Warrior Arms Specs
Overview
Arms spec is the spec for predictable frontloaded DPS. It does not produce as much sustained DPS as a pure DW fury, however it will provide you with reasonably predictable aggro management and damage without being so gear dependant. With the exception of some hybrid PvP specs with very specific equipment restraints, 31 Arms / 20 Fury is the king of all PvP builds as Mortal Strike inhibits healing and predictable burst DPS allows a warrior to frontload DPS as needed. I won’t go too deep into talent builds as they are pretty well hashed over at this point, I will stick mainly to the primary Arms skills and tricks. The following are my experiences on how to be viable in raids with this PvP spec.
Help! I respecced but my DPS stinks!
Gear Selection
Warriors are the most gear dependent class in the game. We have no spells, we have one(1) buff, no significant Crowd Control abilities, no escape abilities and we start each fight with no rage(mana) to use our special abilities. A warrior's survivability is based solely on equipment - Hit Points, Armor, Defense and stats.
1. Stats
Your gear selection for an Arms/Mortal Strike build should be a reasonable balance between Attack power/strength and Increased chance to crit/agility. Your final goals when planning your gear should be ~25% chance or more to crit and greater than 1000 unbuffed attack power as well as a good +5-7% chance to hit while maintaining around 5000 Hit Points and Armor.
2. Weapons
Arms spec and more to the point Mortal Strike is made for the big slow two-handed weapons in the game. While Mortal Strike adds the same damage to a fast 1h weapon as it does to a slow 2h weapon the 6-second cooldown is not affected by weapon speed. Your plans for your weapon should be a 2h with the highest low-end and top-end damage you can find, this unfortunately will also be the slowest weapon you can find as well.
3. Enchants
The absolute best weapon enchant in the game right now for an Arms warrior is Crusader. If you time the use of your instant attacks before Crusader fades you will get the most benefit from the Enchant. There are DPS enchants to almost every slot, they will make it much easier to hit your crit or attack power goals.
4. Consumables
Where you are lacking equipment and stats a good pack full of consumables can help.
Consumables I regularly use to boost my output are:
Elixir of the Mongoose
Elixir of Giants
Elemental Sharpening Stone
Smoked Desert Dumplings
Mighty Rage Potions
Ground Skorpok Assay(repeatable quest)
R.O.I.D.S(repeatable quest)
Stances and Skills
Arms spec has a lot of gimmicks that have to be used to sustain a respectable Damage Output. While it would be nice to "Spam teh MS key and Win teh Internets" it's just not how it works. Mortal Strike typically only makes up 14-20% of my total damage output.
Stances
Battle Stance
Battle Stance is used when you are fighting mobs with heavy AoE damage. Mobs with heavy AoE damage can chew you up if you remain in berserker stance.
Defensive Stance
We do not DPS in Defensive stance. EVER.
Berserker Stance
This is my usual stance for both PvE and PvP. I can maximize my rage usage and generation in this stance.
Disciplines
Retaliation
Useless in PvE raid situations, the chances of this skill winning a battle for you are 1 in a million.
Shield Wall
Your best chance of surviving during those OMG all the other warriors are dead situations, You’ll find true love for this skill once you hit Vaelestraz.
Recklessness
The bread and butter of DPS disciplines, best used when a boss is in execute range. BEWARE it increases damage taken by 20%, heavy AoE fights this is a big nono unless it’s a burst or die situation.
Skills
Battleshout - This is your only buff. Keep it on yourself at all times.
Mortal Strike - Every time this is up and you have rage this is your primary attack.
Whirlwind- Every time this is up and Mortal Strike is cooling down this is your primary attack. Please note, this skill will break CC. Great when mobs are banished, not so great when mobs are sheeped, seduced or slept.
Heroic Strike - This skill is used only if Mortal Strike and Whirlwind are on cooldown AND you have excess rage ie. > 50. Remember this skill will take up a normal melee swing and you will not generate rage for that swing.
Overpower - This skill almost always requires a stance switch for me. My general rule of thumb, if you have less than 30 rage, switch stances to overpower. If you have more than 40 rage try to slip in a MS before you switch but don't panic if you don't get to overpower, it’s more of a random added bonus than a dependable skill. Overpower is a great skill but it's not worth dumping 50 rage to use it.
Cleave - This is like a heroic strike for 2 mobs in close proximity. Same as Heroic Strike it uses up a swing that would otherwise generate rage. One thing to note, this skill does not have a threat modifier like Heroic Strike does, meaning that if you are close to the top of the threat list this is a decent rage dump in the place of Heroic Strike without causing as much threat to yourself.
Sweeping Strikes - Like cleave on steroids after this patch, if you happen to be in battle stance use it, I personally don't switch very often to activate it anymore. It is quite handy on huge swarms of mobs and is a decent source of damage in areas like the suppression room in BWL.
Berserker Rage - Lucky us! Almost all of the mobs we fight in instances have an AoE attack of some sort, be it fire auras, cleaves, dots, thunderclaps, surges, you name it. Timing your use of Berserker Rage before imminent AoE damage will net you some decent rage to bounce some of that damage back at your target.
Bloodrage - Those mobs that haven't been sundered or are made out of rocks, hi Garr, can be really tough to build rage on. Rage is linked directly to the damage you do, 1 rage per 30 damage dealt from normal melee swings. On these mobs Bloodrage helps you produce the rage for an extra special attack here and there. I use this skill fairly religiously even on trash mobs. However wait until targets are stable, on their appropriate tanks, before using this ability, it does have some threat increase involved with it and it will put you at the top of the threat list of mobs that haven’t been tagged by their tanks yet.
Execute – Try to budget your executes on trash mobs. If you are at >70 rage and the mob has just dropped to 19% don’t blow all of your rage on an execute. I love big numbers too, but dropping a MS and a Whirlwind and then an Execute in this situation will almost always net you more overall damage.
Slam - Just remove this puppy from your hotbar. Any damage you take will reset the cast timer(remember the AoE damage I mentioned earlier?) and if mistimed it will reset your autoattack swing. In it's current interruptable, auto attack swing resetting state it is useless. It is supposed to see some improvement in the expansion.
Rend – In most cases rend is not used in a raid situation, the damage does not justify using up one of your target’s debuff slots.
Macros
Useful Macros
These are some of the macros I use to eliminate the inconvenience of stances. The first push of the button changes you to the appropriate stance, the second push activates the ability. If you are already in the right stance it will activate the ability. You will find the macro option in game in your menu, copy and paste these macros with NO changes to the spacing and they should work. Please note that macro coding is changing in TBC so don’t get too attached to these =)
"Charge"
/script texture,name,isActive,isCastable = GetShapeshiftFormInfo(1); if isActive then CastSpellByName("Charge(Rank 3)"); else CastSpellByName("Battle Stance()"); end;
"Disarm"
/script texture,name,isActive,isCastable = GetShapeshiftFormInfo(2); if isActive then CastSpellByName("Disarm()"); else CastSpellByName("Defensive Stance()"); end;
"Intercept"
/script texture,name,isActive,isCastable = GetShapeshiftFormInfo(3); if isActive then CastSpellByName("Intercept(Rank 3)"); else CastSpellByName("Berserker Stance()"); end;
"Overpower"
/script texture,name,isActive,isCastable = GetShapeshiftFormInfo(1); if isActive then CastSpellByName("Overpower(Rank 4)"); else CastSpellByName("Battle Stance()"); end;
"Pummel"
/script texture,name,isActive,isCastable = GetShapeshiftFormInfo(3); if isActive then CastSpellByName("Pummel(Rank 2)"); else CastSpellByName("Berserker Stance()"); end;
"Rage"
/script texture,name,isActive,isCastable = GetShapeshiftFormInfo(3); if isActive then CastSpellByName("Berserker Rage"); else CastSpellByName("Berserker Stance()"); end;
"Sweeping Strikes"
/script texture,name,isActive,isCastable = GetShapeshiftFormInfo(1); if isActive then CastSpellByName("Sweeping Strikes()"); else CastSpellByName("Battle Stance()"); end;
"Whirlwind"
/script texture,name,isActive,isCastable = GetShapeshiftFormInfo(3); if isActive then CastSpellByName("Whirlwind"); else CastSpellByName("Berserker Stance()"); end;
UI Mods
Custom UI mods are great inventions. They make life much easier as a warrior although there can be a tough lesson in becoming too dependant on them. There is only one type of mod that I cannot live without, item sets. Mods that equip sets of armor for you with the press of a button are just plain amazing. Personally I use a mod called ItemRack. Raid functionality is pretty simple. My primary role in a raid being DPS does not exempt me from tanking, there are some pulls that can go very wrong very fast and I may end up tanking. Tanking with +0 to defense is pretty rough. What I do is stay uncommitted to a battle until mobs are stable and heals are steady then I proceed in with my DPS gear. Should a tank die on the pull or before getting into LOS I generally can swap over to my Tank gear before being pulled into combat.
Conclusion
An arms specced warrior will very rarely be the top of the food chain as far as DPS goes. Your arms spec will put you in the best possible position to PvP as a warrior, especially if you don’t have a couple of healers to drag around to Battlegrounds with you. If PvP is more of a hobby than a fixation you will find Fury will fit your needs and even 2H Fury scales better with raid buffs than Arms. As any warrior you need to expect to tank, as an arms warrior you should expect to tank before pure fury warriors are pulled off DPS. However with the right amount of effort and applying some of the skills above you can easily be 5-6th in damage even with your offtanking responsibilities and still enjoy your solo PvP runs.
