Arms Warrior Guide for The War Within

Welcome to our War Within expansion guide for Arms Warrior. Ahead of launch, this page will contain everything you need to know about the Arms Warrior spec in the forthcoming The War Within expansion, including changes, Hero Talent Trees, and some light predictions on the state of the spec going into the expansion.

This page is a constantly evolving work in progress, with regular changes expected as updates hit the War Within Beta. This is not meant to be a launch guide for Arms Warrior, but instead serves as a resource for you to keep up to date with how the spec is evolving on Beta, and what you can expect from its playstyle and feel on launch.

Arms Warrior Rage economy has been significantly altered in The War Within, reducing the amount generated per swing and reducing the Rage cost of Slam, Whirlwind, Rend, Thunder Clap, and Ignore Pain to a consistent 20 Rage. As a result, Rage is generated and spent in smaller chunks, leading to smoother pacing and less time bouncing between a full or empty resource bar.

The Warrior Class Tree has received a moderate rework, rearranging the pathing of several talents and removing some of the less desirable ones outright. Overall, the tree has become smaller and more streamlined, with focus on improving access to important crowd control and early leveling abilities, most notably relocating Shockwave to the middle of the tree. Below, you can see some of the most important changes that will affect your gameplay, decision-making, and power in The War Within.

• Berserker Rage is no longer a talent and now automatically learned at level 12.
• Titanic Throw, Sonic Boom, and Furious Blows have been removed. Furious Blows is one less required damage talent, while the other two were never used.
• Second Wind now restores 1-2% health per second while below 35% health, in addition to its previous effects. This gives it a guaranteed benefit in high damage/low life situations, without changing the previous functionality.
• Impending Victory now restores 20% health, down from 30%.
• Honed Reflexes now reduces the cooldown of most defensive and utility cooldowns by 5%. However minor, this removes another damage talent, while offering an interesting if equally minor defensive benefit.
• Blood and Thunder no longer increases the damage or rage cost of Thunder Clap, and is no longer available to Fury.
• Frothing Berserker now refunds 20% Rage for Arms, down from 20%.
• Barbaric Training no longer increases the Rage cost of abilities. Alongside several other adjustments, this is intended to smooth out the rate at which Arms generates and spends its Rage.
• Champion's Spear now generates 10 rage, down from 20.
• Champion's Might now affects targets hit by Spear, instead of the player standing inside it.
• Shockwave and Thunderous Roar no longer generate Rage.
• Thunderous Words has been buffed from 15 to 30%, but only increases the damage targets take from bleeds during its effect, rather than passively increasing it all the time. This makes Thunderous Roar more active and condenses some of its damage into burstier cooldowns.
• Crushing Force now affects Mortal Strike instead of Slam.
• Endurance Training has gained a second point, allowing players to increase their stamina even further. While nice, the new pathing makes the talent very hard to take.
• Warlord's Torment no longer affects Colossus Smash, and the bonus Rage generated during Recklessness is reduced to +25% from +100%. More so than any other change, this dramatically slows down Arms' Rage generation, though the overall speed of its gameplay is unchanged.
• Blademaster's Torment has been redesigned to now trigger Sweeping Strikes whenever Avatar is used, and reduce the cooldown of Cleave by 1.5 seconds for the duration of Avatar. This gives the talent value no matter what combination of other talents are used, though it also removes any single target value.

The Arms Warrior Spec Tree has undergone only minor changes, condensing and reworking a few of its talents, though retaining the same general pathing.

• Cleave now replaces Whirlwind, reducing the number of keybinds in multitarget content. Reaping Swings has been removed, with Cleave's default cooldown reduced to 4.5 seconds instead.
• Fervor of Battle and Collateral Damage now apply to Cleave, as do Seismic Reverberation and Barbaric Training in the class tree. With Cleave replacing Whirlwind in the rotation, this retains all of the same functionality between the two abilities.
• Tide of Blood has been removed and its effects baked into Skullsplitter.
• Storm of Swords now grants Whirlwind a 30% chance to make your next Whirlwind cost 100% less Rage. Intended to help smooth out the Rage economy, this talent is largely unneeded.
• Sudden Death can now stack twice to avoid wasting procs.
• Improved Overpower now grants a second charge of Overpower, instead of coming from Dreadnaught.
• Strength of Arms has been split into two talents, and now shares a choice node with Dreadnaught. This gives players a clear choice between a single target or multitarget damage boost.
• Finishing Blows now generates Rage when Overpower is used against low health targets, previously found within Strength of Arms. Although seemingly a dramatic nerf, the Rage accounts for much greater part of the overall reduced Arms Rage economy.
• Tactician has been reduced to 1% per Rage spent, while Deft Experience has been reduced to an additional 0.5% per point. A total of 2% per point of Rage, this reduces the overall number of Tactician procs, creating a little more room in the rotation for other abilities.
• In For The Kill now lasts the duration of Colossus Smash instead of a strict 10 seconds. This creates additional synergy with Spiteful Serenity and Blunt Instruments, and greatly increases its value compared to Test of Might.
• Valor in Victory now increases Versatility by 2%, instead of 1%.
• Battlelord no longer increases Overpower damage. This makes the talent less universal, creating more room to take other talents in multitarget content.
• Ravager is now a choice alongside Bladestorm, giving players the option between AoE abilities.
• Bladestorm no longer generates Rage, but its damage has been buffed by ~70%, making it much more directly impactful.
• Hurricane has been removed, thereby reducing the number of layered damage buffs.
• Unhinged now prioritizes the primary target and triggers every other time Bladestorm or Ravager deals damage, allowing it to scale with effects that increase the number of hits.
• Dance of Death has been completely redesigned with separate effects for Bladestorm and Ravager. When an enemy dies during Bladestorm, it increases damage dealt by 5% for the remainder of its duration plus 2 seconds, stacking up to three times. When an enemy dies during Ravager, it instead extends the duration by 2 seconds, also stacking up to three times. A somewhat complicated change, the intent is to reward players when an enemy dies during their large AoE cooldown; used creatively, it can allow funneling damage from a short-lived group of adds into a stronger priority/boss target.
• Critical Thinking has been increased to 10% of Execute Rage refunded per point, greatly helping the Execute Rage economy.

Aside from the changes to Arms Warrior's core features, The War Within also introduces Hero Talent Trees, new tier sets, and the natural reduction in secondary stats when entering a new expansion.

Arms Warrior's get to choose between the Colossus and Slayer Hero Talent Trees. In sections below, we will talk more deeply about the implications of these Hero Talent Trees for the spec, and some thoughts on what looks strong and weak ahead of launch.

Below are the Tier Set Bonuses for Arms Warrior in The War Within. After the wording of the bonus, you will find a brief note/commentary that is italicized.

• Warrior Arms Season 1 2pc — Mortal Strike and Cleave increase the damage of your next Overpower by 10%. This is a very simple, but effective bonus, as these are the three most used abilities in both single and multitarget.
• Warrior Arms Season 1 4pc — When Overpower has its cooldown reset by Tactician, your next Mortal Strike or Cleave has its damage increased by 10% and critical strike chance increased by 10%, stacking up to 2 times. Another simple and straightforward benefit that will apply passively through normal gameplay.

Both set bonuses are completely passive and are not expected to have any gameplay impact, which makes them somewhat boring, but reliable.

The 2pc bonus is a very minor and basic bonus, which suffers slightly from an inability to stack, which means getting back-to-back casts of Mortal Strike through Exhilarating Blows do not further increase the power of Overpower.

The 4pc bonus is a little stronger, since Mortal Strike and Cleave already have several damage modifiers which can be multiplied, though currently held back by a multiplication bug reducing its power. While not particularly exciting compared to bonuses of the past, it is functionally sound.

Based on general dummy testing, the two bonuses together should be worth around +4-7% in single target, which is generally much weaker than set bonuses of the past, though it is not yet clear what Blizzard's target point is for The War Within.

Strengths

• Very flexible toolkit, able to spec into strong single target, two-target cleave, sustained multitarget, or Execute capabilities.
• Significantly improved multitarget options compared to previous expansions, further enhanced by hero talents.
• Reduced rage economy retains the same gameplay, but with better pacing, instead of being resource capped or starved at all times.
• High mobility class due to Charge, Intervene, and Heroic Leap.
• Multiple defensive abilities on very short cooldowns make Arms a fairly tanky melee damage dealer.
• Source of the important offensive Battle Shout buff and defensive Rallying Cry.

Weaknesses

• Downtime significantly penalizes damage potential.
• Emphasis on priority and sustained damage leaves Arms less suited for short lived waves of adds frequently found in raid content.
• Awkward class tree talent pathing requires taking Shockwave in single target content that it has no use in.
• Slayer requires Bladestorm in all of its builds, resulting in somewhat reduced customization and build variety.
• Defensively weaker than Fury, with some defensives sacrificing damage to increase survivability.