Arms with shields?

Hey guys, just making sure here. We can’t use a bunch of moves without a 2h but we can pull out a shield and shield slam or something. Is anyone switching to shields to take a few shots? Or have any use in pulling out a shield 1h and lose out on regular arms rotation?

Thanks for any help.

Not worth it, you will be dealing up to 200k-300k less damage in raid boss encounters when not using MS to apply deep wounds consistently and its big hit potential.

Ignore pain will provide more survivability than shield block. At the same rage cost

Shield slam does about 900-1100 damage which is less than a single slam, and is on a 7-8 second cd. Meaning you won’t use it very often in a 30 second encounter. As it would only provide at most 5k damage. Ms would provide up to 28k in 30 seconds

There isn’t too much of a benefit of pulling a shield out outside providing minor damage reduction toward melee attacks (additional armor benefits which adds about 5% melee damage reduction) in addition to an ability that cost lots of rage(Shield block 40 rage cost for 33% damage reduction for 4 seconds) .

If you try to kill something while wearing a shield you’re left with using few abilities e.g. overpower, slam, whirlwind and shield slam… not very high damage dealing abilities outside of overpower/dreadnaught. Which even if you use all 4 of those abilities in a row its damage is low and takes much more gcd to complete a rotation

  • slam = 1k
  • dreadnaught x2 = 2.5k
  • whirlwind = 700 (which should not be used single target)
  • shield slam = 1k
    Total possible damage = 5200 or 4500 without whirlwind.

When completing with a 4k ms single use.

  • dreadnaught x2 = 2.5k
  • ms = 4k
    Total possible damage = 6500

Much faster and bigger damage. Since ms can crit for 7-8 k where as your shield slam may only crit for 2k. Thats a 5k difference per use. Which you’ll get more MS uses than you would shield slam due to shield slam having such a long cd.

There are conduits, legendaries, and abilities that provide boosts to ms damage too. Which makes it a utility and damage ability. Shield slam doesn’t bring anything outside of 1k damage every 7 seconds, not to mention leaving you rage starved if you use shield block. You shouldn’t even be using shield block as dps anyway in pve. As for In pvp, no benefit since ms applies deep wounds to deal additional damage, and the MS effect for healing reduction, combined with sharpen blade for bigger damage and healing reduction. You would be at no advantage with shield slam.

Hope this answers the question.

Tl;Dr

No. Not worth it. Stick with 2h and ms. Better damage = happy teammates

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Thank you very much. This helpfulness was absolute.

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You’d need 3 otherwise unusable GCDs for this to be worth (and for those equipment swaps to be aligned to just after with the end of each weapon’s auto-attacks, iirc).

Additionally, the fact that you can’t server-queue weapon/equipment swaps makes the process feel like crud.

Worse, in the one place you might actually have wanted the situational value of shield-swapping, M+… you can’t swap gear, so…

In early leveling with poorer gear, you might do this once in a blue moon. In “real” content, it’s even more rarely applicable.

Hello there I’m a 1h shield arms warrior and I can tell you its very possible to play with a 1h and shield and not lose dps too but be a aoe god, so very quickly yes shield slam does less damage than ms its exactly 60% less damage exactly but your looking at shield slam like its going to replace ms for damage your main damage is going to be over power why? Because of your warrior passive seasoned tactician will process resets for over power using those abilities LIKE: SHIELD BLOCK, IGNORE PAIN HAMSTRING, SLAM, WHIRLWIND, ANY ABILITY that’s cost rage per point of rage has a 1.40% chance to reset over power so you can over power endlessly and suddenly your main attack becomes a spammable undodgeable unblockable non parrayable main attack and being smart with this you can stack mastery and crit to do more damage in your windows of overpower resets you have two charges of ,you can potentially do 12 or more overpowers if you keep resetting and the damage well…I will agree the right talents need to be used and also knowing when to force resets and when to use slam or something else(be selective with your abilities you can get many rests in 1 min) like sudden death or skull splitter first row with impending victory or the stun everyone loves using, rend also is good but massacre works really good too either taking collateral damage or cleave (you can switch weapons while bladestorming to switch to 2h and 1h shield there is also a macro to /equip them faster) also I must say you need avatar very important so you can do more damage. so shield slam is ms just about half its power I’m maldraxxus rn so I can stack colossus smash avatar and conqueres banner to do good damage with shield slam 7k 6k damage crit but that’s kinda not the point the point is to reset over power and keep using slam while leaving rend(EXAMPLE:REND costs 30 rage so a little over 30% to reset over power) applied using shield block leisurely or aggressively to force resets with ignore pain and chain attacks together also highly recommended using signet of tormented kings because you get recklessness as well so you can either have 2 bladestorms or have recklessness as a arms warrior these are just some examples to prove that it works there are many different other ways to play 1h and shield but your main focus should be is that you can use both in a fight your ARMS short for armaments which means you should be the master of all weapons as well and you should never be raged starved since shield slam costs nothin now and you can use deadly calm or skull splitter for rage but it would be better if shield slam did cost some rage to reset overpower although there’s a bunch of ways to make builds for 1h and shield I guess people don’t stare at their spell book long enough you start seeing something new like i do lol…I can do about 8.8K dps a second SINGLE TARGET at I lvl 207 aoe its even more like 13 k dps a second or even more if you get many resets keep in mind your using the talent dreadnaught but I’ve seen an very fast warrior one time use anger management to get bs and colossus smash back quickly since you have more ways to spend rage there’s a lot more to this subject any questions feel free to ask I still play rn as of today and can answer any fellow warrior questions and can guide them to help them learn how to do this too remember switch while blade storming don’t switch during a fight without bs switch before and oh drag a 2h in any open actionbar slot and boom! 2h macro. and use your selector for multiple action bars your gonna need it…well goodbye lmk any questions

EDIT: my burst for example look like this going down the list

conquers banner
charge
avatar : you will either bladestorm or get recklessness so watch how you proceed
colossus smash
shield slam
overpowex1
shield block (reset)
overpower
shield block (reset)
ignore pain ( has a greater chance to reset than shield block lets just say it didnt proc)
overpower 2x
rend (reset chance is over 30 %)
overpower till exhaust ALL rage options

Now BLADESTORM and if you drag a 2h in to a action bar now would be the time to press it as you switch, since bladestorm lasts long enough to switch weapons. and then immediately out of bladestorm mortal strike then into normal rotation until you baldestorm again to switch as necessity dictates its quite surprising seeing some one switch weapons mid fight throws people off

doing this right you will do anywhere from 120k damage single target or more just an example and multi target depends on how many targets there are in one burst im sure you will see its a very fast playstyle

FUN FACT:
only 100 damage difference between a 1h execute and 2h execute depends on weapon but its not much I have a 203 2h and a 207 also a 194 1h and a 200 1h they all have similar ranges of difference so 1h 19k executes are possible ive done it to elite enemies before too anyways ty for reading have a good one pls do let me know if any questions or any comments

RE EDIT: the post posted itself 5 times lol i deleted the extras sorry lol

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Xansion thats some wild wild info man ill have to try that out. Would be rad to have shield and 1h wep as an arms warrior.

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i was experimenting today i got overpower to do 9.7k dps twice i had 6 resets with and without recklessness 3 of em one hit for 7.3 and two 9.7k the other 3 i got to do 4.4k average each i lost recklessness halfway through the pull all single target

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im glad man all this time people were hating on me for trying something different
glad people out there genuinely like this

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Hell yeah man i think its a truly rad idea and ill be trying it today. The reason that mind set exists is because all of the classes have become cookie cutter in regards to talents and when someone experiments it seems like the forums erupt with negativity. More power to ya my man.

thanks man i agree the classes have lost some of their luster and im glad i got support man you rock bro oh and dont forget the conduit for conquers banner if your necro i havent made contact with all the other warriors out there in hiding from the different covenants so idk about any other set ups unless your necro but lmk if you have any questions man i would love to hear other covenants and how they might synergize with this

Oh yeah ill let ya know and im in the ole vampire cov so it should be interesting. And thanks again for putting this out there. I would have never thought about trying this.

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oh man the venthyr execute with massacre do you need any other button ? lol

please also spread the info i would love to see more people in the forum getting together and learning more from each other shield warriors unite lol

dont forget you can switch weapons in mythic plus not gear and in torghast too so dont forget to change weapons while blade storming that you can do that transcend your spec and become the warrior be the warrior god you were meant to be bro

Just to be clear, every single thing Xansion has said is a straight up dps loss and should get you kicked in any pug doing content that matters. It’s a dps loss, and a massive one. If you want to have fun, then by all means continue to play this way to your heart’s content. For anyone else who may not know better, don’t do this unless you’re doing (1) trivial content, or (2) being carried and don’t care what others think.

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Thank God someone said it lol

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Looks like I’m late to this thread.
But wow, just, holy crap wow.

If you’re gonna spread info, make sure it’s good info and not absolute trash. Unless you can show some actual proof to it, you’re 207 ilvl with a +2 M+ run is proof; call me skeptical.

I’ll save ya some time, don’t try sword and board in M+ as arms. If you are not laughed right out of the party, you will be a burden on the group.

The only reason Arms and Fury has shield slam and shield block is to be a last ditch tank if the tank dies. The problem is, you still do not have enough defensive ability to survive any legit content that would kill your regular tank. So just don’t bother.

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so if your gonna sit there and lie to the forums and say im lying your wrong LOL you wouldnt understand your a hunter. using shield block even ignore pain and all your abilities that use rage resets overpower you can do MASSIVE BURST resetting in your damage window bc of dreadnaught and overpower. ive hit 10 k overpowers right now and they are just gonna get stronger in a burst i can do crazy amounts of aoe and the burst could potentially never end since if you keep resetting you can keep attacking

no one laughed me out of any party ever i out dps even more geared 2h arms dps in m+ bc i can switch weapons to do overpower resets sure if your skeptical i have screen shots to prove all im saying to you rn or anyone else wanting to put downs shield arms builds its usually the people who are die hard 2h fans the game is changing guys so is the meta the fact that you guys think im lying proves no one has ever thought of what im doing and i and a few others only know that this is possible i understand that you dont understand but i do and thats not my fault, so you cant invalidate me lol bc i discovered something new you dont get and dont try to dissuade others from learning too if thats what they want lol

Lmao dude you’re hilarious.

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