Arms Warrior PVE Leveling Guide

This is the Arms Warrior PVE Leveling Guide updated for Catalcysm 4.0.6.  This is a full level 85 build featuring Prime Glyphs and a spell rotation.

The Arms tree may not have the highest DPS compared to Fury, it still comes pretty damn close and may fit your play style a bit better.  If you want to level fast, and want to Raid at the same time and be decent at PvP while you are at it, the Arms tree is the way to go.

You can take a look at our Fury Warrior Leveling Guide too if you want.

This is the best Arms PVE leveling spec build that goes along with the best leveling route guide: Zygor’s Leveling Guide.

Arms Warrior PVE Leveling Guide Stats:

Strength: Any warrior’s primary stat, you want a lot of it. Luckily it comes on pretty much all your gear. But you will not want agility itemized capes, trinkets, weapons, or jewelery, as opposed to pre 4.0 when we would use those agility based items regularly.

All of your main armor pieces will always be plate. No exceptions. The 5% bonus to strength from plate specialization is too much to pass up, even if by some miracle the crit from agility did become more valuable than the AP from strength on a few pieces.

Hit/Expertise: After strength, this is our next priority. A missed hit deals no damage, and with LttS, Wrecking Crew, and CS, a missed hit can cause a lot more loss of damage than just that hit thanks to the synergy between attacks. You want to make sure both of these stats are capped asap.

Your hit cap is 8%, which at 85 is 961 hit rating.

Expertise cap at 85 is 26 expertise, which requires 792 expertise rating. If you have a weapon specialization racial, this can be reduced. If you’re not sure what the rating requirement is for your racial, take 26 minus the racial bonus, and multiple by 30.03, round up. So for example a human with a sword, gaining +3 expertise has 26-3 = 23 * 30.03 = 690.69 = 691 expertise rating to cap.

Remember, unlike with Fury, any rating above either of these caps is 100% wasted. So take advantage of reforging, gemming, and whatever else to get as close to the exact cap as possible, to make sure you are getting the most out of your gear.

Arms Warrior PVE Leveling Guide Gems:

As long as the socket bonus is a strength bonus, you want your Red Gems to be Strength, your Blue Gems to be Strength/Hit, and your Yellow gems to be Strength/Crit.

Arms Warrior PVE Leveling Guide Spell Rotation

Opener: Rend > CS > MS > OP > Slam > HS

Finisher (Below 20%): Colossus Smash > MS > Execute > HS

Arms Warrior PVE Leveling Guide:

Level 85 Warrior (31/7/3) (Link)

Arms (31 Points)

War Academy – Rank 3/3
Increases the damage of Mortal Strike, Raging Blow, Devastate, Victory Rush and Slam by 15%.

Field Dressing – Rank 2/2
Increases all healing received by 6%, and the effectiveness of your self-healing abilities by an additional 20%.

Blitz – Rank 2/2
Your Charge generates 10 additional rage and stuns an additional 2 nearby targets.

Deep Wounds – Rank 3/3
Your critical strikes cause the opponent to bleed, dealing 48% of your melee weapon’s average damage over 6 sec.

Taste for Blood – Rank 3/3
Increases your Overpower critical strike chance by 60%. In addition, whenever your Rend ability causes damage, you have a 100% chance of allowing the use of Overpower for 9 sec. This effect will not occur more than once every 5 sec.

Sweeping Strikes – Rank 1/1
Your melee attacks strike an additional nearby opponent. Lasts 10 sec.

Impale – Rank 2/2
Increases the critical strike damage bonus of Mortal Strike, Slam and Overpower by 20%.

Improved Slam – Rank 2/2
Decreases the swing time of Slam by 1 sec and increases its damage by 20%.

Deadly Calm – Rank 1/1
For the next 10 sec, none of your abilities cost rage, but you continue to generate rage. Cannot be used during Inner Rage.

Blood Frenzy – Rank 2/2
Your bleeds cause targets to take an extra 4% physical damage and 30% bleed damage. In addition, your autoattacks have a 10% chance to generate 20 additional rage.

Lambs to the Slaughter – Rank 3/3
Your Mortal Strike causes the Slaughter effect, which increases the damage of Execute, Overpower, Slam and Mortal Strike by 10%. Lasts 15 sec. Stacks up to 3 times.

Juggernaut – Rank 1/1
Your Charge ability is now usable while in combat and in all stances, and the duration of your Charge stun is increased by 2 sec. Following a Charge, your next Slam or Mortal Strike has an additional 25% chance to critically hit if used within 10 sec. However, Charge and Intercept now share a cooldown.

Sudden Death – Rank 2/2
Your melee hits have a 6% chance of resetting the cooldown on your Colossus Smash, and you keep 10 rage after using Execute.

Wrecking Crew – Rank 2/2
Your Mortal Strike critical hits have a 100% chance to Enrage you, increasing all damage caused by 10% for 12 sec.

Throwdown – Rank 1/1
Knocks the target to the ground and stuns it for 5 sec.

Bladestorm – Rank 1/1
You become a whirling storm of destructive force, instantly striking all nearby targets for 150% weapon damage and continuing to perform a whirlwind attack every 1 sec for 6 sec. While under the effects of Bladestorm, you do not feel pity or remorse or fear and you cannot be stopped unless killed or disarmed, but you cannot perform any other abilities.

Fury (7 Points)

Battle Trance – Rank 3/3
Your Bloodthirst, Mortal Strike and Shield Slam hits have a 15% chance to make your next special attack that costs more than 5 rage consume no rage.

Cruelty – Rank 2/2
Increases the critical strike chance of Bloodthirst, Mortal Strike and Shield Slam by 10%.

Executioner – Rank 2/2
Your Execute hits have a 100% chance to improve your melee attack speed by 5% for 9 sec. This effect stacks up to 5 times.

Protection (3 Points)

Incite – Rank 3/3
Increases the critical strike chance of your Heroic Strike by 15%, and gives your Heroic Strike criticals a 100% chance to cause the next Heroic Strike to also be a critical strike. These guaranteed criticals cannot re-trigger the Incite effect.

Glyphs

Glyph of Mortal Strike (Prime Glyph)
Increases the damage of Mortal Strike by 10%.

Glyph of Overpower (Prime Glyph)
Increases the damage of Overpower by 10%.

Glyph of Bladestorm (Prime Glyph)
Reduces the cooldown on Bladestorm by 15 sec.

Glyph of Long Charge (Major Glyph)
Increases the range of your Charge ability by 5 yards.

Glyph of Sweeping Strikes (Major Glyph)
Reduces the rage cost of your Sweeping Strikes ability by 100%.

Glyph of Cleaving (Major Glyph)
Increases the number of targets your Cleave hits by 1.

Glyph of Battle (Minor Glyph)
Increases the duration by 2 min and area of effect by 50% of your Battle Shout.

Glyph of Berserker Rage (Minor Glyph)
Berserker Rage generates 5 rage when used.

Glyph of Command (Minor Glyph)
Increases the duration by 2 min and area of effect by 50% of your Commanding Shout.

Do You Want To Level Faster Like The Pros?

If you are having trouble leveling or need to level faster in WoW Cataclysm I highly suggest you check out Zygor’s Leveling Guide. It has the perfect leveling path that gets you to 85 faster and easier than any other way. No matter what level you are, you load the guide and it points with an arrow to the direction of each monster, quest giver, trainer etc. Its pretty crazy. It also has an in game box that tells you exactly what to do, like kill 5 boars, run west 10 miles, etc. If you dont have this in game add on guide, honestly, you are missing out. You can find out more here or check out the Zygor Cataclysm Leveling Guide Review.