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PTR
10.2.5
PTR
10.2.6
PvP Arms Guide (Updated 7/8/09)
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Post by
Rekijan
Since I just can't seem to find a pvp guide these days I've decided to write one here myself. I am in no way an expert but I have quite some experience playing my little warrior so far, so this guide will have room for improvement which I hope you can help provide.
Talent tree
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#LcrcbfIt0brRzGuioGx0so:mIsz0M
First of all the fury tree.
Armored to the Teeth
; as a plate class your armor will be high, this talent puts that defensive stat and makes it a nice offensive stat as well.
Cruelty
; Increases dps aswell as rage regen.
Booming Voice
; Not having to refresh your shouts so often is a nice bonus, but most of all its to get the tier 3 talent in this tree.
Blood Craze
; One of the most annoying things is having almost no heals. This little talent will tick almost all the time and can really add up in longer fights.
Piercing How
l; I used to think hamstring was enough, but the added range on this spell
really
makes a difference.
Then the arms tree.
Imp Heroic Strike
; not worth it. You only have a slow 2h to get rage with, so not using autoswings for rage is gimping your rage.
Rend
; You will want to keep this up on your target at all times anyway, so why not increase its damage.
Deflection
; Not bad, not terrible good. Still good enough to put in 3/5 to get to the next tier though.
Imp Charge
; Now that we can charge in combat the added rage will add up during a fight.
Tactical Mastery
; For increased mobility you will want this for your arena matches.
Iron Will
; For CC heavy bgs this is probably worth it, but for arena's its not powerfull enough.
Imp Overpower
; You will be using overpower a lot. No brainer.
Anger Managment
; Even if rage seems a bit of a problem with your current gear this isnt going to make enough of a difference to justify a point in it. With better gear rage shouldn't be a problem.
Impale
; More damage, no brainer.
Deep Wounds
; More damage, no brainer.
2h weapon spec
; You are using a big two handed weapon aren't you?
Taste for Blood
; Free overpower procs, who doesn't want that? Escpecially usefull to get in an overpower against casters for unrelenting assault.
Sweeping Strike
; Needed for Mortal Strike, plus if glyphed can be kept up 100% because it doesn't use the global cooldown.
Weapon
spec
;
Axe
is still the best, but take whatever spec you have the best weapon for.
Weapon Mastery
; The disarm reduction saves up having to put on a weapon chain on your only weapon, making room for a more dps increasing one.
Imp Hamstring
; A snare should be enough, I find I can stay on a target enough without the root.
Trauma
; While not a bad talent, others will be more beneficial. 2 Dots that will gain damage from talent, procced so doesnt take a gcd to cast.
Second Wind
; You will see this proc a lot, with all the CC flying around.
Strength of Arms
; No brainer.
Mortal Strike
; Core ability of arms, you shouldn't be without.
Imp Slam
; For this to work you would need rage to burn at the same time your target isn't moving. That's not worth putting points into.
Juggernaut
; Charge in combat? Yes please!
Imp Mortal Strike
; In most arena matches applying mortal strike will be your main job, so the added damage and reduced cd is a nice bonus.
Unrelenting Assault
; A well timed overpower on a caster/healer can win a fight on its own. Control your global cooldown to get it in while they are casting.
Sudden Death
; More damage, a few chain proc's can really hurt your target.
Endless Rage
; Gives quite some rage for just one point.
Blood Frenzy
; More dps and with haste it also give a bit more rage.
Wrecking Crew
; More damage, no brainer.
Bladestorm
; Damage, immunity to cc, also gives rage and by the time your done you should have a sudden death proc to boot.
Post by
Rekijan
Gearing up
Get yourself some
savage saronite set pieces
crafted. The stats on these are well worth the crafting prices until you get better gear.
First piece you should grind battlegrounds for is the
pvp
trinket
,
After that fill in the places where you don't have any pvp gear yet.
Doing pve for emblem bought pvp gear works well too, especially if your dual spec is tank (instant ques ftw).
Stats that you should focus on, but should be on your pvp gear anyway, are resilience, stamina, strength, crit. Besides this you need a bit of hit, 160. Its not a lot but it is important, missing a white swing is getting no rage. Missing an ability means no damage done.
Get it either on wg mark gear or neck/cloak/ring.
Your best bet is to go as offensive as possible, tough depending on your playstyle you might wanna try defensive.
Glyphs.
For minor glyphs I use
Glyph of Battle
,
Glyph of Bloodrage
and
Glyph of Charge
,
As to major glyphs there is some room for debate, I myself use;
Glyph of Bladestorm
,
Glyph of Mortal Strike
and
Glyph of Execution
.
Other options include
Glyph of Hamstring
,
Glyph of Sweeping Strikes
,
Glyph of Rapid Charge
[ and
Glyph of Enraged Regeneration
.
One of the first to go is Enraged Regeneration in my opinion, 10% is nice but not so much considering the cooldown on the ability to use it. Hamstring, see talent.
After some testing I decided to drop Sweeping Strikes, the reason is I wasn't seeing a lot of use from it. Sure it enables you to have it on always (no GCD used), but the times its used is laughable low.
After the Rapid Charge glyph nerf it's no longer worth it.
Gems
Meta:
Chaotic Skyflare Diamond
gives a nice boost to your damage.
Red:
Socket strength
or
Armor penetration
. Only if you are using a major arp proc trinket or are able to hit the arp hard cap (unlikely).
Yellow:
Crit
or possible hit.
Blue:
str/sta
is probably your best bet.
Enchanting:
Head:
Arcanum of Torment
are all fine choices, I recommend the last.
Shoulders:
Greater Inscription of the Axe
or
Greater Inscription of the Gladiator
if you cba to rep farm.
Chest:
Exceptional Resilience
Waist:
Eternal Belt Buckle
Legs:
Icescale Leg Armor
Feet:
Greater Fortitude
,
Icewalker
or
Tuskarr's Vitality
. Last one is recommended.
Wrist:
Greater Assault
Hands:
Crusher
Rings (if enchanter): Attack Power
Back:
Haste
Weapon:
Berserking
Shield:
Resilience
Post by
Rekijan
Matchups
Note: All matchup are based on the idea of one-on-one combat without using pots/bandages and using above stated talents and gear.
General tactics
Something you should always try to focus on if at all possible is keeping up your debuffs.
Priority debuffs: Hamstring, Rend, Mortal Strike. Exception is Hamstring against melee classes up until they get to low hp so they don't run away. Against melee classes instead open with Demoralizing Shout and Thunderclap, followed by Rend, Mortal Strike and Hamstring last.
If all required debuffs are up you can starting laying down the damage.
Priority: Sudden death, Overpower, Sunder Armor.
You will rarely get down to Sunder Armor but if you do there is very little else you should be spending your rage on.
If your target can heal themselves keep Mortal Strike up a 100%. Don't make the mistake however of applying it before Hamstring, if they can get away from you it means you won't be able to keep MS up anyway.
Also against targets that use spells that have a casting time of greater than one second you should save up your Overpower until they are casting. Make sure your global cooldown is available for this.
Death Knights
To be honest I don't know any specific tactics for DK's, I just follow my usual tactics. Its a gear fight I would say, but if anyone can update this please do.
Druids
Boomkins.
Easy fight if you make sure you keep close to them. Safe your trinket to get out of Entangling Roots or Cyclone but wait till they are at low hp. Don't pop it the very first time they do it unless you are confident you can burst them down right after it.
Feral.
Keeping Hamstring up is tough as they can remove it by shape-shifting. They can heal themselves in bear or caster form so don't forget MS. A plus side is that your overpower should proc a loads.
Resto.
Stay close and MS away, getting in an overpower while casting is though as a smart resto will keep using instants. Therefor I recommend using overpower whenever you can. Times where I was able to get overpower in is when they would CC me (roots/cyclone) and I used my trinket, but this is tricky at best.
Hunters
Don't charge in right away, safe it for when you need to catch up, say when they use Disengage.Alternativly start the fight (with bloodrage and then) intercept. Getting caught up in a frost trap can be devastating, saving a charge/intercept when this happens is key to getting out, else a good hunter will kite you in circles. (Haven't been able to tell if Bladestorm negates the slow on it, if so good alternative to get back in range).
Mages
As with hunters use charge to get back into range, not to get into range at the beginning. If you are not using the rapid charge glyph then expect them to blink away from you everytime you use your charge. The cooldown on both spells (without glyphs) are 15 seconds. Trinket out of Deep Freeze and use Bladestorm for Frost Nova.
Paladins
Holy
Same as resto druid except easier. They can't keep themselves alive with just holy shock so they will cast spells you can overpower. If you are undergeared rage will most likely be a problem if they keep sacred shield up. Also if they use Hand of Freedom they might slip away from you, but you should be able to charge back in, the stun at charge will keep them busy for a sec but you still shouldn't charge in too soon or they will get out of range again. Try timing your charge so that it lands at the end of the duration of hand of freedom if at all possible. Bubbles can be annoying but if you kept enough pressure up this should just be a stall.
Ret
If they pop wings use your slows and get out of range while switching to defensive for shield wall and/or disarm. When not under the effect of the wings they shouldn't pose too much of a problem unless they outgear you.
Priest
Main problem in this fight will be their shield which causes rage starvation (absorb doesn't give you rage). However if you have enough gear to quickly break through it and get to that cloth armour they should get down easy.
Don't forget you can counter their fear with berserker rage.
Rogue
Chances are they will get to you first. If you know they are coming use your shield and stick to defensive stance to soften the first blows. If possible keep your back to they wall to prevent them from using several high damaging abilities. Don't trinket out of Cheap Shot, save it for Kidney or Blind. If you can use bladestorm in between cheap shot and kidney, won't always work but has saved me in the past. Also when they dismantle you don't sit idle, use thunderclap/demoralizing shout or even an intimaditing shout to lessen their advantage. And of course overpower away.
Shaman
Elemental.
Whip out your sword and board cuz their Lava Burst hits for a ton of bricks, double so as you can't dispel their flameshock making it an 100% crit. You should opt to spell reflect their lava burst back at them when possible and use overpower if you can. Because of thunderstorm you should not charge in, and also never be in between a shaman and big drop to your death. If are slowed or rooted take out a totem if its near (shoot or heroic throw).
Enchantment
If they let the dogs out counter with intimdating shout. Not an expert on fighting them, rarely see them, but I dont think they use a lot of cast time spells, so overpower whenever or save one at low hp if they try to heal.
Resto
Not a lot of problems here. Basic healer fight, keept hamstring up tight or they will ghost wolf right out of town while keeping you frost shocked or earthbound with a totem.
Warlock
Fear can be countered with berserker rage, though death coil cant. They won't be able to keep you off their clothy asses and should be an easy fight, overpower whenever. Watch terrain for their circles.
Warrior
Basic gear contest really. Do what you can to minimalise their damage with thunderclap/demoralizing shout, save hamstring for when your winning. Popular tactic seems to be to go defensive stance and spam revenge.
Great movie, must see
This is a great movie, demonstrating how to play a warrior(/druid) team.
All credit for that goes to
Dajin
, btw I found this movie
here on arena junkies
.
Post by
Rekijan
Macro's
#showtooltip mortal strike
/console Sound_EnableSFX 0
/cast bloodrage
/cast mortal strike
/console Sound_EnableSFX 1
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()
Will cast bloodrage when ready while at the same time removing any error message and sound when its not ready. I use it with mortal strike because of the high rage cost, so if i wanna use it and dont have enough rage chance are ill get it anyway with bloodrage if its ready.
#show
/cancelaura bladestorm
/cast charge
/cast intervene
/cast intercept
So you don't have to keybind each charge-like ability.
Also because sometimes your victim will sprint/blink/whatever out of range and you wont get him back anyway and will just bladestorm air.
You can use /cancelaura bladestorm in a seperate macro, but if you need to cancel bladestorm, chances are you wanna charge to catch up anyway.
If you dont manually stance dance you can use this
#show
/cancelaura bladestorm
/castsequence reset=14 charge, berserker stance
/castsequence intervene, battle stance
/castsequence intercept, battle stance
#show Spell Reflection
/equip Infantry Assault Blade
/equip Titansteel Shield Wall
/cast Spell Reflection
Along with
/equip Titansteel Destroyer
You can spell reflect in battle stance so you only need a shield to do it. Change the macro according to your stuff of course. And make sure you equip your big 2h after. Love using this after a shaman uses flame shock and is casting lava burst. Fearing a warlock ofc is also priceless.
#show shield wall
/cast shield block
/cast shield wall
Shield Wall is one of the very few times I bother changing stances, but can be a life safer if focussed. Both these spell add defensive power and can be used at once.
#showtooltip Intimidating Shout
/stopattack
/cast Intimidating Shout
You don't want your fear breaking because of your white swing.
#show
/cancelaura Enraged Regeneration
/cast berserker rage
/startattack
Great for breaking out of sap, if any target (rogue) is near it will hit him breaking him from stealthed.
The cancelaura is for when you want to use berserker rage to avoid/break a fear but have ER up, denying your enrages (berserker rage being one).
#showtooltip Execute
/script if (UnitHealth("target")/UnitHealthMax("target") < .2) then CancelUnitBuff("player","Sudden Death") end
/cast Execute
Makes you use a full execute when your target is below 20% instead of a sudden death. Pumping more rage on a near death opponent.
Also dont forget your
/cast Intercept
/cast Charge
/cast Intervene
User interface
I highly recommend watching the entire guide at
this website
. Not everything is that usefull but a hell of a lot is.
This
is what it looks like when I'm beating up the training dummy (see now that my damage should be more to the left so not to overlap the debuffs on my target.
And
this is a download
of the settings I use for poweraura. You can import these if you have the addon.
Post by
114129
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126141
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Post by
Rekijan
In that talen tree you have also chosen glyphs.
And i see no reason at all to take Barbaric Insults and Blocking glyphs, i would rather find others, like Glyph of Mortal Strike for exampel.
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#LV0IzfIt0brRzGuioGxbc:sLIz0M
This would be my talents and glyphs for Arms PvP.
Just one taurens opinion :)
It appears my link doesn't work correctly, those are not the glyphs I have chosen. As you can read in the second part of the guide.
Also just saying you choose something different doesn't add anything, please give arguments for the decisions you made differently.
Edit: And when I click your link it shows your using the cleave glyph.
Post by
Rekijan
@Rekijan,
I would agree with almost everything, but I think you should better have Piercing howl. when Hamstring affects only 1 target, piercing howl affects all ennemies within 10 yards.
I would remove those points from trauma and have Piercing Howl and max I Mortal Strike.
You should definitively change those glyphs.
anyway, I would suggest this build :
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#LcrhbfIt0fMRzGuioGx0s:sLVz0M
I wont take glyph of lolstorm, 1m15 over 1m30 is not such a big deal.
Once again the glyphs in his link seem off (barbaric insults and cleave? :P )
Anyway not taking trauma is intresting. I feel if you aren't talking trauma your dots are insignificant due to resilience. Although getting those points open for Piercing Howl and max Mortal Strike is very tempting.
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214610
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Post by
katarr
Good guide but one question-if you are a human and therefore have "Every man for himself" the trinket's usefullness simply comes down to its resilience. Would this therefore mean you would reccommend aiming for something different first with my saved honour and if so what?
Post by
Rekijan
Since 3.1 you can get the
Platinum Disks of Battle
/ Which has more resilience and a nice use effect. Only recommended for humans though because of the racial they have.
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92896
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92896
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Post by
camy009
Tactical Mastery
; Everything you have is in Battle Stance, no need to take this.
I still change stances on my warrior. Against mages intercept is very handy, and against melee disarm is very good.
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222027
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222027
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Post by
Rekijan
@Klepto21
Have you actually tested Blood Craze? I had the same thoughts about it but decided to give it a go. And this spell is on healing me constantly. As a class with almost no healing you should take every scrap you can.
About the bladestorm glyph, I'm not sure, like I said its a valid option I just personally prefer other ones.
Tactical Mastery
; Everything you have is in Battle Stance, no need to take this.
I still change stances on my warrior. Against mages intercept is very handy, and against melee disarm is very good.
Intercept is 10 rage which stance mastery covers.
Disarm you likewise dont need it for seeing as you will get 5 rage quick enough from being hit by that melee.
Though it is through you never need to stance dance, its not needed to get that talent.
@All thanks for the comments.
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353435
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126141
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Post by
Rekijan
I've just started playing warrior.
What do you think about this pvp build?
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warrior=3022302023335100001212012231251305000000000000000000000000203321000000000000000000000&glyph=121315010203&version=9806
Last stand (can be used in a lot of fights cos of low cooldown) seems that increases survivability very much, hence its very useful.
Three minute CD survivability isnt very good in my opinion. Move those prot talents to fury and get blood craze. Constant healing does more for you than 30% max hp.
Also you shouldn't be using heroic strike at all so those are a waste too.
Improved Hamstring keeps your enemy closer to you which is much needed.
And you really want weapon mastery to reduce the time being disarmed.
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