Season of Discovery Arms Warrior DPS Talents and Runes

This build maxes out all damage talents available, and some special utility, such as Tactical Mastery, which can be used to great effect to stance dance between Battle Stance and Berserker Stance in order to get Berserker's critical strike benefit for as long as possible, but still be able to use Overpower and Sweeping Strikes when appropriate.

Alternatively, for high levels of gear and especially once using the Tier 2.5 2-piece bonus for Death Wish, we recommend a swap to Fury 2h talents instead.

• Gloves — Quick Strike
• Pants — Frenzied Assault
• Chest — Blood Frenzy
• Waist — Precise Timing
• Feet — Rallying Cry or Enraged Regeneration
• Head — Taste for Blood
• Wrist — Wrecking Crew or Rampage (Fury 2h)
• Back — Sudden Death or Fresh Meat (Fury 2h)
• Ring — Axe Specialization or similar depending on your weapon
• Ring — Defense Specialization

Quick Strike makes a return now that baseline talents and improved gear allow for much smoother Rage generation.

Frenzied Assault is a strong passive damage buff and Blood Frenzy has great synergy with Taste for Blood, letting you Rend much more easily and for greater results.

Precise Timing provides a way to use Slam instantly every 6 seconds, which is great for Arms and two-handed playstyles in general.

The decision on Enraged Regeneration or Rallying Cry depends on the encounter: if you have a specific use planned for Rallying Cry, then use it, otherwise Enraged Regeneration is more generically helpful.

Taste for Blood will allow you to use Rend for frequent Overpower procs, while Wrecking Crew is a small but also short cooldown DPS buff.

Finally, Sudden Death allows you to Execute even before enemies are low health, and a weapon specialization Rune such as Axe Specialization or similar depending on your weapon is mandatory to drastically increase your Hit chance and reduce Glancing Blow chance and penalty against end game bosses.

Make sure to check our Warrior Rune guide in order to learn where to get all the SoD runes!

Tactical Mastery is required for stance swapping to work, as you would lose all Rage every time you swap stance, otherwise. With Berserker Stance and Sweeping Strikes being unlocked by this phase, the opportunities to stance dance for increased damage are many.

Anger Management generates 1 Rage every 3 seconds, which is not clear at all from reading its tooltip. This makes it a decent Rage generating talent.

Improved Overpower makes your Overpower skill critical strike much more often, increasing your DPS.

Deep Wounds is especially powerful in Season of Discovery as multiple critical strikes will all contribute towards making the debuff tick for more, rather than just refreshing an existing debuff.

Sweeping Strikes is a dead talent in single target, but it shines when attacking two or more enemies at once, as it will essentially duplicate your heavy hitting attacks five times every 30 seconds for only 30 Rage!

Mortal Strike is a great instant attack, although rather pricey at 30 Rage. As long as you can afford its high Rage cost, it will deal nice damage while also halving any healing received by its target.

Cruelty is a staple of all kinds of Warriors, as trading one talent point for 1% extra chance to critical strike is usually a good deal.

Unbridled Wrath is unfortunately not that good for two-handed playstyles, as the more often you attack, the more often you activate this talent for extra Rage.

Piercing Howl can provide a reliable source of soft crowd control in an emergency. Whether it is because the tank lost aggro on some enemies or because you need to run away to recover health, Piercing Howl will make things more manageable.

Improved Battle Shout is a nice damage boost for a full party of melee players. If you are able to provide it at little cost to your performance, it is a good idea to do so.

Improved Cleave is not quite as impactful as it sounds, since the damage increase only applies to the extra damage applied by Cleave and not the whole attack. Still, it can be better than the alternatives for DPS, as long as you have another alternative in your group to replace Improved Battle Shout.