Effectively placing your shortcuts and "know to when what" comes together when you want to minimize brain time for certain things.
First off: I know this is by far not optimal and the best warriors will surely contradict me in some things, but here are some basic UI and some custom warrior macro/keybindtips:
1.
Have one or two of your most used Abilitites include a "/startattack" - this especially for multiple targets or "vanishing" opponents makes retargeting a nobrainer since /startattck simply takes the closest enemy in target. Nothing is as annoying as mashing your buttons and realizing 3 seconds too late that your previous target died and nothing new is selected.
example:
Code:
#showtooltip
/startattack
/cast Mortal Strike
2.
Group abilities of the same "mindset" to the same key/area
That is to say, keep your off-CD ragedumps as close together as possible, so that even if you accidently "mash a button to the left"(tm), at least some damage is done. I know it sounds ridicoulus but i cannot count the times a cleaved a single mob instead of HSing it, but hey, who's to argue: at least I spent that 30 rage in an OFF-CD and don't have to worry about lost damage by having done nothing.
Here's a macro for binding cleave and Whirlwind to the same button with a Shift modifier
Code:
#showtooltip
/startattack
/cast [modifier:shift]Whirlwind;Cleave;
Please note: If you (like me) have a modifier-macro bound to a letter, WoW makes a difference between "e" and "E". To make those macros work, you need to bind both keys to that respective Barslot. E.g. if your number 7 slot is bound to "e" you need to bind "E" to that slot too in order to make an e-E macro work properly.
3.
Making decisions is what decides if your arms warrior performs on the edge of the dps meters - top or bottom. To alleviate your brain from making such decisions in tight circumstances such as raidbossfights should be your main priority. To do so, first of all, you should consider some infight-reminder addons like Power Auras Classic or some CD-addon like NeedToKnow. If you need help setting those up, feel free to PM me or look up one of the many youtube videos or online guides.
The other part of the "ease your brain" thing comes when binding things together in one key. This means: You can bind as many Off-CDs as you want and one On-CD skill together.
Especially usefull is
Code:
#showtooltip Recklessness
/cast Recklessness
/cast Skullbanner
/cast Avatar
/cast Berserker Rage
Please note: This does not free you from having an "emergency" button for any single of those skills. If the raidleader wants you to place the skullbanner, this does not necessarily have to be the time for you to use all the other CDs.
I for myself bound "Die by the sword", "Victory Rush" and "Use Healthstone" together. Yeah I know, some of those abilities may be wasted in a special situation, but having used them at all makes up for waiting for a special moment to press CTRL+ALT+Ö, Shift+F and CTRL+Q because your keyboard is clustered with thousands of skills.
WARNING: If you know how to manage your enrage uptime, this macro is NOT for you!
For all you other out there, that don't want to be bothered with another Cooldown to watch and the decision of "now? or after MS or when?" this may help you.
Code:
#showtooltip Colossus Smash
/cast Berserker Rage
/cast Colossus Smash
... I can literally feel you cringing ... Why on hell would I bind a skill that can trigger an enrage with an active enrage-trigger?
Two reasons, one simple, one complicated.
The simple one first:
I need to decide so many things in an Arms-Warrior fight (I'm still learning it, so be patient with me ) that at the moment I cannot be botherd with the decision, when to best use that enrage - especially if it is best used on cooldown. So I decided to do just that. Use it on Cooldown!
Now for the complicated:
The ONLY scenario in which this berserker Rage is wasted, is, if the Colossus Smash you are about to cast crits. AND it only comes to this on the beginning of a fight and every now and then, when BR and CS are up at the same time.
If it crits you waste your berserker Rage and effectively 10 seconds of 10% increased damage, you could have spent sometime else - bummer!
If it doesn't, you're fine because you needed that enrage anyways.
So assuming you have 30% crit (which is pretty high fetched atm) every 3rd CS will crit. If bad-luck haz u again, it's that special CS when BR is off-CD too. If it isn't - again - you're fine.
You don't need to bother with mortal strike enrages since you NEED to place berserker rage at some point and in a 10 second timeframe fit 2 mortal strikes, so don't tell me, you are making any decision if it's good to use BR (when not enraged) or wait for that MS. IF you do, then you are already on your way to mastering your rage and in no need of this macro.
So why using this macro?
It's that simple for me: I better use a very damage-pumping ability on cooldown than not using it on CD because there's so much going on in my mind - and the most effective way to have it up at a usefull time is CS for me.
OK, sorry for the long post - if you find wrong spellings, please tell me, English is not my native language, nor do I use the English WoW-client.
Cheers
Fiercon
EDIT: As Psykoticrage mentioned it is VERY beneficial to know the timer (use NeedToKnow for example) and the number of Stacks (use Power Auras Classic for example) of your taste for blood and your Enrage/CS timings. IF you can - and you should aim for it - always use your 2+ Stacks of TfB when CS aND Enrage are up. This can be achieved in 70-90% of the times, if you know when the respective buffs are fading.