Arms Warrior Talents

All three talents on this tier are useful and your choice should be based on the encounter.

1. Juggernaut is best used for when you need to charge on a semi-frequent basis.
2. Juggernaut is more useful when you might need a double charge for emergencies.
3. Warbringer is for stunning adds/trash and otherwise unlikely to be a better option than the other two.

1. Enraged Regeneration is a great on demand survivability mechanic.
2. Second Wind is best used when you anticipated being low on health quite often during an encounter.
3. Impending Victory is perhaps the most useful of the three as it can be used on demand and more frequently than Enraged Regeneration for lower rage cost.

1. Staggering Shout roots already snared enemies, rarely useful.
2. Piercing Howl does what it always has, AoE Snare.
3. Disrupting Shout is an AoE interrupt/Silence, likely the best choice of this tier unless you need to kite adds.

1. Dragon Roar is useful for controlling mobs as is Shockwave with Shockwave having the superior damage of the two but the more limited target area.
2. Bladestorm is beneficial during situations where you wish to avoid losing control of your character but otherwise less useful than the other options.

1. Mass Spell Reflection is somewhat useful at times, but lacking due to the fact that the majority of Raid Boss abilities cannot be reflected.
2. Safeguard is useful as damage reduction, but you have to be wary of the damage you might take when using this ability.
3.  Vigilance is similar in that using it poses a risk to your own health, but again it is useful utility when used properly/at the right times.

1. Your choice should be between Avatar and Bloodbath, both of them being superior at this time to Stormbolt.

Arms Warrior  Major Glyphs

1. Glyph of Unending Rage
2. Glyph of Rude Interruption
3. Glyph of Death From Above
4. Glyph of Recklessness
5. Glyph of Bull Rush
6. Glyph of Mortal Strike
7. Glyph of Colossus Smash
8. Glyph of Enraged Speed
9. Glyph of Whirlwind
10. Glyph of Overpower

Minor Glyphs

Most of the minor glyphs are just cosmetic. This one should have some nice utility when fighting trash (or leveling.)

• Glyph of Intimidating Shout

Arms Stat Priorities

Expertise/Hit (7.5%) > Critical > Strength > Haste > Mastery

1. Primary Stats: Strength
2. Secondary: Expertise and Hit to 7.5% each > Critical
3. Weaker: Haste > Mastery
4. Useless: Hit or Expertise over 7.5%

Arms Warrior In-Depth Rotation

Battle Stance is optimal at all times unless you’re taking heavy amounts of damage in which case Berserker Stance, which grants you less rage than Battle Stance when dealing damage, but additional rage from taking damage, can be used.

1. Maintain Battle Shout at all times and use it as a filler rage generating tool if you have nothing else to cast.
2. Your Primary attack and rage generator is Mortal Strike which you should use on cooldown.
3. Use colossus Smash and take advantage of the 6 second time on the debuff which allows 100% of your damage to bypass the targets armor.
4. Overpower should be used as often as you can fit it into your rotation. Overpower triggers each time you use Mortal Strike and when a target dodges an attack. Taste for Blood also grants each Overpower a 30% chance to enable the use of another Overpower.
5. Slam is your primary rage dump and a priority over Heroic Strike.
6. Heroic Strike should be used when you have stacks of Taste for Blood or as a rage dump if you’re about to become rage capped despite using Slam.
7. Execute replaces Slam and Heroic Strike when the target is below 20% health.

Multiple target fights should be handled through the use of Sweeping Strikes and target switching with Mortal Strike to apply Deep Wounds to all targets.

1. If facing three or more enemies use Thunder Clap to apply Deep Wounds to all targets due to Blood and Thunder while spamming Whirlwind as often as possible in addition to continuing your regular single target rotation.

Cooldowns

1. Berserker Rage should be used on cooldown although it’s best to use it in combination with other damage increasing cooldowns and when you have a decent amount of rage pooled to benefit best from the 10% damage buff. To make things easier, the ability has a 30 second cooldown meaning it can be used many times throughout an encounter.
2. Recklessness and Deadly Calm should be used as often as possible.
3. Skull Banner should be used as often as possible, but is also a boost to raid DPS as a whole and therefore should be activated when best to benefit the entire raid.

Tier 4 Talented Abilities:

Shockwave, Dragon Roar and Bladestorm are all effective AoE tools although Bladestorm is a DPS loss when used against a single target as it locks out your other abilities for the duration unlike Shockwave and Dragon Roar.

Gems for the Arms Warrior

Gems with the secondary stats (Hit, Crit, etc.) have twice the value of gems with Str., 320 Vs 160. This will make it worth matching socket bonuses for Str or Crit. Orange and Purple gams can be used in the Yellow and Blue sockets, respectively. Also keep in mind that your Plate Specialization adds 5% to Str from all sources, including gems and enchants. This makes Str just that much more valuable.

You will note, from that stats section, that Hit/Expertise/Crit are better than Strength, point for point. Gem appropriately. If you have Engineering the helm is a pretty sweet starter piece for raiding and a couple of 600 pt Tinker’s Gears ain’t bad either.

You probably won’t need to gem for Hit at all, and maybe not expertise. (Try not to be over the 7.5% Hit/Expertise caps.)

Gem Priorities
Meta		Reverberating Primal Diamond: +216 Str & Increased Crit Effect
Red		Bold Primordial Ruby: 160 Str
Yellow		Smooth Sun’s Radiance: +320 Crit
Orange		Inscribed Vermilion Onyx: +80 Str and 160 Crit
Blue		No appropriate blue gems
Green		No appropriate green gems
Purple		Etched Imperial Amethyst: +80 Str and +160 Hit
Prismatic		Bold Primordial Ruby: 160 Str
Cogwheel		Smooth Tinker’s Gear: 600 Crit

Enchantments for Arms

Basically you should get your enchants based on the priorities above, Str and Crit above all else. If you want to buy the best enchants, fund all of your alts, donate to the guild, etc., but don’t have the cash, then see what the Tycoon Addon can do about about fixing your cash flow.

As with gems, your Plate Specialization adds 5% to Str from all sources.

Note that head enchants are gone and you will get shoulder enchants from the Inscription profession (you can also fnd them on the Auction House.)

Consumables

You Pandarens get twice the value of the food buff. All food buffs last one hour and provide only one stat.

If you have the Alchemy skill the effect and duration of flasks and elixirs will be increased, including the value of secondary stats, by about 30% and an hour. Foods are available that provide secondary stats, but they’re only worth about 200 points each, so are not included here.

Foods

• Black Pepper Ribs and Shrimp: 300 Str

Potions

• Potion of Mogu Power: 4k Str for 25 Seconds
• Master Healing Potion: Heals 60k HP, probably worthwhile to have a few of these on your bar.

Flasks

• Flask of Winter’s Bite: 1,000 Str for 1 hour

Elixirs – you can have one battle and one guardian elixir up at a time. Since you won’t have use for the defensive elixirs, since you’re not that tank, it will be much more efficient to just use the flask, above.

• battle: Elixir of Weaponry: 750 Expertise for one hour.
• battle: Elixir of Perfection: 750 Hit
• battle: Mad Hozen Elixir: 750 Crit
• guardian: Mantid Elixir: 2,250 Armor
• guardian: Elixir of Mirrors: 750 Dodge

Professions for the Arms Warrior

All of the professions provide some benefit for Warriors of any spec, though clearly some are better than others. Even the gathering professions have some value, though you might be better served by using those to build a larger gold stash.

If you’re looking for the buffs then Blacksmithing might be the best choice since you can slot two gems and gems with secondary stats have twice the value of those with primary stats, 320 Crit or Hit Vs 160 Int, per gem, for example. it gives you a bit more gemming versatility. You can load up on 640 Crit instead of 320 Str.

Arms Warrior Races

With Cataclysm it came to be that any race could become a Warrior. Even Goblins. With Mists of Pandaria the Pandarens have also joined the club of face-smashing goodness. All weapons being equal, the Orc might be the best choice for DPS with Axe expertise and Bloody Fury. Draenai have a +to hit, making stat dancing a bit easier, and Worgen have a Sprint and a + to Crit.

For most of the races only tha abilities that would have any use in a raid are shown.

Pandaren - They get to choose whether they will join the Horde or the Alliance, once they leave the starting area.

• Increased duration of Rest XP should make for faster leveling.
• Being bouncy they take less falling damage, which is more useful in PvP than PvE.
• With a quick strike of the hand they can stun an opponent for 4 seconds, which is a pretty nice ability.
• Pandarens get better buffs from food, 600 points of Str from the raid meal instead of 300.
• Naturally they’re good with cooking.

Alliance

Humans 

• Escape – Very nice in PvP as it allows using two DPS trinkets. Occasionally useful otherwise.
• Increased Expertise with swords and maces. Nice for the end-game, if a sword or mace is the best weapon (and it probably is.)

Night Elves - Next, Night Elves gain both Shadowmeld and Quickness as far as effective abilities go.

• Quickness is a 2% increase to dodge and will only rarely be useful, unless your tank has issues with holding threat.
• Shadowmeld can be used in some PvE situations to drop aggro (either to save your skin or so the tank can reacquire aggro) or possibly hide from patrols. It’s an occasionally  useful ability.

Dwarves - Shortness is a virtue? Is a digging tool your favorite weapon?

• Stoneform removes bleeds, poisons, and diseases will sometimes be useful. It also reduces damage by 10% which might also be occasionally useful.
• Ranged Expertise would be nice if you could use ranged weapons, Mace expertise is useful, if a mace is the best weapon available.

Draenei – Winners of the interstellar bodybuilding contest. All of the contests.

• The Draenei heal is a worthwhile ability, even though it doesn’t add to your DPS. Some disagree. I think the any Warrior heal is a good thing. Save it for those moments when you are the target.
• Draenei also gain a 1% +hit. Nice to have, especially for raiding, where it’s just that much less that you have to reforge/gem for. It means that you only need 6.5% hit to cap (instead of  7.5%.)

Gnomes -  Short, the butt of too many jokes, and punted by everyone except Goblins.

• A nice escape ability is great for PvP and is useful every now and then otherwise
• Their Expertise is of no use to you, since you use 2-handers.

Worgen - Grandma, what big teeth you have…

• Worgen can periodically move more quickly, much like the Rogue’s Sprint, which is a generally useful ability.
• They have an increased crit chance which is an overall DPS gain, regardless of weapon equipped.

The Horde

Orcs – Orcs are the race most considered to be the deadliest warrior race.

• Orcs possess an interesting racial ability called Bloodfury, which increases their attack power by a significant amount (even more than the tailoring cloak enchant, and this is a cooldown.) Add this to a macro, along with certain trinkets, and use it to really smash face when you need to.
• The Orc hardiness (stun resistance) will only rarely be useful in PvE.
• The Orc Expertise with Axes is nice, if an axe is the best weapon available.

Tauren

• A 5% increase to base health seems useful at high levels for any prospective tank, especially in raiding, except that it doesn’t scale well at high level, giving far less than 5%. Perhaps this will be changed someday.
• Also useful is war stomp, usually a PvP ability, but also useful for leveling, that gives Tauren Warriors a crucial short range AoE stun. This can also interrupt trash mobs when dungeoning/raiding.

Trolls  For PvE their Berserking puts them ahead of the Undead as DPS.

• Berserking increases attack speed by a decent amount.
• Increased damage Vs beasts is useful for leveling and some PvE content.
• Do Voodoo Shuffle reduces movement altering effects, such as from Slow spells.

Undead

• Will of the Forsaken is a solid racial, PvP wise, granting a free break from fear, sleep, and charm effects every 2 minutes, yet in PvE wise it’s much less useful, aside from specific boss fights.
• Cannibalize grants undead great post-fight regeneration ability. It frees up a bag slot for normal foods, bt probably will find little use in raiding situations.
• Touch of the Grave is a life draining ability (which also heals you,) and it’s passive. It will actually add a bit to your DPS without you doing anything special.

Goblins 

• Rocket Jump is usable once per 2 minutes and can be a nice gap closer or escape.
• Haste is increased for the Goblins, but it’s not a great Warrior stat.

Blood Elves

• Arcane Torrent restores some rage and silences nearby opponents for 2 seconds. Also interrupts non-player opponents for 3 seconds. This makes it a pretty useful ability every 2 min.

The Fast Arms Warrior Leveling Guide

Ok, you’re not yet at the level cap. Maybe you’re only level 1. Do you have a plan to hit that cap ASAP and get into that end-game content ans smash some of the opposition? Or will you just aimlessly wander about the world, looking for the next quest?

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Take a break to do some PvP leveling or instances and when you come back to the guide it will figure out what level you are and pick up from there. Automatically. Heck, Zygor’s will even clean up your obsolete quests for you.

It doesn’t matter if you’re brand new to WoW or you’re decked out in Heirlooms and using Recruit a Friend, Zygor’s will get you to 90 fast. Grab your copy of Zygor’s Guide here or read our review.

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