Arms Warrior DPS Gear, Legendaries, and Best in Slot (Legion 7.2.5)

Table of Contents

• +Introduction
  • 1. Class Overview
  • 2. Patch 7.2.5 Changes
  • 3. Patch 7.2 Changes
  • 4. Strengths
  • 5. Weaknesses
  • 6. Viability in the Current Patch
  • 7. Contents
  • 8. ChangeLog
• +Easy Mode
  • 1. The Basics
  • 2. Talent Choice
  • 3. Stat Choice
  • 4. Basic Rotation
  • 5. ChangeLog
• +Spell Summary
  • 1. Spell Summary
  • 2. Main Resource
  • 3. Basic Abilities
  • 4. Important Procs
  • 5. Offensive Cooldowns
  • 6. ChangeLog
• +Builds and Talents
  • 1. Talent Choices
  • 2. Talent Cheat Sheet
    • 2.1. Open World, Levelling and Questing
    • 2.2. Dungeons and Raids
  • 3. Tier 1 (Level 15) Talents
  • 4. Tier 2 (Level 30) Talents
  • 5. Tier 3 (Level 45) Talents
  • 6. Tier 4 (Level 60) Talents
  • 7. Tier 5 (Level 75) Talents
  • 8. Tier 6 (Level 90) Talents
  • 9. Tier 7 (Level 100) Talents
  • 10. ChangeLog
• +Artifact Traits and Relics
  • 1. Artifact Progression
    • 1.1. Early Progression
    • 1.2. Patch 7.2 Post 35 Trait Path
  • 2. Artifact Ability
  • 3. Relic Choice
    • 3.1. AoE Specific:
  • 4. ChangeLog
• +Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities
  • 1. Single-Target Rotation
    • 1.1. Single Target
      • 1.1.1. Deadly Calm with Soul of the Battlelord
    • 1.2. Execute Usage
    • 1.3. Opening Rotation
    • 1.4. Cooldown Rotation
  • 2. Multiple-Target Rotation
    • 2.1. 4+ Target AoE
  • 3. Important Notes
    • 3.1. Tier 4 Talents
    • 3.2. Focused Rage
    • 3.3. Cooldowns
      • 3.3.1. Battle Cry
      • 3.3.2. Bladestorm/Ravager
      • 3.3.3. Colossus Smash and Warbreaker
  • 4. Mastering your Arms Warrior
    • 4.1. Rage Management
    • 4.2. Colossus Smash
    • 4.3. Movement and Mobility
    • 4.4. Advanced: Heroic Charge
    • 4.5. Defense
  • 5. Tier 19 Set Bonuses
    • 5.1. Tier 19 Trinket optimization
  • 6. Tier 20 Set Bonuses
    • 6.1. Tier 20 Trinket Optimization
  • 7. ChangeLog
• +Stat Priority
  • 1. Basics
    • 1.1. Getting a Better Understanding
    • 1.2. Statistics
    • 1.3. Breakpoints
  • 2. ChangeLog
• +Gems, Enchants, and Consumables
  • 1. Gems
  • 2. Enchants
  • 3. Consumables
  • 4. ChangeLog
• +Macros and Addons
  • 1. Macros
    • 1.1. Generic Macros for Warriors
      • 1.1.1. Bladestorm Cancelaura Macro
      • 1.1.2. Pummel Macro
      • 1.1.3. Heroic Leap Spam
    • 1.2. Specific Macros for Arms Warriors
      • 1.2.1. Charge Macro
      • 1.2.2. Cooldown Stacking Macro
  • 2. Addons
    • 2.1. Generic Addons for Warriors
      • 2.1.1. ElvUI
      • 2.1.2. Boss Mods: Deadly Boss Mods or Bigwigs
      • 2.1.3. GTFO
      • 2.1.4. Parrot or Mik's Scrolling Battle Text
      • 2.1.5. Weak Auras
      • 2.1.6. TellMeWhen
      • 2.1.7. Raeli's Spell Announcer
      • 2.1.8. Recount / Skada / Details!
      • 2.1.9. Omen Threat Meter
    • 2.2. Specific Addons for Arms Warriors
  • 3. ChangeLog
• ×Gear, Legendaries, and Best in Slot
  • 1. Best in Slot List
    • 1.1. Trinkets
    • 1.2. Tier 19 & 20 Bonus Combinations
    • 1.3. Evaluating Upgrades with dynamic Item Levels
  • 2. Racial Bonuses
  • 3. Legendary Items
    • 3.1. 7.1.5 Legendaries
    • 3.2. 7.2 Legendaries
    • 3.3. 7.2.5 Legendaries
    • 3.4. Recommended Choices
  • 4. Loot Competition
  • 5. ChangeLog

General Information

This page is a gear reference for Arms Warriors. It lists your best items and Legendaries, gives you gearing advice, and shows you how you will be competing for loot with other classes.

The other pages of our Arms Warrior guide can be accessed from the table of contents on the right.

About Our Author and Reviewer

This guide has been written by Wordup, a frequent theorycrafter involved in a number of class communities. He is also an experienced player who has been in the world top 100 since the days of Sunwell, currently raiding in Echoes. You can also follow him on Twitter.

This guide has been reviewed and approved by Archimtiros, one of the best DPS Warriors in the world, who raids in Infinity. You can follow him on Twitter.

1. Best in Slot List

With the existence of Titanforged and Mythic+ dungeons, there is no such thing as a hard Best in Slot anymore. This is more of a guideline for the best pieces to keep an eye out for in your raid or dungeon (if applicable). Be smart, and if you find higher item level pieces with valuable stat combinations do not hesitate to upgrade to them.

Slot	Item	Source
Helm	Armet of the Rotten Mind	The Desolate Host
Neck	String of Extracted Incisors	Demonic Inquisition
Shoulders	Titanic Onslaught Pauldrons	Fallen Avatar
Cloak	Titanic Onslaught Cloak	The Desolate Host
Chest	Titanic Onslaught Breastplate	Maiden of Vigilance
Wrists	Vambraces of Resolute Justice	Tomb of Sargeras Trash
Gloves	Groundshatter Gauntlets	Fallen Avatar
Belt	Girdle of the Crumbling Sanctum	Tomb of Sargeras Trash
Legs	Titanic Onslaught Greaves	Mistress Sassz'ine
Boots	Iron Ballast Sabatons	Mistress Sassz'ine
Ring #1	Seal of the Second Duumvirate	Kil'jaeden
Ring #2	Scaled Band of Servitude	Harjatan
Trinket #1	Unstable Arcanocrystal	Withered J'im
Trinket #2	Engine of Eradication	Maiden of Vigilance

1.1. Trinkets

With the trinkets listed, this assumes that you are comparing against equal item level pieces. The information has been taken both through log trend observations, and simulations of individual trinkets as seen below:

Currently you should be aiming for Mastery stat sticks or Unstable Arcanocrystal if you can obtain them, but due to the difficulty of getting powerful ones with the Titanforging system, this can be difficult.

All of the Tomb of Sargeras trinkets come with some caveats that can exclude them for many fight types, which may interfere with how realistic they are in reality compared to where they appear on the list. Due to this I quickly covered the melee specific trinkets below:

• Specter of Betrayal requires you to recast it on cooldown to gain the value from a double hit. Given that the Specter cannot be moved, boss position can have a dramatic impact given how small the gain it shows is. This also rarely lines up with Battle Cry.
• Cradle of Anguish has the issue of requiring you to take very little damage to prevent losing the stacks. This liability cannot be understated, but if this does not impact you is a solid option.
• Engine of Eradication has very high uptime and despite being heavy on Mastery, it comes with a good primary stat proc. Unfortunately with Strength being weaker for Fury, this is currently not ideal. Orb positions can also sometimes be problematic, making it potentially cumbersome.
• Vial of Ceaseless Toxins provides a consistent source of damage with a big chunk of Strength, alongside having the added effect of being gameable on certain fights. An average choice but nothing special.
• Umbral Moonglaives interacts well with Battle Cry, allowing you to frontload a high burst of AoE damage if needed.
• Infernal Cinders has a difficult value to quantify because of the scaling effect with other players. However due to being loaded with just Critical Strike and dealing relatively low damage, it does not appear to be a great option.

1.2. Tier 19 & 20 Bonus Combinations

Arms Tier 19 2-piece was already relatively lackluster during Nighthold, and does not gain anything significant leading into Tomb of Sargeras. If you can obtain high enough Titanforged items, it is worth equipping but should not be pursued. With the Tier 20 4-piece bonus being relatively strong for Arms in Tomb of Sargeras, this means that it simply is not feasible to maintain both bonuses. This is made worse by the Tier 19 bonus not superceding powerful legendaries that clash with the slots (Helm/Gloves), with the Head being used in virtually all situations if possible.

1.3. Evaluating Upgrades with dynamic Item Levels

Due to the Warforging/Titanforging system, having a full comprehensive list of gear ranked against each other would be far too elaborate and confusing to compile, and as such it is recommended instead to evaluate upscaled items using rough stat weights. As always with weights, they can change depending on your gear and to get them perfectly accurate for your character, it is always advised to simulate it yourself, however for the purpose of this I will use example Arms stat weights:

These were calculated using the Advanced build, and 840 Pre-Raid gear:

• Mastery: 1.43
• Haste: 1.28
• Versatility: 1.24
• Critical Strike: 1.08
• Strength: 1

If we then compare two pairs of gloves, we can get a rough evaluation of which to use. Starting with Fitted Ironbark Gauntlets, these come with 1287 Strength, 383 Mastery, and 712 Haste, so we can use this to calculate a relative value:

Then comparing to Primal Gauntlets of Rage, these come with 1287 Strength, 783 Critical Strike, and 312 Haste, which can be evaluated in a similar way:

Through this we can see that the value of Fitted Ironbark Gauntlets is higher than Primal Gauntlets of Rage, and are the better choice to use. As said though, these weights can differ depending on the content you are doing, your talent selections, and the other gear you are currently wearing, as many stats synergise with others and scale exponentially, increasing their value.

2. Racial Bonuses

Racial bonuses are quite minimal for most classes currently, and this is also true for Arms. Whilst this image shows rough estimations for each Race, there are always extra factors that can push some Races above the more passive ones, so I would recommend playing whichever you like the most as the difference is so minor.

3. Legendary Items

Legendary items have a high item level of 970, which makes them extremely strong. They are so strong, in fact, that a legendary item is always going to be worth equipping over any other item you might have in that slot.

However, there is a limitation on the number of legendary items you can have equipped at any one time (by default 1, but by now most players should be able to equip 2). Since some legendary items are better than others, if you have more items than the limit, you will have to choose which ones to equip.

Below, we will do our best to guide you through this process, as well as provide any other relevant information.

Ayala's Stone Heart is a solid choice as it allows for Execute uses in situations it would either be unfavorable, or unavailable due to the targets health, so it does alter the rotation somewhat, but not too drastically. It also counts as a full cost Rage Execute cast both for the purposes of damage and for Tactician, alongside refunding Rage via the Execute mechanic if the target survives; making it even better.

Archavon's Heavy Hand is very powerful, as it almost renders Mortal Strike Rage neutral, but is mostly single-target oriented. Can help a lot with more Rage intensive builds, and a solid choice.

Weight of the Earth provides an additional source of triggering your Colossus Smash effect and, much like Warbreaker, has great applications due to being AoE. Also synergises well with Bounding Stride for a reduced cooldown. It does not, however, apply Shattered Defenses, which makes it less impactful in single-target. Strong synergy with Titanic Might alongside working well with Anger Management and the Tier 20 set bonuses, allowing for significantly reduced cooldowns.

Naj'entus's Vertebrae was recently reduced in effectiveness, only granting 1 extra hit during AoE. This does sync quite well with Fervor of Battle in cleave situations, and makes for a good equip.

Aggramar's Stride is purely a utility item, granting a small amount of extra mobility. As Arms does not heavily favour Haste, this will have quite a low effect, and you already have a quite robust mobility toolkit which reduces how much of an effect it provides.

Mannoroth's Bloodletting Manacles provides a small amount of passive healing during your regular rotation. This can be great in open world and solo content to keep yourself topped off, but its group content uses are more limited due to the relatively low healing coming in. 7.2 added additional Versatility to this item's budget making it slightly more appealing, but still not an ideal choice compared to output legendaries.

Sephuz's Secret has some fringe bonuses for extra mobility and an extra Haste proc activating after crowd control effects, such as Intimidating Shout, unfortunately this has a long cooldown and requires targets vulnerable to Fear. There are talent options that can improve the uptime, but due to the Crowd Control requirement this largely relegates the effect to dungeons.

Prydaz, Xavaric's Magnum Opus could have some powerful survivability uses to survive large bursts of raid damage if it syncs up with the recharge time and avoiding damage is possible, but it is too specific to recommend until more is known about the texture of the upcoming raids.

3.1. 7.1.5 Legendaries

Timeless Stratagem provides additional mobility if needed during an encounter, but has no other impact and as such is a niche item to be used if necessary, as it provides no meaningful damage increase. 7.2 has added additional Versatility to this item's budget making it slightly more appealing, but still not an ideal choice compared to output legendaries.

Kil'jaeden's Burning Wish is a powerful stat stick trinket with an equally powerful on use effect that deals AoE damage on a 1.15-minute cooldown. This does not scale with any secondary effects (or Battle Cry as it already guarantees a Critical Strike), so is relegated mostly to being used in situations where you can get extra use of the AoE damage.

3.2. 7.2 Legendaries

Rethu's Incessant Courage is a new crafted legendary added in 7.2. Its effect triggers a small heal every 3 seconds if an enemy is within 8 yards, but if not grants 15% movement speed. This is predominantly an open world content item without any real group content applications, however, it does come with 3 prismatic sockets making it a great stat stick option if needed.

3.3. 7.2.5 Legendaries

Soul of the Battlelord is a new legendary ring that grants the Deadly Calm talent, allowing you to pick another option on the level 90 talent tier, the options being Focused Rage and In For The Kill. This legendary only really has applications outside of the Tier 20 4-piece bonus, and due to this is not a great option due to Deadly Calm being low impact.

The Great Storm's Eye is a new legendary head that causes your Bladestorm to increase your damage dealt by 6% for 6 seconds, stacking up to 6 times over the duration, and Ravager to do the same, but only 4%. This is an incredibly powerful legendary, in particular when combined with the new Tier 20 4-piece bonus.

3.4. Recommended Choices

Generally, you cannot choose which legendary you get but now as the expansion moves on people have a much wider choice of items to choose from. If you find yourself wondering what to use, some good choices are as follows (in no particular order):

Single Target:

• The Great Storm's Eye
• Ayala's Stone Heart

Multiple Target:

• The Great Storm's Eye
• Naj'entus's Vertebrae
• Weight of the Earth

4. Loot Competition

Regarding the loot you will get from raid or dungeon bosses, you will compete with other classes in the following cases:

Item Type	Competing Classes
Tier Tokens	Hunters, Monks, Shamans, and Fury/Protection Warriors
Plate Armor	Death Knights, Paladins, and Fury/Protection Warriors
Amulets Cloaks Rings	Everyone
Trinkets	Frost/Unholy Death Knights, Retribution Paladins, and Fury Warriors

5. ChangeLog

+ show all entries - show only 10 entries

• 24 Jun. 2017: Incorrect legendary Belt effect fixed.
• 16 Jun. 2017: Updated 2pc/4pc reference, sims pending regarding new Draught of Souls.
• 14 Jun. 2017: Added new 7.2.5 gear alongside trinket and racial simulations. Added note regarding Tier 19/20 2/4pc combinations.
• 27 Mar. 2017: Added 7.2 legendary changes.
• 10 Jan. 2017: Updated for new 7.1.5 gear list and additional legendaries.
• 16 Nov. 2016: Updated BiS trinkets and trinket simulations.
• 25 Oct. 2016: Added Karazhan trinket to the trinket simulations.
• 30 Sep. 2016: Trinket update in BiS list.
• 28 Sep. 2016: Updated BiS.
• 29 Aug. 2016: Updated for Legion's launch.
• 19 Jul. 2016: Removed trinket sims and added BiS recommendations.
• 19 Jul. 2016: Updated for the Legion pre-patch.