I get a lot of questions about different aspects of Warriors, regarding stats, how to do X, all sorts of things, so I thought I'd grab a whole load of data + personal experience and cram it all together into a guide. So without further ado:
THE BASIC ROTATION:
Arms Warrior, in my opinion, is a very low skill-capped spec. I don't mean this in a harsh way, but the spec is very easy to get to grips with, but there are a few subtle nuances that separate a good Warrior from a bad Warrior.
So if you're going to apply a PvE rotation to anything (PvE or PvP) it's going to look like this:
Colossus Smash > Mortal Strike > Slam > Overpower
Now this is very basic. I would honestly say that there is 4-5 different rotations for Arms, and that's purely down to the passive ability Sudden Death. Sudden Death allows your autoattacks and Mastery Procs (Strikes of Opportunity) to reset the cooldown on your Colossus Smash. This straight away changes the rotation because you don't use Colossus Smash on cooldown, you use it if the target doesn't have the debuff on the target. If you'd like to see, in my opinion, what the rotation should look like, it's this:
Colossus Smash (If not on the target) > Mortal Strike (if below 50 Rage) > Slam (if above 50 rage) > Mortal Strike (if above 50 Rage) > Overpower > Slam (If below 50 Rage) > Colossus Smash (If debuff is on the target)
This is not even factoring in if the target is within Execute range. Simply using Overpower over Slam in the wrong place can drop your damage by a ridiculous margin. 80-90k Overpower Crit vs the chance of a 250k Slam Crit. Apparently this is Mr. Street's intent, they want Slam to be the burst ability and Overpower to be the filler ability, but there's such a divide between the damage of the two that it seems... a bit absurd. But I digress:
STAT PRIORITY:
Arms is pretty straightforward:
Strength > Critical Strike > Haste > Mastery
I put Critical Strike in bold for reasons that I'll highlight later, but this is basically going to be your go-to Stat Priority.
GEMS:
Red Slot: Expertise/Crit OR Strength/Crit
Yellow Slot: Crit
Blue Slot: Hit/Crit (Crit/PvP Power for PvP)
Meta Slot: Legendary Gem or Reverberating Primal Diamond
Prismatic Slot: Crit
The reason for these choices is the explanation to the bolded Critical Strike marker in the Stat Prio section. What happened when Blizzard tinkered with the value of secondary stats is that Crit gained so much value that it brought it to over half the value of Strength. In number form Strength could be 1.0 and Crit could be 0.65. This means that due to Secondary stats giving 2x the amount of that stat compared to Primary Stats (i.e. +320 Critical Strike vs +160 Strength), Crit is worth more on gems than Strength is. Using the example above:
Strength Value = 1
Critical Strike Value = 0.65
1 Strength Gem is worth 160 points.
1 Crit gem is worth (0.65x320) = 208 points.
These values are only being used as an example, if you want to min-max on your Warrior, run it through Simcraft and get values specific for your Warrior.
Another thing to remember is that sometimes socket bonuses really aren't worth it. As a rule of thumb you can go with:
+60 Crit/+120 Str on Bonus = Match Sockets
Anything else = 320 Crit gems in every socket.
PVP ADVICE:
This section is going to be worth reading if you're inclined to only PvP on your Warrior. You can still follow the rotation and gem choices as listed above, this is just a set of simple rules/guidelines to go by while in Arena, RBGs, and premade Random BGs (less applicable in Randoms).
1) Never LoS your healer - as a Warrior, you're very easily squished if you get stunned while you're outside of Defensive Stance or don't have any cooldowns up. Second Wind isn't half as good as people make it out to be, and while it will keep you up when you're low, you need to kite and LoS whoever is trying to kill you to get yourself back up to 35%.
2) Correct use of Berserker Rage - So many times I've popped BR to get that extra 10% damage in a burst and as soon as it's over, I just get feared and I'll either have to trinket it if my healer gets focused, or sit a 3 year long Fear. Unmacro Berserker Rage. Save it to break out of Fears IF YOU NEED TO. Don't BR a Fear if you can sit it. While you'd rather not be CCed to oblivion, sometimes saving a BR can mean the difference between a kill and... not a kill.
3) Get used to Banner-Intervene - What this means in a nutshell is bind Mocking Banner to your bars. You can quite easily drop it, intervene to it, and carry on going. HOWEVER. If you're using Safeguard, probably best to use it on a party member, your Banner won't appreciate 20% less damage taken like a Healer will.
4) Don't be afraid to backpedal when necessary - By this I don't mean "Backpedal everywhere, it's a good idea", I mean when you have abilities like Die by the Sword active, backpedaling to ensure that the Rogue/Warrior/DK/Pally/Enhance stays in front of you is sometimes the only option you have.
DISCLAIMER - I DO NOT ENDORSE BACKPEDALING IN A NORMAL SCENARIO. IT'S SLOW, AND BAD.
This is my first time making a guide like this, so if there's anything you'd like me to add to this one, or maybe something to discuss in a future post, feel free to add me on skype (veren1994) or message me on PvP-Live (Exhil)
Thanks for reading, and hopefully talk soon!
Exhil MD
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