Arms Warrior Midnight Talents Guide

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The Warrior class tree has received a fairly substantial overhaul for Midnight. There has been an increased focus on trying to get some more utility for Warrior in some fairly unique ways like making our shout abilities better or even giving them some new additional effects.

While not all of these utility options need to be considered all of the time, listed below are a few key choices and where they could be used to help you decide what to choose and when:

Piercing Howl - Retains its old movement speed reduction (70% for 8 seconds) but has also had a small movement speed increase for allies added as well (30% for 4 seconds). It is incredibly small and is in no way a replacement for Druid Roar or Shaman Windrush, but it could definitely have some occasional use regardless.

Javelineer - A new talent that adds a 3 second silence against non-player enemies hit by Shattering or Wrecking Throw. This is an incredible piece of utility added to Warrior as we have generally been useless when it comes to helping gather a pack outside of our standard Pummel. This will be very useful in M+ in particular but may have some application in raid as well.

Interpose - A new talent that shares a choice node with Intervene. Interpose lets the player charge to a target location near allies. The Warrior then takes 30% of all damage dealt to allies near the charge point for 8 seconds or until a damage cap is reached. The damage cap is incredibly small due to the low 30 second cooldown on the ability. Use this ability with care as you will be taking extra damage for a moment after using it.

Field Dressing - While Warrior in general remains one of the stronger classes defensively, it has gained some extra survivability through this new talent. Simple in design, it increases all healing you receive by 3% as well as all self-healing by 10%. This could be particularly useful against rot damage as this is typically where Warrior has the most trouble surviving.

The Arms spec tree has received a few changes going into Midnight. There are a small number of interesting choices to be made depending on the situation.

Listed below are a few notable talents that might be useful in certain situations:

Fervor Of Battle - This talent will be good in situations where you need to talent Cleave but still want some good priority damage while pressing it.

Broad Strokes - Particularly useful in constant 2 Target situations, this talent activates Sweeping Strikes on every use of Colossus Smash. This leads to significantly more uptime on Sweeping Strikes as the regular Sweep ability can still be used as well. It’s important to note that these 2 versions of Sweep DO NOT stack. You will need to spend all charges of your first sweep ideally before getting new stacks. This will typically be done with Colossus Smash first and Sweeping Strikes second.

Improved Sweeping Strikes/Powerful Momentum - This choice node talent serves as the way to make our Sweep ability better either through more stacks (18 instead of 12) or by letting the cleaved abilities do more damage (25% extra). Realistically, Powerful Momentum will be the most used option here as any extra uptime will generally be gained through the Broad Strokes talent instead.

Crushing Combo - Most likely to be used in M+ it could also be a consideration for regular moments of significant AoE burst in raid as well. The biggest problem with this talent is needing to spend 3 talent points in order to take it (Cleave, Just Warming Up/Broad Strokes + Crushing Combo).

Arms Apex talent is called Master Of Warfare. It transforms Slam into Heroic Strike, offering a nice little throwback for longtime Warrior players.

The effects are as follows:

1. Single target abilities have a chance to transform Slam into Heroic Strike. Heroic Strike benefits from all Slam modifiers and talents. Using Heroic Strike grants a stack of Master of Warfare giving you 3% Armour Penetration for 30 seconds. This buff stacks and each stack has an independent duration.
2. Each stack of Master Of Warfare increases the damage of Mortal Strike, Cleave and Overpower by 2.5/5%.
3. Heroic Strike reduces the cooldown of Colossus Smash by 2 seconds.

Arms Warrior has a choice of either the Slayer or Colossus Hero Talent Tree.

Slayer:

• Reap The Storm: Extra damage proc on Bloodthirst (35% chance) and Sudden Death (100% chance)
• Slayer's Dominance: Attacks have a chance to proc a Slayer's Strike. Each Slayer’s Strike grants a stack of Executioner. These stacks give 3% Execute damage, crit chance and crit damage each. These stacks are independent of each other
• Unrelenting Onslaught: Consuming Sudden Death reduces Bladestorm cooldown by 5 seconds per stack of Executioner currently active on you. Additionally applies a stack of Overwhelmed on the target per Executioner stack you have
• Unhinged: Every other tick of Bladestorm casts a Bloodthirst at your current target or random nearby enemy if you have no target or your current target is out of range

Colossus:

• Decimator: Demolish’s Final Strike applies Deep Wounds to all targets hit
• Cut To The Bone: Mortal Strike crits increase Rend and Deep Wounds damage by 25% for 8 seconds
• Celeritous Conclusion: Demolish’s Final Strike grants 10% Haste for 10 seconds and increases the critical strike chance of your next Mortal Strike by 100%

There’s no massive benefit in any particular situation with playing either hero talent. The closest we get is Slayer being better suited to Execute but several of the Execute based talents interact with Sudden Death specifically, which makes it slightly less useful in the Execute phase.

Through their inception, typically Colossus has been stronger in AoE while Slayer has been stronger in Single Target. Slayer performs both together far better than Colossus but this is almost solely based on tuning over any other factor.