Arms Warrior DPS Easy Mode — Shadowlands 9.2.5

This section is intended for players who are new to the game or class, have no intentions of raiding Mythic difficulty, or simply want a more straightforward way to play their specialization without being overwhelmed by the numerous priorities and active abilities that need to be taken into consideration for optimal play.

Arms is a combination damage dealer that focuses on buffing their Mortal Strike, and debuffing the enemy with Deep Wounds and Colossus Smash. While the base rotation is not very complicated, talents can add extra attacks or replacements allowing players to customize the rotation to their situation or taste. The build showcased here is a simple yet effective play style, good for all types of game content, which is meant to help new players learn the fundamentals of Arms.

If you are completely new to Arms and need more information on the abilities available to you, you can check out our Spell Summary page.

The talents listed below are selected predominantly for ease of use and to mitigate more complex decisions when it comes to resource management. While there are better performing combinations, they also have more room for error. The ones chosen are meant to simplify decision making and resource management while introducing players to Arms' single-target, burst, and AoE potential. Despite being the "easy mode", it is still quite effective for questing, dungeons, and raid content.

• Level 15: Sudden Death
• Level 25: Double Time
• Level 30: Rend
• Level 35: Bounding Stride
• Level 40: Warbreaker
• Level 45: Avatar
• Level 50: Dreadnaught.

If you are looking for the absolute best Arms Warrior talents, which do not compromise on performance for ease of use, you can find a more in-depth analysis on our full talents page below.

Of the four Covenants, three are fairly competitive with one another, while only one underperforms. Your choice as to which to take largely depends on what kind of content you want to pursue, although it is important to remember that they will all perform very similarly in all types of content.

• Night Fae is the strongest Covenant for both single-target and multitarget damage, thanks to the high burst damage of Ancient Aftershock, although the ground effect's lengthy duration means it can lose damage if enemies move out of it.
• Necrolord is technically stronger than Night Fae by a small margin, but its value comes from buffing the group to give other players increased damage rather than the Warrior themselves and the amount of total damage gained will depend on which group members are buffed. Because of the extra setup and complication of buffing the right allies every 2 minutes, it has more potential for failure and is not typically played as much as other Covenants.
• Kyrian is a versatile option with exciting new Soulbind traits that performs well in multitarget content such as Mythic+, though not quite as well as other covenants in single-target.
• Venthyr now has the lowest target damage, along with little multitarget potential, making it the worst choice for competitive content.

The current Arms stat priority is as follows when using this build:

1. Strength;
2. Critical Strike;
3. Haste;
4. Mastery;
5. Versatility.

Critical Strikes double all damage dealt, and increases Rage generation from auto-attacks, which helps reduce downtime within the rotation. Mastery increases the targets damage taken, while Haste compresses the rotation, increasing auto-attack speed and reducing the time between ability casts. Finally, Versatility is a static damage increase and reduces damage taken by half the amount.

While the stat priority for classes is normally the same for both the Easy Mode page and our full guide, subtle differences can still occur. If you want to see the full explanation of the stat priority, as well as the absolute top choices for the priority, head to our full stats page below.

With the addition of Unity, all Arms Warriors will automatically gain the effect of their Covenant Legendary power. This allows Enduring Blow to be used at the same time, interchanged with Signet of Tormented Kings in Mythic+ dungeons.

For more detailed explanations of Legendaries, and some alternatives in different scenarios you can always refer to our dedicated legendary page.

If you are looking for more information about what gear to look out for when playing, you can also check our Gear page linked below.

The typical single-target rotation using our suggested talents is outlined below. Whenever there is more than one target, prioritize Cleave over Mortal Strike to both hit multiple targets and maintain Deep Wounds.

• Cast Warbreaker on cooldown or whenever it will hit multiple targets.
• Cast Bladestorm while the Colossus Smash debuff is active, or when starved for Rage during Execute phases.
• Cast Rend when the debuff has less than 4 seconds remaining.
• Cast Execute if your target is below 20% health.
• Cast Mortal Strike on cooldown, for damage and to maintain Deep Wounds.
• Cast Overpower to buff Mortal Strike and Cleave.
• Cast Slam as a filler while the enemy is above 20% health.

While all builds focus on the same principle of resetting the cooldown of Overpower with Tactician procs, using it to buff Mortal Strike, and using it in turn to maintain Deep Wounds, other talents add extra abilities, maintenance buffs, and replace other abilities within the rotation.