Arms is the two-handed Warrior. Your slow weapon's white swings fill the rage bar, and you spend it from Battle Stance on Mortal Strike, Overpower and Slam, then switch to Berserker Stance for Execute once the boss drops below 20 %. Forever changes where Overpower comes from: with Bloodthrill, your main-hand hits on a boss bleeding from your Rend open it far more often than its dodges do. It does 907.0 DPS on a one-minute single-boss fight, which places it 5th of 25 damage specs.

Strengths and weaknesses

Strengths

• Every single-boss length. Arms places 5th, 5th and 6th on the one-, two- and three-minute fights. Its damage comes from buttons on short cooldowns, Mortal Strike on a 6-second one and Overpower on a 5-second one, so a longer fight doesn't dilute it.
• Overpower crits. Improved Overpower adds 50 % crit chance to it and Impale makes the crits hit for 2.2 times. On a three-minute fight Overpower crits 83.9 % of the time and does 16.5 % of your damage.
• One weapon, one hit cap. A two-hander has no dual-wield penalty, so 9 % hit stops every miss, white swings included. The pre-raid set already sits at 8.7 %.

Weaknesses

• Your best tools need Battle Stance. Rend, Overpower and Spearing Strike only work there, and Bloodthrill only while Rend is on the boss. When you move to Berserker Stance for Execute, all of it stops.
• Three bosses. Sweeping Strikes copies only five attacks every 30 seconds and Cleave reaches one extra boss, so Arms falls to 9th on a three-minute fight against three bosses.
• Spearing Strike depends on the boss. It deals 40 % weapon damage, plus 80 % more against Giants and Dragonkin. Our benchmark boss is a Dragonkin, so every simulated Spearing Strike is the big one. Against other bosses it does a third as much.
• Only swings make rage. A two-hander gives 4.5 rage for each second it spends swinging, whatever its speed. A better weapon adds damage but no rage, and any pause in your swings delays everything on your bar.

On every fight

Arms barely moves across the three single-boss lengths. With three bosses it is strongest on the short fight, where the search swaps Mortal Strike for Whirlwind and Death Wish, and slips as the fight gets longer. With pre-raid gear the two-minute three-boss build drops Mortal Strike too, for Death Wish and Raging Blows. Choosing a fight in the table switches every page of this guide to it.

Races

Orc is the Horde's best race on a one-minute single-boss fight. With pre-raid gear, Orcs win the one- and three-minute fights: their Axe Specialization (1 % crit) works with a two-handed axe, which stacks with Weaponmaster's axe crit on the Forest Defender's Axe, and Blood Fury raises attack power by 10 % for 15 seconds on a two-minute cooldown. Undead take the two-minute fight and the longer three-boss fights through Touch of the Grave: 5 % of your hits drain the boss for 5 % of your own maximum health. On three minutes the two are within a DPS of each other, so pick either.

On the Alliance side, Night Elf comes out on top on a one-minute single-boss fight. Night Elves win every Pre-raid fight but one through Elune's Light, 10 % crit for 15 seconds on a three-minute cooldown. Human Sword Specialization gives nothing with the pre-raid axe and mace. It only counts with a two-handed sword, which is why Humans lead three bosses for three minutes, where their set wears the Arcanite Champion. Dwarves get Mace Specialization's 1 % with a two-handed mace such as the The Unstoppable Force, the Night Elf's weapon on three minutes.

What a Warrior brings to the raid

Battle Shout is the one buff an Arms Warrior adds to its party: about 140 melee attack power for three minutes. The table lists the damage specs it helps on this fight and by how much. Sunder Armor scores zero: the benchmark's boss already carries Expose Armor, which Sunder can't add to. Mortal Strike's healing reduction does nothing in our boss fight.

Changes

Each row is a fresh run of the Arms benchmark on this fight after an update to the simulator or the game data. What each update changed is on the Updates page.