WotLK Classic Arms Warrior Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities

If you have not already, please read the Spell Summary page. Knowing how each spell and ability works in detail will greatly increase your understanding of the topics discussed on this page.

The Arms Warrior rotation is very active, having multiple procs that activate different abilities for us. Arms Warrior relies on managing all of your different procs and keeping your Rend applied. You will spend your entire time as an Arms Warrior in Battle Stance, unlike other Warrior builds.

1. Sunder Armor — Sunder Armor remains your best opening ability on bosses, increasing all Physical damage taken. You do not need to do this if someone else, such as a Rogue, is applying an Armor reduction debuff.
2. Rend — You must always maintain an active Rend on a target to get Taste for Blood procs, allowing you to use Overpower.
3. Overpower — Be sure to use Overpower as often as possible to prevent a Taste for Blood proc from going to waste.
4. Bladestorm — This is your next priority as it deals high damage and you want to get it on cooldown as soon as possible. Ideally this would line up with your trinket procs or on-use trinkets.
5. Execute — Even with Execute being nerfed in WotLK, it remains a high priority for Arms Warriors. Use it with Sudden Death procs or if the target is below 20% health.
6. Mortal Strike — Now is the time to Mortal Strike since all of your procs have been managed at this point. Mortal Strike will bypass Slam if you are moving.
7. Slam — Slam deals decent damage even with it slightly delaying your next auto attack. Be sure to weave them in whenever you have nothing higher priority to use and no procs.
8. Heroic Strike — Finally you will start to use Heroic Strike whenever you have more than 40 Rage as it deals good damage.

1. Rend — You still want to obtain Taste for Blood procs, so you will cast Rend on the target that will live the longest.
2. Sweeping Strikes — Doubles your next 5 attacks on a nearby enemy. Try to use this as much as possible in an AoE situation.
3. Overpower — You will still cast Overpower on cooldown as it does a very high amount of damage, especially when paired with Sweeping Strikes.
4. Thunder Clap — Low cooldown, high damage, hits all nearby enemies and procs Deep Wounds. This passes Overpower in priority when facing large AoE packs.
5. Bladestorm — This is a powerful cooldown for dealing AoE damage. It is slightly lower on the list as threat may be an issue early into the pull, and you want to be sure to have Rend up before casting Bladestorm, as well as Thunder Clap on cooldown to properly push your AoE damage as high as possible.
6. Cleave — Your last priority when AoEing, only use this when you have extra Rage. Ideally you will be using Glyph of Cleaving with this.
7. After this you will go back into your Single-Target rotation until a higher priority AoE ability is ready.

Arms Warriors are lacking in damage-boosting cooldowns. Instead they have a wide array of AoE tools available to them, greatly increasing the amount of sustained cleave damage they can output.

• Sweeping Strikes — 30-second cooldown. You will want to use this whenever there are multiple targets in range. This duplicates 5 of our attacks onto a nearby enemy.
• Bladestorm — 1.5-minute cooldown. This is the 51 talent point Arms ability. Bladestorm casts Whirlwind every second for 6 seconds on up to 4 nearby enemies. This is a massive AoE cooldown and is even strong enough that you use it in your single-target rotation. This is most ideally used with your trinket procs as they have a 45-second cooldown, meaning every 90 seconds both Bladestorm and your proc trinkets will line up perfectly. Lastly, be sure that your Rend will not fall off and use Overpower before using Bladestorm so you can cast Overpower again as soon as the Bladestorm ends.
• Shattering Throw — 5-minute cooldown. This should be used as a raid DPS cooldown and coordinated with other raid DPS cooldowns like Heroism / Bloodlust. The 20% Armor reduction stacks with other Armor reduction debuffs, such as Sunder Armor. With multiple Warriors in one raid, this will typically be coordinated to keep the debuff up back-to-back for a long period of time.
• Recklessness — 5-minute cooldown. Makes your next 3 special attacks guaranteed Critical Strikes. Try to line these attacks up with other cooldowns, such as Bladestorm or while the boss is debuffed by Shattering Throw.
• Enraged Regeneration — 3-minute cooldown. This will consume an Enrage effect to restore 30% of your max health over 10 seconds. This can save your life during high damage spikes.