The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Fury demolishes entire cities in 4.0.1
by Matthew Rossi 
Oct 29th 2010 at 9:00AM
Forget Deathwing. After the horrible start fury got in 4.0.1, it saw some buffs that have made it an extremely beefy DPS spec again. While we may not be topping the meters in all fights, we're certainly putting out some very solid DPS numbers. "Solid" depends on your gear, of course, but my mixed-geared night elf can easily push out 9-11k in a heroic, and my much better-geared draenei can easily put out more if the boss stays alive long enough. With the ICC buff, fury is once again competitive for the top spot (although much less likely to own it) and is no longer a hindrance to your raid. And if you're not a raiding fury warrior, with the change to the justice point system and the removal of ratings on PvP gear, it's never been easier to get solid DPS gear (like I did for my night elf, above).
The gearing requirements are different now, the rotation has changed and we have new glyphs to consider, so while the damage is solid again, there are some real differences to consider.
To gear a fury redux
One thing to note for fury DPS in this last month of Wrath of the Lich King is that certain truths that have held for the entire expansion do so no longer. Not only is armor penetration dead, but hit rating, a formerly despised stat, is now a very welcome one. With the removal of the old Heroic Strike, you want to get as close to 27 percent hit as possible, which is 738 hit rating for a fury warrior (we get 3 percent free from our talent specialization Precision; otherwise, it would be 830 hit rating) in order to ensure your attacks land. Even with rage normalization, a white attack has to land in order for you to generate rage from it; the amount is just fixed and can't go up with a crit or more damage dealt.
As our hit rating needs are now far more stringent, a lot of DPS plate that once looked pretty substandard will now start to look a lot better. Landsoul's Horned Greathelm, for instance, is a very attractive offset piece. In fact, if you don't have four-piece tier 10 for whatever reason, the two-piece T10 bonus is so worthless for us fury warriors that you might as well not worry about wearing any for set bonuses, making off-set pieces like Gendarme's Cuirass and the Raging Behemoth's Shoulderplates far more attractive. However, the four-piece set bonus, a flat 5 percent more damage dealt, is very attractive -- so much so that my draenei, who has a full set of off-set i277 DPS pieces, still wears four of the 264 Ymirjar for that 5 percent boost, and then uses the i277 pieces for other slots.
Those glittering gems
Frankly, with all the old armor pen gems converting to crit, I found crit the easiest stat to reforge off of my gear for hit or mastery. If I'd been inclined to entirely regem my gear, I probably would have stacked strength or mastery gems and reforged more haste along with crit for hit, but either way seems to work. (My draenei has more standing-around money, so he went with more strength gems than my night elf, who is instead relying more on reforging.) Either way, once you have enough hit to ensure steady rage generation and a handle on the rotation, high DPS once again becomes possible, even likely.
Those glittering gems
Frankly, with all the old armor pen gems converting to crit, I found crit the easiest stat to reforge off of my gear for hit or mastery. If I'd been inclined to entirely regem my gear, I probably would have stacked strength or mastery gems and reforged more haste along with crit for hit, but either way seems to work. (My draenei has more standing-around money, so he went with more strength gems than my night elf, who is instead relying more on reforging.) Either way, once you have enough hit to ensure steady rage generation and a handle on the rotation, high DPS once again becomes possible, even likely.
The rotation itself is, to be kind to it, not terribly interesting. Some people have reported binding it to their mouse wheel with macros and putting out high DPS with it. I suspect this would work on a dummy, but not as well in a dungeon or raid where you have to move around. Nevertheless, it's worth mentioning that as of right now, you spend a lot of time hitting Bloodthirst or Heroic Strike while waiting for either Raging Blow or Slam to light up, and that can get kind of monotonous. I'd personally rather have a boring rotation that works than an exciting one that doesn't, but I'd prefer an exciting one that works to either of those, so we'll see how things look once we can slide in an occasional Colossus Smash at 81+. Without the ability arms has to reset its CS, fury will need to learn how to time it for maximum use of that 6-second window, but for now, this is not a concern.
Engraved on our hearts
Glyph choices for fury are relatively simple. The build and glyphs I'm currently using for level 80 more or less hit the highlights. I unfortunately find myself in agreement with Sleutel's analysis from last week, after taking my 1H weapons for a spin with a SMF build this week. While her assessment of the lack of strength on most ICC weapons is part of the issue, I also feel that the SMF damage buff doesn't quite overcome the raw statistics available through dual wielding 2H weapons yet. Still, if the best weapons you have are a Black Bruise and Keleseth's Seducer (better than what I have, an Abomination's Knuckles and Scourgeborn Waraxe), you may see better results. Furthermore, while SMF isn't performing as well as TG, that doesn't mean it is bad in any way, shape or form. It's just not as good as TG given equivalent gear. If your 1H weapons are i264 and your 2H are i245, obviously, go with SMF.
Engraved on our hearts
Glyph choices for fury are relatively simple. The build and glyphs I'm currently using for level 80 more or less hit the highlights. I unfortunately find myself in agreement with Sleutel's analysis from last week, after taking my 1H weapons for a spin with a SMF build this week. While her assessment of the lack of strength on most ICC weapons is part of the issue, I also feel that the SMF damage buff doesn't quite overcome the raw statistics available through dual wielding 2H weapons yet. Still, if the best weapons you have are a Black Bruise and Keleseth's Seducer (better than what I have, an Abomination's Knuckles and Scourgeborn Waraxe), you may see better results. Furthermore, while SMF isn't performing as well as TG, that doesn't mean it is bad in any way, shape or form. It's just not as good as TG given equivalent gear. If your 1H weapons are i264 and your 2H are i245, obviously, go with SMF.
To sum it all up: Fury is performing very well, better in 5-mans than it did before 4.0.1 and the adjustments. It's not as good in raids as it was, but we expected that. It's still very, very gear-dependent with a very high hit cap, and you'll probably need to do some reforging or regemming to get the stats you need. Your glyph choices are fairly boring. The rotation itself is reasonably boring but effective. And it's pretty easy to get an i264 weapon or two to test out with the changes to PvP gear, if you're interested in playing with the spec.
Next week, how did tanking come through, and is Mortal Strike (and all other healing debuffs) really being reduced to a 10 percent healing debuff on the beta? (Yes, it is.) If so, what's the point of even having healing debuffs? (None.) Why not just take them all out and give us some more damage? (No idea.)
Next week, how did tanking come through, and is Mortal Strike (and all other healing debuffs) really being reduced to a 10 percent healing debuff on the beta? (Yes, it is.) If so, what's the point of even having healing debuffs? (None.) Why not just take them all out and give us some more damage? (No idea.)
Check out more strategies and tips for warriors of all specs in Matthew Rossi's weekly class column, The Care and Feeding of Warriors.Filed under: Warrior, Analysis / Opinion, (Warrior) The Care and Feeding of Warriors, Cataclysm
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 5)
Literaltruth Oct 29th 2010 9:17AM
Woohoo...I can't wait to read that next column to find out what Matt's opinion is of that MS nerf. The suspense is killing me.
loop_not_defined Oct 29th 2010 12:51PM
I can't wait to read about Prot Warriors. Fury spec has been wonderful and definitely holding it's own, but good god...Protection has been one long painful struggle. I can only assume I'm doing something wrong - I don't expect amazing DPS as a tank, but I'm barely breaking 1000 DPS with so-so gear (~3800 GS) and keeping aggro even in single-target situations has been hair-pulling.
It probably doesn't help that the well-intentioned LFD system hooks me up with ~5800 GS DPS. :X
aequis Oct 29th 2010 2:38PM
1000 dps is low. I had a relatively large jump from 1600-ish (average ilevel 220 or so) before the patch to 2200 after the patch. Either way, you're going to have trouble holding aggro against the imba damage all the DD classes are doing right now. Even with 3000-3300 dps (after upgrading some pieces to ilevel 264), it can be difficult for me when there's a DK, mage or shaman putting out 6000+ DPS. Their threat is just insane and I'm glad I can hold aggro most of the time.
Teaspoon Oct 29th 2010 9:01PM
I have no idea what gear you're wearing for a 3800GS, as I've completely ignored the whole GS thing because I raid with people I like instead of going on pugs that demand I dress to fit some arbitrary number ...
... but 1kdps at 80 probably means you're doing something wrong, even if you're trotting around in freshly crafted tempered saronite blues.
Nuggets of advice from a protection warrior who's been known to top 15k DPS on ICC trash packs:
- While Heroic Strike and Cleave are on a mutual 3s cooldown, they're NOT attached to the global cooldown at all. Use a macro collection to automatically cast one of them whenever you use any of your regular global-cooldown abilities. I macro in a /click command to make my macro click a particular slot on my action bar, then drag HS or Cleave into that slot depending on which one is right for the fight.
- "Tanking" weapons (fast, +str, used to have defense on them) are weak right now due to changes in how the overall prot damage output interacts with swing speed. Grab one of those slow one-handers that are meant to be for combat rogues and enhancement shamans. Yes, the ones with agility. If you can find one of the rare ones with attack power instead it'll be even better, but just the high base damage on a slow agi weapon will supply a good chunk more damage than an equal-level fast str weapon.
- Pop shield block as you start the fight. Your shield specialization talent means 15 rage per blocked attack, so if you charge into a pack of 5 guys with shield block up and they all swing at you once that's 75 rage straight off the bat AND it buys some ramp-up time for the healer by reducing your incoming damage. If there's a caster in the group you should also bring up spell reflect early because you'll get sixty rage off a successful reflect.
- Don't try to open with a rend on a multi-target pull. Somebody (healer or DPS) is going to cast early and take everybody but the guy you rended (plus maybe his friends that you cleaved). If the group's positioned so you can hit them all with a shockwave, open with that, then rend and thunderclap while they're stunned. If you're opening with a shockwave then you should save your shield block for when the shock wave breaks so that you're not standing there wasting block uptime against targets who aren't swinging at you anyway. If the group's spread out wrong for a shockwave, hit them with a thunderclap straight away without rending, then get a rend in in time for the second thunderclap.
- Priority for the basic attacks is shield slam > revenge > devastate. There may be times when your revenge seems to hit harder than shield slam, but you should still use the shield slam first because there's a good chance that the revenge will proc sword and board and light shield slam back up. "Shield slam, revenge, shield slam" hits harder than "revenge, shield slam, devastate" and probably costs less rage.
- It's bad when your attacks don't land. Gemming and reforging to reach 8% hit and 26 expertise is a good idea. Going over 26 expertise isn't OK if you're raiding because raid bosses have bonus parry chance and the extra expertise will continue reducing that.
- This one's going to be controversial, I'm sure... Attacks not landing on you is also arguably bad, as taking damage supplies you with both rage and bonus attack power. Once your dodge+parry hits 35% (for 5 mans, or about 45% for raiding) you should look at reforging some dodge or parry into mastery for more block chance. Block means you take partial damage so you still get some rage and bonus AP out of it, and you get the 15 rage from shield specialization thrown in too.
HeroJéz Oct 29th 2010 9:25AM
You accidentally picked a Male Nelf. How did your friends take it? Anyway... When you need any support, save this hug for the time when it gets really bad.
/hug
razion Oct 29th 2010 9:41AM
He's got a warrior of everything--it's a problem (he's well aware). We would find him a cure, but we're too terrified of him while he's laughing hysterically swinging at target dummies to do much about it.
Sleutel Oct 30th 2010 12:31PM
While leveling my farming (Herb/Mining) DK, I discovered that Male Night Elves have *the* best knockdown-recovery animation in the entire game.
beaglesan Oct 29th 2010 9:34AM
How is PVE dps for fury versus arms right now, say for toons with a GS of 5000, 5500, and 6000 and up?
Roy Oct 29th 2010 3:49PM
"ITS OVER NINE THOUSAND!"
Mives Oct 29th 2010 6:30PM
With a GS of 5950 Ive found that Arms dps for me is close to 1200 dps behind Fury. A few quick points though, neither spec has access to 4 set bonus which definitely warps current numbers. No Sudden Death for Arms is a massive dps loss as well as Fury not having Deep Wounds.
Hoff Oct 29th 2010 9:35AM
Don't reforge crit off of your gear. Stop being lazy, regem to strength, and don't ever reforge for mastery. It's pretty terrible right now. Fury warriors who aren't idiots are still topping meters. Not all the time, but probably more than you are in your yellow-gemmed mastery set.
Zef Oct 29th 2010 10:02AM
So gem for strength and reforge haste to hit?
El Pollo Grande Oct 29th 2010 10:07AM
Downrate him all you like, but he's got a point. Red ArP gems turning to Yellow Crit gems is a massive loss, regem Strength (or str/crit, str/hit) (which you can't reforge anyway).
So far with a 27% hit set, reforging all haste to hit or crit, I'm seeing very good results.
Ignore mastery till 85 - some classes benefit from it already (hi Prot Warriors), Fury Warriors aren't one of those.
Elwoods Oct 29th 2010 10:16AM
Maybe he is trying different things with different toons?
I'm sure his "main" warrior is nicely Gemmed/Enchanted/Reforged/Oiled to within an inch of its life
Sir Broose Oct 29th 2010 10:17AM
Hoff, At this point in the expansion, I did the same thing for two of my level 80 warriors. Like Rossi, I regemmed for Str on my wealthiest main, but on my 2nd and third warriors, I just left a lot of the crit and reforged my gear to get the hit I needed. Seriously, what is so horrible about that? I min/max my best warrior - the same thing he said he did with his - but I'm not going to go to all that trouble with every warrior alt a month before we all start leveling again. Give me a break! You call that lazy, I call that being realistic and sensible with my gold. My main is awesome in raids and my alts are a more than viable.
I've leveled through 85 in the beta, and I did it with only 3 glyphs and NO reforging or regemming until level 83 (and I didn't really need to then - just finally got around to it) and it was a breeze. I had so much killing power and self-healing that I obliterated everything in my path, never having to stop and eat or bandage. What is the point of dumping all that cash, right before leveling begins again?
Stilhelm Oct 29th 2010 11:11AM
Regemming with blue-level gems, esp the str/hit twilight opals to match decent socket bonuses and activate the meta, would be far better than leaving the +20 crit gems, and not that expensive. The large increase in attack power makes a big difference.
Matthew Rossi Oct 29th 2010 2:21PM
"I probably would have stacked strength or mastery gems and reforged more haste along with crit for hit, but either way seems to work. (My draenei has more standing-around money, so he went with more strength gems than my night elf, who is instead relying more on reforging.)"
Now that I've shown you that you are very bad at reading comprehension...
If you had several warriors and four at 80, maybe you'd focus your efforts on one of them (as I have) or maybe you'd try to get all four to the best possible gem/enchant choices no matter how much time or money it took you. That's your prerogative. I, however, am not seeing low DPS on the night elf even though I went with the cheaper alternative because I know I'm going to replace half of his gear. If I can do up to 13k per boss and a solid 9 to 11k through the heroic on a character who does not raid, I'm okay with that.
As for my draenei, frankly, I'm afraid to talk about his DPS. I left a few crit gems in for sockets, but he's 80% str gemmed, and it's kind of insane how hard he hits.
JoJa Oct 29th 2010 3:20PM
Please Rossi, don't hurt 'em
Fluffumz Oct 29th 2010 9:48PM
TBH, I have actually found a high mastery rating helping DPS especially if you are really trigger happy with Death Wish. ATM, I have only 18 mastery, but at that level my Raging blows is hitting at 157% WD along with Death Wish's 31% increase. And with a Fury OS and so kinda BS'd gear set picked up throughout, not to mention not having the 4 piece t10 yet, I believe that the single target 13k I can pull in heroics is of decent proof that indeed mastery is a respectable stat.
Sleutel Oct 30th 2010 12:36PM
@Zeff: Yes.
Your stat priorities are Hit to 8% and Expertise to 23 (this is a NEW CAP for 80) then Strength > Hit (up to 27%) > Crit > Haste > Mastery. Gem straight Strength if you can reach your initial Hit and Expertise caps through gear alone, including reforging, then reforge all of your Haste to more Hit. If you're overcapped on Expertise now, you can swap that for more Hit, or for Crit if you've hit 27%, or for Haste if you've managed to hit the hardcaps for both Hit and Crit.