Fury Warrior Analysis: Help

[Panthion 3]

I have been playing World of Warcraft for the last 4-5 years and in that time have raided as a tank, a melee dps, and a healer. While I enjoy each role, melee dps will always be my preferred role and it is what I have primarily raided as since mid-tier 11. Splitting my time between first my Ret Paladin, later as a Frost and Unholy DK, and finally my Fury/Arms warrior, I have spent more time on forums, in cross realm ventrillo and mumble servers, and in whispers than I care to tell working on maximizing my dps potential and raid effectiveness. I research my class endlessly, but have found a problem that many of you might be able to relate to. I play on a small, backwater server with slow progression and a tight community. None of this really bothers me but it does present one major issue: the lack of quality players to both challenge my skill and my knowledge of the class. I have few people to compare notes with, and those who I do are usually off server.

Early in the release of Mists of Pandaria, I like many of you, experienced issues with my dps, which confounded and confuddled me to no end. In an attempt to fix my low output, I tried everything from Arms to Titan's Grip to Single Minded Fury, read up constantly and used as many sites as I could to tweak my character to be the most effective. I was worried, I had recently joined a new raiding guild as mine transferred servers towards the end of Cataclysm. My low numbers were not something that was helping my new teamates respect for me and I was worried about being the weakest link. Luckily, my raid leader was understanding, expressed his own concerns damage wise and told me to keep working on it, we would be fine. A number of weeks (and lots of gear drops) later I sit here today with a much more respectable, competitive melee dps (at least within my own raid).

I am still not satisfied and wish to push myself harder and father towards my maximum dps output. To this end I have approached the forums for their imput. Can I tweak more out of my gear? Am I missing out on enrage uptime? Glyphs? Perhaps helpful addons to keep track of buffs, cds, etc. Macros are appreiciated as well. I have provided the following:

Battle.net Link

http://us.battle.net...Panthion/simple

World of Logs account

http://worldoflogs.c...sum/damageDone/

Please review and advise, thank you.

Edited November 26, 2012 by Panthion

[Panthion 3]

Bump

[Kencaid 0]

Hi there,

I was super bored at work today and was filtering through crap for my guild when I found your post.

Good things: Your gear seems fine in terms of reforge. Obviously replacing your pvp items is a high priority. Windsong is fine for non-epics.

I am going to compare some of your logs to my own. I hover in the 87-93% range in terms of my output, with a few rankings now and again (I only have one standing atm on Feng).

My logs: http://www.worldoflogs.com/guilds/125647/ (take w/e day you want, my last Feng was on Nov 18^th and my last elegon was Nov 25^th)

Rotation: Your % dmg breakdown by ability isn’t bad, and your # of hits seems appropriate, but the dmg output from your abilities is a little low. I think this isn’t the result of your rotation, but when you use your abilities.

Execute: Be sure you are saving your rage as you approach 20% (even if lust is up), just keep your rage below 100% to not lose potential DPS. Be sure to pop reck with colossus smash, to max your execute dmg. I chain crit with everything rolling (pots + blood fury ect) for around 2Mill with execute on elegon, which shows given my avg crit dmg for execute is near 1.5M for my last kill, while yours is around 550k, only 100K more than your avg execute hit. Remember, warriors are the highest DPS in the game sub-20%, and you want to maximize your effectiveness when execute is available.

Colossus Smash: You are keeping it up a reasonable amount of time, but I don’t think you are utilizing it properly. One thing I learned from the Arms to Fury swap, is that Fury is more about timing your damage than the actual rotation, while arms is all about prioritizing your abilities. Be sure that you are not spamming heroic strike just b/c you have no other buttons to press. Save your rage when you can for colossus smash, so when it’s up, you can BURN with other cds for those 6 seconds (blood bath, deadly calm, banner ect.). If you sue colossus smash, be sure you either have enrage up with a Raging Blow or can use Berserkers Rage.

Berserkers Rage: Remember, the goal is not to maximize the uptime of berserkers rage, but to maximize the uptime of enrage. There are times I pop berserkers rage when I am already enraged, but it’s normally to either generate rage for execute, or to pump more dmg for a colossus smash + blood bath. Use berserkers rage when you have no enrage buff and bloodthirst is on CD. Try and save berserkers rage for colossus smash if you can, just so ensure you have enrage for it.

Reck: Be sure to pop it once at the beginning with a pre-pot, banner and everything rolling. And again with colossus smash + banner sub 20%.

You probably know some of this stuff, but thought i would throw it out there anyway.

Edited November 27, 2012 by Kencaid

[Panthion 3]

Berserkers Rage: Remember, the goal is not to maximize the uptime of berserkers rage, but to maximize the uptime of enrage. There are times I pop berserkers rage when I am already enraged, but it’s normally to either generate rage for execute, or to pump more dmg for a colossus smash + blood bath. Use berserkers rage when you have no enrage buff and bloodthirst is on CD. Try and save berserkers rage for colossus smash if you can, just so ensure you have enrage for it.

I definitely find myself having this issue, keeping track of when I am enraged or not, I realize I can just look to the corner of my screen to determine my buffs, but is there an add on you recommend to keep track of such a buff? I've seen a number in videos on warrior gameplay, especially in pvp.

I appreciate the analysis. I posted this on a number of forums, and as of yet you were the first to give it a look over. The points on my execute damage are well taken and that's definitely something that I want to maximize. (We warriors have to catch up on damage somewhere right?) The overall jist that I received was that I am doing the right things, but need to be smarter about how and when I do them. That's only going to come with practice, as I played Arms most of Cataclysm, I kind of dove into Fury without much thought and I definitely see/feel the differences. Hopefully I will be able to post some more logs soon to compare. Thanks for the evaluation. :)

[jorellyoung 0]

One thing I learned from the Arms to Fury swap, is that Fury is more about timing your damage than the actual rotation, while arms is all about prioritizing your abilities. Be sure that you are not spamming heroic strike just b/c you have no other buttons to press. Save your rage when you can for colossus smash, so when it’s up, you can BURN with other cds for those 6 seconds (blood bath, deadly calm, banner ect.). If you sue colossus smash, be sure you either have enrage up with a Raging Blow or can use Berserkers Rage.

Thank you both for your comments!! In Cata I was exclusively ARMS PvE and getting used to fury has been a drastic shift. Icy Veins essentially has all the information you posted, but for some reason the way you said it finally 'clicked' for me Thanks!

I definitely find myself having this issue, keeping track of when I am enraged or not, I realize I can just look to the corner of my screen to determine my buffs, but is there an add on you recommend to keep track of such a buff?

Try Weak Auras, it's fully modular and is a great way to keep track of your procs - I'm kind of a minimalist myself and this tool allows you to keep things tidy.

Edited November 28, 2012 by jorellyoung

[jorellyoung 0]

PS - the screenshots for Weak Aura's don't do it justice, this guys vid is pretty good:

Edited November 28, 2012 by jorellyoung