The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Fury 101, Page 2

5. To level a fury
So far we've talked about the stats you want, but how do you go about leveling as fury? For starters, keep it simple: trying to collect ArP on you leveling gear will just frustrate you. You won't have Titan's Grip until level 60 (if you take all of your points in fury to that point) so you'll level with either a 2h weapon or two 1h weapons. Focus on strength, then crit, then stam (stam is useful for leveling because it makes it harder for you to die). "Of the bear' and "of the beast' are probably your best bets for leveling greens. Also keep in mind your relative fragility compared to a tank: you're not going to be able to soak up nearly as much damage, especially when you lack in gear. The heirloom plate shoulders, chest, and 2h axe are all good choices for a fury warrior (and you can always get a second 2h once you have Titan's Grip).
The better your leveling gear is and the more you work on keeping it up to date, the easier it is to level as fury. Consider the Bloodthirst glyph as soon as you can get it, because the self heal is very useful for leveling. Make sure to keep potions, food and first aid ready.
This is a level 70 build aimed at soloing and grinding quests which is also viable for dungeon finder groups. It takes Blood Craze in order to improve survivability (you'd likely have at least Bloodthirst glyphed as well for more health regeneration). This level 80 build is aimed at providing the raid with maximized versions of Battle or Commanding Shout for the longest duration possible (so glyphs would be chosen to amplify one of those two shouts) as well as longer durations on Demoralizing Shout. This variant is instead focused on maximum benefit from the Demo Shout debuff. You could easily move points around for Furious Attacks and Heroic Fury to increase PvP viability or for raid utility.
As a fury warrior you probably won't bother with protection talents when it's almost mandatory to go at least up to Two-Handed Weapon Specialization in arms. Since you'll have to spend at least 15 points to get there, you're most likely going for Impale and Deep Wounds as well: how you get there doesn't matter all that much, although it's not like Improved Heroic Strike is going to hurt your rage dumping any. While fury is hardly the most popular PvP spec for warriors, if you're going to PvP as fury you might as well get Iron Will. Otherwise, I'd recommend Tactical Mastery to make stance switching easier, although as fury you won't have to do that very often. (TM also makes offtanking when necessary easier for a fury warrior.)
So far we've talked about the stats you want, but how do you go about leveling as fury? For starters, keep it simple: trying to collect ArP on you leveling gear will just frustrate you. You won't have Titan's Grip until level 60 (if you take all of your points in fury to that point) so you'll level with either a 2h weapon or two 1h weapons. Focus on strength, then crit, then stam (stam is useful for leveling because it makes it harder for you to die). "Of the bear' and "of the beast' are probably your best bets for leveling greens. Also keep in mind your relative fragility compared to a tank: you're not going to be able to soak up nearly as much damage, especially when you lack in gear. The heirloom plate shoulders, chest, and 2h axe are all good choices for a fury warrior (and you can always get a second 2h once you have Titan's Grip).
The better your leveling gear is and the more you work on keeping it up to date, the easier it is to level as fury. Consider the Bloodthirst glyph as soon as you can get it, because the self heal is very useful for leveling. Make sure to keep potions, food and first aid ready.
This is a level 70 build aimed at soloing and grinding quests which is also viable for dungeon finder groups. It takes Blood Craze in order to improve survivability (you'd likely have at least Bloodthirst glyphed as well for more health regeneration). This level 80 build is aimed at providing the raid with maximized versions of Battle or Commanding Shout for the longest duration possible (so glyphs would be chosen to amplify one of those two shouts) as well as longer durations on Demoralizing Shout. This variant is instead focused on maximum benefit from the Demo Shout debuff. You could easily move points around for Furious Attacks and Heroic Fury to increase PvP viability or for raid utility.
As a fury warrior you probably won't bother with protection talents when it's almost mandatory to go at least up to Two-Handed Weapon Specialization in arms. Since you'll have to spend at least 15 points to get there, you're most likely going for Impale and Deep Wounds as well: how you get there doesn't matter all that much, although it's not like Improved Heroic Strike is going to hurt your rage dumping any. While fury is hardly the most popular PvP spec for warriors, if you're going to PvP as fury you might as well get Iron Will. Otherwise, I'd recommend Tactical Mastery to make stance switching easier, although as fury you won't have to do that very often. (TM also makes offtanking when necessary easier for a fury warrior.)

6. Fury Talent Overview
There are a lot of talents in fury and of course everyone will have different talents they like. I'll go over those I think are particularly interesting or useful, but as always, your own opinions may differ. I'll be mentioning them in the order that they become available on the tree: the more points it costs to get to a talent, the later it will appear on the list. It would take more points than you probably can afford to spend and get the generally accepted necessary arms talents to buy all of these.
- Amored To The Teeth: The developers want you wearing plate, so they have given you this talent (also very attractive for prot warriors speccing into fury) to make the plate give you something useful.
- Booming Voice: Shouts last longer, shouts reach more targets. Since it's right there in the first tier it's pretty easy to justify picking it up.
- Cruelty: For five points, you get 5% crit independent of gear. It doesn't decay as you level, meaning that every time you get a level and the amount of critical strike rating you need for 1% crit goes up, this talent is inflated in value. Think of how much itemization 5% chance to crit is worth at level 80.
- Piercing Howl: Do you want to have to switch stances to hamstring, or would you rather be able to just yell and daze them long enough to get that killing blow in? PH is good when soloing and grinding, in PvP, and on any instance or raid fight with a lot of adds that can be slowed and kited.
- Improved Cleave: This, when combined with the Glyph of Cleaving, is a lot of damage in AoE situations.
- Dual Wield Specialization: You're going to be dual wielding a set of 2h weapons. You want your offhand to hit harder. It stacks with damage from Two-Hand Weapon Specialization.
- Precision: The white hit cap not counting things like draenei racials is close to 880 hit rating. You're never going to get there, but it means that Precision is never a bad talent.
- Death Wish: 20% more damage dealt, 5% more damage taken. Pretty much a must have, just try not to use it when standing in fire, or acid, or fire acid or whatever they're making the floor exude this boss.
- Flurry: You attack faster, generate more rage, and do more damage within the same time frame. Always get this.
- Intensify Rage: Shorter cooldowns for various important DPS abiliies.
- Bloodthirst: Your main instant attack as fury, every four seconds, calculated off of attack power, small self heal that can be increased with glyph for leveling. A necessary talent.
- Improved Whirlwind: More damage for your main AoE ability, which is also your secondary instant attack (glyphed, whirlwind fires every 8 seconds, meaning that your standard rotation will be BT - BT - WW). Another must have talent.
- Furious Attacks: Useful for PvP or fights with healing that needs to be reduced, FA is unfortunately only a chance to apply, only applies on white hits, and must be stacked to 2 to be as effective as the Mortal Strike debuff. In the end, it's a pale second, but if you intend to PvP as fury you'll almost have to accept that.
- Improved Berserker Stance: At the full five point investment, it's an extra 20% strength and a 10% threat reduction (the only threat reduction fury warriors have available) - you have no choice but to take this talent.
- Heroic Fury: A fun and useful talent, good for PvP or for mobility fights where an extra intercept makes getting back into DPS range much, much easier. It's one point, but that may be 1 point you just don't have to spare. (I always try and pick it up, but others are not so enthused.)
- Rampage: If you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you'll have a feral in your raid comp, you can skip this. If there's any chance you won't have one, it's worth picking up. Keep in mind it's inferior to Leader of the Pack.
- Bloodsurge: Without this ability, you should never touch Slam in your damage rotation. With it, Slam as soon as it procs as long as you have the rage.
- Unending Fury: More damage from your big three rotation abilities.
- Titan's Grip: Let's not waste our time pretending. You're going to take Titan's Grip. You know it, I know it, and the two 2h weapons you're going to smash into everything that moves, they know it too. They're already calling your name. TG, even with the damage reduction, is a huge DPS increase.
7. Fury rotation
Unlike protection last week, fury actually has a pretty standard rotation. You'll use Bloodthirst every 4 seconds, Whirlwind every 8 seconds (glyphed, of course) and Slam every time Bloodsurge procs and makes it an instant attack. While you're working on this rotation, you'll most likely weave in Sunder Armor (if there's no protection warrior tanking), Heroic Strike to burn rage if you're high (any rage generated past 100 rage is effectively wasted, so it's always to your benefit to try and stay below 75 rage as a guideline) or Cleave if you're in a multi-mob pull. You also may be expected to keep Demoralizing Shout on a boss, or Commanding or Battle shout up for the group.
You should use your DPS cooldowns (Death Wish, Recklessness) every time they're up as long as you can be sure that you won't waste some or all of their duration by having to move. (Many modern boss encounters feature a lot of movement and are not considered 'warrior DPS friendly') Bloodrage should be used if a long period of rage starvation (three or more white swings missing) causes you to be unable to keep up with your rotation. Major glyphs for fury are almost certainly going to include Cleaving and Whirlwind and Heroic Strike is a popular third choice. Minor glyphs often include Command, Battle or Bloodrage.
You'll gem for whatever stats your gear is short on to make caps at first, then once you have sufficient hit and expertise on gear to no longer need to gem for it, you'll most likely switch to ArP as much as you can. Your meta gem will probably be the Chaotic Skyflare Diamond, with a Nightmare's Tear and one of the purple or green gems with stamina and a desirable stat (again, most likely ArP or crit) to make the meta's requirements.
Next week, we'll discuss arms, and then wrap up our 101 series with gearing, gemming, glyphing and enchanting in detail.






Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
jason.reagan Feb 5th 2010 3:10PM
"(Enrage is basically a great leveling or PvP talent, and is nerfed even in PvP by resilience - ironically, the more resilience and thus survivability you have as a PvP warrior the less you'll like Enrage.)"
uh... what?
"Enrage Rank 5
Gives you a 30% chance to receive a 10% damage bonus for 12 sec after being the victim of a damaging attack. This effect does not stack with Wrecking Crew."
Last time i checked resilience did not decrease the chance you would take damage. The only thing that will reduce the number of times enrage procs would be defense, dodge, parry and block. Any attack that lands and is unmitigated though one of those can proc enrage....
jason.reagan Feb 5th 2010 3:12PM
Also as a side note, even when enrage worked off being crit, it would still proc off an attack that would have been a crit if you didnt have the resilience. So even back then when it worked off crits the statement would be invalid
Matthew Rossi Feb 5th 2010 3:14PM
Oh, right, I forgot they fixed that. Editing.
Ritchie! Feb 5th 2010 3:20PM
Matt, I liek the article - I've been a DPS Warrior for a couple of years now but what I want to know is what kind of gear I'll need to be able to do more boss DPS as Fury than as Arms?
Matthew Rossi Feb 5th 2010 3:27PM
Well, it's more or less the same gear. You want ArP as either spec, you want crit and strength for AP, it just comes down to fury having a more stringent exp cap (since arms can use overpower if a mob dodges) and higher DPS at higher levels of gear. Arms requires roughly 263 hit rating to completely cap out on hit, but doesn't have expertise, while fury doesn't cap out but doesn't need to try and shoot for the white cap either.
Trotline Feb 5th 2010 3:29PM
Minor typo: in the Hit section, you have 163 as the soft cap, instead of 263. Nice article! I wish I'd had it as a resource when I was leveling and as a fresh 80. :)
Matthew Rossi Feb 5th 2010 3:35PM
That's actually counting Precision (why I linked the talent there) - with Precision, the cap is only 163, since it pushes the amount of hit down rom 8% to 5% fully invested. I'll go back and make that clear.
Trotline Feb 5th 2010 3:38PM
Ah, I see what you were saying now. What I get for skimming too fast. :)
Varler Feb 5th 2010 3:41PM
At what point do you start gemming for ArP instead of Str? My fury spec is geared in full 232 t9, and Landsoul's spreadsheet still shows a better DPS increase with Str (if I'm reading it right, of course).
Matthew Rossi Feb 5th 2010 3:48PM
It really depends on if you can hit the hard ArP cap. If you have access to ArP trinkets, weapons, belts, and so on that can get you closer to 1399 rating, then gemming for ArP makes more and more sense. If, however, you're around 700 ArP with a proc trinket, strength gemming will usually serve you as well or better.
I didn't want to mention stuff like spreadsheets in a 101 post, but if Landsoul's is telling you str is better, go with it.
Joester Feb 5th 2010 7:28PM
Farm H. FoS for Needle (ArP Trinket). Once you have that and about 32% ArP from Gear itself. Mostly like, T9/T10 Shoulders, Helm, Breastplate, Axes (Tyrannical Beheader), Crimson Arc Throwing Stars (Range), Rings (Triumph Badge Rings). You can probably start gemming ArP till you reach 100%. I would Spreadsheet it. Landsouls is the best.
Tim Feb 5th 2010 3:57PM
My understanding was that if you want to level as DPS warrior it was better to level as arms due to gear scaling. Is this still true? I believe I heard this from Big hit box.
Evelinda Feb 10th 2010 5:52AM
well, personally, i had a MUCH easier time levelling arms, and was producing much higher dps as arms... I tried both several times, a couple before TG, and a couple after, with heirloom chest, shoulders and axe from level one. I also found myself enjoying playing arms more; the increased level of interactivity thanks to overpower helped to break up the tedium of levelling...
bfamredux Feb 5th 2010 3:59PM
There is a crit cap, and it's attainable. You should also plug Landsoul's sheet, it's defacto for any moderately serious raiding Fury Warrior.
Mortiseraphim Feb 5th 2010 4:16PM
Any moderately serious raiding warrior should already be doing his/her research on EJ and the like, finding ways to be a better face smasher and should know about it by now :P
But all the same, here it is:
http://elitistjerks.com/f81/t37462-warrior_dps_calculation_spreadsheet/
Hands down the best tool to find out what you should be aiming for, and for you gearheads, how to tweak your gems and gear to fine tune the best possible dps. Also note that the difference between warriors and other melee dps classes; expertise is paramount to any other stat (besides hit, but thats easy nowadays) to be capped out on. As Rossi said, its better to be over than to be short even by one point.
Matthew Rossi Feb 5th 2010 4:30PM
Crit isn't so much a cap as it is a DR situation. On the other hand, expertise to push dodge off of the table increases crit's effectiveness (I assume you're talking about the unmodified chance for glancing blows for a dual wielder and how hit and crit interact with it) - so if you're expertise capped your crit and hit don't have to worry as much about dodge, and if you're attacking from behind you won't be blocked or parried.
Assuming I'm understanding your point about the attack table against an 83 mob and the combined hit/crit chance due to glancing blows. If I'm wrong I apologize.
bfamredux Feb 5th 2010 5:02PM
The critical cap isn't a static number, it changes with your expertise and hit rating. Determining what an individual's crit cap by using this formula:
Crit Cap = 100 - 24 - 4.8 - ([214 - X] * 0.0305) - ([722 - Y] * 0.0305)
x = expertise
y = hit rating
If you can cap your toon's critical, then do so because it's a superior stat for rage generation as well as overall DPS and damage done.
Oloron Feb 5th 2010 4:18PM
How do you recommend altering your rotation when bosses are under 20% HP? In other words, what's your stance on Execute spamming?
Matthew Rossi Feb 5th 2010 4:24PM
Execute spamming doesn't really reward you that much anymore. With the change to execute that caps how much rage it uses and how much damage that rage can therefore be converted to, your best bet is to treat execute like a filler or rage dump. In other words, keep using your BT BT WW rotation, just put execute in when nothing else is up.
Furious Kalleck Feb 5th 2010 4:31PM
The way I do it is to weave Execute into the two free GCD's inbetween BT and WW. So at 20 percent it goes BT [Free GCD X2] BT [Free GCD X2] WW. Some of those GCDs should be DPS enchancers, instant slams, or sunders, but at 20 percent Execute is also available. It is a rage hog even at 30 rage capped, tho.