The Complete Fury Warrior Guide

[Ferag]

Fury Warrior Guide
By Ferag

Hello again. It's been a while since I've posted a guide and was bored so wrote another. I hope this can help all the aspiring Fury Warriors out there to be better. It's not terribly in depth or full of math, as most people don't like that stuff and just want the answer. Well, here is the answer. Any questions can be PM'd to me and I'll get back to you at some point.

Please ask before reposting my guide. And yes, this is my guide. I wrote it entirely from scratch, the only thing copy-pasted are some URLs.

Table of Contents

1. Talents and Glyphs
2. Stats
3. Weapons
4. Abilities
5. Execute
6. Gearing, Enchanting and Gemming
7. Raiding Practices

1. Talents and Glyphs

This is my spec
A few minor changes can be made to that spec. Often, it is seen that people drop Piercing Howl and the point in Improved Berserker Rage in favour of Improved Execute, but I prefer to have the utility of Piercing Howl and the extra rage for those dead spots you sometimes hit in Improved Berserker Rage.

Spec like that. Do not get a Weapon Spec. Do not get Furious Attacks. Do not get Improved Cleave. Use the Glyphs I gave you. =]

2. Stats

Strength

The main stat for Fury Warriors. Normally, this is the stat that you stack above all else. However, all other stats are valuable and should not be ignored.

Hit

"Ferag, how much hit should I get?" - A question I receive regularly. The absolute minimum hit you can have is 5%, that is your cap for special attacks (the actual cap is 8%, but as we have +3% hit from talents, we only need 5%). Don't forget that you need Hit to actually generate rage with your white attacks still. So between 8% and 10% hit is liked by most Warriors. Personally, I have 260-350 hit rating (roughly 8 - 10%).

Expertise

Expertise is a stat very like hit. It affects both special attacks and white attacks by reducing your chance to be dodged or parried. A boss will have 6.5% chance to dodge your attacks and 14.5% chance to parry your attacks. Thankfully, we will never be parried as we fight the boss from the back where it cannot parry.

You should cap this stat. It is just as important as Hit. The magic number is 6.5% (26 expertise or 214 expertise rating).

++++++Some people believe that Expertise rounds down, so partial Expertise is useless. Some testing shows partial Expertise actually does affect your attacks.++++++

Crit

Critical Strike Rating should not be stacked, nor ignored. It is necessary to find a balance between Crit and Strength. If you have none, your DPS will fail as you will not have Flurry or Rampage. If you stack it above all, your attacks will hit like a dead albatross (not hard). You need a balance.

I have 35% crit unbuffed, in Berserker Stance. Raid buffed, that shoots up to around 45%, give or take a few percent.

Armor Penetration

Short Answer: Is nice.

Long Answer: Armor Penetration scales better the more of it you have. This means that having 100 Armor Penetration is not 10 times as good as having 10 Armor Penetration (just using simple numbers). ArP is almost as nice a stat as Strength for a Fury Warrior. It is soon to be nerfed so it will fall a bit behind until the next Tier of gear where it will begin to catch up again. So, for now, Str > ArP, but only just.

Note: A point may come where ArP will be better than Strength, but I do not know when that time may be.

Haste

Haste is a decent stat. It boosts your rage generation and increases how quickly you hit with your white attacks. It is not a stat to stack, by any means. It is worse than every other stat a Fury Warrior could get (excepting maybe Agility, but it's real close).

3. Weapons

Slow is good. Whenever you have a choice between fast and slow, choose the slower one. Of course, do not go overboard with this thought. DPS is still the first thing you should be looking at in a weapon. For offhands, DPS is not quite as important as the stats it gives, due to how offhand damage is nerfed. A slow offhand is still a slight DPS increase over a fast one due to Whirlwind attacks.

If you can get two weapons the same speed, you can sometimes get an "extra" Flurry charge. Because your weapons are hitting at the same time, they will eat two charges on the first swing, and then when there's only one charge left and they hit simutaneously, they will both gain the haste from Flurry. So naturally, this is a good thing.

4. Abilities

WW > BT > Execute > Instant Slam > HS

That is your priority rotation. Your instant Slams should be timed to fall at a time when you are not using WW or BT. Generally speaking, you can be spamming Heroic Strike the entire fight, but there are some times when this is just not plausible and you will run out of rage. At 55 rage it should be safe to pop a HS in there, and you will often sit at 100 rage with no way to dump it.

In the Execute phase, just continue your normally rotation, but drop Heroic Strike and Slam in favour of Execute. With the new Execute changes, you may still have rage to use Heroic Strike.

Use Bloodrage when you get low on rage to continue your HS spamming, and use Improved Berserker Rage when you have a free GCD and are low on rage.

Heroic Strike and Cleave

In a scenario where threat is an issue, get a better tank. If this is not an option, some people would tell you to use Cleave instead of Heroic Strike, as they are stupid. Cleave grants additional threat, just like Heroic Strike. In fact, it grants more bonus threat per extra damage dealt. This makes it totally impractical, unless you're fighting two or more mobs, when Cleave is the obvious choice over Heroic Strike.

5. Gearing, Enchanting and Gemming

Gems

Meta: Chaotic Skyflare Diamond. Use this meta until you begin to use epic gems, at which point Relentless Earthsiege Diamond pulls ahead because you only need to use a Nightmare Tear in your gear and every other socket can be Strength.

Red: Bold Scarlet Ruby/Bold Cardinal Ruby
Yellow: Inscribed Monarch Topaz/Inscribed Ametrine
Blue: Sovereign Twilight Opal/Sovereign Dreadstone

You should be using Strength Gems in every available socket, only using other gems to keep your meta working, or if the socket bonus will yield a DPS increase (i.e. a bonus of +4 strength may warrant use of another gem). Note that an Orange Gem counts as both Red and Yellow for your meta bonus, Green counts as Blue and Yellow, and Purple counts as Red and Blue. Prismatic gems, like the Nightmare Tear, count as Red, Blue and Yellow.

Enchants

Head: Arcanum of Torment (Knights of the Ebon Blade revered)
Bracer: Greater Assault
Gloves: Crusher
Boots: Greater Assault/Icewalker
Cloak: Major Agility
Chest: Powerful Stats
Legs: Icescale Leg Armor
Shoulders: Greater Inscription of the Axe (Sons of Hodir exalted)
Weapon: Berserking, or Massacre if you're cheap.

Gear

The best way to see your gear upgrades is this spreadsheet. If you don't feel like using that Spreadsheet, the next best way is a program called Rawr. Apart from that, you can use MaxDPS but it is not very reliable at all.

6. Raiding Practices

Consumables

Hands down, the best Elixir or Flask is Flask of Endless Rage. Just use it =]. Other than that, you should stock up on Potions of Speed to use with your cooldowns.

Knowing the Fight

You should always know the boss fights you're doing. You can use Tankspot, WoWWiki, Bosskillers, or any other site you know of.

Don't Hit the Sheep

Really. I know it's fun to senselessly kill helpless animals, but you must remember that underneath that little sheep is actually a creature that can and will kick the shit out of you.

Cooldowns

You should always link your Cooldowns together. That means Deathwish + Bloodlust + Trinket(s) + Racial(s) + Recklessness + Potion of Speed. This way will always yield higher DPS than using them one after the other.

Stand Behind the Boss

Melee 101: Stand behind the boss. It will drastically increase your DPS. We're talking by 8% here. Stand behind it (surprise buttsecks?)

Buffing and Debuffing

Battle Shout should always be up, unless you have Blessing of Might, when you should instead be using Commanding Shout. It may be your job to Sunder the boss, or use Demoralizing Shout, in which case you should keep these debuffs up, even at the cost of DPS. Remember that you keeping up these debuffs might be vital for your raid to down the boss, and you're part of that raid and must pay the big ugly plate gear repair bill.

Staying Alive

A dead Warrior does no damage. You may have to stop DPS for a moment if you're pulling aggro, rather than get in that last big Bloodthirst crit. It is wise to recall that you own a Shield and have Defensive Stance if need be, you can even use Shield Wall.

Pinch Tanking

If you're at 5% and your tanks are dead, you should be the one to whip our your "HOLY SHIT!" macro to put on a Shield, go Defensive, Shield Wall and Taunt. You might just save the raid, and get bonus DKP or a reward for being really freaking epic.

That is all for my guide. I hope it helps you.

[Kanora]

wow very good and indepth guide. This will help alot when i get my fury warrior to 80. +2 rep

[Gibraltar]

Good guide as i expected, you may no me i wrote one too. But for a complete guide i whould expect ej spreadsheet download with an explanation how to use it, and other various things.

[Ferag]

Gibraltar, I linked the EJ spreadsheet, and there is a guide there on how to download and use it. I see no point on explaining the basic knowledge of how to use a spreadsheet in my guide about Fury Warriors anyways. I do remember your guide though, and now it's outdated, so I made a new one with my knowledge of a Fury Warrior.

Apart from that, what various other things could I include? Please do tell me so I can make a more complete guide.