Warrior PvE DPS: Arms

Delos had posted a need for help with warrior dps. I commented on that post in December, adding my advice and what little I knew about dps as a warrior with a two-handed weapon.

He’s posted again since then, and has found a new resource for the subject.

Skindancer over at Altosis (not to be confused with Altitis) has posted his own take on the subject, and over the course of a number of posts, goes into great detail uncovering the nuances of the spec, ability rotations, and just about everything one would need to know to enter a raid environment as what I call “an MS warrior.”

Also, coincidentally, there is a video up on warcraftmovies.com made by a Tier-6-wearing warrior who does dps in this spec. I apologize that I don’t have a link to it, but the idea is that it does comparable dps to fury, but has an added benefit, and one that I admit I have been overlooking for quite some time now.

And that benefit is Blood Frenzy.

Whenever the warrior with this talent has a bleed effect active on the target (Rend or Deep Wounds), another debuff becomes active called Blood Frenzy, akin to the way Misery and Shadow Embrace for Shadow Priests and Afflication Warlocks, respectively, work (with one debuff triggering another). This debuff increases all physical damage dealt to the target by 4%, with two points in the talent.

So, wow. Let’s start with who deals physical damage.

- Rogues
- Warriors
- Hunters (and their pets)
- Enhancement Shaman
- Retribution Paladins
- Feral Druids

Second, how important is 4%?

Well, it’s pretty much exactly like increasing your hit chance by 4%, except it still works over the hit cap. It’s like increasing your crit chance by 4%, with the exception of that it will not proc things like Flurry nor benefit from +crit damage talents/items.

If you have a rogue in your Kara raid who would have otherwise done 50,000 damage over the course of a fight, just adding in that arms warrior will increase that by 2,000.

If you have 3 rogues doing this, it’s sort of like saying the warrior, by proxy, is doing 6,000 extra damage on top of his own (which, if you manage to find that video I mentioned, is certainly pretty decent…I’ll try to link to it in an edit of this post later).

Consider also that you’re really buffing more than just rogues. All of those classes mentioned above will benefit from this.

Finally, it’s a warrior providing a buff beyond Battle Shout for the dps. And a very good one at that.