Originally posted by minimoogle as a massive wall of text blog. Reposting here to save our feedreaders from getting pwnd.
Reposted from my Blackrock guild as it might be useful for aspiring Fury Warriors:
Note: This is basically a re-hash / update of the way I currently understand Warrior Fury DPS. It's not the gospel, but for stimulation of ideas.
The other thread was getting a bit TLDR with various musings.
Given the increased likelyhood of Warriors obtaining two Ulduar Weapons or greater, Fury is definitely an option to try as it's scaling according to gear is meant to be better than Arms.
Feel free to add any Fury related improvements.
Basics:
CAPS
Hit Rating
- With 3/3 points in Precision (+3% hit rating): The mark to hit to ensure all specials will hit is 165 (or 5%).
- Rage is a precious commodity, and if specials are wasted on misses / glancing blows, then it directly impacts our dps.
- More hit rating is not necessarily bad, as it improves the chance for our auto-attacks to hit (ie. generating rage), but given rage generation is pretty high with high-end gear, most of our attacks would be specials, so hit rating becomes less important than other stats such as Str / Crit / ArPen (see later)
Expertise Rating
- Disregarding Racials (eg. Orcs with Axes), the Expertise cap is 26 (not sure of the actual values)
- 26 is the mark to hit to ensure no specials are dodged.
- We should be attacking from behind to avoid Parries (which can lead to Parry Gib on the tank).
- Anything above 26 is a waste of points (unless you are attacking from the front, which is a big no no anyway)
Rotations + Macros
The Warrior's Primary DPS moves are specials (hence capping hit rating for specials). EVERY Global CD should be utilised (like any other class).
Basic Rule:
1) Blood Thirst should always be on CD
2) Whirlwind should always be on CD
3) If Bloodsurge Procs (and the above are on CD), use Slam
4) If Rage is > 50 (and the above are on CD or not procced) use Heroic Strike / Cleave (situational and depends on spec). If the target is under 20%, you have the option of using Execute, rather than HS.
5) If you feel inclined, throw in a Sunder
- I wouldn't worry about Sunders / Executes until you get comfortable with the basic rotation.
White hits (auto-attacks) generate rage (though can miss due to hit rating).
If we have > 50 rage, you use Heroic Strike / Cleave s it replaces the white hit with a harder-hitting special (which will definitely hit since specials are hit-capped, and hence assured hit vs chance to miss).
So how does Redwiggle manage this?
Basic Keybinds (not-efficient, but works for me)
1 - Pummel (interrupt) - though have to watch rage to make sure I have enough
2 - Intercept
3 - Slam Macro
4 - Bloodthirst / Whirlwind Macro
9 (and Scroll-Mouse Down) - Heroic Strike / Execute Macro
0 (and Scroll-Mouse Up) - Cleave
Basic Strategy:
1) Position behind the boss, and out of fires
2) Spam 4 to ensure BT and WW are on CD
3) If Slam procs, press 3
4) Monitor Rage - If > 50, Scroll Down / Up to queue HS/Cleave
Optionals:
5) Throw in a Sunder / Demo shout if required
6) Maintain enough rage for an interrupt
In addition:
This leaves the mouse free to click on targets / other abilities
Notably:
Bloodrage - If I'm rage starved and need a boost
Berserker Rage - Break Fears / Rage Boost if specced into it
Recklessness - Next 3 hits are Crits
Death Wish - increased Damage
Recklessness / Deathwish are +dmg modifiers, so I would use these when I get Damage Procs from my trinkets. Word of advice is to also watch for incoming dmg as you don't want to use these if there is a lot of impending dmg.
Good use of these Damage Boosters will increase DPS since it's compounding your bonuses.
I use Elkano Buffbars to track:
Self Buffs:
Slam Proc
Grim Toll / Death's Choice / Darkmoon Card:Greatness
Target Debuffs:
Sunder Armor
Demoralizing Shout (and other classes shared debuffs)
I'll post the Macros below when I get them.
Edit:
Slam Macro:
#showtooltip Slam
/startattack
/cast Slam
/stopcasting
Notes: The stopcasting is to stop the 2second cast in cast you click it by mistake (though jumping will do the same thing)
Bloodthirst / Whirlwind Macro:
/startattack
#showtooltip Bloodthirst
/castsequence reset=8 Bloodthirst, Whirlwind, Bloodthirst
Notes: BT CD is 4 seconds, WW is 8 seconds. You need the 2nd BT, as sometimes the macro gets stuck waiting on WW, even though BT is off CD
Heroic Strike / Execute Macro (with Sunder Modifier)
#showtooltip Heroic Strike
/cast [mod:alt] Sunder Armor; Execute
/stopcasting
/cast [mod:alt] Sunder Armor; Heroic Strike
Notes: If Execute is available (ie. < 20%) then use it, otherwise queue HS. Careful in this situation as it may use more Rage than you want to .. especially if you need to save rage for a Pummel
Cleave Macro (with Demo Shout modifier):
/showtooltip Cleave
/cast [mod:alt] Demoralizing Shout; Cleave;
Of course I still click Sunder / Demo shout as I still am not used to using the modifier!
Gearing + Armor Penetration
After capping the basic caps,
Warrior's primary stat to stack is Strength (1 STR = 2 AP + King + Talent's bonus)
Armor Penetration - Ignores a portion of Armor from the target. Useful against high armoured targets, not so much vs low-armour.
Theorycrafting has shown that at high levels, ArPen is better than STR. Given the abundance of ArPen gear in Ulduar, Every warrior was killing / willing to sell their souls for a ArPen Trinket (Grim Toll or Mjolnir Runestone). However, with the recent ArPen Nerf, and a shift of Stat's itemisation to Hit / Crit and Str gear, Blizzard have given warriors the choice again of which way to go.
As a Fury DPS warrior, we don't get any bonuses other than Crit from Berserker stance.
Given the trend of gear, my personal guideline would be to ignore ArPen unless you have one of the ArPen-proc trinkets (Grim Toll / Runestone).
Otherwise, the stats you give up to even approach ArPen being good is too much. So Stack Str / Crit
IF YOU DO have an arPen trinket, then the fun calculations begin:
The basic principle of ArPen is that the more of it you have, the better it is. There is a Hard Cap of 100% - Anything over is another wasted case of stats.
So this means you need to get to a Soft Cap of X,
where X is 100% - (the proc % of your trinket)
In Grim Toll's case, post nerf, it procs for ~43%. This means that from gear and gemming, I would need to reach ~57%, so that when Grim Toll Procs, I reach the 100% hard cap.
Anything less than 100% is not as effective, anything > 100% is a waste.
So this is why you need to make the choice of going down the ArPen route or not.
Mixing up STR + ArPen when you are not at the cap is basically a waste and gimping your DPS from what it could potentially be.
How I utilise ArPen Procs
Track Grim Toll procs using Elkano Buff Bars
If it procs, and I am not doing something else like stacking sunders,
use Death Wish (and if I can afford the 3 minute CD, Recklessness)
End Result? - Stacking Damage on Damage.
All credit to Landsoul from ElitistJerks for creating such a fantastic and easy to use modelling tool.
Has saved countless hours (and caused countless hours) of gem combinations / gear combinations in working out whether something was an upgrade, or not.
Saves using Karma / Gems / Badges for something that doesn't end up being an upgrade - two-fold saving here - you don't waste karma / gems / $$ and another guildie benefits.
Link (note. you need Excel 2007 to open and run the macros:
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http://elitistjerks.com/f81/t37462-warrior_dps_calculation_spreadsheet/
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NOTE: Please take all precautions with downloading files / scanning etc etc that you normally would.
1) Open the File and follow the directions on the Start Tab to ensure that the macros will run correctly.
2) Go to the Fury Tab and Enter your name/server in the appropriate boxes, and click 'Fetch from armory' - Note that you should have logged out in your Fury gear. Hopefuilly it should have correctly imported your talents (AJ3) and Glyphs (AN21) and Professions (AP17)
3) Scroll to the right, and there should be a field (AP1) to enter your Latency, I usually enter 200. This directly affects your DPS.
4) Finally, go to Cell (AN33) which is the type of buff food that you use. It's default is +40 ArPen, which is incorrect in our raid situations where we usually have some generous chef presenting a Fish Feast. In which case it should be +80 AP.
5) Now ... let's look at the spreadsheet (which should have imported all your gear + gems + enchants.
B27 - Rating Caps - Tells you how far you are from reaching the minimum caps
I22 - Unbuffed and Buffed Values.
The Buffed values tell you what your stats are after all ticked Raid Buffs (W21) are applied. Note: I don't mess around with the raid buffs as it tends to mess up the spreadsheet. The Default Raid Buffs tend to be pretty accurate anyway.
In E23, if you click "Click to Run", it calculates the SEP values, ie.. what stats would bring the biggest advantage to your DPS.
STR stays at 1 (so I see), and the other stats bounce around.
Eg. if I wasn't at hit cap, hit rating would be values > 1. Since I'm over hit cap, its rated < 1.
Play around with the spreadsheet, changing gear / gems / enchants, to reach the caps etc .. and how it affects your DPS.
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As an example with ArPen
I have Grim Toll equipped.
Hence, The aim is to get Maximum to 100%
Good luck and happy DPSing.
Final Notes:
- ArPen is being removed in Cataclysm (so I hear)
- Practise the rotation on a Dummy while Recount is running. Attack from the front, and from the back and you can review how many attacks were dodged / parried / misses etc.
- Rage generation can be quite flaky sometimes if you're unlucky to get a string of misses
- Feel free to add any questions / improvements as half the fun is trying to eke out that extra bit of DPS.