WoW Warriors: Fury 101

Protection warriors are the tanks of the warrior class, the guys who stand up there and bang on their shields and bang their shields into things ranging the gamut from large horrible squamous tentacle monsters in Old Kingdom to giant walking bone piles in ICC. And that's fine: somebody has to keep the monsters and bosses of the game focused on a hard target so the rest of us can kill it. It's good to see prot warriors alongside bears, walking corpses and daisy picking fancylads doing the tank job. (I kid you paladins because my heart is black and full of envy.) It's good that there are warrior tanks.

But that's not you, is it? You haven't read this far because you want to tank. If you did, you'd have clicked that link and been on your merry way. You don't want to tank. You don't want to stand up front and keep monsters attention focused like some kind of giant nursery school teacher for the horrors of Azeroth. No, you don't want to tank.

You want to kill things. You want to rip them into bloody gobbets and leave their ruined, looted corpses in your wake. You want to wear two huge weapons crossed on your back and reach up to draw them forth as soon as things get ugly, which can't come soon enough in your opinion. You want to get on up there and rip things heads clean off. You're the kind of person who thinks Grom Hellscream had a good idea but didn't go far enough with it.

Come right this way. Fury is the spec for you.

1. What is fury?
Fury is the "grrrargargsgarg DIE DIE DIE DIE" spec. It's the spec Blizzard described in the Class Q&A last year as "screaming barbarians in woad" and that still remains the best way to think of the spec. For in game examples of warriors who seem to embody the fury playstyle, both Varian Wrynn and Garrosh Hellscream fit the bill. (Sorry, guys, Saurfang is arms. We all know this to be true.) Fury warriors can offtank in a pinch or even tank a five man, but they're not designed to be tanking in raids. The spec is designed at present to equip two huge weapons and smash them into things.

It's refreshingly simple in concept, really.

2. What are the benefits of fury?

Well, do you like two handed weapons?

What about hitting things with two handed weapons?

In all sincerity, fury is as simple and pure as it gets. Get two big weapons. Hit things with them. If this sounds fun to you, then congratulations, fury is the only spec in the game that can allow you to dual wield two handed weapons. Since fury is a warrior spec, it's dependent not on mana, energy or runes/runic power, but rather on rage, a resource that scales as damage increases. The harder your white hits (any attack that doesn't require use of a special ability, also known as 'auto attacks') the more rage they generate. The more rage you have, the more you can do since most warrior special attacks (also known as 'yellow hits' because their damage is reported in yellow colored text) cost rage. Fury, in essence, feeds on itself: the more you do the more you can do.

Plus, we look ridiculously cool. Go ahead, try and say we don't.

That's what I thought.

3. What about drawbacks?
Fury has a few. First off, few talent trees are so thoroughly dominated by their 51 point talent as fury is by Titan's Grip. If you are a fury warrior, you're taking Titan's Grip: there's no reason to do so otherwise, even with repeated nerfs the talent is always a DPS increase over any other possible fury build. Secondly, I think it's fair to say that absolutely no spec in the game is as ridiculously depending on absolutely rigidly specific gear selection to get the ultimate best performance. While it's true that a prot warrior in bad gear can't tank at all while a fury in bad gear can DPS poorly without instantly dying, the margin for error in fury gearing to get the highest possible DPS is exceedingly small. Finally, DPS warriors in general and fury warriors in particular are remarkably fragile for a DPS class that wears plate. While you can talent and glyph for slightly higher survivability, such choices always come at a cost to DPS, and since DPS is what fury is all about, it's a hard tradeoff to make. In general, survivability/regen talents and/or glyphs are better suited to the leveling process than they are to endgame.
4. What stats do fury warriors like?
Generally, fury are looking for stats that allow them to kill things.

• Strength. This is raw smashing (or chopping or cutting) power. Strength converts to Attack Power which adds directly to weapon damage per second (or DPS). The talent Improved Berserker Stance adds another 20% of your total Strength when you are in Berserker Stance. 1 Str = 2 AP for a warrior.


• Hit Rating. Since fury warriors dual wield, they require hit rating to reduce the chance that they will miss an attack. We talked about Hit and Expertise back in 2009 for DPS warriors. I've generally changed my mind about the Precision talent since then, but the basic argument that we need 263 hit rating (without Precision) to push yellow attacks off of the miss table is still sound. Precision gives 3% chance to hit with melee weapons and is basically always worth the points, since minus the Draenei racial or any hit debuffs your chance to miss with white hits is 27% against a level 83 boss. (Raid bosses are skull level, effectively always three levels above a player.) With Precision, you only need 163 hit rating to effectively hit 8% for specials.


• Armor Penetration. As you get better and better gear it becomes easier to reach what is known as the hard ArP cap (currently 1399 ArP rating if I'm doing the math right): most leveling fury warriors don't need to concern themselves with ArP at all, it only becomes a viable stat once you begin accumulating Tier 9 or better gear. It's easier to start working towards the soft ArP cap (roughly 50% armor reduction, 699.5 rating) which in combination with an ArP proc trinket like the Grim Toll, Mjolnir Runestone or Needle-Encrusted Scorption will reduce armor to very close to 100%.


• Expertise. Expertise is the stat that diminishes the chance a mob will dodge or parry you. Mobs in WoW can dodge when you are behind them (players cannot) but cannot parry unless they are facing you. Expertise, unlike hit, has no talent in the fury tree to help warriors cap it. Also unlike hit, it's easier for a fury warrior to completely cap out the effective value of expertise. After 26 expertise there is no effective value to any further points in the stat. (My fury set is 1 point over, which is effectively wasted expertise. However, it's better to be over than low, if those are your only two options.) 26 expertise is 214 expertise rating. You do not need to gear for the hard cap of 56 expertise as a fury warrior. (That hard cap pushes parries off of the table as well, but since as a DPS warrior you should always be behind the boss or mobs, there's no value to pursuing more expertise.)


• Critical Strike Rating. Really, crit never gets bad. It's good to hit harder. White critical hits will generate more rage, allowing you to use more special abilities. You don't want to stack crit above all else, but neither can you ever really 'cap' crit: the more, the better. Plus, it activates Flurry.

Stamina is neither to be courted nor shunned. Armor Value helps your attack power from talents like Armored to the Teeth, but it's not worth going specifically after. The talent just exists to keep warriors out of leather or mail. Similarly, defense, dodge, parry and block are of no interest to you. You're not a tank. You can pinch hit for a few seconds or tank content you outgear, but don't go confusing fury warriors for dedicated tanks. Avoid tanking stats for your DPS set, although by all means, collect a tank set and use it to tank. We're hybrids, after all, and since you'll be paying the hybrid tax on your DPS you might as well get some hybrid benefits too.

Stat weighting depends greatly on the level of gear you're in. Leveling gear and blues from 70 to 80 instances just won't have a lot of ArP, and will be low on expertise as well. As you gear up, however, ArP and expertise will be easier to acquire. Generally your best DPS stats are ArP over Strength over Crit over hit over exp, especially once you have 26 expertise. You simply never need any more expertise than that.

5. To level a fury

So far we've talked about the stats you want, but how do you go about leveling as fury? For starters, keep it simple: trying to collect ArP on you leveling gear will just frustrate you. You won't have Titan's Grip until level 60 (if you take all of your points in fury to that point) so you'll level with either a 2h weapon or two 1h weapons. Focus on strength, then crit, then stam (stam is useful for leveling because it makes it harder for you to die). "Of the bear' and "of the beast' are probably your best bets for leveling greens. Also keep in mind your relative fragility compared to a tank: you're not going to be able to soak up nearly as much damage, especially when you lack in gear. The heirloom plate shoulders, chest, and 2h axe are all good choices for a fury warrior (and you can always get a second 2h once you have Titan's Grip).

The better your leveling gear is and the more you work on keeping it up to date, the easier it is to level as fury. Consider the Bloodthirst glyph as soon as you can get it, because the self heal is very useful for leveling. Make sure to keep potions, food and first aid ready.

This is a level 70 build aimed at soloing and grinding quests which is also viable for dungeon finder groups. It takes Blood Craze in order to improve survivability (you'd likely have at least Bloodthirst glyphed as well for more health regeneration). This level 80 build is aimed at providing the raid with maximized versions of Battle or Commanding Shout for the longest duration possible (so glyphs would be chosen to amplify one of those two shouts) as well as longer durations on Demoralizing Shout. This variant is instead focused on maximum benefit from the Demo Shout debuff. You could easily move points around for Furious Attacks and Heroic Fury to increase PvP viability or for raid utility.

As a fury warrior you probably won't bother with protection talents when it's almost mandatory to go at least up to Two-Handed Weapon Specialization in arms. Since you'll have to spend at least 15 points to get there, you're most likely going for Impale and Deep Wounds as well: how you get there doesn't matter all that much, although it's not like Improved Heroic Strike is going to hurt your rage dumping any. While fury is hardly the most popular PvP spec for warriors, if you're going to PvP as fury you might as well get Iron Will. Otherwise, I'd recommend Tactical Mastery to make stance switching easier, although as fury you won't have to do that very often. (TM also makes offtanking when necessary easier for a fury warrior.)

6. Fury Talent Overview

There are a lot of talents in fury and of course everyone will have different talents they like. I'll go over those I think are particularly interesting or useful, but as always, your own opinions may differ. I'll be mentioning them in the order that they become available on the tree: the more points it costs to get to a talent, the later it will appear on the list. It would take more points than you probably can afford to spend and get the generally accepted necessary arms talents to buy all of these.

• Amored To The Teeth: The developers want you wearing plate, so they have given you this talent (also very attractive for prot warriors speccing into fury) to make the plate give you something useful.


• Booming Voice: Shouts last longer, shouts reach more targets. Since it's right there in the first tier it's pretty easy to justify picking it up.


• Cruelty: For five points, you get 5% crit independent of gear. It doesn't decay as you level, meaning that every time you get a level and the amount of critical strike rating you need for 1% crit goes up, this talent is inflated in value. Think of how much itemization 5% chance to crit is worth at level 80.


• Piercing Howl: Do you want to have to switch stances to hamstring, or would you rather be able to just yell and daze them long enough to get that killing blow in? PH is good when soloing and grinding, in PvP, and on any instance or raid fight with a lot of adds that can be slowed and kited.


• Improved Cleave: This, when combined with the Glyph of Cleaving, is a lot of damage in AoE situations.


• Dual Wield Specialization: You're going to be dual wielding a set of 2h weapons. You want your offhand to hit harder. It stacks with damage from Two-Hand Weapon Specialization.


• Precision: The white hit cap not counting things like draenei racials is close to 880 hit rating. You're never going to get there, but it means that Precision is never a bad talent.


• Death Wish: 20% more damage dealt, 5% more damage taken. Pretty much a must have, just try not to use it when standing in fire, or acid, or fire acid or whatever they're making the floor exude this boss.


• Flurry: You attack faster, generate more rage, and do more damage within the same time frame. Always get this.


• Intensify Rage: Shorter cooldowns for various important DPS abiliies.


• Bloodthirst: Your main instant attack as fury, every four seconds, calculated off of attack power, small self heal that can be increased with glyph for leveling. A necessary talent.


• Improved Whirlwind: More damage for your main AoE ability, which is also your secondary instant attack (glyphed, whirlwind fires every 8 seconds, meaning that your standard rotation will be BT - BT - WW). Another must have talent.


• Furious Attacks: Useful for PvP or fights with healing that needs to be reduced, FA is unfortunately only a chance to apply, only applies on white hits, and must be stacked to 2 to be as effective as the Mortal Strike debuff. In the end, it's a pale second, but if you intend to PvP as fury you'll almost have to accept that.


• Improved Berserker Stance: At the full five point investment, it's an extra 20% strength and a 10% threat reduction (the only threat reduction fury warriors have available) - you have no choice but to take this talent.


• Heroic Fury: A fun and useful talent, good for PvP or for mobility fights where an extra intercept makes getting back into DPS range much, much easier. It's one point, but that may be 1 point you just don't have to spare. (I always try and pick it up, but others are not so enthused.)


• Rampage: If you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you'll have a feral in your raid comp, you can skip this. If there's any chance you won't have one, it's worth picking up. Keep in mind it's inferior to Leader of the Pack.


• Bloodsurge: Without this ability, you should never touch Slam in your damage rotation. With it, Slam as soon as it procs as long as you have the rage.


• Unending Fury: More damage from your big three rotation abilities.


• Titan's Grip: Let's not waste our time pretending. You're going to take Titan's Grip. You know it, I know it, and the two 2h weapons you're going to smash into everything that moves, they know it too. They're already calling your name. TG, even with the damage reduction, is a huge DPS increase.

You'll notice that several talents I recommended taking like Imp Demo Shout and Commanding Presence are not on this list. That's because I don't like them. That doesn't mean they aren't useful for raids or that you shouldn't take them, but they're boring and I hope they're revised or even removed and replaced by mastery in Cataclysm. Several other talents like Enrage, Unbridled Wrath, Improved Execute or Blood Frenzy need some work before I'll recommend them for more than a leveling spec. (Enrage is basically a great leveling or PvP talent, and is nerfed even in PvP by resilience - ironically, the more resilience and thus survivability you have as a PvP warrior the less you'll like Enrage. I've been at this game too long. Enrage used to require you to be critically hit. Enrage is still not really worth it for most DPS builds, since the goal is not to be hit, but with splash damage you may find it useful.)

7. Fury rotation

Unlike protection last week, fury actually has a pretty standard rotation. You'll use Bloodthirst every 4 seconds, Whirlwind every 8 seconds (glyphed, of course) and Slam every time Bloodsurge procs and makes it an instant attack. While you're working on this rotation, you'll most likely weave in Sunder Armor (if there's no protection warrior tanking), Heroic Strike to burn rage if you're high (any rage generated past 100 rage is effectively wasted, so it's always to your benefit to try and stay below 75 rage as a guideline) or Cleave if you're in a multi-mob pull. You also may be expected to keep Demoralizing Shout on a boss, or Commanding or Battle shout up for the group.

You should use your DPS cooldowns (Death Wish, Recklessness) every time they're up as long as you can be sure that you won't waste some or all of their duration by having to move. (Many modern boss encounters feature a lot of movement and are not considered 'warrior DPS friendly') Bloodrage should be used if a long period of rage starvation (three or more white swings missing) causes you to be unable to keep up with your rotation. Major glyphs for fury are almost certainly going to include Cleaving and Whirlwind and Heroic Strike is a popular third choice. Minor glyphs often include Command, Battle or Bloodrage.

You'll gem for whatever stats your gear is short on to make caps at first, then once you have sufficient hit and expertise on gear to no longer need to gem for it, you'll most likely switch to ArP as much as you can. Your meta gem will probably be the Chaotic Skyflare Diamond, with a Nightmare's Tear and one of the purple or green gems with stamina and a desirable stat (again, most likely ArP or crit) to make the meta's requirements.

Next week, we'll discuss arms, and then wrap up our 101 series with gearing, gemming, glyphing and enchanting in detail.