Arms Warrior DPS Spec, Builds, and Talents — Dragonflight 10.0.7

Arms Warriors have much more build variety than before, allowing them to mix and match single and multitarget talents for different content. However, they are still better specialized in one or the other. In Patch 10.0.5, their builds revolve around Mortal Strike and Overpower, two attacks that frequently reset each other's cooldowns. During the Execute phase, Juggernaut continually enhances the damage until the encounter is ended.

While changing talents to match the situation is highly recommended, the following builds are set up to handle the most common encounter types, with secondary/optional choices detailed. Remember that in Dragonflight, talents can be changed at any time while out of combat, excepting during active PvP or Mythic+ content. This makes small adjustments much more accessible, so do not be afraid of experimenting with different approaches!

There are also multiple talents that require a change to your rotation in order to use them optimally. You can find more information on how your rotation will look after selecting your talents on our rotation page below.

Mythic+ dungeons largely revolve around burst multitarget damage, and continually killing enemies as you move from pack to pack. Arms main tools in this regard are Cleave, Thunder Clap, and Bladestorm, with several triggered buffs to enhance burst damage.

Remember that you can easily import the talent tree below into the game with either of the two "Copy Export String" buttons:

Mythic+ can potentially require a mix of certain AoE and single-target talents, depending on affixes and other variables. If you want advice that is specific to Mythic+, you should check out our page below.

This build is ideal for sustained single-target, most commonly found in raid encounters. As boss fights often have varied mechanics, there are often situations in which alternative talents such as Bladestorm may prove worthwhile.

The builds suggested above do not reflect every individual encounter in the current raid tier. If you wish to have a boss-by-boss breakdown of talent choices, you should check out our dedicated page below.

The first talent tier encompasses rows 1-4 and requires 8 points to be spent before progressing to the second. As the first tier, many of these talents are required to progress further down the tree anyway, making most of them automatic picks, with a couple choices left over.

• 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 is not only a useful defensive ability, but also an offensive damage increase due to spending more rage for the purposes of Anger Management and Test of Might.
• 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.

The second talent tier encompasses rows 5-7 and requires a total of 20 points to be spent between the first and second tier in order to progress to the third. These talents are grouped into three branches, the leftmost ones mainly focused on Bleeds, the middle on Colossus Smash, and the third is mostly focused on multi-target.

• 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 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 multitarget 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 increase 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 multitarget as well.
• Improved Sweeping Strikes is not of particularly high value outside of dedicated two-target encounters.
• 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 it 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 cheap and frequently used multitarget attack.
• Cleave creates the basis for Arms' Mythic+ build, a cheap low cooldown, multitarget 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, this allows a very effective and very fun multitarget rotation.

The third talent tier encompasses rows 8-10 and makes up the final five talent points available in the Dragonflight Pre-Patch, increased to 10 at Level 70. These talents are also grouped into three branches, the left most enhancing bleeds and Mortal Strike, the middle focused on Bladestorm, and the third providing major boosts to Execute.

• 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 not only makes managing bleeds easier, but also synergizes incredibly well with Tide of Blood, greatly amplifying the burst damage it deals.
• 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 multitarget 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.
4.1.

PvP Talents (War Mode)

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 to be "ganked" while leveling or doing World Quests exists.

Arms Warrior PvP guide
4.1.1.

Arms Warrior PvP Talents

1. 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.
2. Storm of Destruction allows Bladestorm to be used more frequently, boosting single and multitarget damage considerably.
3. 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.

5.

Changelog

• 20 Mar. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.0.7.
• 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.
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