I've been raiding as arms the last two weeks partly to cover for a feral druid who missed a couple days and partly b/c I can't seem to match it playing fury yet. Granted, with the Arm Pen buff, change to imp zerker stance, and TG/Deep Wounds nerfs, my gear really needs fixing. On AOE fights, though, especially with a lot of targets, I've actually gotten a ton of aoe production out of sweeping strikes/bladestorm/imp TC. I have 7 pts in prot for IBR/ImpTC/2pts Incite so I crit TC 25-30% of the time. The crits proc deep wounds/trauma/bloodfrenzy. On an Auriaya kill, it was 10% of my damage even though after the first 4 adds I'm on the boss the whole time.

But, I'm certainly making a list of things to acquire to get my fury dps back up to a happy place and go back to fury full time. I like the simpler rotations so that I can be more situationally aware.

Yes and this is why people says the nerf is actually a 15-20% nerf, because of rage generation. I played Fury for 4 years and it's the first time I felt the need to respec Arms for PVE and I'll have to stay Arms until they buff Fury because frankly, Arms is def a stronger pve dps spec now, I can actually reach the top 5 now (which I couldn't as Fury in Ulduar).

I really hope Blizzard will put Fury back on track again, a good conservative approach would be to reduce the TG penalty to 5% and see how it goes.

I made some contrary experience. I played Arms for about 6-7 days then switched back to Fury. Had some problems maintaining the Arms cycle, then got used to it. However, I couldn't yet outperform my DPS with Fury. With Rage I had only problems with, when being unlucky / missing support.

Stand and nuke such as Deconstructor, Arms done pretty well but didn't outperform Fury. I think this is because Arms is lacking Death Wish. On even shorter fights, it was worse.

Fights with lot's of AoE-damage they were both about equal.

My overall thought was to this point, even when I could play Arms better, it would at most be about 200 DPS better. On movement fights, however, it would fall behind.

When being responsible for Sunder Armor and imp. Demoshout, Arms wasn't comparable to Fury anymore, because of the loss of many GCD's and perhaps overwhelming complexity of the cycle.
Spreadsheet tells me 5900 DPS for Fury vs. 6214 DPS for Arms, react-time set to 50 and Lag to 0 on both sheets. When I increased that, or left it with the standard config Arms was clearly inferior.

About Fury nerf:

The problem is not necessarily the TG-nerf itself, but the 2% Antidodge which were lost on top of that. That's about ~100 DPS loss with endgame T7-setup, extra. BiS-Setup had about 6700 DPS according to spreadsheet, with 3.1 there were lost about 10% + 2% (antidodge) damage, landing on ~5700 DPS.
Now, Ulduar is pretty AoE-heavy, and there are lots of damage sinks, I couldn't even manage to do that. My DPS was in average about 4800-5000 with Fury. With Arms it was most time worse.

So the problem I see is, melee classes such as Rogues, Death Knights can profit more of AoE-fights and can do a lot more damage compared to Naxxramas. Warrior isn't this good in AoE-fights and even got a heavy nerf - Arms only got buffed up to about "Fury-Level" and can't top that really in average, and again is scaling a lot inferior compared to Fury, it seems.

I don't know what to tell you. Some fights favor Arms, some Fury, but so far from my experience only the most static of fights favor Arms over Fury, otherwise they are both competitive with one another and Fury still has an edge on AE heavy fights. Sweeping Strikes and Bladestorm do not do quite as good as Whirlwind and Cleaves that hit 2-3 mobs at once. Even though Arms can Cleave too, you won't glyph for it and you cannot use it even close to the same amount.

I understand how it can be taken the wrong way, that is why i used bold and caps for the word 'never'. I will not be going with my first sentence though as that doesn't put across the point im trying to make.

In my experience fury still has far more multi-target potential then arms. Sure bladestorm is an amazing Aoe, but there is still the 1.25 sec. cooldown (glyphed). Sweeping strikes contains of only 5 hits (3 seconds) of multi-target dps. Cleave can only be used when there's enough environmental damage.
Fury on the other hand allowes to have cleave glyphed, hitting one additional target. This combined with 3 talents in improved cleave, and an offhand generating rage, allowes for constant cleaving on every swing (mousescrolling ftw). On thorim my dps shoots up to around 6-6,5k during the arena. (don't have a wws parse for that available atm). I admit I havn't tried dpsing thorim arena as arms yet. Still I doubt I would get equal numbers given the limits of the spec itself. Arms generally favors the singletarget fights that have an occasional multi-target component to use bladestorm/sweeping strikes on.

Regarding the lack of rage posts above, yes I have noticed this as well. I compensated this slightly by putting 5 points in unbridled wrath. I was always using 2 points in imp. berserker rage already, but these 2 talents feel like a must-have for the build at the moment. I do feel that the 10% flat reduction is hampering the build more then it should be. It feels more suitable to have a 10% reduction on specials alone, leaving the white hits without the penalty. Fury without the abovementioned rage increasers feels useless.

Not using Rampage because a feral druid provides the same buff is a very bad idea. You woud be force to respec every single time your feral druid is not there or every itme yoU're doing a 10man. It's better to have a useless buff once in a while than to respec every other day. Except if you have infinte amounts of gold like some pople in the Art of making gold thread.

No point in having enrage because if it is not set off by AoE damage (as stated in p35 of the Warrior: Simple Questions/Simple Answers thread. Therefore it would be a wasted talent point.

Edit: Spelling

I actually use Fury as my aoe spec for some fights, and i go for 5/5 enrage (dropping 2 out of offhand spec) + 3/3 imp cleave + cleave glyph. So far it seems optimal for me, simply because on single target dps fights im Arms (which is at the moment superior, and will stay superior for at least few more weeks), and i switch to fury for specific fights. Enrage does proc on quiet a few fights actually. It does proc on razorscale, its not hard to proc it on deconstructor if you wish, it does proc easily on thorims arena, it does proc from freya little adds (and medium adds spells), it does proc from mimiron damage in p2/p3. Not saying im fury for all those fights, but saying enrage doesnt proc at all is a bit off. Granted its my situation of being dedicated dps warrior and speccing arms/fury as dual spec. But i guess quiet a few people might be in my position so its worth to mention it.

For the 5/5 points to be put in enrage I'd personally rather put them in commanding presence or imp demo shout for raid utility, although that's a very biased opinion from me as I'm normally the only warrior on the raid. But i'll conceed the point that it doesn't proc at all, there are a few fights when it seems useful but overall I would find somewhere else for the points as they'd seem more useful elsewhere.

I myself am using arms/fury dual specs at the moment but am tempted to go tank/fury as I have been needed to fufill both dps and off-tank rolls.

Shha, its a bit strange to see some gems be Arm Pen and some Str in your gear. You trying to keep your Attack Power to a certain level? I ask because I'm getting ready to do the Str => Arm Pen gem/gear swap and if there's a reason to keep a certain amount of Str gems, it would be nice to know this before I swap heh. Just like it would be good to know if I can allow myself to "ignore" a little expertise, seeing as you're missing like 2 points of expertise. Is standing at -6.00% chance to dodge enough for you?.

If I do the swap to Arm Pen gear, using [Aged Winter Cloak], [Gloves of the Stonereaper], [Legplates of Double Strikes] and [Band of Draconic Guile] instead of what I have now, I'd end up at 480 Arm Pen (624 Arm Pen if I Gem everything to +16 Arm Pen), 231 Hit (7.04%), and -5.93% chance to dodge (96 Rating + Str of Arms + Weapon Master, although I believe that would toss me to -5.75% still unless I'm mistaken). Still not sure what my Crit or Attack Power would look like though, and thus I'm a tad concerned (and therefore asking you) about leaving some Str Gems or not, and finishing the cap on Expertise or not (or if there's a certain point where you wouldnt let your crit fall down from). Of course I'd have my expertise gear for Fury, but still. I just wanna test it out but leaving no holes (like gimping my Str too much, or my crit).

Quite interested in testing such gear while DW Arms too, with a bit more hit gear on, most likely. I have tier 8 (not 8.5) Shoulders and Legs, which have very good amount of Hit to them (although I might use some leather 10man Ulduar shoulders I got which have a socket, hit and arm pen too, they are most likely better than tier 8 which suck), I'd prolly gem those for hit and give DW Arms a test in the dummies and maybe even in a 10man or something to see the result, while keeping well above 450 Passive Arm Pen. Maybe more if I decide to go DW one handed Maces lol. That'd be... interesting...

Edit: edited cause I forgot Armory doesnt take into account Strength of Arms and thought your Expertise was quite low.

Well, if you're the only warrior in the raid, you'd prolly be better being full utility. Something like Arm spec to have Trauma and Blood Frenzy, while having both Improved Demoralizing Shout and Commanding Presence. Reason is you have to Sunder and Demo anyways, so your dps is gonna be hurting, so you might as well do it well and even Thunderclap (if not even going as far as taking Imp Thunder Clap from Prot!). Your DPS wont be nearly as good as it could be, specially with such a strange spec getting those talents, but at least you're going to be one of the most welcome people in your raid because of everything you're bringing.

Sunder Armor, Imp Demo, Imp Commanding, Imp Thunderclap, Trauma, Blood Frenzy and even Shattering Throw. If you put all of that together, you being the only warrior, you're basically as desirable to a raid as an enhancement shaman is, or something. And the always helpful macro that gets you in defensive stance with sword and shield and shield wall to off tank an add that got lose. I did that a lot in phase 1 Yogg while learning and helped lead to successfuly go to phase 2 with everyone alive. Its a wild idea, but while learning, you doing 2k dps more wont be nearly as good as everything else you could bring like this. I'd personally do it if I was the only warrior in my raid

Wishmaster:

A lot of tier 8 gear has a lot of hit to it. A LOT of hit to it. As in "why would they put so much hit to it?" too much hit to it hehe. When you compare tier 7.5 and tier 8.5, only the Chestpiece and the Helm end up being real upgrades if I'm not mistaken. Legs and Shoulders have too much hit, and normally the Legs tend to be one of the main sources of Expertise we have from tier 7.5, so no way we swapping that for hit. Shoulders would mean swapping out Arm Pen for Hit, which is just ridiculous to even type it out. Gloves have Hit and Expertise, which by now you have from other places. I really doubt I'll be seeing a lot of people with more than 2 pieces of tier 8 on them to be honest, at least not anytime soon.

Well Imp Thunderclap is wasted, because every Tanking Class can Specc it.
Imp Demo is good if you dont have a Feral Tank or this Feral Tank often runs in Cat dps specc.
Imp Commanding is 563.75 Hitpoints for your Entire Raid: 1.0-1.4% more HP for your Tanks and 2.7% more HP for your low health classes which is a lot better for Fights like Freya HM (The little random Aggro Plants, Ground Tremor, ...)

Trauma&BF are Arms stuff for the other Thread

There is only one Ulduar fight where fury spec seems better and that is Thorim. Otherwise, every other boss only has periods where you want to use AoE like Freya Phase 1 for the 3 adds or 10 add waves, Hodir for breaking out NPC’s, Razorscale for adds, Auriaya at the start of the fight and intermittently for guardian swarm, Mmiron for phase 3, etc. For all of those I feel like a 1.5 minute bladestorm and frequent SS is enough to carry you through. I’m sure it is partly that my fury setup is inferior to my arms as my offhand is weak, Armageddon, but Fury doesn’t touch Arms for me. It is a staggering 800-1,000 dps behind.

People keep arguing that movement fights cripple arms b/c you can’t slam as much. I don’t see it. Boss hit boxes are so large that with non-braindead positioning I can slam whenever I want to at a 0.5 second cast and if I start switching a couple of times I would slam into Heroic Strikes the difference in dps is nominal. I’ll try Fury again when I get a good offhand, but frankly I hope it still doesn’t touch Arms b/c the rotation as arms I find 10x more entertaining.

I think people need to separate max dps Fury from utility spec Fury. It's really a no-brainer that if you have to keep up sunders and demo shout that you will definately be falling behind in DPS.

Personally I spec 5/5 imp demo because I usually end up being the one to apply it. Commanding presence in 25 man content (for my guild at least) is almost a waste due to the Pally buffs being so much longer duration.

I hate to say it, but for many of us still spec'ing Fury you need to look big picture and not focus on the numbers. No we can't do what we did previously.... but we still have a very important role and if played right, you can still play a vital role.

If you are only looking at numbers then go Arm's and stop worrying about the nerf's to Fury. It doesn't seem like it's going to change anytime soon.

I've been keeping up with this forums for a while now and maybe im not understanding what you guys are saying but every thing that i seem to try and do to get my dps above 3k doesn't seem to work ive looked at the warriors specs and glyphs that say there pulling over 5k dps but i attempt to do that and my dps doesn't change any advise on this matter would be greatly appreciated cause im tired of pulling my hair out trying to figure out why i can't get my dps up

Don't forget about rending multiple mobs at the same time - that's quite nice damage if they live long enough.

Also Thunderclap is good for packs with lots of mobs.

Basically, you don't have the gear for the 5k dps they're talking about. You could play flawlessly with the right spec and glyphs and you'll never reach those numbers because you just don't have the gear to do it. You can only get so far with 186 dps weapons. There's always more to it then just gear of course, but that's what I spotted right away.

He should definitely be doing over 3k considering the armor that he has. Fury is not very weapon dependent, and he would probably be doing more damage swapping his level 200 epic weapons for Runeblades of Demonstrable Power.

Anyway I'd say his major issue is the fact that he's using glyph of revenge, devastate, and blocking.

@Durotaz:

I agree with DavosJr. There's only so much you can do with your current weapons and gear. There are, however, a couple of ways you can increase your dps outside of raids, but it includes spending quite a few $$$.

*If you manage to get your professions higher, you'd get a nice benefit from the extra sockets, and the extra stats from JC gems.
*You're using a tanking gun. Dont.
*You're gemming too much for crit and even attack power over Strength. You need hit? That's fine, but there are some places where your gems should be better set. You should gem for Str always, and break that only if you need hit or expertise to reach cap, or if the socket bonus is far too good to pass. +16 Str on reds, +8 Str/+12 Sta on Blues and +8 Str/+8 Crit on Yellow sockets.
*Berserking on weapons is better than 85AP. Way better.
*Those bracers are pvp ones, if you dont have anything better, then so be it, but enchant them.
*Try getting another trinket other than that one from Oracles, its really no good.

Other than that, its all about luck with drops I guess. With that gear setup I'm guessing you wont be able to heroic strike much without messing your rotation, so be careful with that. You wont be able to get 5k DPS, specially with the current TG nerf, since it hurts people undergeared far more than intended due to rage generation.

@Noble:

Uhm, how is Fury not very weapon dependant? Slam will hit harder, Whirlwinds will hit harder with both weapons, Heroic Strikes will hit harder, and your white hits will hit harder, generating more threat. To that, add the benefit from stats that good weapons give. When you have weapons that give good Str, Crit and even Arm Pen instead of say, Agi or Haste. Hell, even Deep Wounds, since its based entirely on weapon damage. The only thing that doesnt benefit directly from your weapon's raw DPS is Bloodthirst, but everything else does, and even this can be debated considering Bloodthirst gets benefit from raw stats, and there's nothing better to get stats from than from two good and well balanced two hander weapons.

Fury is just as dependable on weapons as Arms is, if not more, considering that only Bloodthirst is not weapon DPS dependable, and you balance that out with Sudden Death procs, Execute not being weapon DPS dependable, so its not as different now days as it once used to be.

More than AOE, the interrupt factor is the single biggest thing that drives me towards swapping to fury for certain fights.

The AOE difference is there, but it's not as enormous in my exp as the difference in DPS loss for interrupting.
Arms has to virtually stop their rotation for a few seconds to interrupt (and risk glance starvation until rage ramps back up), while Fury can just interrupt free... and most fights where you need to interrupt the adds there's tiny adds around to feed fury rage to keep cleaves running, which drives fury AOE way past arms.

The other really big difference is if you get stuck with the sunder stack. Keeping sunders up can fit sort-of-seamlessly (depending on rage, ~1 less HS per sunder) into fury's rotation, but arms sacrifices an attack for every single sunder.

Seems like you skipped "Basic Fury DPS 101" and went straight to the advanced class that is this forum, now I may not know much about theory craft but I think I can help catch you up on the basics.

3 parts to dps , #1stats, #2rotation and #3FPS/Latency not necessarily in that order.

Stat wise in order of importance I think would be Strength then Crit, as your primary stats hit comes in 3rd until hit cap at 9% with precision, after that point all it does is buff your off-hand damage for the most part and as such is the least beneficial stat lower than secondary stats. Expertise is similar to hit up to the cap of 6.5%. Primary stats effect all of your dps special and white.
Secondary stats only affect part of your dps the most important of which is Armor pen, trick with armor pen is if you have enough of it it will become your #1 primary stat even though it does not effect bleeds the +% dmg increase makes it better than strength once you're hitting 30% or more arp from gear I believe is a good point to consider geming for arp. Haste is your second secondary stat once you're hit caped haste>hit but its still your second worse stat it scales well with Flurry and Heroic Strike acts as a multiplier to your white damage which also improves rage gen etc.

So very long story slightly shorter you should gem for strength, gems are wildcard stats you're trading 1 for 1 best stat for inferior stats by geming for crit and hit. Also you seem to be missing 2 talent points maybe put them in Improved Execute? Which brings me to the rotation, which you probably know but I'll cover it anyway.

Instants have highest priority of course you want to use WW/BT soon as they are up and que up Heroic when you have 45+ rage. Simple, to this effect you may want to pick up WW and Heroic Strike Glyphs both must haves.

Lastly your DPS may suffer due to poor FPS or high latency, there is one thing you can do and that is to start hitting buttons half a second or so earlier than what your gcd shows on screen to make up for latency this will help tighten up your rotation and in the end you should have more special damage.