Class Overview/Changes

Shadowlands Arms Warrior has changed a lot going into Shadowlands. The biggest changes being Deep Wounds(Mastery), the reintroduction of Intervene and Ignore Pain.

Intervene being the biggest of the three in my opinion, bringing back that crisp playmaking ability that Warrior was previously known for. Whether it be Intervening your teammates offensively to eat interrupts while going for crowd control effects, or defensively to disrupt your opponents; Intervene feels great. This also paired with the new Overwatch(PvP Talent) gives warriors the tools they’ve been endlessly asking for since MoP.

Deep Wounds changing was quite important as well. Previously Warrior was more of a consistent damage rot playstyle with your passive bleed being your #1 damaging ability pretty much every game leaving me and many others feeling quite dissatisfied. The change comes at quite a good time. While Mastery still applies a bleed, the bleed damage is significantly lessened and applies another effect which increases your damage dealt to any target suffering from Deep Wounds. This alone has greatly increased warriors' impact in every game and it’s damage is now something that demands respect.

Ignore Pain swapping from a Protection only ability to a class wide ability was quite nice as well. Warrior’s now have a button to press besides Defensive Stance when in trouble. And with it’s quite high rage cost, it reinforces an idea of playing well and using your rage bar effectively; not just pressing buttons as they light up or relying on passive effects to give you that added durability. It’s a trade-off whether to use your rage on durability, or to do damage.

Spell Reflect was also changed. For starters, it’s baseline. No more wasting a PvP talent choice. It now lasts for 5 seconds and reduces all magical damage taken while the buff holds by 20%. The kicker is that instead of reflecting all magical abilities, it only reflects one. While this change is less than ideal, I feel it is fair. Before, you could just press reflect almost lazily and at times not be punished for it. I think you should have to use your abilities well in order for them to perform well..

Your Role

Your role in Arena is very different than it was before. With the class changes I mentioned above, Warriors can really take over a game by themselves at times. Instead of just being a glorified damage bot, you now offer insane team-wide utility with a plethora of different PvP talents that I’ll mention below. In most games though, you’re in. And when I say in, I mean you’re in the enemy team's face, pretty much the whole game. Warrior is at its strongest when it's offensive. You don’t struggle nearly as much when you’re on the backfoot now, but obviously it’s not ideal. Be careful to not drag your teammates out of position too hard though. Sometimes just press the W key, don’t hold it. Use that utility to keep your team offensive as well. Ignore Pain's added durability makes you extremely hard to punish for being in as well when used correctly. Warrior is still a heavy disruption class, but now it’s even easier to break up those long crowd control chains. At times now, you’re even the class meatshield, intervening huge damage on your teammates and soaking it up with Ignore Pain and defensive stance. Your consistent damage took somewhat of a hit, but that’s fine. Your new mastery increases your burst potential, allowing you to affect the change you want to see in enemy players' health bars. Look for opportunities to really abuse teams with sweeping strikes cleave, as that portion of warrior did not change at all. When teams stack against you, be on the lookout for that and punish them. Don’t spend too much time in defensive stance either. I get asked this a lot. Be in defensive stance when you need to be. When your healer is CC’d, interrupted. During other teams offensive pushes. You can use defensive stance to really just close off any opportunity for a lot of teams. If you get caught out though and you’re trying to play aggressively without being aware of the other team or what’s going on around you, you’ll get punished extremely hard.

Races

Human = Orc > Gnome

• Human - Human offers a wide variety of options. The biggest one being Will to Survive, more commonly known as ‘human trinket.’ This paired with Relentless makes Warrior quite annoying to deal with. The tools you have to avoid CC along with the fact that once you finally are CC’d it’s reduced is quite potent. Warrior’s only really die in stuns, so be careful with your racial as it’s a minute longer than the traditional trinket. The other nice thing about human is The Human Spirit. This just provides a nice little passive damage increase. All in all, human is very well-rounded.

• Orc - Orc is likely interchangeable as Warrior. To be completely frank it probably doesn’t matter versus the majority of compositions you will play against. Orc’s racial, Hardiness works with Sephuz, as I’ll mention later in the Legendary section of the guide. This makes Orc Warrior extremely hard to kill if it is a team’s selected kill target; especially rogues. Warrior only really dies in stuns. The only downside to this in my opinion is that if you are NOT the kill target, it’s easier to CC you out, even if you are opting to play Sephuz. Blood Fury is also quite nice. Just a mini on use trinket with a longer CD.

• Gnome - Gnome would be the last option I would play OVERALL but the first option I would play if the meta suddenly shifted to be more of a frost mage kite meta. Gnome is the best race against this because of Escape Artist. The 1 minute snare/slow removal compliments your other root/snare removals quite well. Potentially could see Gnome having value with Sephuz to make hard cc’s less impactful, as that’s really the only downside to Gnome at the moment. 10% not quite enough to put it to the level of Human.

Talents

Massacre vs Rend

I play Massacre almost every game. The only scenarios where I don’t play it are against 2 high armor melee targets in 3s (Ret/War, War/DK, etc) when I’m trying to cleave or rot 2 both of the melee and I’m swapping around a lot. As something like WM/X or a more set-up based composition or even strategy I opt to just stay Massacre. Sometimes in 2s against high armor targets where I can have a lot of uptime as well. Never against low armor targets. So against like War/Rsham, War/Pal, or any plate melee dps and high armor healer. Against things like War/Rdruid I would play Massacre and try to set up on the Druid.

PvP Talents

Sharpen Blade - I choose Sharpen Blade almost every game. The only situation I’ve run into where I don’t, is against RMP. You don’t really reduce healing against RMP. Most of their ‘healing’ is just shields. Sharpen Blade doesn’t affect those. You also need a more defensive build versus RMP. Without it, you’ll just get walked over.

Storm of Destruction - I take this ability very sparingly. In some matchups even when double melee, you can’t afford to give up other PvP talents for it. The damage and pressure it provides, especially when paired with Unhinged, is quite nice. But losing overall effectiveness and team-wide utility is oftentimes not worth it.

Master and Commander - This is a pretty staple PvP talent as Kyrian. I haven’t found myself using this as Venthyr a single time. I find myself using it as Kyrian quite often as Death Sentence gives you almost no value unless you’re Venthyr. This paired with Inspiring Presence, gives you a very strong team wide defensive, on a relatively short cooldown.

Disarm - Only into MM Hunter, Rogues, Warriors, and Death Knights do I take this talent. This would have value against Ret Paladin as well but they can still cast Templar’s Verdict (if playing Final Verdict legendary) while Disarmed and that just kind of renders the ability useless. I feel it is a must versus the 4 classes lifted previously though, as it completely shuts them down.

Overwatch - Godfather "Look how they massacred my boy" HD

Death Sentence - I play this pretty much every game as Venthyr. Even when I don’t play Sharpen Blade into something like RMP I still prefer to take Death Sentence over Master and Commander or another utility spell. The only time I really don’t play Death Sentence as Venthyr is if I’m training an extremely immobile healer (generally Priest) and I don’t plan on detargeting him the entire game.

War Banner - I use this only really against set-up based compositions with lots of CC and high burst potential but lower consistent damage. Things like RMP, Mage/Lock, etc. Extremely low value against melee cleaves. Pretty much against any Mage team you’re going to want to take this PvP talent.

Duel - KEKW

Warbringer - I’ve only really played this when playing Kyrian. You can’t really fit it into your PvP talents as Venthyr as Death Sentence still feels like a must and any scenario you would realistically play this into would be versus some sort of melee cleave in 3s and then Disarm is also a must. As Kyrian it’s a bit different and I think it kind of depends on what comp you’re playing. I played it as WMPal and I noticed I broke a lot of Dragon’s Breaths and Polymorphs with it. That’s no bueno. But as something like War/SP or War/Ele where you’re trying to peel 2 melee and give your caster or healer or anyone some breathing room I actually quite liked it. Storm and Destruction would also be good maybe but I didn’t really like it. It’s kind of hard to rot teams at the moment and the game feels so fast paced that just giving your teammates a little more breathing room actually felt better to me. I still don’t like Warbringer very much but these are just my initial thoughts.

Demolition - TYLER1'S ANGRY ADDICTION

PvP Trinkets

I’ll try to cover each of the trinkets and when I prefer to use each of them. Keep in mind this is kind of a preference and realistically I haven’t run any sims or done any Dexter’s Laboratory type shit. This is what I prefer. Also, I play Human on my Warriors.

Medallion - you play this ALWAYS as every single race EXCEPT Human. I guess if you’re a little edge lord and you aren’t min maxing and you play Dwarf for some reason there would probably be some scenario where you don’t play this but if you’re Dwarf you’re already trolling yourself so why not do it a little bit more. The scenarios where I like to play this on Human are slowly increasing but generally it’s just into Frost DK cleaves in 3s. Someone on your team has to trade a trinket for every single one of their setups or you just die. Sometimes I like playing this trinket in 2v2 against other warriors so that Disarm isn’t as debilitating but most of the time I just play Relentless and am lazy. Kind of depends on the healer you’re against because if it’s like Warrior/Druid you want to be Relentless so you can’t get cloned out of Incap Roar.

Relentless - only ever really play this as a human. Just play it in the scenarios where you don’t play Medallion which is pretty much all of them. ALWAYS play this into Mage comps as a Human warrior or you’re going to get Dragon’s Breathed into Polymorph literally all game.

Emblem - I only play this into low consistent damage comps that win strictly in setups. Prime examples would be RMP, Shatterplay or God Comp. Things like that. Mage/Lock/X, etc. Things that win in long CC chains and have high burst damage but lower consistent damage. Emblem can really save your ass.

Insignia vs. Badge - I like playing both of these trinkets in different scenarios. First I’ll just describe when I like to play Badge. Also, I think this is just preference? I like the small haste % from Insignia especially as a Venthyr warrior who is opting for more crit. I hate how slow my globals start to feel. Anyway, badge. I like badge into comps where I have limited uptime but I’m not entirely afraid of dying. Something like Shadowplay stands out to me or some of the Mage/Pal/Melee comps like WW/Mage or War/Mage. If there was another caster or a rogue there I’d just play Emblem. But since there’s a consistent damage melee I’m not overly concerned with dying. They’ll likely go on my partner anyway. I like Badge versus those style of compositions because I’m not worried about dying, but my uptime will be less than ideal. What if my Insignia procs and I get stuck in a root? It’s useless. But with Badge when I finally can connect I have more control over my damage. Insignia I just play when I know I’ll have good uptime and I just want the pure damage. Mainly into melee cleaves or SP/Rsham/X. Things like that.

Malediction - Maledict is back for some reason and only Blizzard and God knows why because trust me NO ONE wants this thing back but ANYWHO it’s pretty broken so I find myself using it a lot. If your teammates don’t have them yet, don’t bother playing it because it’s way too easy to shut down just 1 of them. This trinket is extremely good at the time of this guide update because it’s 259 iLvL and we’re all still at most using 226 trinkets from last season. I think once the other trinkets are also at the same PvP iLvL that Maledict won’t be nearly as strong. Try to use this versus Druids during CC to eat up their HOT healing and not really outside of CC as it’s too easy for them to dispel. Same rule of thumb for Shamans realistically but can chain them with your teammates against Shaman teams to still get insane value.

Adaptation - don’t play this shit moron.

Stat Priority

From 0 to 30%, there's no penalty. From 30% to 39%, there's a 10% penalty.

From 39% to 47%, there's a 20% penalty. From 47% to 54%, there's a 30% penalty.

From 54% to 66%, there's a 40% penalty. From 66% to 126%, there's a 50% penalty.

You can't get more than 126% from gear rating.You can read more on it here:

The reason I believe Haste > Crit for all of the Covenants besides Venthyr and Kyrian when using Elysian Might is because you’ll be playing Battlelord. Haste with Battlelord feels extremely fluid and the damage output is extremely high. If you choose to play a different Legendary like Sephuz or maybe your PVE and you have Enduring Blow or something like that, I think that your stat priority would change to Haste = Crit.

Kyrian Elysian Might: Versatility > Crit > Haste > Mastery

Kyrian: Versatility > Haste > Crit > Mastery

Necrolord: Versatility > Haste > Crit > Mastery

Nightfae: Versatility > Haste > Crit > Mastery

Venthyr: Versatility > Crit > Haste > Mastery

Versatility in PvP is still by far your best stat. In every single instance of PvP, it is the best. It increases your damage done, decreases your damage taken. No other stat is better. With the 2 set bonus increasing it as well, it only helps to have as much of it as possible.

Haste is extremely potent for Warrior. The more Haste you have, the faster you auto attack. More auto attacks = more rage. Haste also decreases the cooldown of Mortal Strike, and in general, your globals just feel better. I prefer this faster global cooldown playstyle, even if I’m not spamming Slam. Maybe it’s a mental thing for me, but the slower my game feels, the slower I start to play.

Critical Strike is quite good as Venthyr. Definitely your 2nd best secondary stat behind versatility. I don’t quite like going full into the crit build though. I prefer to play somewhere around 8% haste with an Insignia equipped. Creeping down to levels of haste below that just feels completely unplayable to me. It is likely a preference thing as many warrior players don’t mind this but I do.

Mastery is quite literally just free damage and free damage increase. It’s extremely important to keep Deep Wounds on any target you’re hitting. Mastery overall is not that important though. I don’t run any Mastery at all on any of my warriors.

Rotation/Priority/Doing Damage

First things first, “rotations” don’t really exist in PvP. Or maybe my connotation of what a rotation is doesn’t. There is no SET order of buttons to press, only a priority of what comes first. I’ll try to do my best here to cover in my opinion what that priority is.

ALWAYS try to keep Mortal Strike on cooldown unless you’re Venthyr. As Venthyr you can get away with letting your Mortal Strike sit there for a global or two. As Venthyr it’s more important to keep the Mortal Wounds buff on target and not as important to keep Mortal Strike on CD. The two are different, but realistically not by much. ALWAYS try to keep your hamstring or some form of slow on your target. As long as you’re attacking something, you’re generating rage. If you have rage, you can do damage, or prevent damage. Every situation calls for something different.

The only time I press Slam is when I’m not being targeted at all and I have nearly a full rage bar. Ignore Pain is almost always better to press. You should never use your rage to Slam when you could instead Mortal Strike. If using your rage to Slam will prevent you from pressing Mortal Strike, DON’T do it.

Sweeping Strikes while I feel self-explanatory is often under-utilized. When you can deal damage to more than one target, press that shit.

Debuffs to ALWAYS attempt to maintain:

Mortal Wounds / Deep Wounds / Hamstring / Rend (if playing)

Assuming you have all of these debuffs on target, your priority list should be:

• Mortal Strike if Sharpen Blade - even with 2 stacks of overpower Mortal Strike does less damage than Execute. Only with Sharpen Blade up does it do more
• Execute/Condemn - hardest hitting ability by far. Try to use Sudden Death procs instantly so as to not waste them.
• Mortal Strike - keep on cooldown to best of ability
• Rend (if playing) - important to refresh the duration on this IF you are playing it before using globals on Overpower for maximum Tactician procs
• Overpower - keep on cooldown to the best of your ability. Rage spent can reset cooldown but does not take priority over pressing other things.
• Slam - if plenty of rage and all other conditions are met

Setting up burst windows on Warrior whether you’re playing Kyrian or Venthyr or any Covenant is strictly around Warbreaker. It’s the most important spell for doing damage. Not only is its damage significant, but it increases your damage to target by 30%. During this window is when you want to try and dump as much rage and deal as much damage as possible. The same priority list follows even during this window. The same prerequisites as well. You don’t want to go into this window without a hamstring or some form of slow on target. You don’t want to spend globals trying to slow someone back down when you should be doing damage. You don’t have to worry about applying Deep Wounds as much because Warbreaker does it for you. If you are playing Rend, you want it applied before you press Warbreaker. You don’t want to waste globals.

Assuming you have have hamstring/rend(if playing) already applied and you’re ready to create a burst window, it should look something like this:

• Warbreaker - most important spell. Increases all damage dealt to targets by 30% aim to use as often as possible for burst windows but don’t waste.
• Mortal Strike if Sharpen Blade - even with 2 stacks of overpower Mortal Strike does less damage than Execute. Only with Sharpen Blade up does it do more
• Execute/Condemn - hardest hitting ability by far. Try to use Sudden Death procs instantly so as to not waste them.
• Mortal Strike - keep on cooldown to best of ability
• Overpower - keep on cooldown to the best of ability. Rage spent can reset cooldown but does not take priority over pressing other things.
• Slam - if plenty of rage and nothing else to press
• Rend (if playing) - least important during this window

Setting up Burst Windows when playing Unhinged looks entirely different, almost too much to type. For this I just made a small little Youtube video explaining what I’m looking for, what my globals are, and what to do during this window as it is completely different to your normal priority list or “rotation” during your burst phase. You can find that video here.

If you are playing Exploiter, definitely do the best you can at not overcapping the stacks on your target as you’re simply just wasting damage and your legendary at that point. If the target has 2 stacks of Exploiter and you Condemn to get to them (assuming you’re playing Death Sentence) that would be fine as losing uptime is losing damage as well. But much like Overpower stacks, you never really want to go above 2. Also with Exploiter, depending on what comp you play, at times it is good to hold your stacks if your team and you are about to go for a setup. Doing as much damage as possible to get as many CDS or even a kill is obviously ideal. If you’re just doing damage, I wouldn’t try to double stack Exploiter if it meant losing Mortal Wounds uptime or Hamstring uptime or something also important. It really just depends on what’s taking place in the game and what your goal will be in the next 5-10 seconds I would say. Holding your damage after such a long period just starts to become troll.

Legendaries

Kyrian

1. Elysian Might - Legs (Crit/Vers)
2. Battlelord - Wrist (Haste/Vers)
3. Misshapen Mirror - Chest (Haste/Vers)

Necrolord

1. Battlelord - Wrist (Haste/Vers)
2. Misshapen Mirror - Chest (Haste/Vers)

Nightfae

1. Battlelord - Wrist (Haste/Vers)
2. Misshapen Mirror - Chest (Haste/Vers)

Venthyr

1. Exploiter - Ring (Crit/Vers)
2. Misshapen Mirror - Chest (Crit/Vers)

LEGENDARY EXPLANATION

I’ll start off with Elysian Might. This is the new Kyrian specific Legendary. Gamechanger. Definitely the best Kyrian legendary at the moment. The only times where I find myself not liking this Legendary is into DK melee cleaves. DK can just get out of the Spear WAY too easily. Versus those compositions I like to play Battlelord and then go Rend with high levels of haste and just chop them down. Seems to be pretty good thus far. Misshapen Mirror is definitely not being played as much as before but I think once the pace of the game slows down some it will have more value. At the moment though it just feels bad to take off Elysian Might. It’s so powerful. Also to touch on Elysian Might I’ve been running primarily crit when playing this legendary to empower its 25% crit damage effect. Sometimes clunkier gameplay but you get used to it.

Battlelord + Haste is pretty self explanatory for the other covenants minus Venthyr. Just super fluid gameplay with super high damage. If you don’t have the Haste to go hand in hand with Battlelord in my opinion at least you start to feel very global bloated and it feels like you can’t get the most out of your Legendary. Misshapen Mirror more value for Necrolord/Nightfae if you’re playing one of those as losing Battlelord for the reflect utility for your teammates isn’t as damning as losing Elysian Might as Kyrian.

Last season we put Exploiter on shoulders as Venthyr because you could purchase the crit/vers BOE ring and get double crit/vers ring that way. This season you can’t. Moving Exploiter to ring as I think min-maxing the secondary stats is better than the primary stat gain of putting it on shoulders. It’s very minimal though and I don’t realistically think it matters at all but it’s just what I’ve chosen to do.

If you want anything explained better than I’ve written it here just ask in my Discord or ask in my Twitch chat. Links are a few pages below.

Covenants/Conduits

Kyrian = Venthyr > Necrolord > Nightfae

In Shadowlands I’ve been playing Kyrian and Venthyr. As stated above I feel there are 3 clear outlier Covenants, with Nightfae just being completely dogshit in PvP. I think it’s supposed to be quite good in PvE but I admittedly don’t know as I don’t kill dragons. In my opinion there isn’t a best overall covenant as each composition you play will call for a different thing. I’ve posted some on my YouTube about them and my thoughts and I talk about it quite frequently in stream. For example, if you’re playing TSG with a Frost DK, Kyrian will be your best covenant. You’ll be able to set up a spear with every Frost DK setup. If you’re playing with an Unholy DK though, Necrolord will be your best option. The Necrolord Banner is extremely potent and DK loves Mastery. Venthyr would be your worst option in TSG in my opinion. If you’re playing Ret/War, I think Necrolord is your best option into most things, but Venthyr would have insane value if you’re just trying to trade straight up into other high armor melee cleaves. Each situation kind of has a preferential covenant. It really comes down to what compositions you plan on playing. I try to explain this to the best of my ability but really there is no clear cut BEST in my opinion. There really isn’t. Currently as of 7-18-21 the day that I’m updating this guide the renown cap is level 48 and I’m maining Kyrian. I think with the new Elysian Might legendary, armor nerfs, and Execute buffs, Kyrian could be the best or it is at least EXTREMELY competitive with Venthyr. I still have a Venthyr warrior that I’ll be playing on this season and I plan to come back and update this as my thoughts change and as renown progresses and armor increases.

Also, a brief explanation of conduits. The thing I like the most about conduits and about many of the systems in Shadowlands is the trade-off. If you pick one thing, you lose another. Offense vs defense vs utility. In my opinion it is very well designed and your choices feel meaningful. I’m not sure if it’s the same for other classes as it is for warriors but as far as I can tell, this is how they work. I’ll cover more in depth on conduits that I pick and why I pick them down below.

Potency conduits just empower your offensive spells.

Endurance conduits empower your defensive spells.

Finesse conduits empower your utility spells.

Kyrian

I play Pelagos currently. I’m not sure how good Forgelite will be at later renown levels but I’ll come back and update once that renown level is available (currently max is 48 at time of updating.)

You’ll notice in the below images of my planned conduit trees that there are multiple pathways filled out. For Pelagos I have Safeguard filled out next to Condensed Anima Sphere. The reasoning for this is some teams opt to train the Warrior thus rendering Safeguard useless and making an Endurance Conduit more valuable. If they’re not going you, Safeguard becomes more valuable. The passive healing from Condensed Anima Sphere is quite nice into rot style compositions as well.

For Forgelite I do something similar as well near the bottom. Some compositions will be a little more scary for you so taking Reactive Retrofitting will be better. Some compositions you will have a little more freedom so taking Soulglow Sepctrometer will be better. The conduits below those 2 Soulbind abilities reflect those choices. Kind of a heavy finesse conduit tree which is unlucky because the finesse conduits are kind of some ass but whatever.

Venthyr

You might notice that I have filled out conduits for Familiar Predicaments and Dauntless Duelist for Nadjia. This is because of Human Relentless. Recently Familiar Predicaments was nerfed and it doesn’t stack with Relentless. I never take it anymore as a Human unless for SOME REASON I’m playing Medallion but I haven’t encountered this yet. I play Dauntless Duelist every game as Human, and Familiar Predicaments when I’m playing any other race that uses Medallion.

Necrolord

Best person to ask any Necrolord related Warrior questions is Smexxin. I linked his twitch to his name there. I don’t play Necrolord on any of my Warriors as I don’t feel I’d gain any value from playing it. I think that I still know enough about it to fill out the soulbind tree and I really don’t think the other 2 besides Plague Deviser Marileth look all that great but again I’m not really the expert.

Nightfae

Links/Closing Thoughts

• Follow me on Twitch - be notified when I go live. Best place to ask questions and see high rated arms warrior pvp live.
• Follow me on YouTube - significantly more content coming soon. I plan to really put in some work this season/expansion on YouTube. Give me your ideas. What do you want to see? What hasn’t been done? etc.
• Follow me on Twitter - keep up to date with my dumbass.
• Join my Discord  - another really good place to ask questions
• If you really liked the guide can donate
• If you have any feedback you can post it here
• List of my macros

Thank you to whoever you are for reading this. Whether you like me, or don’t like me. 2020 has been a crazy year for me and I’m extremely grateful to be in the position that I’m in and I owe that all to not only my small little community, but to the warrior community, and the WoW community as a whole. I’m grateful for the opportunity to be viewed as someone with a voice on the Warrior class, and hopefully I make you all proud. If you have any feedback, join my discord or follow me on twitch and ask in chat. Remember to be positive and thoughtful in these discussions. We’re not on that negative shit. Treat people kindly. Once the season starts I’ll be adding to the guide and making changes as the meta develops, so make sure to check regularly.

See you all in Shadowlands.

Also, if you have any gameplay you wish to have reviewed by me, post it in my Discord. Link above and in other places in this guide. I won’t download anything but just send me a video of it somehow, however you like, and I’ll watch it on stream. If you aren’t there when I watch it I’ll tag you in the channel when the review starts and a direct link with a timestamp to my VoD when it begins.