Fury Warrior Guide for The War Within

Welcome to our War Within expansion guide for Fury Warrior. Ahead of launch, this page will contain everything you need to know about the Fury Warrior spec in the forthcoming The War Within expansion, including changes, Hero Talent Trees, and some light predictions on the state of the spec going into the expansion.

This page is a constantly evolving work in progress, with regular changes expected as updates hit the War Within Beta. This is not meant to be a launch guide for Fury Warrior, but instead serves as a resource for you to keep up to date with how the spec is evolving on Beta, and what you can expect from its playstyle and feel on launch.

Fury Warrior cooldown uptime has been dramatically reduced in The War Within, and while the actual speed of gameplay is unaffected, its overall Rage generation and frequency of Rampage casts has gone down. Whether this is good or bad is largely a matter of opinion, as it creates more room for other buttons in the rotation.

Thanks to significant tuning adjustments, Bloodthirst also has a renewed emphasis within the rotation, more closely resembling that of Legion and Battle for Azeroth.

The Warrior Class Tree has received a moderate rework, rearranging the pathing of several talents and removing some of the less desirable ones outright. Overall, the tree has become smaller and more streamlined, with focus on improving access to important crowd control and early leveling abilities, most notably relocating Shockwave to the middle of the tree. Below, you can see some of the most important changes that will affect your gameplay, decision-making, and power in The War Within.

• Defensive Stance is now automatically unlocked.
• Berserker Rage is no longer a talent and now automatically learned at level 12.
• Titanic Throw, Sonic Boom, Blood and Thunder, and Furious Blows have been removed. Furious Blows is one less required damage talent, while the other two were never used.
• Second Wind now restores 1-2% health per second while below 35% health, in addition to its previous effects. This gives it a guaranteed benefit in high damage/low life situations, without changing the previous functionality.
• Honed Reflexes now reduces the cooldown of most defensive and utility cooldowns by 5%. However minor, this removes another damage talent, while offering an interesting if equally minor defensive benefit.
• Frothing Berserker now refunds 10% Rage for Fury, down from 20%.
• Barbaric Training now affects Thunder Clap for Mountain Thanes.
• Seismic Reverberation now affects Thunder Clap for Mountain Thanes.
• Champion's Spear now generates 10 rage, down from 20.
• Champion's Might now affects targets hit by Spear, instead of the player standing inside it.
• Shockwave and Thunderous Roar no longer generate Rage.
• Thunderous Words has been buffed from 15 to 30%, but only increases the damage targets take from bleeds during its effect, rather than passively increasing it all the time. This makes Thunderous Roar more active and condenses some of its damage into burstier cooldowns.
• Crushing Force now affects Bloodthirst instead of Slam.
• Endurance Training has gained a second point, allowing players to increase their stamina even further. While nice, the new pathing makes the talent very hard to take.

The Fury Warrior Spec Tree has undergone very minor change, retaining the same general pathing, though condensing and reworking a few of its talents.

• Improved Enrage is now called Frenzied Enrage and now shares a choice node with a new talent: Powerful Enrage. This gives players a choice between faster-paced gameplay through additional haste, or slower but stronger gameplay through a direct damage buff.
• Raging Armaments, Storm of Swords, and Annihilator have been removed. Originally designed to provide a slower playstyle, Annihilator never actually accomplished that goal, and so Powerful Enrage has taken that role in a simplified format.
• Improved Raging Blow now has a 25% chance to reset its cooldown, up from 25%.
• Frenzied Flurry has been baked into Single-Minded Fury, making that option a stronger and cheaper investment, though ultimately still weaker than using two-handed weapons.
• Wrath and Fury now increases the chance for Raging Blow to reset by 10%, instead of overriding it entirely.
• Improved Whirlwind and Meat Cleaver now affect Thunder Clap for Mountain Thane.
• Bloodcraze now triggers from Raging Blow instead of Bloodthirst.
• Deft Experience now extends the current duration of Enrage by 0.5 seconds per point when Bloodthirst is used. Although seemingly minor, this is now very important for maintaining Enrage uptime.
• Swift Strikes now increases Bloodthirst Rage generation in addition to Raging Blow.
• Tenderize no longer increases the duration of Enrage or triggers Unbridled Ferocity.
• Bladestorm is now a choice with Ravager, giving Fury Warriors a more compressed burst AoE option.
• Hurricane has been replaced by Unhinged, which triggers Bloodthirst every other time Bladestorm or Ravager deal damage. Interacting with all effects which Bloodthirst normally does, this is a very deceptively powerful addition, as it can generating Rage, proc Enrage, heal, cleave multiple targets, and trigger hero talent effects.
• Reckless Abandon now empowers one cast of Bloodthirst and Raging Blow, instead of one or the other. This is a powerful addition, which also makes the rotation much more forgiving, and less dependent on specific timing.
• Unbridled Ferocity no longer triggers from Onslaught and its chance to trigger has been reduced to 6% down from 20%. This is a major nerf to overall Recklessness uptime and Rage generation, resulting in less frequent Rampage casts and more distinct cooldown use.
• Odyn's Fury has been received a major buff, with the intent of making it better than Onslaught in multitarget, though also currently leaving it competitive in single target as well.
• Titanic Rage now increases the bleed damage inflicted by Odyn's Fury

Aside from the changes to Fury Warrior's core features, The War Within also introduces Hero Talent Trees, new tier sets, and the natural reduction in secondary stats when entering a new expansion.

Fury Warrior's get to choose between the Mountain Thane and Slayer Hero Talent Trees. In sections below, we will talk more deeply about the implications of these Hero Talent Trees for the spec, and some thoughts on what looks strong and weak ahead of launch.

Below are the Tier Set Bonuses for Fury Warrior in The War Within. After the wording of the bonus, you will find a brief note/commentary that is italicized.

• Warrior Fury Season 1 2pc — Bloodthirst increases the damage of your next Rampage by 10%. This is a very simple, but effective bonus, as these abilities are both used with great frequency in all forms of content.
• Warrior Fury Season 1 4pc — When Raging Blow resets its own cooldown, the damage of your next Bloodthirst is increased by 10%, stacking up to 2 times. This is a problematic bonus, since the reduced emphasis on Raging Blow means that the ability is not used very often, and therefore cannot reset its own cooldown very often either.

Both set bonuses are completely passive and are not expected to have any gameplay impact, which makes them somewhat boring, but theoretically reliable if not for the glaring flaw in the 4pc bonus activation.

The 2pc bonus is unexciting but reliable in both single or multitarget content, with the sole flaw that Bloodthirst may occasionally be cast multiple times before generating enough Rage to use Rampage. If it were able to stack, the bonus could be a little more dynamic, both providing bad luck protection, as well as a little more burst opportunity alongside Unhinged or Burst of Power.

The 4pc bonus is incredibly weak, and may be in the running for one of the weakest tier set bonuses of all time if it were to go live. Because the new rotation focuses on using Bloodthirst roughly every 3 GCDs, there is not as much space in the rotation to use Raging Blow, and because it only has a 20% chance to reset its own cooldown, the total amount of 4p procs is very low.

Even with Slayer using Raging Blow more frequently than Mountain Thane, the 4p is estimated to contribute around 0.5%, which is so woefully underpowered as to be considered unrealistic. There is extremely little chance the bonus goes live this way.

Strengths

• Fast and engaging playstyle which is also relatively simple, focuses on constant thoroughput damage while also being easy to learn.
• Powerful Enrage offers a new option for players who prefer a slower pace, without changing the core gameplay.
• Extremely bursty AoE damage profiles, while sacrificing very little to no single target performance.
• High mobility class due to Charge, Intervene, and Heroic Leap.
• Multiple defensive abilities on very short cooldowns make Fury a tanky melee damage dealer, even more so with Mountain Thane hero talents.
• Source of the important offensive Battle Shout buff and defensive Rallying Cry.

Weaknesses

• Downtime significantly penalizes damage potential.
• Generally mediocre single target to compensate for such easy access to strong AoE.
• Fast rotation can be difficult for some players to keep up with, though mitigated by Powerful Enrage.
• Less build variety and gameplay choices following the removal of Annihilator.
• Awkward class tree talent pathing requires taking Shockwave in single target content that it has no use in.
• High burst damage can cause threat issues for unprepared tanks.