Arms Warrior Talents Guide

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The Warrior class talent tree seems relatively unique by comparison to many other class trees in that there is a lot of damage being offered as opposed to almost solely utility.

Pathing through the general tree offers a good amount of free points to choose what type of utility or survivability you want to take as you move down the tree.

Some key notable talents always worth taking are:

• Defensive Stance
• War Machine
• Rallying Cry
• Leeching Strikes
• Heroic Leap
• Crushing Force
• Reinforced Plates
• Barbaric Training
• Double Time
• Armored to the Teeth
• Wild Strikes
• Two-Handed Weapon Specialization
• Avatar

The above talents will not let you reach the entire way down the tree but are some talents which I feel are always worth taking. There are some strong optional talents to let you round out your build.

The only talent that currently serves almost no purpose for Arms is Crackling Thunder just below Thunder Clap. An argument could be made for taking this in M+ if AoE slows aren’t something easily brought by the rest of your group and your tank feels they will need it for kiting. This is, of course, a VERY fringe case.

The Warrior Class tree has undergone a small reshuffle for The War Within with the biggest change being the new location for Shockwave. Formerly a capstone talent, it is now positioned much further up the tree making it a very easy pickup whether it is required or not.

Some talents in the class tree have been altered or removed entirely. Most notable changes are to:

• Frothing Berserker (No longer includes Execute rage refund for Arms)
• Furious Blows (Former 5% attack speed increase REMOVED)
• Blood and Thunder (REMOVED. Thunder Clap now applies Rend to 5 targets baseline if you also have Rend talented)
• Warlord’s Torment (No longer grants Recklessness when Colossus Smash is used. Only when Avatar is used)
• Blademaster’s Torment (No longer has Bladestorm/Avatar interaction. Instead grants 8 seconds of Sweeping Strikes when Avatar is used. Additionally, during Avatar, Cleave cooldown is reduced by 1.5 seconds)
• Thunderous Words (No longer increases bleed damage by 15% at all times. Instead increases bleed damage by 30% to targets affected by Thunderous Roar)
• Champion’s Might (No longer requires the player to stand inside the Spear radius for the critical damage bonus. Instead, Champion’s Spear applies a debuff to all targets it hits increasing critical damage taken by 35%)

There are some further minor changes to the Class tree outside of the ones listed above and the Class tree itself looks slightly different compared to the Dragonflight version.

The Arms Warrior spec tree looks virtually identical to the Dragonflight version barring 2 exclusions. The old talents Reaping Swings and Tide of Blood have been removed with no talents taking their place. As a result, Cleave now has a 4.5 second cooldown only reduced by Haste rating or the Blademaster’s Torment talent.

Skullsplitter now makes Deep Wounds and Rend tick faster by default instead of needing a follow on talent like previous.

Tactician as a whole has been nerfed compared to Dragonflight now offering a total of 2% chance per Rage spent to reset Overpower. This is split between Tactician and Deft Experience both offering 1% proc chance each (0.5% per point in Deft Experience).

Other major spec tree changes are:

• Improved Overpower: Now gives a 2nd charge of Overpower instead of Dreadnaught.
• Strength of Arms: This talent has been split in 2 pieces. Strength of Arms retains the extra damage and crit chance to Overpower, while new talent, Finishing Blows, takes the 8 Rage gain on Overpower when used on a target below 35% HP.
• Exhilarating Blows: Now also affects Cleave.
• Storm of Swords: Redesigned. Now gives Cleave or Whirlwind a 30% chance to make the next Cleave/Whirlwind cost no rage.
• In for the Kill: Now matches the Haste buff to Colossus Smash duration. Used to be a flat 10 seconds.
• Ravager has returned in a choice node with Bladestorm.
• Unhinged: Now casts Mortal Strike at your target every other tick of Ravager/Bladestorm.
• Battlelord: No longer increases Overpower damage.
• Dance of Death: Fully redesigned and virtually useless.

Lastly, Cleave now replaces Whirlwind when talented. Additionally, all talents that affect Whirlwind now also affect Cleave if talented. This was part of a design shift for Arms to give more emphasis to Cleave for AoE damage instead of bleeds and Overpower / Dreadnaught.

Slayer

Originally packaged as a Hero Talent for “Execute enjoyers” Slayer has seen more focus placed into Bladestorm rather than Execute specifically.

Overall I think this is a good design choice. As offering more Execute usage alone makes the Execute phase feel less significant and the alternative of juicing up the Execute phase specifically has the potential to make pre Execute damage feel awful.

There are still decent Execute buffs through the debuff Marked for Execution as well as more access to Sudden Death through the Hero Talent Imminent Demise.

Being locked specifically into Bladestorm due to how the talent tree works could be a bit of an issue but as long as Bladestorm is satisfying to use I don’t see this being a big problem.

Colossus

The Colossus Hero Talent is rather beautiful in its simplicity. When first announced, it was widely acknowledged that Colossus would sink or swim depending on how Demolish felt. Blizzard were adamant that Demolish would do a significant amount of damage and be impossible to ignore. Happily enough, this has been successful.

On top of Demolish, there are a couple of damage amps to various abilities in the Hero tree which helps the likes of Cleave and Mortal Strike continue fulfilling the identity of being exceptionally hard hitting abilities.

There are 2 main concerns with Colossus currently.

Firstly, Demolish is almost identical to the Fyr’alath legendary with its usage. You are rooted for 2 seconds (reduced by Haste) with every use. The payoff of using the ability does help alleviate the slightly clunky nature of dealing with a temporary root but it could be quite annoying to some players.

Secondly, the way Demolish handles its cooldown reduction is quite odd and regularly misaligns with other cooldowns for Arms. In my experience this has never been overly frustrating but the idea of wanting to line up every cooldown possible, especially around an ability as big as Demolish, could cause some frustration at times.