World of Warcraft

June 10th, 2021

A warrior clad in blue armor brandishes a large sword equal to himself in height. He stands at the ready, poised for combat at any moment. The background is a burning bush in front of a dark evening castle environment.

Venthyr Arms Warrior Rotation Guide – Shadowlands 9.0.5

Let’s talk about how all of your abilities, talents, and legendary come together into actual gameplay. There’s two main types of rotation, Single Target and Multi-Target. As a reminder, Arms will often find itself in situations where Rage generation needs time to rebuild, especially if you accidentally rage-starve yourself. This is perfectly ok, simply stay in melee range of your target and your auto-attacks will generate rage passively for you. Even in a perfect rotation with perfect procs, Arms simulations are riddled with “wait for resources” entries, indicating that even when a robot plays the class there will be periods of waiting for resources. Don’t deviate from the priority system of your rotation and use the free time to take a sip of tea and bask in your own glory instead.

Single Target

While labeled as “single” target, this will be your default rotation which you perform on all raid fights, except for hectic add cleave fights such as Sun King’s Salvation. This rotation will also be used when fighting individual bosses within dungeons.

  • Avatar
  • Ravager
  • Warbreaker (without Avatar)
  • Skullsplitter if you’re below 60 rage
  • Mortal Strike when Deep Wounds has less than 4 seconds remaining
  • Overpower
  • Condemn (whenever available)
  • Mortal Strike
  • Slam as filler (only if over 50 Rage, otherwise just wait)

Multi-Target

This will be your rotation whenever there is more than one enemy within range of you, yielding the highest damage on large add packs in dungeons and raid trash.

  • Sweeping Strikes active whenever there is more than 1 target
  • Avatar
  • Warbreaker to apply Deep Wounds to all targets
  • Bladestorm
  • Overpower
  • Condemn
  • Mortal Strike
  • Slam as filler (only if over 50 Rage, otherwise just wait)

You might see folks recommending Whirlwind as filler for multi-target, but in its current state Slam deals more damage than Whirlwind for the rage amount it costs. Whirlwind deals roughly 33 damage per rage, whereas Slam does 100 damage per rage. Whirlwind becomes equal to Slam at 3+ targets, pulling ahead at 4+, otherwise use Slam to consume less rage.

For the sake of simplicity, you can avoid using Whirlwind entirely and you’ll be perfectly fine.

Execute Windows

Execute windows are when Condemn is usable, from 100% to 80% health, as well as 35% to 0% (assuming the Massacre talent is taken as recommended). Your rotation won’t change terribly much during these windows, with a heavier focus on Rage management. Despite being an ‘execute’ window, Condemn is going to be a lower priority, with a larger focus on ensuring you use your DPS cooldowns, build rage, and maintain Deep Wounds.

  • Avatar
  • Warbreaker
  • Skullsplitter if less than 60 rage
  • Ravager
  • Mortal Strike ONLY to upkeep Deep Wounds
  • Overpower
  • Condemn
  • NEVER use Slam

The reason Slam (or any other ‘filler’ spell) is avoided during Condemn windows is because the damage of Condemn scales linearly with the amount of Rage spent on it– so any amount of Rage is worthwhile to keep for your next Condemn. Essentially: hold onto your  leftover Rage scraps for your next Condemn and it’ll be more worthwhile. You will occasionally find yourself in a situation where there’s no immediate button to press, and that’s perfectly OK. Just let your auto-attacks generate more Rage and pool for your next Condemn instead of spending it on Slam.

Additional learning

Still hungry for more Warrior knowledge? Head on over to the Advanced Warrior Tips & Tricks guide to learn how to correctly leverage all of the utility in our toolkit, optimize our Rage generation, and learn some fun ways to mitigate or entirely ignore a fair number of mechanics throughout the Shadowlands.

Additional Guides