6th Edition DW Fury Guide

[Corbusier]

DW Fury Guide - 6th Edition

***In Progress***

This guide is an update of Meeks' DW Fury Guide - 4th Edition, as well as my 5th Edition. THIS GUIDE IS NOT FOR LEVELING WARRIORS, it is for RAIDING warriors or those who are interesting in raiding as a fury warrior. For leveling, see:
Warrior Leveling Demystified - TankSpot and
Of Steel -- Guidelines for New & Leveling Warriors - TankSpot; also see TankSpot's Critical Guides & Articles Library - TankSpot

Fury FAQ - Fury for Dummies

Below you will find the most commonly asked questions regarding the fury spec, gearing strategy and damage rotations for a raiding fury warrior. If you seek more specific information, follow the table of contents below to find the appropriate section.


Why 18/53? Why not a weapon spec?

This is currently the gold standard for pure DPS:
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Some of the early arms talent points are negotiable (Iron Will, Deflection, etc) as is trading Unbridled Wrath (this build hardly needs more rage generation) for Improved Demoralizing Shout. Note the floater point in Imp Execute. Personally, I like to have this in Heroic Fury instead for utility, but it can go pretty much anywhere.

DO NOT spec any farther into arms than Deep Wounds/Impale/2h spec. The loss of extremely important deep fury talents is not worth the minimal gains from the weapon specs.

How much hit?

Short answer: as much as you need to maintain your DPS rotation while keeping Battle Shout/Commanding Shout active.

Long answer: You need 8% hit to not miss specials attacks (yellow damage, also the TG hit penalty has been removed as of build 3.0.8) on raid level (or ??) bosses, which are treated as level 83 for all intents and purposes. You get 3% from precision, so you need 5% from gear. 1% hit is equal to 32.79 hit rating, therefore you need 164 hit rating to "soft cap". The hard cap for dual wielding is 27% against raid bosses, which equates to 885 hit rating (787 after 3/3 precision). This is not a goal to work towards or even worry about.

"but but but does that mean stop at 164 and don't get more +hit?"

NO. No. no. After the soft cap, hit is merely no longer your most important stat. Ignoring it altogether WILL hamper your rage generation.

"ok, so should i go ahead and gem for hit?"

If you're under 164, yes.

"but you didn't tell me how much i need "

Precisely.

Proper rotation?

The changes to Improved Whirlwind and Bloodthirst, along with the addition of the instant slam and Whirlwind glyph, changes the rotation from what we were used to in The Burning Crusade.

Your rotation would now look like this:

0.0 sec: WW
1.5 sec: BT
3.0 sec: GCD free
4.5 sec: GCD Free
6.5 sec: BT
8.0 sec: WW
9.5 sec: GCD free
11.5 sec: BT
13.0 sec: GCD free
14.5 sec: GCD free
16.0 sec: WW
17.5 sec: BT
19.0 sec: GCD free
20.5 sec: GCD free
22.5 sec: BT
24.0 sec: WW
25.5 sec: GCD free
27.5 sec: BT
29.0 sec: GCD free
30.5 sec: GCD free
32.0 sec: WW
33.5 sec: BT


And so on. Your instant slams should ideally fall in the 'GCD free' locations for a smooth rotation. Heroic Strike is still your rage dump, and with the change in mechanics, you can virtually spam it non-stop in a raid environment, however, you should still be aware of when you're not able to use it due to rage generation.

That's all there is to it, really. It's not rocket science, there is no magic.

What gear?

Ugh. Really? Seriously?

It just so happens that the new edition comes with a nice new gear guide:
http://www.tankspot.com/forums/f97/4...ear-guide.html

You can also try MaxDPS.com - Fury Warrior DPS Gear Rankings
USE WITH CAUTION - SEE CAVEAT IN SECTION 7. ENCHANTS, GEAR & GEMMING FOR SPECIFICS.

Slow or fast Offhand?

Short answer: Use the best you have access to. I tend to value stats > DPS > speed.

Long answer: A slow offhand is the theoretical ideal, and has the highest theoretical DPS potential, assuming all other stats & DPS are equal. The slow mainhand/slow offhand combo takes some time to get used to, and it can be much more difficult to manage your rage. Rage is coming in bigger chunks but less often, and can leave you with too little rage to punch your instant attacks, or spike too high that you're sitting at 100 rage with no real dump other than Heroic Strike. Slow/slow also tends to favor a higher gear level, which has enough stats (crit/hit/haste) to smooth out the dips in incoming rage.

But good luck finding a fast 2h offhand.

FASTER WEAPONS DO NOT GENERATE MORE RAGE THAN SLOW WEAPONS.
TOP END IS NOT A DPS STAT.

Slow or fast Mainhand?

Short answer: Slow. Always.

Long answer: Slow. Unless you're execute spamming. A slower weapon will hit harder on whirlwinds, and will result in larger, less frequent Heroic Strikes. Every Heroic Strike is accompanied by a static bonus threat (259) as well as bonus damage (495). A faster weapon will benefit more from Heroic Strike from a percentages point of view, since you're adding 495 damage more often.

TOP END IS NOT A DPS STAT.

What should I socket?

Short answer: Strength, unless the socket bonus is really worthwhile, Expertise if you're not yet capped.

Long answer: Strength, unless the socket bonus is really worthwhile. Really. If you have a yellow socket with a nice bonus, put a crit/strength gem in it. Till you're into t7-t8 content and are pushing 4k AP unbuffed, strength will be your priority stat. If you're in that content, you should be able to figure this out by now and don't need my help.

Your meta-gem should be a Chaotic Skyflare Diamond. This meta-gem requires 2 blue gems to be active, so you should have no more than 2 green/purple (crit/stam or strength/stam), since hybrid gems count as both colors. Try to choose the sockets with the best bonuses for these gems (i.e. a +4 strength bonus is obviously better than +3 crit or (shudder) +4 stamina).

Executioner/mongoose/berserking/massacre?

Short answer: Dual Zerking. Unless you're cheap.

Long Answer:There isn't one.

What addons should I get?

PopCap Games - Play Bejeweled in WoW! is all you need.

[Corbusier]

Table Of Contents

1. Talents
2. Stats
3. Attack Table
- Two Roll System for Specials?
4. Offhands
- Priorities
- Whirlwind damage
- Flurry & Synced Speed "Extra Attacks"
- The Effects of Sharpening Stones
5. Skill Rotation
6. Execute Range
7. Enchants, Gear & Gemming - Choosing Items
8. Haste, Rage & You
- Haste & Rage Generation
9. Glyphs
10. Best Practices
- Consumables
- Cooldown Synergy
- Raid Preparation
- Awareness & Multi-Target Attacks
- Standing Behind the Boss
- Buffs/Debuffs
- Survival

1. TALENTS

In the Arms tree, you are building towards Impale/Deep Wounds and 2H spec. Anger Management is not as useful as it was in a 1h build. Improved Heroic Strike is also standard since it becomes a mainstay of your damage, even more so than in BC. The other early Arms talents are primarily preference (though there is absolutely zero reason to spec into Improved Rend, DO NOT spec it). In the fury tree, most talents are obvious wins; Dual Wield Specialty, Improver Berserker Stance, Bloodthirst, Rampage, etc. Weapon Mastery, with its move to the Fury tree in Patch 2.3, has displaced Improved Execute. Improved Cleave is a waste in any build (save for maybe a trash clearing spec once dual specs are implemented). Bloodsurge, Intensify Rage and Unending Fury are also mandatory.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

[Corbusier]

2. STATS

IN GENERAL, stat priority is Strength > Crit > haste/ArP > hit (assuming you've achieved enough hit to maintain your rotation already). This order obviously changes relative to your existing stats (i.e. at certain gear levels, crit begins to outpace strength). The most important thing to understand about stats is balance, balance, balance. An increase in one stat makes all the others that much more valuable.

- Strength

The bread & butter of fury DPS.

Attack power - WoWWiki - Your guide to the World of Warcraft

Attack Power (AP) increases your base DPS by 1 for every 14 attack power. For example, an AP of 28 will give you 2 DPS. To convert DPS into average damage per swing: (Weapon DPS + AP/14) * Weapon Speed. If dual wielding, an off-hand weapon will also receive DPS from AP with the normal damage penalty. Disregarding dual wield specialization talents, the offhand damage is then: [(Weapon DPS + AP/14) * Weapon Speed]/2.

DPS Warrior Compendium - Elitist Jerks

The list of weapon normalization speeds is:

* Daggers: 1.7
* One-Hand Weapons: 2.4
* Two-Hand Weapons: 3.3
* Ranged Weapons: 2.8


The formula therefore after 1.8 is:

normalized_damage = base_weapon_damage + (X * Attack Power / 14)

where X is the listed value for the specific weapon type. While the normalization of Attack Power greatly reduced the impact of having a slow weapon for instant attacks, slower same-dps weapons still produce a slight dps increase for instant attacks. This is because a weapon with 100 dps and a fast attack speed has a relatively low damage range, while a 100 dps weapon with a slow attack speed has a higher damage range. Therefore the increase in base weapon damage used in the formula makes the slower weapon come out slightly on top. In short: instant attacks still benefit from slow weapons, just the difference is not as large as it once was.

- Hit

Most of the information in this & the following section came from:
Working Theories of Theorycrafting as of 2.3 - Elitist Jerks
Blessing of Kings: +Hit Caps for Bosses
Weapon skill - WoWWiki - Your guide to the World of Warcraft
Guide: Hit Rating, Spell Hit, and Expertise - TankSpot
Combat Ratings at level 80 - Elitist Jerks

Base Melee Miss (Dual-Wielding): 27%
Base Melee Miss (2H/1H+Shield/Special Attacks): 8%
Hit % = hit rating / 32.79

These following statements are assuming your target is a raid boss. If a mob/player is your level the miss rate is 5% for special and 24% for normal attacks (5% base miss chance + 19% miss dual wielding penalty).

While dual wielding your white attacks will have a 27% chance to miss on both mainhand and offhand. Your special attacks still have a 5% chance to miss. This means that if you have precision you will want to stack hit until you reach 164 hit rating which will mean you will not miss a special attack.

It is important to note that after 5% hit, more +hit ONLY affects white (normal) attacks. The typical fury warrior will see 20-27% of his damage coming from white attacks. The implication is that more hit only affects 20-27% of your damage, while crit and strength affect ALL damage. (This is simplified of course, but illustrates the point well enough.) However, TG fury needs more hit than traditional fury in order to smooth out the rage droughts that occur from one or more misses.

- Expertise

Since a boss-mob is calculated as level 83 mob its dodge is increased by 3*0.5% = 1.5% up to 6.5%. To negate 6.5% dodge, 26 points of expertise or 214 points of expertise rating are needed.

++++Expertise rounds down. Partial amounts of Expertise do nothing.++++

Base Melee Dodge: 6.5%
Expertise rating to reduce dodge/parry by 1%: 32.79
Total needed to cap dodge reduction: 214 Expertise Rating

When you reach 214 expertise rating, your attacks will never be dodged. Melee attacks can still miss. If you reach both your hit rating cap and 214 expertise, your melee attacks will never miss or be dodged.

The following is the amount of expertise rating you need to minimize dodges for raid boss fights, depending on your talents, and disregarding racial expertise.

Base: 214
w/ Weapon Mastery: 148

It is worth noting that expertise is quite a valuable stat relative to hit. After 5% hit, you've capped for specials, and more hit will no longer affect your yellow damage, yet expertise will until that is capped.

- Crit

Critical Strike Rating needed for 1% Crit: 45.91
Agility needed for 1% Crit: 62.50

Critical Strike is a multi-faceted stat, and a very important one for fury warriors. It helps do more damage, generate more rage, it procs & refreshes flurry (which in turn does more damage & generates more rage) and allows Rampage to be activated & refreshed. Ignoring it will cripple your DPS; stacking it at the expense of strength/AP will make you hit like a wet noodle. It is best to seek a balance between crit and AP.


Contrary to popular belief, 33.33% crit will NOT guarantee 100% flurry uptime, far from it.

1 - ( 1 - c ) ^ x

Where 'c' is your Crit chance expressed in decimal (i.e: 35% crit = 0.35) and 'x' is the number of attacks made in one cycle of Flurry (3 from auto attack swings, and generally one additional from instant attacks; 4 is a commonly used number).

Example: 35% crit yields

1 - ( 1 - 0.35 ) ^ 4 = 0.8215 which translates to 82.15% Flurry up-time.

Crit past 33% will of course increase your Flurry uptime, any amount of Crit under 100% (or the crit cap) is less than 100% Flurry up-time, and therefore additional Crit will increase your up-time. It is important to note that while additional Crit will increase Flurry up-time, it is subject to diminishing returns. The amount of Flurry up-time gained going for 1% crit to 11% crit is much greater than going from 40% to 50% (in both cases an increase in 10% Crit chance).

- Armor Penetration

Short answer: Armor penetration is not as good as it used to be.

Long answer: Most of the hard data is going to come from Jathine, so blame him if the math is wrong:

One thing many people don't seem to realize that the ArP rating reductions are accounted for after flat Armor Reductions such
as Sunder Armor. In short, it uses the current armor of the target instead of their un-debuffed armor value. Blizz also decided to change how debuffs stacked in raids. They split Armor Reductions into two categories Major and Minor. You can only have one of each on the mob. There are three classes with Major and three classes with Minor debuffs. Here is a list of them:

Major: All give a 3925 reduction at max effect
Sunder Armor (5 stacks)
Expose Armor (5 combo points)
Acid Spit (Hunter Pet; 5 stacks)

Minor: All give 1260 reduction
Sting (Hunter pet)
Faerie Fire
Curse of Recklessness (Note: adds 135 AP to the mob)

To put these changes into a better picture let's look at one of the best ArP items in the game both pre and post-3.0: Cat's Edge.
Pre-3.0: Cataclysm's Edge - Items - WOWDB – 335 ArP
Post-3.0: Cataclysm's Edge - Item - World of Warcraft – 48 ArP rating (6.48% reduction)

I will be using the new debuff system on a 6200 Armor boss (Teron) just to make comparison easier.
Placing a major and minor debuff on a 6200 Armor boss their armor is reduced down to 2990 Armor
which is 22.07% mitigation.

Using the pre-3.0 Cat's Edge you reduced the boss's armor down to 2655 for a physical mitigation of
20.09%. That is a decrease of 1.98% in mitigation. Using the post-3.0 Cat's Edge the boss is reduced
to 2796 Armor which is 20.94%. That is a reduction in mitigation of 1.13%. That makes the
difference of 0.85% in mitigation a nerf of 42.9%.
At lvl 80, it takes 15.39 ArP rating to give 1% Armor reduction.
Wrath boss armor testing - Elitist Jerks - Dayve and Lactose's testing

Thanks to recent testing by Dayve and Lactose over on the EJ forums it has been determined that raid
bosses have 13,083 Armor. I have done the math to show the mitigation of bosses using combinations
of no debuffs, Minor Debuffs, Major Debuffs, and 1% armor reduction from ArP rating. I added in a
10% armor reduction from ArP rating at the very end on a fully debuffed raid boss.

http://i493.photobucket.com/albums/r.../BossArmor.jpg



http://i493.photobucket.com/albums/r...e/ArPChart.jpg



The chart shows that you get basically 1% increase in your damage that is mitigated by armor for every 3% armor reduction, which corresponds to 46.19 ArP rating. However, that does not correspond to a 1% increase in your total dps because 20-27% of your total damage done as a TG warrior is from Deep Wounds. Factoring that increases the amount of ArP rating needed to increase your overall dps by 1% to ~58.74 if you have 20% of your total damage coming from bleeds. If you have 27% bleed damage it takes ~63.27 ArP rating to see a 1% increase in your overall dps.

http://i493.photobucket.com/albums/r...mgperptArP.jpg


http://i493.photobucket.com/albums/r...sArPRating.jpg


http://i493.photobucket.com/albums/r...-Corrected.jpg


Basically what these graphs show is that ArP scales fairly linearly all the way up to 700 ArP rating, which corresponds to ~45% armor reduction. It doesn't really get close to Crit at any point that is within reason. Remember this graph only shows the damage increase in your damage that is mitigated by mob Armor. Our Bleeds do 20-27% of our total damage so it reduces the % damage increase of our overall damage added by ArP.

So what does all of that mean?

It means that ArP when look at the initial percent increase in damage looks to be about as good as Crit rating for dps gains. However, after accounting for damage that isn't mitigated by armor such as bleeds in the case of dps warriors (or poisons for rogues, magic damage for DK's Rets and Enh Shammies would also reduce the benefits from ArP rating by similar amounts) it starts lagging behind Crit rating by a fairly good amount. Crit rating feeds all of our damage, yes that includes bleeds which we stack up through getting crits, while ArP is only increasing 75 to 80% of the damage we do. This basically puts ArP rating in the same ball park as Haste rating depending on how much damage you get from bleeds. As your bleed damage becomes a larger portion of your total damage output the lower the benefits you get from ArP rating. If you are pushing 25% bleed damage you will ArP falling behind Haste by a pretty good amount.

3. ATTACK TABLE

A little explanation about how the hits & misses work with both white and yellow attacks. The consensus at this point is that yellow attacks are on a 2-roll system, but white attacks still rely on a single roll (except for hunter's, who's ranged attacks seem to all follow the 2-roll system afaik).


Whenever an attack is made (both white damage and specials), the following can happen:
MISS
DODGE
PARRY
BLOCK
GLANCING
HIT
CRIT
(Parry/Dodge/Glancing are Melee Only)
(Glancing is White Damage Only and Applies 70% of Normal Damage))

The above all have a chance to happen, based on your and your target's stats.
Base miss rate against an equal leveled target is 5%.
Against a mob 3 levels higher than you (which is what a boss is considered to be), your miss rate is 9% or 28% if Dual Wielding.
Glancing Hits are a static 24%.
Dodged attacks are 6.5%.

With ranged attacks, there is no 1% chance to miss that cannot be negated. This is a rumor, and is incorrect. Spells always have a 1% chance to be resisted, melee/ranged attacks do not.


Ok, let's deal with your regular white melee hits (non-special attacks). Let's go with 0 hit 0 expertise and 30% crit and attacking from behind to remove parries and blocks. White attacks work on a 1-roll table that looks like this:


Dual Wielding (Druids, Hunters and Single/Two-Handed attacks are 9% Miss Rate - Hunters are on the 2-Roll System following this)

* 1-Roll Table
1-28...: 28% Miss
29-35..: 6.5% Dodge
36-59..: 24% Glancing
60-89..: 30% Crit
90-100: 11.5% Hit


Based on these numbers, you're still hard crit capped at 30%. You'd need an additional 11.5% crit for your complete lack of hit rating and expertise to start affecting your crit hits (once you reach 41.5% Crit, you theoretically push HITS off the table and all the misses you experience at this point are missed crits). So right now, adding +hit and +expertise only increases your white "hits", not your crit.

One of the popular arguments for stacking hit is people tell you that the more you hit the more you crit. As much as that sounds like it makes sense it is not how the WoW combat system works. Wow uses an attack table. Attack table - WoWWiki - Your guide to the World of Warcraft

This means is that there is a 100 sided die that blizzard rolls every time you attack. Say you have 0 hit and 41% crit and are attacking from behind.

Here are the sides of the die:
1-28: Miss
29-53: Glancing Blow
53-58: Dodge
59-100: Crit


In this circumstance every time you hit it will crit. Crit shares the hit table with non crits so as long as your crit is less than miss + glancing + dodge then adding hit will have no effect on your crit. Now if your crit was above 41% which is possible with raid buffs and mongoose procs then you would be losing crits in this situation. However one will never have 0 hit. Assuming then the minimum 9% hit for your yellows not to miss you can safely stack crit to 51% without losing any benefit. From here on every 1% hit increases your crit cap by 1%.

- Two-Roll System for Specials?

After poring over dozens of WWS reports and combatlogs, I have yet to see any evidence supporting a two-roll system for special attacks in PvE, apart from this thread:
Backstab: Two Rolls? - Elitist Jerks
Bear in mind that this thread was created in November of 2006, and the testing methodology is not especially rigorous. I personally have not had the time nor opportunity to properly test this, as I would need to drop my hit rating and boost my crit rating to such a point that it would become unfeasible in a raid setting.

However, I do not discount the possibility of a two-roll system for specials out of hand, but would like to point out that from a programming standpoint, it is much more efficient to have one one-roll system than two different systems operating simultaneously. Therefore, it is unlikely that this is the case.

[Corbusier]

4. OFFHANDS

- Priorities

Your offhand accounts for a relatively small percentage of your DPS (due to the offhand damage modifier, which is .5 before talents and .625 after talents), so the weapon's damage itself is less important than its contribution to your overall damage. What that means is that the stats on the weapon tend to be more important than either the DPS or the speed. Take The Decapitator for instance. The DPS alone makes it a decent mainhand, but the poor stats make it an equally poor offhand compared to, say Fool's Bane, which has slightly lower DPS but much better stats.

- Whirlwind damage

The primary argument for slow offhands is the extra Whirlwind damage (since equal DPS weapons will have identical white damage over time). Let us assume that we have a choice between Vanir's Left Fist of Brutality and Vanir's Left Fist of Savagery, since they have identical DPS and stats apart from speed & damage range.

average_normalized_damage = average_base_weapon_damage + (X * Attack Power / 14)

Let's assume 3000 AP.

Slow: x = 257.5 + (2.4 * 3000/14) = 771.2
Fast: x = 154.5 + (2.4 * 3000/14) = 668.8

Now if we apply the offhand damage penalty we get:

Slow = 482 average damage
Fast = 418 average damage

Ideally, you can Whirlwind every 9 seconds or 6.67 times per minute.

Slow = 3215.94 damage/minute = 53.58 dps
Fast = 2788.06 damage/minute = 46.47 dps

The DPS difference turns out to be only 7.11.


- Flurry & Synced Speed "Extra Attacks"

I was highly skeptical of this particular "bug" for quite some time. I finally got a chance to test it when the new fist weapons were released in patch 2.4. It appears that you do often get four flurry "charges" instead of three, but never two. Now, I do not recommend gearing exclusively in an attempt to exploit this bug, however, the extra attacks are worthy to consider when seeking weapon upgrades.

5. SKILL ROTATION

0.0 sec: WW
1.5 sec: BT
3.0 sec: GCD free
4.5 sec: GCD Free
6.5 sec: BT
8.0 sec: WW
9.5 sec: GCD free
11.5 sec: BT
13.0 sec: GCD free
14.5 sec: GCD free
16.0 sec: WW
17.5 sec: BT
19.0 sec: GCD free
20.5 sec: GCD free
22.5 sec: BT
24.0 sec: WW
25.5 sec: GCD free
27.5 sec: BT
29.0 sec: GCD free
30.5 sec: GCD free
32.0 sec: WW
33.5 sec: BT

- Heroic Strike vs. Cleave
Heroic strike and cleave are the two contenders for a rage dump for fury warriors. They both have bonus damage, are not on the global cooldown, and both turn a white attack into a yellow attack. This means that an attack that would have had a 27% chance to miss, 25% to be a glancing blow, and only crit for 2x damage now becomes a yellow attack. It only has the base 10% miss, no glancing and 2.2 crit from impale. They both also have bonus threat.

In an effort to try to lower their threat people have been floating the idea of using cleave instead of heroic strike. This is a matter of confusion due to blizzard listing on Heroic Strike’s tooltip that it has bonus threat, but no similar note for Cleave. But you should know better than to believe something on Blizzard’s tooltips. (Blood Frenzy and melee/physical damage anyone?)

Heroic Strike - WoWWiki - Your guide to the World of Warcraft
Cleave - WoWWiki - Your guide to the World of Warcraft

Heroic strike adds 495 damage for 259 threat. That is .52 threat per bonus damage.
Cleave adds 222 damage for 225 bonus threat. That is 1.01 threat per bonus damage.

Something worth noting however is that if cleave hit two targets the bonus threat is split between the two making it preferable threat wise if you have a second target to hit.

6. EXECUTE RANGE

- Enchants & Weapon Choices

Executioner MH and Mongoose OH are still your best options for your execute weapons, as crit & ArP scale your Execute damage faster than AP, and the haste & crit from Mongoose can help generate a little extra rage.

Formerly, for Execute range it was recommended that you equip two fast weapons (1.5 speed or faster) so that you are able to punch Execute on every available cooldown. Daggers with these stats are acceptable, as Execute is not normalized nor is it based on weapon damage. Look for items with haste, crit, hit ideally.

However, in WotLK I have had good results in a TG build with continuing the normal rotation, but dropping instant Slams and Heroic Strikes for Executes. This also can save you dkp and cash by not having to maintain 4 weapons and their corresponding enchants. Thusly it is recommended that you not execute every GCD, nor switch to faster 1 handers for this phase as we used to.

[Corbusier]

7. ENCHANTS, GEAR & GEMMING - CHOOSING ITEMS

- Choosing Items

The highest i-level item is typically the highest DPS item, no matter if it has ideal stats or not (i.e. the badge shoulders having higher DPS than t4/ragesteel). Upgrades in i-lvl will thusly be upgrades in DPS. Most often you do not have a choice between items with similar quantities of different stats, so this rule of thumb suffices for the most part.

The way item budgets work is that the more of one stat you have the less total budgets the items gets. This means that items that have a variety of stats will have more overall stats allocated. Items with hit/crit/str together are generally better items then just str/crit. Find gear with balanced stats when you can and use this to keep your hit rating high. Then gem for str/crit in these items.

It is also important to note that the lower your level of gear the more effective str is. If you are just starting to gear up STR is by far your best stat. As your gear improves the value of crit will rise and at certain levels of raid buffs even marginally pass str. This means that for very low levels of gear stick to +8 str but as you improve you can phase in 4str/4crit gems to finish socket bonuses.

A good place to go to in order to find the relative value of each stat for your current level of gear is:
[Warrior] Fury DPS Spreadsheet for 3.0 - Elitist Jerks

You can also try:
MaxDPS.com - Fury Warrior DPS Gear Rankings

Use at your own risk.

The spreadsheet is not meant to be an absolute guide. It is in fact quite flawed, especially when it comes to predicting the rage-->damage ratio. I link this post because there is very good discussion throughout and it is an incredible resource for posting specific item questions and getting reasonable answers. Even when working the spreadsheet is no more then a rough guide. Use it with caution.

Here you can enter your gear and get a rough value of how useful a single point of str, hit, and crit is for you right now.


On Maxdps:
It has its usefulness, but also serious flaws. It is terrible at modeling rage, bad at ranking weapons and trinkets & proc effects. Inputting extreme values of certain stats (i.e. very low crit) tends to throw off whatever algorithm is at work, and it's also bad at knowing when you are soft or hard hit-capped.

However, for other gear I have found it to be fairly accurate and close to the other spreadsheets as far as ranking non-weapon, non-trinket items, so long as you input your raid-buffed stats. Use it with caution. It has improved recently with a full rage model and full talent selection, however.

The EJ spreadsheet is still the one I have found to be most accurate according to my in-game testing


- Gemming

* Meta - Chaotic Skyflare Diamond: 3% Increased Critical Strike damage, +21 Critical Strike Rating - Chaotic Skyflare Diamond - Item - World of Warcraft
* Bold Scarlet Ruby - +16 Strength (Red) - Bold Scarlet Ruby - Item - World of Warcraft
* Inscribed Monarch Topaz: 8 Strength, 8 Crit Rating (Orange) - Inscribed Monarch Topaz - Item - World of Warcraft
* Sovereign Twilight Opal: 8 Strength, 12 Stamina (Purple) - Sovereign Twilight Opal - Item - World of Warcraft
* Jagged Forest Emerald: 8 Crit Rating, 12 Stamina (Green) - Jagged Forest Emerald - Item - World of Warcraft
* Smooth Autumn's Glow: +16 Crit Rating (Yellow) - Smooth Autumn's Glow - Item - World of Warcraft

You should maintain just enough Blue gems to have a working meta gem. Purple/Orange/Green gems work as either of their two component colors. i.e: Purple can count as Red or Blue. The Chaotic Skyflare Diamond will always yield the highest dps of the meta gems currently available.

- Enchants

Head

Arcanum of Torment - Item - World of Warcraft

Bracers

Enchant Bracers - Greater Assault - Spell - World of Warcraft

Gloves

Enchant Gloves - Crusher - Spell - World of Warcraft

Boots

Enchant Boots - Greater Assault - Spell - World of Warcraft
Enchant Boots - Icewalker - Spell - World of Warcraft

Cloak

Enchant Cloak - Major Agility - Spell - World of Warcraft

Chest

Enchant Chest - Powerful Stats - Spell - World of Warcraft

Legs

Icescale Leg Armor - Item - World of Warcraft

Shoulders

Greater Inscription of the Axe - Item - World of Warcraft

Weapons

Enchant Weapon - Berserking - Spell - World of Warcraft
Enchant 2H Weapon - Massacre - Spell - World of Warcraft

[Corbusier]

8. HASTE

[Mechanic Primer] - Haste - How it works, and what that means. - Elitist Jerks

The formula for determining hasted weapon speed is:

Hasted Speed = Weapon Speed / ( (1+(Haste 1 %/100)) * (1+(Haste 2 %/100)) * (1+(((Haste Rating 1 + Haste Rating 2 + ... )/100)/15.7)) )

Example: Beast Master Hunter
Bow Speed / Serpents Swiftness * Quiver Speed * haste from added up haste ratings
3.0 / ( (1+(20%/100)) * (1+(15%/100)) * (1+((30+45+25)/1570)) )
3.0 / (1.20*1.15*1.064) = 3.0 / 1.468 = 2.04 sec. attack speed.

- Haste & Rage Generation

It has been thought for some time that the rage generation formula used the "hasted" weapon speed instead of the "base" weapon speed to determine the rage-per-hit, or used a normalization factor so that 1% haste did not result in 1% more rage. It appears that this is not the case.
Warrior Rage Generation and Haste - TankSpot

From Bagelbite's testing, we can see that haste has no appreciable effect on rage-per-hit, so haste effects WILL cause you to generate more rage in a given unit of time. This conclusion is supported by Jathine, who duplicated this testing with a wider range of haste buffs and weapons:
WoW Forums -> Haste-Rage Relationship

9. GLYPHS

Major:
Glyph of Whirlwind
Glyph of Execute
Glyph of Heroic Strike

Minor:
Glyph of Battle
Glyph of Enduring Victory
Glyph of Bloodrage

[Corbusier]

10. BEST PRACTICES

- Consumables

* Flask of Endless Rage: 180 Attack Aower (2 hours, persists through death)
* Elixir of Mighty Strength: 50 Strength (1 hour)
* Guru's Elixir: +20 all stats (1 hour)
* Wrath Elixir: 90 Attack Power (1 hour)
* Elixir of Accuracy: +45 Hit Rating (1 hour)
* Elixir of Armor Piercing: +45 Armor Penetration Rating (1 Hour)
* Elixir of Deadly Strikes: +45 Critical Strike Rating (1 Hour)
* Elixir of Expertise: +45 Expertise Rating (1 Hour)
* Elixir of Lightning Speed: +45 Haste Rating (1 Hour)
* Elixir of Mighty Agility: +45 Agility (1 Hour)

* Dragonfin Filet: +40 Strength & Stamina - Recipe: Dragonfin Filet - Item - World of Warcraft
* Hearty Rhino: +40 Armor Penetration Rating - Recipe: Hearty Rhino - Item - World of Warcraft
* Imperial Manta Steak: +40 Haste Rating - Recipe: Imperial Manta Steak - Item - World of Warcraft
* Very Burnt Worg: +40 Haste Rating - Recipe: Very Burnt Worg - Item - World of Warcraft
* Rhinolicious Wyrmsteak: +40 Expertise Rating - Recipe: Rhinolicious Wyrmsteak - Item - World of Warcraft
* Snapper Extreme: +40 Hit Rating - Recipe: Snapper Extreme - Item - World of Warcraft
* Spiced Wyrm Burger: +40 Critical Strike Rating - Recipe: Spiced Wyrm Burger - Item - World of Warcraft


* Potion of Speed: 500 Haste Rating. (15 seconds)

- Raid Preparation

- Knowing the Fight

There is zero excuse to be ignorant of the ins and outs of an upcoming fight with all the resources available.
Bosskillers World of Warcraft Bosses, Guides, Movie Reviews and Guild Kills
WoWWiki - Your guide to the World of Warcraft
MMO-Champion - World of Warcraft Guides and Raid Strategies
Project Marmot -- TankSpot Raid Movie Guides - TankSpot
Learn the fight, learn your role in it. Don't die.

- Consumables

Bring them. Lots of them. It's your job to farm for/make/purchase them, not your guild's. Be sure you have at least enough flasks for the allotted raid time, or enough elixirs to cover the expected deaths (which can easily run into double digits on progression nights). Bring one stack of bandages at minimum, as well as 2-3 stacks of health potions.

- Gear

Is all your gear appropriately gemmed and enchanted? Did you repair before zoning in?

Be sure to bring along appropriate off-set gear as well. At certain points you may be expected to offtank, so be sure to grab that set from the bank before heading out. You may also need resist sets for certain encounters, so find out ahead of time. Some resist sets take quite a while to build; most notably the shadow resist set for Mother Sharahz. Farm for the materials to make these if you must.

- Awareness & Multi-Target Attacks
"Get out of the goddam fire!"

You know how Whirlwind hits up to 4 targets? And has a longer range than your other attacks? Yeah, about that. Careful where and when you use it. Yes it's part of your rotation. But if you break a sheep or a shackle, that mob is coming after you, or worse, the healer that just saved your ass.

Get a feel for the range of your Cleave & Whirlwind range, or download an addon that tracks distance for you. You and your raid leader (and healers) will get along much better.

- Cooldown Synergy

Taken almost verbatim from Elitist Jerks

Use them, use them in conjunction with each other if possible. Using short cooldowns such as trinkets or Deathwish as soon as possible in the fight allows them to cool down sooner and become ready for use again later on in the fight. Cooldowns used in conjunction with each other will always yield higher dps than cooldowns used consecutively. Take this example:

Recklessness guarantees most of your attacks for the next 15 seconds will be critical strikes.
Heroism increases your attack speed by 30% for 40 seconds.

Used in conjunction with each other, you get 30% more attacks that are nearly guaranteed by Recklessness to crit if they land. This inflates the value of Recklessness by 30%. Note that Recklessness is still subject to the crit cap and Attack Table.
Used consecutively, each buff yields only it's own dps with no added value. Recklessness is 15 seconds of near 100% critical strike chance, Heroism is 40 seconds of 30% faster attack speed.

If possible, time your Recklessness/Deathwish/Trinket/Haste Potion with your shaman's Heroism. If you don't have a shaman, try and time your Deathwish/Trinket/Haste Potion to coincide with each other.

It should be mentioned that not all cooldowns scale each other. For instance, activating a trinket such as Mark of Norgannon and popping an Potion of Speed at the same time doesn't make either effect more potent in and of themselves. However both benefit from being timed with a Deathwish or Recklessness. This mostly only matters if you run into a situation where you know that a fight won't last an additional two minutes for an extra use of a trinket or pot, and you have a choice of waiting to use it now, or saving it to coincide with a potential proc. In general, stacking like bonuses together won't result in an increase beyond the basic bonus.

Bear in mind also that it pays to ensure that you use your trinkets, pots and other cooldowns just when BT/MS and WW will be available. Take for example Loatheb's Shadow, which grants an AP boost for 20 seconds. If this trinket is used just when BT and WW become available a full 3xBT 2xWW cycle can be completed before the duration ends; if it's carelessly popped just after Bloodthirst and Whirlwind are used you will end up losing the buff before the third Bloodthirst and second Whirlwind can be executed.

Likewise, it is best to keep a close eye on timers for any ability which may result in you being unable to DPS for any length of time, and hold off on using cooldowns if they become available shortly before the timers for such abilities come up. Quite a bit of DPS can be lost from carelessly popping a pot and trinket just before say, getting graved on Morogrim or being airbursted by Archimonde.

- Standing Behind the Boss

You should know this by now. Seriously.

Attacking from behind has numerous benefits to both you and your raid (not to mention myriad opportunities for mildly clever witticisms). You effectively remove parry and block from the attack table (not dodge, this isn't PvP), increasing your DPS.Also by doing so you drastically reduce the chances that your tank will be parry-jibbed. Furthermore, many bosses have a nasty cleave/hateful strike/other fun frontal attack that can be completely avoided merely by standing behind its 180 degree frontal arc.

- Buffs/Debuffs

- Battle Shout

Keep it active at all times. Your DPS will improve, and your rogues and shaman will appreciate it.

- Sunder Armor

If your tank is not a warrior, congratulations! It's now your job to apply sunder armor. Not only will keeping a stack of five sunders active increase your DPS, it increases everyone else's physical DPS as well (apart from bleeds & poisons obviously).

- Demoralizing Shout

Keeping Demoralizing shout active is imperative if that is your responsibility.. If you allow this debuff to wear off, your tank has a much higher chance of being killed by spike damage, and that big ugly monster will likely come after you first. Use a mod to track debuffs if you must, but DO NOT let it fade.

- Commanding Shout

No it's no sexy. No it won't increase your DPS. Sometimes though, you just have to bite the bullet, especially if you happen to be in a group with tanks/offtanks (or are said offtank).

- Survival

Dead warriors do zero DPS. Sometimes living a bit longer is more important than landing one more fat Bloodthirst crit.

- Berserker Rage

C'mon, you've had this skill for, what, 40 levels now? Use it.

- Defensive Stance & Shield

Make a macro for it already. Getting hit by AoE damage and the healers are ignoring you? Use said macro. Shield Block helps as well if you're taking physical damage.

- Shield Wall

Under dire circumstances, using your cooldown on Shield Wall can save your life, and sometimes the entire raid.

- Commanding Shout

On some encounters there are expected bursts of damage, aoe or single target, in which case it can be beneficial to use Commanding Shout instead of Battle Shout until the expected burst is over. Naj'entus/Illidari Council/Mother Shahraz come to mind.

[Ciderhelm]

Moved and stuckied.

[Corbusier]

:O

[Narshe]

Is there now, like at lvl70, some scenario when you should be keeping the usual rotation instead of spamming execute?
At lvl70, iirc around 4k AP buffed, BT was doing more damage than execute. Do we have a number at 80 now?

[Corbusier]

Is there now, like at lvl70, some scenario when you should be keeping the usual rotation instead of spamming execute?
At lvl70, iirc around 4k AP buffed, BT was doing more damage than execute. Do we have a number at 80 now?

Pretty much anyone in raid gear should maintain their rotation, but use execute instead of HS as the rage dump.

[Saturday]

No personal comments on glyphs?

[Corbusier]

No personal comments on glyphs?

Will be added shortly.

[Delicatesse]

Isn't the yellow hit cap 9%?
Also, there are plenty of BC references like Mother Shahraz and stuff like that.
Great guide nevertheless.

[Miratu]

Thanks for great job, respecced to fury (after 2 years of tanking :P) and is very helpful for me now

[kelvs]

good guide. was waiting for this.

[Chosenx]

My gear is getting pretty decent, and I popped a haste pot and execute spammed at 20% and saw a pretty significant drop in my dps. I do NOT suggest it.

Good guide, pity it is still stocked full of lvl 70 references and out-dated information, but the important stuff is in there and that is what matters.

A couple tips I can point out straight away as an easy fix:

1. Reference project marmot for raid preparation lol.

2. Don't suggest executing at 20% (i dont think there will be a situation where this is good, use it during free cooldowns tho).

3. Crit is a lot more important than I think it used to be, due to the fact that it is harder to gear up. I had pretty decent t5/6 gear while leveling, and my crit dropped to around 20%. Gettin that back up saw a dramatic increase in dps, and i dropped a fair bit of strength gems to do it, and don't regret it. 3.0.8 changes the importance a bit, but I don't think it makes much difference (slam should proc about the same as someone with 35% crit pre-3.0.8 i think).

Good job tho, I was lookin for this while I geared but u took too long :P but now I can offer advice, which is a good position to be in.

[Megatrohn]

Isn't the yellow hit cap 9%?
Also, there are plenty of BC references like Mother Shahraz and stuff like that.
Great guide nevertheless.

Current consensus from testing over at EJ forums indicates that the yellow hit cap is 8%.

[Marrick]

Very nicely done. A warrior in my guild was looking at arms vs. fury and different TG specs. I'll definitely have him read this through.

One thing I noted under how much hit:

bosses, which are treated as level 73

[Delicatesse]

Current consensus from testing over at EJ forums indicates that the yellow hit cap is 8%.

Yeah I've just read that. I wonder if dodge/parry are reduced aswell since LK?