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Arms Warrior DPS Guide for PvE

Arms Warrior
Updated for Warlords of Draenor 6.2

Yes, it’s true, Arms Warriors aren’t just for PvP. They can actually do well in the PvE area. Now, on to the face smashing!

Arms Warriors took a bit of damage in the Warlords expansion and 6.1 was kind of “meh.” You can see the Warlords Warrior changes here. The 6.2 changes are listed here. Basically your mastery is better and your Mortal Strike got a small nerf. The Mastery should more than make up for that.

Now go kick some butt and grind their faces into the dirt.

Contents

  1. Arms Warrior Talents
  2. Arms Glyphs
  3. Arms Stats
  4. Arms Abilities
  5. Arms Rotations
  6. Gemming Arms
  7. Enchants for Arms
  8. Macros and Keybinds
  9. Consumables
  10. Professions
  11. Races
  12. Fastest Arms Leveling
 This Arms Warrior guide is primarily intended for use at level 100, for generating the best possible DPS in a raiding/PvE environment. Many of these principals will still apply in PvP or during the leveling process. If you’re looking for advice on leveling your Warrior, you should check out our Warrior Leveling Guide.

Other Warrior Guides: 

Check out the same in-game step by step leveling guide that we use to get to level 100 as fast as possible, take a look at our favorite in-game leveling guide.

The Fastest Way to Level 90, Click Here to Start

 

Arms Warrior Talents

The best talents for general PvE use are checked, Best talent, in the descriptions below.

Certain talents will fit better in certain situations, others in different situations. The better you know what’s coming up the easier it will be to make the change. Fortunately they are easy to change. Keep a stack of Tomes handy and switch as necessary.

Arms Warrior PvE Talents for Warlords of Draenor

Tier 1, level 15:

Charging in:

  1. More charges: Juggernaut is best used for when you need more charges per minute, but generally the double-tap charge of Double Time is more useful.
  2. Best talent Double Charge: Double Time is more useful when you might need a double charge for emergencies, such as a rapid target switch. If you charge the same target twice you only get rage for the first charge. If you charge different targets, back to back, then you get Rage for both.
  3. Stun: Warbringer is for stunning adds/trash and otherwise unlikely to be a better option than the other two, since it does not lower the charge cooldown in any way. If you need to stun an add though, it’s a solid pick. Naturally bosses won’t care about it.

Tier 2, level 30:

Healing and Survival

  1. Heal: Enraged Regeneration is a decent on demand survivability mechanic, but Impending Victory heals for as much on a much shorter cooldown and has other plusses. Skip this one.
  2. Leech: Second Wind is best used when you anticipated being low on health quite often during an encounter. Hopefully you’re spending very little time at or below 35% health. Note that the heal is a Leech, so you will need to keep attacking for it to so anything.
  3. Best talent Strike:  Impending Victory is the most useful of the three as it can be used on demand and more frequently than Enraged Regeneration for lower rage cost. It’s a decent, low cost, heal as well as a cheap strike.

Tier 3, level 45:

Slam or Sudden Death? Up to you, really, as their DPS value is very close.

  1. Best talent Rend Rage: Taste for Blood is very nice for multiple targets, as you’ll be getting that much more Rage from all those Rends. If you have the T18 4 piece bonus (Rend deals damage 50% more often) T for B is also the best Single Target pick.
  2. Best talent Executes: Sudden Death gives you that Execute proc that can hit targets at any health level, is random, which may be a point in favor of the other two, and passive in that it does not add an extra key. It’s a powerful hit though, and Execute is your primary attack anyway in the low health phase.
  3. Smack! Slam whacks the opponent and the next two slams, after which it resets, do increasing damage at increasing cost. More strategic value than Sudden Death, since you get to pick when you use it

Tier 4, level 60:

  1. Best talent Ranged stun: Storm bolt adds a ranged shot to your arsenal, along with a stun (against trash.) This is the best talent for single target damage, since it does decent damage, at no cost, to any target that it can’t stun. Such as the Boss.
  2. Cone stun: Shockwave has decent damage and a more limited target area than Roar. Very nice if you need the stun, such as for groups of adds.
  3. A of E: Dragon Roar does damage and knocks enemies back a short distance. This instant damage is a solid hit and a pretty useful talent. Better than Storm Bolt for group fights.

Tier 5, level 75:

Helping Out the Group

  1. Reflect: Mass Spell Reflection is somewhat useful at times, but lacking due to the fact that the majority of Raid Boss abilities cannot be reflected. Possibly useful for the times when trash mobs are lobbing spells at the group.
  2. Eat his hit: Safeguard lets you eat your ally’s next incoming hit and provides him some damage reduction, but you have to be wary of the damage you might take when using this ability.
  3. Best talent Protect him: Vigilance protects the target from a good amount of damage and that damage is no longer taken by you. Much safer for you than Safeguard. This is a solid pick if you have someone you want/need to keep an eye on.

Tier 6, level 90:

Avatar and Bloodbath are roughly equal for single target DPS, Bladestorm is better for 3+ targets.

  1. Rahhrrr! Avatar provides a very nice damage buff every three min. It’s very solid for single target fights (eg: Bosses.)
  2. Best talent More bleeds: Bloodbath helps to spread the blood around. Solid damage. Everything you do will cause the opponent to bleed and slow him (won’t slow the boss.)
  3. Area: Bladestorm is beneficial during situations where you wish to avoid losing control of your character. It’s more fun, too, which makes it a decent pick. This is the easily the best pick for fighting 3 mobs or more.

Tier 7, level 100:

Anger Management and Siegebreaker are about about equal in DPS terms, Ravager is easily the best for groups.

  • Cooldowns: Anger Management reduces the cooldown of certain abilities as you spend rage. The reduction will be small, but noticeable, and will result in a few more abilities used in a fight of any length. Its the pick because it’s a passive and the extra use of a couple of abilities might come in handy.
  • Area: Ravager throws your spinning weapon at a location of choice, doing damage to all enemies in its area. This is the best pick for groups that will stay put for a few seconds.
  • Best talent Extra strike: Siegebreaker changes your Intimidating Shout into a single-target attack, doing good damage and knocking the opponent back and down, if it isn’t a boss. If you want an extra attack (on a 45 second cooldown,) rather than reduced cooldowns, then this is a good pick.

 

Arms Warrior  Glyphs

None of the glyphs add directly to DPS, but they do add in other areas which will be an indirect DPS add.

Glyphs with ** are pretty much required.

The Major Glyphs

  1. ** Glyph of Unending Rage – Increases your max rage.
  2. ** Glyph of Resonating Power increases and damage, and the cooldown, of your Thunder Clap. With the T18 4 piece set bonus you will no longer be using Thunder Clap in your rotation, so this glyph will lose its value.
  3. Glyph of Bull Rush for more Rage when
  4. Glyph of Death From Above – Reduces your Heroic Leap cooldown, for more leaps over time, but it reduces your range by a lot. Exclusive with…
  5. Heroic Leap increases your speed after leaping. Exclusing with other glyphs affecting H. Leap.
  6. Glyph of Recklessness – 18% Crit increase ( down from 30%) and 18 second duration (up from 12 seconds.) Less crit increase, but longer lasting.
  7. Glyph of Rude Interruption – More damage after successful using Pummel to interrupt spells. If you wanted an excuse to interrupt more, here it is. Obviously it’s useless when not fighting casters.
  8. Glyph of Sweeping Strikes – gain Rage when hitting targets with Sweeping Strikes.
  9. Glyph of Mortal Strike – Recommended if you’re taking a lot of damage, as the heals coming your way will be buffed by 10%.

Minor Glyphs

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

 

Arms Stat Priorities

The ‘>’ symbol means “better than” or “greater than.”

Your stat priority: Strength > Critical >= Mastery > Multistrike  > Versatility > Haste

Your new stats in Warlords are Multistrike and Versatility. Hit and Expertise are both dead. At level 90 you get a 5% Mastery bonus via your Weapon Mastery ability.

 

Crit is the best of the rest of your Stats (after Str.) Your Recklessness ability adds up to 30% to your Crit rating while active. Nothing special procs off your crits, except that your auto attack crits generate 2x the Rage as regular auto-attack hits.

Mastery increases the damage of some important strikes: Mortal Strike, Colossus Smash, and Execute. You gain an addition 5% Mastery, from all sources, due to your level 90 Weapon Mastery ability. Your Mastery also got a buff in 6.2. Mastery becomes better than Crit when you have the T18 4 piece bonus.

Multistrike gives you a chance at one or maybe two extra strikes at 30% effectiveness. Any attack can Multistrike and Multistrike hits can both crit and proc anything that a regular strike might proc.

Versatility is a straight up add to all of your damage and healing and also adds half its value to your damage reduction. 5% Versatility will be +5% damage and +2.5% damage reduction.

Haste speeds up your attack speed, but it’s a poor value compared to the others. Traditionally the Arms Warrior’s least valuable stat, it maintains that position in Warlords, even with your Headlong Rush ability.

 

Arms Warrior Abilities

These are your abilities as Arms, your basic Warrior abilities are here.

Arms Spec
7 Rend – Bleed the enemy for 18 seconds.
7 Execute – big strike for when enemy is at 20% or less, added Rage does more damage. Your Sudden Death talent procs an Execute that hits anyone.
10 Mortal Strike – Your basic strike, causes Mortal Wounds on the target
10 Seasoned Soldier (P) – More damage with 2 handers.
14 Thunder Clap blasts all nearby enemies and slows them.
26 Whirlwind – Attack everything within 8 yards.
56 Die by the Sword For a brief time you have massively increased Parry chance and take less damage.
60 Sweeping Strikes lets your strikes also hit a nearby target.
80 Inspiring Presence – your entire party gets +3% Versatility.
80 Mastery: Weapons Master – More damage to your big hits.
81 Colossus Smash – Smash the target and cause followup attacks to bypass the enemy’s armor for a few seconds.
 81 Shield Barrier absorbs a lot of damage, no shield required.
83 Rallying Cry gives your entire party a 15 second health boost.
87 Recklessness increases crit chance and damage done for 10 seconds
90 Weapon Mastery gives +5% to your Mastery stat.

 

Arms Warrior In-Depth Rotation

See below this section for gems, enchants, etc.

Your Stance

  • Battle Stance is optimal at all times, with the only exception being when you’re taking enough damage to be interesting. Rage is generated from your auto-attacks, not damage taken.
  • Defensive Stance, if glyphed with this, can be used when there is a lot of damage coming your way. The glyph makes sure that you won’t make your tank’s job harder and your life shorter.

Your Shouts

  • Battle Shout will be your “go to” shout at all times, except under special circumstances. It buffs the entire group’s attack power.
  • Commanding Shout might be useful in times of heavy raid-wide damage, as it increases everyone’s Stamina.
  • Intimidating Shout is not recommended as sending mobs running all over the place is generally a poor idea. If you use the glyph (Glyph of Intimidating Shout) they will stay put, and it becomes more useful, though it still won’t affect the boss.

Useful Notes and Cooldowns:

  • Berserker Rage should be used when a fear or incapacitating effect is happening or about to happen. .
  • Recklessness should be used as it becomes available. Ideally use it with other procs/effects, such as trinket procs, Heroism type buffs, and you want it available when you’re in execute range, which means there will be times when you want to delay using it for a bit.
  • Colossus Smash should be used whenever available. It strips away your opponent’s armor for 6 seconds, greatly increasing your damage. Try to have enough Rage saved up to take good advantage of those next six seconds.
  • Bloodbath (if you took it) should be aligned with Colossus Smash.
  • Bladestorm should also be used with those buffs/procs and should generally only be used with 3+ enemies in range.
  • Ravager (if you have it) should be saved for group fights, or burst Area Effect damage. As with the others, line it up with your buffs, if possible.
  • Execute should, if possible, be used after Colossus smash. Spam it during those 6 seconds.
  • Quaff your Str potion right before the fight starts (“prepotting”) and again at some point during the fight. In line with the Heroism buff would be a good time.
  • Sudden Death procs take priority over everything else. Use them as they pop up.
  • Your Primary attack is Mortal Strike which you should use it on cooldown.

Set Bonuses

These are the tier 17 set bonuses:

  1. Colossus Smash has a 40% chance to reduce the cooldown of Mortal Strike by 50% for 10 sec (6 seconds to 3.)
  2. Colossus Smash now generates 20 Rage (instead of costing 10)

The T18 Bonuses:

  1. 2 piece set: Your Rend periodic damage ticks have a 60% chance to reset the cooldown of Mortal Strike.
  2. 4 piece set: Your Rend deals damage 50% more often.

Your Opening “Rotation”

More of a priority or “what should I do now” list. With random procs and buffs an exact “rotation” isn’t possible. Practice on your target dummy until it becomes at least somewhat automatic.

  1. Prepot
  2. Place your targeting circle for Ravager (if you took it)
  3. Charge
  4. Rend
  5. Dragon Roar, if you have it
  6. 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.
  7. Recklessness

Continuing Vs a Single Target

If the Boss is 20% or less (Execute range:) Use Execute at 60 or higher Rage.

During Colossus Smash: (Execute proc) > Mortal Strike > Storm Bolt or Dragon’s Roar > Thunder Clap > Whirlwind. Use the Execute proc when it pops up, don’t save it.

Fighting Groups

Don’t worry too much about the “Use ABC on X or fewer opponents” remarks. Exact numbers depend on a lot of things.

  1. Execute procs on primary target
  2. Maintain Sweeping Strikes
  3. Ravager
  4. Bladestorm, try to have at least 6 seconds of Sweeping Strikes remaining. You’re then be able to refresh SS right after Bladestorm without losing anything.
  5. Rend on 4-5 targets
  6. Dragon’s Roar 
  7. Colossus Smash on main target (only for smaller groups, 4 or fewer.)
  8. Execute on 5 or fewer enemies.
  9. Mortal Strike on 4 or fewer enemies.
  10. Thunder Clap
  11. Whirlwind

Arms Video

This video briefly covers talents and glyphs and goes a bit more into rotations for Arms.

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A somewhat “Tongue in Cheek” “How to Arms” for patch 6.2. This is with the T18 4 piece set bonus.

 

 

Gems for the Arms Warrior

Gemming In Brief, for Warlords 6.2

  1. Immaculate Critical Strike Taladite: +75 Critical
  2. If you have the 4 piece T18 bonus: Immaculate Mastery Taladite: +75 Mastery

These gems are likely to bit pricey, so drop down to a lesser gem if you must. Losing 25 points of Crit/Mastery will make very little difference in your DPS. Or you can earn more gold.

More Detail:

Gem sockets are actually uncommon in Warlords, but they do have a some random chance to appear on Raid gear. Also, there are no meta gems or sockets, there are no socket bonuses, and all sockets are “prismatic,” which means that they will take any available gem.

They gems are all prismatic, meaning any gem fits into any socket. None have Str or any primary stat. they only have secondary stats (Mastery, etc.)

Older (Mists of Pandaria) gems work until item level 600, but the item squish cut them down a bit. What used to be 160 Int is now 10, for example. Older gems (Mists of Pandaria and lower) that used to code for Hit now do Crit, gems that had Expertise are now Haste.

Gemming Arms for pre-Warlords gear:

 

Arms Gem Priorities
Prismatic
Mists of Pandaria Gems, for gear under ilevel 600.
Meta Reverberating Primal Diamond: +14 Str & Increased Crit Effect
Capacitive Primal Diamond: +20 Critical Strike, and chance on melee or ranged hit to gain Capacitance
Red Bold Primordial Ruby: +10 Str
Yellow Smooth Sun’s Radiance: +20 Crit
Orange Inscribed Vermilion Onyx: +5 Str and +10 Crit
Blue Rigid River’s Heart: +20 Crit
Green Sensei’s Wild Jade: +10 Crit and +10 Mastery
Purple Etched Imperial Amethyst: +5 Str and +10 Crit
Cogwheel Requires an engie helm, such as this.
Smooth Tinker’s Gear: +38 Crit
Fractured Tinker’s Gear: +38 Mastery

 

 

Enchantments for Arms

In Short: Enchant for Crit, until you have 4 piece T18, at which time you enchant for Mastery.

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.

Warlords Notes: There are no head enchants, all shoulder enchants come from the Inscription profession and are only for items under item level 600. There are new enchants for Neck, Cloak, Weapons, and your Rings. Not for any other pieces. (Not yet, anyway.)

Enchantments
Weapon

Mists:
Rings Warlords:

Neck Warlords:

Cloak Warlords:

  • Enchant Cloak – Gift of Critical Strike – +100 Crit and +10% movement speed
  • Note: There is a “breath of” version of each of these enchants which have the same stats, but without the 10% movement bonus, and which is probably cheaper.

Mists:

Enchant Cloak – Accuracy: +12 Crit rating
Other enchants, for gear under item level 600.
Shoulders Greater Tiger Fang Inscription: +15 Str and +5 Crit
Chest Enchant Chest – Glorious Stats: +9 to all Stats
Bracers Enchant Bracer – Exceptional Strength: +15 Str
Gloves Enchant Gloves – Super Strength: +25 Str
Belt Livingsteel Belt Buckle: Sockets your belt, pop in the best gem.
Leggings Angerhide Leg Armor: +19 Str & 11 Crit rating
Boots Enchant Boots – Pandaren’s Step: +10 Mastery and Slight run speed increase.

 

 

Macros and Keybinding

Keybinding

The virtue of keybinding is speed and efficiency, leaving your mouse for other uses, such as turning and moving. At the very least you should keybind your movement and your most used strikes.

One scheme many use is to bind WASD to their movement. W is forward, A & D are strafe left and right, S is move back. Use the mouse to turn. I use ESDF, which is just one key to the right of each of those. The frees up an extra key to the left.

With your index finger on the forward key see which keys you can hit without removing that finger from the forward key (W or E.) Use those keys for your main abilities. SHIFT should be an easy reach for your pinky and gives you an extra bind. For example (the key in () is the ESDF key:)

  • F (or G) for Mortal Strike, SHIFT+F(G) for Execute.
  • E (or R) for Rend, SHIFT+E(R) for Colossus Smash

And so on. WoWhead’s got a decent keybinding guide here, if you want more.

If you grab something like the Razer Naga MMO Gaming Mouse you’ll have access to more mouse keys for your bindings. There are a variety of mice that do similar things, grab one that’ll be right for you.

Arms Macros

Cancel Bladestorm: At times you might want to turn off Bladestorm. Perhaps the adds all died and you’re just spinning, or you need to do something else right now.

 #showtooltip Bladestorm
/cancelaura Bladestorm
/cast Bladestorm

Just Gotta Charge, right now, but Bladestorm is up. This macro cancels Bladestorm and charges the enemy if that’s what’s targeted. It intervenes to an ally if you have him targeted instead. If what you have in your opponent in front (can’t Charge or Intervene,) then it whacks him with Victory Rush.

Zap the ‘; [help] Intervene’ part if you don’t want to accidentally intervene to the wrong thing. 

#showtooltip
/cancelaura Bladestorm
/cast [harm] Charge; [help] Intervene
/cast Victory Rush

Pummel your Focus target: Have a focus, in range, who has the gall to be casting a spell at someone? Use this and it’ll stop him and will not change your main target. It checks to see if you have a focus and that it’s an enemy. If so, then it Pummels him.  If there’s no focus or if it’s an ally, then it Pummels your main target instead.

#showtooltip Pummel
/cast [@focus, harm, exists][@target] Pummel

Are you Vigilant? If so, then here are a couple of useful macros. This first one guards the target of your target, which will usually be the tank, but might be someone else who you’re trying to rescue.

#showtooltip Vigilance
/cast [@targettarget, exists] Vigilance

This next one targets a specific player, perhaps someone you’re carrying through the dungeon/raid. Perhaps the tank if you know he might need a bit of help. You will have to provide the exact name of the player you want to help. You could also set that player as your focus and use ‘@focus’ instead of ‘@playername.’ 

You can also use ‘@mouseover’ if your targets may change and you’re good at mousing over people.

#showtooltip Vigilance
/cast [@playername] Vigilance

Blow All Cooldowns: Blood Fury is the Orc Racial. The Badge is an “on use” trinket. Use whichever trinket you have, just replace the name. You can also do ‘/use 14’ if that trinket is in the 2nd trinket slot, ‘/use 13’ if it’s in the first, then you don’t have to change names whenever you update the trinket. What this will do is blow your cooldowns. Test it first.

/cast Recklessness
/cast Blood Fury
/cast Bloodbath
/cast Avatar
/cast Malevolent Gladiator’s Badge of Victory

 

 

Consumables

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

Warlords note: There are no new DPS Elixirs, but there are for Potions and Flasks. There are no Str foods, either.

Foods

Potions

Flasks

Elixirs – None are interesting

Rune

  • Stout Augment Rune: +50 Str for one hour. Occasionally drops from WoD bosses (in Raid Finder mode) and is also rarely found as mission rewards from your Garrison. Stacks with flasks and other buffs. You can also use the Empowered Augment Rune, earned from Tanaan rep.

Other

 

 

Professions for the Arms Warrior

In Warlords there are no professions bonuses. No special stat boosts that characters without the profession cannot get. The only profession that provides a stat buff, to yourself or anyone else, is cooking (feasts will feed the raid for +75 to their best secondary stat.)

Professions now are for the gear and/or the gold. Most have something that can be used as starting raid/pvp gear or sold, such as ilevel 640 gear pieces. Leveling a profession can be done quickly and relatively easily once you get the Draenor version.

Some of the professions, eg: Engineering, have really useful items for leveling and world events. They’re not usable in raids, however (sigh.. no firing rockets at the boss…)

Your level 2 garrison profession hut and the working follower with the appropriate trait will let you get some interesting perks from your skill. Note that you do not actually have to have the appropriate skill to get these bonuses/buffs, just the level 2+ hut and the follower.

Draenor Blacksmithing is recommended for the raiding Warrior because it comes with two interesting buffs from your follower, one of which you should like a lot.

Professions
Blacksmithing Mail and Plate armor and weapons. Mail and Plate armor (640) and weapons (630) and the items to both reroll stats and boost the items to 715 for the armor and 705 for the weapons. Keys for locks, though not Draenor locks. Your garrison follower can give you two nice buffs, both of which go away if you die:

  • Song of the Anvil – “Your armor and weapons do not lose durability from use for 4 hrs.” Just the thing for an extended tanking/dungeoning session, right? This should save you a lot of gold.
  • Solace of the Forge might be helpful when leveling through Draenor, as a molten elemental will sometimes come to your aid.
Engineering will let you create a number of useful items, such as rockets, shields, a stealth device, etc. These cannot be used in rated PvP, but that can be used elsewhere, such as World PvP or in Highmaul Coliseum.
Jewelcrafting Useful (ilevel 640) rings and neck items, pretty gems, gemmed mounts.
Inscription Glyphs, some trinkets, caster weapons, fortune & Darkmoon cards, and more.
Alchemy Chemistry is fun, unfortunately you can’t make acids or bombs. You can make flasks and potions to boost stats and cause other interesting effects. You can also make a very nice DPS trinket: Draenic Philosopher’s Stone, requires Alchemy 500. This item is upgradable in 6.1.
Enchanting Enchant all those items and cast illusionary enchants.
Tailoring Cloth armor, flying carpet, murlock chew toy and allows you to make nets (Embersilk Net) and battle standards (such as: Fearsome Battle Standard)
Leatherworking You can make Drums of Fury for a Heroism type buff (25% Haste for 40 sec.) Through the Leatherworking hut in your Garrison you can make single use tents that will increase your Str by 10% for an hour.
Archeology will let you pick up ilevel 620 items, usable at 91, which are bind on account. One useful item, for you, is Warmaul of the Warmaul Chieftain.
Skinning For gold gathering and for leatherworking
Herbalism For Inscription, Alchemy, and gold gathering
Mining Making gold and powering Blacksmithing and some engineering.

 

 

 

 

Arms Warrior Races

With Cataclysm it came to be that any race could become a Warrior. Even Goblins. With Mists of Pandaria the Pandarens joined the club of face-smashing goodness.

Warlords didn’t add any new races, but it did away with Hit and Expertise. Any raciels with either of those stats are now gone.

For most of the races only the 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

In order of DPS:

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.
  • Bonus to Strength.

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.

Humans – Minor DPS increase with their Versatility

  • Escape – Very nice in PvP as it allows using two DPS trinkets. Occasionally useful otherwise. Can break free of certain raid mechanics.
  • Bonus to Versatility.

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

  • Stoneform removes bleeds, poisons, and diseases and will sometimes be useful. It also reduces damage by 10% which might also be occasionally useful.
  • +2% critical damage.

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.
  • +1% Crit by day which changes to +1% Haste at night.

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
  • A bit (5%) of extra max Rage.

The Horde

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

  • Orcs possess an interesting racial ability called Bloodfury, which increases their attack power by a significant amount and 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.

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

  • Berserking increases attack speed by a decent amount.
  • Increased XP from beast slaying is useful for leveling, but not much else.
  • Do Voodoo Shuffle reduces movement altering effects, such as from Slow spells.

Blood Elves now have +1% Crit, which moves them ahead of the Undead.

  • 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, if you’re fighting caster trash.
  • +1% Crit rating

Undead

  • 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.
  • 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, but probably will find little use in raiding situations.
  • Indefinite Underwater breathing has some open world use, but not in the raid.

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.

Tauren

  • A 5% increase to base health seems useful at high levels for any prospective tank, especially in raiding. It’s worth about three Stam gems at level 90.
  • 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.
  • +2% critical damage.

 

 

The Fast Arms Warrior Leveling Guide

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

To make your job a lot easier you should snag an in-game leveling guide for your leveling blast. With a guide you will never again wonder about where to go or what to do or what to skip and your leveling will be faster, much faster.

Zygor’s Guide practically automates the whole leveling path, from start to finish, for your Warrior. Carve your way through the world and both old and new content at a surprisingly crisp pace. Pick your starting point and the guide automatically updates and advances as you complete quests, sets a waypoint arrow automatically, and includes the important quest info eliminating all doubt as to what to do next.

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.

Even if you boost to 90 you’ll still have those last ten levels and Zygor will show you the way.

You’ll need the Draenor Loremaster achievement, on any one of your characters, as part of the requirements to get your Draenor Flying. Zygor will help you get there.

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 100 fast. Grab your copy of Zygor’s Guide here or read our review.

Want to add something? Have a comment or critique? Add it below.

Related Warrior Pages

8 thoughts on “Arms Warrior DPS Guide for PvE”

  1. solar
    Reply

    During Colossus Smash: (Execute proc) > Mortal Strike > Storm Bolt or Dragon Roar > Thunder Clap > Whirlwind. Use the Execute proc when it pops up, don’t save it.
    That is wrong, you don’t ever want to use dragon roar during colosus smash, it already ignores armor so you’re loosing time on your colosus smash phase

  3. Pingback: Beef Up Your Arms Warrior - 8 Steps to Maximum Damage! - GotWarcraft.com

  4. Geremy Sorlini
    Reply

    Rather than use Sunder Armor as a DPS, you might want to instead glyph colossus smash to apply it. It’s fairly fast to stack it up with your Sudden Death procs too (I more than once happened to get a couple of Colossus smashes in a row through that proc) and you’ll avoid getting an access of threat off your tank, since mobs and bosses HATE sunder armor and will more than happily attempt to wack anyone who dares using it against them, unless it’s the tank.

    [Thanks, I’ll make a note of that. -Rog]

  5. Tylor Pawlick
    Reply

    I need help with my attacks i’m a lvl 85 Arms Warrior and dont know what 2 use for attacks? i kill very slow and die so fast could you please give me a list of attacks to use, i’m ready to delete this character!

    1. Alpha
      Reply

      You should take a look at the Rotation section of the guide for advice on how to get the best DPS with your warrior. You might want to test it out on a practice dummy.

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