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A real arms warrior PVE guide (updated for 4.3)
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Post by
marklartank
Q.
can arms compete in PVE?
A.
yes, arms is good for PVE. in fact, it's as good right now as it has been in a long time. taking a quick look at 25N logs on ultraxion, fury still has more parses over the last two weeks (6400 vs 5150), but arms now has the higher average dps.
Q.
yeah, but no serious guilds take arms warriors, right?
A.
they do now. look at the top logs for 25H ultraxion. all you see on the first page are fire mages and arms warriors, including one from DREAM Paragon. (oh, and fire mages are getting nerfed soon).
Q.
is arms hard to play?
A.
not nearly as bad as it used to be. the standard deviation of arms warriors on 25N logs is still quite high (the 2nd highest behind only subtlety rogues), but i think a lot of that is due to a lack of information or misinformation about how to play arms.
Q.
why should i follow your guide?
A.
you don't have to, but i will back up what i'm saying with logs. i've been offspec arms since ulduar and mainspec since cataclysm. my toon is linked in my sig, and if you go to wow-heroes you can see my latest logs as well as fights that i've been ranked on. it is getting harder to get ranked! i raid fairly casually, and many more well-geared toons are raiding arms now. on top of that, i'm getting sucked into healing on progression fights, so i'm a step behind even my own guild.
___________________________________________________________
ABILITIES
arms centers around three core attacks:
Mortal Strike
Overpower
Slam
and two core debuffs:
Rend
unfortunately, i can't give you a rotation or even a simple priority system. there are a few decisions that need to be made on the fly.
maximizing the use of
Overpower
is of primary importance. it's your your hardest hitting ability, and is a fantastic bargain at only 5 rage. fortunately, you have a LOT of flexibility in using OP, so it typically doesn't interfere with anything else.
can't occur more than once every 5 seconds, but our rend only ticks every 2 seconds, so realistically, the best we can do is one OP every 6 seconds ><. this 6 second window means that you can almost always maximize MS uptime without missing an OP. if you have to choose however, choose OP.
oh, but how to know? personally, i use power auras to give me a counter when TfB procs. my aura is below, you can try it and modify as you like.
Version:4.23; icon:Ability_Rogue_HungerforBlood; buffname:Taste for Blood; x:-145; texture:3; mine:true; combat:true; size:0.65; texmode:1; timer.HideLeadingZeros:true; timer.g:0.9647; timer.h:4; timer.Texture:AccidentalPresidency; timer.enabled:true; timer.r:0.9686; timer.cents:false; timer.Relative:CENTER; timer.ShowActivation:true
if you see a "6", you better already be hitting the OP button; otherwise, you just missed a proc. in practice, if you can achieve 8 OP per minute, you're doing pretty good.
___________________________________________________________
Mortal Strike
is our only fixed CD locked primary ability, and is our 2nd hardest hitting attack. therefore, we want to maximize the number of MS per fight as well. given the flexibility of OP, the only thing that usually takes priority over MS is applying the CS debuff (more on CS below).
MS is also key because of
. not only does this refresh rend, it's crucial that you keep
stacked to three the entire fight. slaughter makes all of your primary attacks hit 30% harder, and it takes a minimum of 9 seconds to build back up if you lose it. this is a buff on you, not a debuff on your target, so if you know some downtime is coming, try and time a MS just before you have to stop attacking. look for
something
to hit if it's close to falling off.
to make MS even better, crits proc
if you can achieve 11 MS per minute, congratulations! ur gud at MS.
___________________________________________________________
Slam
is your filler. it does quite a bit less damage than OP, and although it's very close to MS in damage done, it doesn't proc anything special like MS does. it also pauses your swing timer, which adds 2-3 rage to its cost and causes you to do slightly less white damage. that being said, it should be #3 or #4 in your damage done, so it's still an important part of the rotation. other than the effects just mentioned, the cast time is mostly irrelevant because you can cast it while moving.
___________________________________________________________
most of the time,
Rend
is "apply once and forget". if bosses disappear like ragnaros did, then you may need to reapply it during the fight. rend is critical and should be up on any target that you're going to attack for more than ~5 seconds.
___________________________________________________________
hits like a fluffy gerbil. on its own, it does a pathetic amount of damage for a GCD cost. HOWEVER, the debuff left behind for 6 seconds is amazing.
0.0 CS
1.5 boosted ability #1
3.0 boosted ability #2
4.5 boosted ability #3
6.0
TODO
:
test if a 4th attack bypasses armor
normally, you want to use CS every time it's available IF AND ONLY IF the CS debuff is not already up on the target. the only exception is if you are responsible for sunders and your sunder stack is about to fall off. in that case, use CS to refresh sunder even if the debuff is already up (more in glyph section). because of
Sudden Death
, we get much better uptime on CS than fury does.
usually, i prioritize CS > MS if they both come up at the same time. with the
T13 4 pc
, it makes sense to go MS > CS and fish for a CS proc.
if you get really comfortable with all this, you should start trying to time it so that you get 2x OP procs when CS is up. i don't think it's possible to get 2x MS.
___________________________________________________________
- there's never been more ups and downs to a spell than HS. currently, it does far less damage than our primary nukes and cost far more rage. BUT, don't ignore it! it's just another tool in the arsenal that we need to use wisely for maximum dps.
use it when
procs. if you're under ~20 rage, just save BT for your next attack; otherwise, use it for a free HS. at zero rage cost, the DPR is wonderful (yeah, yeah, divide by zero) and we don't typically need the extra rage from BT for our rotation.
use it any time you've got excess rage. what "excess rage" means depends. if you're stance dancing (more below), then anything over 75 rage is usually wasted anyway, so certainly you should use HS by then. i use it around 65-70 rage, and i lower that threshold slightly if incite procs. whatever your threshold, lower it by 10 during
if you have
2 pc T13
.
fights with steady incoming damage, like ultraxion or madness are simply amazing for HS usage. on those fights, i try to keep IR on cooldown.
since HS doesn't hit for much, anything you can do to make it better helps. normally, we're not overflowing with rage, so when you are ready to HS, be sure you have one or more buffs up to help you. CS, enrage, etc. if not, it's fine to hang on to it for a few seconds and wait for something to proc. it's even more beneficial to wait for CS if incite is proc'd.
here's a powa i use for BT:
Version:4.23; b:0.1216; g:0.6275; icon:INV_Helmet_06; buffname:Battle Trance; x:-22; texture:10; alpha:1; owntex:true; mine:true; PowerType:0; combat:true; size:0.43; y:59; texmode:1
___________________________________________________________
Execute phase!
time to really push the meters.
Execute
does insane dps if you use it right, especially coupled with cooldowns (more info in cooldown section). even though it's only available for 20% of the fight, it's typically #3 or #4 on your damaging abilities. a 30 rage execute hits harder than anything else you've got, so you want to maximize those. it also applies
, which gives you 25% more white damage + rage generation. under 30 rage, you have a few decisions points.
if
is about to fall off, MS becomes top priority (this applies even > 30 rage). keeping slaughter up will also keep rend up.
if you're under 30 rage and slaughter is in good shape, use OP. at only 5 rage, it will help you get back to 30 rage for more executes.
never HS unless
is up! since you won't be stance dancing unless you're very low on rage, you're just stealing good rage from executes with HS.
with the above priorities, slam is the odd man out in execute phase. you will not have a spot for it in your rotation.
___________________________________________________________
TALENTS
my
raiding spec
for DS
there are quite a few choices you can make with your talent tree, and i'll go over the optional talents. i'm going to skip the obvious/mandatory talents because they are self-explanatory. if i skipped a talent that's reachable, then i don't consider it remotely useful for PVE.
or
you have to take 2/2 in one or the other. for progression on intense healing fights, you probably want FD; for everything else, take blitz for more rage. there's quite a few encounters you can charge on.
it's pretty much mandatory if you stance dance, which is unfortunately required to maximize your dps (more below). if you're not raiding, you can afford to skip this and forget stance dancing.
there's nothing in DS to interrupt, making this quite useless for raiders. for anything else, you can easily get 1/2 without sacrificing anything. if you're just doing 5 mans, put 2/2 here instead of TM.
i have this in my spec still, but it's really left over from FL for ragnaros adds. in DS, i use it for knocking down the sappers. this is your floater point for the arms tree.
part of the standard raid spec. gives you 25% more white damage + rage generation for 20% of the fight. points well spent most of the time. i could see giving this up for 2/2 B&T in an aoe heavy fight, but normally i sacrifice incite instead. for 5 mans, skip it - things die too fast for it to be worthwhile.
amazing talent in T11 when we got to interrupt bosses. no use at all in T12 or T13, but highly recommended for a 5 man spec.
better than it looks at first glance, and part of the standard single target raid spec. 15% crit on HS plus 100% on the next HS. it gets better with 2pc T13.
very nice AoE ability, but quite limited in DS. i have a second arms spec with this for heroic yor'sahj, but probably not worth it for normal or LFR DS. nothing short of mandatory for 5 mans.
___________________________________________________________
GLYPHS
prime glyphs are fixed, no discussion, quite obvious (see raid spec link above if you still have questions)
major glyphs you actually have a lot of choices:
Charred Glyph
not very useful in most of DS. outside of
, arms doesn't cleave much. take it if you don't need the other glyphs, or you have a planned "cleave phase" in a fight and time it with DC.
Charred Glyph
new and improved, it even applies sunder now! basically mandatory if you are responsible for sunders, and still decent if not. one of my most often used glyphs.
Charred Glyph
only slightly useful, but i use it a lot because i usually keep sunders up. it helps get stacks more quickly because you can cast HT immediately on the pull and at least do some damage on that first sunder. on bosses that move out of range, you can use HT to refresh or reapply sunder as you charge back in. it's the first glyph to sacrifice if you need anything else and it's probably totally useless in 25 man.
Charred Glyph
i like this one on any fight where i'm moving to a new target often (yor'sahj, for example). that's 5 less yards i have to waste time running across, and
charging
is a dps boost.
Charred Glyph
maybe useful on a fight where you plan to use B&T a lot, and 5 mans. not really useful in DS raids.
Charred Glyph
if you're going to use
in a fight, use this glyph.
Charred Glyph
the only minor glyph i'd call mandatory. if you're responsible for a shout, use that glyph as well; otherwise, the minors don't matter much.
___________________________________________________________
STATS/GEARING/GEMMING
strength is king, always maximize your strength.
hit cap is 8%, expertise cap is 26.
crit is by FAR your best secondary stat. every single piece of gear should have crit on it; if it doesn't, reforge the highest stat to crit and replace it when you can with crit gear. look at all that crit does for you:
we are heavily dependent on crit.
mastery and haste are both fairly weak, although i typically go mastery > haste.
don't sacrifice crit for your caps, you should have plenty of mastery/haste for that.
rules for reforging gear, in order:
maximize crit
get hit cap
get expertise cap
mastery > haste
Bold Queen's Garnet
Inscribed Lava Coral
Etched Shadow Spinel
the only gems to use (or lower version if you can't afford). i normally only use hybrid gems if the bonus is strength; otherwise, gem pure strength.
___________________________________
COOLDOWNS
you don't have many, but here's a brief description of each.
, which i didn't even have on my action bar until i got my
2pc T13
. you should use IR whenever you use HS, unless you're about to use DC (since you can't overlap them).
- try to keep this on CD and spam HS during DC. to maximize dps, wait for the next CS and "overuse" HS just before hitting DC. if you are within 2 min of execute phase, then save it because it really shines in execute phase. you can basically spam 30 rage executes + HS until it runs out.
note
: the 2 min CD lines up nicely with some trinkets.
Recklessness
is a powerful cooldown with a stupid penalty. execute phase is best, but that may be too dangerous on progression fights, so plan ahead. with a 5 min CD, you can get two in long fights - in that case, use it on the pull after your pre-pot.
more details on cooldowns in the rotation summary.
Post by
marklartank
ROTATION SUMMARY
opening a fight, you have a number of things to worry about. you have to get rend up, you have to get slaughter stacked to 3, and you might have to get sunders up. that's a lot to juggle in the beginning. because slaughter takes at least 9 seconds to stack and significantly boosts your primary attacks, i use MS first.
note:
always begin the fight in charge range for an extra 25% crit on your first MS.
i tend to rely on CS to stack sunders, rather than using the sunder ability. if i'm responsible for sunders, then i try to glyph HT and use it as the tank pulls for a head start. you should never be responsible for sunders in a 25 man.
the real question for me is when to use CS at the beginning. if sundering, then fine - use it soon; otherwise, i might wait for slaughter x3 for maximum benefit. i haven't done any maths one way or the other since i have to sunder a lot, so i just use it early.
opener
golemblood pot / shout before combat
HT on the pull only if glyphed and doing sunders
0.0
charge/MS
1.5
rend
3.0
CS
4.5
MS (+recklessness if you can't use it later, or if fight > 5 min long)
6.0
OP
7.5
slam
9.0
MS
100% - 20%
OP if TfB >= 5s
MS
CS if CS is not up (move this above MS if no T13 4pc)
slam is your filler
also:
HS during DC or if rage > 60 (with IR)
DC on cooldown if >2 min until execute phase
20% - 0%
0.0
DC + on-use crit trinkets
0.0 - 9.0
spam execute + HS
10.5
golemblood + recklessness + on-use strength trinkets
now that you have a full rage bar and cooldowns, you will see a HUGE dps spike here
then follow:
MS if slaugher < 2s
execute if rage > 30 or if executioner < 2s
OP if rage < 30
MS
execute
i've seen claims that it's better damage to skip OP during recklessness, but i doubt any difference in damage is worth the enormous rage cost. if anyone has evidence of this, please post it.
___________________________________
STANCE DANCING
i hate stance dancing; it's a pita, it's clumsy, and it's irritating. i hate that blizzard clearly intends for arms warriors to be in battle stance, but then makes only ONE ability require battle stance. it seems like it would be extremely simple to break stance dancing for PVE, but as long as it's here, you might as well get used to it. if you are new to arms, you may want to just ignore this section until you feel very comfortable with the rotation first.
there is one direct benefit of stance dancing, besides the 5% extra damage you get in zerker stance. changing stances this often forces you to spam your buttons; this is something you should have been doing anyway, but with this play style you absolutely have to.
changing stances does NOT trigger the GCD, but it does trigger an independent 1s CD on your stance. the idea is simple:
Mortal Strike
,
Slam
,
,
Execute
,
, and white attacks don't care which of the two stances you're in, so clearly using them in
is preferable to
. unfortunately,
Rend
and
Overpower
make it impossible to stay in zerker stance (although
means rend is no longer a problem).
the way to handle this is with macros. i'm not a macro pro, so please correct me if there's an easier way to do this. make the following macros and replace the buttons on your bar with these. if you use default blizzard bars, i guess you need to be sure both stances have the same buttons. i use bartender, and i turn off bar switching for stances.
#showtooltip Overpower
/use Battle Stance
/use Overpower
#showtooltip Rend
/use Battle Stance
/use Rend
#showtooltip Thunder Clap
/use Battle Stance
/use Thunder Clap
#showtooltip Mortal Strike
/use Berserker Stance
/use Mortal Strike
#showtooltip Execute
/use Berserker Stance
/use Execute
#showtooltip Bladestorm
/use Berserker Stance
/use Bladestorm
#showtooltip Slam
/use Berserker Stance
/use Slam
i skip CS because it does so little damage that it doesn't matter much, and not having it macro'd to zerker stance makes CS > OP combos simpler.
when you use these macros, you'll notice a couple things. overpower (and rend) will be greyed out for much of the fight. using those abilities REQUIRES you to hit the macros at least 2x because the first time the stance change won't register in time to allow you to use the ability. this means you absolutely need to be spamming OP before the GCD is up so you don't lose dps due to latency.
the other abilities don't have that problem because they can be used in either stance, so the game will allow you to hit the MS macro no matter which stance you're in. from what i've read (not verified personally), it will process the stance change before the ability; however, you still want to spam everything. first, it gets you back in zerker stance ASAP after an OP (for more white damage). second, spamming your buttons helps account for variable latency and will make you do more damage.
membrane keyboards will hate you, but i got a 1984 IBM model-M off ebay for $20 and it's a tank. springs in the keys > membranes any day :)
___________________________________
AOE/CLEAVING
in a true AoE situation, you have only two abilities:
Bladestorm
and
. in most situation where adds will die quickly, just use BS. it's one of the most powerful AoE's in the game; it's only downside being the long cooldown. for more sustained AoE phases, go B&T, BS, then
Thunder Clap
on cooldown while following your normal rotation OR dropping into a cleaving rotation.
in a cleaving (meaning 2-3 adds that are closely stacked) situation, we have another very powerful ability:
. it's weakness is that the targets need to be VERY closely stacked for it to work. it double-dips with attacks like
Cleave
, so that if you cleave 3 targets, you get 6 hits.
for maximum cleavage, use SS > DC/cleave spam while following your normal rotation. after DC wears off, just substitute cleave for HS.
now the bad news: when BS and SS are on cooldown, we're among the worst classes at AoE or cleaving. without DC you simply don't have the rage to cleave much, and if you're not spec'd into B&T, you're reduced to TC...
fortunately, T13 works extremely well with our AoE cooldowns, and our weaknesses are not exposed in this tier.
yor'sahj
: B&T + BS for black phase
zon'ozz (H)
: SS/DC/cleave for claw
hagara
: SS for frost tombs (BS if too spread out)
gunship
: SS if you have tanks alternate picking up both adds
spine
: B&T to help keep bloods cleaned up towards the end (careful with BS here)
madness
: BS is up for every ooze phase, DC/cleave burning tentacles (not sure if SS reaches), SS for terrors
___________________________________
if you have any questions or suggestions, please post them here. discussions and arguments are welcome, so long as they're civil. i would ask that you provide logs to back up your point, or at least a really good explanation of why it works.
Post by
WTBaggrodump
Looking nice so far! I can't wait to see it when it's finished.
TLDR
;
Requesting this be stickied.
Post by
323257
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
marklartank
Regarding cd usage, would you overpower at all during deadly calm or spam slam? I pmuch forgot many things about this spec. Also, another thing you might want to mention is that if rage isn't an issue and CS is coming up, you can try to delay your HS to land right after your CS applies since it is off GCD.
other than 30 rage executes, OP is your hardest hitting ability (don't forget the crit rate increase), so you really don't eren want to miss an OP when boss is > 20%.
good point about delaying HS for a CS if you can - i'll add that.
Post by
323257
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
marklartank
Someone just showed me a video from Landsoul showing you how to fit 4 GCDs inside the CS debuff. You have to set your custom lag tolerance appropriate to the latency you get so the client knows how to pre-queue abilities so it lands as if you have 0 latency. The only restrictions are that the ability must not be on cooldown as you cannot queue an ability you cannot use yet. The other restriction for arms is that slam has a cast time so slam cannot be the last GCD inside your CS.
that would make it impossible for 2x MS then? MS would just be coming off cooldown.
Post by
Zakkhar
I dont know what 4 abilities we can do of slam is out of the question?
Executes?
Like MS, Op, Exec, exec..?
Post by
323257
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
288980
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Zakkhar
OK I love this guide. But I do have a question: When are you going to cover stance dancing? I am a min/max player even though my guilds I am in are quite casual. At this point in time I am beinging to have a lot of fun playing my arms warrior and was told a few days ago in LFR that I could push past my 27k if I stance danced. I really don't understand the concept of stance dancing.
I've read a few people saying they are in beserk stance for >65% of all fights. My thoughts on that is "you can't use OP in zerk stance"
If you could explain this, it would be much appreciated.
Thank you
You just macro battle stance to Overpower and Zerker stance to everything else. Stance dancing is on different cooldowns than the actual abilities.
Like that:
#showtooltip overpower
/use overpower;battle stance
#showtooltip mortal strike
/use mortal strike;berserker stance
repeat for slam, blade storm and whats not.
I am sure there are easier macros for that, but thats what i would use.
Post by
marklartank
OK I love this guide. But I do have a question: When are you going to cover stance dancing? I am a min/max player even though my guilds I am in are quite casual. At this point in time I am beinging to have a lot of fun playing my arms warrior and was told a few days ago in LFR that I could push past my 27k if I stance danced. I really don't understand the concept of stance dancing.
I've read a few people saying they are in beserk stance for >65% of all fights. My thoughts on that is "you can't use OP in zerk stance"
If you could explain this, it would be much appreciated.
Thank you
pretty much what zakkhar said - i'll try and get to that section soon!
don't expect an enormous dps gain, it's strictly the difference between
and
. 65/35 is about the right split, so your gain is approximately 65% of 5%, or just over 3% increase.
Post by
marklartank
I dont know what 4 abilities we can do of slam is out of the question?
Executes?
Like MS, Op, Exec, exec..?
i think he just means slam can't be last because the 0.5s cast time would push it past the CS debuff. so maybe something like OP, MS, slam, OP would be the best case.
Post by
Rauno
Nice guide. Would be even better if you used capital letters at start of the sentence.
A few important things you should add.
1. About gems: Use purple/orange gems(hit/str or crit/str) only if socket bonus is +10 Strength or more.
Meta gem should always be
Reverberating Shadowspirit Diamond
.
2. Correct Opening rotation posted by Sherea on mmo-champion:
To Openion rotation: Correct way of doing it, unlike what everyone probably says, is to start with Shout -> Charge -> MS -> Rend -> CS -> MS -> Slam -> OP
If your MS is fine in raids you'll have a 0.4 ish sec margin until renewed OP procc like this. The reason you don't want to use rend / Cs first is because
1) You wont use OP for at least another 3 globals
2) Charge boosts MS crit which enables Enrage 10% buff -> higher dps boost during initial CS
3) Higher Cs reprocc chances
4) Initial crit for AoK stacking for deadly calm cd's
With 4pT13 MS>CS will result in higher CS-Uptime
3. Make list of useful addons(with download links and description) for warriors.
For example. I find dominos very helpful and useful cos it lets me keep my bars when I switch stances.
Reforgelite for optimal reforges, or use Askmrrobot.
4. Add stance dancing macros.
5. Might be a good idea to add links to few of the most popular warrior forums/sites for additional information sources and extra read and/or theorycrafting.
Overall very well made guide I hope you keep updating it. Good job.
Post by
328067
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
marklartank
Nice guide. Would be even better if you used capital letters at start of the sentence
sorry, i really don't use caps much, not even at work. slows down my typing by about 1/3 and adds very little value (imo).
thanks for the comments.
i did forget the meta!
i agree with the opening mostly, although i'm not sure if it's better to use CS so early or wait for slaughter x3. the main goal is to get slaughter x3 ASAP, so MS being first is the important bit.
the last three i definitely plan to include :)
Post by
asakawa
I'd say there's enough here now to be stickied. Keep up the good work and feel free to transfer it over to the
guide
system too.
Post by
570342
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
marklartank
done! i think...
let me know if i've forgotten a topic, or if anyone has any feedback (i'll try and work on caps someday).
Post by
wigglemonster
I'm very tempted to give this a shot on my warrior. The ability to be arms in a raid situation and be better positioned to pvp with the same spec appeals to me. My main spec is Prot... And I want to be able to pvp and dps with my other spec.
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