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Sunday
Feb012009

DPS Warrior Specs

The life of the DPS Warrior is filled with trials and tribulations. Whether it’s facing the seemingly boundless hatred Blizzard has for melee in general or the absence of a threat reducing ability (and no I do not count soulstones and battle rezes as reliable aggro dumps) the experience of a DPS Warrior can be a frustrating one. However, hopefully this can help make your experience much more enjoyable.

Let's start with the absolute must have talents regardless of spec and play style:


  • Cruelty – 5% crit. 1st tier of Fury.

  • Armored to the Teeth – 3 AP for every 180 armor you have. We wear plate, about time we put all that armor to use.

  • Impale - 20% increased crit damage from specials.

  • Deep Wounds – 48% of weapon damage as an unmitigable dot over 6 seconds and it rolls so none of your crits are “wasted”

  • Two-Handed Weapon Specialization – 6% increased damage done by two-handed weapons.


Those five talents that are absolutely essential in any PvP or PvE build.

Arms PvE


54/17/0 - Raid Utility

One of the harsh truths of being an arms warrior in a raid is that you aren’t going to be topping the charts (or at least I hope you aren’t). What the arms warrior does bring however is a ton of raid utility


  • Trauma – Target takes 30% more damage from bleeds for 15 seconds after a critical strike. Fury warriors, rogues, and especially feral druids are going love having you around. Even with a feral druid in the group it is best to keep the talent since it is a passive ability for the arms warrior whereas it is an active ability for the feral druid.

  • Blood Frenzy – Rend and Deep Wounds cause the target to take 2% increased physical damage, an absolutely essential raid debuff.


If you have another dps warrior who has commanding presence and a paladin with improved might you can move the points from commanding presence into other talents in the first three tiers of fury. Other than that there really isn’t much room for change, most of these talents are more or less essential.

Arms PvP


55/16/0

When PVPing as arms you lose a lot of the raid dps talents in order to gain survivability and mobility talents. Things like imp. slam go away because you are rarely going to get someone to hold still long enough for you to hit them with slam. Important talents to grab are:


  • Improved Intercept – As a warrior this is our only way to close a sizable gap, might as well knock 10 seconds off the cooldown.

  • Second Wind – 10% of total live and 20 rage over 10 seconds every time you are struck with an immobilize or stun.

  • Blood Craze – 6% of your total life over 6 seconds each time you are struck with a crit.

  • Piercing Howl – AoE snare with a ten yard range, great for catching those enemies right outside of melee range.


Improved hamstring is a very nice talent but not entirely essential. If there was a place to take points from that would be it.

Fury PvE


19/52/0 - All out DPS

If being at or near the top of the charts is something you enjoy, this is the way to go.

This build is pretty straight forward, all the dps talents in fury are grabbed as well as all the essentials in arms.

Similar to the PvE arms build there isn’t much room for changing points around. You can move the point from Anger Management elsewhere if you like. Heroic Fury is a possibility but there aren’t many bosses that root you or require an intercept more than once every 30 seconds.

Fury PvP


18/53/0

This is one of the harder builds to decide on, unlike other specs there are so many options you end up having to leave behind a great talent somewhere. Talents that are a must have:


  • Furious Attacks – Passive healing debuff. A great addition to the tree and an essential for any pvping fury warrior

  • Heroic Fury – Removes immobilizing effects and refreshes the cooldown on Intercept. A great talent to allow you to finish off some of the more elusive classes.


Intensify Rage and Precision are very nice talents but you have to make cuts somewhere. If these talents just seem to good to pass up points can be moved from Unending Fury, Improved Berserker Stance or Improved Berserker Rage

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Reader Comments (2)

[...] far they only have one article on warriors, but I’ll see if I can’t talk someone into getting us some equal [...]

As a fury warrior, i find things get far too repetitive, Right now Fury is nurfed, Arms is far buffed, go arms.

May 11, 2009 | Unregistered CommenterDjLythium

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