We all know why we brought fury warriors pre-expansion. Having equal DPS to your best mages and rogues, and the ability to switch gear in a second and tank reasonable well offtanking any type of mobs.

Im wondering however how the expansion will handle Fury warriors. As I havent been on the beta I cant really comment on it with solid fact but ive read that our damage output is lowered severely. Even in this patch it is already pretty noticeable that im not getting close to my old dps output. Even with all the new talents which should up my dps even more. Rage normalisation is big issue in this. That having said my tanking capability also took a blow, generating less rage now then before in my tank gear im having trouble tanking against the raised dps output by other classes. Apart from that the top 4 tiers from protection trees are finally adding a significant bit of easier aggro gain and/or survivability.

Pretending were raiding in TBC already and im a fully specced fury warrior, just maximized dps and no improved demoshout/thunderclap noncense. My dps output will be lower then pure dps classes (rogues/mages/hunters/warlocks). My ability to tank is very subpar and probably the most important with offspecs, you dont add anything to your group wich benefits the raid. (apart from perhaps imp bs).

Every not pure DPS class of which offspecs have been mocked into oblivian already gained something to benefit the raid. Just to name a few things: Leader of the pack (feral), moonkin aura (balance), sanctified crusader (retribution), misery/VE/VT/shadow weaving (shadow), Totem of wrath (elemental), Unleased rage (enhancement). If this are all worthy specs remains to be seen but they do add to the raid and not just to your own dps. Finally there is also Arms spec which can put a debuff on a target for 4% extra melee damage taken (not just group) and the possibility to spec Mortal strike which ‘could’ have uses raiding wise if you encounter healing mobs.

So the question remains, why would you take a fury warrior over a arms warrior, or offspec druid/priest/paladin which adds something to your raid apart from damage, damage which wont even surpass the pure dps classes anymore.

Fury scales very well with gear. Early in expansions it will always be mediocre, but as gear starts to be way too good for its level at the max, it will become powerful again.

Good question to which I don't know the answer, and one of the reasons I reroll when TBC comes (I've played warrior since beta, and fury warrior for over a year).

The rage normalisation is pretty severe, but it might be offset by the increase in gear power from 60-70. If it's not, the fury warrior, in the state he's in at the moment, will be a subpar raid addition IMO. You'll want prot spec warriors for tanking, arms spec warriors for improved debuffs, an increase in overall raid melee damage, and against mobs that heal. Fury seem to have no clear place, except maybe for solo or small-group PvE unless the rage normalisation is compensated by level 70 gear..

Probably not adding all to mutch with this, but as a 70 rogue with my same old gear, I tend to want a druid to tank in insatances more then warriors simply because its way easyer for me to overaggro when the warrior tanks. I know that the chances of the warrior being protection spec == 0, and the druid probably have specced for the tanking solely. Yet it still scares me a bit.

That's the way it was before the rage 'normalisation'. Early tests from level 70 chars on TBC beta haven't been very encouraging, the rage you're getting seems to scale only very, very slowly with gear improvement. By normalising it, they have pushed the brakes on this mechanism, which previously allowed DPS warriors in general and DW fury warriors specifically to dramatically increase DPS output with increased gear power. Because of the fact that you get more rage when you do more damage, you can do even more damage with the extra rage.

But Blizz heavily nerfed the rage increase caused by gear increase, as well as nerfed effects that enabled you to gain rage when using abilities that cost rage (windfury being the main one). So the fact is that warriors now scale a lot less with gear than they did previously.

A few patches ago it was pretty unbalanced, I must admit. When Hamstring could proc Windfury and you gained rage from the white damage of the Windfury proc, you could spam Hamstring (instant attack, no cooldown, hardly any damage) do good damage from proccing Windfury (and proccing sword specialization talent or the Hand of Justice trinket effect) and actually gain rage. But I think they went more than a little overboard with the nerfs (and the Warrior class already has a long, long history of nerfs).

I know you all feel the rage normalization, but is there any solid figures I can look at that say a level 70 fury warrior, with shaman and paladin buffs and the insane new consumables stacked on him, will be doing negligible amount of DPS? It goes without saying warriors are the class that will benefit from these the most.

I have zero numbers, but I have complete faith.

I also am assuming that, like most DW fury warriors had to, I'll have to respec Arms until optimal gear arrives.

Even if this is not the case, heroic 5mans are going to requires Defiance, so I'm assuming a 4/41/16 Build atm if I wish to stay fury. Maybe go protection until Tempest Key has been attained if it becomes that important to have the increased mitigation of below Tier 3 Prot.

Fury will change, and the true fury warriors will adapt. The ones which only sought epeen numbers will reroll the newest craze. Faith for me dictates that fury will do what it always does, bring up the back and move to the front.

All in all. "DO A BARREL ROLL"

No, as far as I know we only have some testing done by fresh level 70 players. Time will tell, and I think it's very likely Blizz will tweak rage generation and/or warrior talents some more the coming months. There are a lot of factors influencing whether fury warriors will be 'viable' (hate that word!) in high-end raids.

- DPS compared other classes (we're competing with the traditional DPS classes rogue/mage/lock/hunter, but in TBC we'll also be competing with new and improved shadowpriests, retribution paladins, enhancement shamans and feral/moonkin druids)
- the influence of high-end gear on fury warrior DPS.. Maybe we'll still be able to get in the top5 damage done, but if only the top 1% geared fury warriors can do so, you can still hardly call it viable)
- adjustments by Blizz to talents, skills or rage generation

I play a level 70 Fury warrior in the beta and i love it. The rage nerf doesnt feel too bad as you get better and better gear. Im currently specced 17 Arms/44 Fury and its tons of fun. I can keep up with a rogue for the most part on DPS but forget trying to keep up with a mage or warlock. Impale with a fury build is pure sex. Big numbers galore. There are some clips with some numbers off of SCT in here:

http://files.filefront.com/bc_instan.../fileinfo.html

Its a video of Shattered Halls where my friend was playing then went Prot later in the instance. I dont think Fury warriors are going to be hurting too bad. There are some very good one handers at iLVL 115 that drop in Tempest Keep that are quite nice.

This thread can easily turn ugly in a hurry. Let's hope that doesn't happen. >_<

I don't think Fury is going to be all that bad. With Imp Berserker Stance and Rampage you can get even sillier AP values than before. Add in Unleashed Rage (which stacks with Imp BStance), and you will be getting a LOT of white damage. From my testing on beta (I'm only level 62) in group content the damage of fury is way above arms, and will only get better as gear improves.

Few problems here, that I see.

First, you can't just write off battleshout, or imp battleshout. As a rogue, it is by far my best DPS buff. Better than any totem or any other aura. 300+ AP (at 70) is just huge, and that one warrior adding that to all the rogues in his group is a big increase in dps, like almost 100 dps per rogue.

Second, if you don't get the utilty talents, then surprise, you have less utility?
Maybe you should pick up imp demo, because its a great raiding talent. Or imp tclap, because its a good raiding talent.

Honestly, this should really be heaped. Fury warriors outdpsing everyone and then being acceptable tanks is widely considered to be broken, and they're trying to fix it. The class will still tank in tank gear, and do damage in dps gear, just not quite as extremely as it did before. Problem here is?

Well, if you compare Fury Warriors to the offspecs with group auras/buffs such as Feral Druids and LotP or Sanctified Crusader the Fury Warrior will do more DPS regardless compared to the offspecs.
Now the question is if your DPS is worth more than Offspec DPS + Utility. I think that if you spec Improved BS (which you do anyway), Improved Demo (not every Fury spec does that) and Piercing Howl (most do) you will be taken to raids over a second Feral/Ret/"Generic Offspec whose benefit diminishes after the first one" for sure.
I don't think you will be taken over the first off spec because they offer too much to be passed up for. But the same is true for 2 Fury Warriors. You only need 1 Improved Demo and 1 Piercing Howl. Imp BS alone is not worth it to bring a second Fury Warrior in my opinion. Diversity is being rewarded in TBC - or so I hope.


Sure, you might not be taken for your DPS only like it is now in live but because of the combination of DPS and utility you bring to the table. Improved Demo is powerful especiall after the big increase it got from level 60 to 70 (138 vs 300 AP reduced)* and Piercing Howl and Improved BS speak for themselves. I am leaving out your tanking utility delibaretely because after all Paladins and Druids can all tank, too.

* Improved numbers: 193.2 and 420 respectively. Yes, that's right. The highest Demo Shout rank gains 120 AP reduction - which is nearly as much as the rank you were using at level 60 with unimproved Demo. That is HUGE and if people refuse to take you for that alone they are dumb.

Well I don't really wanna go into the ugly part of this conversation (OMG we're nerfed to death! - But you were way too imba!), but it's frustrating as a player if you put a lot of effort in upgrading your gear only to get set back in power level each and every patch. It feels like 1 step forward and 2 steps back. It might objectively be 2 steps forward and 1 step back, but still it hurts. Only time will tell if fury DPS warriors are still going to appear in high-end raids and perform well under the current circumstances. If they do not, I'm sure Blizz will tweak things eventually. But for me personally, I've had one smack of the nerfbat too many and I will finally be rerolling, even though I've always played my warrior with great passion.

Note: all these numbers are for 1handed, MH weapons (and bearattacks)
Rage numbers, if you put them in a graph you see rage scales worse after the change (which nobody doubted). Note though, that if you have bad gear, +crit is really an upgrade to your rage generation.

rage numbers at lvl 60


rage numbers at lvl 70


and a neat graph (I need a better graph making program than excel really)


So are the numbers bad? yes they are. Is it justified? Everyone should realise Exponential scaling is a BAD thing