Arms Warrior DPS Spec, Builds, and Talents — Dragonflight 10.2.5
On this page, you will find out the best talents for each tier for your Arms Warrior in World of Warcraft — Dragonflight 10.2.5. We also have default talent lists for various types of content, such as raiding or Mythic+. If you play with Warmode on, we have your PvP talents covered as well.
If you were looking for WotLK Classic content, please refer to our WotLK Classic Arms Warrior talents.
Best Dragonflight Talents for Arms Warrior
Note that these builds are generic recommendations for various content. For more specific recommendations for the Raid and Mythic+, check out the dedicated pages below.
Best Talents for Arms Warrior
Best Single Target Talents for Arms Warrior
The single target Arms build is largely unchanged in Season 3, only dropping Ignore Pain due to no longer being used offensively. It continues to perform well after acquiring the new tier set, without any further required changes.
Be sure to make use of the 'Copy Export String' button to import the best build directly into your game!
Best Multitarget Talents for Arms Warrior
While it sounds unintuitive, Arms does not generally use a specific multi-target build due to Sweeping Strikes being a baseline ability. As a result, the only common change from single to multi-target is taking Improved Sweeping Strikes to extend the duration of its cleave effect. Although Bladestorm may be situationally taken for heavy AoE, most Arms Warriors will prefer to stick with the normal single target build for most raid encounters.
Be sure to make use of the 'Copy Export String' button to import the best build directly into your game!
Best Mythic+ Talents for Arms Warrior
Mythic+ dungeons largely revolve around burst multi-target damage and continually killing enemies as you move from pack to pack. This generalist build uses Bladestorm to facilitate burst AoE, while falling back on Sweeping Strikes and heavy bleed damage from Blood and Thunder in between cooldowns.
Be sure to make use of the 'Copy Export String' button to import the best build directly into your game!
An alternative Mythic+ build focuses on Fervor of Battle and Collateral Damage for increased sustained multi-target damage, although it is more Rage intensive and loses some of its single-target damage as a result.
Be sure to make use of the 'Copy Export String' button to import the best build directly into your game!
Talent Explanations for Arms Warriors
For further details and explanations of various talents, please visit our Spells page via the button below.
Class Talents
Row 1-4
Battle Stance is Arms' default damage-dealing stance. |
Defensive Stance is an alternate stance, which serves as an on-demand defensive cooldown. |
Berserker Rage breaks a variety of incapacitating effects, making it strong but highly circumstantial. |
Impending Victory is a very powerful on-demand heal, which should always be taken. |
War Machine increases Rage generation and provides a minor burst of movement speed. |
Intervene can provide extra mobility, but the defensive value is inconsequential outside of PvP, and more will more often get you killed when targeting tanks, though it can occasionally be combined with Die by the Sword to mitigate that. |
Rallying Cry is a very important group defensive tool used in most organized raid content. |
Berserker Shout removes fear from the entire party, though very rarely necessary. |
Piercing Howl is a strong AoE snare, though limited by its cooldown and in an expensive spot on the talent tree. |
Fast Footwork is a small but nice passive movement speed increase. |
Spell Reflection is an extremely useful mini-defensive cooldown, which can occasionally deal damage back to an enemy and even ignore some debuff applications entirely! |
Leeching Strikes is a minor but nice passive leech increase. |
Second Wind provides passive healing, which is usually broken by incoming damage, but occasionally ignores it, making the heal very situational, but very powerful in the right circumstances. |
Frothing Berserker provides a small irregular Rage refund, not great enough to influence the rotation, but helpful over time. |
Heroic Leap is a fantastic burst mobility tool. |
Intimidating Shout is most often used as a pseudo-interrupt, as it tends to scatter enemy groups. |
Thunder Clap is useless on its own but has follow-on talents that increase its efficacy. |
Furious Blows is a very useful passive auto-attack speed increase. |
Row 5-7
Wrecking Throw is a niche talent but can provide a very good amount of damage for one talent point when enemies have absorption shields. |
Shattering Throw is extremely niche outside of PvP, due to a general lack of when breakable immunities in PvE content. |
Crushing Force provides a large damage increase for Slam. |
Pain and Gain provides a small amount of passive self-healing, though it adds up over the course of a long encounter. |
Cacophonous Roar is a PvP-focused talent which has little to no practical effect in PvE. |
Menace improves Intimidating Shout by not forcing targets to run away, but it is rarely worth the talent point. |
Storm Bolt is a ranged single target stun on a short cooldown, which is a must-have in almost all dungeon content. |
Overwhelming Rage increases maximum Rage, which in turn reduces resource waste from overcapping. |
Sidearm is a minor passive damage increase. |
Concussive Blows is an extremely niche single-target damage increase, only hypothetically useful if constantly interrupting a single target on cooldown. |
Reinforced Plates provides a rather insignificant defensive boost, which gains value due to its follow-on talent. |
Bounding Stride allows Heroic Leap to be used much more frequently. |
Blood and Thunder is a must-have talent in multi-target content, allowing Thunder Clap to serve as an AoE version of Rend. |
Crackling Thunder is simply worse than Piercing Howl. |
Barbaric Training provides a moderate damage increase for both Slam and Whirlwind, while the Rage increase actually makes them more efficient spenders. |
Honed Reflexes reduces the cooldown of Overpower, which is not overly useful due to already frequent cooldown resets. |
Bitter Immunity is an on-demand heal which also removes certain debuffs. Situationally useful, but very useful when it is. |
Double Time is a must-have increase in mobility, which leads to an even more important talent. |
Titanic Throw is useless for DPS specializations. |
Seismic Reverberation causes Whirlwind to deal damage four times per cast, instead of the normal three, when hitting multiple targets. |
Row 8-10
Armored to the Teeth provides a moderate damage increase, and the main reason to take Reinforced Plates. |
Wild Strikes is a surprisingly powerful auto-attack damage and Rage generation increase, though its internal cooldown keeps it from achieving a 100% uptime. |
Two-Handed Weapon Specialization is a must have passive damage increase. |
Cruel Strikes is a moderate Execute damage increase, which synergizes well with other talents in the spec tree. |
Endurance Training is a small survivability boost, although the crowd control reduction is rather unimportant in PvE content. |
Avatar is an extremely important cooldown, which also aligns nicely with others. |
Thunderous Roar is a powerful AoE attack and bleed. |
Champion's Spear is another powerful AoE attack, with a lingering DoT, which also tethers enemies in place, making it even more useful in a variety of situations. |
Shockwave provides an AoE stun, very useful in small-group situations. |
Warlord's Torment causes major cooldowns to trigger Recklessness, greatly flooding Arms with Rage. |
Blademaster's Torment triggers a full damage Bladestorm, which also activates secondary talented bonuses. |
Uproar greatly reduces the cooldown of Thunderous Roar, though in a way that misaligns it with other cooldowns. |
Thunderous Words increases bleed damage at all times, not only when Thunderous Roar is activated, making it much stronger than it appears. |
Piercing Verdict is a moderate AoE direct damage increase that is not normally worth taking, especially as the extra Rage is often overcapped and wasted. |
Champion's Might is a very powerful increase to Champion's Spear when layered with other cooldowns. |
Rumbling Earth is a very strong talent which makes Shockwave much more frequently useable. |
Sonic Boom is a mostly unimportant bonus due to Shockwave's low initial damage. |
Spec Talents
Row 1-4
Mortal Strike is Arms' primary attack, forming the basis of its rotation and with several talents enhancing its capabilities. |
Overpower is a free filler, helping to maintain the rotation between spenders. |
Die by the Sword is Arms' main defensive cooldown, with the added benefit of parrying frontal melee attacks. Keep in mind that not all attacks can be parried, however, so it is not a true immunity. |
Martial Prowess causes Overpower to buff Mortal Strike and Cleave. While technically optional, it should be taken in virtually all builds. |
Improved Execute is another technically optional but imperative talent to take, allowing Arm's Execute to be used much more frequently. |
Improved Overpower increases the damage of Overpower by a minor amount. Although Overpower is used quite frequently, the low value makes it a rather weak choice. |
Bloodsurge has a moderate chance to generate Rage whenever Rend, Deep Wounds, or Thunderous Roar, deals damage. While only contributing a minor amount of overall Rage generation in single target, it ramps up considerably when facing multiple targets. |
Fueled by Violence provides a low amount of sustained healing, which ramps up when multiple targets are afflicted with the bleed, courtesy of Cleave. |
Storm Wall causes every parry to heal, making it a very useful addition to Die by the Sword, particularly when taking threat from a tank. Interestingly, the talent triggers on any parry, even when Die by the Sword is not currently active. |
Ignore Pain no longer contributes to Anger Management or Test of Might, making it a purely defensive ability in exchange for Rage. |
Sudden Death allows Execute to be cast anytime it triggers, adding a little bit of proc-gameplay, as well as offering a strong spike of damage. |
Fervor of Battle causes Whirlwind to automatically cast a free Slam whenever Whirlwind hits two targets. This makes it a much stronger filler but more difficult to take advantage of, as it does not replace Slam outright. It does have great synergy with Collateral Damage, however, as Whirlwind does not normally stack it. |
Rows 5-7
Tactician creates more proc-based gameplay and allows Overpower to be used much more frequently, helping maintain the rotation, as well as buff Mortal Strike or Cleave more frequently. |
Skullsplitter is an additional attack which generates a moderate amount of Rage. While not overly useful on its own, the follow-up talent is extremely powerful. |
Tide of Blood causes all remaining ticks of Rend of Deep Wounds to deal their damage immediately, typically resulting in upwards of a dozen ticks of rapidly dealing damage. Not only bursty, it fits very well into the Colossus Smash window, increasing its damage further. Combined with other bleed-enhancing talents, this forms one of the main elements of Arms' single-target damage potential. |
Rend is a familiar talent which inflicts a large bleed. While it no longer increases critical strike damage, there are several bleed-enhancing talents across the tree that make it very potent in a variety of situations. When Blood and Thunder is also talented, Thunder Clap also applies the bleed, allowing it to be used in multi-target situations instead. |
Bloodborne is a straightforward but very potent damage increase, which provides build synergy with several other talents throughout both trees. |
Improved Slam synergizes well with Crushing Force to greatly increase the damage of Slam. |
Dreadnaught is a returning talent, which provides roughly 33% more damage to Overpower, though the extra charge is also very useful for helping avoid wasting Tactician procs. |
Colossus Smash is Arms main offensive cooldown. While not incredibly strong, it has a fairly high uptime thanks to Anger Management, while other talents increase its effectiveness further. |
In For The Kill triggers a moderate Haste buff whenever Colossus Smash is used. While not as strong as its shared talent, Test of Might, the Haste bonus is more useful in combination with Bladestorm. |
Test of Might triggers a strength buff after Colossus Smash ends, while not quite as strong as Colossus Smash itself, it effectively extends the buff window, helping maintain sustained damage output. |
Blunt Instruments is a single and two-target enhancement to Colossus Smash, which combines well with Test of Might and/or Sweeping Strikes. |
Warbreaker turns Colossus Smash into an AoE effect, which is downright indispensable in multi-target content. |
Impale takes the effect previously tied to Rend and makes it effectively baseline, as the talent is required in order to proceed down the right side branch of the tree. Note that it only increases the extra critical strike damage of attacks, making it closer to a 5% damage increase rather than 10%. |
Exhilarating Blows allows more Mortal Strike use, though the Cleave reset is largely redundant due to Reaping Swings. |
Massacre makes Execute available sooner. As Execute makes up a big part of Arms damage, this is a must-have talent in single target and can even be nice to have in multi-target as well. |
Improved Sweeping Strikes gains considerable value with the T30 set bonus, which reinforces the use of multi-target Mortal Strike instead of Cleave. |
Strength of Arms is an important single target talent, particularly during the Execute phase. |
Collateral Damage doubles down on the two-target capabilities of Sweeping Strikes, though, only stacks off of single-target abilities, which are cleaved. This has strong synergy with Fervor of Battle, though, allowing Whirlwind to be used to hit multiple enemies and build stacks at the same time. |
Storm of Swords turns Whirlwind into a much more powerful attack on a moderate cooldown. While the high rage cost appears prohibitive, it works best as a Rage dump in conjunction with Cleave, which is both a cheap and frequently used multi-target attack. |
Cleave creates the basis for Arms' Mythic+ build, a cheap low cooldown, multi-target attack, which also maintains Deep Wounds. While not particularly strong, the extra bleed damage and very low cooldown give the build great sustained damage. |
Reaping Swings reduces Cleave's cooldown from four GCDs to two, allowing it to be used after every other ability. Typically alternated with Overpower, Thunder Clap, or Whirlwind allows a very effective and very fun multi-target rotation. |
Rows 8-10
Deft Experience provides a minor Mastery bonus, but its much more important effect is greatly increasing the proc rate of Tactician, allowing much more frequent use of Overpower. |
Bloodletting is a very strong talent which makes managing bleeds easier. |
Battlelord is a really fun ability that, unfortunately, is not very strong. With Mortal Strike refreshing the cooldown of Overpower via Tactician and Overpower refreshing the cooldown of Mortal Strike via Battlelord. this becomes a really fun gameplay loop which has a hard time spending enough Rage to keep from overcapping, resulting in the talent being a little weak. |
Fatality is a new pseudo-execute talent inspired by Dribbling Inkpod from the Battle for Azeroth expansion. Throughout normal combat, enemy targets will build up stacks of Fatal Mark, which are then consumed to create a large burst of damage. This burst can only happen once per target, but if the encounter is long enough; it can stack to very high levels. Note that its damage is not affected by Colossus Smash or Avatar but is affected by primary stat increases such as Hurricane or Test of Might. |
Valor in Victory provides a minor Versatility bonus while also reducing the cooldown of Die by the Sword, a very useful effect, particularly if facing threat issues in multi-target content. |
Bladestorm is one of Arms' signature abilities, a bursty AoE attack which inflicts Deep Wounds and deals respectable damage, especially as it should always be buffed by Warbreaker and often by Avatar as well. |
Dance of Death is forgiving in that it does not require Bladestorm actually get the killing blow, though it can still be somewhat hard to use. While increasing the duration of Bladestorm by 50% is numerically powerful, it is not perfectly suited to all situations, but can be situationally powerful. Note that extra Bladestorms triggered by Blademaster's Torment can trigger the effect, but will not benefit from or consume it, making it a good way to kickstart the effect before casting Bladestorm manually. |
Unhinged adds a good deal of single-target damage to Bladestorm, although Hurricane is typically better in situations where you are talenting the AoE attack in the first place. |
Hurricane is a very potent buff, which stacks quickly and refreshes its duration with each stack. This allows it to cover the length of Warbreaker and most of Avatar, as well as synergize quite powerfully with Merciless Bonegrinder. |
Merciless Bonegrinder provides a large damage bonus to Whirlwind and Cleave after Bladestorm ends, adding follow-on sustain to the burst cooldown. |
Critical Thinking provides a minor Critical Strike buff, but its much more important effect is refunding a portion of the Rage spent when using Execute. Combined with Improved Execute, this results in 40 Rage Executes refunding up to 12 Rage after every cast, making it much easier to maintain without Rage starving. |
Sharpened Blades provides a nice damage buff to Mortal Strike, Cleave, and Execute, also synergizing well with Cruel Strikes. |
Executioner's Precision is a returning effect, which helps encourage the use of Mortal Strike during the Execute phase. Unfortunately, it is a little weak and could be skipped in favor of other talents. |
Juggernaut was a Fury artifact trait during the Legion expansion, but now synergizes with Arms' gameplay much better due to the lack of a cooldown on Execute. This helps cement Arms as a major Execute spec, although it is subject to falling off due to downtime from encounter mechanics, so care should be taken in order to maximize its potential. |
Mythic+
Mythic+ can require a mix of AoE and Single-Target talents, depending on affixes and other variables. You should check out our page below if you want advice specific to Mythic+.
Rotation for Arms Warrior Talents
Some talents will require you to play in a particular way to get the most out of them. You can find more information on how your rotation will look after selecting your talents on our rotation page below.
PvP Talents for Arms Warrior in Dragonflight
Since Battle for Azeroth, players have the option to go into "War Mode," allowing them to participate in PvP combat with other players. Enabling War Mode provides the following benefits:
- PvP talents enabled in the outdoor world;
- 10% increase in World Quest rewards at maximum level;
- 10% more experience gained while leveling;
- Earn Conquest Points, which can reward gear every week.
With the benefits of enabling War Mode for leveling and PvE content, it is recommended to enable the feature to maximize your leveling and rewards at maximum level. However, you will make yourself available for open-world PvP, and the possibility of being "ganked" while leveling or doing World Quests exists.
Arms Warrior PvP Talents
- Shadow of the Colossus jumpstarts the rotation by ensuring Overpower is always available, and you have enough Rage to follow it up with other attacks.
- Storm of Destruction allows Bladestorm to be used more frequently, boosting single and multi-target damage considerably.
- Sharpen Blade adds a separate off-global cooldown buff, which synergizes well with Overpower to increase the damage of Mortal Strike.
Death Sentence and War Banner offer increased mobility, which can be useful but too situational to be practical in a PvE setting.
Master and Commander, Spell Reflection, Disarm and Duel can be situationally strong defensive options but are not typically necessary or useful in PvE content.
Changelog
- 15 Feb. 2024: Fixed broken spell link with the Champion's Spear formerly of Bastion.
- 15 Jan. 2024: Updated for Patch 10.2.5.
- 14 Jan. 2023: Minor updates clarifying recommended talents in selection tool.
- 06 Nov. 2023: Updated talent builds for Patch 10.2 and Season 3 tier sets.
- 04 Sep. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.1.7.
- 12 Jul. 2023: Minor formatting updates.
- 10 Jul. 2023: Minor updates for Patch 10.1.5.
- 01 May 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.1
- 02 Feb. 2023: Updated talent builds.
- 24 Jan. 2023: Updated builds for Patch 10.0.5.
- 11 Dec. 2022: Reviewed for Dragonflight Season 1.
- 28 Nov. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight launch.
- 18 Nov. 2022: Update Fervor of Battle use and description.
- 25 Oct. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight pre-patch.
More Warrior Guides
Guides from Other Classes
This guide has been written by Archimtiros, Warrior class theorycrafter and SimulationCraft developer who has been writing class guides for more than a decade. You can follow him on Twitter or see more of his day to day work in Skyhold, the Warrior Discord.
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