How to play arms?

[Rashi]

So I´ve been trying to find some arms guide for the current content but cant find much, People tell me that you can easy make diff, between a good arms war and a decent arms warrior. For example the rotation.

Is it true that you want to use MS > OP. if rage > 80, slam otherwise just wait for MS/overpower? When to CS? when I cs do I want to use every rage i stacked? i dont get it. also when to use cooldowns etc?

[Deleted]

Here's a pretty good guide. http://www.icy-veins.com/arms-warrio...owns-abilities

Basically, what I do is I keep MS on cooldown and try to keep CS up as much as i can. I use overpower on procs and dump rage with slam.
I replace slam with heroic strike if I have Taste for Blood stacks up or if my taste of blood stack is about to fall off the target. (try to stack these up as high as you can, they go up to 5)

I'm not the most experienced arms warrior when it comes to PvE (or PvP) but this is how I do it, more or less. I'm also not saying this is the best/right way to do it, if anyone can correct me, please do. =)

Also, I just woke up so sorry if my text doesn't make sense or is hard to understand.

Hope this was helpful.

[Nubproof]

Here's a pretty good guide. (LoL I had to remove link cuz i wasn't allowd to post them)

Basically, what I do is I keep MS on cooldown and try to keep CS up as much as i can. I use overpower on procs and dump rage with slam.
I replace slam with heroic strike if I have Taste for Blood stacks up or if my taste of blood stack is about to fall off the target. (try to stack these up as high as you can, they go up to 5)

I'm not the most experienced arms warrior when it comes to PvE (or PvP) but this is how I do it, more or less. I'm also not saying this is the best/right way to do it, if anyone can correct me, please do. =)

Also, I just woke up so sorry if my text doesn't make sense or is hard to understand.

Hope this was helpful.

Sure it's a nice general guideline of how to play the spec, but is it really what you want when looking for advanced pvp guides? I don't think so..
I've seen a lot of Swifty and Bajheera videos on youtube and even tho I am aware of they're not the best warriors in the game, they're still way better then 90% of the bunch out there. What I've learned from studying their videos among with many other high rated arena videos from various warriors, they don't seem to use slam at all(!). It's mainly Colossus smash > Mortal strike > Overpower > rage dump with Heroic strike > apply Thunder clap if melee.
But the trick isn't really knowing what abilities to faceroll on your keyboard. The challenge seems to be making this "rotation" second nature, and taking full advantage of Colossus smash/Overpower/TsB procs - and that my friend, nobody can help you with but yourself... I kinda gave up

What I do now is just a simple macro like this

#showtooltip
/startattack
/castsequence reset=3 mortal strike, slam
/cast !overpower
/cast !colossus smash

Even tho I know the pro's don't use slam, it's the only ability worth spamming that uses a global cd.
If you try putting Heroic strike in that castsequence the macro will execute so fast it doesn't trigger overpower and colossus smash.
Use it, abuse it, love it, hate it..

[Deleted]

From what I understand (I mainly play prot in pve, arms in pvp), the arms rotation is something like this:

Mortal Strike > Colossus Smash > Execute (20%) > Overpower > Slam

If you reach 60 rage (80 with unending rage glyph) you dump rage with Heroic Strike. Heroic Strike also takes precedence when you have Taste For Blood stacks for regular rage dumping.

Aside from that, it's pretty important to try and keep yourself Enraged as much as possible. This will happen naturally when critting with certain abilities (Mortal Strike, for one) but also when using Berserker Rage (30 sec cd) which is mainly a dps cooldown in PvE. Try and pop your cooldowns together as much as possible.

I tend to pop Blood Fury + trinket at the same time and Avatar + Skull Banner + Recklessness. Recklessness has a longer cd than Avatar/Skull Banner though, so after 3 mins I pop Avatar/Skull Banner without Reck.

[Nakkí]

To add to the earlier posts:

PvE arms warriors will want to get used to Bloodbath (if they haven't already) since Avatar will be a non-option come 5.1.
Also, just like in Fury, you want to add Heroic Leap to your DPS abilities. Use it between globals for plenty of free damage.

As for CS vs. MS, I never delay MS to get CS up as arms. MS goes off on the CD no matter what. We have plenty of CS procs to play around with anyway.

[Nubproof]

Aside from that, it's pretty important to try and keep yourself Enraged as much as possible. This will happen naturally when critting with certain abilities (Mortal Strike, for one) but also when using Berserker Rage (30 sec cd) which is mainly a dps cooldown in PvE. Try and pop your cooldowns together as much as possible.

Sure, if you're dueling against classes that has no fear or in arena against classes that can't fear, Berserker rage should be used offensively.
But for battlegrounds or when facing comps that can use fear in arena, Berserker rage should only be used to cancel fear.

[Deleted]

Sure, if you're dueling against classes that has no fear or in arena against classes that can't fear, Berserker rage should be used offensively.
But for battlegrounds or when facing comps that can use fear in arena, Berserker rage should only be used to cancel fear.

Which is why I emphasised it's only used as a dps cooldown in PvE. In PvP it's main use is to break fears (and to some extent saps).

[Deleted]

Sure, if you're dueling against classes that has no fear or in arena against classes that can't fear, Berserker rage should be used offensively. But for battlegrounds or when facing comps that can use fear in arena, Berserker rage should only be used to cancel fear.

He mentioned pve in his post, and maybe it's just me but perhaps, the OP could specify whether he is talking about pvp or pve? The whole conversation is compromised when we don't know which of the two we are suppose to be talking about.

[OscaR]

unless you're capping rage soon, you don't have to dump heroic strike at >80 rage all the time. Stay at high rage and dump heroic strikes during CS while you're still able to have enough rage for Slam if no OP procs. Don't know if it's optimal but I tend to wait for CS to come off cd or proc to pop bloodbath. Pop cd's at the beginning of the fight and during execute phase. Have full rage, pop all cds, trinkets, CS and execute away. Heroic Leap during CS. Stance dancing will help a lot too.
Warriors have higher GCDs than other classes so you've got a little bit of time to plan ahead and see where you rage is at and choose what abilities to use.

[Nubproof]

He mentioned pve in his post, and maybe it's just me but perhaps, the OP could specify whether he is talking about pvp or pve? The whole conversation is compromised when we don't know which of the two we are suppose to be talking about.

Well I just assumed he was talking about PVP because of

People tell me that you can easy make diff, between a good arms war and a decent arms warrior. For example the rotation.

Might just be me, but can you tell me any difference between a good and a decent arms warrior besides the rotation for pve? I thought the only
difference between a good or a decent player in PvE WAS the rotation :P Any requirements for PvE besides perfect rotation is player based ( like tactical knowledge, gemming, reforging, talents) and not class, spec or utility based.

[Deleted]

Might just be me, but can you tell me any difference between a good and a decent arms warrior besides the rotation for pve? I thought the only difference between a good or a decent player in PvE WAS the rotation :P Any requirements for PvE besides perfect rotation is player based ( like tactical knowledge, gemming, reforging, talents) and not class, spec or utility based.

Class, spec and utilities, how and when to use them properly and most effectively all fall under the skill set of a good pve player. If you want to be a top damage dealer, you need to do a bit more than just follow the standard rotation. That's always been the case.

[Nubproof]

Class, spec and utilities, how and when to use them properly and most effectively all fall under the skill set of a good pve player. If you want to be a top damage dealer, you need to do a bit more than just follow the standard rotation. That's always been the case.

As a warrior I don't really see what duties you would get in a raid besides giving your best dps. But ok if you feel like the utilities dps warriors brings to a raid is abilities you would use very often then I apologize for my mistake

[Deleted]

As a warrior I don't really see what duties you would get in a raid besides giving your best dps. But ok if you feel like the utilities dps warriors brings to a raid is abilities you would use very often then I apologize for my mistake

If we're speaking of utilities... how about interrupts, sunders, shattering throw, various banners, RC, slows and intervene, just to name a few utilities that comes to mind that a dps warrior can do during a raid. Whether you use them or not is entirely up to the content and personal attitude, but going the extra mile will always be the difference between good and mediocre.

[Nubproof]

If we're speaking of utilities... how about interrupts, sunders, shattering throw, various banners, RC, slows and intervene, just to name a few utilities that comes to mind that a dps warrior can do during a raid. Whether you use them or not is entirely up to the content and personal attitude, but going the extra mile will always be the difference between good and mediocre.

Fair enough, I see your point. But I don't consider PvE to be a utility game like PvP is, and just because all those abilities mentioned above could help a raid it's still very situational, with a good raid you won't even need them. Unless a warrior not utilizing all of his spellbook causes the raid to wipe (which would be a lol raid btw) I'd say the 80k dps warrior is always better then your handy manny warrior doing 65k dps. Anyway.. What ever platform the OP wanted to improve his game, this discussion has kinda drifted off :P

[Deleted]

Fair enough, I see your point. But I don't consider PvE to be a utility game like PvP is, and just because all those abilities mentioned above could help a raid it's still very situational, with a good raid you won't even need them.

True, pvp has a bigger emphasize on utilizing your repertoire of all manner of gimmicks, but it doesn't mean that a good raider doesn't use them either. Doing hard modes the game changes pretty drastically, particularly in a 10-man setup where often have a much limited number of raid utility, thus the ability to shield wall and safeguard a tank to give him an extra damage CD (just an example) can be the difference between a wipe and a kill.

Unless a warrior not utilizing all of his spellbook causes the raid to wipe (which would be a lol raid btw) I'd say the 80k dps warrior is always better then your handy manny warrior doing 65k dps.

That isn't necessarily true either. There are many examples of encounters where high DPS is much less of a concern than proper control. Not only that but moving into hard modes those two usually mix and you need to be able to provide both, high amount of control and personal performance.

But yes, we've digressed from the topic quite a bit. I just wanted to make this point because it seems that way too many pvp'ers like to think they are the only ones who use, or should use, all the tools in their class's toolbox.

[OscaR]

Fair enough, I see your point. But I don't consider PvE to be a utility game like PvP is, and just because all those abilities mentioned above could help a raid it's still very situational, with a good raid you won't even need them. Unless a warrior not utilizing all of his spellbook causes the raid to wipe (which would be a lol raid btw) I'd say the 80k dps warrior is always better then your handy manny warrior doing 65k dps. Anyway.. What ever platform the OP wanted to improve his game, this discussion has kinda drifted off :P

with good raids you have to use them as a warrior. Banners, Rallying Cry, Safeguard/Vigilance, Taunt + Die By the Sword... Those are essential.