PvE Arms Warrior DPS
Best Races
Best Professions
Beyond directly making your character stronger through talents, equipment, enchants, etc, there are 2 more things you can use in order to improve your performance as a player: addons & macros. It cannot be understated how much of an impact they can have on your gameplay — increasing your DPS or healing by a large percentage, preventing you from dying, etc. You will need the best addons & macros to be the best Arms Warrior you can be!
Addons
General
Warriors don’t really have any useful class-specific addons, so we recommend the basics:
- DeadlyBossMods – Allows you to track boss abilities. A must-have for raiding.
- Details – Shows you how much damage, healing, etc everyone in your raid is doing. Flex on your friends!
WeakAuras
WeakAuras is a versatile addon with almost limitless possibilities. It allows you to install mini-addons created by other players, which are confusingly also called “WeakAuras”, in order to perform specific tasks, such as tracking the cooldown of a spell, having a visual or audio notification when something procs, giving you a warning when a boss uses an ability, etc. You can find WeakAuras that suit your needs on wago.io. It’s strongly recommended that you use WeakAuras; they’re a huge quality of life boost.
Arms Warriors can and should use WeakAuras to track Sudden Death and Taste for Blood so you don’t have to awkwardly keep looking at your buffs list to see if they procced. Furthermore, in Wrath, you can get a huge damage boost by using your DPS cooldowns effectively (Recklessness, Hyperspeed Accelerators, Sweeping Strikes) — having help tracking these can be a significant boost to your DPS!
Macros
Essential
Startattack Mortal Strike Macro
It is optimal to have the /startattack command on all of your abilities as a melee DPS character. Doing so allows your character to begin auto-attacking your target right away, even if you don’t have enough rage to use Mortal Strike yet.
#showtooltip/startattack/cast Mortal Strike
Note that you could optionally add “/cast Battle Stance” before the “/cast Mortal Strike” line, allowing you to switch to Battle Stance if necessary. This can be useful if you’re using the following macro.
Instant Rend Macro
Allows you to instantly use your Rend without having to fumble with stances.
#showtooltip Rend/startattack/cast [stance:3] Battle Stance/cast Rend
Spammable Slam Macro
This macro instantly interrupts your Slam cast, which is useful if you button-mash your abilities and accidentally have Slam queued — possibly resulting in a DPS loss if you don’t interrupt your Slam cast quickly.
#showtooltip/cast Slam/stopcasting/startattack
AoE Burst Macro
#showtooltip Bladestorm/Cast Berserker Stance/Cast Bloodrage/cast Recklessness/cast Sweeping Strikes
This Macro will prove to be useful when you are dealing with a large number of pesky mobs — especially low-health mobs — as it allows you to trigger most of your offensive cooldowns. You can follow up this macro with either Bladestorm or any of your other abilities, however, Bladestorm will be the best choice!
Helpful
Survive! Macro (Must be pressed twice)
This macro instantly switches you to Defensive Stance, equips your shield, and activates your defensive cooldowns. Perfect for moments when things are getting ugly and you just need to survive for a little bit longer. Note: You will need to press this macro twice for it to take effect, so just mash it!
#showtooltip Shield Wall/equipslot [noequipped: shields] 16 (NAME OF YOUR 1-HANDED WEAPON)/equipslot [noequipped: shields] 17 (NAME OF YOUR SHIELD)/cast Defensive Stance/cast Shield Wall/cast Shield Block
Charge / Intercept Macro
Allows you to instantly charge your target, using Intercept if you’re in combat or Charge if you’re not. This macro will be useful if you choose to not spend a point on the Juggernaut talent.
#showtooltip [combat] Intercept; Charge/cast [combat] Berserker Stance; Battle Stance/cast [combat] Intercept; Charge
Intervene Macro
Allows you to instantly use your Intervene to charge to an ally, without having to fumble with stances.
#showtooltip Intervene/cast Defensive Stance/cast Intervene
Spell Reflection Macro (Must be pressed twice)
Allows you to instantly use your Spell Reflection to reflect a spell, without having to fumble with stances or equipping your shields. Note: You will need to press this macro twice for it to take effect, so just mash it! Also, by default this macro changes you to Battle Stance if you are in Berserker Stance — you could change line 4 to “/cast [stance:3] Defensive Stance” instead, for a more defensive option.
#showtooltip Spell Reflection/equipslot [noequipped: shields] 16 (NAME OF YOUR 1-HANDED WEAPON)/equipslot [noequipped: shields] 17 (NAME OF YOUR SHIELD)/cast [stance:3] Battle Stance/cast Spell Reflection