Fury spec warrior gear

[Kevin]

Alright I'm thinking about doing something that I said I would never do. Most of it is because I don't want to spend the time getting another warrior to 60. But I'm thinking of specing Gnolack to fury. I'm thinking about this because I'm pretty sure that a fury warrior will be a better tank than a protection warrior, even in Motlen Core. I can't really test this easily on the test server unless I get a bunch of other people that I've played with before to go over there with me and spend time on test that quite frankly is probably better spent on live servers. :) I can test solo power on test but not really tanking because I won't really have a baseline in a PUG.

Anyway, if I do this I will want a set of gear that compliments a fury warrior for damage mode a well. As many of you know I don't pay a heck of a lot of attention to gear or where you get it from. So I'm asking for help in that department. What gear that I can try and get out of the higher end 5 man instances (and even Molten Core as I may have some of it) would be good for a fury warrior? Crafted gear choices work as well. I'm sure many of you can probably list some of it off the top of your head. Linking it is cool but I can look that up on my own. If you want to see the spec I'm looking at I can post that but I'm not sure of that myself yet. :)

Recommended weapon enchants would be nice as well.

I do have:
Weapons:
Eskhandar's Right Claw
Bonescraper
Scepter of the Unholy
Dreadforge Retaliator
Blackhand Doomsaw
Bararous Blade

And I think the sceptre is the only thing enchanted and that is +4 damage. Doomsaw might have a +7 damage on it.

Anyway thoughts on good fury gear, keeping in mind that until 1.8 (and even after that) most of the PvP rewards are probably things I can't get because of how climbing in ranks works.

[Lissa]

Alright I'm thinking about doing something that I said I would never do.  Most of it is because I don't want to spend the time getting another warrior to 60.  But I'm thinking of specing Gnolack to fury.  I'm thinking about this because I'm pretty sure that a fury warrior will be a better tank than a protection warrior, even in Motlen Core.  I can't really test this easily on the test server unless I get a bunch of other people that I've played with before to go over there with me and spend time on test that quite frankly is probably better spent on live servers.  :)  I can test solo power on test but not really tanking because I won't really have a baseline in a PUG.

Anyway, if I do this I will want a set of gear that compliments a fury warrior for damage mode a well.  As many of you know I don't pay a heck of a lot of attention to gear or where you get it from.  So I'm asking for help in that department.  What gear that I can try and get out of the higher end 5 man instances (and even Molten Core as I may have some of it) would be good for a fury warrior?  Crafted gear choices work as well.  I'm sure many of you can probably list some of it off the top of your head.  Linking it is cool but I can look that up on my own.  If you want to see the spec I'm looking at I can post that but I'm not sure of that myself yet.  :)

Recommended weapon enchants would be nice as well.

I do have:
Weapons:
Eskhandar's Right Claw
Bonescraper
Scepter of the Unholy
Dreadforge Retaliator
Blackhand Doomsaw
Bararous Blade

And I think the sceptre is the only thing enchanted and that is +4 damage.  Doomsaw might have a +7 damage on it.

Anyway thoughts on good fury gear, keeping in mind that until 1.8 (and even after that) most of the PvP rewards are probably things I can't get because of how climbing in ranks works.
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As I recall from Flyn with Galreth, enchant for the weapons are lifesteal for fast weapons. Also, the two trinkets that Galreth tends to use a lot are the Heroism card and the Maelstrom card. Heroism gives you some health back and Maelstrom will increase damage to mobs that hit you.

[Olon97]

There's a starter gear list on post 4 of this thread. Pay special attention to the "poor man" options.

Between the resetting of the swing timer and the 1.5 second global cooldown, I'm not convinced weapon swapping for Whirlwind/Overpower is particularly worth it any more. If you're not swapping in a slow 2H for whirlwind, you might want to consider your highest damage range 1H (speed will be irrelevant after 1.8) in your main hand so you can get moderately good damage/rage whirlwind/overpowers without swapping.

I like crusader on MH and lifesteal on OH (the lifesteal proc is not subject to the 50% damage reduction).

Good luck with the respec!

[Artega]

Slow, high-damage Main-Hand weapon, fast high-stats offhand weapon.

Voone's Vice Grips from the Warlord's Command chain (and the Alliance equivalent) are extremely useful. In general, you should try to get some +to-hit gear assembled, to reduce your miss-rate while dualling as much as possible, though without gimping yourself in the process. For grinding/PvP purposes, the Darksoul Leggings, Lionheart Helm, Voone's Vice Grips, and either Satyr's Bow or Blackcrow will greatly reduce you miss-rate without really costing you TOO much in the way of other stats.

For tanking? I'd still say 31/5/15 is the best route. You may want to try 0/30/21, if you think you can survive without TM and Anger Management; Flurry combined with Defiance is pretty hot, plus you'll have some of the other nice passives from Fury and Concussion Blow from Protection.

[Boutros]

For PvE attack power is king. A good general approximation is that 1% crit = 20AP and 1 str = 2 agi. This is very much not the case in PvP though, where crit is much more important. Valor tends to ahve a lot of AP, but there are still a lot of random items that have better overall damage. Some reasonably good AP gear that's not too hard to get might include:

Will of the Martyr (Strathholme quest)
Crown of Tyranny (Stratholme scarlet bastion, Balnazzar)
Breastplate of Valor (UBRS, General Drakkisath)
Omokk's Girth Restrainer (LBRS quest)
Eldritch Reinforced Legplates (Dire Maul west, Prince Tortheldrin)
Bile Etched Spaulders (Dire Maul west, Immol'thar)
Gordok Bracers of Power (Dire Maul north, tribute)
Gordok's Handguards or Death Grips (Dire Maul north/west quest and Stratholme undead, Magistrate)
Grimy Metal Boots (Dire Maul north, King Gordok)
Cape of the Black Baron (Stratholme undead, Baron Rivendare)
Band of the Ogre King (Dire Maul north, Grodok King)
Rune of the Guard Captian (Hinterlands quest line)

For a weapon, I'd still go with a slow two hander, preferably a Reaper or Barbarous Blade if you are going to be rolling with a blue weapon, or an OEB/Earthshaker/Unstoppable Force if you can get one. I'm probably biased as an MS/Enrage warrior, but I think instant attacks are king. With flurry you will have damn good rage generation, and with a slow two hander whirlwind will be your bread and butter, with Bloodthirst thrown in for flavor. Or you could try rage hoarding and chain slamming.

[Olon97]

I'm thinking about this because I'm pretty sure that a fury warrior will be a better tank than a protection warrior, even in Motlen Core.  I can't really test this easily on the test server unless I get a bunch of other people that I've played with before to go over there with me and spend time on test that quite frankly is probably better spent on live servers. 

I would be interested in your thinking on this theory as I've often contemplated the same thing.

Having deathwish's 30 second fear immunity for phase 2->3 in the Onyxia fight would be a very nice way to get that transition to go smoothly, short of respeccing blacksmithing for a mithril insignia.

Then there is the aggro factor.

At 15% crit (tank gear), you've got about a 39% chance of any hit being flurried (except for the first couple hits which have a lower chance). I figured the following raw DPS/Aggro #s (840 attack power 5/5 flurry vs. 5/5 1h mastery with Eskhander's claw):
Base DPS with crits (no talents): 118.8
DPS with Flurry & crits: 132.6 (11.6% relative increase)
Aggro equivalent DPS with flurry + defiance: 152.4
DPS with 1H mastery: 130.7 (10% relative increase - big shock)
Aggro equivalent DPS with 1H mastery +defiance: 150.3

Basically - in white damage and the aggro from that damage, the two specs are a wash. Then you have to remember that 1h mastery is always on but Flurry is sporadic (almost never on at the start) - giving prot spec a very slim margin in "initial aggro" buildup.

Then you have aggro from specials. Since raw DPS is similar, rage will be similar (and often greatly outfactored by rage from incoming damage), you're left with Bloodthirst (if you choose to use it) aggro vs. Shield Slam aggro - something not well tested to date. We know Shield Slam was boosted, but bloodthirst has a heal component that likely generates hate if it's not overhealing. Rage boosting talents (unbridled wrath, anger management, imp. zerker rage, shield specialization) might vary rage availability (and hence specials use) a bit in some situations - likely giving fury a little edge in rage-scarce tanking.

The other factor to tanking is mitigation, and I would probably give the edge there to protection, but not by a lot. Bloodthirst's healing can be after-the-fact mitigation of spell damage, something that protection offers nowhere besides the extra seconds of shield wall. With a 5 arms / 31 fury / 15 protection build that also includes defiance, you have 10 points to spread around shield specialization, anticipation, and toughness (mitigating talents) but protection builds have the option of picking them all up. Flurry & concussion blow is nice (I should know, I spent months with the spec), but not nice enough to lose deflection from an end-game tanking standpoint IMO.

My thought on the "better" tank spec is that protection builds still come out a little ahead, but for the slight difference you can get the option to DPS with Flurry and a 2H (for overpowers and WW), which 1H spec doesn't help at all with. With 31/5/15 you get a still reasonable tank spec (behind prot & fury/prot IMO) and a distinct PvP advantage.

edit: The fury spec I keep getting tempted to try: link

[Quark]

Anyway thoughts on good fury gear, keeping in mind that until 1.8 (and even after that) most of the PvP rewards are probably things I can't get because of how climbing in ranks works.
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No time to go through it right now, but you should check out the Reputation rewards for PvP at least. Even if it takes 6 months, you never lose progress on the Reputation rewards, only on the Honor rewards.

Of course, the best Fury rewards are probably AV so this assumes that 1.8's changes to AV allow it to actually occur on our server.

[RTM]

Hit has been 13 Arms/rest Fury since level 50 or so (she's 56 now). I really enjoy it even though I sometimes miss the big numbers that fly with 2h weapon MS or Overpower. I can still hit 900's critting with Heroic Strike though.

I've respecced a lot, and will probably do it again (I think I paid 20g last time). Here's my current build:

ARMS:
3/3 Improved Heroic Strike
2/5 Deflection
5/5 Tactical Mastery
1/1 Anger Management
2/2 Improved Overpower

FURY:
5/5 Cruelty
5/5 Imp Demoralizing Shout
2/5 Unbridled Wrath (working on maxing this now)
1/1 Piercing Howl
5/5 Imp Battle Shout
5/5 Enrage
2/2 Imp Execute
2/5 Dual-Wield Specialization
1/1 Death Wish
5/5 Flurry
1/1 Bloodthirst

If I respec again I'll probably drop Dual-Wield spec for something else (Imp Beserker Rage?) as I've heard that it's really not worth the talent points. Improved Execute is questionable for PvE grinding but good for boss fights. I took Improved Heroic Strike because there really aren't any good rage dumps in the Fury line except for Bloodthirst. You generate so much rage so quickly that it's nice to have a place to dump it. I've noticed that I don't use it as much as I used to though- I tend to wait till I have enough rage to use a Bloodthirst. It's somewhat viable tanking as it is a high-threat attack.

If you're looking to be a DPS Fury warrior then I've heard good things about taking Improved Slam and just spamming that with a high-damage 2h weapon. I can see how that + Imp Execute could do a lot of damage to a single target. I haven't tried it myself although I am tempted to try a 2h fury build- maybe taking Arms up to Sweeping Strikes (with Impale) and Fury up through Flurry.

I'm sure there are more efficient builds but I really enjoy playing my Rogue in Plate. :) I average about 120dps on similarly-levelled targets with spikes up to 150 and over 230 if I can get a lucky string of crits.

[Artega]

In a word, no. You want a faster weapon for use with a Flurry build, and you need to have an acceptable crit-rate if you want to get any use out of the key talent - Flurry.

If you want to use a two-handed weapon (and avoid the ghastly 24% miss-rate associated with dualling), aim for the highest DPS you can find on the fastest weapon you can find. The Blade of Hanna (60.1 DPS @ 2.10) is ideal, but unlikely. The Needler (something like 51.1 DPS @ 2.20) is a good alternative, and there are many others available. Brain Hackers will do well. Generally, any two-handed weapon faster than, say, 3.00, will serve you fairly well.

As for AP v. Crit, you may just want to play it by ear. There are a couple of threads on the Warrior boards you can probably search for that have math for when to start going for crit over AP, but the best bet is to find a good compromise between sufficient AP and sufficient crit. Once you reach 900-1000 AP, I'd start stacking on AGI and crit, but that's just me.

[Artega]

I'd go for Impale over the Improved Heroic Strike and other Arms areas. My previous Fury build:

Arms Talents - 18 Points

3/5 Deflection
3/3 Improved Rend
5/5 Tactical Mastery
2/2 Improved Overpower
3/3 Deep Wounds
2/2 Impale

Fury Talents - 33 Points

5/5 Cruelty
5/5 Unbridled Wrath
1/1 Piercing Howl
3/3 Blood Craze
1/5 Improved Battle Shout
5/5 Enrage
2/2 Improved Execute
1/1 Death Wish
2/2 Improved Intercept
5/5 Flurry
2/2 Improved Berserker Rage
1/1 Bloodthirst

While I dislike Deep Wounds (takes up a debuff slot, does fairly piddly damage considering the damage range on the weapons you'll be using, and can make Fear+Bandaiding difficult), I love Impale. Considering a lot of your damage will come from ragedumping via Heroic Strike and Bloodthirst, the extra 20% really helps. Dual Wield Specialization is generally a waste, given that your offhand will be very fast, resulting in low damage, and it also means five wasted talent points if you ever happen to get an excellent, fast two-handed weapon such as Blade of Hanna, Destiny, Runeblade of Baron Rivendare, Blackblade of Shahram, etc.

[sosostress]

Syladril on Stormrage has a similar plan to Artega's, except she added a point to Anger Management and points in Dem. Shout instead of the extra point in deflection and the point in Battle SHout. She basically wears mostly Valor gear, though I switch off to some +defense gear when tanking and don +1crit Reiver claws and +1crit Omokk's belt during PvP situations. As far as her weapons are concerned, she dual weilds the Dal'Rend's set, which is great fun. I opted to enchant both the Dal'Rend blades with +15 agility (more agility = more chance at critting = more chance at activating flurry). Here's Syladril's build:

Warrior Talents

Minimum Required Level: 60
Required Talent Points: 51

Arms Talents - 18 points
Deflection - rank 2/5
Improved Rend - rank 3/3
Tactical Mastery - rank 5/5
Improved Overpower - rank 2/2
Anger Management - rank 1/1
Deep Wounds - rank 3/3
Impale - rank 2/2

Fury Talents - 33 points
Cruelty - rank 5/5
Improved Demoralizing Shout - rank 1/5
Unbridled Wrath - rank 5/5
Improved Cleave - rank 3/3
Piercing Howl - rank 1/1
Dual Wield Specialization - rank 4/5
Improved Execute - rank 2/2
Enrage - rank 5/5
Death Wish - rank 1/1
Flurry - rank 5/5
Bloodthirst - rank 1/1


In the end, I can get 5 sunders away very quickly but sometimes I still lose aggro to higher dps rogues. It's okay for tanking in 5-man teams, but where this build shines is in PvP gaming.

[Quark]

In the end, I can get 5 sunders away very quickly but sometimes I still lose aggro to higher dps rogues.
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I'll say this about Rogues - if a Rogue you play with a decent amount is pulling aggro off of you, it's his fault, not yours. You have to get a feel for how much aggro the tank always has, and I know from experience which of the Avarice tanks I do more damage with. Rogue's aggro removal is only 2nd to hunters, so a little patience on the Rogue's part goes a very long way.

Now, playing with new Warriors is always fun because I have no idea how much leeway I have.

[Wolfsong]

It's interesting how much exposure the 18/33 build has been getting lately. I sort of stumbled on it after playing around with a talent calculator and several respecs (DW MS build is not fun at all). I wouldn't say it's the new Fury cookie cutter, but it is interesting to see how many people are coming over to it.

I did some dabbling with a 2H Fury build for PvP purposes, and still have it even though I've gone back to mostly DW for two reasons really. (1) It still works, and (2) my next respec is 50g and I'm poor again after buying Battle Cat.

Arms Talents - 18 points
Deflection - rank 2/5
Improved Rend - rank 3/3
Tactical Mastery - rank 5/5
Improved Overpower - rank 2/2
Anger Management - rank 1/1
Deep Wounds - rank 3/3
Impale - rank 2/2

Fury Talents - 33 points
Cruelty - rank 5/5
Unbridled Wrath - rank 5/5
Improved Cleave - rank 2/3
Piercing Howl - rank 1/1
Blood Craze - rank 3/3
Improved Execute - rank 2/2
Enrage - rank 5/5
Death Wish - rank 1/1
Flurry - rank 5/5
Improved Intercept - rank 1/2
Improved Berserker Rage - rank 2/2
Bloodthirst - rank 1/1

Not a whole lot to add since what's been said covers a lot of ground. Fast fast fast is the key to Fury, so choose your weapons accordingly. Right now I'm running with a pair of Bone Slicing Hatchets with +15 Str on them (still trying to get Bloodthirst to not suck), although if I ever get the materials together I might swap over to +15 Agi for the crit bonus (and to annoy hunters even further).

For my final tangent, I've learned over many painful months that the key to being a successful PvP Fury warrior is, oddly enough, to move like a rogue. With dual wielding, you NEED to maintain contact with your opponent if you want your speed to count for anything. MS warriors are used to jousting, moving in for the quick MS instant then backing out of range til their swing timer comes around again to build up more rage. Once you learn how to stick to an opponent, to move around and through them, your effectiveness goes way up.

[Artega]

Anger Management is mostly pointless for me since I end with Execute(s), and I don't need the passive rage generation - I always found another point in Deflection or Improved Battle Shout to more useful.

As for me, I'm still a fan of slow main-hand, fast offhand. A significant amount of my damage versus melee comes from Overpower, and a 2.80 main hand will hit much harder than any 1.90 ever will, even after the weaponspeed changes come 1.8. The difference between Flurry with the two setups is negligible at best (you'll proc it more frequently with two fast weapons, but do less damage), and I feel the loss of damage on instants like Whirlwind and Overpower does not compensate for the faster attacking. The only exception to this is when I'm using my Silent Fang, which is 1.60 (the fastest possible sword after Hanzo Blade) and requires the main hand. However, the Silence proc is just devastating in PvP; if it procs, that Mage is dead before the proc ends.

I'd go with the Dal'rend's set if at all possible until you can secure goodies from ZG and MC; it provides you with a slow, powerful main hand (in fact, the highest damage range on any blue, 81-151) that increases your crit, and a fast offhand that increases your Parry, and the set bonus gives you an extra 50 AP. Barring that set, Frostbite and Glacial Blade (and their Alliance equivalents) from AV are also extremely good when used together, and don't require all that much rep with Frostwolf/Stormpike.