That feeling when...

[Artunias]

The boss randomly turns to cast a spell for a split instant and parries your Colossus Smash. And of course it's ALWAYS the CS.

[murakumo]

Yep, pretty much the worst.

[Baracuda]

Or just anytime your colossus smash band-aid ability to do normal dps is parried.

[Archimtiros]

The boss randomly turns to cast a spell for a split instant and parries your Colossus Smash. And of course it's ALWAYS the CS.

It's a known issue by the devs and (from what I understood) unintentional, just looking for an elegant way to fix it. Personally I think CS should just reset the Cd when parried, or be unparryable.

Or just anytime your colossus smash band-aid ability to do normal dps is parried.

You lost me with this one.

[Darkfriend]

Or just anytime your colossus smash band-aid ability to do normal dps is parried.

If by "normal" you mean "among the best in the game" and by "band aid" you mean "a core rotational ability that gives warrior their flavor and gives a benefit to skillful play unlike frost Dks who don't get shit from perfect play" I agree with you 100%.

[nyjl]

Or just anytime your colossus smash band-aid ability to do normal dps is parried.

Can someone please tell me, what the hell does this sentence mean? I can't sleep at nights.

[Deleted]

Can someone please tell me, what the hell does this sentence mean? I can't sleep at nights.

My guess... Is that he reefers to colossus smash implementation as a bandaid fix (debatable, i didnt really like it when it came, mostly due to CS-SS weaving for prot..), CS which is required to do normal dps. And when it parries he cant do his normal dps :s

[Baracuda]

If by "normal" you mean "among the best in the game" and by "band aid" you mean "a core rotational ability that gives warrior their flavor and gives a benefit to skillful play unlike frost Dks who don't get shit from perfect play" I agree with you 100%.

If you consider anything about warrior's playstyle skillful then you don't know the definition. Compared to frost it may be hard but it's still easy. If your CS is dodged/parried you do crap dps, your competitive damage is balanced around it being on your target. Though I guess you don't notice that as much in PvE.

[Warriorsarri]

Being able to do 70-90% of your maximum as Fury is quite easy. getting 90-95% is hard, but doable. Playing Fury at 95-100% of your maximum potential is most likely one of the hardest feasts you can achieve in this game, it's at the same level as topend Feral or Windwalker play.

So if you find Fury easy, it's most likely something in your playstyle that you can improve to increase your personal output.

[Deleted]

Being able to do 70-90% of your maximum as Fury is quite easy. getting 90-95% is hard, but doable. Playing Fury at 95-100% of your maximum potential is most likely one of the hardest feasts you can achieve in this game, it's at the same level as topend Feral or Windwalker play.

I'm probably one of those 70-90% offspec slackers lol, so its a genuine question, what makes playing fury at 95-100% so hard to achieve ?
I mean, it doesn't look that hard on paper but i haven't put any effort into dps this expo.
(Have no insight into feral or ww play either)

[Warriorsarri]

There are several things that goes into breaching into the very topend, but to give an example, Preplaning. Knowing when you want to use all your cds and abilities even before you pull the boss to ensure that you get the maximum outcome out of them.

[Deleted]

Guess i was wrong then, im 95-100% guy lol. Cmon now, preplanning is heroic raiding basics.. and certainly has nothing todo with how hard fury is to play.

[Archimtiros]

If you consider anything about warrior's playstyle skillful then you don't know the definition. Compared to frost it may be hard but it's still easy. If your CS is dodged/parried you do crap dps, your competitive damage is balanced around it being on your target. Though I guess you don't notice that as much in PvE.

Frost DK? You have to be kidding me.

[Darkfriend]

If you consider anything about warrior's playstyle skillful then you don't know the definition. Compared to frost it may be hard but it's still easy. If your CS is dodged/parried you do crap dps, your competitive damage is balanced around it being on your target. Though I guess you don't notice that as much in PvE.

Fury is among the hardest specs to play at skill level, and also gains among the most for perfect play over average play. That's PvE.

That's the reason Fury warriors are either super high DPS or super low. They are either great, or shit.

[Warriorsarri]

Guess i was wrong then, im 95-100% guy lol. Cmon now, preplanning is heroic raiding basics.. and certainly has nothing todo with how hard fury is to play.

There's a lot that goes into it, and that's one of them. Should have picked something better, such as proper stance usage or the optimal cleave and AoE rotation

[Deleted]

There's a lot that goes into it, and that's one of them. Should have picked something better, such as proper stance usage or the optimal cleave and AoE rotation

When you open with:

Playing Fury at 95-100% of your maximum potential is most likely one of the hardest feasts you can achieve in this game

Yes, you could have choosen a much stronger argument and something that isn't universally true for all classes.
I might come off as rude, but i've played warrior for the past 4-5 years as main, although prot. So im genuinely curious what makes fury so much harder compared to other classes that it deserves "likely one of the hardest feats you can achieve in this game".

All 3 points you made so far has nothing todo with what makes anything hard, its simply knowledge beforehand, which i'll argue should go for anyone playing any class at an endgame level, making a stance macro seems to be the hard part here. ;p

[Warriorsarri]

Sorry Santa, was quite tiered when I wrote that, and therefor the quality of the post went down.

Playing a Warrior at a high level ain't hard, same goes for all other classes in the game, it's just a matter of learning the spec and having some gear. The thing about Fury tho is that there are a lot of small things that you can do, or keep track of, that can add up to a big amount of extra spice on top of your already good output.

To give some more detail on what I meant with one of my earlier statements, are you sure you are using your stances in the correct fashion? Most likely no.
One of the things that I find the most annoying is to know that a big AoE is about to hit me, and knowing that that should give me a full rage bar, but once it hits you notice that you got over a million absorb on you, meaning you get no rage. There are several ways you can make sure you don't get into this situation, for instance you can have a /cancelaura for all absorbs on all your attacks, but that's quite a D-bag way of doing it, and it may end up killing you. The way I personally do it is by having a WA that simply shows me how big of an absorb I have on me at any given point. If I see that I got a very big shield, I just stay in battle for a while longer and let it get depleted before I switch to BzS.

Another thing that I've seen most people forgo is using Heroic Leap in an optimal fashion. Knowing when you should be using it for DPS, and when to save it for mobility is crucial if you want to achieve the maximum of your potential performance. For Instance, You know you got some movement in 25seconds that you want to save Heroic leap for and your CS is currently off CD, are you gonna:
a) Saving it for 25seconds until you need it to make sure it's ready.
b) Using it now and risking it being on CD once you need it for mobility.
c) Using it now, and in the next CS, then not having it for the movement phase.
d) Using it now, but not in the next CS, to have it for mobility.
e) Delaying either CS phase by a few seconds, so that you have CS during the movement phase so that you can leap for both the movement and damage.

Either of those 5 answers is gonna be the "correct" way to use it, but without knowing the fight you will have a hard time choosing the correct one.
For someone who already dose these things, this may seem like some small and/or easy things to keep track of, but for a vast majority of players, these are things that they can improve on.

[Darkfriend]

Things that boost DPS for the best fury warriors:

1.) Heroic Leap every CS unless needed for mobility.

2.) Proper rage usage. Knowing when to hit HS, WS, how to gain more rage through serker stance, etc.

3.) Enrage uptime and proper use of BrZ, especially in AoE situations.

4.) Knowing how minor changes impact rotation. Example, during pull I'll do 3x RB and 1x SB inside a CS instead of the normal 2x RB 1x BT 1x SB. I won't pop DPS CDs until trinkets proc. On fights like Sha I'll wait to see if I get the buff first.

[Recke]

Pardon the incoming "wall" and semi-rant.

I think a better note on the aforementioned "complexity" of the rotation is the overload of small things that ultimately intertwine to such an extent that is far more foreboding than originally let on.

1) Resource management
2) Buff/Debuff uptimes affecting a larger percent of the damage.
3) Specific rotational reliance on certain abilities.

1) Most classes have a resource that replenishes or doesn't fully deplete unless something is done in rare situations (multidotting/damage on an Spriest when applying VT isn't optimal), but warriors utilize Rage, a resource that starts at 0 and caps at 100 (120 with glyph) with fluctuations in rage gain due to various reasons. Before mentioning Runic Power, no other primary resource (mana, energy, focus, runes, etc) builds up from 0 by player actions, not time. Secondary resources (runic power, holy power, shadow orbs, etc) have a similar cap system, but they are used for specific skills/effects, not a majority of the abilities. This also draws 'stances' into a fun little situation of optimal rage gen being in one of two stances for any given moment and maximizing without capping being a dps gain.

2) Buffs (specifically Enrage) and Debuffs (Colossus Smash) go to great lengths to provide huge dps gains, but at the same time, cause other actions to be potential dps losses 10 seconds after-the-fact. Colossus Smash ignores the armor of the target upon application, which (old estimates, not sure 100%) increases damage on the target for the warrior for ~35% while the debuff applies. If you spend any rage during the time when the cs debuff is not on your target and you could have used it during CS (whether on or off gcd), it's technically a dps loss, unless it was rage that would be beyond the cap value by the time you applied cs to the target. Mastery is in an all-too similar relationship. Players are reaching points of close to, if not over, 50% bonus damage while being Enraged. Any damage when not Enraged would of been better off being used when Enraged, especially due to the likelihood of Enraging off the next Bloodthirst. But, optimally, you'd want to have both of these things together, as well.

3) I bring into mind BT and how "necessary" it is in the rotation. Normal 'rotations' now and days (partly due to how most resources work, partly due to damage per execution) are just (at heart) a priority list with some slight variables involving maintaining certain debuffs or maximizing use of certain priority abilities around specific windows. Fury, on the other hand, can't use it's "rotation" without BT. Not because it's a big dps loss on it's own, but due to how the spec relies on it's abilities. Bloodsurge, Deep Wounds, and Enrage all are passives directly tied to BT, on top of which rests Raging Blow.
-Without BT, you don't get Bloodsurge procs.
-Without BT, you don't get Deep Wounds damage.
-Without BT, you don't get Enrages (outside of using Berserker's Rage (30 sec cd) and Colossus Smash crits (20 sec cd).
-Without Enrages, you don't get Raging Blows.

If you strip this one ability away, you are forcing a rotation that is completely butchered. I'm going to use Darkfiend as an example, since he's a frequent visitor and a known warrior here on these forums. I'm going to run three sims on his character. One will be with normal rotation single target, the next will be with all Colossus Smash removed (to keep with the necessity of it the OP's expense), and the last will have all BT removed (to stress my point on reliance of 1 ability).

Standard Sim= Darkfriend : 366590 dps (~2% downtime "waiting")
Sim without CS= Darkfriend : 258470 dps (~17% downtime "waiting")
Sim without BT= Darkfriend : 178134 dps (~41% downtime "waiting")


4) I would akin planning for Fury dps similar to counting cards out of a standard card table, probably in line with Texas Hold 'Em.

You know your critical chance, your rage generation, the limitation on your abilities, the optimal times to use specific abilities in accordance with buffs/debuffs, and the likelihood of taking enough damage to warrant a stance change.

You know the chance of a a specific card being played, your cards, the combinations that will help you win, the ideal time to go in, and the likelihood of certain cards being in the other players hands.

At any given point, your entire calculation could change due to the addition or subtraction of available knowledge.

Example:

You have over a 50% chance for your Bloodthirst to critical strike to Enrage you prior to using Colossus Smash, and you've been pooling rage to 90 to ensure a smooth ragedump to align with a fading (but still present) strength buff. Your last BT didn't crit and you are only at 1 RB proc for this dump.

What do you do? What happens if your BT doesn't crit? What if the boss turns for whatever reason and your BT gets parried? What if CS gets parried instead?

Don't get me wrong, there's an obvious answer to each little "what do you do next," as there should be. The problem lies in the fact that the three mentioned ideas (Rage resource, optimization of buffs and debuffs due to their large role they play on damage, reliance on an ability you spend almost a 3rd of a fight actively using) causes the grey area between "new to the spec" and "ideal" damage to be such an absurdly large gap, regardless if you are hitting as many (useful/bound) buttons as possible, as hard as possible.

[Archimtiros]

I'm going to use Darkfiend as an example

Couldn't you have picked a good Warrior?