Arms Warrior PvP Rotation and Playstyle (BfA / Patch 8.3)

The Arms Warrior has one role when in an arena: do damage. Arms Warriors lack crowd control and the ability to peel for teammates. Players should focus on maximizing their damage as much as they can. Warriors lack mobility, that is why when you get to the enemy you should deal as much damage as you can to them. Warriors have the ability to singlehandedly force cooldowns (trinkets and defensive spells) from enemy players. They have great sustained damage and very short burst cooldowns.

Have a plan for who you will be mainly using your crowd control on. Although Arms Warriors do lack crowd control, they still have Intimidating Shout and Storm Bolt. Also make sure that if you are swapping or attacking someone with more than 80% health and using the Breath of the Dying Major essence, you should use that first to get the cooldown reduction on it.

• Maintain Colossus Smash debuff on your target with Colossus Smash or Warbreaker.
• Use Reaping Flames if you are using this Major essence and the enemy is above 80% health or below 20% health.
• Use Overpower to increase the damage of your Mortal Strike.
• Use Mortal Strike as soon as you can.
• Maintain Rend on your main target.
• Use Slam if you have downtime.
• Maintain Hamstring if your kill target is mobile.

The opener refers to your team's opening crowd control chain and damage done as soon as you get out of the gates. The main goal in the opener is to force your enemies to use their cooldowns.

If the enemy healer uses their trinket in the opener, they are in trouble. In the opener, Arms Warriors should focus on sticking to an enemy and dealing large amounts of damage to the target.

This is the rotation you should use on your target at the beginning of the game.

1. Use Sudden Death and Tactician as soon as you can. The faster you use them, the faster you can get another.
2. Use Charge to close the gap between you and the target.
3. Use Colossus Smash or Warbreaker.
4. Use Rend.
5. Use Reaping Flames if you are using this Major essence and the enemy is above 80% health.
6. Use Overpower to increase the damage of your next Mortal Strike
7. Use Mortal Strike.
8. Get crowd control on the enemy healer (you can use Intimidating Shout or Storm Bolt or have a teammate do this).
9. Use your burst rotation.

When you have the enemy healer in crowd control and you are trying to kill an enemy, you use your burst damage.

1. Use Avatar if you are talented into it.
2. Use Reaping Flames if you are using this Major essence.
3. Use Sudden Death and Tactician as soon as you can. The faster you use them, the faster you can get another.
4. Use Charge to close the gap between you and the enemy.
5. If the enemy team is stacked, use Sweeping Strikes.
6. Use Colossus Smash or Warbreaker.
7. Use Overpower. Use it even if you do not have a Tactician proc.
8. Use Mortal Strike.
9. Use Blood of the Enemy if the enemy team is stacked and you are using this Major Essence.
10. Use Bladestorm.
11. Use Overpower.
12. Use Memory of Lucid Dreams if you are low on Rage and using this Major Essence.
13. Use Slam as a filler.
14. Use Sharpen Blade as soon as the enemy healer leaves crowd control or uses healing cooldowns .
15. Use Mortal Strike.
16. Use Execute if your target is low on health.

Sustained damage is damage you do when your burst cooldowns are not available.

1. Use Sudden Death and Tactician as soon as you can. The faster you use them, the faster you can get another.
2. Maintain Rend on your primary target.
   • If multiple enemies are in range and you have the Rage for it you can apply Rend to as many enemies as you can.
3. Use Overpower to increase the damage of your Mortal Strikes.
4. Use Reaping Flames if you are using this Major essence and the enemy is above 80% health or below 20% health.
5. Use Mortal Strike.
6. If you have multiple procs and want to do damage, use Warbreaker to apply Colossus Smash.
7. Use Memory of Lucid Dreams if you are low on Rage and using this Major Essence.
8. Use Sweeping Strikes if the enemy team is stacked.
9. Use Slam as a filler in your rotation.
10. Use Execute on targets that are low on health.

Die by the Sword is your main defensive cooldown. This is a very powerful defensive against melee teams. Use this when you are being focused and your healer is having trouble healing you or is stuck in crowd control.

Defensive Stance is another great defensive that Warriors have. This gives Warriors a flat 20% damage reduction and is a great ability when being focused by an enemy team.

Heroic Leap will mostly be used to run down enemies. However, there will be times where having to survive is more important than getting a kill. If have not already used it, use Heroic Leap when you are being targeted and need to get to a pillar to avoid incoming damage.

Duel, if talented, is a great defensive ability. When you see an enemy use strong single-target burst cooldowns, you can use this and it will greatly reduce any damage they deal to players other than you.

Intimidating Shout is one of the strongest Warrior cooldowns that is not damage. This ability should be usually used on a healer to try to get a kill on an enemy. The other use for this is to peel for yourself or your teammates. This is a strong AoE fear that can easily help your team stabilize when under pressure.

Victory Rush is not used often in 3 vs 3 arena, but it can still be valuable. You can gain this ability after killing an enemy or an enemy pet. So if you need a heal, you can quickly try to kill a pet and hit an enemy for a heal.

It is advised to use Macros to use abilities on enemies or allies without having to target them. For this reason, we have a page dedicated to them.