by Rhony of Ensidia

I know, I know. Patch 4.2 has been out for awhile now, so why am I posting this so late? For starters, there weren’t many changes for the Fury Warrior in patch 4.2 that needed to be documented. In fact, the only changes that affected Fury Warriors were that Dual Wield Specialization weapon damage increase had been lowered to 5%, down from 10%, and Retaliation, Recklessness and Shield Wall no longer had stance requirements.

With that out of the way, and since Rhony’s guide was still applicable, I decided not to reinvent the wheel. You can view Rhony’s original post HERE.

The staple PvE fury spec:

Piercing Howl and 1/2 Rude Interruptioncan be used if your guild requires you to help on add kiting on certain encounters.

When it comes to prime glyphs there isn’t really much choice. As for the major and minor glyphs, it is up to personal preference or raid composition. For example: Glyph of Colossus Smash should be used whenever you are on Sunder duty.

Single-Minded Fury or Titan’s Grip?

Theoretically, SMF can result to slightly higher DPS than TG and provide steadier rage generation given equal quality gear. This is only true however for single target encounters. The playstyle of TG/SMF is very similar – the only thing that changes is that Slam takes priority over Raging Blow when you are playing SMF. Use whichever one you prefer or pick your 31-pointer depending on your weapons. One-handers with desirable stats like Lava Spine (Magmaw) tend to drop earlier in the progression path than 2-handers.

Bloodthirst is your main attack and should be used every other GCD. Other abilities should be used as fillers in between Bloodthirst hits. It is absolutely vital to hit Bloodthirst every 3 seconds as it is your most damaging attack and scales the most with your gear.

Your rotation isn’t really a rotation but a priority list. Many random procs influence the order on which abilities should be used. A basic priority list looks like this:

CS > BT > RB > Slam

• Colossus Smash is the only ability that should take priority over Bloodthirst.
• Bloodsurge makes your Slams instant and free of rage which should be prioritized in low rage situations (<20) as opposed to spamming RB and waiting for the next autoattack to hit.
• Raging Blow can only be used while enraged so in some cases (such as when you’ve already hit BT but you cannot use RB or Slam for the next GCD) it could be beneficial to keep Berserker Rage free as an RB enabler. In raid damage heavy encounters Berserker Rage should be used on cooldown or when you know you are going to be receiving heavy damage.
• Heroic Strike should only be used as a rage dump when you have over 70-80 rage. If Incite or Colossus Smash is up HS should be used more generously (>50 rage). If Battle Trance is up HS should be used instantly. This can be quite tricky to pull off if you are button spammer since any other ability will use up the Battle Trance buff.
• Death Wish & Recklessness usage depends on the encounter and using both in sync is preferred. Other than that Death Wish should be used on cooldown if you know you are going to be in melee for the next half minute. It can also be beneficial to delay both for a few seconds to combine them with Bloodlust.
• Inner Rage should be used during DW/Recklessness/Bloodlust or whenever your rage generation is high. Be careful though: it is not hard to blow all your rage within 3 seconds and then stall on the next instant ability.
• Battle Shout is a GCD filler for when RB, Slam, Berserker Rage can’t be used. You can use the extra rage to hit a Heroic Strike immediately if your rage is high enough.
• Whirlwind is the dead last option! It does not hit as hard as it used to. Use it on the rare occasion that you are glowing red with 100 rage and have used all of the above abilities.

Execute phase

The idea here is to keep up 5 Executioner stacks and keep using your normal ability priorities afterwards, only using Execute to refresh Executioner or burn off excess rage.

Colossus Smash still takes priority over all other abilities. Heroic Strike should not be used in this phase.

Cleave and Whirlwind are your friends. Cleave should take priority over WW when there are less than 4 targets around. Burn off excess rage on Bloodthirsts which will allow for free Slams (Bloodsurge) and Cleaves (Battle Trance). Don’t forget to Inner Rage as much as you can. In many cases when there is a lot of aoe damage incoming Berseker Rage and Inner Rage will provide a huge dps boost.

3. Itemization