http://www.tankspot.com/forums/f211/...reatme-ui.htmlWelcome to Tankspot's fury warrior class guide. My name is Thegreatme and in this guide I will be discussing what you need to know in order to play a fury warrior.
The Information in the above videos is only accurate as of patch 3.2.2 and as such in the future some or all of the information may become invalid, however the I will keep the text version of the guide updated and as accurate as possible. NOTE: Because nothing really changed for warriors in patch 3.3 this the video is still accurate.This guide is meant to be a general guide for all PvE related uses of fury, however the main focus will tend to be oriented towards 25 man raiding, rather than 10 mans and 5 mans.
Last Updated: 2/11/10Overview: <BLOCKQUOTE>
1. Talents2. Glyphs3. Hit and Expertise Caps4. Rotation/Abilties5. Heroic Strike6. Execute7. Shattering Throw8. Armor Penetration9. Useful Resources/ Macros</BLOCKQUOTE>
__Talents___In this section I am going to be discussing Fury talents, and where you should be putting your points.
Filler talents: Early on in the fury tree there are a few talents which could be considered "filler" talents, these talents include:
Booming Voice: Increases the area of effect and duration of your Battle Shout, Demoralizing Shout and Commanding Shout by 50%.
Improved Demoralizing Shout: Increases the melee attack power reduction of your Demoralizing Shout by 40%.
Unbridled Wrath: Gives you a chance to generate an additional rage point when you deal melee damage with a weapon.
Improved Cleave: Increases the bonus damage done by your Cleave ability by 120%.
Commanding Presence: Increases the melee attack power bonus of your Battle Shout and the health bonus of your Commanding Shout by 25%.
Heroic Fury: Very useful in ICC because there are a ton of movement heavy fights. only pick this up if you are consistantly raiding with a feral druid (or another fury spec'ed in to rampage). drop rampage to pick this up.How you choose these talents is dependent on your gear, and the needs of your raid.
For example as your gear improves you will naturally generate more rage and therefore you might find it acceptable to take points out of unbridled wrath and put them somewhere else.
Another example would be if your raids generally have a retribution paladin that is spec'ed in to vindication there is very little need for an extra attack power reduction debuff so you could skip improved demoralizing shout and put those points elsewhere.
If you are having trouble trying to decide where to put these early talent points talk to some of the other warriors in your guild and see where they have put their points. Ideally you want to spread your filler talents out evenly so that your raid has all of the best possible abilities.
Other than these filler talents there are not too many variations of the fury spec. This is because the talents that you do not pick up are ones that are generally very mediocre for PvE situations and therefore there is no need for you to get them.
Required talents: Armored to the Teeth: grants you three attack power for every one hundred eight armor you have.
Cruelty: grants an additional 5% chance to crit
Dual Wield Specialization: increases the damage of your offhand by 25%
Precision: increases your chance to hit with melee weapons by 3%.
Death Wish: gives you an ability that costs ten rage and when you use it, it will increase your damage done by 20%, and your damage taken by 5% for thirty seconds.
Flurry: causes your next three swings after a critical strike to be twenty five percent faster.
Intensify Rage: decreases the cooldown of your Bloodrage, Berserker rage, Recklessness, and death wish abilities by 33%.
Bloodthirst: is ability that costs twenty rage and does damage equal to 50% of your attack power and has a four second cooldown.
Improved Whirlwind: increases the damage of your whirlwind ability by twenty percent.
Improved Berserker Stance: increases your strength by 20%, and decreases your threat generated by 10% while in berserker stance
Rampage: causes your critical strikes to cause all party or raid members within forty five yards of you to gain a buff increasing their melee critical strike rating by five percent for ten seconds.
Bloodsurge: gives your heroic strike, bloodthirst, and whirlwind abilities a 20% chance to cause your next slam to be instant.
Unending Fury: increases the damage of your bloodthirst, whirlwind, and slam abilities by 10%.
Titans Grip: allows you to use two handed weapons in one hand at the cost of doing 10% less damage.
Arms Talents:Most fury specs will also put points in the arms tree in order to get:
Improved Heroic strike: Reduces the cost of your Heroic Strike ability by 3 rage points.
Impale: Increases the critical strike damage bonus of your abilities by 20%.
Deep Wounds: Your critical strikes cause the opponent to bleed, dealing 48% of your melee weapon's average damage over 6 sec.
Two Handed Weapon Specialization: Increases the damage you deal with two-handed melee weapons by 6%.
This requires you to spend at least eighteen points in the arms tree, but other than getting these four talents it does not really matter where you put your points.
Examples of talent point allocations:A typical spec for warriors who recently hit 80 (not very well geared, and not min/max oriented):
Talent Calculator - World of WarcraftA pretty standard spec for warriors who are pushing top tier raid content (IE well geared and min/max o
riented):
Talent Calculator - World of WarcraftAnd for those of you are curious, here's my spec:
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-t...atme&gn=CasualThe reason I have heroic fury over rampage is because in 25mans we always have a feral druid so rampage wouldn't be utilized.
There are lots of other possibilties out there. You have lot's of options with your filler points. As stated before the best thing to do is create a spec around the needs of your raid, and the needs of your gear.
__Glyphs__Major glyphs:For your major glyphs you should have:
Glyph of Whirlwind, which decreases the cooldown on your whirlwind abilities by two seconds.
Glyph of Heroic Strike, which causes heroic strike critical hits to refund ten rage.
And either:
Glyph of Execution, which causes your execute ability to do damage as if you had ten additional rage (at level 80 it adds 380 damage per execute)
OR
Glyph of Cleaving, which causes your cleave ability to hit an additional target.
If there are two or less targets you should be using a glyph of execution, and if there are three or more targets you should be using a glyph of cleaving.
Minor Glyphs:For your minor glyphs you should be using:
either:
Glyph of Battle, which increases the duration of battle shout by 2 minutes
OR
Glyph of Command which increases the duration of commanding shout by 2 minutes
Glyph of Bloodrage , which decreases the health cost of bloodrage by 100%.
Glyph of Enduring Victory which increases the window of opportunity in which you can use victory rush by 5 seconds.
__Hit/Expertise Caps _ As a Fury warrior it is important that you are
above the soft hit cap, which makes it so your abilities can't miss, as well as to be at the expertise cap for dodges, which means your attacks can not be dodged under normal circumstances.
Hit:The soft hit cap (before talents) =
8%but because you have precision which gives you
3% hit
you only need a minimum 5% hit from gear 5% hit = 164 Hit RatingExpertise: The expertise cap for dodges =
2626 expertise = -6.50% chance to dodge/parry
26 expertise = 214 expertise ratingBecause reaching these caps are so important if you are unable to meet them by your gear alone it is acceptable for you to gem for them, though ideally you should never need to gem for hit or expertise.
One thing to note is that after the soft hit cap having additional hit rating is not necessarily a bad thing. this is because even though your abilities can't miss, your auto attacks still can so therefore you can still get some DPS increase from having additional hit rating, though, hit after the soft hit cap is not as vital to your DPS as it is under the soft hit cap.
On the flip side you do not want any additional expertise after the dodge cap because you are not going to get parried when attacking the mob from behind and therefore any additional expertise will be wasted.
__Rotation/Abilities__Main DPS abilities:The main abilities that you will use as fury are:
Whirlwind Bloodthirst Slamand
Heroic Strike or
Cleave depending on how many targets are present.
Situational Abilities:Some of the more important situational abilities that you will use as fury include:
ExecuteVictory RushBattle Shout OR
Commanding Shout In combat you will be using these abilities when you have a free GCD (this will be discussed later)
Cooldowns:The major cooldowns that you have as fury are:
RecklessnessDeath WishShattering Throw Ideally you want to be using these cooldowns every time they come off cooldown, but you also want to be using them in conjunction with raid cooldowns such as heroism or bloodlust.
One thing to note about DPSing as a fury warrior is that rage generation, and rage management are absolutely vital in order to DPS properly. If you are unable to manage your rage well you will not be able to do the DPS that you are capable of, it is one of the most important parts of playing the spec.
the basic premise of the DPS rotation as fury is that you’re are going to use
Whirlwind → Bloodthirst → instant
Slam if you have a
Bloodsurge proc
→ Bloodthirst→ instant
Slam if you have a
Bloodsurge proc (else skip this step)
→ Repeat the rotation going back to
Whirlwind .
NOTE: if the above explanation is confusing take a look at this Diagram:
While you are doing this rotation you will also be using
Heroic Strike, but because of the nature of the ability I am going to be discussing it a little bit later.
On an exact timescale the rotation looks like: <BLOCKQUOTE>0.0
Whirlwind 1.5
Bloodthirst3.0 Free GCD (instant
Slam if available)
4.5 WAIT 1 second
5.5
Bloodthirst7.0 WAIT 1 second__________________8.0
Whirlwind 9.5
Bloodthirstetc.
NOTE:
___underlines mark the "end" of a rotation, the next Ability could be said to be at 0.0_____</BLOCKQUOTE>Now the issues with this rotation can come from those 1 second waits because it is very possible for you to accidentally use another ability eating up a global cooldown if you are not careful and paying attention to it.
Another problem with sticking just to this specific rotation is you can lose a LOT of slams. To help combat this if you get a bloodsurge proc after T=3.0, or you need an extra GCD (for shouts, sunder, etc.) you can use a slightly modified version of the rotation:
<BLOCKQUOTE>0.0
Whirlwind 1.5
Bloodthirst3.0 Free GCD (instant
Slam if available)
4.5 WAIT 1 second
5.5
Bloodthirst7.0 Free GCD (instant Slam if available)_______________________8.5
Whirlwind (note that WW is pushed back 0.5)
10.0
Bloodthirst (note that BT is pushed back 0.5)
</BLOCKQUOTE>doing this rotation you are actually going to lose whirlwinds because you are delaying the use of it by 0.5 seconds, and 0.5s is the same as 1/16th of a whirlwind and 1/8th of a bloodthirst. the reason why pushing whirlwind and bloodthirst back like this is ok is because you are gaining 1 full slam, which is going to do much more damage than 1/16th of a whirlwind and 1/8th of a bloodthirst.
You can also start your rotation with bloodthirst if you prefer that. doing so would make the rotations look like this:
<BLOCKQUOTE>0.0
Bloodthirst1.5
Whirlwind3.0 WAIT 1 second
4.0
Bloodthirst5.5 Free GCD (Instant
Slam if available)
7.0 WAIT 1 second______________________8.0
Bloodthirst9.5
Whirlwind</BLOCKQUOTE>If you have a bloodsurge proc before t=3.0 this is what the rotation looks like:
<BLOCKQUOTE>0.0
Bloodthirst1.5
Whirlwind3.0 instant
Slam4.5
Bloodthirst (note bloodthirst is pushed back by 0.5s)
6.0 Free GCD (instant
Slam if available)
7.5 Wait 1 second_________________________________________8.5
Bloodthirst10.0
Whirlwind (note that Whirlwind is pushed back by 0.5s)
</BLOCKQUOTE>there is really no difference between starting with Bloodthirst and starting with Whirlwind.
Using Rend in the RotationBeing able to cycle through your stances and get a rend off in between your second Bloodthirst and second Whirlwind can result in a DPS gain if you do not have a bloodsurge proc. because of the large amounts of rage that you will lose due to swapping stances twice if you do not have very good gear, I would advise you to NOT attempt to use rend in your rotation because you will more than likely become rage starved, which would cause a larger DPS loss than the DPS gained from using rend.
If you are using the Whirlwind first rotation it the time scale would look like this:
<BLOCKQUOTE>0.0
Whirlwind 1.5
Bloodthirst<Switch to battle stance>3.0
Rend<Switch to Berserker stance>4.5 WAIT 1 second (this 1s wait also acts as a buffer for getting rend off if you don't get it off at exactly 3.0)
5.5
Bloodthirst7.0 Free GCD (instant
Slam if available)
8.5
Whirlwind (note that WW is pushed back 0.5s)
10.0
Bloodthirst (note that BT is pushed back 0.5s)
etc.
</BLOCKQUOTE>If you are using the Bloodthirst first rotation the time scale would look like this:
<BLOCKQUOTE>0.0
Bloodthirst1.5
Whirlwind3.0 instant
Slam4.5
Bloodthirst (note bloodthirst is pushed back by 0.5s)
<Switch to Battle Stance>6.0
Rend<Switch to Berserker Stance>7.5 Wait 1 second
8.5
Bloodthirst10.0
Whirlwind (note that Whirlwind is pushed back by 0.5s)
</BLOCKQUOTE>If you plan on using rend in your rotation I highly suggest you set up a macro that looks something like this:
Code:
#showtooltip Rend
/cast [stance:1] Rend; Battle stance
/stopcasting
/cast Berserker stance
make sure that this macro is either on a bar that does not change when you switch stances, or you have it in the same location for your berserker stance and battle stance bars. using this macro will also cancel your next heroic strike to help prevent you being rage starved immediately after switching stances
No warrior is perfect at rage managementyou will
always be able to make a mistake.
Never assume you can be perfectly fine with your ability to manage rage because will make mistakes at times.
The better you are at managing your rage the less likely it will happen to you. So always practice it, always make sure that you are managing your rage properly, be very careful with it, pay attention. This can take a long time to master, but the longer you play the spec the better you will get at it.
Jumping to cancel accidental slam casts:The reason why I jump to cancel the slam cast when I accidentally hit it when I don’t have a blood surge proc is because of the fact that slam pauses your swing timer, and therefore you will not auto attack and that is actually a DPS loss if you let it go through. So if you accidentally hit slam, just simply jump to cancel the cast.
If you find your self accidentally hitting slam a lot you can make a macro that will help you stop slam from casting:
Code:
#showtooltip Slam
/cast Slam
/stopcasting
this macro works most of the time but I have seen it randomly not work. in fact one of these random macro failures took place when I was making the video for this guide, and was in the recording.
This macro should only be used if you are having a lot of problems with accidentally casting slam. this macro will cause you to un-que your HS when ever the macro is hit and as such can result in a DPS loss. If you can handle your Slam! procs well and are not constantly hitting it when you do not have a proc, do NOT use this macro. Ideally you should never need this macro in the first place but it is an option if you are having serious problems.
__Heroic Strike__Now I am going to be discussing
Heroic Strike, which is our rage dump.
Please note that all of this information also applies to
Cleave, which should be instead of
Heroic Strike if there are two or more mobs close enough together to be hit by
Cleave.
Heroic strike is a very deceiving ability for a few reasons:
even though it says it only costs 12 rage if you have 3 points in improved heroic strike, it actually costs much more than that. This is because whenever you use heroic strike, your next main hand swing will not generate any rage, which could easily be as much as 30 rage. So in reality it means that heroic strike costs somewhere around
40-45 rage, just for an ability that does 495 damage. Which leads me to the next deceptive aspect of heroic strike: its damage.
A very common misconception about heroic strike that some warriors make is that heroic strike does a lot of damage. They say this because they see the numbers on their screen and in their combat log that says heroic strike did a lot of damage. While this is ok that they see this, the important thing to note is what you don’t see. And what you don’t see is a main hand auto attack. Most of heroic strikes damage which you see on your screen and in your combat log is actually damage that would have happened anyway.
if you did not que up a heroic strike because you would have had a normal auto attack from your main hand, so you would have done the same amount of damage, just 495 damage less.please note that using heroic strike will prevent your mainhand swing from being a glancing blow, as well as making it affected by Impale. This means that over a longer time scale the DPS increase of using heroic strike will be more than just because of the addition of 495 damage. However this still does not make heroic strike an amazing DPS ability, you should be using Heroic strike as a rage dump and not an ability that can boost your DPS by a large amount.
The reason why we use heroic strike in our DPS rotation is because even though we do not want to become rage starved, we also do not want to become rage capped, which means to be at 100 rage. This is because when you are at 100 rage your auto attacks will not generate any additional rage which means that you are essentially wasting rage that you could have had and heroic strike is what helps use keep from hitting 100 rage.
this quote from Ariedan's Prot warrior guide is another great explaination of how Heroic Strike and rage dumps in general work:
Originally Posted by
Ariedan One thing to keep in mind is the nature of rage. A lot of the time, you have more rage than you know what to do with. But at times, you will find yourself having a difficult time gaining rage. In those situations, you need to be careful so you do not rage starve yourself. People refer to rage dumps as a "gas pedal," where you must learn to let it go every bit or so to gain rage. You should never rage starve yourself to the point of lacking rage for your rotation.
A general rule for using heroic strike is if you have
under 50 rage you should NOT use heroic strike, and if you have
more than 50 rage go ahead and use heroic strike but only use it once or twice.
Never spam heroic strike always be
in control of when you use it.
<BLOCKQUOTE>
Please note that my definition of "spamming" means to be mindlessly hitting the button. with full raid buffs and high quality gear it is very possible to be able to use HS on every main hand swing. there is nothing wrong with doing this, but just make sure that you can recognize when you should not use HS and act accordingly. Using HS is fine, just don't make it cause rage problems.
</BLOCKQUOTE>When raiding with high amount of crit (50% or more) while using a glyph of heroic strike the negative effects caused by mindless heroic strike spam will be noticeably negated. this does NOT completely stop these negative effects of mindless HS spamming, you will still be able to rage starve your self if you do not pay attention to it.
NEVER, EVER, spam heroic strike. It is not worth it.__Execute__Execute is an interesting ability because it doesn't scale nearly as well as a fury warriors other abilities so even though it used to be our bread and butter when a mob was under 20%, times have changed and execute is pretty mediocre now.
Execute has a terrible damage per rage value compared to your other abilities and once you are in naxx gear all of your other abilities will be more damage per rage, and more DPS, than execute.
sub 20% your rotation will not change. The only difference is that now you can use execute during your free GCD if you do not have a bloodsurge proc:
<BLOCKQUOTE>0.0
Whirlwind 1.5
Bloodthirst3.0 Free GCD (instant
Slam if available, else use
Execute)
4.5 WAIT 1 second
5.5
Bloodthirst7.0 WAIT 1 second
8.0
Whirlwind etc.
</BLOCKQUOTE>to help illustrate this lets put some numbers in to the arguement:
lets assume that fully raid buffed you have 10000 AP (which is doable if you are in mostly BiS gear) and you have a 258
JusticebringerExecute will at most cost you 45 rage (15 rage base + up to 30 additional rage burned) so lets calculate it's max and minimum damage
NOTE: armor is not being factored in because it just complicated the math and it has the same effect on both abilities so it can be ignored
1456+(10000*0.2)+(38*r)=Damage
1456+2000+1140=
4596 max possible damage
1456+2000=
3456 min possible damage
Now lets calculate slams damage:
average white damage = weapon DPS*weapon speed
281.7*3.6=1014.12
added damage from AP = (AP/14)* weapon speed
(10000/14)*3.6 = 2571.43
Total slam damage:
1014.12+2571.43+250=
3835.55now lets compare the two abilities:
4596-3835.55=
760.45so an execute from 45 rage does 760.45 damage and 760.45/1.5=506.66DPS more than slam but it also costs 30 more rage. meaning that each additional point of rage is doing 760.45/30=
25.348 damage per rage, which is pretty terrible.
now because the glyph of execution simulates you having 10 more rage, that means that it adds 380 damage per execute.
so with glyph of execute:
380+3456=
3836 minimum possible damage
380+4596=
4976 maximum possible damage
this means that if you are using execute at 15 rage with the glyph of execute you will do about the same per use as slam, with 45 rage you will do 1140 damage more than slam per hit.
At 45 rage with the execute glyph your execute will do 1140/1.5=760 more DPS than slam, but the damage per rage for that extra DPS is 1140/30=
38 damage per rage. which is interesting because that makes it in line with what the tooltip says (meaning I probably screwed up somewhere, or blizzard screwed up... it was probably me though)
If you are in an infinite rage situation, I would say go ahead and replace slam with execute sub 20%. The rest of the time I personally prefer to keep slamming and use execute when I don't have a bloodsurge proc.
__Shattering Throw __Because you need to switch stance in order to use shattering throw, I am going to be discussing what it looks like when you actually do that.
Because when you switch stances you will be unable to do your DPS rotation properly ideally you want to switch when you have the most time left on both cooldowns of whirlwind and bloodthirst
This point in time occurs when you use bloodthirst immediately after a whirlwind:
<BLOCKQUOTE>0.0
Whirlwind 1.5
Bloodthirst<Ideal time to switch stances>3.0 Free GCD (instant
Slam if available)
4.5 WAIT 1 second
5.5
Bloodthirst7.0 WAIT 1 second
8.0
Whirlwind </BLOCKQUOTE>In reality however it is ok to switch stances at any time.
Once you do switch stances, get your shattering throw off as fast as possible, and then get back into berserker stance as fast as possible. As you are switching back it is a very common practice to use a rend in order to burn a little bit of rage that is going to get wasted anyway from switching stances.
Making the "rotation" look something like this:
<BLOCKQUOTE>0.0
Whirlwind 1.5
Bloodthirst<Switch to battle stance>
3.0
Shattering Throw4.5
Rend<Switch to berserker stance>
</BLOCKQUOTE>
__Armor Penetration__ With the way gear is being itemized as of late so I feel obligated to add this section so people don't get more freaked out about than they already are(n't).
Is ArP good?
yes.
Should I get it?
Yes.
Should I Gem for Armor Pen. Instead of Strength?It depends.
there are two situations currently which make gemming for arp viable, soft capping, and hard capping
Soft Capped ArPIn order to soft cap ArP you must have one of these trinkets:
Grim Toll
Mjolnir Runestone
Needle Encrusted scorpion
Soft capping ArP means that when your trinket procs, you will be at 100% armor penetration.
To determine the amount of ArP you need from gear in order to be soft capped use this simple formula:
ArP needed from gear = 100% - ArP given by the trinket proc
Usually you will need 50-60% arp from gear depending on which trinket you have. so depending on your gear most of your gems might still be strength gems.
Hard Capped ArPHard capping ArP means that you have a passive 100% Armor penetration from your gear.
normally as fury this hasn't been viable but with the release of Icecrown gear this is very doable.
currently this requires that all of your gems be used for ArP
as of right now you are really only seeing warriors in top end guilds doing this because they have hardmode ToC25 gear so they are able to be really close to or at the hard cap. by the time the rest of Icecrown is released this will be common practice for most fury warriors who are able to clear the content.
How close to the hard cap should I be able to get before I gem pure ArP?this is more of a personal choice. I personally plan on gemming ArP when I can be at or above 90% passive ArP with gems, but it's up to you really.
__Advanced Concepts__
Don't read section this if you are easily confused, or very new to fury.
Deep wounds shrinking/growing:Because computers cannot calculate things instantly, bad things can happen when you do other similar calculations before the first one has finished.
How it works:
When ever you crit, it adds damage to a "pool" of deep wounds damage that hasn't been done yet:
D+P
this calculation generally takes about 0.2 seconds to complete.
if you crit again in that 0.2s window of time, it starts a new D+P calculation. The problem is that it's value for P can not be changed once the calculation has started, so when the first D+P calculation is complete, the 2nd calculation will still be using the value of P before the first D+P, causing the first crit's deep wounds damage to be essentially overwritten and ignored.
A good example of this in action is the fact that WW crits will always generates an OH stack of deep wounds, because the OH always hits second.
This is called Deep wounds shrinking.
When ever deep wounds crits, it subtracts damage from the pool. There is a slight delay between the tick doing damage, and that damage being subtracted in the pool (P-T), again it's about 0.2 seconds.
If you Crit immidiately after a deep wounds tick what will happen is it will start calculating D+P with the value of P being what it was before the tick dealt damage, causing the ticks damage to be essentially overwritten and ignored, giving you a "free" tick of deep wounds
This is called Deep wounds growing.
There is no way to control Deep wounds growing/shrinking and it will either help you or it won't. it is totally RNG based.
__Useful Resources/ Macros__MacrosPreventing accidental slam casts:Code:
#showtooltip Slam
/cast Slam
/stopcasting
Cycling stances to use rend:Code:
#showtooltip Rend
/cast [stance:1] Rend; Battle stance
/stopcasting
/cast Berserker stance
Heroic throw in melee range:Code:
#showtooltip
/castsequence reset=0.2 Heroic Strike, Heroic Throw
this makes it so that heroic throw will never delay your MH swing for more than 0.2 seconds
if you have Heroic Fury I would suggest having this macro:Code:
#showtooltip
/castsequence reset=1 Intercept, Heroic Fury, Heroic Fury
Hit this macro once to intercept, double tap to intercept and use heroic fury to reset intercepts CD. The 2nd heroic fury is there to help prevent a double intercept due to server lag/button spamming, you can add more uses of Heroic fury to the sequence to further help prevent this if needed.
Other Useful ResourcesElitist Jerks <BLOCKQUOTE>An amazing resource where warriors who are much smarter than me discuss things related to warriors and test theories which eventually become common knowledge.
</BLOCKQUOTE>
Landsoul’s Spreadsheet <BLOCKQUOTE>
GET THIS. EVERY DPS WARRIOR SHOULD HAVE THIS! This is by far the best spreadsheet for DPS warriors out there and is pretty much the standard. Want to know if ArP is better than Str for you? This spreadsheet will tell you. this will help you be able to decide if certain pieces are upgrades for you with your current gear set. if you have any sort of gearing questions this spreadsheet can probably answer them.
</BLOCKQUOTE>
Tankspot <BLOCKQUOTE>You already know about this site though.
</BLOCKQUOTE>
Thanks for reading/watching this guide!Misc. notes:I know I didn't specifically cover itemization and other topics of that nature (enchants, gemming, etc.), this is because the value of each stat is very variable based on your gear so I didn't feel comfortable making generalizations about that. I may add a section about it in the future if people want me to but only time will tell.
I am planning on making a new guide for cataclysm after I get a handle on how to not suck (meaning 2 months before patch 5.0).
If you notice any spelling/grammar/etc errors let me know so I can get them fixed.
If anything is unclear please say something. I don't want there to be any confusion with what I am saying.
<BLOCKQUOTE class="postcontent lastedited">Last edited by Thegreatme; 08-13-2010 at 09:37 AM. </BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE class="signature restore">
</BLOCKQUOTE>
Reply With Quote <LI id=post_313364 class="postbit postbitim postcontainer">11-06-2009 11:57 AM
#2 
Thegreatme 
Is Bad
Join Date
Mar 2009
Location
Sartell, MN
Posts
608
<BLOCKQUOTE class="postcontent restore">
The Holding TankThis area is going to be where I discuss more personal opinions/theories/untested ideas/ anything else that may not be accurate enough to be directly in the guide.
Misc./Encounter Specific TricksMarrowgar: bonestorm damage counts as him directly attacking you and as such will proc retaliation charges so use retaliation during the bonestorm for free damageBlood Prince council hardmode: intercept/intervene/charge will only give you one stack of the movement debuff.
Festergut: you can survive pungent blight with zero stacks of innoculated if you shield wall, even on hardmode 25man
Lich King: if you get picked up by a val'kyr and your raid fails the DPS check, you can intervene back on to the platform. the window of time that you have to pull this off is very small but it can be done. if you can convince a priest/mage to slow fall you it makes it much easier.
It's also possible to negate defile by jummping off the ledge just before it is dropped on you then intervening back, but if you can pull it off consistantly you are a robot and located within 100ft of your severs physical location (IE have ~10ms), not to mention it would probably be considered an exploit.
you can intervene the king inside frostmourne. I wouldn't suggest doing this though unless you are trying to wipe quickly.
As fury when you shield wall you can put your offhand back on and still have shield wall work for it's full duration.
Analyzing ParsesBeing able to analyze your raid parses can help a lot with figuring out if you are doing anything incorrectly. As much as I would like to add links to show you the page that has the info I will be describing it would end up being a big hassle because my guild doesn't pay to keep their parses beyond the standard amount of time so I would have to keep remaking the links... So I will just walk you through how to get to the info, and give some example numbers.
having a calculator handy will help with some of this.
Rotation management:first you need to determine your presence for a given boss fight (this may be called 'active time' or 'DPS time'). this can usually be found on the main DPS break down page (the one showing all raid members). if it gives you your exact presence in seconds you are good to go, if not then you need to either convert the minutes in to second, or you need to multiply the total time by your % presence.
now you can figure out the max number of BT/WW's you could have during that fight. take your time and divide it by 4, and also divide it by 8
so lets say your time was 584 seconds:
584/4=146 possible BT's
584/8=73 possible WW's
Note that with the way the current rotation works you will never get to your max possible WW's because you delay it some times on purpose.
now compare your max possible WW/BT to your actual number of uses for WW/BT. There really isn't a guide line per say on what is an ok number of missing abilities but ideally you should miss as little as possible. if you have a lot of missed abilities that means you have a rotational issue, which could just be bad ability usage, or it could be because of rage management issues.
I am finally deciding i should probably add something to the guide about gearing and gems and all that sort of jazz:
Basic itemization hierarchy:please note:
a) because of ArPs increasing returns I am not placing it in the hierarchy. the effectiveness of ArP is extremely dependent on your gear so it will be different for each person.
b) this is assuming that you are soft hit capped, and expertise capped for dodges.
1. Strength
2. Attack Power
3. Crit
4. Haste
5. Hit
6. Expertise
one of the more technical things to understand is why haste is better than hit.
post soft hit cap haste and hit will both result in about the same rage generation, but where haste pulls ahead is the fact that since it speeds up your melee swings, you will be able to have a higher number of possible Heroic strikes, resulting in more DPS.
keep in mind though that this is not a major DPS increase, you shouldn't really ever go out of your way to get extra haste or hit at the cost of having less of other stats.
Other assorted topics not slated for being added to the main guide:
Arms vs. Fury:In my opinion both specs are incredibly viable for doing competitive DPS. neither spec is better than the other in every situation. they are both relatively
equal. the biggest factor for which spec you will do the most DPS as is skill. you are going to do more DPS as which ever spec you can play better. the best option is to try and be good at both specs and then be which ever spec is more suitable for the encounter/raid group.
Arp vs. STR as fury:Step 1) get landsouls spreadsheet (see the useful resources section for a link)
Step 2) have it load your armory and make sure everything is accurate (the load in can't differentiate between normal versions and heroic versions of gear)
Step 3) on the left side click the green button in the "strength equivalency points" section
Step 4) if ArP has an SEP >1, gem arp
In all seriousness though arp has so many variables that affect how good it is, so play with the spreadsheet, change all of your str gems to arp ones and see how much of a DPS gain/loss it is. for example currently ArP > STR for me, but the DPS gain of me changing ever gem I have to ArP was so minor (>100 DPS for 19 gem sockets) it really isn't worth it especially because if I was to get a runestone a decent amount of those gems would have to go back to str because of the soft cap. this is why my JC gems and some of the gems on my new items have arp but mostly is still stack STR.
long story short is use the spreadsheet, play around with your gems there, see what happens, and then act accordingly.
Heroic Throw in melee range:Normally using heroic throw in melee range is a bad idea because it resets the swing timer, which can really mess with your rage generation. Recently while prowling EJ I came across this macro:
Code:
#showtooltip
/castsequence reset=0.2 Heroic Strike, Heroic Throw
What this does is it makes it so you will never reset a MH swing by more than 0.2 seconds because you will not cast heroic throw unless a HS has gone off, which only happens when your MH hits. I haven't personally tested it but I don't see why it wouldn't work. I would not suggest that you make this macro your "HS spam" macro because when a Heroic throw goes off it invokes the GCD and that can mess with your rotation depending on the timing of it. </BLOCKQUOTE>
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