Arms Warrior rotations

發布者 1050670

This post was from a user who has deleted their account.

發布者 Serael

Hi Zeek,

Looks like there's a fair bit that can be streamlined here.

First off, Auto Attack should never be on your bars. Right-clicking a mob does the exact same thing, and unless arthritis makes this difficult, then Auto Attack is a waste of a keybind.

When you say bottom bar, I take it you mean 1-9, -, and =? This is where you should be putting your main combat abilities, similar to what you've already been doing. The top bar (which I tend to bind to the same number combinations, modified with the Shift key) is where you put the abilities you need to use less frequently (DPS cooldowns, defensive cooldowns, mobility abilities, etc.)

Try laying out your bottom bar as sequentially as possible - i.e. in an order that, mostly, allows your hand to travel in a straight line across the keys. For instance, I always have Charge bound to 1 - it's a good way to start a pull, for the extra rage, so it makes sense to make it your first keybind. Next you want the first ability you're going to use on an enemy after Charging into them - Colossus Smash - so bind that to 2. Next you'll be using Mortal Strike, so bind that to 3, and you'll be using Overpower after that, so bind that to 4. The 5 key should be your rage dump ability - I can't remember at this point whether that should be Slam or Heroic Strike (I stopped playing Arms a few months ago).

See where I'm going with this? It makes opening up a fight much simpler by just having to press 1-2-3-4. After that you can start getting into the rhythm of the fight, but the advantage of this bind order is that all of your main DPS abilities are lumped together in one area of the keyboard. This keeps your fingers focused on a specific area, reducing the chances of you accidentally hitting the wrong ability at the wrong time, and would also benefit your arthritis by limiting the amount of movement your hand needs to make.

For that reason, I like to keep Pummel way at the far side of the keyboard, bound to =, just so I don't accidentally blow a crucial interrupt cooldown while executing my DPS rotation. Over here I also keep my AoE DPS abilities so I don't accidentally waste them on single-target fights (and while we're on the subject - for fights where you're dealing regularly with lots of mobs, or you need to cleave on multiple targets, then take Bladestorm. For more single-target fights, roll with Dragon Roar.)

You'll need to experiment with the layout of your own bars and go with what suits you, but you can make it much easier for yourself if you lay out your rotation in ascending numerical order.

As for your top bar, this is the place for your cooldowns, defensive and offensive, your Healthstones, etc - stuff that you use on most fights, but less regularly. I keep Heroic Leap up here, since it's primarily used for mobility during combat, which isn't common enough to justify it a place on the bottom bar. Are you macroing your DPS cooldowns (Skull Banner, Recklessness, Avatar/Bloodbath) into a single macro? I'd recommend doing this - and then putting your DPS macro next to Shattering Throw on the top bar. I have ST bound to Shift+7, and my burst macro on Shift+8 - so I can hold Shift, tap 7, tap 8, and then go crazy with the DPS.

Unless you PvP a lot, you can also take out Disarm/Hamstring from your rotation (although Disarm is useful for a small percentage of raid bosses, it's not worth keeping it on your bars full-time.)

I hope this helped - let me know if you need anything clarifying, or need any additional advice. Good luck!

發布者 1050670

This post was from a user who has deleted their account.

發布者 Serael

Muscle memory is definitely an enemy, yeah. Forcing yourself to re-learn how all of your main abilities are mapped will obviously result in an initial DPS loss, but this will lessen and stop as you use the new layouts more and more.

Interesting what you said about different bars for soloing/raiding - personally I never felt the need to have a separate bar for questing and one for raiding. Unless these bars are mostly laid out identically, this strategy will probably do you more harm than good to be honest - muscle memory might take over at a vital point against a raid boss and lead you to hit something you shouldn't have done, because you're more used to your questing bar layout.

Try amalgamating both into a single multi-purpose bar. You'll probably find your performance goes up as a result of teaching yourself to be proficient with a single bar as opposed to two.

發布者 WTBaggrodump

I completely agree Seraei, muscle memory will become your friend the more you practice the same thing over and over (boss dummy fights, dungeons, etc). As for separating your bars based on what you're doing, a little bit of yes, but mostly no. As Seraei said, it'll be worse for you if you're still trying to get down your muscle memory on the positioning of your abilities.

What I did, however, is I'd substitute certain abilities that I wouldn't need while questing/fight mobs for a node/fishing pool. I'd have Charge, Heroic Leap,Colossus Smash, Mortal Strike, Overpower, then the rest would be my fishing outfit, casting rod, archeology dig, etc. Real simple stuff. I'd keep the same stuff in the same place as I do raiding, but just less of it to allow room for the mundane stuff and I'd switch to it by holding shift, then rolling my mouse wheel up or down.

Personally, I'd leave my lower bar 1 through =, and my upper right is bound to shift+1 through =, and my upper left is ctrl + 1 through =, but that's what worked for me (and my razer naga mouse). You have to figure out what works best for your style, either what class you were previously playing or role, depending on if you tanked or whatnot, IE big CDs easier to get to than the usual stuff, or the spamming stuff easiest, followed by big CDs. We can give you tips and help where we can, but it's up to you to find out what works best for you.

Best of luck.

發布者 1050670

This post was from a user who has deleted their account.

發布者 Fellner

Hello Zeek,

All of serael's points are good ones. Admittedly, I don't have a lot of experience in this last expansion playing PvE. However, I do have macros for pvp that blow all of my damage or defense cooldowns, and I imagine they work just as well for PvE. If they don't, just ignore me:

The damage macro is really simple: I just /cast anything that can be a damage buff.

/cast Recklessness
/cast Berserker Rage
/cast Skull Banner

and so on. Nearly all of the buff abilities on a longer cooldown don't trigger the global cooldown, so it really is as simple as using /cast for all of them. The exception may be the banner abilities- I can't remember if they trigger a cooldown or not. My defensive macro is very similar:

/cast Rallying Cry
/cast Die by the Sword
/cast Healthstone
/cast Intimidating Banner

Honestly, I forget the banner name that reduces the enemy's damage. Much like the offensive macro, all the abilities can be simply a /cast. However, in this macro, it is important that the banner spell be cast last. Unlike the Skull banner, the defensive banner has to be placed on the ground at a target location, so it needs to be cast last.

Hopefully these macros can help you on the PvE side of things. Good luck!

Tudes

發布者 Serael

Quick follow-up to Tudes' post:

Your offensive cooldown macro is:

/cast Recklessness
/cast Skull Banner
/cast Avatar (or /cast Bloodbath)

I'd be wary of putting Berserker Rage in there - once you eventually decide to re-spec to fury (and you really should - Arms eventually becomes so bad that it's just not viable as a raiding spec) you'll need to look at Berserker Rage as a lot more than just a 30-second minor DPS increase. Best to get into the habit of seeing it this way now.

As for your defensive macro(s) - if you're raiding endgame content, you're going to want to separate out your personal "Oh crap!" abilities from the group "Oh crap!" abilities. I suggest two macros:

/cast Die by the Sword
/cast Healthstone

^ This is your personal ass-saver, to be popped whenever you drop worryingly low on health and you know that healers' priorities are elsewhere. The other macro is:

/cast Rallying Cry
/cast Demoralizing Banner

^ This is your contribution to the group's defensive cooldown pool. It gives your team a temporary burst of extra health to play with, and reduces all damage that they take by a good amount for a short while. Most bosses in ToT require rotation of defensive cooldowns - be ready to use this macro when it's your turn to provide one.

As Tudes said, Demo Banner needs to be assigned to a physical location, so make sure you click your macro, and then select a location for your banner. Try to position it in such a way that it will affect as many targets as possible - for instance, on the Megaera encounter in ToT, you should drop this between the two active heads during Rampages to reduce damage dealt by both.

Other than that, all I can say is good luck :P and come back if and when you decide to make the jump to Fury!

Arms Warrior rotations

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