4: Heroic Strike vs. Cleave
Heroic strike and cleave are the two contenders for a rage dump for fury warriors. They both have bonus damage, they both are not on the global cooldown, and they both turn a white attack into a yellow attack. This means that an attack that would of had a 28% chance to miss, 25% to be a glancing blow, and only crit for 2x damage now becomes a yellow attack. It only has the base 8% miss, no glancing and 2.1x crit from impale. They both also have bonus threat.
It is well known how a fury warrior’s main limitation is the threat cap. In an effort to try to lower their threat people have been floating the idea of using cleave instead of heroic strike. This is a matter of confusion due to blizzard listing on heroic strike’s tool tip that it has bonus threat and not on cleave’s. However this far into the game you should know better then to believe something on Blizzard’s tooltips.
www.wowwiki.com/Heroic_Strike
www.wowwiki.com/Cleave
Heroic strike adds 176 damage for 196 threat. That is 1.1 threat per bonus damage.
Cleave adds 70 damage for 130 bonus threat. That is 1.8 threat per bonus damage.
Something worth noting however is that if cleave hit two targets the bonus threat is split between the two making it preferable threat wise if you have a second target to hit.
As Natural pointed out to me this is not the entire story.
Q u o t e:
For example, let's say that "removing glancing blows and reducing chance to miss" increases the expected damage of an attack by 200. This is a completely out of the ballpark example, I'll look at some WWS logs in a second.
This changes your calculation as follows:
Heroic strike adds 176 damage (+200 for hit/glance) for 196 threat. 1.92 damage/threat
Cleave adds 70 damage (+200 for hit/glance) for 130 bonus threat. 2.07 damage/threat
Here, cleave is the victor. If you can calculate the value of these other bonuses (no glance, +hit, +10% crit damage), THEN you can calculate what is better damage per threat.
This means it becomes hard to tell exactly how much threat each one causes without calculating factors from all your gear. It would appear that the better your gear the more in favor of cleave it will be. The differences are pretty minor and for now I would still recommend heroic strike because of the very large rage difference and minor threat difference.
5: Slow or Fast Offhand?
There are benefits for a slow and a fast offhand. A fast offhand is good for steady rage generation and easily refreshed rampage.
A slow offhand benefits from better scaling with haste, less wasted flurry charges, and if it is the same speed as your main hand you can get 4 charges from flurry sometimes.
Personally I pick the offhand with the best stats that I have access to. If I have a choice between two offhands with similar stats I will pick the slower one. However with the changes to Unbridled Wrath and the rage normalization your offhand is not a huge deal.
6: Skill Rotation:
The standard fury build has ½ improved whirlwind. This allows you to make a solid skill rotation with blood thirst and whirlwind.
Seconds into fight:
0: BT
1.5: WW
3: Global cool down free
6: BT
7.5: Global cool down free
10.5: WW
12: BT
13.5: Global cool down free
15: Global cool down free
18: BT
19.5: WW
This allows you to use both abilities as they cool down. Also leaves some nice places to use a global cooldown on something else. Use these times to refresh a shout or rampage or possibly a hamstring.
Assuming threat is not a concern use heroic strike if you go over 50 rage.
Should hamstring be a part of my skill rotation?
Before the windfury nerf hamstring used to be a vital part of your skill rotation because it could proc a windfury attack. Now that it no longer procs windfury it is less clear whether or not to use it. Hamstring can crit and proc flurry, and it can proc enchants and haste procs. However hamstring has 181 bonus threat per use. In the end it is up to you. If you have the rage and you are good on threat feel free to use a global cool down on a hamstring. Generally speaking I will use heroic strike before I use hamstring. This is because they both have the same amount of bonus threat and I generally feel heroic strike will add more damage. This is really up to personal opinion though.
Threat:
Threat is a major concern for a fury warriors and is often our limiting factor. I highly recommend getting omen and making sure your tanks have it too. I also recommend begging paladins for salvation if you are not getting it.
If threat is becoming an issue stop using heroic strike and just auto attack until your threat settles a little. Then add BT and WW back into your rotation until your threat goes back to 80% of tank. Then add heroic strike back at your discretion. Do not worry about wasting rage if threat is an issue. You do more damage alive then dead.
7: PvP:
Arena:
A PvE fury build is really lacking in pvp. You do not have improved intercept or mortal strike and you take a beating from zerker stance. Stacking resilience gear takes you below the minimal hit cap so your damage suffers greatly. Stacking the dps gear you need means you take way to much damage due to no resilience. As soon as a good arena team realizes you are fury prepare to die and die fast.
If you have any desire to do well in arena and are not just playing to get the minimum games for points then I would respec to arms.
Battlegrounds:
You will fair slightly better here as people care less and are much less organized. This means if you are lucky you will get focused a lot less. Wear full dps gear and pray for a healer and you can often top kills and damage meters. I still recommend arms if you care about battlegrounds but who does these days?
8. Execute Range
This is your time to shine and make up some spots on the damage meters. If you have decent fast weapons equip them now as they will give fast steady rage. If your rage spikes above 50 use a Blood thirst then go back to executes.
Wait till you think boss is about 40 seconds from dieing then pop deathwish. When deathwish has 20 seconds left pop recklessness. If you have a shaman in your group start this when he pops blood thirst / heroism.
