Warrior Arms Guide

Quick and dirty Arms guide
For patch 3.1

This guide is meant to be a basic introduction to Arms DPS. My experience with the spec is from my own theorycrafting, the ongoing discussion over at EJ, and of course, actually mucking around with the spec as much as possible on the PTR. If people find this useful, I'll try to update it with new developments, hints, etc. that come from playing it on live. Hopefully it'll help answer a few questions as people try DPSing without Fury in 3.1

First, some benefits an Arms warrior brings to a raid:
Trauma - 30% more bleed damage (Does not stack with a Druid's Mangle)
Blood Frenzy - 4% more melee damage (Does not stack with a Combat Rogue's Savage Combat)

How does it compare to Fury?
From what I've seen, it's about the same, actually. A Fury warrior scales better with rage than an Arms warrior, and in a raid setting this ends up bringing the two to roughly the same level. Granted, my experience in this matter is limited, so take it with a grain of salt. It may very well be that Arms is stronger than Fury in some/many/most scenarios. Time will tell.

Now then, on to the guide.

Glyphs
Rending/Execution/MS
Glyph of Bladestorm is bad.

Specs
Single target - Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
Better AoE - Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Tweaks
As discussed below, using HS is an option in an Arms build. If you do find yourself using it, taking Imp. HS might be a good choice. It wouldn't make a huge difference, but every little bit can help.

Similarly, you can be flexible with the point you put in Weapon Mastery depending on your expertise.

Rotation
Your basic goal is to use every GCD available. There isn't really a rotation in this, per se, but instead a priority queue:
- Maintain Rend
- Mortal Strike
- Execute
- Overpower
- Slam

This is not set in stone. You're going to want to adjust dynamically depending on what you rage intake is, movement, etc. With a bit of practice, you'll have a feel for it. Some notes:

TfB deserves special notice, because it's going to trigger in a changing fashion. Here's a breakdown, assuming you're using Glyph of Rending (note that Rend ticks every 3 seconds, for 7 ticks with the glyph):

Code:
1 TFB
2
3 TFB
4
5 TFB
6
7 TFB
-- Rend Reapplied --
1
2 TFB
3
4 TFB
5
6 TFB
7
This pattern repeats itself. Notice that the first time, TfB will proc off the last tick, while the second time, it won't. This means that the first time, you're going to want to let Rend fall off naturally. While you could go and reapply rend the third time right after your seventh TfB proc, you're not going to see a DPS gain from this. TfB won't proc any faster, you're reducing your damage per rage, and most importantly, you're reducing your damage per GCD. Arms is a GCD locked spec, so you need to make the most out of each one you get.

I'm going to repeat that again to make it clear: let Rend fall off.

The key with Arms is to make the absolute most out of every GCD, and letting Rend fall off helps you do that.

Bladestorm
Bladestorm is a nice little DPS increase for the time its up, assuming you're using it properly. Ideally you'll want to use it when your other abilities are on cooldown; specifically MS and Taste for Blood's internal CD. To this end, you'll probably want to use it directly after you use Overpower (ideally this OP comes directly after a TfB proc), and when MS is on CD. This way when your BS wears off you have a fresh OP ready to go (if you play your cards right, you shouldn't sacrifice a TfB proc), MS off CD, and with luck an SD proc from all the WW hits. You can then unload on the target and continue your rotation.

Heroic Strike
Should you use heroic strike? Maybe. It really depends on your rage intake, and if you're riding a lucky white crit streak. You'd only want to use it if you have more than around 70 rage (assuming you're expertise/hit capped), but you'll really have to try it for yourself to get the hang of it.

Gearing
First things first, you want to be expertise and hit capped. This is quite easy to do as an Arms warrior - you just need the 8% hit, and 14 extra expertise (for a total of 18 on your character sheet). Why do you want to cap these? First, they're solid DPS stats. I'm not going to say whether they're the best DPS stats for you, but they have one, huge, auxiliary benefit: guaranteed rage income. This is very handy to have when you've got the hang of your basic priority queue, as it allows you to watch a swing timer and plan based on that, safe in the knowledge that rage will be on its way.

But why cap expertise when OP is always available?
Because Arms is a GCD-locked spec. You need to make the most out of every GCD. While it's true that using OP after a dodge can make up for lost damage, the net effect is still a GCD you effectively spent doing nothing. This is a DPS loss. On the other hand, it does mean that expertise is less of a DPS gain to us than it would otherwise be. I can't put an exact number on it, since I haven't done the math and I don't intend to. It's ridiculously easy to cap expertise as Arms, so you should just do it.

Stat Priority
Note: This section is currently not as up-to-date as it could be. Since I wrote this, ArP theorycrafting has been refined a bit. See Lizana's quote below for a good rundown.

Your primary DPS stat is going to be either ArP or AP (and subsequently, Strength). Focus on AP until you're above about 3.2k (rough number - you'll probably have to find the right value yourself), at which point ArP takes over as the best stat. Once ArP becomes better than AP your goal is to cap it while keeping your Strength/Crit levels reasonable. ArP gets better and better the more of it you have, so once you start stacking you should keep stacking - in fact, whenever you begin your ArP stacking, completely regem for it.

ArP cap levels are as follows (there is no cap right now, but there's a good chance there will be in the future):
Coming Soon (tm)

After that, you're looking at Strength, then crit. Crit deserves special mention here as you really should try to keep it higher than 35% raid buffed in order to keep your buffs up and maintain a nice rage income. Don't worry too much if your crit takes a low dip, but do keep it in mind.

Haste is a pretty bad stat for Arms warriors, for two reasons. First, our white damage just isn't that high in the first place. Second, we scale pretty badly with it due to Slam - it gets worse the more haste you have. You really don't want to be stacking Haste if you can find any other DPS stat.

ArP
There seem to be a lot of questions floating around the forums about ArP these days, and Lizana made a pretty good summary deeper in the thread. I'm going to quote him here, for those who want some more info.

Heres a very basic and oversimplified view ( and incorrect in some situations for being basic)

If you have 30% arp from gearing alone, then start geming ARP, continue to gem arp till aroung 65-70% even if you have an arp trinket. After aprox 65%-70% arp passive with an arp trinket it will be greater dps to gem STR , without an arp trinket it is still better to gem ARP than STR untill you hit 100%
Weapon Spec
Axes are the way to go, followed by Maces. If you have a lot of ArP, Mace spec is probably the better option. We don't talk about sword spec...

The Axes vs Maces comparison is pretty simple. Maces will net you anywhere from a 3% to 8% increase in overall damage, depending on your ArP level. Axes get you a 5% increase to all damage (roughly), plus the damage from 5% bonus damage to crits. If you're taking a balanced approach to gearing, it's pretty clear that Axes will be more DPS; however, if you're stacking ArP out the wazoo, the Mace bonus will start to be pretty awesome.

Misc.
Random tidbits of useful information!

Mods
As an Arms warrior, you need to be keeping track of procs and Rend (and if you're unlucky, Sunder). I've found two mods to be useful for this:

For procs, I use Satrina Buff Frames. I won't get into my UI setup too much, but what I like about SBF is that you can assign whatever buff you want to show up pretty much anywhere. I put Sudden Death and Taste for Blood as bars in their own little frame right in the middle of my screen, so that I can't not notice when they proc.

For keeping track of Rend, I use Quartz. Another alternative is ClassTimer, though I personally prefer Quartz out of nostalgia.

Interrupting
Look, interrupting as an Arms warrior is bad. You either have to stance dance, or equip a shield and Shield Bash. Either way you lose DPS, so it's really preferable to have another class do it. However, sometimes situations arise requiring you to get in there and save the day - should that happen, this shield bash macro should be useful:

Code:
/cast [equipped] Shield Bash
/equip [noequipped] 1H Weapon; 2H Weapon
/equip [noequipped] Shield
(You're going to need to put your weapon names in there)

Hit it once to equip your shield, and hit it a second time to bash and swap weapons back.

That should about cover it.