We break down all the reasons you should consider playing Arms Warrior in Patch 10.1 and even throw in a few reasons of why you might not. From all the changes since launch to the new tier set bonuses coming in 10.1, join us as we explore Dragonflight Season 2 Arms Warrior!
Why You Should Play a Spec in Dragonflight Season 2 Series
Blood DK
Havoc DH
Feral Druid
Guardian Druid
Preservation Evoker
Beast Mastery Hunter
Arcane Mage
Fire Mage
Mistweaver Monk
Retribution Paladin
Holy Priest
Shadow Priest
Assassination Rogue
Elemental Shaman
Affliction Warlock
Protection Warrior
Dragonflight Season 2 Warrior Tier Set
Why You Should Play an Arms Warrior in Dragonflight (and Why You Shouldn’t)
| Why You Should | Why You Shouldn’t |
Why You Should Play an Arms Warrior in Dragonflight
Priority Damage Dealer
Arms Warriors are strong priority damage dealers, which excel in one to two target situations, particularly in the Execute phase. This naturally makes them strong candidates for many raid fights, including most of the so-far tested encounters in Aberrus, wherein single target damage is virtually always more conductive to successfully ending the fight. It does especially well when it can stick to a target and continuously attack, building up Test of Might and Juggernaut.
This doesn’t mean Arms lacks multitarget capabilities, however, as Dreadnaught, Storm of Swords, Blood and Thunder, and Bladestorm all contribute a great deal of frequent multitarget pressure. Collecting the full T30 set bonus will also lead players to experiment with a new Mythic+ build in Season 2, which drops Cleave in order to focus on stronger priority damage from Mortal Strike and Sweeping Strikes.
Strong Defense and Utility
Although not as indispensable as combat resurrections or Heroism/Bloodlust, Warriors are the only source of Battle Shout and Rallying Cry, two very important raid buffs, which also provide decent if not quite essential small group support. Warriors also have easy access to interrupts, stuns, slows, fear, burst mobility, and strong personal survivability – all of which make the class feel adaptable to a wide variety of situations, regardless of whether or not they happen to be the strongest DPS at the time.
Why You Shouldn’t Play an Arms Warrior in Dragonflight
Few Build Options
While it has several interesting talents, Arms suffers from a lack of variety, in that there aren’t a whole lot of combinations, with most “builds” being simple 1-2 point variations of the same overall set of talents. Even when purposefully going for a drastically different build, Arms continues to use most of the same abilities and priorities, resulting in the spec feeling fairly one-dimensional. In most cases, the biggest choice is simply whether Bladestorm is useful or not .
Button Bloat
Playing optimally, Arms’ current rotation suffers from a bit of button bloat and redundancy within its rotation. Instead of using Slam as the traditional rage spender, it now rotates a combination of Ignore Pain, Storm of Swords, and Thunder Clap to spend rage in larger chunks than it would otherwise. While effective, this means juggling three short cooldowns instead of a single ability, while also paying attention to Battlelord procs, Tactician resets, auto-attack swings, and various short de/buffs. While it is by no means a particularly difficult rotation, it is certainly busy.
Few Changes since Season 1
Arms received a minor overhaul in Patch 10.0.5 which greatly improved talent pathing in the third tier of the class tree and made Defensive Stance baseline to the specialization, although since then it has received only a handful of minor changes, which are nice quality of life improvements, but may leave the specialization feeling a bit stagnant to some players. Although the new Season 2 tier bonus swaps to Mortal Strike instead of Cleave in Mythic+, the single target builds don’t change whatsoever, and the set itself is completely passive – it doesn’t add any rotational decision making beyond setting up the initial build, which may be a good or bad thing depending on how much you enjoy the gameplay.
Uncertain Tuning
Coming out of Season 1, Arms would appear to be the go-to spec for Warriors in the next tier’s largely single target focused raid encounters. However, while Arms received a moderate damage buff, the specialization loses almost as much as it gains when going from the Season 1 bonus bonus to the new Season 2 tier set. This may result in Arms starting fairly strong, but ending up a little weaker than expected, particularly as Fury gains a much stronger bonus. Of course, future tuning and the untested final boss could always adjust that perception.
Final Thoughts
Overall, Arms Warriors are strong, engaging, damage dealers with a lot of battlefield control and can feel very fun to play, though the lack of actual gameplay changes between Patch 10.0.5 and 10.1 leaves little in the way of new things to get excited about. If you are a big fan of the spec and how it plays right now, chances are you’ll be very happy in Season 2 as well, but aside from a new multitarget option, there isn’t much else in the way of brand new innovation.
About the Author
For more information on playing Arms Warrior, please see our class guide updated for Dragonflight:
Arms Warrior Guide
