Class Talents
The Warrior class talent tree seems relatively unique by comparison to many other class trees in that there is a lot of damage being offered as opposed to almost solely utility.
Pathing through the general tree offers a good amount of free points to choose what type of utility or survivability you want to take as you move down the tree.
Some key notable talents always worth taking are:
- Defensive Stance
- War Machine
- Rallying Cry
- Leeching Strikes
- Heroic Leap
- Furious Blows
- Crushing Force
- Reinforced Plates
- Bounding Stride
- Barbaric Training
- Double Time
- Armored to the Teeth
- Wild Strikes
- Two-Handed Weapon Specialization
- Avatar
- Blademaster’s/Warlord’s Torment (situational)
The above talents will not let you reach the entire way down the tree but are some talents which I feel are always worth taking. There are some strong optional talents to let you round out your build. For example, on the right side of the tree below Furious Blows, we are left with a choice in order to reach further down the tree to Barbaric Training which we definitely want. The choices are Storm Bolt, which is mostly useless in raid situations, Overwhelming Rage, which is a great choice but would require a 2 point investment in order to go further and Sidearm/Concussive Blows. Sidearm is a small amount of extra damage for 1 point and Concussive Blows is only useful when interrupts are involved. The situation can highly influence your decision about which of these talents you would choose.
As it stands, there are no talents in the Warrior tree that would be completely useless for Arms Warrior.
Talent Builds
Single Target
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Patch 10.2 brings a small change to the current single target talent setup with the inclusion of the Crushing Force talent in the Warrior tree. There is also 1 point freed up now that Inspiring Presence has been removed. Second Wind is a strong talent on paper but several raid mechanics will deactivate this passive, mitigating its usefulness greatly.
With this in mind, the point in Leeching Strikes can be moved to Second Wind if it’s particularly useful on a certain fight.
Pain and Gain is also a fairly minor survivability talent and can be moved into Bounding Stride, for example, if more mobility is needed.
Cleave
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There isn’t much call for change between the single target build mentioned above and a more cleave-based build as, fortunately, we no longer have to spec into Sweeping Strikes. For a mostly 2 target fight (like Council of Dreams), swapping Strength of Arms for Improved Sweeping Strikes is a good play, but this will heavily depend on the fight. Additionally, consider swapping 1 point in Cruel Strikes out for Uproar if this makes Thunderous Roar line up better with add spawns or you generally need more AoE damage.
Mythic+
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Thanks to the new tier set in 10.2, the Bladestorm build is back and better than ever. Previously this build suffered with heavily reduced single target but the new tier set help bridge that gap a bit while contributing greatly to AoE. The single target damage is still quite heavily backloaded with Execute and Executioner’s Precision.
Alternative Mythic+
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This build sacrifices even more single target damage than the M+ build above. Only consider this build if you absolutely do not need single target damage.