but he can't do anything besides spin in a circle (it requires concentration not to get dizzy and fall over). So for the duration of the BS he's not going to be putting up MS on anyone. Get some distance, and look for the opportunity that opens up. Every cloud has a silver lining, yes?

Another option here is strategic CC -- if you've almost got free of a MS, it may be a good idea to throw a cyclone up to get those last couple seconds to go by without a reapplication.

5) Gear...it's all about gear, for warriors more than anyone else. Good gear on a warrior = massive hurt. Bad gear on a warrior = roflfail. The nice thing about arms warriors is that they're not very bursty so you can likely get a fairly non-skewed picture about what kind of DPS they're going to put on you from the get-go, and that in turn will educate you about what kind of hotting you need to keep up.

So there be a melee class...next time...locks? Or maybe we'll get lucky and I'll get my dogtag scripting to work and share a fantastic BG tag I came up with but haven't quite ironed the kinks out of yet...