Shadowlands F2P Warrior Guide

Hey Chops,
long time fan here.
First thing first thanks for the awesome guide, as soon as i noticed it i picked up my pre-shadowlands warr to bring him up to speed.
Now, as for the actual question, i'm almost done with getting the socket gear and was looking at gems when i found out steady talasites are getting nerfed in 9.1.5.
So question is: do we default to Northrend JC +3 str gems or are the +2 str/+2 haste ones worth considering?
I'm currently playing a fury warr and you mentioned haste as the most valuable secondary in your guide so i was wondering whether the +1 str per gem was superior to the added haste.
Also, just for argument's sake, i found out i'm kinda low on haste since tbc socket gear has a lot of crit and i'm currently using locket+lagnut to stack on vers.

If you aren't f2p I'd throw 2str and 2stam into the mix aswell, since being beefy is fun ;)

Edit: Disregard the f2p part, they can apparently get the gems! I guess being vet for so long has left me clueless :)
 
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Forgot to mention, yeah i'm F2P.

I'd go +3 Northrend/Wrath Strength, and just have to not use the Alchemy Flask, or get all +3 crit from the PvP vendor with Marks of Honor for a high Crit build and rely on Crusader, Doomplate set, and or stength proc trinkets to provide the strength.
Tedious grind on the Northrend JC because you have to do a daily quest for the Dragon's Eye to make the Bold Dragon's Eye.
Also, it costs 2 Dalaran JC tokens from dailies to buy the recipe if you don't have it.
So, if you have 20 gem slots to fill, will take 22 days.
You need generic Wrath gems to finish the dailies with.
To aquire these, you have to pick up Northrend Mining and Mine about 100 Saronite ore to prospect for gems.
Best area for this is the old Wintergrasp area, can be difficult to get to for flight path.
Go thru Sholozer Basin and run up a snowy hill full of scourge, kind of a pain unless you are a stealth class.
And you have to keep Wrath JC for the gems to work in your gear.
As such, you have to drop either Eng, or Alchemy due to this.

Marks of Honor drop in like 1 of 5 or maybe 1 of 10 crates from PvP victories.
RNG nightmare and you have to win to even get a crate.
Good luck with it !
 
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To aquire these, you have to pick up Northrend Mining and Mine about 100 Saronite ore to prospect for gems.
Best area for this is the old Wintergrasp area, can be difficult to get to for flight path.
Go thru Sholozer Basin and run up a snowy hill full of scourge, kind of a pain unless you are a stealth class.
Marks of Honor drop in like 1 of 5 or maybe 1 of 10 crates from PvP victories.
RNG nightmare and you have to win to even get a crate.
Great info, allow me to add my personal exp in this regard; First, you can use the portal to purple parlor în old Dalaran, inside violet citadel, to get to one of the highest Point: there you can use goblin glider kit (garrison eng building) with darkmoon cannon (achiev reward from darkmoon race quests) and try to fly toward WG. The full continental map will be usefull for path guidance. Might need a secondary use of the cannon if you land right on the wall and not inside the WG area. Also, its much easier to farm mats there during a battle (bc the elemental that roam there will be despawned during the battle).
In regards to mark of honor, there is a secondary source for them beside bg: a specific mission from order hall, you need at least a follower with 450 itemlvl to spawn the mission: you Will need a 200% succes rate for it, because the mark is a bonus loot from it. The mission is more or less rng based, some chars can get it on a regular bases, others only once. So far on my main ww monk i get the mission every 2 weeks. Hope the extra info will help some1!
 
Great info, allow me to add my personal exp in this regard; First, you can use the portal to purple parlor în old Dalaran, inside violet citadel, to get to one of the highest Point: there you can use goblin glider kit (garrison eng building) with darkmoon cannon (achiev reward from darkmoon race quests) and try to fly toward WG. The full continental map will be usefull for path guidance. Might need a secondary use of the cannon if you land right on the wall and not inside the WG area. Also, its much easier to farm mats there during a battle (bc the elemental that roam there will be despawned during the battle).
In regards to mark of honor, there is a secondary source for them beside bg: a specific mission from order hall, you need at least a follower with 450 itemlvl to spawn the mission: you Will need a 200% succes rate for it, because the mark is a bonus loot from it. The mission is more or less rng based, some chars can get it on a regular bases, others only once. So far on my main ww monk i get the mission every 2 weeks. Hope the extra info will help some1!

Good stuff! Never thought about trying to glide into WG, but I don't have the DMF cannon either.
Yeah, you can still farm around the edges during non battle times, but prepare to have to run away from the elementals.
On certain classes, you can stealth out or feign death, shadowmeld to escape, if you aggro one.
 
Hey Chops,
long time fan here.
First thing first thanks for the awesome guide, as soon as i noticed it i picked up my pre-shadowlands warr to bring him up to speed.
Now, as for the actual question, i'm almost done with getting the socket gear and was looking at gems when i found out steady talasites are getting nerfed in 9.1.5.
So question is: do we default to Northrend JC +3 str gems or are the +2 str/+2 haste ones worth considering?
I'm currently playing a fury warr and you mentioned haste as the most valuable secondary in your guide so i was wondering whether the +1 str per gem was superior to the added haste.
Also, just for argument's sake, i found out i'm kinda low on haste since tbc socket gear has a lot of crit and i'm currently using locket+lagnut to stack on vers.
You've been told a lot of confusing and outright wrong information already so let me see if I can help clear some of this up.

First off, 2/2 str haste gems arent a terrible choice. 2/2 str stam gems might be a bit better though, considering how much of a hit secondaries take in BGs. That said, as a fury warrior you're gonna be getting dual crusader Ignore Pains pretty commonly so being beefy isnt gonna be too much of a concern. FWIW I've been able to stack enough haste without the gems. Your mileage may vary.

My recommendation would be to get haste from gear and gem for either straight strength or str/stm, depending on how squishy you feel in BGs. Gun to my head, I'd tell you maybe an even mix of the two? We're all guessing about how thats gonna feel right now but I'm planning on keeping the +3s I have (6) and replacing the talasites with 2/2s

To get these gems, I'd recommend following Gobolords insanely useful F2P JC Guide. You can safely ignore these goobers telling you you need Dragons Eyes or implying that F2P cant get the str/stam gems. You make Bold Cardinal Rubys for the +3 str or Sovereign Dreadstones for the str/stm so also, no you dont have to keep northrend JC for the gems to work.

What you will need to do is start with mining/JC and just mine and prospect your ass off until you have enough of the tier 2 gems to do all the transmutes you want to do (folks recommend wintergrasp, I recommend Sholazar Basin). Then swap to herb/alchemy and farm herbs to level alch. Recommend get another 10-15% more herbs on top of the guides recommend. RNG is a bitch.

Re: specifically Cardinal Ruby - Make sure you have enough alchemy mats to get to 75 comfortably and also transmute 5 other epic gems (hey, dreadstone!). The Cardinal Ruby transmute is locked behind a quest that requires you to transmute 5 epic gems. This quest is also often glitched! and wont appear visible so you might need to get a GM to put it in your logs for you.

Then its just a matter of slogging through a 24 hour CD on the alchemy transmute for every gem. It sucks, but what are you gonna do? You can use that month to do the JC dailies to get the recipes you need and you can also use your second prof slot to grind up more ore/gems for leveling JC and eventually engi, etc.
 
I knew about the JC guide so i'm pretty much aware the grind is a massive pain.
I just wanted to know your opinion on what to put instead of the steady talasites.
Thank you so much @Chops for the insight, i'll get to farming asap
 
Chops, thanks for this. I was getting super confused reading the above posts. This was my plan as well, replacing the talasites with +2 str/+2 sta gems and keep my +3 str as is. I'll prob go for a nightmare tear as well as the +3 stam/+4 crit from hellfire. Not sure arms can go full glass cannon and not spent all game in the GY.

I think the nerf will be beneficial to warriors in general and am looking forward to it.
 
sorry, i get carried away.

TL;DR theres a surprising amount of haste available from gear. Feel free to gem with whatever combination of +3 and +2/2 you feel fits
Nothing to be sorry about....after all i got a lot of convenient and helpful information in a single organized post so i ain't complaining.
I was just pointing out that, as i know you and other mods don't like people asking the same stuff over and over instead of just checking the relevant guides, i did make the effort to look into Gobolord's excellent guide.
 
glass warrs r totly r1
where they rly shine tho is in
warr vs warr duels
those r like a fkn game of chess yo
best version of pvp in this game
change my mind
 
Wouldn`t it be better if its put in the main hand because of the higher weapon damage along with the crow wing in the off hand?
Maybe. it was a hasty test and re-write after artifacts got nerfed (as evidenced by the goofy sentence that just... ends) so if it turns out that its better in main hand, go for it.

Edit: @EKJMNY45 - just gave this a quick looksee and rivendare in the MH gives me 2 more dmg on bloodthirst, even dmg on raging blow and 2 less dmg on rampage. Given offhand calculations in instanced pvp, I'd imagine that Rampage dmg actually evens out or is slightly better, so yea. Thanks for catching that. I'll edit it in a second.
 
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chops, since fury warriors get the 5% movement speed buff from smf wouldn't it be better to sue the vanilla 10% ms boot enchant? or does it not stack with MS stuff anymore?
 
chops, since fury warriors get the 5% movement speed buff from smf wouldn't it be better to sue the vanilla 10% ms boot enchant? or does it not stack with MS stuff anymore?
If I understand the mechanics correctly, it does. I just forgot to add it as an option after SMF went from gimmick to actual BIS. I'll toss it in when I update the baron sword thing too.
 
You've been told a lot of confusing and outright wrong information already so let me see if I can help clear some of this up.

First off, 2/2 str haste gems arent a terrible choice. 2/2 str stam gems might be a bit better though, considering how much of a hit secondaries take in BGs. That said, as a fury warrior you're gonna be getting dual crusader Ignore Pains pretty commonly so being beefy isnt gonna be too much of a concern. FWIW I've been able to stack enough haste without the gems. Your mileage may vary.

My recommendation would be to get haste from gear and gem for either straight strength or str/stm, depending on how squishy you feel in BGs. Gun to my head, I'd tell you maybe an even mix of the two? We're all guessing about how thats gonna feel right now but I'm planning on keeping the +3s I have (6) and replacing the talasites with 2/2s

To get these gems, I'd recommend following Gobolords insanely useful F2P JC Guide. You can safely ignore these goobers telling you you need Dragons Eyes or implying that F2P cant get the str/stam gems. You make Bold Cardinal Rubys for the +3 str or Sovereign Dreadstones for the str/stm so also, no you dont have to keep northrend JC for the gems to work.

What you will need to do is start with mining/JC and just mine and prospect your ass off until you have enough of the tier 2 gems to do all the transmutes you want to do (folks recommend wintergrasp, I recommend Sholazar Basin). Then swap to herb/alchemy and farm herbs to level alch. Recommend get another 10-15% more herbs on top of the guides recommend. RNG is a bitch.

Re: specifically Cardinal Ruby - Make sure you have enough alchemy mats to get to 75 comfortably and also transmute 5 other epic gems (hey, dreadstone!). The Cardinal Ruby transmute is locked behind a quest that requires you to transmute 5 epic gems. This quest is also often glitched! and wont appear visible so you might need to get a GM to put it in your logs for you.

Then its just a matter of slogging through a 24 hour CD on the alchemy transmute for every gem. It sucks, but what are you gonna do? You can use that month to do the JC dailies to get the recipes you need and you can also use your second prof slot to grind up more ore/gems for leveling JC and eventually engi, etc.

So, sorry if I gave wrong, misleading, or incomplete information.
The above described way @Chops referenced following the JC guide is the truly best way.
However, in my case, I want to spend more time PvPing and not grinding out tons of mats and professions.
For example, on my Warr I got the BC gear, then Panda Enchanting, GID, then Cata Eng, etc.
Had to farm the Crusader Enchant recipe, then 300 vanilla enchanting, then I did vanilla Alch for the Flask.
Pretty decent time sink I feel, but that's just my opinion also.
For a time cost analysis, for me, the Northrend JC Bold Dragon Eyes is much simpler. Call me lazy or not a huge fan of farming mats and maxing professions.
Elites and/or true optimized twinks might scoff at this.
In the end, what do I lose really, 12 Strength from the Alch flask. I'm okay with that.
Though, if I'd known ahead, I prob wouldn't have done Alch for the Flask, except getting Swiftness potions is plus, if you can get the recipe to drop that is.
Again, the JC guide is phenomenal and the best way to do it with Cardinal Ruby gems.
My way is a time shortcut that for me, is/was the better choice and quickest route.
 
If I understand the mechanics correctly, it does. I just forgot to add it as an option after SMF went from gimmick to actual BIS. I'll toss it in when I update the baron sword thing too.


Ah okay now I just need to find an aquamarine so I can do the enchant.
 
I'm thinking along the same lines as @Celydar in planning to go for the Dragons Eye gems once the talasite nerf drops. Obviously it's not optimal, but I don't really feel like farming all the herbs and ore, so for the time being at least I think I'll just hold Jewelcrafting/Engineering and miss out on nets/flask. It also opens up https://www.wowhead.com/item=42341/figurine-ruby-hare?ilvl=19 as an option to try out which could be fun for warriors, (though I think I'll still prefer https://www.wowhead.com/item=136975/hunger-of-the-pack?bonus=1826:1472&ilvl=25 )

It's so dumb that there aren't strength MoH gems.
 
Feel like its worth bumping this to note that upon some PTR testing, if you were a talasite stacking warrior and are going to be swapping +3 str or +2str/+2stam gems after 9.1.5 then you might want to look at Combatant Claymore and Runeblade of Baron Rivendare are your new Arms BIS weapons (im leaning towards runeblade as bis because movespeed, but the claymore gives more tooltip dmg)

For F2P this means potentially saving 3 gems in potentially not having to re-gem a Crow Wing

I'll update the guide officially when things are a little more concrete and i've had more than 7 minutes between projects to actually test it more thoroughly.
 

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