Arms Warrior Best Covenants, Soulbinds, and Conduits — Dragonflight 10.2.5

Please be aware that as of the Dragonflight Pre-Patch and Dragonflight expansion, all Covenant abilities, Soulbinds, and Conduits will only function while within the Shadowlands. This page will temporarily remain as a reference.

This page assumes that you are already familiar with Covenants, Soulbinds, and Conduits. If that is not the case, we have a number of pages that can help you get up to speed:

• Covenants Guide, which explains what Covenants are, what perks they bring, and how you can join one;
• Warrior Covenant Abilities, which lists all the abilities that Warriors gain by joining each Covenant;
• How To Change Covenant?, which tells you how you can switch Covenant (rejoining a former Covenant will require you to perform a number of tasks to regain their trusts);
• General Soulbind Guide, which explains what Soulbinds are and how you can pledge yourself to them to open up their Soulbind tree;
• Warrior Conduits, which lists all of the Conduits available to Warriors.

There are several things to know about Soulbinds and Covenants before you read the rest of this page and its recommendations:

• Upon reaching Renown 80 with a single Covenant, players will unlock the ability to change Covenants freely without incurring a cooldown or losing Renown. This players to quickly speicalizes for different types of content, although renown still needs to be obtained with each Covenant in order to unlock their full range of benefits.
• Renown can be instantly increased to level 40 using the Broker Mark of Distinction, immediately unlocking the majority of soulbind talents. The remaining 40 levels of Renown can be unlocked quickly in Torghast, Battlegrounds, or defeating raid bosses, as well as by completing daily calling quests or weekly Covenant quests.

Because you can now change Covenants without a cooldown, there is much more freedom to specialize based on content type, although generally Night Fae will pull ahead slightly in raid content, while Kyrian will perform better in Mythic+.

Night Fae is the strongest single target Covenant for Arms Warriors, with Kyrian performing better in Mythic+ dungeons. Both are incredibly close to one another, and largely interchangeable, with some raid encounters favoring one slightly more than the other depending on the timing of their Covenant abilities and how well each Legendary suits individual encounter mechanics. In multi-target raid encounters, Night Fae will typically pull ahead very slightly due to lower target counts, but Ancient Aftershock is still limited to 5 targets, which gives Kyrian much greater damage potential with large pulls in Mythic+ dungeons.

Necrolord is an honorable mention, as the group buff can provide incredible value to allies at the cost of personal damage. This makes Necrolord a much weaker choice for the Warrior, but potentially worthwhile in situations where an undergeared player can support a stronger one, or to enable certain burst damage strategies. Despite this potential, maximizing the Conqueror's Banner requires ensuring the correct players are closest to it every 2 minutes, which necessitates greater coordination and potential for mistakes. Necrolord is not frequently played and therefore not recommended for personal performance, though the group-wide benefit can be very competitive under the right circumstances.

We cover our thoughts on the Covenants and their Soulbinds in this section further below.

In the list below, you will find the best Conduits, organized by type. For more information, please see the Conduits section of this page.

• Best Potency Conduits: Crash the Ramparts, Mortal Combo
• Best Finesse Conduits: Inspiring Presence, Safeguard
• Best Endurance Conduits: Stalwart Guardian, Indelible Victory, Fueled by Violence

Crash the Ramparts and Mortal Combo are the go-to Conduits for Arms Warriors due to their synergies with Dreadnaught and Enduring Blow respectively. When three potency Conduits are available, the third slot is flexible, though Kyrian and Night Fae Warriors will often use their Covenant-specific conduits to improve their Covenant ability damage in multitarget situations.

This section only covers which Conduits you should pick. For detailed explanations on what all of the Warrior Conduits do, check out our Warrior Soulbinds and Conduits Page below.

Some Conduits are better in certain situations or have specific synergies, in which case they will be labeled appropriately.

All Covenants and Conduits are ranked relative to the best overall setup.

• Crash the Ramparts (with Dreadnaught)
• Mortal Combo (with Enduring Blow)
• Destructive Reverberations (Night Fae-only)
• Piercing Verdict (Kyrian-only)

• Adaptive Armor Fragment
• Merciless Bonegrinder (Multitarget-only)
• Veteran's Repute (Necrolord-only)

• Ashen Juggernaut (Venthyr-only)
• Harrowing Punishment

This tier list is very much a guideline and we absolutely recommend using Raidbots to sim your own Conduit choices as you unlock them.

All of these Conduits are geared towards survival and defensive options. This means that there is a bit more room for personal choice, though Stalwart Guardian stands out as the universal choice due to allowing more frequent use of the main defensive cooldown. Fueled by Violence and Condensed Anima Sphere are good secondary choices, providing passive healing, while Brutal Vitality takes a more active approach and can have some strong applications under carefully controlled circumstances.

While these Conduits are meant to increase mobility and utility, they include very strong group defensive options, which make them very good bonuses. Inspiring Presence benefits the entire raid in small way, while Safeguard can become a very potent external cooldown at higher ranks.

Night Fae is now the strongest single-target Covenant for personal damage, as well as the best in multitarget due to the strong Souldbinds and powerful Ancient Aftershock ability. There is still a chance for failure as enemies moving out of the ground-targeted effect results in significantly reduced damage and Rage generation, though this should not be a major problem for players with strong awareness.

Kyrian is very competitive in single-target, while becoming the strongest multi-target Covenant when used in conjunction with the Covenant-specific legendary, Elysian Might. The synergies provided by the Mikanikos Soulbind allow frequent alignment of cooldowns, resulting in major burst damage at 45 and 90-second intervals, although care must be taken to remain positioned within the legendary field of effect.

Necrolord is much more powerful than it was at launch, as it is no longer restricted to a specific area on the ground and no longer requires a ramp up before full benefit. That said, it is still a group buff, which often provides more to your allies than the Warrior. Under the right conditions, such as buffing two powerful Fire Mages in tandem with their cooldowns, the Banner can be incredibly competitive and even better than other Covenants, but the increased effort required to ensure that the two closest players are buffed every 2 minutes requires much more effort than other options.

Venthyr has fallen to the worst Arms Warrior single-target damage Covenant, due to the recent buff to Execute which did not affect Condemn. Because Condemn does not hit multiple targets outside of Sweeping Strikes, it also remains the weakest multi-target Covenant as well.

• Niya and Dreamweaver are both very close in single target situations, largely dictated by the difference between Niya's Tools: Burrs and Field of Blossoms. If the player cannot stay within the field of effect, Dreamweaver loses value, making Niya a somewhat more reliable option.
• Korayn falls behind Niya in single-target, but offers much more burst in Mythic+-type content due to First Strike.

• Forgelite Prime Mikanikos is now much more consistent and has the added advantage of reducing the cooldown of Spear of Bastion to better sync with other cooldowns, along with a great deal of Haste from Hammer of Genesis, making him a very strong pick in all situations, particularly single target encounters with periodic secondary targets.
• Pelagos would appear to be the strongest Kyrian Soulbind, but the damage increasing traits require precise positioning and movement, which may not be conductive to all encounters.
• Kleia is less competitive in group situations due to the likelihood of Valiant Strikes consuming critical strike stacks to heal allies.

• Plague Deviser Marileth is the worst Necrolord Soulbind and should not be chosen for DPS potential.
• Emeni provides a nice stacking bonus during the early game, and has a strong Mythic+ trait in Gnashing Chompers.
• Bonesmith Heirmir is slightly better than Emeni in single target, largely due to Critical Strike synergy with Heirmir's Arsenal: Marrowed Gemstone.

• Nadjia the Mistblade is the primary single-target choice, due to Dauntless Duelist.
• Theotar the Mad Duke is very competitive, but somewhat less reliable due to the area-of-effect restriction on Soothing Shade and random nature of Party Favors.
• General Draven is not recommended due to offering very few consistent damage dealing bonuses, although if you were able to constantly interrupt it would push his value much higher.