Fury Warrior adjustments, heading into Cataclysm

[Beeastt]

One thing to note for fury DPS in this last month of Wrath of the Lich King is that certain truths that have held for the entire expansion do so no longer. Not only is armor penetration dead, but hit rating, a formerly despised stat, is now a very welcome one. With the removal of the old Heroic Strike, you want to get as close to 27 percent hit as possible, which is 738 hit rating for a fury warrior (we get 3 percent free from our talent specialization Precision; otherwise, it would be 830 hit rating) in order to ensure your attacks land. Even with rage normalization, a white attack has to land in order for you to generate rage from it; the amount is just fixed and can't go up with a crit or more damage dealt.


As our hit rating needs are now far more stringent, a lot of DPS plate that once looked pretty substandard will now start to look a lot better. Landsoul's Horned Greathelm, for instance, is a very attractive offset piece. In fact, if you don't have four-piece tier 10 for whatever reason, the two-piece T10 bonus is so worthless for us fury warriors that you might as well not worry about wearing any for set bonuses, making off-set pieces like Gendarme's Cuirass and the Raging Behemoth's Shoulderplates far more attractive. However, the four-piece set bonus, a flat 5 percent more damage dealt, is very attractive -- so much so that my draenei, who has a full set of off-set i277 DPS pieces, still wears four of the 264 Ymirjar for that 5 percent boost, and then uses the i277 pieces for other slots.

exerpted from:http://wow.joystiq.com/2010/10/29/the-care-and-feeding-of-warriors-fury-demolishes-entire-cities/#continued


Second, some General information affecting warrior in this patch.

-Leather items are worthless! Attack power was removed and leather items grant crit only via agility.
-Plate Specialization: 5% more strength if you are wearing plate armor.
-Battle Shout and Commanding Shout will generate rage now, instead of draining it.
-Pummel is usable in Battle Stance.
-Bloodrage was deleted from the game.
-Whirlwind was changed to an area of effect attack and is no longer in the single target rotation.


Third Fury in detail

3.1 Spec http://wowtal.com/#k=mFbCfNH.a5o.warrior.RDsz4k

You will obviously see which talents are just fillers, so you can change these according to your preferences.

3.2 Glyphs:

Prime Glyphs are obvious.
Major Glyphs: The last one can vary. Take Glyph of Victory Rush to level.
Minor Glyphs: Should be obvious too.
There are several changes in the Fury tree including the changes on some mechanics, but the play style basically remains the same.

3.3 Changes to Fury-relevant abilities:

-Raging Blow (better known as the Whirlwind replacement) can only be used while under the influence of Death Wish, Berserker Rage or Enrage.
3.4 Stats/Priorities:
-26 Expertise (200 expertise rating)
-27% Hit (Hardcap!)
-Mastery is not important.
Expertise > hit > strength > crit = haste > mastery

3.5 Gems:

Red: 20 strength
Yellow: 10 strength 10 crit / 10 strength 10 haste
Blue: 10 strength 10 hit / 10 expertise 10 hit
3.6 Rotation / Priority list:
Rotation: Execute > Bloodthirst > Raging Blow > Heroic Strike / Cleave > Slam
Priority: HS/Cleave > Raging Blow > Bloodthirst > Slam
Shouts are used as GCD fillers if everything else is on cooldown and there’s no proc for slam.
Bloodthirst now has a 3second CD, Raging Blow a 6 second CD, therefore a good rotation is possible.
Execute was changed with 4.0.1 so it stacks up a buff increasing attack speed.
Like the Arms spec it is possible to ignore a Slam proc and prefer Heroic Strike for higher DPS. It is all a question of gear.


*COMMENT* A comment from Anize at the end:

Because of the removal of the “On next Swing” mechanic the warrior becomes a white hit DPS class like rogues in Burning Crusade. I spent a lot of time on the Beta server collecting data. It appears that about ~45-50% of the damage are auto attacks. (Maybe even more within a raid) Therefore hit becomes so important.

exerpted from Ensidia's blog site: http://www.manaflask.com/Starym/blog/4974/