Arms Warrior DPS Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities — The War Within (11.0.5)

Welcome to our Rotation page for Arms Warriors. On this page, you will find everything you need to know about actually playing the spec in Raiding and Mythic+ scenarios.

If the rotations below seem overwhelming to you, you might benefit from visiting our Easy Mode page, which outlines a close-to-optimal rotation in simpler terms.

The content on this page is purely PvE-related. If you are looking for PvP Rotation Tips, please visit our PvP page below.

The Arms rotation is a conditional priority list, which can change depending on talent choice. Use the checkboxes below to make the appropriate customizations and make sure that Battle Stance is always toggled on! Note that the same toggles are used for both the single and multitarget rotations.

Recommended	Other Options
Slayer	Colossus
Thunderous Roar	Champion's Spear
Skullsplitter	Warbreaker
Bladestorm	Ravager

This rotation focuses on the period above 35% health before Execute takes over the rotation, as noted in the following section.

1. Rend to apply or refresh Rend with 4 seconds remaining
2. Thunderous Roar
3. Ravager
4. Avatar simultaneously with Colossus Smash or Warbreaker
5. Colossus Smash
6. Warbreaker
7. Champion's Spear during Colossus Smash
8. Mortal Strike
9. Demolish on cooldown
10. Execute with three stacks of Marked for Execution
11. Bladestorm
12. Overpower with Opportunist or two charges available
13. Mortal Strike
14. Skullsplitter
15. Execute to consume Sudden Death procs
16. Overpower
17. Slam to fill the rotation

In simple terms, the Arms Warrior rotation revolves around keeping Mortal Strike on cooldown, while using various talented cooldowns, Overpower, and Slam regularly to fill the rotation. While simple, the difficulty lies in keeping track of various cooldowns, not all of which always naturally align.

• Slayer works in more frequent casts of Execute and cooldown reduction for Bladestorm, resulting many more free GCDs and therefore a surplus of Rage in the rotation. This also helps quickly stack and maintain Juggernaut, enhancing the overall Execute phase, even though Slayer itself cares more about Sudden Death and Marked for Execution than normal casts.
• Colossus adds Demolish to the rotation, a short and powerful cooldown that should be used on cooldown as much as possible. The other major difference from Slayer is the use of Ravager, favored due to its passive damage and extra Rage generation, allowing Mortal Strike and Execute to continue to be used without interruption.

Execute deals very high damage and refunds a portion of the Rage spent if the target does not die, helping maintain its higher Rage cost. Outside of Sudden Death procs, it will become the primary Rage spender once the target drops below 20% health, or 35%, with Massacre talented.

1. Thunderous Roar
2. Ravager
3. Avatar
4. Colossus Smash
5. Warbreaker
6. Champion's Spear during Colossus Smash
7. Demolish during Colossus Smash
8. Mortal Strike with two stacks of Executioner's Precision, while Ravager is not active
9. Bladestorm with two stacks of Executioner's Precision
10. Skullsplitter with less than 85 Rage
11. Mortal Strike with two stacks of Executioner's Precision
12. Overpower with Opportunist, Rage below 80, and less than 2 stacks of Martial Prowess
13. Execute with Sudden Death or more than 40 Rage
14. Overpower

While Execute appears to have a low priority, it becomes the main rotational spender, replacing Slam entirely. Mortal Strike is still semi-regularly with stacks of Executioner's Precision for increased damage, which also maintains Rend and Deep Wounds. However, Colossus will avoid casting Mortal Strike while Ravager is active, instead preferring to use Execute and Overpower and let Unhinged passively consume their damage buffs.

The Arms opener is functionally identical to the standard rotation, using Charge to initiate combat to start with more Rage, applying Rend, and then opening with cooldowns and Colossus Smash, as outlined in the single target rotation above.

There are two multi-target Arms rotations, a two-target setup similar to the single target rotation and another using Cleave to focus on sustained damage against a high number of targets. Use the checkboxes below to make the appropriate customizations.

Recommended	Other
Slayer	Colossus
Bladestorm	Ravager
Thunderous Roar	Champion's Spear
Skullsplitter	Warbreaker

The two-target rotation is functionally identical to single target, with the addition of using Sweeping Strikes on cooldown to cleave attacks onto a secondary target. Because it also applies Colossus Smash to a second target, Warbreaker is not needed unless there are more targets.

The most common multitarget talent build is a hybridized setup, which focuses on Cleave for sustained multitarget damage, but retains Blunt Instruments instead of Warbreaker for increased haste and priority damage.

1. Cleave while Sweeping Strikes and Merciless Bonegrinder are active.
2. Thunder Clap to apply or refresh Rend at 4 seconds remaining
3. Sweeping Strikes
4. Thunderous Roar
5. Avatar
6. Ravager
7. Sweeping Strikes
8. Skullsplitter during Sweeping Strikes
9. Colossus Smash
10. Warbreaker
11. Champion's Spear during Colossus Smash
12. Cleave
13. Demolish during Sweeping Strikes
14. Overpower
15. Mortal Strike during Sweeping Strikes
16. Execute during Sweeping Strikes
17. Overpower during Sweeping Strikes
18. Bladestorm
19. Execute with Sudden Death, or more than 40 Rage, or Marked for Execution
20. Mortal Strike during Sweeping Strikes
21. Overpower
22. Thunder Clap
23. Mortal Strike

Arms multi-target rotation is extremely dynamic, changing frequently based on the number of targets, what specific buffs are available, and whether Sweeping Strikes is active. In Season 1, Cleave also helps maintain the powerful tier set bonus in addition to Deep Wounds, almost completely passively, thanks to hitting multiple targets.

Arms cooldowns align fairly naturally, thanks to Anger Management. Still, it is important to ensure that Colossus Smash and Deep Wounds are active on as many targets as possible before going into the cooldown cycle.

Avatar is a potent cooldown in its own right, though its follow-on Tormented talents have changed considerably. Warlord's Torment is directly depowered with reduced Rage generation and no longer activated by Colossus Smash, while Blademaster's Torment now increases Sweeping Strikes and Cleave uptime, instead of extra casts of Bladestorm.

Bladestorm and Ravager are both strong AoE cooldowns, which generate a high amount of Rage and even contribute meaningful single target damage through Unhinged. The choice between them is largely dictated by Hero Talent choice, with Slayer requiring Bladestorm, and Colossus favoring Ravager for more Mortal Strike casts and resulting Colossal Might stacks.

Skullsplitter applies a debuff which causes Rend and Deep Wounds to tick twice as quickly, allowing them to deal more damage in a shorter amount of time that better fits into increased damage windows such as Colossus Smash and Thunderous Words. While this does result in refreshing Rend more often, the tradeoff is typically worth it.

Maintained by Mortal Strike, Colossus Smash, Bladestorm, and Cleave, keeping Deep Wounds on the target or targets is paramount to maximizing damage, as it can significantly increase the damage taken from your abilities. Because the debuff lasts a minimum of 12 seconds, this should happen naturally throughout the rotation, but when facing multiple targets, take care to keep the debuff on as many targets as possible for maximum benefit.

Arms generates Rage purely from auto-attack swings and Charge casts, and nearly all abilities cost Rage to use. Ensuring you always have enough Rage to use Mortal Strike on cooldown is paramount, both for damage and to keep Deep Wounds on the target. Choosing not to spend Rage on a filler ability and letting a global cooldown go unfilled is better than letting the debuff drop off.

The overall Rage economy has been significantly reduced in The War Within, but so too has the amount of Rage spent by most abilities, resulting in generating and spending in much smaller amounts. This makes it harder to Rage starve, but also harder to dump Rage quickly, though that is not necessarily a bad thing, as it creates more room to use Ignore Pain without infringing on the normal rotation.

A small optimization can be made by moving out of range of the target and using Charge to generate extra Rage during your rotation. Care should be taken to do this between autoattack swings when Colossus Smash is not active. Heroic Leap can also be used to create enough room to Charge for bosses with large hitboxes, which is sometimes specifically referred to as Heroic Charge.

Warriors have several active tools through Charge and Heroic Leap that allow for instant movement across large distances. Finding ways to maximize your uptime on a target through the intelligent use of these is crucial, as downtime is extremely detrimental to the flow of the rotation. The talents Double Time and Bounding Stride are particularly useful in any encounter that demands heavy movement.

Arms' primary survivability tool is Die by the Sword, which is exceptionally useful for immuning direct physical damage and can even be used to tank raid bosses for a short time. Defensive Stance and Ignore Pain can be used for more mitigation when expecting more frequent spike damage, though be mindful that both come at a small cost of damage output. Finally, Spell Reflection is an extremely useful tool for mitigating or outright immuning many sources of magical damage.

Warriors also have access to Rallying Cry, one of the few defensive group cooldowns in the game. It is typically used to help the group survive key encounter mechanics rather than as a personal cooldown. Keep in mind that it is on the global cooldown, so be ready to use it when needed.

Arms also brings Battle Shout, increasing all party and raid members' Attack Power by 5%, which should be applied before combat begins. 5% Attack Power translates to roughly 5% damage for melee classes and Hunters. However, the actual impact is slightly reduced due to the prevalence of non-scaling sources of damage, such as trinkets and potions.

For information about Mythic+ as an Arms Warrior and the rotation you need to use in this game mode, please refer to our Mythic+ page.

WeakAuras can tremendously affect your performance, helping you track important buffs, debuffs, and cooldowns. Since this is a broad topic, we dedicated a page to it.