The Passive-Aggressive Warrior

[Artega]

An improvisation of the standard high-DPS warrior, with some Fury skills and Two-handed Spec. sacrificed in favor of a couple of the Defensive Talents. This is still a Battle Stance warrior, however.

Arms Talents

Deflection - 5/5 (+5% to Parry)
Improved Charge - 2/2 (+6 to Rage Bonus)
Improved Rend - 3/3 (Bleed Damage +35%)
Deep Wounds - 3/3 (Deals 60% Weapon Damage as DOT on crit)
Improved Overpower - 2/2 (+50% of crit on Overpower)
Impale - 2/2 (+20% damage on crit)
Improved Heroic Strike - 3/3 (-3 Rage Cost on Heroic Strike)
Sweeping Strikes - 1/1 (Next 5 melee attacks hit additional nearby opponent)
Axe/Mace/Sword Specialization - 5/5 (+5% chance of crit, 6% of 3-sec stun, or 6% of additional attack, respectively)
Improved Hamstring - 2/2 (+10% slow effect)
Improved Thunder Clap - 3/3 (Damage +25%)
Mortal Strike - 1/1 (200% weapon damage, heal effects -50% for 10 sec)

Fury Talents

Cruelty - 5/5 (+5% chance of crit)

Protection Talents

Shield Specialization - 5/5 (+5% chance to Block)
Toughness - 5/5 (Armor value from items +10%)
Iron Will - 5/5 (+15% chance to resist Stun and Charm effects)

Obviously, there are a few problems with this build. It's designed to take advantage of shields' Blocking, Armor, and stat bonuses, but in order to sacrifice the five points into Shield Specialization, one must give up Two-Handed Weapon Specialization (+5% damage with two-handers), and there aren't enough points to reach One-Handed Weapon Specialization. Toughness drastically increases your Armor rating in the late-game, and Iron Will makes it more difficult to Stun or Sheep you.

Alternatively, one could ditch shields completely and pick up Anticipation (Defense +10) instead of Shield Spec., pick up Two-Handed Spec., and drop Improved Heroic Strike and Improved Thunder Clap.

[WarLocke]

Sorry, for the derail, but this is a Warrior talent thread, so...

My new dwarf Warrior, Bergretha, is only level 8, but I have no idea what talents I'd want to pick up with her. Is a pure- or heavy-Protection build viable? The whole 'immovable rock' thing appeals to me.

Plus, the talents that are always in effect (+ to armor, + to crit chances, etc) seem like a better 'bang for the buck' than, say, '+X% to Rend damage' and such.

[stabby]

An improvisation of the standard high-DPS warrior, with some Fury skills and Two-handed Spec. sacrificed in favor of a couple of the Defensive Talents.  This is still a Battle Stance warrior, however.

Arms Talents

Deflection - 5/5 (+5% to Parry)
Improved Charge - 2/2 (+6 to Rage Bonus)
Improved Rend - 3/3 (Bleed Damage +35%)
Deep Wounds - 3/3 (Deals 60% Weapon Damage as DOT on crit)
Improved Overpower - 2/2 (+50% of crit on Overpower)
Impale - 2/2 (+20% damage on crit)
Improved Heroic Strike - 3/3 (-3 Rage Cost on Heroic Strike)
Sweeping Strikes - 1/1 (Next 5 melee attacks hit additional nearby opponent)
Axe/Mace/Sword Specialization - 5/5 (+5% chance of crit, 6% of 3-sec stun, or 6% of additional attack, respectively)
Improved Hamstring - 2/2 (+10% slow effect)
Improved Thunder Clap - 3/3 (Damage +25%)
Mortal Strike - 1/1 (200% weapon damage, heal effects -50% for 10 sec)

Fury Talents

Cruelty - 5/5 (+5% chance of crit)

Protection Talents

Shield Specialization - 5/5 (+5% chance to Block)
Toughness - 5/5 (Armor value from items +10%)
Iron Will - 5/5 (+15% chance to resist Stun and Charm effects)

Obviously, there are a few problems with this build.  It's designed to take advantage of shields' Blocking, Armor, and stat bonuses, but in order to sacrifice the five points into Shield Specialization, one must give up Two-Handed Weapon Specialization (+5% damage with two-handers), and there aren't enough points to reach One-Handed Weapon Specialization.  Toughness drastically increases your Armor rating in the late-game, and Iron Will makes it more difficult to Stun or Sheep you.

Alternatively, one could ditch shields completely and pick up Anticipation (Defense +10) instead of Shield Spec., pick up Two-Handed Spec., and drop Improved Heroic Strike and Improved Thunder Clap.
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I have to say, I'm not a fan of Improved Charge, Improved Heroic Strike, Improved Thunder Clap, and Impale.

Improved Charge, for me, rates an "Okay," but I find that in groups, I very rarely get to use Charge (especially in instances).

Improved Heroic Strike seems very much like a waste of talent points to me, as Heroic Strike is the most rage-inefficient attack we have (costing a number of rage, replacing the next attack (which will not generate rage as a result), and doing only "okay" damage). This is okay if you're dual-wielding, but as a two-hand or sword and board-focused warrior, you really can't afford to be skipping rage-generating attacks unless you've managed to generate way too much, in which case you are probably tanking multiple enemies, and will soon be enjoying the bizarre interactions of Sweeping Strikes + Cleave (which also fails to generate more rage, but does ridiculous sums of damage to multiple monsters at once).

Ditto Improved Thunder Clap -- the skill itself is entirely lackluster in the damage department, a 20% bonus will do just about nothing to help you there.

Impale is a tricky subject. It only adds damage to your special ability criticals. If you're playing a build that goes for a lot of heroic strike damage and a high critical rate (axe or polearm spec, obviously cruelty, generally dual-wielding to minimize HS's inefficiencies). If you're a 2-handed or shield-specced warrior, though, I find that your special attacks are things like Hamstring, Shield Bash, Execute, and the occasional Overpower and Cleave. The first two deal negligable damage. Execute is funky, and I only use it while soloing, in general (in groups, it seems to waste my entire rage bar while not doing any damage due to timing issues, more often than not). Overpower crits a *lot* thanks to Improved Overpower, but things don't tend to dodge with frequency. In the end, it's a judgement call, and I went with "no". I may change my mind after I get Mortal Strike in a quarter of a level and start buying points in Cruelty. If I do, I'll let you know.

The more I play Warrior (39.75 or so as of this post), the more I find that the key to being as good as I could possibly be is good reflexes and effective stance micromanagement. While solo, I tend to stick to battle stance, and swap to Berserk every 10s for Whirlwind while farming. While grouped, I tend to stay in defensive stance to easily taunt things off of people, improved aggro, improved rage build, and better defense (I've been using a two-handed weapon at all times due to a lack of suitible 1-handed weapons, but I just came across a good one, so we'll see how my shield-bearing holds up), swapping to Battle stance to jam my overpower key if a target dodges, hitting Thunder Clap to secure aggro on multiple targets, swapping to Berserk for Whirlwind against multiples, switching to Battle for Sweeping Strikes when I have a lot of rage and can do tons of damage by hitting two things with execute, or just multi-cleave.

Obviously, it's something that people need to play around with on their own.

[Artega]

Yeah, but remember that Improved Heroic Strike and Improved Thunder Clap are there more to fill out the thirty points for Mortal Strike than for any usefulness. Heroic Strike is useful (I use it constantly), and Thunder Clap is nice (Cleave and Sweeping Strikes are better.)

I may consider going for Tactical Mastery and/or Anger Management, as swapping Stances has always seemed useful (Defensive to draw aggro, Battle to slaughter the hapless mobs.)

[Olon97]

I've put some commentary on warrior talents (with arbitrary number ratings for the fun of it) at the Basin's unofficial WoW Wikki. It's about 1/2 complete as I got too involved playing the game to finish up. Doing a little on it now.

If you're an experienced warrior player (preferrably who fooled around with talents with a 60 warrior in Beta), feel free to register on the Wiki and add comentary / ratings if you see fit.

I think there are still many good ways to make a warrior, with "best" being highly dependent on what you plan to do with it.

The best damage dealer, IMO is still the Arms/Fury mix with Sweeping Strikes, MS and Piercing Howl as highlights. My personal favorite is a Protection/Fury mix with Flurry, Piercing Howl and Concussion blow. Listing every little choice on the way gets a little tough to follow, and besides the very high end talents, there is definitely some room for error.

[Boutros]

The talent build I've been working toward is primarily defensively focused, with some branching out into fury and arms for better rage management, cc, and some more versatility for PvP and soloing. It looks something like this:

Fury: 11
Cruelty 5
Improved Demoralizing Shout 5
Piercing Howl 1

Protection: 29
Shield Specialization or Anticipation 5
Toughness 5
Iron Will 5
Improved Revenge 3
Defiance 5
Improved Sunder Armor 3
Improved Shield Wall 2
Concussion Blow 1

Arms: 11
Deflection 5
Tactical Mastery 5
Anger Management 1

I may have to respec soon so I can try out some of the flashier skills, so far I've put all my points into the boring passive prerequisites. I'm leaning toward this build as I'm not terribly concerned with achieving tremendous DPS, but rather being as useful to a group as possible, while having some interesting skills to use against my enemies in pvp. I think it allows me to avoid having to put points into talents that aren't very good just so I can get a better talent later. For example, Improved Heroic Strike. Even with -20% rage cost it's till not very much bang for your rage dollar, especially considering what it does to your rage generation. My only real regret here is the lack of sweeping strikes, as I've heard very interesting things about it and it's synergies with cleave and retaliation.

[Artega]

I'm starting to lean heavily towards Tactical Mastery and Anger Management, myself.

I've been using Sunder Armor instead of Heroic Strike for some time now, since Sunder Armor is more useful in the long run, especially in groups.

What things have you heard about Sweeping Strikes and Cleave?

[Artega]

The commentary you linked to was very valuable. Thank you.

Using said commentary, I've come up with a Fury/Arms build that will switch between Battle and Berserker Stances on the fly, using various skills as necessary:

Cruelty Rank 5
Improved Demoralizing Shout Rank 5
Unbridled Wrath Rank 5
Piercing Howl Rank 1
Improved Execute Rank 2
Enrage Rank 5
Improved Intercept Rank 2
Flurry Rank 5
Fury Total: 30

Deflection Rank 5
Improved Rend Rank 3
Tactical Mastery Rank 5
Improved Overpower Rank 2
Deep Wounds Rank 3
Impale Rank 2
Sweeping Strikes Rank 1
Arms Total: 21

Intercept is a great way of starting a fight (especially since you can't use Charge while in combat, which has caused the occasional Hunter to win a fight they should have lost), and Execute is a great way of ending it. If you get the drop or the first hit, punch Charge to generate some quick rage, Rend em, and bash on them to generate Rage. If they try to run (they will), Intecept them. Build up Rage, and finish them with Execute. If they have good snares or mez, pray for a quick death :)

EDIT: Forgot to mention that I'll definitely find myself missing the weapon spec and Mortal Strike talents if I go this route. Axes would give me a whopping 10% extra chance of critting (so would polearms, which are inherently cooler, too), and so would be conducive to this kind of build, but I can't find a way of squeezing in enough points without raping my Fury tree at the same time. The flipside is that I'll never have to worry about being restrained to specific weapons - I could even use a main handed weapon and a shield if the mood took me. I've been eying the Blight polearm as of late, however :)