The purpose of this guide is to provide the tools for new or existing fury warriors for them to be successful in a raid environment. Any feedback or suggestions are welcomed.
Enjoy!
Notable changes:
- All raid and party buffs which grant group members 10% increased attack power have been changed slightly. They continue to provide 10% increased ranged attack power, but now provide 20% increased melee attack power.
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Fury
- Dual Wield Specialization no longer increases Physical damage by 5%. It continues to increase off-hand attack damage by 25%.
- Furious Attacks now reduces the target’s healing received by 25%, up from 10%.
With the overall buff to melees and nerf to fury warrior, we have been brought closer to other melee classes and unfortunately been overtaken by most of them in terms of standing-still-and-pounding-away DPS. If you only look at warrior dps without compairing to other classes, we have been buffed slightly.
Table of contents
1. Talents
This is the most common talent specialization which will suffice for most encounters. Some encounters may require you to choose differently. If you have 2-setbonus from tier12, you may choose to put your Booming Voice other places. I would recommend putting the extra point in Blood Craze because healing from that talent is able to procc Landslide and thus theoretically having a higher uptime.
Single Minded Fury or Titans Grip?
The answer to this question is quite simple. If you have a better one-handed weapon, then you should without a doubt choose SMF. But once you have a two-handed weapon with the same ilvl as your one-handed, then Titans Grip will pull out in front. This is mainly because of the large amount strength and weapon damage a two-handed weapon contains. The weapon damage will increase the damage output of the Arms talent Deep Wounds and the enormous amount of stats will make the 20% more damage when specced SMF seems less appealing.
2. Glyphs
The prime glyphs are set in stone. There’s really no point in even discussing them, and I will just list them along with the other suggested glyphs that you will use.
These are glyphs that will be useful for most encounters. Some encounters require you to swap out a few of major glyphs. As an example, you can swap out the Cleaving glyph for Glyph of Heroic Throw if you’re on sunder duty and the boss doesn’t have multiple adds which needs cleaving.
There’s also the occasional boss which does some kind of huge amount of aoe damage, where you might have to use Glyph of Shield Wall.
As Fury doesn’t really have a stun, you might want to use Glyph of Intercept on bosses where a stun might be useful. Sons of Flame during Ragnaros encounter comes to mind where this glyph is useful to some extent.
As for minor glyphs, the Glyph of Berserker Rage is a nobrainer. Some people may want to use Glyph of Battle, although this shouldn’t be necessary as you will use Battle Shout more frequently than once every other minute. I’ve chosen the Glyph of Enduring Victory, because many encounters have adds where you might get a killing blow and thus having an extra ability at hand in case you have a free GCD.
3. Playstyle
The main ability in a Fury warriors arsenal, is Bloodthirst. This ability should take priority over every other ability, and is used on every other GCD. This goes for both TG and SMF.
There’s no rotation as there have been in previous expansions, but instead a priority list. As mentioned earlier, we have a lot of random factors to work with such as uptimes and proccs.
The basic priority lists for both SMF and TG are as following:
TG: Bloodthirst > Colossus Smash > Raging Blow > Bloodsurge > Open GCD
SMF: Bloodthirst > Colossus Smash > Bloodsurge > Raging Blow > Open GCD
Execution phase
When the boss is below 20%, Execute will be available for usage. This takes priority over everything else except Colossus Smash untill you reach 5 stacks of Executioner. At that point you will only use Execute for burning rage or refreshing your buff and continue using your normal priority list.
How many open GCD’s you’ll have during a fight is dependant on your luck and RNG. Unless you’re born under a shooting star while holding a four-leaf clover, you will have several of them. There are a few abilities which we can use these spaces, and some of them are Battle Shout, Heroic Throw and Whirlwind. The last two mentioned should NOT be used unless you’re glowing red and is all maxed out on rage.
But Heroic Throw doesn’t cost rage you might ask? Blizzard has oddly designed this ability to reset your swing timer, and thus reducing your rage income for the next few seconds (unless you really had good timing with the open GCD and your swing timer).
Whirlwind doesn’t do much damage on single target, and should be the last resort. Most of the times its best to just do nothing instead of spending rage on a sub-optimal ability.
The ability you should use the most in these spaces, will be your Battle Shout. Depending on how much rage you have at the moment of use, you should at 50+ rage use it along with a Heroic Strike in order to not be rage capped.
OBS: With 2-set Tier12, you should never delay any of your abilities to gain the damage boost. It just isn’t worth it.
Cooldowns
Damage cooldowns
Death Wish (2 minutes 24 seconds): This is our main source of damage increase. This should be used on cooldown, and ligned up with Colossus Smash. You should always strive to get two full Colossus Smash durations in while under the effects of Death Wish.
Recklessness (4 minutes): This is our second and long cooldown to increase damage. It’s kinda boss dependant how often you will use it. If the fight is long (5 minutes+) you should align it with Death Wish. In most fights you’ll be able to use this ability twice, and in most situations along with Death Wish. There’s only one fight at the moment which is long enough for you to use it more, and this is Ragnaros HC. Even then, it should be aligned with Death Wish to ensure doing the right amount of damage in each of the phases.
Inner Rage (30 secs): This is a very situational cooldown and should be used with care. You might end up using it too early and then not being able to use it when you actually need it, and the result of this is wasting a lot of rage due to cap.
The ability should only be used when you’re reaching the rage cap and during Bloodlust. With the upcoming 2-set tier13 bonus, i could speculate that this would be used for every second Colossus Smash duration if there’s sufficient rage to work with.
Survival Cooldowns
Rallying Cry (3 minutes): This is our raid-wide defensive cooldown. You should always check with your healers when you should use this. This is not really the best raid cooldown, but together with other cooldowns it really shines.
Shield Wall (5m): Your most powerful survival cooldown. This will reduce your damage taken by 40%, although with glyph it can be increased to 60% but also adding 2 extra minutes. You should use this ability whenever you know beforehand that there will be a large amount of damage. Such situations could be crackle on Nefarian or running around with plenty stacks of Superheated during Ragnaros phase 4.
Enraged Regeneration (3 minutes): This is our primary “oh ****”-ability. You will most likely use this ability after you’ve done something you shouldn’t have, and need to camouflage it. Again, this is also useful when you have too many stacks of Superheated. This ability has its gains from mastery.
Utility cooldowns
Berserker Rage (24 secs): This allows us to use Raging Blow when RNG are against, and should thus be saved for such situations.
Heroic Fury (30 secs): It resets the cooldown of your intercept, and is useful should you have Intercept/Heroic Leap unavailable. Besides that it removes any movement hindering effects.
Shattering Throw (5 minutes): Although it’s a personal dps loss to use, it can be very useful if you have a melee heavy raid composition.
4. Stats
The stat priority as a Fury Warrior are as follows:
Strength > 8% Hit > 26 expertise > Crit
Strength is and probably always will be our main stat with critical strike as secondary. Our tertiary stat is hit in most cases. Some warriors always have good experience with mastery as their tertiary stat, but this will bring even more RNG to our class but will be very good on short encounters.
In average our stat priority for each Fury “spec” are:
TG: Crit > Hit > Mastery > Haste
SMF: Crit > Hit > Haste > Mastery
Reforging
By using the above mentioned priority you can’t go totally wrong. Make sure to hit around 780/781 expertise, or 691 if you have some sort of racial benefit to expertise.
If you use some sort of reforging addon or website, you can input these stat weights.
Crit: 198
Haste: 137
Expertise: 247
Mastery: 157
Hit: 175
Spirit/Dodge/Parry: 0
Expertise: At most 781 (or 691 with racial)
These stat weights are only average. They will change along with your gear, and you can always simulate with SimulationCraft to get the stat weights for your current gear.
Gemming
Blue: 10+ strength bonus, use Etched Shadow Spinel
Yellow: 10+ strength bonus, use Inscribed Lava Coral
Red: Bold Queen’s Garnet
Consumables
Flask: Flask of Titanic Strength
Food: Beer-Basted Crocolisk
Potion: Golemblood Potion
You should be able to use a potion twice during an encounter. The first one should be used at the pull, and second one along with your cooldowns and preferably Bloodlust.
Where are the Glyphs?
1: You should try and get the cloak/thrown/neck from VP. The belt from LFR is a decent upgrade, should go get that before buying the VP one. 2: Either you go all-out hit, or all-out mastery. Both are just as viable. Hit are more comfortable to play, since you don't rely too much on RNG. 3: You have a lot of items unenchanted. No proffesions. You have too much expertise (aim for 691).
now you can copy it easier. not many comments here anyways.
http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/character/darksorrow/Whippedcream/simple
Hello Mokkrash, Great guide indeed, couldn't do my fury DPS without it. I just have a few questions you might be able to help with. http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/character/darksorrow/Whippedcream/simple I have played since mid-tbc on 3 different characters, so i've been playing for some time. 1. I have supplied you with an armory link of my current gear and other stuff. Would you suggest i go toward the VP trinket or the VP belt? (or even perhaps something else) 2. i have seen a fury warrior going full mastery, as i am currently SMF, and he was TG is that a good option to fully reforge to? 3. Do you have anything i could do better about my gear, talents, glyphs or anything else Thank you for you time, continue doing a good job mate and GL in DS and further!
great guide!!