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The new and improved talent trees are one of Dragonflight’s most exciting features, but you don’t have to wait until the expansion launches to try them out. The talent trees were added to the game alongside the Dragonflight pre-patch, meaning you can already start experimenting with them right now. Just keep in mind that you won’t have as many talents in the pre-patch as you’re going to have at max level inWorld of Warcraft: Dragonflight.
If you’re planning to play an Arms Warrior in Dragonflight you’re in luck because in this guide we’ll walk you through the spec’s new talent trees and help you put together a solid build. But before we take a look at what’s new with Arms Warriors in Dragonflight, let’s talk a little bit more about the talent trees, in general.
What’s New With Talent Trees In WoW: Dragonflight?
One of the biggest changes you’ll notice right away is that each spec now has two talent trees. The first tree features a bunch of talents and spells for your class while the second one is unique to each individual spec. In this case, you’ve got your Warrior talent tree and your Arms talent tree.
Technically, you don’thaveto make any builds from scratch because Blizzard thought ahead and added a “Starter Build” option, which does exactly what it says on the tin. You could stick to Starter Builds and be fine for the most part, but you can make your character more efficient by creating your own builds. Besides, that would be way more fun than sticking with the default option.
Level 60
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The Warrior tree is where you’ll find most of your utility abilities and passives, including Berserker’s Rage, Rallying Cry, Heroic Leap, and more. In addition, the tree also contains several important abilities that will help you with your DPS, such as Avatar and Thunderous Roar. If you’re playing Arms, you’ll want to stick mostly to the left side of the class tree, especially toward the end.
Row 1:
Battle Stancegets unlocked by default on the first row, and you may also choose to spend a point onDefensive Stancehere. Normally, you probably wouldn’t take Defensive Stance as an Arms Warrior but now you sort of have to due to how the new tree is designed.
Row 2:
Since we grabbed Defensive Stance, we’re going to takeRallying Cryfrom this row along withWar MachineandImpending Victory. Impending Victory can usually be skipped when you’re doing group content, but we’re taking it anyway because we want our Warrior to be as self-sustaining as possible.
Row 3:
Next up you’ll want to grabLeeching StrikesandSecond Windfor even more self-healing along withSpellReflectionandFast Footwork. We skipped Berserker Rage on the second row, so we’ll have to skip the follow-up talent as well.
Row 4:
The fourth row is pretty straightforward as you’ll want every talent here except for Intimidating Shout. That leaves you withFrothing Berserker,Heroic Leap,Thunder Clap, andFurious Blows. Intimidating Shout is a good talent for PvP, but it generally does more harm than good in PvE.
Row 5:
Overwhelming Rage Rank 2andPain and Gainare the first two talents you’ll want to pick up here. There are a few other good choices on this row, but we want to spend just one additional point here, so we decided to go withStorm Boltsince having a ranged stun can always come in handy. But if you would rather have a bit more DPS, you should probably go with Crushing Force Rank 1, or possibly Sidearm.
Row 6:
Since we saved up some points earlier we can now grab every talent on this row.Reinforced Plateswill make you more resilient,Bounding Stridewill make you more mobile, andBarbaric Trainingwill give you a bit more AoE damage. Then, you get a choice between two talents that improve Thunder Clap and we highly recommend going withBlood and Thundersince it’s just objectively better.
Row 7:
On this row, we’re only going to grab the two utility talents:Bitter ImmunityandDouble Time. If you saved up a point earlier by not picking Impending Victory, you could now use it to grab Seismic Reverberation from this row. Or, you could wait a bit longer and spend it on Uproar later on. Both of those are better for DPS than Impending Victory, but you would be missing out on some nice healing.
Row 8:
Starting with this row we’re sticking almost exclusively to the left side of the tree. That means we’re gettingArmored to theTeeth Rank 2andWild Strikes Rank 2. Finally, we’re also grabbing the last talent left in the middle section:Two-Handed Weapon Specialization.
Row 9:
By now you’re locked into the left side of the tree so grab bothAvatarandThunderous Roar.
Row 10:
Blademaster’s Tormentis a must-have for most Warrior builds whileThunderous Wordsis great for DPS. You also have Uproar here, another good talent, so make sure to grab it if you saved up a point earlier.
This is where things get really interesting. Arms Warriors have a couple of viable builds in Dragonflight depending on whether you want to focus on single-target or AoE damage. In this guide, we’re going to focus mainly on the AoE build, but we’ll also touch on the single-target one. You’ll only need to change things around towards the end since the first half of the tree is going to be roughly the same for both playstyles.
The second row only contains a single talent as well:Overpower.
Finally, we’re starting to have more choices.Martial ProwessandImproved Executeare both really good since we want a lot of AoE, but also decent single-target damage. We would normally skipDie by the Swordoutside of PvP and leveling, but wehaveto take it to unlock more talents down the central section of the tree.
There aren’t any good talents for AoE on this row, so we’re going withSudden Deathfor more single-target damage. We’re also grabbingBloodsurgeandFueled by Violence, mainly so we can continue to unlock more talents down the tree. If you find yourself having to parry a lot for one reason or another, you’ll want to get Storm Wall instead of Fueled by Violence.
Colossus Smashis a fantastic ability that can be upgraded even further so you’ll want to get it asap. And thenTacticianandImpaleare almost mandatory due to how the tree is set up. You could technically skip them, but that would mean also skipping Rend and Cleave later, which isn’t an option for this build.
As mentioned earlier,RendandCleaveare very important, so they’re going to be the first two talents we’re going to pick from this row.Anger ManagementandSweeping Strikesare also a no-brainer for any AoE-focused build. The last talent we’re getting here isExhilarating Blows., which helps us with both AoE and single-target. However, if you want more single-target you’ll want to go with Massacre instead. Meanwhile, for more AoE, you may want to save up the point and get Reaping Swings on the next row.
There are a lot of mutually exclusive talents on this row, so you’re going to need to make some hard choices.Storm of SwordsandWarbreakerseemed like pretty obvious first choices, and then we went with InFor The Killover Test of Might. That said, Test of Might is pretty good too, so don’t hesitate to experiment. Before moving to the next row make sure to also grabBloodborne Rank 2.
Since we don’t want the Juggernaut capstone on row 10 we’re skipping Critical Thinking and sticking toDeft Experience Rank 2andValor in Victory Rank 2.
Bladestormis the most iconic AoE ability for Arms Warriors so that’s going to be our first pick here. Unfortunately, we don’t have enough points left to get both talents from the left side so we’ll stick toBloodletting.However, if you skipped both Exhilarating Blows and Reaping Swings earlier you’re able to get Battlelord here as well.
The last row allows us to make our Bladestorm even stronger withHurricanewhile also giving us some extra AoE damage thanks toMerciless Bondegringer. Last but not least, our final point is spent onFatality, however, if you’re going all-in on the AoE you may want to consider Dance of Death instead.
For PvP talents, you have a lot of good choices as an Arms Warrior.Storm of Destruction,War Banner,andWarbringeras probably your best choices in battlegrounds. For Arenas, you’ll want to go withDuel,Death Sentence,and then eitherDisarmorRebounddepending on whether you’re struggling more with melee classes or casters.
Stay tuned for more Dragonflight content in the days and weeks to come. In the meantime, make sure to check out ourDragonflight pre-patch survival guideto get up to speed with all the other changes coming with the new WoW expansion.
