02-14-2008, 12:21 PM
THIS GUIDE WAS FOR BURNING CRUSADE, IT IS NOW OUT OF DATE AND NOT ACCURATE.
Things have radically changed with some abilities and with stats.
Okeys, here is the bare bones guide to a fury warrior. If you have additional questions, you can talk to me online, post below this, send me anonymous hate mail, or whatever. I'll be more than willing to help answer your questions or dilemmas.
Feel the RAGE burn within you!
For a duel-wielding fury warrior to be an effective fighting force, you need a pretty specific set of talents (I'll also give a good offtank/fury talent spec for those that offtank a lot, though the first would work pretty well with good enough gear). (For a two-handed weapon fury build, talk to me.)
The numbers at the end of each are the number of talent points recommended to go in the number of slots 2/5 means put 2 talents into this slot, but not fill it all the way to 5/5.
ARMS
~Talent Tier 1~
- Improved Heroic strike: very good to take, as you will find yourself with a lot of extra rage most of the time, so 3/3
- Deflection: one of the best defensive talents and I always recommend taking at it 5/5
- Improved rend: Never take this talent...like ever. rend does next to 0 damage, its only use is to keep rogues visible in pvp, and using 3 talents to bring a dot from doing 12 damage to 21 is NOT worth it. 0/3
~Talent Tier 2~
- Improved Charge: not for a fury warrior. you will be in 'zerker stance most of the time. 0/2
- Iron Will: This is mostly a pvp talent and I don't recomend taking it as a raid build. 0/5
- Improved Thunderclap: This I always recommend taking in any build because a)you can help your tank take 20% less damage from this debuff and b) its good for offtanking. You will help paladin and Bear tanks immensely if you keep this up (be sure not to break crowd control though!) 3/3
~Talent Tier 3~
- Improved Overpower: You won't use this much, if at all. This is mostly a pvp arms ability and is only usable in battle stance. 0/2
- Anger Management: Very nice. It generates 1 rage every 3 seconds giving you rage during combat and slowing the decay of your rage out of combat. 1/1
- Deep Wounds: This is essential only in that it leads you to Impale.
~Talent Tier 4~
- Impale: 20% increase to the damage of your critical strikes. Very good talent. In fact, it's just about the whole reason you take talents in the arms tree as fury. 2/2
FURY
For the sake of making this shorter I'll omit the talents that are not so good and just put down what you should take.
~Talent Tier 1~............. ~Talent Tier 2~..........................~Talent Tier 3~..............................~Talent Tier 4~
- Cruelty 5/5................ - Unbridled Wrath 5/5..................- Commanding Presence 5/5............- Duel wield specialization 5/5
.......................................................................................................................................- Enrage 5/5
~Talent Tier 5~........................~Talent Tier 6~................~Talent Tier 7~............................~Talent Tiers 8 & 9~
- Sweeping strikes 1/1................- Flurry 5/5.....................- Precision 3/3..............................- Improved Berserker stance 5/5
- Weapon Mastery 2/2.....................................................- Blood Thirst 1/1..........................- Rampage 1/1
....................................................................................- Improved Whirlwind 1/2
Your stats: maximizing your intellect...wait...
What you don't want
Intellect = Bad. We don't want smart warriors, that leads to the dark side.
Spirit = Bad. It only affects out of combat regeneration, and it is REALLY SLOW no matter what.
Stamina = meh. It comes on gear. you don't need more as fury, or dps in general.
What you do want
Okay, so first and foremost, a fury warrior wants hit rating. While duel wielding, your white attacks have a miss chance of 25% on your level of mobs, but since we are raiding, we're going for bosses. that means 28% on your white attacks and 9% on your yellow ones. So, with the precision talent, thats 3%, now you need at least another 95 hit rating to stop your yellow attacks from missing.
Getting this much hit is more important than anything else, but it comes standard on gear, so don't gem for it unless you have to. After you get this hit rating, you can take more (since it will come on gear) but it is now your least important stat. Why you ask? Because crit and strength give stats to all of your hits, whereas hit rating now only affects your white attacks. This does not mean you never want any more, on the contrary! Just don't take it over strength or crit (within reason). If you aren't sure, ask.
Your important stats: Strength, Crit, Armor penetration, haste, hit. Don't gem for agility, agility gives some crit and some dodge, and you don't need dodge in your fury gear, so effectively you are losing some strength or crit you could have had. Also, expertise is great, but there's not plate dps gear with it. If you can distract a rogue long enough to get a-hold of some leather its a great stat to have. Armor penetration is amazing in a very unique way: the more of it you have, the more effective it gets. So until you get a few pieces with it, don't worry too much about this stat.
Weapons and how they work for you
Weapon speeds are sort of important because they affect how much damage you deal with some of your abilities. Basically it goes like this:
hit rating of around 130 or less with the precision talent: Slow main hand, fast offhand (for rage generation).
Hit rating greater than 130 or so and with the precision talent: Slow / Slow (same speed if you can get it).
The reason for this is because Whirlwind hits with both weapons and deals weapon damage + a certain amount. so having two slow weapons vs a slow/fast set up is more effective.
Your Main Hand should always be slow, that means 2.3 or higher (2.6-2.7 is optimal). This ensures that your heroic strikes and whirlwinds will do lots of damage.
Attack Power
Because bloodthirst (this one ability will do a good chunk of your damage) is based soley on attack power (thats right, you can use it unarmed!) and strength is 1str=2attackpower, you want a good amount of strength and/or attack power.
Oof, this is long, so if you have any more questions, ask away!
Things have radically changed with some abilities and with stats.
Okeys, here is the bare bones guide to a fury warrior. If you have additional questions, you can talk to me online, post below this, send me anonymous hate mail, or whatever. I'll be more than willing to help answer your questions or dilemmas.
Feel the RAGE burn within you!
For a duel-wielding fury warrior to be an effective fighting force, you need a pretty specific set of talents (I'll also give a good offtank/fury talent spec for those that offtank a lot, though the first would work pretty well with good enough gear). (For a two-handed weapon fury build, talk to me.)
The numbers at the end of each are the number of talent points recommended to go in the number of slots 2/5 means put 2 talents into this slot, but not fill it all the way to 5/5.
ARMS
~Talent Tier 1~
- Improved Heroic strike: very good to take, as you will find yourself with a lot of extra rage most of the time, so 3/3
- Deflection: one of the best defensive talents and I always recommend taking at it 5/5
- Improved rend: Never take this talent...like ever. rend does next to 0 damage, its only use is to keep rogues visible in pvp, and using 3 talents to bring a dot from doing 12 damage to 21 is NOT worth it. 0/3
~Talent Tier 2~
- Improved Charge: not for a fury warrior. you will be in 'zerker stance most of the time. 0/2
- Iron Will: This is mostly a pvp talent and I don't recomend taking it as a raid build. 0/5
- Improved Thunderclap: This I always recommend taking in any build because a)you can help your tank take 20% less damage from this debuff and b) its good for offtanking. You will help paladin and Bear tanks immensely if you keep this up (be sure not to break crowd control though!) 3/3
~Talent Tier 3~
- Improved Overpower: You won't use this much, if at all. This is mostly a pvp arms ability and is only usable in battle stance. 0/2
- Anger Management: Very nice. It generates 1 rage every 3 seconds giving you rage during combat and slowing the decay of your rage out of combat. 1/1
- Deep Wounds: This is essential only in that it leads you to Impale.
~Talent Tier 4~
- Impale: 20% increase to the damage of your critical strikes. Very good talent. In fact, it's just about the whole reason you take talents in the arms tree as fury. 2/2
FURY
For the sake of making this shorter I'll omit the talents that are not so good and just put down what you should take.
~Talent Tier 1~............. ~Talent Tier 2~..........................~Talent Tier 3~..............................~Talent Tier 4~
- Cruelty 5/5................ - Unbridled Wrath 5/5..................- Commanding Presence 5/5............- Duel wield specialization 5/5
.......................................................................................................................................- Enrage 5/5
~Talent Tier 5~........................~Talent Tier 6~................~Talent Tier 7~............................~Talent Tiers 8 & 9~
- Sweeping strikes 1/1................- Flurry 5/5.....................- Precision 3/3..............................- Improved Berserker stance 5/5
- Weapon Mastery 2/2.....................................................- Blood Thirst 1/1..........................- Rampage 1/1
....................................................................................- Improved Whirlwind 1/2
Your stats: maximizing your intellect...wait...
What you don't want
Intellect = Bad. We don't want smart warriors, that leads to the dark side.
Spirit = Bad. It only affects out of combat regeneration, and it is REALLY SLOW no matter what.
Stamina = meh. It comes on gear. you don't need more as fury, or dps in general.
What you do want
Okay, so first and foremost, a fury warrior wants hit rating. While duel wielding, your white attacks have a miss chance of 25% on your level of mobs, but since we are raiding, we're going for bosses. that means 28% on your white attacks and 9% on your yellow ones. So, with the precision talent, thats 3%, now you need at least another 95 hit rating to stop your yellow attacks from missing.
Getting this much hit is more important than anything else, but it comes standard on gear, so don't gem for it unless you have to. After you get this hit rating, you can take more (since it will come on gear) but it is now your least important stat. Why you ask? Because crit and strength give stats to all of your hits, whereas hit rating now only affects your white attacks. This does not mean you never want any more, on the contrary! Just don't take it over strength or crit (within reason). If you aren't sure, ask.
Your important stats: Strength, Crit, Armor penetration, haste, hit. Don't gem for agility, agility gives some crit and some dodge, and you don't need dodge in your fury gear, so effectively you are losing some strength or crit you could have had. Also, expertise is great, but there's not plate dps gear with it. If you can distract a rogue long enough to get a-hold of some leather its a great stat to have. Armor penetration is amazing in a very unique way: the more of it you have, the more effective it gets. So until you get a few pieces with it, don't worry too much about this stat.
Weapons and how they work for you
Weapon speeds are sort of important because they affect how much damage you deal with some of your abilities. Basically it goes like this:
hit rating of around 130 or less with the precision talent: Slow main hand, fast offhand (for rage generation).
Hit rating greater than 130 or so and with the precision talent: Slow / Slow (same speed if you can get it).
The reason for this is because Whirlwind hits with both weapons and deals weapon damage + a certain amount. so having two slow weapons vs a slow/fast set up is more effective.
Your Main Hand should always be slow, that means 2.3 or higher (2.6-2.7 is optimal). This ensures that your heroic strikes and whirlwinds will do lots of damage.
Attack Power
Because bloodthirst (this one ability will do a good chunk of your damage) is based soley on attack power (thats right, you can use it unarmed!) and strength is 1str=2attackpower, you want a good amount of strength and/or attack power.
Oof, this is long, so if you have any more questions, ask away!