Warrior Hero Talents — The War Within (11.0.5)

This page is specifically about Hero Talents in The War Within. If you want to learn more about the best regular talents for Arms Warrior, check out our Talents page:

Colossus is slightly less competitive in single target, but has additional defensive bonuses, and Demolish provides a strong burst of damage on a very short cooldown.

Slayer is very strong in all situations, providing better single-target damage, particularly during the execute phase, along with a smoother damage profile and its own powerful cooldown in Bladestorm. Instead of defensive bonuses, it brings increased mobility, which may or may not be useful depending on the encounter.

Colossus performs very well in multitarget, with more frequent spikes of damage offset by periods of noticeably reduced damage in between cooldowns. It performs very competitively against Slayer, with a slightly higher overall average, at the cost of slightly less priority damage.

Slayer offers very strong sustained multitarget damage, with a smoother damage profile and more priority damage than Colossus, though at the cost of less frequent spikes. Overall, the two perform within a small margin of one another, dictated by timing and circumstance more so than raw tuning would imply.

2.

Best Hero Talent Builds for Arms Warrior

Slayer Pure Single Target Build Slayer Balanced Multitarget Build Colossus Spikier Mythic+ Build

3.

Best Slayer Single Target Build for Arms Warrior

Slayer lacks compelling defensive bonuses but offers a choice between increased mobility through Relentless Pursuit and Vicious Agility. Which is better will largely come down to circumstance, though the increased movement speed after using Charge is very helpful in raid situations where bosses get quickly pulled from one side of the other, making it a safe default choice. In the rare circumstance where Heroic Leap is needed just a few seconds sooner, Vicious Agility may be worth swapping to.

3.

Best Slayer Sustained AoE Build for Arms Warrior

Slayer has an interesting offensive choice bewteen Culling Cyclone and Brutal Finish. While it seems intuitive that increasing the damage of Bladestorm would be better for multitarget content, the 20% extra damage is divided by the number of targets hit so that it will always grant the same total amount of extra damage, regardless of the number of targets hit, resulting in no extra damage done against multiple targets. However, Brutal Finish is currently bugged, with the buff triggering and immediately fading when Bladestorm is used with three stacks of Imminent Demise, leaving Culling Cyclone as the only viable option.

3.

Best Colossus Mythic+ Build for Arms Warrior

Colossus has an interesting utility choice between longer stuns with Boneshaker or a knock-up and lower cooldown from Earthquaker. Both of these are compelling in their own way, though for most players in Mythic+ dungeons, the lower cooldown will be preferred because the knockup also helps ensure the disruption lands even if the target is affected by diminishing returns after being stunned too many times. In more specific situations, like dealing with raid adds that spawn on a predictable timer, the extra duration may be preferred.

Colossus revolves around Demolish, with Mortal Strike, Cleave, and Execute all contributing to increase its damage and reduce its cooldown. Despite this, talents that increase the frequency of those abilities are not currently favored, so the rotation is not that different from a normal Arms Warrior, aside from keeping Demolish more or less on cooldown.

Slayer differs from a normal Arms Warrior due to the increased number of Sudden Death procs, which are important to consume Marked for Execution and reduce the cooldown of Bladestorm. Although this does not seem like a significant change, it results in an excess of Rage due to so many more free globals without any good way to spend it before reaching the Execute phase. Ignore Pain can be used to help burn extra resources, though doing so does not contribute to the offensive rotation.