The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Fury report card for Wrath

A couple of months back, I had intended to start a series reviewing each of the warrior specs as they are in current endgame. While I freely admit I got distracted by all the shiny bells and whistles of the beta, the time has come to step away from the looming apocalypse and instead look again at the class as it is right now when you log on.
As we established last time, there are no major changes incoming for any of the classes until Cataclysm ships. The way your class plays right now is the way it will play until the pre-expansion patch drops and changes everything.
So how does fury rate overall? It's had its ups and downs ... from top of the DPS in Naxxramas to middling in Ulduar and Trial to (finally) near the top again in ICC (at least if you're in the best possible gear, much of which is still leather). Even if you're in merely solid gear, however, fury can put out a serious hurting. I have yet to be less than No. 1 on the DPS charts on any 5-man I've run since I started collecting my 264/277 DPS set. I'm hardly any great shakes as DPS; it's the nature of the spec and how rage, talents and gear all intersect for the fury warrior. A talented fury warrior (again, I make no claims to be particularly talented) can lead the DPS on any fight halfway friendly to him in ICC.
Wrath saw fury gain and lose on talents -- for example, the change to Rampage (although a late one) that made it a passive crit aura was a very positive talent change -- and ebb and flow with new gear as each raid dropped.
Filed under: Warrior, Analysis / Opinion, (Warrior) The Care and Feeding of Warriors, Wrath of the Lich King
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And so this week we conclude our leveling specs discussion with talk of fury. When I started this discussion, I mentioned that I was respeccing quite frequently, and that hasn't changed. Since I hit level 80 I have respecced twice a day. Not out of any specific need so much as out of boredom and a desire to play around with different specs, as I tend to try learning by doing as much as possible. I'm also trying to decide which of my characters to level up next, as I have the Death Knight starting at me but also several warrior alts I'd like to roll through Northrend with. I'm interested in seeing the quests from the Horde perspective, and grinding up on a warrior is cake nowadays. Every spec is solid for leveling, with Protection combining good damage and ridiuclously high survivability, arms bringing a nice mix of proc based pain and AoE damage, and fury?
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