The World of Warcraft Arms Warrior
August 21st, 2010 by author
The World of Warcraft Arms Warrior typically carries a big axe (or sword) and excels at generating massive damage to crush opponents. The opposition goes down quickly to the Arms Warrior’s high level of “burst damage,” and if they have a healer behind them? Well, they’re pretty nearly unstoppable.
Prior to the release of Cataclysm, for the current 3.3 patch series, Arms is the build of choice for PvP, with Fury falling a bit behind. Arms also makes a very good DPS build for raiding and light tanking as well as a nice A of E (Area of Effect) leveling build. All in all, it’s a pretty flexible tree.
Some will say that Arms falls too far behind the Fury Warrior for raiding DPS. Others differ, saying that the two are comparable. Most agree that Arms DPS requires a lot more attention than Fury to generate comparable numbers.
After playing a Fury warrior (perhaps while leveling) for a long time it can be refreshing to play something that requires a little more skill. It’s always nice to switch around attack rotations and see something different. Also, as mentioned above, Arms requires a little more attention to use properly, which is a nice change from Fury. That it hits really hard is no small bonus.
Your primary attack will become Mortal Strike. Besides hitting hard It’s especially useful in PvP, with it’s healing debuff. With that healing debuff and Arms’ burst damage you might be able to put your opponent down, regardless of his healing.
When building or leveling your Arms Warrior, especially if you’re going to be PvPing, stick with the Arms tree so that you can get into Mortal Strike ASAP. You should then stay with Arms to get into Bladestorm, and after that feel free to pick up talents from the other trees to suit your particular needs. Once MS is in your toolset your generic attack rotation will then be something like charge > MS > Hamstring. Use Overpower, Sudden Death, or Bloodsurge if they proc, otherwise use Heroic Strike inbetween your MSs.
When the Cataclysm expansion arrives there will be two big changes to the talent system, in addition to completely chaging the talents. Well Ok, that’s two after the reworking of the talents. One is that you’re locked into one tree until you hit the top talent. Only after that can you branch out. The Mastery system is the next big change. “Mastery” of the Arms tree gives you a chance for free attacks after each of your normal melee attacks. This provides encouragement to stick with one tree, which you will be forced to do anyway.
Mastery will be a skill that can be obtained from your trainer, after you grab the last Arms talent, Bladestorm. Your Mastery ability can be enhanced by the Various pieces of Cataclysm gear which will have Mastery rating. This works the same way as gear with Hit or Crit rating points. Very well geared Arms Warriors will be getting quite a few of those extra attacks, which should boost their DPS quite nicely.