Pre TBC I have always been a MS or off-tank MS spec and back in BWL and AQ days was consistently in the top 3 of raid dps. With the coming of TBC’s smaller raids and lack of WF totems I decided to try out the MS fury 2 hand spec because MS was just falling short of the dps I was used to. It really performed for arena but was still a little low PVE wise without a shammie. Recently I decided to try a deep DW fury build with 15 in prot for tanking heroics (seems really hard these days to get a heroic as a full dps build) My first raid with the DW build I place about 5 to 6 in raid dps and after reading this post I think one of my major problems was using HS WW BT as a main skill set instead of BT WW with HS or Cleave as my rage dump. Though I can say with Salv I had no problems spamming HS the entire fight. Here is a link to our first Gruul kill (yes we are not a ground breaking guild lol) and my first DW run.
http://www.lossendil.com/wws/?report=umvls55anhtkg
I was hoping you guys could give me a little insight into the fury skill cycles and maybe some gear pointers
The gear currently in my Armory profile is my MS gear. My DW gear puts me at 200 to hit around 2200 ap with BS and about 25.5 to crit. Any help would be appreciated.

How is settling for using "less aggro intensive attacks" proving anything? Even cleave has massive threat associated with it, which people fail to realize. The only reason to spam it is you have an excess of rage and you feel like purposely doing less damage in order to dump rage.

Warrior
Battle Shout +60 (rank 7)
Cleave1 +130 (rank 6)
Demoralizing Shout +43 (rank 5)
Devastate1 +101 (all ranks)
Hamstring1 +181 (rank 4)
Heroic Strike1 +196 (rank 10)

Notice the large amounts of threat that are associated with both attacks? The only reason people get the impression that cleave is a safe rage dump is because it costs more rage, meaning they can spam it less. However, cleave is nothing more than a giant load of inefficiency (especially untalented).

Maybe that is why you have aggro issues without a Fettish and other Warriors do not and are still topping the charts.

Could I ask about something that completely puzzles me.

I see posts talking about achieving a certain rank on the damage meter, being top 5 or whatever and I can't understand at all why players think that way. If you can do X and come 3rd on the meter or you can do 90% of X while simultaneously buffing 8 other dpsers' damage by 4% and that will get you 8th on the meter surely the latter is preferable.

It's as if Shamans refused to drop Windfury totems for the melee group because a) they get higher personal dps if they use the mana to do a Shock instead and b) if the Warriors and Rogues perform worse the Shaman is likely to end up higher on the damage meter.

Is this something that some raiding dps warriors value themselves (ie you care more about beating the next guy on the meter than beating the boss) or is this something people feel is pushed upon us (ie people think you're rubbish if you come 8th while boosting everyone else)?

I can see Blood Frenzy may be weak in Kara because so much will be Bleed immune. I can see if another dps warrior has it then it's redundant for more warriors to take it too. But if you are the only dps warrior then surely Blood Frenzy is the default talent that must be taken then the rest of the spec built from there.

Or maybe the dps from my guild is significantly higher then yours and therefore, I have a harder time "topping the meters." If you cannot out-threat your offtank as a fury warrior, when striving to do top dps, then you're probably very undergeared.

I'd still really like to see a breakdown of your damage done from your entire guild. Something doesn't add up if you're consistently #1 damage done as a 2hander using warrior.

In my spare time, I'm always browsing through Nihilum and DnT forums and their MS wars with Blood Frenzy are never on top. I'm pretty sure, everybody in those two guilds actually know how to play their class to its fullest potential.

How much time is left on Hydross's enrage timer when you down him on average?

Blood Frenzy warriors are buffers/debuffers, they raise raid DPS enough to justify their lacklustre personal performance. Playing your class to its full potential isn't just topping the damage meters if you're a warrior.

If you're pulling aggro from your tank you're either a terrible DPSer or your tank is terrible (siding with this, if your casters can't break 1k dps because they're threat limited something is wrong).

You also need to stop being so confrontational, you're coming off as a know-it-all who doesn't actually know it all.

I think you should have checked thottbot or wowhead before writing this post.
There is an innate 20% threat reduction in battle and berserker stance.
http://www.thottbot.com/s7381

The whole point of this thread is to discuss the viability of dps warriors. If you're not doing considerable damage, what is the point of bringing a dps warrior? So far, nobody has posted any substantial evidence that really shows the benefit of a warrior using a 2hander, whether it be a ms or 2h fury warrior. The only thing that people have said is they hold their own which has no true bearing on the actual capabilities of a warrior. Arms/2h Fury warriors are viable offtanks depending on the encounter, but they are acting as a hybrid in a pinch, rather than somebody you bring in solely for dps.

However, there are quite a few experienced and geared dw fury warriors who are dishing out incredible amounts of damage, even at the cutting edge stage of progression. I will even post a few:
http://www.curse-guild.org/azgalor.jpg
http://www.curse-guild.org/kael2.jpg
http://www.curse-guild.org/akama.jpg

When a raid leader is selecting participants, honestly, who would be chosen? A fury warrior like prophet, capable of running with some of the best dps'ers in the world or an MS warrior who lies in the middle to low end of damage done providing only blood frenzy which does not account for the damage he is not outputing. It's fine if your guild allows you to stay ms/2hfury incase you like to pvp or something of the sort, but saying it stands up to the dps of a fury warrior just isn't true.

Browsing through Nihilum's forum, I bumped into this topic:
http://www.nihilum.eu/forum/raids-cl...er-second.html

It shows their MS warrior Landolph on a Morogrim clear. Being MS, his damage is not as high as most of the other DPS, and his blood frenzy is not enough to make up for the damage lost from being MS instead of fury. However, that's not to say he doesn't deserve his raid spot, because he's an important part of the raid being a tank and putting out decent damage. But again, he's acting the role of an offtank instead of as the role of dps. Coincidentally, Landolph is now DW Fury.

You mean you wouldn't want an extra 10% reduction of what is already there?

Your post was worded so that it seemed like you did not know, or account for the threat modifier of berserker stance. I think he was acting off that.

If you can do solid damage and bring something else to the table, why not bring one?

By that argument, why not take another rogue over a DW fury warrior? If anything, a raid leader (I would hope) would choose who offers the most of what is needed, be it pure damage-dealing or other benefits such as imp thunderclap, Blood Frenzy, Demo shout, PH, etc.

Anyway, it seems that you're unwilling to see that point of view so I guess it may be pointless to try and explain it to you.

Crazypie's point (to me anyways) is the following;

DW fury > arms DPS....i don't think that you can really dispute that fact

Graul argues that the margin is small enough in his experience, with no evidence to back that up, other then "I'm usually top 3" that blood frenzy will more then make up his viability to the raid.

Crazypie is more on the side of, "We don't have any hard numbers, so it's difficult to prove. If you are brought to DPS, then you better squeeze ever single point of damage possible out of your character."

It's an argument of hybrid vs plate rogue. Almost like comparing an enhancement shaman to a rogue/mage...their DPS isn't going to be nearly as good, but their buffs make up for that lack.

Personally (And sorry once again for not providing any hard numbers here) I think arms spec suffers from the "Big numbers Syndrome", where people are convinced they are doing more DPS because they see bigger number when they hit stuff. It's similar to the destruction vs affliction discussion of warlocks.

At any rate, this thread has convinced me to at least give an arms/fury spec a try one weekend in KZ, or on our next gruul kill....just to see what it feels like.

Good discussion. I wouldn't ever question dw fury > MS. In my case I am part time raid leader/dkp nazi/yell at the screwups/offtank so my raid spot is never really questioned. Like anyone else though I like to do a good job in whatever roll I am playing. A 2h imp slam build is capable of decent dps.

For me at this point my gear and pvp dictate my spec and as long as I can manage I will stay this way. I am working on updated fury gear and look forward to giving that a whirl tbc style when I get there. WTB prism of inner calm

If 50% of raid damage is physical, blood frenzy is a 2% increase to raid DPS. By my calculation, if a DW fury warrior can do over 1.32 times the damage of an arms warrior, then it's better to have that DW fury warrior.

However, another benefit is that it translates to around 5% of extra threat for your MT, which is always nice.

I'm not really disputing your claim, but do you care to elaborate on the 5% extra threat for your MT part. Threat is probably still around 50% physical, and blood frenzy is 5% of that so means 50% / 1.45 = 34.5%. 34.5% of your threat comes from the physical damage and it's then modified by stance modifiers. So wouldn't it be 34.5% * 1.05 = 1.72%? I only slept two hours last night so I expect something to be wrong somewhere in my calculations so an explanation would be appreciated.

Thank you for presenting my claim in a more clear and concise manner.

Double post

Who ever disputed that? I certainly never did. The thing I did not do however was bang my head against a wall blindly denying the fact that a two handed spec can do and does do well, especially until you get an equivalent level of gear required for dual wielding. Just dual wielding doesn't mean you are going to outperform anything if your gear does not equal or exceed the gear you have for another spec.

Also, people need to stop assuming that a 2h build is going to be an "Arms" build, when if you are going to actually try to do adequate damage you are going to at least have 5/5 Flurry. 31/30, 17/44 or 20/41 are the kinds of 2h builds you would use on a raid if you had to use a 2h and were there to DPS, not just as a supplemental DPSer while debuffing.

It's a good thing you used a build like that as your basis of whether or not a "2h spec" can do well then isn't it, especially considering that build isn't even close to the highest DPS you can get from a 2h?

31/30 does not have Blood Frenzy. I was not, nor am I an "Arms build". A little more insight from everyone before replying about it would be super. 2h Fury was extremely good pre TBC, only being eclipsed by DW after substantial gear upgrades. 31/30 is essentially pre TBC 2h Fury but with MS and an additional weapon effect (5% crit, extra attack) as well as Improved Slam now, which is infinitely more viable with the reduction in talent points than it was previously. This whole debate was never about a 2h build being better than an equivalently geared DW build. The only reason I respecced to a 2h build for a while, was because after the patch I needed better DW gear than I previously had before going back. Now I have it. I enjoy DW much more, but the point remains that a 2h build is indeed valid.

I'm sure I was tricking SWstats with my big numbers.

We had 1:10 left last night.

Sure. I'll post some Void Reaver SS's after tonights raid.

Does anyone have experience going with a hybrid Fury/Prot build? With a 0/31/30 build you lose some pretty hefty DPS talents like Precision, Imp Berserker Stance, Rampage, Impale, and Imp Overpower, but you are able to get 1H spec out of it to balance the loss somewhat. Although the extremely static nature of threat generation without Shield Slam and Devastate is extremely distasteful to me, there's no question that you're gaining some substantial tanking advantage over a 20/41/0 build or something of that nature, and presumbably bringing a little more to the raid as a result.

0/31/30 looks like an off tank build. If you are going that route, you may as well just go 5/43/13 or something similar to that. You gain Toughness and Defiance at the cost of Impale. A minor DPS loss for a decent tanking gain. Some people can't live without Last Stand, even as an off tank, so you could fiddle with points to get that as well if you really needed it. I was 5/43/13 until we stopped doing Karazhan and there was never any issues with being the second tank.

This isn't WWS, but it's good enough to compare my 2h SWstats shot on page 4. This was tonight's Magtheridon with my current gear and build (DW), same buffs and he died about 30 seconds faster this time around.



This was our first Karathress kill from last night. We beat the enrage by one second with a couple of deaths/battle rezes:



Rogues were losing a lot of combo points for a while when having to switch to the spitfire totem.

Graul, from the limited information provided, it seems that the damage of a 31/30 is pretty similar to a DW 17/44. I would assume the difference in dps due to T3 1hander vs gorehowl/mooncleaver?

I find on most fights I am capped by threat not damage, how much do you have to hold back as a 17/44? Or do you chain spam HS?