The Arms warrior now and then: a comprehensive guide.

[Dremonth]

Greetings RnP, and welcome to this little guide I've decided to post. First off some forewords:

I have been a dedicated Arms specc warrior since mid vannila WoW, and have rolled with every change as they came. When the majority of players claimed that arms was unsuitable for PvE I perservered (this can admitedly be put down to sheer bloody minded stubborness), and performed beyond most naysayers expectations.

Personaly I adore Arms, the flavour of it representing a person at the height of weapon mastery in the form of a highly proffessional soldier, akin to the German Landsknecht mercenaries of the renaissance.

But enough preamble, lets get with the substance of the guide:

Table of Contents
1: Stats, which to choose, what are your caps?
2: The PvE priority list
3: The PvP burst sequence
4: Proper use of Cooldowns
5: Enchantments/Gems
6: Glyphs
7: PvP tactics, and hints.


1: Stats

First and foremost, the accuracy stats are just as vital to arms as any other melee. Hit has a slightly higher priority over Expertise however, as one of arms strongest nukes are procced on dodges as well as Taste for Blood.

Hit/Expertise Caps for PvE
8% hit , 6.5% Expertise

For PvP
5% hit, 4% Expertise

8% is the normal single weapon hitcap and will ensure you wont get missed on even raidbosses, while 5% hit is what is required to hit level 85 targets, aka players/normal mobs.

6.5% Expertise eliminates a PvE mobs ability to dodge your attacks when you go at him from behind, and coupled with hitcap will give you perfect reliability in your swings. 4% Expertise for pvp however is a debatable number, as many melee dps now have large ammounts of Avoidance due to the way Parry and Dodge interact with Strength and Agility, you will get parried and dodged a fair deal. However gearing for enough expertise to negate this is not reasonable, and thus we settle for 4%, which is the ammount of dodge that casters usualy run around with. However mind you, you cannot dodge anything when you are casting, so lacking expertise in PvP will not make you die from not being able to pummel an important spell.

Next up, we tackle the base stats and secondary dps stats. Simply put, this is the relationship between the different stats:

Strength > Crit = Mastery > Haste > Agility

The above does apply to both PvP and PvE, but lets go into detail what these stats do for you, and why they are places this way:

Strength is your main scaler, it will directly improve all damage you do, as well as give you parry%, you can never go wrong with an uppgrade of strength.

Crit is your second most valuable stat, allthough it is listed as equal to Mastery above, crit still comes out just on top. There are a multitude of talents that work directly off crit in the arms tree, Impale increases the multiplier of your specials, deep wounds creates a very powerfull scaling dot on each crit, and finaly Wrecking crew is our +10% damage enrage that proccs of critted Mortal strikes, and I dont think I need to specify how usefull that is.

Mastery is despite crits greatness, a downright awesome stat. What it does is that whatever move or swing you do, there is a % chance based on mastery that you get an extra yellow swing against the person which can crit and produce Deep wounds dots as well. Being a 2hed class with alot of strength, this mastery bonus can become very potent indeed. A general rule of a thumb however is that whenever possible reforge mastery to crit, but if crit is on the item, reforge any unwanted stats to mastery.

Haste is a chump stat, it doesnt scale well at all with arms even if there is a talent which is designed to make sure we get haste (Blood frenzy). The fact that Slams cast time doesnt move at all regardless of haste means that while usefull for rage generation, you shouldnt have bad enough problems to warrant getting haste in any good ammount.

Finaly, Agility is a very poor stat, it gives crit in very small ammounts. Avoid like the plague.

2: The PvE priority list

The way that Arms dps works is lining up and managing certain proccs and abilities, it can be somewhat RNG but Blizzards numbers seems to be okay right now.

Rend->Mortal strike->Overpower->Slam->Heroic Strike

Keep rend up 100% of the time, always Mortal strike when possible, and use overpower before it refreshes itself via Taste for blood (a 5-6 second window). Slam is your rageburner, and you will use it whenever any of the above ar unavailable. As a rule of a thumb: never waste a global cooldown.

Beyond the above shown priority lists, Collossus smash and execute are integral to your dps, and needs to be given a great deal of attention.

First off, Collossus smash is an ability which gives you 100% armour penetration on your target during its 6 second duration, you can see it as a dps amplifier for your main rotation. Use it when you have Trinket buffs, cooldowns used, or when you have plenty of rage and alot of options. As arms, Collossus smash will renew itself sporadicaly due to the Sudden death talent, which means that the button should be used as soon as you are in position to capitalize on it (Ie, dont clip a Csmash debuff, and use it when rage allows). Managing Csmash will be an integral portion of your PvE dps, as its effect on your strikes is monumental.

Secondly, Execute has been changed since Wrath, and been returned to its former position of fight ender. When you have it available, swich to berserker stance and exchange your Overpower for Execute in the priority list. You can of course keep stanceswapping to weave overpower into the execution phase (and indeed it is reccomended that you do this at least to keep rend on the target), but generaly your goal will be to get as many executes on your target within the duration of your Csmash debuffs.

And again as a basic guideline: Manage your rage carefully while making sure you do not waste a single GCD being idle.

3: The PvP burst sequence

In pvp, sustained dps takes a backseat to sheer burst. This is an environment where healers can undo your long dps priorities if you treated it as a pve encounter, and you need to surprise your enemy to kill him.

First off, the tools at your disposal to set up this situation include the above mentioned damage abilities, but adding to this we have Throwdown, and Hamstring.

What you need to do is to first make sure you can secure upptime on your opponent, use charge, snares, and the stun throwdown to make sure he stays put (do look out for coupling charge and Throwdown to close together however, as the two stuns share diminishing returns with eachother at the moment and will reduce Throwdowns duration). After this is ensured, apply rend and build rage while doing normal dps.

When your rage is high, knock him on his ass and apply collossus smash, immediately use MS then Slam+Heroic Strike, and after that Overpower. The timing will then allow you to use another overpower within the Csmashs duration if lucky. This will deal significant damage to your enemy, and when coupled with your dps cooldowns (recklessness, deadly calm) is quite capable of breaking apart even staunch healers.

The perfect sequence will be hard, and sometimes impossible to pull off, but the general rule of thumb is to build rage before you use Csmash, then unload all you have in the 6 second window.

4: The proper use of Cooldowns

Arms is endowed with a number of very usefull cooldowns which they can make great use of in either pvp or pve. For this I will ignore Inner rage, as the ability is nigh useless unless you are in extremely high rage situations.

Bladestorm is Arms signature move, and it does quite a few things for you. First off, and most obvious, is that it will deal very strong AoE damage over its duration, so using it during an aoe pack is ideal.
Secondly, it breaks snares and makes you immune to conventional CC. You can use it to free yourself from harrasing snares and roots, and as well make yourself temporarily immune to other such slowing effects, making it an ideal tool for usage against people who attempt to control you in PvP. Do mind however that you can be disarmed while in bladestorm, and you will see alot of people do that. If it happens, cancel the buff and deal with the threat.
A tertiary perk of Bladestorm is that you will continue to autoattack during its duration, this means that it can be used to build rage in a productive manner in either PvE or PvP encounters. Just make sure you are not wasting overpower/csmash/ms uneccesarily by doing so, and you are golden.

Deadly Calm Is a newcommer in our repertoire come Cataclysm, and it basicaly turns off your rage consumption for its duration. This Cooldown is insanely powerfull, and learning how to use it is paramount to any arms warrior. Deadly calm and Collossus smash are very close friends, using both at once before unloading everything you can throw at the enemy will result in serious damage. Just make sure you have applied rend before you pop it and you will be fine. As a general rule of a thumb, it is best to use it when your rage first runs out during the fight.

Sweeping Strikes copies your strikes on your main target into secondary strikes which hits side targets, use this in aoe situations, but avoid using it together with Bladestorm unless there are alot of enemies around, as the Bladestorm hits are not as powerfull as your main rotational skills.

Recklessness was recently changed, and turned into a monster. Basicaly you want to couple this with your major cooldown, Deadly calm, and see the fireworks.
In pvp, this ability is essential when you need to destroy a target right there and right now.

5: Enchantments/Gems

Gemwise, arms wants strength. If you have your desired hit/expertise cap, just go for strength (and the Strength/+3% crit meta). Good socketbonuses with strength or crit in them can warrant the use of multicoloured gems.

Enchantments are also quite basic, if there are crit enchants for your slots then take that, other than that take crit ormastery.

For PvP however, use the resilience enchants, and the mandatory Sta+Movement speed enchant on your boots. Everyone is using it, and if you dont have it, PvP will be frustration that never ends.

For your weapons, Hurricane will suffice untill you can find enough gold/materials for Landslide on a good weapon. When you start off pvp, get a pyrium weapon chain however, getting disarmed for 10 seconds is bad.

6: Glyphs

Arms has a very inflexible setup of prime glyphs.

Mortal strike
Overpower
Bladestorm

Any other prime glyphs are either fury/prot specialized or clearly inferior to these three above.

As for Major glyphs, we get more wiggle room. For PvE I would choose:

Collossus Smash- Use one sunder at the start, then the stack will keep up on itself for the rest of it.

Sweeping Strikes- It removes the rage cost, bargain really.

Cleave/Thunderclap- This is all about taste really, if you go for a build with Blood and thunder, then I would argue the Thunderclap glyph is better, otherwise, cleave.

For PvP Major glyphs, it changes somewhat:

Intercept- Mandatory, the extra stun duration will give you more time on your enemy, a very precious commodity in the game of today.

Piercing Howl- Snaring more people is a very good deal, especialy those hunters who think theyve gotten out of your range and wants to kite you to oblivion.

Rapid Charge- You need to charge alot, and you need it available as fast as possible.

Minor glyphs are more or less user choice, they wont make a major difference in the long run.

7: PvP tactics and hints

Arms warrior pvp has been a staple of wow since it started, and right now were in the thick of it again, even if we are surrounded by a horde of people who got snares and roots comming out of their ears.

A general rule of pvp is: Always snare. There are very few situation where you DONT want your enemy slowed down, so whenever possible, and whenever able, snare anything you are fighting, and possibly his friend nearby. You cant go wrong with snaring people. Your main tools for this are Piercing Howl and Hamstring, the Howl is good, but Hamstring can via talents turn a snare into a root, and we all know people standing still are easier to hit than those running around like crazy. Use howl however to unstealth people, and to make sure those who try to keep away gets closer for a little hug.

Your goal in any pvp situation is to bring down key enemy players, warriors do have a fair deal of pvp utility, but it all boils down to running down someone for the greater good. The tools at your disposal are snares, mobility, and the above mentioned PvP burst sequence.
As job number 1 to achieve your pvp goal, you need upptime on your enemy. This requires creative use of whatever mobility impairment on your enemy and boost on yourself you can rustle up, you can only do your job when you are at an arms length.

Eventualy, you will find yourself the center of attention of a battle, as any other foul tempered pugilist harrassing healers and ranged dps, the hordies will take offense and attempt to blow you up. However you have a fair deal of abilities you can use to prevent this: Disarm, Spell reflect, Shield wall, Enraged regeneration, Intimidating Shout, and your mobility.

General hints
-If disarmed, attempt to snare via piercing howl to get away from your enemy, or disarm him back. The one who disarms second will get his weapon back faster after all.
-If attacked by a rogue and put in a stunlock, trinket the kidney shot. Kidney shot is a combo point requiring ability, so removing it can break his stunlock early.
-Always apply rend on nuke targets and stealth classes, rogues will despise you for that bleed, just as it should.
-Time spell reflects so that it comes up near the end of a casters cast, so he got as little time to react as possible.
-Intervene back to friendlies if you arent confident in your healers keeping you up, he who fights and runs away can fight another day after all.
-If a warrior gets fiery sparks flying around his hands/face, disarm him immediately, he has just used recklessness and is capable of near instantly killing someone.
-Use Enraged regeneration early. If used at low health, the CD will be used and you might get executed down regardless. Use it at 50% to ensure the hot can benefit you.
-Get a cancel aurao macro for Bladestorm. Being able to leave bladestorm if disarmed or when an enemy has just used an escape ability to get out of your range is extremely usefull, as well as being good for going defensive fast.

#showtooltip Charge
/cast charge
/cancelaura Bladestorm
This macro will cancel bladestorm when you click charge, very usefull.
-Get a spellreflect macro for protecting yourself against casters. Putting a shield+1h manualy then going defensive stance to reflect is impossibly cumbersome, thus you should macro the process:

/cast [stance:1/3, nomodifier]Defensive Stance
/cast [modifier] Battle Stance
/equip [modifier] "2her name"; "1her name"
/equip [nomodifier] "Shield name"
/cast [nomodifier] Spell Reflection

This will on one click put you in defensive stance, and equip your sword+board, and in another click cast spell reflect. A doubletap will thus make you go defensive mode. If you then click shift+keybind you will return to battlestance and re-equip your 2her. This macro works wonders as a general defensive measure, as you can then easily use Shield wall and intervene as you are in Defensive stance.
-Get friends. Yeah this is somewhat of a no-brainer, but still. Warriors are not a solo pvp class, you might see success at times, but if you get friends that can help you pin down enemies or keep you moving, things will get far easier and far more enjoyable.
-Remember that Shattering throw breaks Iceblocks and palabubbles. In Bgs you will catch alot of people by surprise when you shatter their defenses, but in arenas it is simply assumed you already know this. Make sure you are ready to break their protections!
-Get the pvp trinket, like yesterday. I cant stress how important this piece of gear is to a warrior, you cant function without it.
-Use Sweeping strikes when attacking a pet class, if you pop some cooldowns or get lucky, you might kill the pet, making it easier to kill the master.
-Conserve Heroic leap. Heroic leap is your ace, with a 1min cooldown it will not be available to you all the time like charge, but you will need it to catch very elusive prey like frost mages or hunters.
-When new to cata pvp, get the crafted pvp set first, gem and enchant it. Then get two trinkets, one for on-use strength, and the other for freeing yourself from CC. Then get gloves+shoulders. This will get you the most resilience early on, and resilience is mandatory to keep yourself allive. You wont be able to fight certain classes effectively before your resi count has gotten up, as you need to wait out their CDs.

That is about all I can think of, talent builds will be added later.

[Dremonth]

More PvP hints!

- Remember Victory rush! Comming from an oldtimer this button alone is so incredibly usefull its beyond belief. Healing back 30% of your health from a free rage instant attack is simply too good.
- When facing a frostmage, remember to keep your cool (hurrrr) and not blow all your cooldowns too fast. Your trinket, Charge, heroic strike, shattering throw, spell reflect, and various snares + bleeds will be crucial in any battle with this your great arch nemesis. First, try to start the combat by being mounted and running in to snare the mage. He will use one of his many rooting spells, which means you should spam your defensive cooldown the moment the frozen explosion happens. If you do it fast enough, you might reflect one of his most powerfull spells: deep freeze. He will attempt to make distance from you without using Blink at this point, so consider using Intimidating shout to force a trinket or keep him close (this will also mitigate shattercombos and save your defensive cooldowns). After this it becomes a game of cat and mouse, the key is to make sure he blinks before you charge.
The key to force him to do this is to keep him snared and mitigate his casting as much as possible.
If you manage to get a snare on him, use Bladestorm. This will force him to either eat the damage, block, or blink.
If he blocks, break the block asap, he might freeze so use PH for a snare/throwdown if close enough.

To be frank, frostmages have so much shit they can pull out of their ... ehem.. they have loads of tools, which means that whatever I type here, there will be something he can use to break it. The central conflict in the fight is however you vs his Cooldowns. If he has Cold snap available, you might not be able to beat him, but without it, it is fully possible to wear him down.
To re-iterate the earlier mentioned tip: Keep cool. With low resilience a frost mage will feel like the epitome of an unfair fight, but it gets better. See each of them as a learning experience instead, and let the asskicking teach you the modus operandi of this most enervating specc. To be fair, this paragraph fits most fights.
-Try to never let a melee hit at your back, and on the flip side, attempt to stun or go behind someone you are going to use important abilities on (like Collossus smash).
-Consider the values of getting a multibuttoned mouse. This is entirely optional, but my gaming has improved immensely once I bought a mouse which allows me to keybind essential abilities to it. At the very least your mouse -should- have a mousewheel on it, and if it does theres a very simple but extremely usefull keybind setup for it:
Mousewheel up: Battle stance
Mousewheel Down: Berserker Stance
Mousewheel Press: Defensive Stance

These three binds alone are immeasurably usefull for both PvE and PvP, as it will allow you lighting quick reaction speed to your stance needs.

[Dremonth]

As promised, talent builds!

First off PvE

The key points of note here is Drums of War, Rude interruption, and Blood and thunder.

Drums of War: This is simply usefull, as in PvE you want to press your dps to its utmost without worrying about rage management for pummel and such.

Rude Interruption: There are spells abound to interrupt in Cata, heroics, raids and dailies alike. It's just as well that we get some dps from it as well. I only took 1 point in it as well as a 15 second duration is plenty, considering most mobs will cast more than each 15 seconds.

Blood and thunder: You will have rend on your main target 24/7, which means on aoe pulls there is no reason why you shouldnt spend a GCD to use thunderclap, and spread the bleed. On longer aoe fights, the individual rend ticks critting on their own will amount to a very large ammount of damage.

There is a variation where one skips Blood and Thunder for Incite, but I find Incite rather lackluster at the time, due to Heroic strikes likeness to wet noodles.

Now for PvP

Theres no real need for comment on these picks, they bring all that is needed for you to survive pvp and debilitate your foes. There might be some glyph choices which one can take differently but personaly I find this a solid and dependable build.

[Dremonth]

Very small update, just remembered it.

-Use easily accessible keybinds repeatedly via the stance system. Example: overpower is on E, but in defensive stance you cant use overpower, so use E for Disarm. Thus Mousewheel down and E disarms, then back again does overpower. Faster and more efficient usage of your most important skills.

[Dremonth]

Another Update!

This is more about the upcomming changes to the arms warrior comming in 4.1 than a guide, but I fealt I had no need to spam the forum with an Arms blog, so I can just add it here.

- Collossus smash on PvP targets only bypass 50% of your foes armour.

This is a very sizeable nerf for pvp, but all in all Csmash was allowing warriors to DESTROY people far too fast for Blizzards liking, so it got nerfed. This all comes on the coat tails of a slight HIGH resilience stacking nerf, so damage overall "should" be balanced, but dont quote me on that if we all turn into Noodles.

- Spell reflect Cooldown increased to 25 seconds

Once more, this is a telling nerf. It turns spell reflect into an ace card rather than 2nd line of defense against casters, so using it properly and with timing becomes of the essence. In a way it also frees up GCDs when fighting casters, as you wont be tempted to sneak in a spell reflect.

-Charge and intercept stun no longer share dimishing returns with other stuns, and its cooldown when talented via Juggernaut is now 13 seconds.

The removal of diminishing returns here is pretty awesome, as it allows for more Throwdown action. Charge is also at a very low cooldown now so theres more mobility in the offing. There is a slight concern however that the 1.5 second stun is not enough to offset the usual charge positioning problems, but overall I would call this a net buff.

-Lambs to the slaughter now refreshes Rend when Mortal strike hits the target.

Great allround change, it tidies up Global Cooldown use.

-Improved Hamstring now reduces the GCD of hamstring by 0.5-1 second (2 points)

Once again, cleans up the GCDs and allows more of them to be used for nuking.

-Mastery rating on Arms warriors increased in potency by aproximately 10%

-Rallying Cry (new ability) is available from trainers at level 83. It temporarily grants the warrior and all party or raid members within 30 yards 20% of maximum health for 10 seconds. After the effect expires, the health is lost. It has no cost, no stance requirements, and is not on the global cooldown. It has a 3-minute cooldown, but also shares a cooldown with Last Stand.

Hard to calculate what this above will do, but any utility is good utility.

Overall I would say the patch is a very sizeable nerf on warrior effectiveness in PvP, in PvE its a straight up buff.

[Dremonth]

Update 25/6-011

Long time no update. 4.2 is upon us momentarily, and there are a few nerfs that got slammed at the warrior class to even the playing field a bit more.

1) Arms 2hed spec perk is down to 12% extra damage, down from 20%

2) recklessness and deadly calm are on CD during eachothers duration, no stacking anymore!

3) The major 3 cooldowns no longer require stances at all.

First one is a nobrainer, we were too high damage on cloth/leather despite the Csmash nerf, so we get an 8% nerf on all damage we do (were still going to be doing alot of damage despite it). Not to mention the intelligent arms warriors were well able to push the envelope and get PvE dps results they werent supposed to as well.

Second one was a LONG time comming, and is purely a pvp nerf (and not an incredibly harsh one at that, I'l get back to it). Infinite rage and +50% crit is just too good despite a 5 min CD on the latter.

Third one you wouldnt call a nerf per say, but it is bitter when they remove more and more stance specific abilities. I can't see a reason why an arms warrior would swich stance at all right now, what with spell reflect and shield wall being stance neutral, and to me that is bad design.

Now for a few hints since last time, which will undoubtedly help to cope once the 4.2 nerfs are done:

- Reckstorm is your god. This basicaly means macroing Bladestorm and recklessness together, which when used on a Csmashed target becomes wonderfully remeniscent of how the ability used to perform back in Wrath. This is why the deadlycalm+reck nerf isnt really that much of a deal, because you will want to save reck for Bladestorm regardless!

- Macro sweeping strikes into your cooldowns if you have the glyph! It doesnt cost you any rage when glyphed, and the possibility of copying a 30k-40k attack from your main target to the secondary is just too good to be true. Sweeping strikes + reckstorm on multiple enemies is particularly devastating.

- Rallying cry and enraged regen belong together, never use one without the other.

[Dremonth]

Update 3/9-2011

Long time no post in my wonderous guide! Mostly because my actual PvE experience as a warrior had not improved much since well.. early Cata! But I do have some rather sizeable additions for 'yall. These are not class changes, just changes in how the tools are used.

1)Stancetwisting
For some reason beyond me, Blizzard has decided that the idea of having Berserker stance improve damage by a further 5% compared to battlestance is a good idea. Obvious design flaws aside (it was part of why Arms was blatantly overpowered back in mid 4.1), we shall still abuse this fact by doing stance twisting!

The truest form of Arms warrior minmaxing at this time is basicaly the art of spending as little time in battlestance as possible. Now to review, what exactly are the abilities in battlestance you have to use regularly?

- Overpower (one of your largest dps contributors)
- Thunderclap (a surprisingly powerfull AoE for Arms)

Now swapping back and forth for every Taste for blood procc is a way to handle this but it can steal a fair deal of rage and mess up your swingtimer, therefore it is imperative that one times it so that two overpowers can be used in succession.

Taste for Blood when procced gives a player a 9 second buff allowing the usage of Overpower. At around the 3 second remaining mark, this buff is refreshed, making the intervall between Overpowers roughly 6 seconds. What you want to do is delay your Overpower to around 4.5 seconds left of the buff, swap over fast and use it, then use the second OP that comes up right after before swapping over to zerker stance again.

This takes practice, and it is HIGHLY reccomended that you install an addon that allows you to track the time remaining on Taste for blood, as the buff itself can get lost in the spam of the normal bufflist. Taking it from pull, your sequence should look like this:

charge->Rend->Overpower->Berserker stance->Csmash->Mortal strike->Filler till ToB is 4.5->Battlestance->Overpower->(spare GCD is possible here)->Overpower->Zerker->Filler

This type of gameplay will net you a 5% damage increase on nearly all your Mortal strikes, Executes, heroic strikes, and Slams, and is well worth the effort if your goal is to be the utmost of what your specc can perform.

2)Sweeping strikes

A point which I was unaware of earlier but is obvious to me now, is that the ability Sweeping strikes will actualy copy ALL direct damage you do during its duration. This means if you would heroic leap onto 10+ mobs with the buff already up, then all those 10 heroic leap hits will procc an SS extra hit. This also applies to Thunderclap, and Whirlwinds from Bladestorm.
In essence, this allows an arms warrior to go WTFDIE on larger groups of adds by doing the following sequence:

Sweepingstrikes->Heroicleap->Rend->Thunderclap->Bladestorm->Thunderclap

With the talent Blood and Thunder from t1 prot, the aoe damage would be horrifying to behold.

All for now, stay excellent!