Arms Warriors Provide the Big Smash in the World of Warcraft

The Arms warrior in WoW typically carries a big axe (or sword) and excels at generating massive damage to crush opponents. The opposition goes down quickly to the Arms Warrior's high level of "burst damage," and if they have a healer behind them? Well, they're pretty nearly unstoppable.

An Arms Warrior sizing up the Opposition

Prior to the release of Cataclysm, for the current 3.3 patch series, Arms is the build of choice for PvP, with Fury falling a bit behind. Arms also makes a very good DPS build for raiding and light tanking and if you're not yet at the level cap it's a pretty good choice for leveling. All in all, the Arms Warrior has a lot of versitility.
For raiding DPS some say that Fury is superior to Arms. Others differ, saying that the two are comparable. Most agree that Arms DPS requires a lot more attention than Fury to generate comparable numbers.
After playing a Fury warrior (perhaps while leveling) for a long time it can be refreshing to play something that requires a little more skill. It's refreshing to move to the more difficult Arms after playing Fury for a while. Also, as mentioned above, Arms rewards that higher level of involvement with a great deal of versatility. That it hits really hard is no small bonus.

Your Mortal Strike (MS) ability will become your Bread and Butterstrike . MSs healing debuff makes it especially useful in PvP. Arms specializes somewhat in burst damage and with the healing debuff from MS you might be able to put your opponent down, regardless of his healing.

When laying out your Arms Warrior's talents, especially if you're going to be PvPing, stick with the Arms tree so that you can get into Mortal Strike ASAP. Bladestorm is a good reason to stick with the Arms tree, after which you can branch out into the other trees as necessary. Once you have MS your generic attack rotation will then be something like charge > MS > Hamstring. Use Overpower, Sudden Death, or Bloodsurge if they proc, otherwise use Heroic Strike inbetween your MSs.

When the Cataclysm expansion arrives there will be two big changes to the talent system, besides a complete reworking of the talents. Well Ok, that's two after the reworking of the talents. One is that you're locked into one tree until you hit the top talent. Only after that can you branch out. Then there's the Mastery system. "Mastery" of the Arms tree gives you a chance for free attacks after each of your normal melee attacks.   So this will simultaneouisly give players incentive to stick with one tree while also forcing players to... stick with one tree.

Your trainer can teach you the Mastery ability, after you grab the last Arms talent, Bladestorm. Your Mastery ability can be enhanced by the Various pieces of Cataclysm gear which will have Mastery rating.   This allows your Mastery ability to improve as your gear does (just like Crit or Hit rating does.) With lots of high level gear the Arms Warriors should be generating some nice DPS with all those extra attacks.