Arms Warrior PvP Guide for TBC Classic

Strengths

• Does not have a limited resource such as Mana.
• Provides healing reduction with Mortal Strike.
• Can put very high pressure on their chosen target.

Weaknesses

• Extremely gear-dependent.
• Needs a very high amount of support to be able to play well.
• Extremely vulnerable to being rooted and kited.

Warrior, specifically Arms, brings a few desirable things to almost any PvP situation. Mortal Strike reducing healing received by 50% and not being able to be dispelled can be a gamechanger and makes a Warrior a strong addition to any PvP team.

This is the main talent build for PvP Warriors, grabbing many core abilities and talents. Endless Rage is a very strong PvP talent as it can be very difficult to get Rage when hitting high-Resilience targets. While the above spec takes Mace Specialization, you should take whichever specialization based on your weapon, ideally Swords or Maces. Tactical Mastery is a great pickup, allowing you to swap stances and use abilities right away, such as Disarm or Spell Reflection.

In PvP there is no real set rotation you should be focusing on. The usage of your abilities depends on many factors but the most important thing as an Arms Warrior is to stay on your target as much as you possibly can. As a Warrior your mobility can be quite limited if kited, but with proper play you can limit this quite a lot.

Hamstring is the first thing you should use when engaging an enemy. If you cannot slow your enemy down and stick to them, you will never land a kill.

Piercing Howl — Use this instead of Hamstring if your enemy is just outside of your melee range, or multiple enemies are in your range.

Mortal Strike will be the majority of your damage. It is important to keep this debuff up on your enemy as much as possible to half the healing they receive, essentially doubling the Mana spent by their healer.

Sunder Armor — Keep this stacked up 5 times when you will be focusing one target for a long time. This is a massive damage increase, especially against low-Armor classes.

Whirlwind — Only use this when you have a pool of excess Rage, or you are hitting multiple targets.

Heroic Strike — Only use this when you have a large pool of excess Rage.

Warriors have a decent number of utility spells; taking full advantage of your utility is what really separates a good Warrior from a great one. When used correctly, Warrior has a response to almost every situation you could think of.

Spell Reflection — This reflects almost all spells cast on you back at the caster. A well-timed Spell Reflection can be the difference between losing and winning many games. Try to time this based on your enemies' cast times and use it at the end of them.

Disarm removes an enemy's weapon for 10 seconds. It can be used to peel for a teammate or to reduce the damage you are taking. Try to use this from behind your opponent to remove the chance it gets dodged or parried.

Demoralizing Shout reduces the melee Attack Power of nearby enemies. It is great when facing melee DPS to hinder their damage output slightly. It can also be used with the Booming Voice talent to get Rogues out of stealth.

Intervene — Dash to a friendly target and redirect the next Physical attack from them to yourself. It is great for moving around the map both offensively and defensively. If timed very well, it can be used to redirect crucial attacks, such as Kidney Shot or even Blind, greatly increasing your odds at winning.

Pummel — This is your interrupt when you are in Berserker Stance. Try to only kick crucial spells, such as heals or crowd control.

Intimidating Shout fears nearby enemies. It can cause chaos when used in the middle of a group of enemies. Try to kill those Tremor Totems before using to this force a few PvP trinkets to be used.

The Stance you will be using in PvP will change often depending on the situation. If you are being focused, use Defensive Stance. If you are purely damage-dealing, use Berserker Stance. Battle Stance is a decent mixture of the two. All Stances have specific abilities that require that Stance to be used, so you may find yourself needing to change Stances often to use a specific ability.

As an Arms Warrior your largest focus stat-wise will be Resilience, Stamina, and Critical Strike. Arms Warriors deal a large amount of damage with just Strength which will be plentiful on any gear. The lack of Warrior's mobility can make it easy for them to find themselves in a situation where they will be taking a considerable amount of damage, so defensive stats can be more beneficial for them than other classes.

Resilience is the largest source of damage mitigation you can get from stats. Resilience is a flat damage reduction from crits and DoT sources and getting as much of this as possible especially early on can help you in most PvP situations. Arms Warrior deals a lot of damage baseline so putting an emphasis on this stat is important.

You will want to aim for 5% Hit Rating to avoid missing in most normal circumstances. This can be crucial as a missed Mortal Strike or Hamstring can determine a game.

Critical Strike and Agility both have large benefits for Arms, increasing the chance for your abilities to crit. Pure Critical Strike is more valuable than Agility as each point of Agility gives less than an entire point of Critical Strike rating. More Critical Strike, more Rage; more Rage, more damage. It is very hard to kill players in PvP without critting.

Strength increases your damage by being the single-largest source of Attack Power. Each point of Strength will grant 2 Attack Power.

Stamina increases your health pool and especially early on there are times where the raw health added by certain pieces can make a major difference in your survivability.

Attack Power increases the damage of your abilities and autoattacks.

The list linked below includes the best possible gear setup for a Arms Warrior in PvP.

When it comes to evaluating Arms Warrior's place within the Arena, we have created a number of guides devoted to listing a variety of popular team compositions which you can find below.