Fury Warrior testing

[Krenian]

Hello folks,

Seeing how I am in the beta, I decided that I'd start compiling some ideas and thoughts as to what's going on to the Fury Warrior section in WoW. I'll leave some thoughts as I dissect the numbers and will give you a general idea as to what is going on.

What exactly IS going on with Fury?

Simply put: there are a couple of changes so far. Slam is gone; that's an Arms talent now. We have been given a skill called Wild Strike, which is a yellow attack that is usable at all times, uses 30 rage, and has no CD. Bloodthirst is now an ability that doesn't simply do damage; but it actually gives you rage. 10 to be exact. The difference is it is now no longer on a 3 second cooldown; it's back to 6. Raging Blow still is only usable when enraged and the tools to stay enraged are few and far between now; the attack is pretty sporadic and rarely used.

Rage becomes more like energy than it currently is; you get a lot, and then you use it. The constant balance of keeping yourself rage abundant for a string of attacks is even more compelling as you now want to time your attacks through CS. As we want to have CS and BT on CD, there is a simple priority system that I would like to suggest:

CS
BT
WS
HS when Bloodsurge is active and over 60 rage.

Wild Strike is pretty much replacing Heroic Strike as our dump. On rare times, such as Bloodsurge is active, you can use a bit more rage (40 per attack) and use Wild Strike and Heroic Strike, but those will be few and far between, so the 60 rage requirement is a fact. How did I get to these conclusions?

Level 85 stats, which of course will differ from 90 but we can use as a template, come out as such (Damage per rage scenario):

7043 + 5722 = 12.765 per 30 rage, 425 DPR (Raging Blow)

7043 + 40% + 935 = 10.795 per 30 rage, 359 DPR (Heroic Strike)


5772 + 170% + 2975 = 18554 per 30 rage, 618 DPR (Wild Strike)


1H Fury Warrior (two hits, 19 rage)

RB = MH + OH at 85% power
HS = 140% (With 1H) + 935
WS = 270% OH damage + 2975

Now we can assume that Heroic Strike will probably go up with damage as we hit 90. Something tells me that at some point, it might get better but the gap between the three is significant: HS can be used all the time at 30 rage, off the CD, however it is our weakest attack, even with the 1H bonus. Raging Blow, our middle attack, can only be used when Enraged. But why even use both when the DPR of choice is Wild Strike, and is always usable?

So, we come to a point where WS beats HS hands down but HS is more to be used as an essential dump if you get near cap. The real concern is RB: There is little to no point of using RB at all right now. The DPR is pointless and the availability (Read: nearly none) make it for a very poor skill. This one will need to be reviewed.

Now, most of our attacks are used with Weapon Damage. How does 2 handed weapons do? (You can use both when you hit Fury. No more choosing which you prefer.)

8407 + 5109 = 13.516 per 30 rage, 450 DPR (Raging Blow)


8407 + 495 = 8902 per 30 rage, 296 DPR (Heroic Strike)


5109 + 170% + 1574 = 15368, 512 DPR (Wild Strike)


2H Fury Warrior (2 hits, 26 rage)

Now you must look at this and wonder why the numbers are lower in some situations: Simple. Single-Minded Fury gives some of the numbers a much higher output. Especially the arbitrary numbers (The added damage seems to stack with the percentage that SMF gives for damage; essentially = all skills are increased with this damage buff.)'

Of course, you get more rage per hit, but you also swing slower. Let's just presume for a moment everyone has the same speed and let's calculate the DPR of each skill in 1h vs 2h, and give it a 3 minute span.

In a 3 minute fight, 1H weapons at 19 rage at a 2.4 average swing time = 1425 rage ( (180 seconds / 2.4) x 19)
In a 3 minute fight, 2H weapons at 26 rage at a 3.6 average swing time = 1300 rage ( (180 seconds / 3.6) x 26)

So...from what we can see, not only do 2H lag in the rage generation (Note that if you miss with your OH, you're not generating any rage from that and it's more painful to deal with) but the damage, except for Raging blow, is weaker than 1H. We do not even need to go into the math but in a 3 minute fight, it is feasable to state that you will throw more attacks that do more damage.

In short? 1H is superior to 2H due to the damage increase of SMF. TG needs to be looked at and given a bit of a boost or SMF will have to be nerfed. Also, with this, TG will want to have more hit because hitting will become way more valuable to them than for SMF due to the fact you already get more rage with the 1 handers over the 2. Also, Wild Strike might get the nerf bat; it's too strong in it's current incarnation and is freely available, which eclipses the use of the two other Fury skills: HS and RB. Finally, RB is just pathetic; it needs a buff, skill wise.

Hit will be the most important stat to the dodge cap.

Next will be Crit. Why? Because it's what increases the chance of you falling into enrage status. The fact that we're so low is solely because you need to crit more often with your YELLOW attacks only. All crits with your yellow attacks will trigger the Enrage ability; this will be a bit less useful on the fact that you can use some tools that make you enraged (Berserker Rage is on a 30 second CD) but the more upkeep you can do on your attacks, the better it is for you. If you can crit at least once out of two yellow attacks, you might be safe to keep your rage up at a decent level. Also crits with your white attacks will give you more rage so why not.

Mastery will probably be the middle ground here. It's a passive upgrade to your enraged timer and if you can keep that up, you're going to take out more damage in those enrage times. It's probably not the greatest and is probably very close to Haste.

Haste will make you hit faster, which will give you more rage; so long as you're not going on a missing streak. This is why you have to decide between white cap hit or haste at this point. Either way, getting to 24% will guarentee you 100% rage whereas haste will increase the speed of your attacks and make you hit more often as a result. But as they say: no matter how fast you swing, if you can't hit the broad side of a barn, then you're useless. I'd put hit higher here than haste.

Haste is probably the worst stat out of all the stats. There it a certain percentage after a little while that will make haste become better than the offhand hit cap but...it'll depend on how much 1% haste gives in rage versus how much rage the OH gives. For two handers, it's more important cause that OH prolly gives you more than the haste. For 1H, it probably is very close and tips towards Haste.

So Hit/Expertise to yellow cap
Crit
Mastery
Haste/White Hit

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That's what I got for now. Open the floor and discuss away with what you guys think; even if you're not in the beta, go to WoWhead.com and find the calculator and play around with it. Do some math; a lil thinking never hurt.

[Thegreatme]

maybe sometime within the next decade I can get my beta invite and help out, until then, I'll just yell random things from the sidelines.

not that it makes a huge difference in the overall layout of itemization practices, haste also has the capability to increase the number of crits per time interval, where as hits can only increase the number of hits per time interval (this is because of auto attacks being on a 1 roll system, meaning there cannot be a "missed crit"). there is always the posibility that haste could (probably won't, but could) surpass hit after you have X amount of hit (but also being under the hard hit cap).

Also unless there is a significant buff to mastery/enrage effects/RB, haste is going to stomp all over mastery similar to how it does now assuming you have 2pc t13.

[Krenian]

Oh most likely. It'll depend on how much, at level 90, it takes to increase your mastery per percentage point in enrage. if it's as pitiful as it is now, there's literally little to no point going very high with mastery because the amount needed to make it decent is ludicrous and you're better off just dumping it in haste/hit.

As it stands now, there ain't much change stat wise. Just how priorities work.

If it goes live now, 1H beats 2H easily, even in the DPR area, and nearly all skills are useless other than CB/BT/WS. I haven't looked at execute atm. Does around 49000 damage from what I saw with the weapons and attack power I have, unbuffed, so I figure it's a huge increase in damage per rage atm. Sucks they removed Excutionner...that was fun to attack faster and faster as you executed people.

[leethaxor]

A few questions.

1) Are we still using the same rage model as cataclysm?

2) The rage coefficient is x * weapon speed = average rage generated per swing

3) Is the rage coefficient is?

Then all we need to do is run a few loops to see if you can buff rage generation enough to allow more WS or buff your white damage.

[Thegreatme]

A few questions.

1) Yes
2) correct
3) the coefficient on a 3.6 speed weapon is 5 (18 rage per swing). OH still generates 50% less rage per swing. there is also no change in the coefficients going from level 85 on the beta to level 86, which might imply that this rage coefficient will be the same at 90.

On live a 3.6 Mh swing generates ~23.333 rage per swing, for a rage coefficient of 6.5.

I get the sneaking suspicion that they are seeing how low they can get our rage generation while keeping fury viable, as flurry uptime is already going to be drastically lower than what we're used to. I foresee the coefficient increasing eventually, though it will probably go no higher than 6.0 for a 3.6 MH, that or they will find some other way of increasing out rage generation.

[Gregasaurous]

though it will probably go no higher than 6.0 for a 3.6 MH, that or they will find some other way of increasing out rage generation.

Well, BT generates rage, and it has a passive higher crit chance, giving a better shot at enraging for more rage, so my bet is they'll tinker with that.