07-23-2006, 02:42 PM
I've seen lots of questions about Fury Warrior weapons and my response is usually "Get the best one-handed weapons you can and use them." Frankly, trying to pick a specific weapon for a Fury Warrior always seemed like a good way to get frustrated. My approach has always been to use whatever good weapons dropped into my lap. Originally, this was Quel'Serrar and the Axe that Ras Frostwhisper drops. More recently it is Crul'shorukh, Edge of Chaos and Ancient Qiraji Ripper. In my experience, I've never really had a situation where it wasn't blatently obvious which weapons I should use. :P
That said, here are some things that I would use to evaluate weapons if I got 2 weapons that were very similar:
Speed
Weapon speed is interesting. Slower weapons (in your main hand) hit harder on cleaves and whirlwinds so if you're in areas where you're doing a lot of cleaving, it is usually best to put the slower weapon in your main hand. Faster weapons, in general, give you more rage. The other interesting thing to think about is placement of weapons. Your mainhand weapon will hit for more damage than your off-hand weapon, generally, because the off-hand has a damage reduction on it, *even if the main hand weapon is faster*. Therefore, for single target DPS I like to use is a slower off-hand weapon and a faster main hand weapon. This means that when I get a crit and so end up with 3 attacks that are affected by Flurry, more often than not 2 of them will be my harder-hitting main hand. This means that your main hand is effectively getting a higher damage boost than the off-hand, from Flurry, so you get more bonus damage from the Flurry procs.
Stats
Another thing to look at in weapon choice is stats. Off-hand weapons can often get away with being lower DPS if they have other good bonuses like +hit% or +crit%. Those numbesr affect all damage from both hands so it can often make a very large difference in overall damage output. The best way to evalute this is to use some form of damage meter. If you are generally putting out 200 DPS, then +1% crit will give you about 2 DPS (a little more since flurry would go off more often). If you are putting out 400 DPS, +1% crit is going to give you about 4 DPS. This is why I used Brutality Blade for so long (and eventually replaced it with the very similar Qiraji Ripper).
Crit Gear
Critical hits are very important to a fury warrior. Each crit not only doubles the damage of that strike, but adds quite a bit of damage to subsequent white hits. This is huge as far as damage output and rage generation is concerned. However, there comes a point where +crit% items don't add as much damage because you are in an almost-constant state of flurry. For me, this has happened around 25% chance to crit in battle stance. Once I got there I stopped worrying about it as much and focused on loading up on stamina and attack power gear.
Hit Gear
+hit% gear is very nice to have as a Fury Warrior. When I used to have very little hit gear I remember going through times where I would miss 5 or 6 times in a row. This would often make a fight go from easy to very difficult when soloing or just completely nerf damage output when playing as DPS. Also remember that while white hits have a base miss rate of 24%, specials use a 5% base miss rate. Therefore, once you get past that the base miss rate for special attacks (5% vs. level 60 mob, 8% vs. level 63) you won't get as much of a damage boost from +hit% gear. Since white damage usually accounts for 50% of a fury warrior's damage, this means that once you get past that cap you only get about half as much damage for each additional +hit%.
Finally, damage isn't everything. I am a stamina hog on my warrior because it helps make it easier to heal me when I get aggro. As my gear has gone from blue -> purple items, the biggest boosts I've seen have been to my attack power and my life total. My warrior has lots of +stamina and +life enchantments on her DPS gear to try and even that out. She currently has 4850 life (unbuffed), 997 AP (without battle shout) and 25.6% crit (in battle stance). I could swap some of the life enchantments out for strength (for more AP) but I prefer to be more well-rounded.
That said, here are some things that I would use to evaluate weapons if I got 2 weapons that were very similar:
Speed
Weapon speed is interesting. Slower weapons (in your main hand) hit harder on cleaves and whirlwinds so if you're in areas where you're doing a lot of cleaving, it is usually best to put the slower weapon in your main hand. Faster weapons, in general, give you more rage. The other interesting thing to think about is placement of weapons. Your mainhand weapon will hit for more damage than your off-hand weapon, generally, because the off-hand has a damage reduction on it, *even if the main hand weapon is faster*. Therefore, for single target DPS I like to use is a slower off-hand weapon and a faster main hand weapon. This means that when I get a crit and so end up with 3 attacks that are affected by Flurry, more often than not 2 of them will be my harder-hitting main hand. This means that your main hand is effectively getting a higher damage boost than the off-hand, from Flurry, so you get more bonus damage from the Flurry procs.
Stats
Another thing to look at in weapon choice is stats. Off-hand weapons can often get away with being lower DPS if they have other good bonuses like +hit% or +crit%. Those numbesr affect all damage from both hands so it can often make a very large difference in overall damage output. The best way to evalute this is to use some form of damage meter. If you are generally putting out 200 DPS, then +1% crit will give you about 2 DPS (a little more since flurry would go off more often). If you are putting out 400 DPS, +1% crit is going to give you about 4 DPS. This is why I used Brutality Blade for so long (and eventually replaced it with the very similar Qiraji Ripper).
Crit Gear
Critical hits are very important to a fury warrior. Each crit not only doubles the damage of that strike, but adds quite a bit of damage to subsequent white hits. This is huge as far as damage output and rage generation is concerned. However, there comes a point where +crit% items don't add as much damage because you are in an almost-constant state of flurry. For me, this has happened around 25% chance to crit in battle stance. Once I got there I stopped worrying about it as much and focused on loading up on stamina and attack power gear.
Hit Gear
+hit% gear is very nice to have as a Fury Warrior. When I used to have very little hit gear I remember going through times where I would miss 5 or 6 times in a row. This would often make a fight go from easy to very difficult when soloing or just completely nerf damage output when playing as DPS. Also remember that while white hits have a base miss rate of 24%, specials use a 5% base miss rate. Therefore, once you get past that the base miss rate for special attacks (5% vs. level 60 mob, 8% vs. level 63) you won't get as much of a damage boost from +hit% gear. Since white damage usually accounts for 50% of a fury warrior's damage, this means that once you get past that cap you only get about half as much damage for each additional +hit%.
Finally, damage isn't everything. I am a stamina hog on my warrior because it helps make it easier to heal me when I get aggro. As my gear has gone from blue -> purple items, the biggest boosts I've seen have been to my attack power and my life total. My warrior has lots of +stamina and +life enchantments on her DPS gear to try and even that out. She currently has 4850 life (unbuffed), 997 AP (without battle shout) and 25.6% crit (in battle stance). I could swap some of the life enchantments out for strength (for more AP) but I prefer to be more well-rounded.
-TheDragoon