Wow Arms Warrior Guide

Cheap WoW WOTLK Classic Gold

Updated 23rd of June: Item links might take a day to update.
Update 24th of June: I've decided to hang up the hat after a good 10 years playing and will not be updating this guide in the future.

1.1: Introduction.
1.2: Stat-priority.
1.3: Enchants and consumables.
1.4: Talents.
1.5: Glyphs.
1.6: Rotation.
1.7: Useful macros.
1.8: Boss-by-boss.

1.1: Introduction and F.A.Q.
Good day. So I noticed there's no Arms guides for current content up on these forums, so I've decided to quickly put one together for all you aspiring, or experienced newly returning warriors. I'll keep it short, and if there are popular questions I'll answer as best I can and add it to the front page.

So, where do I want to play arms
Arms can be played on any fight, but shines mostly on cleave encounters. This means fights with high uptime on more than 1 target to DPS. Good examples are Brackenspore, Tectus and Twin Ogron in Highmaul, Hans'gar & Franzok or The Iron Maidens in BRF, or Hellfire Council, Tyrant Velhari and Archimonde in Hellfire Citadel.

What makes Arms strong, and what are its weaknessess
Arms' strongest feature is its incredibly strong execute damage and 2-target capabilities through Sweeping Strikes and Rend. Arms is also one of the few specs that gain single target damage by adding another target to the equation through increased rage regeneration from the Taste for Blood talent.

Arms' weakest feature is that you need an incredible amount of targets for it to be worth aoe'ing with anything besides Sweeping Strikes and Rend, and it thus falls far behind other classes the second more than 4-5 targets are introduced or if your raid needs high amounts of burst damage for short periods of time (think Kormrok or Operator Thogar).

6.2 is out and I'm not sure which trinkets I should go for. Which do I use
From best to worst:
1. Discordant Chorus is your best all around trinket and should not be substituted for anything. The proc from this trinket will typically do around 6% of your damage even single target and is thus incredibly strong.
2. Unending Hunger is your second best trinket once you get the T18 4-set.
3. Empty Drinking Horn.
4. Worldbreaker's Resolve is your second best trinket before you get the T18 4-set, after which it falls drastically in value. It may sound good, but is generally not worth it for Arms simply because you won't have enough rage to fill globals during colossus smash.
5. Rumbling Pebble is far worse than other alternatives.

What does the T18 4-set do and how much is it worth
The new 4-set doubles the rate of which your Rend ticks, essentially doubling its damage and the rage you get from the Taste for Blood talent. It has strong synergy with the 2-set, which gives you a 60% chance to reset the cooldown on your Mortal Strike. Since Rend with the T18 4-set ticks every 1,5 seconds the two setbonuses together essentially removes the cooldown from Mortal Strike when facing multiple targets.

1.2: Stat-priority

Strength, Critical Strike and Mastery are your best stats, and all three have certain distinctions to them.

Strength increases your raw damage output.

Critical Strike will increase your raw damage output, but will also increase your rage-generation significantly. This is why it's largely regarded as your best stat. A non-crit white swing will only generate 21 while a crit will generate a massive 48 rage.

Mastery increases the raw damage of your Mortal Strike and Execute by a flat amount. It's important to note that while this is extremely good for singletarget, it has no effect on talents and abilities like Whirlwind, Dragon Roar, Ravager or, most importantly, Bladestorm. While it is very valuable for singletarget it is far less desirable once there are more targets involved.

Versatility increases your raw damage, and increases your healing taken.

Multistrike gives you two chances per attack to do an extra attack for 30% damage.

Haste increases your attackspeed and reduces your global cooldown through the ability Headlong Rush.

The following stats have been calculated with full normal-mode HFC gear enchanted with Mastery. If you're unsure whether or not an item is an upgrade for you, I recommend downloading the addon Pawn and inputting the following.

Single-target: 63887 DPS
1. Weapon DPS (2.14)
2. Strength (1.0)
3. Mastery (0.93)
4. Critical Strike (0.85)
5. Multistrike (0.70)
6. Versatility (0.57)
7. Haste (0.57)

Two to three targets: 107000 dps (70294 dps to main target)
1. Weapon DPS (2.01)
2. Strength (1.0)
3. Mastery (0.91)
4. Multistrike (0.65)
5. Haste (0.65)
6. Crit (0.63)
7. Versatility (0.57)

Crit falls in value for every additional target introduced because the increased rage generation through Taste for Blood keeps us with enough rage to fill almost every global cooldown.

1.3: Enchants and consumables:

Enchants:
Cloak, Neck and Rings: Gift / Breath of Mastery
Weapon: You can go with either Enchant Weapon - Mark of the Thunderlord or Enchant Weapon - Mark of Bleeding Hollow depending on how much you have of each stat on your gear. Thunderlord has slightly higher uptime and will help your rage generation, but Mark of the Bleeding Hollow will on average give you higher DPS.

Gems:
Greater Mastery Taladite
Immaculate Mastery Taladite

Flasks & potions:
Greater Draenic Strength Flask
Draenic Strength Potion

Food:
Sleeper Sushi

1.4: Talents:

L15: Go with either Double Time or Juggernaut depending on preference.

L30: Your only real choices here are Enraged Regeneration and Impending Victory . Second Wind is not worth it. With the T18 4-set Impending Victory is a DPS decrease.

L45: Sudden Death for singletarget and Taste for Blood on any fight where you can consistently keep Rend on more than one target. With the T18 4-set you'll want Taste for Blood for all fights.

L60: Dragon Roar if you can ever hit more than one target with it, Storm Bolt for singletarget. You can safely stick with Dragon Roar even for singletarget fights, as there is minimal difference. Shockwave can be useful if you are ever assigned to stun groups of adds, but other classes are generally better at it.

L75: Vigilance. Your tanks should be calling for it.

L90: Bloodbath or Avatar depending on preference. With the Mastery levels of HFC gear you need something like 15 targets for Bladestorm to be a better cooldown.

L100: This is kind of an interesting tier, as Anger Management has some niche uses this tier. The general consensus is that if Anger Management gives you another set of cooldowns on any given fight it will perform slightly higher than Ravager or Siegebreaker for singletarget. On average, Anger Management will reduce your cooldowns by ~20-25%. That means Bladestorm goes to 45-50 seconds and Recklessness goes to ~2 minutes 20 seconds. On any fight shorter than 3 minutes, and on any fight where the cooldown reduction better aligns your cooldowns for major burns or add-waves you'll want this talent. Otherwise stick with Ravager.

1.5: Glyphs:

Glyph of Unending Rage: This glyph is mandatory. Increases your maximum rage by 20 for a maximum of 120 rage.

Glyph of Wind and Thunder: This glyph is very, very good for fights where you have to hit multiple targets, or fights where you sometimes go out of range of the boss. As Arms you will generally want this glyph. This glyph is however almost completely redundant once you have the T18 4-set, as you'll never again want to use Whirlwind on less than 9 targets.

Glyph of Resonating Power: This glyph is a small DPS increase as it makes Thunderclap do as much damage as Whirlwind for half the rage-cost, but it adds a button to your rotation. This glyph also becomes redundant once you have the T18 4-set.

Glyph of Rude Interruption: Is there something interruptable on the encounter If yes, use this glyph. If you're on Oregorger, tell your raid you want to take the first interrupt. If you're doing Blast Furnace, interrupt everything. Heck, interrupt Slag Elementals in the last phase just for the added DPS. The damagebonus is huge.

Glyph of Mortal Strike: Useful for fights with very high damage taken, but you generally want other glyphs.

Glyph of Recklessness: Never use this.

Glyph of Sweeping Strikes: Good choice for fights with multiple targets, as the T18 4-set frees up the glyph slot previously used for Resonating Power.

1.6: Rotation:

Pre-execute:
1. Keep rend up, refresh when less than 5 seconds remaining on debuff.
2. Ravager. Always put this down before Colossus Smash.
3. Colossus Smash on cooldown.
4. Mortal Strike on cooldown (or if 40+ rage if you have the T18 4-set).
5. Sudden Death proccs.
6. Siegebreaker if you chose this talent.
7. Storm Bolt / Dragon Roar (never use Dragon Roar inside CS, as it already ignores armor and is better used outside).
8. Thunder Clap (Only with Resonating Power glyph!)
9. Whirlwind if 40 or more rage.

If you have the T18 4-set you should very rarely use Whirlwind or Thunderclap in your single target rotation. Since Mortal Strike more often than not comes back off cooldown every 1.5 seconds there is a high chance using another ability in between will delay your Mortal Strike.

Execute:
1. Keep rend up, refresh when less than 5 seconds remaining on debuff.
2. Ravager. Always put this down before Colossus Smash.
3. Colossus Smash on cooldown.
4. Execute during CS, or at 72+ rage to avoid rage-capping. Be sure to save as close to 120 rage as you can for every Colossus Smash.
5. Siegebreaker.
6. Storm Bolt / Dragon Roar.
7. Replace all other fillers with Execute.

Opener:
1. Prepot and charge in.
2. Rend.
3. Put your Ravager down.
4. Pop your cooldowns and Colossus Smash.
5. Mortal Strike.
6. Continue singletarget rotation based on your talent and glyph choices.

2-3 targets:
Keep 100% uptime on Sweeping Strikes. Keep Rend applied to as many targets as you can without ragecapping. Continue your singletarget rotation while positioning yourself between two targets to ensure your Sweeping Strikes is hitting optimally.

Protip: On 2+ targets it might be a significant DPS increase to go Juggernaut and use Glyph of Bull Rush. Charge does not grant rage if you repeatadly charge the same target, but if you alternate targets it will still grant rage. During Execute, whenever you're low on rage, run away from the boss and Charge back in to get an easy free Execute every 12 seconds.

5+ targets:
Follow your 2-3 target rotation. Swap Mortal Strike for Whirlwind if there are 9 or more targets to hit.

Cooldown- and trinket usage:
As a warrior you have two primary cooldowns; Recklessness and whichever L90 talent you chose. Your number one priority, always, is to have as many uses of these as possible. Most often that means use them on cooldown. However, it is important to note that you always want to have your cooldowns up for when the boss reaches Execute-range. I can't stress enough how important this is, as this is the biggest determining factor in whether you just tickle the boss or actually manage to make a dent.

That means if a fight lasts 6 minutes, you should not pop your second Recklessness on the 3-minute mark. You should, however, pop your 2-minute trinket with Bloodbath at the 2 or 3-minute marker and then save the third trinket use for Execute.

If the fight lasts 3 and a half minutes you want to save your second 2-minute trinket use for your second Recklessness and align it with Execute.

1.7: Useful macros:

Cooldown macro nr.1. Will pop your L90 talent.
#showtooltip
/cast [talent:6/1] Avatar; [talent:6/2] Bloodbath; [talent: 6/3] Bladestorm


Cooldown macro nr.2. Will pop your L90 talent, Recklessness, Orc racial and any use-trinket you have equipped.
#showtooltip Recklessness
/cast Recklessness
/cast Bloodbath
/use Blood Fury
/cast Avatar
/use 13
/use 14

Vigilance. Will Vigilance your friendly, focused target if you have one. Otherwise will Vigilance the target of your target, so hopefully the tank.
#showtooltip
/cast [@focus,exists,help] Vigilance; [@targettarget] Vigilance

Stance-dance! Will swap you to defensive stance if you're in battle stance and vice versa. I recommend keeping this on an easily accessible button to avoid those big damage spikes like a boss.
#showtooltip
/cast [stance:1] Defensive Stance; [stance:2] Battle Stance

Taunt. Will go defensive stance, taunt, and go back to battle stance.
#showtooltip Taunt
/cast [stance:1] Defensive Stance
/castsequence reset =3 [stance:2] Taunt, Battle Stance

Charge/Intervene. Will charge your target if hostile, and intervene your target if friendly.
#showtooltip Charge
/cast [harm] Charge; [help] Intervene

1.8: So that's great and all, but I'm fighting Kilrogg Deadeye right now and have no clue which talents to pick.

I'll add this part of the guide as soon as I've killed the bosses a couple of times.

Hellfire Assault: N/A

Iron Reaver: N/A

Kormrok: N/A

Kilrogg Deadeye: N/A

Hellfire High Council: N/A

Gorefiend: N/A

Shadow-Lord Iskar: N/A

Socrethar the Eternal: N/A

Tyrant Velhari: N/A

Fel Lord Zakuun: N/A

Xhul'horac: N/A

Mannoroth: N/A

Archimonde: N/A


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