Arms Warrior PvP Best Arena Compositions — The War Within (Season 1)
Team composition in 2v2 or 3v3 Arena is very important, because not all classes work well together. Here, we give you the best compositions you can have for your Arms Warrior (i.e., the best classes to pair with it).
This page is part of our Arms Warrior PvP Guide.
2v2 Arena
Arms Warrior in 2v2 is all about applying unrelenting pressure and securing as much uptime on your target as you can. For this reason, they excel playing with healers that can stay high on Mana and apply pressure with you. There is no general guideline for whether you should focus on the DPS or the healer; it comes down to each individual match.
Arms Warrior focuses mainly on mitigating damage rather than healing it back as a Death Knight would, and for this reason, they scale greatly into dampening. Combined with the overall pressure of a warrior, this often leads to the warrior winning eventually through consistent damage output.
It is important to make use of cross CC, meaning you should try to time CC with your healer onto the enemy healer and DPS to not only stop their healing output but also stop them from disabling your damage output with abilities such as Disarm, Mortal Coil, Polymorph etc. Mastering this strategy is key to closing out games, but you should not focus solely on it, as it can be equally good to stun an opponent out of line of sight of his teammate, or to ruin major cooldowns like Avenging Wrath.
We strongly recommend you learn each and every offensive and defensive cooldown for all specializations, and get addons like Flyplatebuffs, BigDebuffs, and Gladius, so you have an easier time knowing when and how you should react. Alternatively, WeakAuras are a good way to customize your UI and alerts. These addons will give you an easier time identifying when an enemy uses cooldowns that can be difficult to spot visually, like Icy Veins and Vendetta. See our Arms Warrior PvP Macros page for more information on the subject.
This will also help you understand when you should break off from your target and peel for your healer with Intervene, Disarm, Rallying Cry etc.
Here is a list of the best team compositions for 2v2:
- Arms Warrior + Restoration Shaman
- Arms Warrior + Restoration Druid
- Arms Warrior + Mistweaver Monk
- Arms Warrior + Preservation Evoker
- Arms Warrior + Holy Paladin
3v3 Arena
Similarly to 2v2, Arms Warriors' main role in 3v3 is to apply unrelenting pressure onto the enemy team. In 3v3, however, it is even more important to know how to play defensively, as you are dealing with 2 DPS opponents instead of 1. In general, healers should not be hard focused unless they overextend into your range/healer or have no trinket, in which case they can be swapped to with a Storm Bolt. Some melee cleave compositions are an exception to this.
The playstyle and win conditions of Arms changes depending on what composition you are playing in 3v3. The best compositions will each be explained in detail below.
Tier | Composition |
---|---|
S | Thunder Cleave | Arms Warrior + Retribution Paladin + Mistweaver Monk (Fistweaver) |
A | TSG ( Unholy Death Knight) | WMPala (Frost Mage) | Arms Warrior + Balance Druid | WLS (Affliction Warlock) | KFC (Beast Mastery Hunter)| WLS (Destruction Warlock / Demonology Warlock) | Kitty Cleave |
B | KFC (Survival Hunter / Marksmanship Hunter) | TSG (Frost Death Knight) | Arms Warrior + Windwalker Monk | Turbo Cleave | WPPala | Arms Warrior + Havoc Demon Hunter |
C | Batman Cleave (Outlaw Rogue) | WEX |
D | |
Not viable/ Not seen on ladder | Man Cleave | Lumberjack Cleave |
Arms Warrior Composition Names
In a general 3-letter composition, the last letter represents the healer class of the composition, which alters depending on the meta. A composition like WLS indicates that the healer in this composition would be a Restoration Shaman. If a healer is undefined, the last letter is simply replaced with 'X' to (WLX).
Class letter codes:
- D = Druid
- DH = Demon Hunter
- DK = Death Knight
- E = Evoker
- H = Hunter
- M = Mage
- WW / MW = Windwalker Monk / Mistweaver Monk
- P = Priest
- P(ala) = Paladin
- R = Rogue
- S = Shaman
- L = Warlock
- W = Warrior
Compositions:
- WLX: Warrior + Warlock + Healer
- Kitty Cleave: Warrior + Feral Druid + Healer
- WMX: Warrior + Mage + Healer
- Turbo Cleave: Warrior + Enhancement Shaman + Healer
- Thunder Cleave: Warrior + Elemental Shaman + Healer
- KFC: Warrior + Hunter + Healer
- TSG: Warrior + Death Knight + Healer
- WPX: Warrior + Shadow Priest + Healer
- Batman Cleave: Warrior + Rogue + Healer
- WEX: Warrior + Evoker + Healer
- Man Cleave: Warrior + Protection Warrior + Healer
- Lumberjack Cleave: Arms Warrior + Arms Warrior + Healer
Changelog
- 09 Sep. 2024: Reviewed for The War Within Season 1.
- 21 Aug. 2024: Updated for The War Within
- 23 Jul. 2024: Updated for The War Within Pre-Patch.
- 07 May 2024: Reviewed for 10.2.7.
- 22 Apr. 2024: Updated for Season 4
- 19 Mar. 2024: Updated for Patch 10.2.6
- 15 Jan. 2024: Updated for Patch 10.2.5
- 06 Nov. 2023: Updated for Patch 10.2
- 04 Sep. 2023: Updated for Patch 10.1.7.
- 10 Jul. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.1.5
- 09 May 2023: Updated for Dragonflight Patch 10.1.
- 21 Mar. 2023: Updated for Patch 10.0.7.
- 30 Jan. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.0.5.
- 11 Dec. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight Season 1.
- 22 Nov. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight pre-patch.
- 31 Jul. 2022: Updated for Shadowlands season 4.
- 31 May 2022: Reviewed for Patch 9.2.5.
- 28 Feb. 2022: Page updated for Patch 9.2.
- 08 Nov. 2021: Page reviewed for Patch 9.1.5.
- 02 Jul. 2021: Reviewed and approved for Patch 9.1.
- 27 Dec. 2020: Rewritten by Karanze for Shadowlands season 1
- 14 Oct. 2020: Updated for Shadowlands pre-patch.
Other PvP Guides
This guide has been written by Karanze, an experienced Gladiator Warrior player who has been a Stormforged/trusted member in the popular Warrior class discord Skyhold. You can watch his stream on Twitch.
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