Introduction to the Arms Warrior
Arms Warriors are strong but somewhat slow damage dealers which revolve around building burst damage windows with Colossus Smash. Their greatest strength comes in the form of a versatile toolkit, offering Single Target, close-range cleave, burst AoE, and even a limited form of physical damage immunity.
Arms has powerful burst damage abilities with short cooldowns, making it both extremely competitive and easy to play in Mythic+ dungeons, where it can align those abilities with most pulls. Although it will not always fill every global between cooldowns, those abilities refresh frequently enough that the downtime is minimal, and further reduced by higher gear. In addition to powerful on-demand burst-AoE.
Below you will find a beginners guide to the Arms Warrior, you can click on highlighted abilities, for a more in depth description of them.
Strengths and Weaknesses of the Arms Warrior
Strengths
- Bursty, cooldown driven damage.
- Versatile toolkit, able to effectively deal with 2 targets by using
Sweeping Strikes
Weaknesses
- Slow rotation, with intermittent periods of unfilled global cooldowns.
- Lack of sustained combat healing
Talents
Level | Choices | ||
---|---|---|---|
15 | ![]() | ![]() | ![]() |
30 | ![]() | ![]() | ![]() |
45 | ![]() | ![]() | ![]() |
60 | ![]() | ![]() | ![]() |
75 | ![]() | ![]() | ![]() |
90 | ![]() | ![]() | ![]() |
100 | ![]() | ![]() | ![]() |
Rotation of the Arms Warrior
The basic rotation for the Arms Warrior is as follows:
- Cast
Warbreaker
- Use Overpower to buff
Mortal Strike
- Cast
Mortal Strike to maintain
Deep Wounds
- Cast
Bladestorm during
Colossus Smash
- Use
Slam
- Cast
Warbreaker
- Cast
Bladestorm when under 30 Rage
-
Execute as often as possible to fill GCDs
You can use the recommended Addon ConRo for help with your rotation, it can be found in our Addons Guide here
Cooldowns
Bladestorm deals massive damage and inflicts
Deep Wounds on single and against multiple targets.
Colossus Smash is a high damage offensive cooldown which causes the target to take increased damage, creating a burst window that serves as the linchpin of Arms’ damage.
Sweeping Strikes is a secondary cooldown which enables two target damage.
Stat Priority
The stat priority of the Arms Warrior is:
- Haste
- Critical Strike
- Mastery
- Versatility
- Strength

Pro Healer (If I’m tabbed in), otherwise a total Moob