Warrior: Arms

This article has not been updated for 3.0.


This article discusses the Arms Warrior in a PVE setting. This article does not deal with playing an Arms warrior in PVP.

 

Contents

1 Do not ask this question 2 Why Arms is useful in a raid setting 2.1 What if my raid already has an Arms warrior? 2.2 Optimal Groups for Arms 2.3 My DPS is terrible! 3 Choosing Your Gear 3.1 Choosing Your Weapon 3.2 A Short Word on Trinkets 4 Ability Rotations 4.1 Understanding and using Slam effectively 5 Talents: What not to do 5.1 Improved Demoralizing Shout 5.2 Improved Slam 6Is it better to skip MS to have enough rage to slam on time? 7 Haste and why it is not good for you 8 Useful Formulas 8.1 Blood Frenzy Contribution 8.2 Rage Generation 8.3 Average damage values

[top] Do not ask this question

Q: WHAT GEAR SHOULD I USE? / WHAT SHOULD MY STAT WEIGHT BE? / HOW I GEM SOCKETS

A: There's no hard and fast correct answer for these questions. Your stat weights will change as your gear changes. Your trinket slots alone will heavily impact the quality of each stat for you, and even your raid composition can affect your gemming strategy. There are numerous spreadsheets and simulators available for you to plug in your current items and see what other upgrades are out there for you to find. The only stat you'll commonly see on plate gear that you will want to avoid is Haste for reasons explained later.

[top] Why Arms is useful in a raid setting

There are a few key advantages to having an Arms warrior in a raid.

#1: An Arms warrior can deal a high amount of damage.
#2: An Arms warrior provides a melee group with Battle Shout.
#3: An Arms warrior provides a few key debuffs: Blood Frenzy and Improved Demoralizing Shout.

While only Blood Frenzy is unique to the Arms warrior (all other abilites can be done by a Fury warrior), it is a talent that defines the spec. When taken in conjunction with Deep Wounds, Blood Frenzy is automatically applied when the warrior crits, and provides a 4% boost to physical damage dealt by the raid. This is a not insignificant value and will generally outweigh any inferiority of Arms vs Fury (or any other class) in terms of relative place on damage meters. If your raid is very melee-light this may not prove to be the case, but a raid that has 2 tanks and a full melee DPS group will typically see enough improvement from Blood Frenzy that an arms warrior is worth having.

[top] What if my raid already has an Arms warrior?

A raid does not need more than one Arms warrior. Blood Frenzy does not stack from multiple sources and has a very good uptime from a single Arms warrior. If you would be the second Arms warrior in the raid, you're typically going to provide more total damage if you spec Fury (assuming similar gear quality) due to Fury's higher personal DPS.

[top] Optimal Groups for Arms

If you don't get Windfury, your damage will suck. Period. Windfury is a flat 20% bonus to all of your white damage and more importantly a source of a large amount of rage that will keep your ability cycles fueled. You will become good friends with your raid's enhancement shaman since you will be in his group every single night. If you are unlucky enough to not have an enhancement shaman, you will become good friends with your raid's grumbling resto shaman that will have to drop windfury for you and your group. If you are extra unlucky and your enhancement shaman insists on dropping Grace of Air with you in the group, he is an idiot and you should direct him to the article in this wiki on Windfury. You may also want to punch him in the nose if possible.

The best groupmates for an arms warrior are:

• One Enhancement Shaman who drops Windfury
• One to three Rogues
• One or more Druids in feral form for Leader of the Pack

Any other groupmates fall distantly behind these three classes. You can do okay with another Warrior who is either Fury or Protection (one of you can provide Commanding Shout), but Battle Shout is your best group buff and your raid should be structured to allow you to use it as best you can. If your raid contains several warriors and there is lots of battle shout overlap, this is less of an issue. You do not mesh very well with Hunters since only their pets benefit from Battle Shout and they typically prefer Grace of Air (this is also why you may not get a Feral Druid - they prefer GoA and the crit from LoTP is better for hunters).

The "best" DPS group (dependent on your raid composition) is either:
You - Enhancement shaman - Rogue - Rogue - Rogue
or
You - Enhancement shaman - Rogue - Rogue - Feral Druid

[top] My DPS is terrible!

You won't beat rogues or fury warriors with this spec, and it's possible for enhancement shamans or hunters to beat you out as well. The reason for this is that all of these classes are improved by your presence. If you want to determine how much raid damage you're responsible for, add your Blood Frenzy contribution to your personal DPS (see the formulas at the end of the article for how to do this). In general you shouldn't compare yourself directly to caster classes since some fights are more melee friendly than others.

[top] Choosing Your Gear

For the most part, plate DPS gear is reasonably well itemized and an upgrade in item level will usually be an upgrade for you. You will want the following at some point:

- 9% hit: 142 Hit Rating
- 6.25% target dodge reduction: 103 Expertise Rating (72 Expertise Rating with Weapon Mastery talent)

These values should be achievable sometime during Tier 5-quality gearing without sacrificing very much. 9% hit will remove any misses against boss-level NPCs and 6.25% dodge reduction will remove any dodges the target may make. It is not worth going out of your way to wear an item with hit on it that has poor other stats simply to cap your hit value for the sake of capping your hit value. Rather, choose well-itemized pieces that have hit rating on them until you reach the cap. Expertise on the other hand doesn't really exist on actual Plate pieces, so you'll have to use your trinket, ring, and neck slots to get it.

Beyond capping out these two stats, you want copious amounts of Strength, Critical Hit Rating, Armor Penetration and Stamina. Attack Power is nearly as good as Strength but you will typically have to downgrade your armor to mail or leather to find it (almost all plate is raw +Strength), which can lead you to competing with other classes for gear. You don't want agility unless you have no better choice available -- the conversion to Critical Hit percentage per item point works out better for Critical Hit rating, and the amount of dodge that it offers you is minimal as well. If you want to know specifics about what items are best for you, use one of the many tools specifically designed for this purpose.

[top] Choosing Your Weapon

Since Slam is not a normalized attack (that is, its AP contribution from attack speed is not locked at 3.4) you will typically want the slowest weapon you can get your hands on. You also want a Sword if possible since sword spec provides the most total damage of the three weapon type specs in your talent tree by a small margin. This means your best choices for PVE DPS are either [Cataclysm's Edge] or a [Vengeful Gladiator's Greatsword] (or the season 4 equivalent when season 4 rolls around) with other swords like [Jin'rohk, The Great Apocalypse] being good alternatives. Slow axes like [Soul Cleaver], [Halberd of Desolation] (if your hunters don't want it) or [Trollbane] or even [Gorehowl] are good if you can't get one of the swords, as Poleaxe spec is also quite good.

Generally speaking you will not want a mace for PVE DPS since the majority of bosses are immune to stun effects and the extra rage generated on a mace specialization proc is far inferior to the bonus damage of a sword or axe spec proc. However if you attain a mace that is far above the quality of any other weapon you own (as a [Torch of the Damned] might be) don't be afraid to use it.

[top] A Short Word on Trinkets

I know the top of the article says to not ask about gear, but your best trinket at any point in the game is [Solarian's Sapphire]. If you get this trinket, you do not unequip it for any reason ever in a raid. The boost to Battle Shout is just as much as your 5 points in Commanding Presence -- and it is affected by Commading Presence. Your groupmates will love you for providing them with a staggering 470 AP boost when you perform Battle Shout (versus 306 untalented with no Sapphire). This makes your Battle Shout the best party buff in the game that isn't Heroism or Bloodlust by a wide margin. You sacrifice some personal DPS for improved group DPS, but you're doing that anyway by providing Blood Frenzy so you may as well do it right.

As with the rest of your itemization, you want trinkets that provide large amounts of attack power or critical strike rating. Your other ideal trinkets are (in no particular order):
[Shard of Contempt]
[Madness of the Betrayer]
[Berserker's Call]
[Tsunami Talisman] - Arguably best in slot for Hunters so be nice to them, but better for you than Rogues who should be taking a Warp Spring Coil anyway.
[Bloodlust Brooch]
[Hourglass of the Unraveller] (This scales a lot better than you'd expect)

Your ideal trinkets are NOT:
[Dragonspine Trophy] - Provides haste. Haste is bad for you (see below).
[Ashtongue Talisman of Valor] - Terrible. It's just bad.

[top] Ability Rotations

First off, it goes without saying that unless you have good reason to be minimizing your incoming damage, you should be in Berserker Stance when dealing damage. Your basic damage rotation is:

Autoattack -> Slam -> Autoattack -> Slam -> Repeat forever

Slam takes a very low amount of rage in comparison to Mortal Strike or Whirlwind (15 vs 30 or 25), is not normalized (both MS and WW are) and this provides a larger number of attacks overall, improving your Blood Frenzy uptime. This is what you should fall back to when you find yourself with very little rage. In a raid setting where you are provided Windfury totem you will typically have enough rage to add an instant attack in between some of your slams. Instant attacks like Mortal Strike or Whirlwind will not reset your swing timer like Slam will, so they can be used in the time between when your Slam global cooldown expires and before you must slam again. Prioritize Mortal Strike if you have the choice of MS or WW since its cooldown is shorter and it will be available sooner if you generate enough rage.

The best DPS rotation is as follows and requires Berserker Stance (AA stands for auto attack):

AA -> Slam -> Mortal Strike -> AA -> Slam -> Whirlwind -> AA -> Slam -> Mortal Strike -> AA -> Slam -> (open) -> repeat

Due to the cooldown cycling of MS and WW, there is a gap in the fourth part of the rotation where neither Mortal Strike or Whirlwind will be up. This is the time where an Arms warrior should be using either Battle or Commanding Shout (if it has almost expired) or Demoralizing Shout. Do not be afraid to sacrifice an instant attack to keep Battle Shout up or to apply Demo shout. These abilities are typically more important than getting one more good hit in. You should continue your Slam rotation throughout.

[top] Understanding and using Slam effectively

As an Arms Warrior you will likely have a strange relationship with Slam. On one hand, it is extremely efficient and effective damage and will be a staple part of your DPS rotation. On the other hand, screwing up Slam will cause you no end of grief and lower your DPS considerably. It is very important that you understand how Slam works in order to play your spec effectively. Slam does the following things when you activate it:

1. Causes your current swing to be interrupted
2. Resets your swing timer to the beginning when Slam hits or is interrupted
3. Casts the ability Slam that does weapon damage (which is not normalized) plus a small bonus

If you spec Improved Slam (which you should), using the ability will eat up 0.5 seconds and do full damage. However, there are considerations that must be made due to #1 and #2 above. First, casting slams back to back is usually a bad idea. Even though Improved Slam only takes 0.5 seconds to cast, your global cooldown will not be ready for 1.0 seconds after your slam hits. This means you will be wasting over 25% of your already-restarted swing timer if you choose to cast slam again immediately. It is more effective to allow this newly-started swing to continue to its end than it is to slam again. The only time you should chain cast slam is when your attack speed is significantly slowed for some reason (such as by the sludges in the Netherwing mines).

For optimum DPS you should begin your slam a fraction of a second before the actual swing hits (just enough that your latency allows the swing to finish before the server receives your command), and this is nigh impossible to do without an aid. It is more or less essential for you to install a UI Mod that has a swing timer in order to use Slam effectively. Quartz is a very good tool for this. Learning the right time to slam takes a lot of practice, and the right time to do it depends on your latency. Clipping an autoattack because you slammed to early is always the wrong thing to do, so you should err on the side of caution. It is far more expensive to waste a full autoattack than it is to wait 0.1 or 0.2 seconds to ensure your white swing will hit.

It cannot be emphasized enough that if you are bad at using slam your DPS will be terrible. Clipping swings or waiting too long in to your next swing to Slam cut huge chunks off your damage, and you will be watching your swing timer very carefully in order to do optimum DPS. Practice makes perfect, and Arms is one of the harder specs to play very well in all of WoW because of timing issues and on-the-fly decision making.

[top] Talents: What not to do

Do not skip the following talents for any reason:
- Death Wish (Pre-requisite for Mortal Strike in addition to on-demand damage improvement and fear immunity)
- Sword or Poleaxe Mastery (if using one of these weapon types, provides better than 5% damage improvement)
- Two-handed Weapon Specialization (5% damage improvement)
- Mortal Strike (Instant attack)
- Blood Frenzy (4% physical damage bonus to the entire raid)
- Cruelty (better than 5% total damage)
- Improved Demoralizing Shout (see below)
- Commanding Presence (Improves Battle Shout from 300 AP to 380 AP)
- Improved Slam (see below)
- Sweeping Strikes (You're this deep in the Fury tree for Improved Slam anyway, vastly improves your DPS on multiple targets)

And you really ought to take these unless you have good reason not to:
- Deep Wounds (makes Blood Frenzy automatic on any critical hit)
- Flurry (15% attack speed reduction after a criticla hit, has a high uptime)
- Weapon Mastery (Equivalent to 32 Expertise Rating - Orcs or Humans with the appropriate weapon and sufficient expertise elsewhere may choose to skip this)
- Mace Mastery (If using a mace, still better than some other Arms talents)

You will note that this leaves you with precious few options regarding where your talent points should be spent. Tough luck. You simply cannot deal good PVE damage and justify your raid spot as Arms without these talents, especially Blood Frenzy and Improved Slam. This unfortunately railroads you in to a minimum 33/23/0 spec in order to be effective. Sorry. The major choice comes when you must weigh Second Wind, Tactical Mastery and Flurry against each other. Flurry the best damage-dealing choice for your final 3 points by a considerable margin, resulting in a 33/28/0 spec that also includes Enrage. Ultimately your talent choice is your own but if you keep these key talents you will do well.

[top] Improved Demoralizing Shout

Many warriors do not take Improved Demoralizing shout. This is a poor choice, and the power of the talent is widely misunderstood. The amount of AP that can be debuffed from an NPC is actually quite minimal when compared to the amount that can be removed from a player, as most NPCs have low AP values but very high base damage on their attacks. Current estimates place most boss NPCs at or around 340 AP. An untalented Demoralizing Shout will wipe out most but not all of this value. The primary reason to take Improved Demoralizing Shout (referred to hereafter as IDS) is to offset Curse of Recklessness.

Curse of Recklessness removes 800 armor from the target but improves its attack power by 135. When fighting extremely hard-hitting or difficult bosses, using Curse of Recklessness will improve the AP value that can be debuffed to well beyond what a normal Demoralizing Shout will cancel out (estimated 475 AP). Improved Demoralizing Shout (accounts for 420 AP of the 475) in conjunction with Screech from a hunter pet (removes the rest) is required to cancel this AP bonus completely and still debuff the target NPC to its maximum value. Even without a hunter pet, the mob will only be left with around 55 AP. In essence, IDS and Curse of Recklessness together act as an 800 AC debuff on the mob with no side effects. With proper cooperation from your warlocks, this talent buys 160 armor penetration per point for the entire raid. 800 armor penetration is a considerable amount, and is nearly the difference of fighting a high AC target like Void Reaver versus a medium AC boss like Curator. This vastly outweighs the DPS benefits from either Booming Voice or Unbridled Wrath. For this reason it should be a no-brainer to take Improved Demoralizing Shout for your second tier Fury talents.

[top] Improved Slam

Some MS builds skip Improved Slam. This is wrong. Your swing timer doesn't reset until Slam connects, so you are extending every single auto-> slam -> repeat rotation by a full second by skipping improved slam. Your attack cycle will move from approximately 5 seconds to 4 seconds for the exact same amount of damage and rage expenditure. There is nothing else anywhere at all that will make up for the loss of Improved Slam.

[top]Is it better to skip MS to have enough rage to slam on time?

While most Arms warriors will generate enough damage to Slam each swing with no assistance, it is entirely possible to run yourself out of rage and be unable to slam until your client has updated your rage value from the previous hit. This can cause you to slam anywhere from 0.1 to 0.5 seconds later, depending on your latency and reaction. Thus it is worth asking: when you can use MS or Whirlwind but doing so will drop you under 15 rage, should you hold off using MS or WW and save rage to ensure you can slam earlier?

Unless you can guarantee the next swing will net you 15 rage, the answer is yes, you should wait to slam. The opportunity cost given up by a missed autoattack after using an instant that drains your rage is significant: you have traded MS for one on-time slam and one delayed slam. If you have wiped out all miss and dodge chance through a combination of +hit and +expertise and you will hit hard enough to generate 15 rage on your next swing, you should use your instant attack. Don't forget to take glancing blows in to consideration when determining if you'll generate enough rage.

This series of examples uses a 3.8 speed weapon that generates 15 rage per hit and assuming a .2 net reaction time on "good" slams and a .5 reaction on "bad" slams.

Damage done: 3 autoattack hits, 3 slams, 1 MS and 15 rage available to continue the cycle. DPS is .72 times average autoattack damage ().

Second swing as a miss, choosing to use MS when enough rage is available:
Damage done: 2 autoattack hits, 1 MS, 2 slams and no rage left so the next slam will be late too. DPS is approximately 0.46 times average autoattack damage .

Consider the same sequence, this time choosing to slam on-time rather than MS:
Damage done: three autoattack hits, three slam hits with 15 rage still in the bank so the cycle may continue. DPS is approximately 0.61 times average autoattack damage .

In the end, splitting the difference puts you squarely in the middle. However since you're far more likely to generate big chunks of rage from crits and Windfury procs than you are to miss or fail to generate enough rage for slam, you're best off keeping MS and WW on cooldown. Chain casting Slam or using Heroic strike are your only options for burning off excess rage and either will rob you of a large amount of incoming rage in addition to being relatively inefficient damage per rage. Keeping your rage to a minimum any way you can without disrupting your cycle will be your best choice.

tl;dr version: Hit MS/WW every time you've got the rage to do so and are between slams, so long as you will usually generate enough rage to slam again after your next autoattack hit. It's not worth giving up a slam for an instant cast ability.

[top] Haste and why it is not good for you

For almost every class in WoW, haste is a good stat. On paper, it looks very good for you: much like Improved Slam, it cuts your rotation time without lowering the damage of that rotation. However haste is very bad if it screws up your damage rotations. If you've taken Flurry, your swing timer is already probably under 3.2 seconds already when Flurry is active. At the absolute minimum, Arms requires a 2.5 second swing timer to allow for Slam -> Special -> Auto -> rotations (3.0 seconds for the whole thing, minus 0.5 while Improved Slam is casting). Due to latency and human reaction time, 2.5 is completely unrealistic and anything under 3.0 becomes very difficult to manage effectively. For this reason, stacking large amounts of Haste will often be detrimental to your damage as it will tend to screw up your ability rotations. Small amounts of haste can be beneficial, but this value varies greatly depending on your typical latency and weapon of choice.

Bloodlust or Heroism will almost certainly provide enough haste for this too-much-haste scenario to come to life, and your swing timer will drop low enough that you are unable to maintain an effective Slam rotation. If you find yourself in such a situation, your DPS will typically be better if you simply use your instant attacks as soon as they are ready and use Heroic Strike to burn off any excess rage.

[top] Useful Formulas

[top] Blood Frenzy Contribution

Determining approximate contribution from Blood Frenzy from WWS parses:

Total physical damage dealt by the raid can be viewed by examining the "damage in" on the target. 1.04 assumes 100% uptime of Blood Frenzy. Reduce this amount if the uptime was less than this value. Uptime is difficult to calculate exactly from WWS parses, so this will be an approximate value.

[top] Rage Generation

For Dealing Damage:
Main Hand Normal Hits: Factor=3.5
Main Hand Crits: Factor=7.0
Off Hand Normal Hits: Factor=1.75
Off Hand Crits: Factor=3.5

Rage Conversion at level 70: 274.7

Rage Gained from dealing damage = ((Damage Dealt) / (Rage Conversion) * 7.5 + (Weapon Speed * Factor))/2

Values taken from a blue post by Kalgan: WoW-Europe.com Forums -> The new Rage formula (by Kalgan)
and a followup: WoW-Europe.com Forums -> New Rage Formula (2.0.10)

[top] Average damage values

Average Autoattack Damage

Average Mortal Strike Damage
where 3.3 is the normalized value for a two-handed weapon.
Average Whirlwind Damage
where 3.3 is the normalized value for a two-handed weapon.
Average Slam Damage