Arms Warrior DPS Stat Priority — The War Within Pre-Patch

Arms Warriors primarily value item level for Strength, followed by Critical Strike and either Mastery or Versatility, though the value of Haste can be higher at low gear levels. By the time you have reached moderate gear levels, the stat priority for an Arms Warrior should be:

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

At the highest level of gear, these stats will shift further due to diminishing returns on the most stacked stats, though there is a point where you simply cannot get more of one stat without giving up a large portion of another. This is why traditional stat weights compared to one point of strength are a difficult tool to utilize, and it is recommended that players regularly sim their own gear upgrades instead.

Strength is your primary stat, found on plate armor, weapons, and trinkets. It provides Attack Power, which contributes to the damage of all abilities and auto-attacks.

Critical Strikes normally double the damage of attacks and abilities, as well as increasing the Rage generated by autoattack swings by 10%. Thanks to Impale and more specific talents such as Sharpened Blades and Cruel Strikes, the damage of crits is increased beyond the normal +100% multiplier.

Haste compresses the rotation, reducing the time between the autoattack swings, the global cooldown, and the cooldown of the rotational abilities Mortal Strike, Skullsplitter, and Cleave, as well as the speed at which Bladestorm, Ravager, Rend, and Deep Wounds deal damage. Despite this, it is generally not worth explicitly gearing for outside of very high gear levels.

Mastery increases the damage taken debuff Deep Wounds, which is applied and maintained by using Mortal Strike, Colossus Smash, Bladestorm, Warbreaker, Cleave, and Ravager. This typically had lower value in multitarget, but has increased thanks to the ease of using Cleave to maintain the debuff.

Versatility provides a flat increase to damage dealt and reduces damage taken by half as much. Direct damage trinkets, cantrip items like Fyr'alath the Dreamrender, and other outside sources of damage value versatility further due to typically not scaling with attack power. Because the pre-patch features several of these items, the stats value climbs dramatically as more are collected.

Although there are various breakpoints that allow additional global cooldowns during Colossus Smash, Haste is a traditionally strong stat due to its influence on fitting more global cooldowns into the buff and getting the buff back faster via Anger Management. This value is reduced by In For The Kill, however, which now has greater uptime than previously.

The gems, enchants, and consumables you will use are directly derived from your stat priority, and you can find our advice on this topic on our dedicated page.

Racial bonuses tend to have a minimal impact on Arms performance, with anything within 1% typically considered trivial and a small enough margin that our recommendation is to simply play what you enjoy the most.