Arms Warrior DPS Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities — The War Within (11.2)

Welcome to our Rotation page for Arms Warriors. On this page, you will find everything you need to know about actually playing the spec in Raiding and Mythic+ scenarios.

If you have not already, please read the Spell Summary page. Knowing how each spell/ability works in detail will greatly increase your understanding of the topics discussed on this page.

The Season 2 tier set has very little rotational impact, with the Warrior Arms 11.1 Class Set 2pc set bonus passively increasing Overpower damage, while the Warrior Arms 11.1 Class Set 2pc increases Mortal Strike and Cleave. While the amounts of these bonuses vary based on their number of stacks, each have high uptime, so they do not need to be explicitly tracked or played around.

Moving into Season 3, players should try to replace their old set as soon as possible. The new bonuses have different effects depending on the selected hero talents, emphasizing the playstyle differences between them.

• The Slayer set bonuses further emphasize Sudden Death, allowing signficantly more procs dealing greater damage, which also leads to more cooldown reduction for Bladestorm. Although the set also increases the efficacy of Overpower, that has a fairly minor impact; the real change is a greater uptime on Juggernaut.
• The Colossus set bonus increases the damage of Demolish, while causing Mortal Strike crits to greatly increase the damage of bleed effects. To facilitate this, the set gaurantees a crit after each Demolish, but because any Mortal Strike crit can trigger it, the buff has a very high natural uptime. The main gameplay change is taking more bleed talents, including Skullsplitter.

The Arms rotation is a conditional priority list, which can change depending on talent choice. Use the checkboxes below to make the appropriate customizations and make sure that Battle Stance is always toggled on! Note that the same toggles are used for both the single and multitarget rotations.

Note that the Arms opener is functionally identical to the standard rotation, using Charge to initiate combat to start with more Rage, applying Rend, and then opening with cooldowns and Colossus Smash, as outlined in the single target rotation.

4.

Arms Warrior Rotation

Single-Target Rotation Execute Rotation Multi-Target Rotation

3.1.

Single Target Ability Priority List for Arms Warriors

This rotation focuses on the period above 35% health before Execute takes over the rotation.

Recommended	Other Options
Slayer	Colossus
Thunderous Roar	Champion's Spear
Skullsplitter	Warbreaker
Bladestorm	Ravager
Season 2 Tier Set Bonus	Season 3 Tier Set Bonus

1. Rend to apply or refresh Rend with four seconds remaining
2. Thunderous Roar
3. Ravager just before Colossus Smash
4. Avatar just before or with Colossus Smash
5. Champion's Spear with Colossus Smash
6. Colossus Smash
7. Warbreaker
8. Demolish during Colossus Smash
9. Mortal Strike with two stacks of Executioner's Precision
10. Execute with three stacks of Marked for Execution, two Sudden Death, or to refresh Juggernaut.
11. Overpower with Opportunist active
12. Mortal Strike
13. Bladestorm
14. Storm Bolt during Bladestorm
15. Mortal Strike
16. Demolish
17. Skullsplitter
18. Execute to consume Sudden Death procs
19. Overpower
20. Execute to consume Sudden Death procs
21. Slam to fill the rotation

In simple terms, the Arms Warrior rotation revolves around keeping Mortal Strike on cooldown, while using various talented cooldowns, Overpower, and Slam regularly to fill the rotation. While simple, the difficulty lies in keeping track of various cooldowns, not all of which always naturally align.

• Slayer works in more frequent casts of Execute and cooldown reduction for Bladestorm, stacking and ideally maintaining Juggernaut throughout the entire encounter, rather than just in the execute phase. Using the Sudden Death Conditions WeakAura to provide an audio/visual alert is highly recommended.
• Colossus adds Demolish to the rotation, a short and powerful cooldown that should be used as much as possible. In adddition, Colossus focuses more on Mortal Strike than Execute, utilizing frequent resets to increase the damage and reduce the cooldown of Demolish. Finally, Bladestorm is dropped in favor of Ravager generating extra Rage without inerrupting the rotation.

3.2.

Execute Phase Ability Priority List for Arms Warriors

Execute deals very high damage and refunds a portion of the Rage spent if the target does not die, helping maintain its higher Rage cost. Outside of Sudden Death procs, it will become the primary Rage spender once the target drops below 20% health, or 35% with Massacre talented.

Recommended	Other Options
Slayer	Colossus
Thunderous Roar	Champion's Spear
Skullsplitter	Warbreaker
Bladestorm	Ravager
Season 2 Tier Set Bonus	Season 3 Tier Set Bonus

1. Thunderous Roar
2. Ravager
3. Avatar just before or with Colossus Smash
4. Champion's Spear just before or with Colossus Smash
5. Colossus Smash
6. Warbreaker
7. Bladestorm with two stacks of Executioner's Precision
8. Storm Bolt during Bladestorm
9. Skullsplitter
10. Mortal Strike with two stacks of Executioner's Precision
11. Overpower with Opportunist active and less than two stacks of Martial Prowess
12. Demolish during Colossus Smash and ten stacks of Colossal Might
13. Demolish during Colossus Smash
14. Mortal Strike
15. Mortal Strike and Ravager is not active.
16. Overpower with less than 90 Rage
17. Execute with over 40 Rage
18. Execute
19. Overpower
20. Execute
21. Execute with over 40 Rage
22. Overpower
23. Execute

Similar to the single target rotation, Slayer will focus more on Execute, only using Mortal Strike when it is buffed by other abilities. Colossus will instead Mortal Strike almost on cooldown, with Execute filling the role of lower priority rage spender instead.

3.3.

Multi-Target Ability Priority List for Arms Warriors

When facing only two targets, a standard single target build will typically be used along with Sweeping Strikes to cleave attacks onto the second target. When facing three or more targets, Cleave becomes the main focus of the rotation.

Recommended	Other
Colossus	Slayer
Bladestorm	Ravager
Thunderous Roar	Champion's Spear
Skullsplitter	Warbreaker
Season 2 Tier Set Bonus	Season 3 Tier Set Bonus

1. Cleave to apply or refresh Deep Wounds under 4 seconds remaining.
2. Thunder Clap to apply or refresh Rend under 4 seconds remaining
3. Thunderous Roar
4. Ravager
5. Warbreaker
6. Sweeping Strikes
7. Colossus Smash
8. Champion's Spear
9. Avatar
10. Demolish with ten stacks of Colossal Might
11. Cleave
12. Execute with three stacks of Marked for Execution or to refresh Juggernaut
13. Bladestorm
14. Demolish with ten stacks of Colossal Might
15. Mortal Strike
16. Skullsplitter
17. Overpower during Sweeping Strikes and Opportunist active
18. Mortal Strike during Sweeping Strikes
19. Execute during Sweeping Strikes and Marked for Execution active
20. Skullsplitter during Sweeping Strikes
21. Overpower with Opportunist
22. Mortal Strike with 2 stacks of Executioner's Precision
23. Execute with Sudden Death
24. Mortal Strike
25. Skullsplitter
26. Overpower
27. Execute
28. Thunder Clap
29. Execute or Slam
30. Execute or Slam to fill the rotation

Colossus is preferred in multitarget, featuring a fairly straightforward rotation that prioritizes keeping Cleave and Mortal Strike on cooldown in order to facilitate more frequent use of Demolish.

Slayer instead becomes much more complicated, still prioritizing Cleave, but also juggling Execute in order to maintain Juggernaut and reduce the cooldown on Bladestorm. Using the Sudden Death Conditions WeakAura to provide an audio/visual alert is highly recommended.

Combat Assistant, added in Patch 11.1.7, is comprised of two options meant to help players with combat rotations and gameplay.

The first is Assisted Highlight, which recommends the next rotational ability that players should use, in order to help them learn how to better play their specialization. While not a perfectly min-maxed rotation, it is perfectly servicable, losing an average of around 5% compared to manual ones. However, it does not attempt to recommend offensive cooldowns, defensives, utility abilities, or other off-GCD abilities such as Charge, so players must be mindful to use these on their own.

The second option is the Single-Button Assistant, which is a new button placed on the action bar which automatically cycles through each ability in the rotation when pressed. Using the same rotation as the Assisted Highlight, it is serviceable, though an additional 25% penalty is placed on the global cooldown to keep this from being an easily competitive option, resulting in a roughly ~20-25% loss in performance. Therefore, it is only recommended for brand new players, players in trivial content, or those who are otherwise unable to keep up with regular gameplay.

In both cases, using cooldowns such as Avatar and Sweeping Strikes can be as easy as macroing them to the Single-Button Assistant or a common ability like Colossus Smash, though players may also opt to continue using them manually, in the same manner as prescribed above.

Arms cooldowns align fairly naturally, thanks to Anger Management. Still, it is important to ensure that Colossus Smash and Deep Wounds are active on as many targets as possible before going into the cooldown cycle.

Avatar is a potent cooldown in its own right, though its follow-on Tormented talents have changed considerably. Warlord's Torment is directly depowered with reduced Rage generation and no longer activated by Colossus Smash, while Blademaster's Torment now increases Sweeping Strikes and Cleave uptime, instead of extra casts of Bladestorm.

Bladestorm and Ravager are both strong AoE cooldowns, which generate a high amount of Rage and even contribute meaningful single target damage through Unhinged. The choice between them is largely dictated by Hero Talent choice, with Slayer requiring Bladestorm, and Colossus favoring Ravager for more Mortal Strike casts and resulting Colossal Might stacks.

Skullsplitter applies a debuff which causes Rend and Deep Wounds to tick twice as quickly, allowing them to deal more damage in a shorter amount of time that better fits into increased damage windows such as Colossus Smash and Thunderous Words. While this does result in refreshing Rend more often, the tradeoff is typically worth it.

Maintained by Mortal Strike, Colossus Smash, Bladestorm, and Cleave, keeping Deep Wounds on the target or targets is paramount to maximizing damage, as it can significantly increase the damage taken from your abilities. Because the debuff lasts a minimum of 12 seconds, this should happen naturally throughout the rotation, but when facing multiple targets, take care to keep the debuff on as many targets as possible for maximum benefit.

Arms generates Rage purely from auto-attack swings and Charge casts, and nearly all abilities cost Rage to use. Ensuring you always have enough Rage to use Mortal Strike on cooldown is paramount, both for damage and to keep Deep Wounds on the target. Choosing not to spend Rage on a filler ability and letting a global cooldown go unfilled is better than letting the debuff drop off.

The overall Rage economy has been significantly reduced in The War Within, but so too has the amount of Rage spent by most abilities, resulting in generating and spending in much smaller amounts. This makes it harder to Rage starve, but also harder to dump Rage quickly, though that is not necessarily a bad thing, as it creates more room to use Ignore Pain without infringing on the normal rotation.

A small optimization can be made by moving out of range of the target and using Charge to generate extra Rage during your rotation. Care should be taken to do this between autoattack swings when Colossus Smash is not active. Heroic Leap can also be used to create enough room to Charge for bosses with large hitboxes, which is sometimes specifically referred to as Heroic Charge.

Warriors have several active tools through Charge and Heroic Leap that allow for instant movement across large distances. Finding ways to maximize your uptime on a target through the intelligent use of these is crucial, as downtime is extremely detrimental to the flow of the rotation. The talents Double Time and Bounding Stride are particularly useful in any encounter that demands heavy movement.

Arms' primary survivability tool is Die by the Sword, which is exceptionally useful for immuning direct physical damage and can even be used to tank raid bosses for a short time. Defensive Stance and Ignore Pain can be used for more mitigation when expecting more frequent spike damage, though be mindful that both come at a small cost of damage output. Finally, Spell Reflection is an extremely useful tool for mitigating or outright immuning many sources of magical damage.

Warriors also have access to Rallying Cry, one of the few defensive group cooldowns in the game. It is typically used to help the group survive key encounter mechanics rather than as a personal cooldown. Keep in mind that it is on the global cooldown, so be ready to use it when needed.

Arms also brings Battle Shout, increasing all party and raid members' Attack Power by 5%, which should be applied before combat begins. 5% Attack Power translates to roughly 5% damage for melee classes and Hunters. However, the actual impact is slightly reduced due to the prevalence of non-scaling sources of damage, such as trinkets and potions.

For information about Mythic+ as an Arms Warrior and the rotation you need to use in this game mode, please refer to our Mythic+ page.

WeakAuras can tremendously affect your performance, helping you track important buffs, debuffs, and cooldowns. Since this is a broad topic, we dedicated a page to it.