Some in-depth thoughts and strategies for Warrior PvP

[Gamblore]

Hey everybody, here's my personal take on arms and what I've found to be successful in PvP so far...
First of all, what I've noticed is that arms is FUN again. There are a few issues, but in general I think we are in a rock solid place after this patch.

Some tips, if you have to face off against a rogue, keep a rend up at all times on secondary targets. This way you can hammer him with Taste for Blood overpowers even if you can't get the rend on him due to evasion or dodges.

Write a focus overpower macro. Taste for Blood is not limited to the target you have the rend on, so make sure you can use it on your focus target to apply Unrelenting Assault.

I use
/cast battle stance
/cast [target=focus] overpower

A great time to use this is say when a Paladin has Divine Plea up.

Consider:

If you have a mortal strike on your main target, the paladin has divine plea up and you hit him with a UA he is healing for only 12.5 % of his heal efficiency. It might as well be nothing, and it lasts allot longer than a pummel. This is an ideal time for a bladestorm. Blow recklessness then Bladestorm and the damage is literally unhealable.

One of the great things I've noticed about arms this patch is the pure disruption you can produce. I've seen allot of debate (and whining) since the patch dropped about shield bash vs pummel vs unrelenting assault vs spell reflect. My solution??? Use them all. Look at the sheer volume of tools you have to use here! Be ready to use any of these for every possible situation on short notice. Have them all hot-keyed, macrod and ready to go. Note: pay attention to the order that you use them. If someone is casting from a distance, start with a spell reflection. Spell reflection is FAST. I can beat any Druid cyclone or any mage polymorph with it. But once you have that shield out to reflect why stop there? One thing that is rarely mentioned in this debate is that Blizzard DID add an instant interrupt to the arms tree on a twelve second cooldown in the form of Juggernaut (if you glyph Rapid Charging). Hit the next cast with a Juggernaut charge and the one after that with a shield bash. Then since your in arms stance anyways hit the cast after that with an overpower for a UA debuff. Or hit it with pummel, into an intercept. Blizzard has given us some amazing options here and I personally feel almost bad for Frost and Blood Death Knights with there one stupid mind freeze that is easily juked, even though they have no stance requirements on it.

A great move is to hit a healer with a focus intercept/pummel/overpower then get back on your target with a Charge. Have focus modifiers written into both your charge and intercept macros.

I use
/cast [modifier: ctrl, target=focus] charge; charge
/cast [modifier: ctrl, target=focus] intercept; intercept

Another useful macro I've found for shattering throw is
/cast battle stance
/cast [modifier:ctrl, target=focus] shattering throw; shattering throw

I hope some of this is useful to you guys, and have fun hunting all the scrub DKs and Rets who are about to get their comeuppance from the mighty arms warriors! Reply in this thread if you have any questions or any useful tips macros you've found.

P.S. As a side note; I went with mace spec and am finding it quite good. I am running Deadly Gladiator Bonegrinder and I was able to out-dps a fellow arms warrior who ran with a Betrayer of Humanity in BGs. It seems to hit DKs and Paladins really really hard. For glyphs I'm running Rending, Rapid Charge and Imp. Hamstring.

Edit: Since making this post I've changed my mind on the best pvp build as a result of discussions within this thread. Here is my modified build which I predict will become the cookie cutter arms pvp spec for 3.1. Special thanks to Cyrant for first bringing it to my attention.
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#LcrubfIt0frRzGuioGx0o

[BubbaJim]

Some tips, if you have to face off against a rogue, keep a rend up at all times on secondary targets. This way you can hammer him with overpowers even if you can't get the rend on him due to evasion or dodges.

didn't think in-depth enough to remember that Overpower can't be blocked/dodged/parried :/

Other than that, sounds fairly standard stuff, good to write down if ppl dont already know tho..

[Gamblore]

I meant rend a secondary target to get Taste for Blood procs to use on the rogue. On good rogues it is sometimes difficult to get a rend on him if he deadzones charge/intercept and has evasion/evasion glyph up for 40 seconds. I am well aware that overpower can't be blocked dodged or parried.

[yadomaru]

Some other things I would like to add:

Remeber that shield bash give also a daze effect - means you can slow people in defence stance (some how people seems to forget to use this one, so you have slow abilites in every stance). That means druid cant shapeshift out of daze.

When rogue pop evasion and you are in defence stance, change to battle stance and overpower now that it only have 1sec cd .

When you see a target gets saped never ever go close to the target and try to uncover him from stealth. When rogue sap he is alread moving away form the target that means he is never close to the saped target. You always try to uncover him couple of yards away from the saped target.

Also learn to master vanish - demo shout (most people have 2pts in Booming Voice means 15yards).

When druid pops Nature Grasp the buff looks like a claw and have a sound to it - Spell reflect.

Edit

Reminder:

For god sake use your shield wall if you for some reason in a frostnova and mirro image and water element is out and top of that mage casting frostnova.

Addon:

Think most of you already have it but for thouse that dont get Eventalert.

[darkdesires]

im sorry 2 say it seems a good post but taking blood craze over improved MS while having bullheaded in the back of your head is just fail considering that a rogue for example will just spam you with his poisions of healing reduction what will minimize your benefit of it and a pala will kick your arse so fast that that little heal wont even be seen by yourself. Seeing that my MS hits like a truck for a average of 4k+ with my low gear(halfblue and some valourus and the HoS hc weapon) seeing that hitting such numbers with your second attack and such low gear i dont think you would even need 2 bother considering 2 replace it. but thats just my opinion no hard feelings;0.

AND YES MY GRAMMAR SUCKS

[Gamblore]

@Darkdesires

Yeah I might change out my spec once arena starts for imp. Mortal Strike and glyph it as well. I'm still debating. I'm going to wait and see what warrior survivability is like in arena. I really enjoy 21 second rends though especially against Mage/Rogue. It's amusing watching rogues sprinting all around the arena frantically trying to restealth for that long. I'll have to take a look at recount and see how much DPS i'd gain from 20% boost to MS. The rends are easy to refresh so it might be a waste to glyph it. I'll be playing with a holy pally so i might not need blood frenzy as well.

Another point i wanted to make was I was having success in 2v2 skirmishes with double dps. Warrior/DK and warrior rogue come to mind. We could sit on the pally and force the bubble almost instantly into a Shattering Throw. Anybody else having success with unusual comps by leveraging the new shattering throw mechanic?

[Predatore]

Against DK's and Rogues I often switch to Def + Sword and Board activate Shieldblock and revenge the Crap outa them. Who said a Warrior can't do damage while turtled?

[Wenger]

I'd definitely go with the imp. MS route because of Juggernaut.

[Cyrant]

Yeah I've given imp MS a shot and it's really nice.

The build I was trying out for PvP was:

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#LcrhbfIt0fMozGuioGx0soo

However I've been debating switching around and doing

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#LcrubfIt0frRzGuioGx0o

60/11. I lose out on Blood Craze but I get Trauma, strength in arms and a point in tactic mastery.

Thoughts?

[Gamblore]

@Cyrant

I actually really like that spec allot. You gain allot of extra rage every minute by taking imp. charge over tactical mastery; something i never considered. One issue i was having by not having full tactical mastery though was if I forced a bubble or an ice block in berserker stance or defensive stance it was hard to switch back to battle and get a quick shattering throw. I guess you could always save your blood rage for those situations, if you macrod your shattering throw like this to get those clutch instant shattering throws:

15 rage from having 1 point in TM plus 10 rage from the first tick of blood rage=25 rage;

/cast battle stance
/cast bloodrage
/cast [modifier:ctrl, target=focus] shattering throw; shattering throw

Other than that though this looks like a pretty mint spec. I've always really liked trauma and bleeds, and have used it in most of my arms builds. I'm assuming your glyphs are hamstring, rapid charge and mortal strike?

If survivability wasn't an issue without blood craze this looks like the all around best arms spec that I've seen for sustained pressure and burst.

[Battousai]

@Cyrant

I actually really like that spec allot. You gain allot of extra rage every minute by taking imp. charge over tactical mastery; something i never considered. One issue i was having by not having full tactical mastery though was if I forced a bubble or an ice block in berserker stance or defensive stance it was hard to switch back to battle and get a quick shattering throw. I guess you could always save your blood rage for those situations, if you macrod your shattering throw like this to get those clutch instant shattering throws:

15 rage from having 1 point in TM plus 10 rage from the first tick of blood rage=25 rage;

/cast battle stance
/cast bloodrage
/cast [modifier:ctrl, target=focus] shattering throw; shattering throw

Other than that though this looks like a pretty mint spec. I've always really liked trauma and bleeds, and have used it in most of my arms builds. I'm assuming your glyphs are hamstring, rapid charge and mortal strike?

If survivability wasn't an issue without blood craze this looks like the all around best arms spec that I've seen for sustained pressure and burst.

There's really very little reason to be out of battle stance for any lengthy period of time with Juggernaut. Pummel....a split second intercept after Charge, and its back to battle to rend/OP/reflect/.

[Gamblore]

@Battousi

I was thinking of the times when I dodge or parry an attack, as well as pummel intercept rotations. If I dodge or parry something I like to do a quick swap to defensive and get off 3-4 revenges, especially if I'm under focus.

I think there will always be compelling reasons to swap stances in pvp that could potentially rage starve a warrior at critical moments. Whether it is for a quick intervene, revenge spam, shield block, shield wall, intercept, pummel, etc...

The macro was just there in case you need to break an invulnerabilty effect at an inconveniant moment. Another useful thing I've found is if a pally bubbles and you're at zero rage you can still charge him in his bubble to generate the rage for a shattering throw.

[stawlsajmon]

I have a question here. You guys seems to know alot of this (but it's the Warrior forum afterall), and i'm going to show this thread to my future arena partner. He is leveling a Warrior at the moment, and he could use some of these tips, even if it's beginner tips. I for myself play priest, and I think they will be strong this season, and Warriors are hopefully going to be more succesfull than the last one.

But my question are, do you guys think that Disc Priest and Arms Warrior will work as a combo. I was thinking with all the mobility, stuns and interrupts, they have a decent form of having a target locked down, and it can actually be something.

But you guys knows more about Warriors overall then i do so could someone experienced please comment his thoughts of this.

P.S English isn't my first langhuage, hopefully you can understand it.

[Gamblore]

@stawlsajmon

I typically play 2v2 with a hybid ret holy pally, and I have a resto shaman as my healer alt so I am no expert on priests. That being said I think for sure that priest warrior will be viable this season. I think that an arms warrior will be viable with any healer this season.

The only tips I might have for you is to consider a 33/38/0 build. Here is what Serennia wrote on holy priests (he was writing about DKs, but I see no reason some of this couldn't be applied to arms warriors as well):

"This spec and strategy is viable with any healer really (although I feel shamans will be the weakest with a DK), however, I think of all the healers in 3.1 for 2v2, a Holy Priest will be the best. Yes, a holy priest. Why? Because priests have the best on-demand burst with their holy fire/SWD combos, in addition to spammable nukes with smite and mind blast. Paladins have nothing spammable, druids don't compete either with wrath and they have to leave tree form to do that, and shamans also don't really compare outside of their lava burst combo. In addition to this, a priest's fear does not share diminishing returns with Hungering Cold, thereby offering a very long CC chain assuming the other team's healer doesn't have trinkets up."

Note: Obviously a warrior doesn't have anything like hungering cold, but we have comparable disruption with focus pummels, intercepts, unrelenting assault overpower, and intimidating shout. We also have one of the best healing debuffs in the game in the form of mortal strike.

He continues:

"Holy priests running a 33/38/0 spec will also be EXTREMELY difficult to kill by having both focused will and blessed resilience, really only losing out on pain suppression and penance. In return, they gain blessed resilience (crit immunity after being crit), much more raw healing power, better regen if you take holy concentration, and most importantly, body and soul. I cannot emphasize how amazing body and soul is. It makes a priest's abolish disease also dual function as an abolish poison when used on themself, removing a poison every tick in addition to disease. Rogue on your priest? Who cares when he won't even be able to crit him, focused will reducing a huge amount of damage, and the priest will be able to easily kite the rogue with abolish and 60% speed boosts everytime he uses PWS. I've tested this myself on TR playing a priest and it's much better than I thought it would be."

I haven't tested this out myself but it seems to make a allot of sense. Giving your warrior a mini-sprint every time you hit him with a PWS would be huge for closing the distance on classes that were trying to kite. Combine that with the offensive and defensive dispels a priest offers and their healing efficiency and offensive pressure and you have an extremly viable top tier comp. I'd advise your warrior friend to pick up engineering and try Cyrant's spec
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#LcrubfIt0frRzGuioGx0o with glyph of mortal strike, Rapid Charge and Hamstring.

Hope this helps!

[darkdesires]

this is the spec i would use for arena.

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#LcrrbfIt0frRzGuiohg0o

i took 1point of of iron will and applied this 1 to tactical mastery due 2 the stance switching all the time + if you keep 10 rage when you switch for minimum you can always count on your intercept and not always on bloodrage due 2 the 1 minute CD and you can build faster rage what will result in enough rage for a WW after your intercept and switch back2 battle stance without loosing 2 much rage. You can even refresh your hamstring in battlestance this way may this be needed or piercing howl watever you like .
i took the imp demo shout over booming voice cause i meet alot of melee these days and less attack power for a melee is a real bitch incase you wanna burst.
im also considering 2 take full demo shout over armored 2 the teeth tho i i think i gotta gearup a bit before i can do that.

im yust wondering what you guys think about it.

[Gamblore]

@Darkdesires

Looks like a pretty solid spec dude. I'd reconsider keeping booming voice though, as the wider area of effect it gives your demoralizing shout can sometimes catch a stealthed rogue or feral druid. It's nice also that it makes it last 45 seconds rather then 30, which saves you rage having to reapply it. In addition you seem to be a bit confused about tactical mastery. All warriors retain 10 rage minimum when they swap stances, even with no points in tactical mastery. With your 2 points in tactical mastery, you will retain 20 rage every time you change stances. The ideal amount you want to have after a swap is 15 rage, as this allows you to do a stance swap and get a disarm or a spell reflect off. To do that you need just 1 point in tactical mastery. My personal view is to keep full points in iron will, with all the stuns out there every millisecond counts especially when a rogue is all over your nuts. I'm even considering putting in the stun reduction meta gem for a full 30% off of stun duration. This would reduce a five-point kidney from 6 seconds to 4, which is what a cheap shot normally lasts for.

I think dropping armored to the teeth for imp. demo shout would be a bad, bad idea. If you have 20k armor, armored to the teeth gives you an extra 333 AP. Imagine if you could find a 333 passive AP trinket. Would you use it, or drop it for a trinket that reduced your opponents attack power by an extra 100-150? The best defence is a good offense. You want the other team reacting to you and your moves. You want to control the tempo of the fight. The best way to do that is to put them on the defensive from massive burst damage. You don't want to be chasing them around to cast a demo shout that will only last 30 seconds without booming voice.

You did make me think of something though that I like to do when fighting Paladin teams which is to shield slam off their teammates blessing of might or blessing of kings. This also works to remove hand of freedom and sacred shields. If you keep demo shout up and you get rid of their blessing of might you have just reduced their attack power by a staggering 800+ attack power. Most paladins are dumb and won't even realize that you did it so they won't reapply it. Don't try this against Ret nubs though because they have to many magical buffs protecting them and you're likely to shield slam off something worthless, like vengeance or replenishment or Art of War.

I still believe the best 60/11 spec I've seen so far that was posted by Cyrant here:

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#LcrubfIt0frRzGuioGx0o

I'm going to predict that this becomes the cookie cutter Arms warrior spec for S6.

[Battousai]

I still believe the best spec I've seen so far that is 60/11 posted by Cyrant here:

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#LcrubfIt0frRzGuioGx0o

I'm going to predict that this becomes the cookie cutter Arms warrior spec for S6.

HEEEEYY....thats my build, only mace ;D

[Gamblore]

@Battousi

Yeah man I'm running maces too. How are you finding it? After stepping into the arena yesterday my enthusiasm for maces is starting to wane a bit. It would be nice to guarantee just about every overpower be a crit, and also negate the bulk of the other teams resilience, which Poleaxe does. It would also stack with impale and my chaotic skyfire Meta. I'm starting to think that I will have to burn my arena points to pick up a Tier 1 Furious Gladiator Decapitator in order to make my push for 2200 to get a tier 2 weapon (I don't raid so I don't really have any other options).

Edit: I saw your post over in the other thread Battousi so I see what your thoughts are on armor pen. I think I will follow your lead and try stacking armor pen over my strength gems. Thanks for your hard work and clarity on this subject.

[Gamblore]

Hey everybody I just got back from some arenas and here is my report:

As things stand right now arms warriors are the new Death Knight of season 6. I'm not kidding. Our class is that strong. Prepare yourselves for incoming QQ from death knights, rogues, mages, hunters, and paladins. Get yourself a good mace, socket all your reds and oranges for armor pen and go with this spec.

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#LcrrbfIzxfrRzGuiohg0o

Trust me the results are spectacular.

[ellascdog]

This is a new thought that I have been working on figuring out for the past week. SWORD SPEC! I have run swords since preBC to rank 13 and as you can imagine I was utterly devestated when it was nerfed. Having said that, and despite all the tests that I have seen done and done myself on Poleaxe/Mace proving that they are superior, I still believe that sword spec has some hope only because as arms you will be swinging far more (i.e. overpower, execute, ms, rend, etc) the 5% chance becomes far greater then it was when you had to wait on whirlwind or MS CD to come up. Furthermore, BS with sword spec could prove to be huge in many situations. I am not making a case for sworc spec being superior to the others or even being equal, just trying to gather thoughts on its viabilty. Thanks.