A Concern Regarding the Fury Warrior Guide

[Jorvalt 2]

After reading the Fury PvE guide, I was a bit skeptical of where it says that Furious Strikes [/wowicon] and Sudden Death are essentially equal in terms of dps, with Unquenchable Thirst being far behind. In practice, I have found this to be completely untrue. I tried testing this for myself (albeit, only with Furious Strikes, but the guide says the two are equal so it shouldn't matter) and there was no noticeable difference in DPS. In fact, one could argue that Unquenchable Thirst would be a much better choice, seeing as it increases survivability and also increases the rate of Bloodsurge and Enrage procs. Thoughts?

[Amputate 1]

Unquenchable Thirst is easily the worst of the 3 tallents for very very obvious reasons that you seem to have missed.

For starters, realistically you would Sudden Death almost every time because FS is only good if you have 100% uptime on a boss and even then I believe that it's still a bit less damage but I can't be certain.

 

The reason why Unquenchable Thirst is a bad talent is because once you have proper gear and learn to play fury properly you won't have a problem keeping enrage up at all times.

Bloodsurge procs are nice to have but it's not worth spamming BT to get it.

Also BT is one of the lowest damaging abilities in the game.

It does so little damage in fact that it's a sad moment in your rotation when you have to use it.

As long as my 4-Tier bonus keeps procing I find myself avoiding BT like the plague.

[Tarazet 144]

First off, we're not sure of your gear level or how much experience you have playing the spec. Since Rage generation is normalized now, Fury is not as gear-dependent as it used to be, but the rotation is still much smoother and the performance is more consistent when you have enough gear to tame Fury's streaky, unpredictable nature. This also means that the playstyle is quite a bit more challenging with a low gear level than a high gear level, because you have to compensate for the periods where you will not have Enrage up. It's easy to make small mistakes that have a major impact on your performance.

 

With that said, even with low gear levels and a low Critical Strike rating, you're still better off using anything else but Unquenchable Thirst. Bloodthirst hits like a wet noodle; you're better off with the downtime than losing the benefit of those free Executes from SD or the cheap Wild Strikes. The difference in performance is too great to even entertain the possibility. And though the guide does say that SD and FS are close to one another for single-target DPS, SD is also the clear best choice for fights that have multiple targets, so it is in effect the default talent for Fury.

[Jorvalt 2]

First off, I'd like to say that I don't really appreciate the very condescending way that you both have responded to my question. I have the most experience with tanking as a warrior and don't know much about DPS in general (mostly because I tend to suck at it, I don't know why because I follow the rotation on these guides as closely as I can) but I feel like these are at least valid questions as someone who doesn't know much about Fury. I would appreciate it if I wasn't being treated like the answers to these questions aren't the most obvious thing ever.

Unquenchable Thirst is easily the worst of the 3 tallents for very very obvious reasons that you seem to have missed.

For starters, realistically you would Sudden Death almost every time because FS is only good if you have 100% uptime on a boss and even then I believe that it's still a bit less damage but I can't be certain.

 

The reason why Unquenchable Thirst is a bad talent is because once you have proper gear and learn to play fury properly you won't have a problem keeping enrage up at all times.

Bloodsurge procs are nice to have but it's not worth spamming BT to get it.

Also BT is one of the lowest damaging abilities in the game.

It does so little damage in fact that it's a sad moment in your rotation when you have to use it.

As long as my 4-Tier bonus keeps procing I find myself avoiding BT like the plague.

See, there are only two sources of enrage: Bloodthirst crits and Berserker Rage. Obviously since Berserker Rage has a 30 second cooldown and only gives you a 6 second enrage, you're going to have to rely on Bloodthirst crits for most of your enrage uptime. Having a 4.5 sec (default) cooldown, you'd have to crit on Bloodthirst roughly every other time (seeing as the enrage effect given by Bloodthirst crits lasts 8 sec) meaning you would need to maintain a little over 50% crit rating at almost all times. This, of course, is a completely unrealistic expectation even for someone who is heavily geared. You can't avoid using BT; all of Fury depends on it.

 

First off, we're not sure of your gear level or how much experience you have playing the spec. Since Rage generation is normalized now, Fury is not as gear-dependent as it used to be, but the rotation is still much smoother and the performance is more consistent when you have enough gear to tame Fury's streaky, unpredictable nature. This also means that the playstyle is quite a bit more challenging with a low gear level than a high gear level, because you have to compensate for the periods where you will not have Enrage up. It's easy to make small mistakes that have a major impact on your performance.

 

With that said, even with low gear levels and a low Critical Strike rating, you're still better off using anything else but Unquenchable Thirst. Bloodthirst hits like a wet noodle; you're better off with the downtime than losing the benefit of those free Executes from SD or the cheap Wild Strikes. The difference in performance is too great to even entertain the possibility. And though the guide does say that SD and FS are close to one another for single-target DPS, SD is also the clear best choice for fights that have multiple targets, so it is in effect the default talent for Fury.

See, Bloodthirst essentially has the same effect as Furious Strikes in the sense that Bloodsurge procs will give you 2 free wild strikes, plus being able to use BT more frequently means faster rage generation. In that respect, both are essentially equal. However, being able to use BT more frequently also means you will generate Raging Blow charges, and thus, Unquenchable Thirst seems like a better choice between the two. I know BT does very low damage compared to other abilities, but at least it's better than auto-attacking, which is what you would be doing half the time with SD or FS.

 

Honestly, I still don't get it. In my opinion, neither of you are making very solid cases for why Unquenchable Thirst is so much worse than the other two options available in that tier.

[Tarazet 144]

First off, I'd like to say that I don't really appreciate the very condescending way that you both have responded to my question. I have the most experience with tanking as a warrior and don't know much about DPS in general (mostly because I tend to suck at it, I don't know why because I follow the rotation on these guides as closely as I can) but I feel like these are at least valid questions as someone who doesn't know much about Fury. I would appreciate it if I wasn't being treated like the answers to these questions aren't the most obvious thing ever.

 

See, Bloodthirst essentially has the same effect as Furious Strikes in the sense that Bloodsurge procs will give you 2 free wild strikes, plus being able to use BT more frequently means faster rage generation. In that respect, both are essentially equal. However, being able to use BT more frequently also means you will generate Raging Blow charges, and thus, Unquenchable Thirst seems like a better choice between the two. I know BT does very low damage compared to other abilities, but at least it's better than auto-attacking, which is what you would be doing half the time with SD or FS.

 

Honestly, I still don't get it. In my opinion, neither of you are making very solid cases for why Unquenchable Thirst is so much worse than the other two options available in that tier.

 

Approaching the topic from a purely theoretical standpoint, but without doing any of the number-crunching, and admitting that you don't play the class well, doesn't put you in the strongest position to argue. I would recommend that if you want to go against the grain and buck the advice of people who actively play the spec, that you should be prepared to produce logs showing that you were able to get better performance in a real-world scenario than other players in similar gear, and to point out why that is.

 

High-end guilds that are trying to push for rapid progression will experiment heavily with all of the different talent choices from pull to pull to figure out what works and what doesn't, because they have to find the one that performs best in order to get the fastest or first kill. They will use the same line of thinking you're using in trying to reason why this group of talents might synergize the best or perform better than the others, but then they validate the results. And it may turn out that some talents are inferior overall, but they allow players to concentrate their DPS to push specific phases. For example Bladestorm is not the talent of choice for single-target, but if you absolutely need to blow apart a bunch of grouped-up adds quickly, you'll want to have it.

 

For everyone after the world-firsters, it's going to matter a lot less, because over the course of a raid, you're probably not going to lose more than about 5% of your DPS even if all your talents are completely wrong. But, we feel that most people would like to know what the optimal setup is in most situations so that you can give the maximum contribution to your raid's performance.

[ripmacestun 2]

While the first post may have been condescending, I didn't think the second post was. However, you may have read it differently than I did.

 

I felt the need to create an account and contribute to this. I've played a fury warrior since TBC.

 

See, there are only two sources of enrage: Bloodthirst crits and Berserker Rage. Obviously since Berserker Rage has a 30 second cooldown and only gives you a 6 second enrage, you're going to have to rely on Bloodthirst crits for most of your enrage uptime. Having a 4.5 sec (default) cooldown, you'd have to crit on Bloodthirst roughly every other time (seeing as the enrage effect given by Bloodthirst crits lasts 8 sec) meaning you would need to maintain a little over 50% crit rating at almost all times. This, of course, is a completely unrealistic expectation even for someone who is heavily geared. You can't avoid using BT; all of Fury depends on it.

One of the things you're missing here is that bloodthirst has a 40% increased crit chance built into the ability. So, with 11% crit you're likely to crit on every other bloodthirst. There are streaks where you might not get an enrage proc, though. The other thing is that, in 2pc tier gear, your raging blow crits have a 20% chance to activate enrage. RNG with this ability means you can have long strings of enrages in which you are procing raging blow off of raging blow, and you don't use bloodthirst.

 

Personally, I generate so much rage as it is that I have trouble dumping it fast enough when I get free wild strikes off of bloodthirst. If you're not using all of your rage (letting it cap), then you're effectively losing DPS. I also rarely have time where I am standing around auto attacking--in fact, the only time it happens is when my enrage has fallen off and my beserker rage is on cooldown. Otherwise I'm fitting in other attacks on the GCDs between BT. This includes raging blow, wild strikes, and execute crits. I try to use BT when its available to generate rage and keep up enrage, unless I have more important abilities to use.

 

With my gear, which admittedly isn't stellar, I sim at 33,776 dps with Sudden Death and 31,124 dps with Unquenchable Thirst and holding all other talents constant. Losing the sudden death procs drops my execute DPS about 5,260. Using unquenchable thirst ups my bloodthirst dps by about 300, wild strike by 1960, and raging blows by about 1600. Clearly the dps gained in other attacks isn't enough to compensate for the loss of DPS from Sudden Death with my character and her gear. It's a 9.2% DPS loss to step down from sudden death to unquenchable thirst. Execute is simply that much better.

[Tarazet 144]

Also, I forgot to comment on this:

 

 

 

See, Bloodthirst essentially has the same effect as Furious Strikes in the sense that Bloodsurge procs will give you 2 free wild strikes, plus being able to use BT more frequently means faster rage generation. In that respect, both are essentially equal.

 

 

All three of the talents have essentially the same effect: they fill holes in your rotation and reduce your downtime. Unquenchable Thirst has the highly undesirable effect of completely GCD-locking you, which means it requires 100% uptime and perfect execution, and yet even if you can just stand there like a derp and chain GCD's together for the whole fight, it still doesn't perform as well as SD or FS.