Help my girlfriend... the arms warriorFollow

My girlfriend plays an Arms warrior, last night when we were doing The Nexus I noticed her dps seemed a little low (she was doing about 600 DPS, I would have expected a little higher). Not sure what rotations she is using but here is her character so you can see the spec she is using as well as the equipment she has. Neither of us has done a whole lot of instancing mostly questing together/soloing (she got me addicted to this damn game). So the gear is mostly greens, some blues, and some pvp purples. Is the arms spec she is using the best choice? I have been trying to convince her to go back to fury so she will have Titans Grip (only because 2 2h weapons looks cool). Though I really know nothing about the class so I thought I would ask the most knowledgable people I could find... the allakhazam forum.

Also we will be doing pvp at 80 though I want to start on some 10 man raids, would fury be a good pve/pvp spec? I don't mean to be lazy but I am a layperson when it comes to warriors... I know little to nothing about how the class works.

her spec is a mish-mash of good stuff and bad stuff.

the bad: ditch imp rend. rend is actually a pretty good skill now, but the talent is still kinda lame, at least compared to the other options available. deflection is fine.

tier 2 - looks fine.

tier 3 - get max imp overpower. the rest is fine.

tier 4 - fine.

tier 5 - fine.

tier 6 - looks fine, trauma is somewhat questionable in my opinion, but its a dps boost nonetheless.

tier 7 - looks fine.

tier 8 - get imp. MS. its actually pretty good now. likewise, unrelenting assault is pretty nice for the shorter revenge and overpower cooldown. it makes arms single target tanking ridiculously easy, and guarantees that overpower will always be ready when possible.

tier 9 - heres a big problem; she needs endless rage. it really does help a LOT. i mean a lot a lot. ER + imp MS will be a big boost to her damage.

tiers 10 and 11 - just great.

now, if she wants, she can try mixing in some taste for blood-style action, at which point she'll want unrelenting assault and thirst for blood, as well as improved rend. she can ditch the imp hamstring (unless she likes to pvp) and abandon iron will to free up points (again, unless she likes to pvp, but if she doesnt ditch some points she'll end up with quite a few into arms). but her build is just fine for dpsing.

my guess is that her problems lie in her rotation. with her current spec, it should follow this general set of rules.

1. keep rend up for blood frenzy (discretionary; if deep wounds is consistently up, skip this step).
2. keep mortal strike on cooldown.
3. keep whirlwind on cooldown.
4. hit sudden death executes as necessary AFTER the above is taken care of, preferably right before a normal auto attack swing (this guarantees that youre not at low rage for extended periods of time).
5. if all of the above is done (in addition to little stuff like shout buffing or maybe Tclapping) then slam as needed to keep rage from peaking at 100.

the idea is that you use your instant attacks to ensure that your auto attacks (and thus, your rage generation) are uninterrupted. however, endless rage and crits will generally mean youll be at or near the top of your rage bar more often than youd suspect. hence, you use slam to burn off that excess rage in between cooldowns.

if she opts for a taste for blood style of play, then replace #3 (whirlwind) with overpower, meaning she can sit in battle stance for the most part. the suggested ruleset i listed above assumes you spend most of your time in zerker stance for the 3% crit bonus, swapping to battle if you need to refresh rend (if you crit enough, deep wounds will take care of it, but sometimes that doesnt happen).

arms tends to play a little more carefully than fury does. fury generally involves mashing buttons to keep things on cooldown, watching for bloodsurge procs and timing your damage abilities/trinkets right. success as an arms warrior hinges largely on proper use of your abilities and good rage and stance management, as you can go from a full bar to nearly empty in the space of single weapon swing. good arms play takes practice, so tell her not to get discouraged if things seem a bit awkward or tough at first. spending a good 20 or 30 minutes wailing on training dummies should give her plenty of practice in figuring out the basic idea behind things, and get her fingers familiarized with all the motions she'll be using as well.

Edited, Nov 18th 2008 6:41pm by Quor

I agree with all you say except for endless rage I have not found to be very helpful. IMO I have found it to be waste of a talent point. I have no problem with rage. I personal like improved rend but I do understand you point about that.

Arms (51 points)

3/5 Deflection
2/2 Improved Rend
2/2 Improved Charge
3/3 Iron Will
2/2 Improved Overpower
1/1 Anger Management
2/2 Impale
3/3 Deep Wounds
3/3 Two-Handed Weapon Specialization
3/3 Taste for Blood
5/5 Poleaxe Specialization
1/1 Sweeping Strikes
2/3 Improved Hamstring
2/2 Trauma
2/2 Second Wind
1/1 Mortal Strike
1/2 Strength of Arms
3/3 Improved Mortal Strike
2/2 Unrelenting Assault
3/3 Sudden Death
2/2 Blood Frenzy
2/5 Wrecking Crew
1/1 Bladestorm

Fury (9 points)

3/3 Armored to the Teeth
5/5 Cruelty
1/5 Improved Demoralizing Shout

Protection (3 points)

3/3 Improved Thunder Clap

ill assume she wants prot, altho you can do quite well with an arms tanking spec thanks to unrelenting assault. regardless, ill give you both just in case.

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=LV0Idfht0rMRcbRt0LZVGz0x

this is something of a pvp hybrid. you get some good mitigation in prot, as well as a bit more survivability, and youre pretty much unmatched for single-target tanking thanks to the fact that you can spam revenge once every second. quick tabbing and use of revenge works for two-and-three target tanking if shes quick and careful, and combined with Tclap and shield slam, can hold 2-3 mobs without too much trouble. it also gives her all the goodness of arms pvp, but her dps will suffer a bit as shes more reliant on slam for dps than any of the other dps-focused arms talents (no AttT sucks too).

full prot would probably look something like this:

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=LVZGx0oZVIzMxcdidIzsGo

i left three points free for a reason. those are discretionary points; stick em in TM, or fill out more in prot, or grab demo shout in fury....whatever floats her boat. this build gives her a lot of options, as she can opt for some pvp as prot (piercing howl is her def stance snare) and still tank exceptionally well (lots of mitigation talents in prot, as well as threat talents). if she needs more mitigation, grab ancticipation. if she needs more threat, try imp revenge. if she wants a bit more pvp power, safeguard can work nicely in a protection role, or TM can help her with being more stance-free. so take these three points and drop them in whatever she thinks works best for her.

other than that, tell her not to get discouraged if things are a bit awkward at first. prot has a lot of buttons to push, and finding spots for everything can be difficult, not to mention training yourself to hit the right stuff at the right times while learning an entirely different style of play.