How to Counter Arms Warriors | Shadowlands 9.0 Guide

“Know your enemy, know his sword.” – Miyamoto Musashi 

In order to win, you must know your enemy and we have the guide just for you. Guides below will discuss key features of a certain spec in arena gameplay. Find out what to expect from them as well as potentially being able to counter them and today’s focus is how to deal with Arms Warriors

DEFENSIVE STANCE

Starting with the basics of arms which makes use of Defensive Stance in the arena. Being in this stance means that Arms Warriors will be harder to kill. Making them take 20% reduced damage but at the same time they deal 20% less damage in PVP instances. Some compositions may not favor hitting a warrior which will result in them not being in Defensive Stance. This allows them to deal far more pressure which can be troublesome if left unchecked. 

Here’s an example against a Shadow Priest which our class’s warriors can destroy. This mirror matchup results in both warriors tunneling down on each other’s Shadow Priests being able to demolish them without the need of Defensive Stance.  This results in cooldowns having to be traded to survive the onslaught. The best way to deny a Warrior’s passive pressure is to try to kite and CC them. Mages and Druids are excellent in this regard, being able to spam sheep or cyclone, followed by root effects stopping a warrior from maintaining uptime. 

The State of Arms Warriors on the Shadowlands Beta - Wowhead News
Arms Warrior

OFFENSIVE COOLDOWNS 

For the classes that can’t kite or CC an Arms Warrior heavily, your main survival tool is going to be to peel their Offensive Cooldowns. Arms Warriors have quite a number of powerful offensive cooldowns which can deal an incredible amount of damage. These are Colossus Smash, Avatar, Bladestorm, and Spear of Bastion if they are Kyrian. The huge ones to watch out for are the Warbreaker and Avatar Window. If you can’t kite the warrior here, try to CC the warrior during these cooldowns. Otherwise you may have to use Defensive Cooldowns in order to survive them. If you don’t instantly peel a warrior during these cooldowns, they could opt to use Bladestorm protecting them as well blocking any CC on them during most of their cooldowns resulting in them doing an immense amount of pressure. Disarm is one of the best ways to negate a Warrior’s pressure during their cooldowns. It also lines up well with every Warbreaker Window, being able to reliably peel one of their big damaging abilities. Remember that this is only when the enemy warrior plays with Dreadnaught as if they play with anger management. The best way to use this or CC a Warrior is ideally just as you see them use Warbreaker, that way you land your peeling abilities before they potentially get a Bladestorm off or before they get any big damage rolling reducing their effectiveness. When trading cooldowns, try to use effective ones that you can match or big ones if you’re struggling to live. Die by the sword with the Stalwart Guardian Conduit makes it an excellent cooldown exchange. It negates most of the warrior’s damage and could be traded for every avatar if needed. As for Bladestorm and Spear of Bastion, both of these abilities are strong, short-ranged AOE cooldowns. As such it can deal immense pressure on targets that are stacked likely to force defensive cooldowns. Spear of Bastion also denies mobility cooldowns as well as the affected targets being able to kite out of its radius. To reduce both of these abilities’ effectiveness simply keep them tracked and being a bit spread should result in only one target being prone to the pressure of these spells. As for Bastion, some classes can use mobility cooldowns to escape. 

THE POWER OF EXECUTE

Throughout the ages, warriors have always had Execute but now it is back to the state of being much more powerful. This could easily catch enemy players by surprise due to sudden death procs and Arms Warriors playing with massacre. Although there is no real stopping Executes from Warriors, as Healers you can try to prevent Executes by keeping your partners up above 35% HP. That way you can avoid more Executes from massacre which will reduce a Warrior’s finishing potential. It is common for some Warriors to be Venthyr, an ideal covenant for raiding as well as a strong one for PVP. This means that they have condemned, allowing them to essentially execute targets at above 80% health as well. 

Arms Warrior is SLAMMIN' in Shadowlands! (Pre-Patch) - WoW 9.0 Warrior  Arena PvP - YouTube

SHATTERING THROW

In Shadowlands, Warriors have been reintroduced to the return of Shattering Throw. This ability can get rid of immunity effects (ice block, divine shield and blessing of protection). It has also been given an additional added effect dealing 500% extra damage to players with absorbed shield effects. This works well against life cocoon of the last shield of a Discipline Priest’s rapture. As such, you want to be careful seeing the warriors cast bar in case they make an attempt to rip off the shield and slay your teammate. As for Paladins and their teammates, if you are going to use BoP or divine shield, you could look to line of sight the warrior shattering throw denying its use. Every player could also look to CC the warrior during the shadowing throw cast, which will also deny it from going off. Also, you can intervene a shattering throw on your partners. 

Paladin

DISARM AND INTERVENE


Disarm are powerful defensive cooldowns. Disarm and Intervene abilities can be very overpowered against most melee. Intervene redirects all physical abilities to the Warrior including damage CC and even interrupts such as kick and pummel. Disarm stops a ton of damage certain abilities against every melee, excluding Windwalkers and Feral Druids. Even though Intervene can be a powerful defensive cooldown against melee, most melee cleaves could look to carry on their pressure which can annihilate the warrior quickly. This could force the die by the sword out of the Warrior making them a vulnerable target after. Sweeping strikes if super effective during intervene usages as it will increase pressure on the Warrior. AOE abilities are also effective being able to go through the intervene effects. Making abilities such as fists of fury more difficult to deal with. You can also look to deny intervene with crowd control on the Warrior preventing its use. You can abuse line of sight from the warrior with their partners or keep the Warrior in any form of CC. Root effects can be excellent here unless the Warrior has a root breaker. Another way to deny intervene is potentially look to tunnel down Warrior instead since intervene can never be a factor when killing a Warrior, preventing them from peeling any setups. This could be the way to go when playing against a set up based comp such as RMP. As for disarm, most classes can’t avoid it but most classes can usually use other globals during disarmed windows. The only classes where disarm is virtually useless is against Feral Druids and Windwalker Monks as they do not need a weapon to deal with their pressure. 

SPELL REFLECTION

This has also been changed from its original form during the last expansion. It is now baseline meaning an Arms Warrior will have this every game. However, it has been changed to only reflecting one spell making it much weaker. This means Casters can have easier time to get spell reflection off making it easier to burst Warriors down or land CC on them as well. It also means players can help take the spell reflect away by using an instant spell on it.

OVERWATCH

Overwatch is a nice new PVP talent Arms Warriors have gained in Shadowlands. The new ability allows an Arms Warrior to intervene to give their target a spell reflection as well. As such, you can use your intervene effectively against Casters which will most likely be the talent of choice against Wizard cleaves in general. It can even be an annoyance for Hunters being able to reflect many traps if timed well. However, a big downside with Overwatch is you can lose the overpowered aspect of intervene being that it soaks damage from their teammate. This is great news for physical damage dealers as they can turn up the pressure on the Warrior’s teammates, knowing there is no intervene to save them. A Warrior will have to choose to intervene his partner to reduce pressure meaning the Overwatch aspect may go to waste or to use it for the reflect on their partners but then can’t protect their partners from physical damage at an important time. As for Casters, dealing with this will be exactly the same with how you deal with spell reflection. 

DIE BY THE SWORD

This is a widely known defensive cooldown. Being the biggest self-defensive cooldown in Arms Warrior. In Shadowlands, the spell received a massive cooldown reduction being a 2 minute cooldown. Stalwart guardian is a conduit that reduces its cooldown further, roughly at a 1 minute 30 second cooldown. This means it is half the cooldown it was in previous expansions. This results in having a powerful safety measure especially against melee. Arms Warriors will be even more difficult to kill now that it’s a much lower cooldown. Even though it is a powerful cooldown, if used late it can still look to kill through it and kill targets that use it too late. Warriors are still susceptible to magic damage during this cooldown so heavy damage can still warrant kills if they do not use it in a timely manner or if you have massive pressure. 

WARRIOR LEGENDARIES

Warriors have a number of legendaries they can use in the arena. Three main ones which an Arms Warrior will use are Unhinged, Signet of Tormented Kings and Misshapen Mirror. This can be quite daunting to deal with at first however dealing with all of them is similar to dealing with other aspects of an Arms Warrior. 

Misshapen mirror is pretty much the new mass spell reflection but it only works on the nearest ally. It will be taken most likely against caster cleaves, giving Warriors another way to disrupt more magic CC. The way to deal with this is the same as spell reflection or overwatch as it will only give off one reflect. Tracking spell reflection and crowd controlling the Warrior during your setups will also deny the use of it. 

Signet of Tormented Kings adds even more punch to your offensive cooldowns. Allowing Warriors to gain an additional cooldown when using avatar or bladestorm. This makes it more important to peel these offensive cooldowns and as such dealing with this legendary is the exact same as dealing with other offensive cooldowns. 

Lastly with Unhinged, this can be stacked with sweeping strikes and sharpened blades making their bladestorm deal immense pressure both single target and against 2 players. Dealing with this will be the same as dealing with bladestorm in general. Being spread out is possible so that you can avoid taking massive pressure while a Warrior is using this cooldown.   

Video chapters

0:00 – Intro
1:03 – Defensive Stance
2:10 – Offensive Cooldowns
4:31 – The Power Of Execute
5:28 – Shattering Throw
6:17 – Disarm & Intervene
7:59 – Spell Reflection
8:33 – Overwatch
9:53 – Die By The Sword
10:38 – Warrior Legendaries

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