Fury Warriors for DummiesFollow

Hey all,
I'm trying to piece together some useful (and simple) information for a guildie who's playing a fury warrior (lvl 80) which he's leveled mostly on his own.
He's in his 60's and a really great friend but simply put, he's bloody awful as a dps warrior. (Running him through H-UK and seeing an average of 700 dps from him made this abundantly clear.) A fair amount of this is gearing/etc. (which we're working on with him) but I'm sure lack of understanding BASIC mechanics is a big part. I'm kind of at a loss with him as he KNOWS he's not able to keep pace and wants/tries to improve but seems to be unable to do so.

He's a sweet guy and I just know sitting on the sidelines or not being able to pull his weight has got to be embarrassing to him so I'm trying to do what I can. The guild I'm in with him is TINY and just friends and family so we've no one in-house to show him the ropes.

He's unlikely to ever be good but I'm trying to find him some easy to grasp info he can use to improve. Remember, this is a man near retirement age so this isn't someone who's grown up on gaming here. I've read most of the relevant info in these forums but wading through post after post for concise info on a class I don't play is a bit tedious for me and I know he's just going to sit there with his eyes glazed over after a few posts.

What's out there in the way of DPS warrior blogs (I've been searching but haven't found what I'm looking for) that basically deal with Warriors for Dummies. Hunters have had sources like BigRedKitty and Aspect of the Hare and I'm hoping for remedial info like that that I can point him at and not have him bogged down with theorycrafting that I'm sure will go right over his head.

Thanx for any helpful advise
Fry

A lot of Fury Warrior's DPS comes from using a rotation of skills/abilities. What rotation you should use will depend greatly on who you talk to, but a good basic rotation to start with is as follows:

Bloodthirst -> Whirlwind -> Heroic Strike

while keeping Bloodrage and Beserker Rage on cooldown.

Aside from rotation, a lot depends on gear, gems and enchants. I simply cannot emphasize how important gear, gems and enchants are to a Fury Warrior. Without a good setup, you simply won't do good DPS. If you take a look on the Armory (or, far easier, wow-heroes), you'll notice the top Fury Warriors on any given server will all have a few things in common... they all have the same spec and they all use the same kind of gems/enchants.

Your standard spec should be 18/53/0, which breaks down as follows:

{Fury} 53

3/3 Armored to the Teeth
2/2 Booming Voice
5/5 Cruelty
5/5 Commanding Presence
5/5 Dual Wield Specialization
2/2 Improved Execute
3/3 Precision
1/1 Death Wish
1/2 Improved Beserker Rage
5/5 Flurry
3/3 Intensify Rage
1/1 Bloodthirst
2/2 Improved Whirlwind
5/5 Improved Beserker Stance
1/1 Rampage
3/3 Bloodsurge
5/5 Unending Fury
1/1 Titan's Grip

{Arms} 18
3/3 Improved Heroic Strike
4/5 Deflection
3/3 Tactical Mastery
2/2 Impale
3/3 Deep Wounds
3/3 Two-Handed Weapon Specialization

This spec can be retooled as the player sees fit... but it hits pretty much all the important talents while ignoring the talents that aren't as useful to pure DPS. Specifically, you'll notice Arms only goes deep enough to get Impale and Two-Handed Weapon Specialization. These two talents are more important than ever thanks to the 10% damage reduction Blizzard decided to tag onto Titan's Grip. Every little bit of extra damage helps and Two-Handed Weapon Specialization helps out. Same goes for Impale, since most of Fury's DPS comes in the form of critical hits (yellow damage).

That leads me into my next point, which is stats. Just like rotation, this is open to different opinions depending on who you talk to, but I think most would agree the stat priority should be as follows (from highest priority to lowest priority):

Strength -> Crit % -> Hit Rating -> Armor Penetration -> Stamina

Basically, Strength increases raw damage (white hits) as well as critical damage (yellow hits). Agility increases your dodge chance, and more importantly, your crit %. Hit Rating determines how likely you are to hit a boss. You should get this as high as you can without sacrificing Strength or Agility... but you should try to aim for something in the neighborhood of 300 or higher (the higher the better). Stamina should be the last stat you focus on. It increases how much HP you have, which sounds important as it means you can take more hits without dying... but let's face it. Fury Warriors can't take much damage despite wearing plate armor. The difference between 19k health and 22k health translates into maybe one or two more hits from a boss. It's just not worth focusing on in my opinion.

This leads me to gear, gems, and enchants. Gear should be pretty self-exclamatory. Get gear that focuses on the stats you are focusing on. Gems should follow the same philosophy. Enchants is debatable and really boils down to personal preference. Ideally you should take a look at what gear and gems you have and get enchants that bump up stats you aren't satisfied with. However, you could also throw enchants on that increase a paticular stat like STR.

I'll tell you one thing though. Do NOT focus on Attack Power (AP). If may seem lucrative to do so and it certainly is cheaper on the funds than focusing on STR... but it's snake oil. You'll get more DPS point for point by focusing on STR rather than AP... both in solo situations and in party/raid situations... especially when you have a Paladin in your group (which you most likely will). This is because Paladins will usually give you Blessing of Kings, which increases your stats by 10%, which includes STR. The higher your STR, the higher it's boosted, which translates into higher AP. If, however, you focus on getting gems and enchants that boost AP as opposed to STR, this translates into lower STR, which in turn translates into less of a bonus given by Kings... which ultimately translates into lower DPS.


EDIT: Changed stat priority.

Edited, Aug 13th 2009 1:15pm by neocronNV

This is some very useful information!
I too have been having low dps with my fury warrior, and have
been pulling my hair out trying to figure out a good combination..
I can't wait to get home and try this out :)

No, I thought the same thing. We're easily misled.

For leveling, their is so little hit available before level 68-70 that you should take everything you can find that has it.

Of course putting on cloth with hit rating is silly, but that 5 hit rating boot enchant goes a long ways early game.

Edited, Jul 6th 2009 12:39pm by devioususer

that's the best new word i've learned in a long frigging time.

is agi really better than hit nowadays?

I'd like to modify what I said about stat priority.



While this still holds mostly true... I have been experimenting with ArP and have seen a massive increase in DPS. That said, I'm going to modify my stance on stat priority to this:

Strength -> Crit % -> Hit Rating -> Armor Penetration -> Stamina

Why don't I put ArP higher up and why did I exchange Agility for Crit %? Well Strength is still your bread and butter stat for Fury Warriors for the reason I mentioned in my last post. With Blessing of Kings on, you'll never go wrong with focusing on Strength. I switched out Agility to Crit % because it's a much more effective stat than Agility (which also affects Crit %, but often you'll find gear that is suited for Fury Warriors that has Crit % on it rather than Agility). The going rule of thumb for Crit % is to try to get that stat up to 33%. At 33% Crit %, one third of your attacks will be critical hits, which is a nice balance. With raid buffs, you could end up around 40% Crit % which is very nice.

Hit Rating remains unchanged because you still need to be able to HIT the mob in question. Try for a Hit Rating of 300 or better.

As for Armor Penetration, this stat is invaluable. Not as invaluable as the other 3 stats before it... but invaluable nontheless. What Armor Penetration does is it allows your attacks to ignore a percentage of a mobs armor rating. This translates into attacks doing much more damage all across the board. Your white damage will increase and more importantly, your yellow damage will increase as well. With an Armor Penetration rating of 25% armor reduction, I am doing around 3k dps, which is a lot better and more in-line with what other DPS classes put out.

The only downside to ArP is finding gear that has ArP on it naturally is rather difficult until you hit T8 or T9 gear. Heroic and T7 gear don't have ArP on them, so your forced to get gems that give ArP and use food that gives ArP. This is expensive over time... but the payoff is worth it in my opinion.

Edit + sticky? it's that good.

Can we get one for arms? The current stickies are old methinks looking after this post.

I know it needs an edit but right now it's SOLID info so with a tad of revision it should be sticky worthy :)

I wouldn't include stamina at all for Fury warriors.





I'd go with;


Before 8% hit cap;

Strength -> Hit Rating -> Expertise Rating -> Crit Rating -> Armor Penetration -> Haste Rating

After soft hit cap;

Strength -> Expertise Rating -> Crit Rating -> Armor Penetration -> Hit rating -> Haste Rating

After Expertise cap;

Strength -> Crit -> Armor Pen -> Hit -> Haste
(No more expertise)


I've always seen Armor Pen as more useful than more hit after soft capping. Armor pen works on every attack you use, while hit only affects your white damage rotation.

Auto attack is roughly 50% (+/- depending on rotation, etc...) of overall damage. Which is a significant chunk.

But hit % after soft capping (getting 0% miss rate on specials) is only going to affect your white damage, while almost every other stat (not; hit, haste) will affect 100% of your overall damage.

It is a huge part of your overall damage, as was dual wield pre TG. And is something not to ignore. But if you can raise both white damage and yellow damage with a single stat, it is overall a much better overall improvement.

More or less yes.

Strength affects all damage you deal, except executes. But it's the highest return on damage overall.

Armor pen and Crit rating affect all damage you deal.

Hit rating affects -only- white damage after you soft cap it.

Expertise does nothing past capping.

Haste doesn't hurt, but it sucks. And only affects white damage.

This whole thread is goodness wrapped in sugar, but one thing hasn't been touched on....

Glyphs.

My Fury Warrior is now L.74 and I totally forgot about his glyphs up until now...

I switched from Battle Stance to Berserker Stance at around 40 or 50 (maybe even up to 60), but my two major glyphs are still for Battle Stance. While I have Glyph of Battle (increases Battle Shout by 2min), and Glyph of Bloodrage (reduces the health cost of Bloodrage by 100%) as minors...

My question is this... Depending on what stance you are in... what are the best glyphs (major and minor) you should be using?

Thanks for the replies.