Furious Slash is excessive and unnecessary

[Archimtiros]

For anyone who's interested in my latest obsession, reposting from http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/to...35?page=17#332.

Here's a log from Trilliax testing: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...ht=29&source=2

Despite going out of my way to better prioritize Furious Slash, you'll see I only managed to use it 15 times in 3 minutes. Despite being our no-cost/no-cooldown filler, it simply isn't used enough in the rotation and competes with other abilities for GCDs. For those of you not reading the report:

• Furious Slash - 15 times in 185 seconds
• Rampage - 20 times
• Bloodthirst - 31 times
• Dragon Roar (20s CD) - 11 times
• Wrecking Ball (proc) - 17 times

As you can see, the ability is simply pushed out of the rotation by other priorities. This might be fine as a filler, but hurts the ability when so many effects are tied to it.

Source of the Problem: Furious Slash is pushed out of the rotation
The common rotation with Inner Rage creates a very predictable cycle:
BT - RB - X - BT; where X is a free GCD normally filled by Furious Slash.

Unfortunately, it rarely works out that way. If Rampage procs, Furious Slash is pushed out; if Wrecking Ball or Sudden Death procs, Furious Slash is pushed out; if Dragon Roar or Odyn's Fury are available, Furious Slash is pushed out. If Execute is available, Furious Slash is always pushed out. If these things only happened once a minute or more, it might not matter, but they happen all the time.

Second Problem: Taste for Blood is rarely consumed
Taste for Blood (stacking BT crit from FS) lasts 8s. The idea is that if BT doesn't crit, the buff is refreshed by a second stack the next time FS is used. Ideally it works something like this:
BT - RB - FS (1 stack) - BT (+15% chance) - RB - FS (2 stacks) - BT (+30% chance)

Unfortunately, due to the first problem listed above, that doesn't happen. What happens is this:
BT - RB - FS (1 stack) - BT (+15% chance) - RB - Rampage - WB - BT (+15% chance) - RB - FS (1 stack)
Here's a table format of that same mockup rotation: https://i.gyazo.com/56e94826b62489e8...e18fb317d1.png

Notice that Taste for Blood never went to 2 stacks. Why? Because the buff fell off before the second Furious Slash was used. This happened because Rampage was available and Wrecking Ball procced, which isn't unlikely in the least.

You might say Haste is the answer, but the mockup above was written with 25% Haste in mind (1.2s GCD), allowing for 6 GCDs to be used during the buffs time, rather than 5. It's also important to remember that even if the buff chains, that's still only two stacks of Taste for Blood, giving an extra 30% chance to crit with Bloodthirst, and given how little we value Crit (hint: Fury's worst stat), still unlikely that Bloodthirst will crit.

In the same log referenced above, I went ahead and overlaid Taste for Blood with Bloodthirst use. Out of the 15 Taste for Blood buffs, Bloodthirst only benefited from it 8 times - every other time the buff simply expired.
http://tinyurl.com/hhzjw93

The solution could be extending the length of the buff, or increasing the amount of crit it provides, since 1 stack is generally all you get and it's 6 stack cap is a pipe dream, or even better micromanagement of the buff, though that comes at the expense of using better abilities (which is a total DPS loss), but in truth, Taste for Blood isn't the problem - the low frequency of Furious Slash is.

Solution: Remove Furious Slash
Or more accurately - Merge it with Raging Blow.

This is just one example, and of course there are many other possibilities, but I propose merging Raging Blow and Furious Slash together, using RB's base and FS's effects, along with the following adjustments to relevant talents and traits.

• Raging Blow - no cost, no cooldown, does not require enrage, does not generate rage, stacks Taste for Blood.
• Frenzy - Raging Blow increases Haste by 5% for 10s, stacking up to 3 times.
• Inner Rage - Raging Blow generates 5 rage.
• Wild Slashes (artifact trait) - Increases the damage of Whirlwind by 3%.

*Adjust numbers as necessary.

How is this better?

• RB without talents takes FS's place as a consistent filler and allows for a more streamlined rotation that still contains 4 primary attacks, putting it on par with Arms and Prot (4 each).
• RB being used consistently means Taste for Blood will always refresh or be consumed by Bloodthirst.
• Frenzy would mean less micromanagement; no more using an ability in place of higher priorities just to maintain the buff.
• Inner Rage would synergize with Rampage/Execute.
• Wild Slashes would give Whirlwind an artifact trait - whereas currently it is the only basic ability without one.

Edit
Part 2: See part two for testing post RPPM nerf and information regarding proc rates of Berserking and Odyn's Champion.

Part 3: See part three for testing without Wrecking Ball or Inner Rage talented. Furious Slash is even more underrepresented in the rotation.

[Murlocbait]

I haven't played beta or ptr, but everything you posted makes complete sense. It would be awesome to see the devs act on this. Would there be any reason to move the FS effect to RB and then just keep FS as a filler for when nothing else is up? Or does that just make it stupid when your suggestion is more streamlined and easier for beginners while offering important choices for experienced players?

[MORGATH99]

i kinda like furious slash

[Bigbazz]

I'll be honest I'm surprised you think this is really a cause worth fighting for, by taking Wrecking Ball you've created an additional lack of space for Furious Strike and on Anomaly for example it's not really the optimal talent to take, if you'd taken Avatar you'd have had a nicer balance of Furious Strike as the filler ability.

I did some testing on Anomaly last night too and I personally felt Fury was in a great place as it is now, It's not perfect and a little bit wonky for some of the reasons you've explained in detail above, but you could easily argue current Fury the best spec design in Legion even with it's flaws.

I guess you have always been fighting the cause of removing Furious Strike on the official forums, but the Taste For Blood issue could be easier fixed by simply increasing the duration. But then you have to ask "is the spec working currently" and with current tuning Fury is one of the strongest specs on the Legion Beta, Fury works extremely well in a variety of situations in spite of its problems, maybe they will become more apparent if/when Fury gets some of that damage tuned away but personally I don't think at this point it's realistic or necessary to have the removal of Furious Strike.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...done&source=14

One of my logs on Anomaly last night.

25 BT
23 FS
15 RB
x15 Rampage
4x Odyns Fury
18x Whirlwind

Not optimal playing because the lag was incredibly bad as any of the testers can confirm, but not running Wrecking Ball changes the outlook a lot. Not saying I entirely disagree with you Archi, I just don't see the point this late.

[Archimtiros]

Would there be any reason to move the FS effect to RB and then just keep FS as a filler for when nothing else is up

Unnecessary as the idea is that Raging Blow would act as Furious Slash does now, in not having a cooldown or require Enrage. I simply chose to call this fictional ability Raging Blow instead of Furious Slash, because I believe it has the superior animation/sound/mechanic.

[Murlocbait]

Unnecessary as the idea is that Raging Blow would act as Furious Slash does now, in not having a cooldown or require Enrage. I simply chose to call this fictional ability Raging Blow instead of Furious Slash, because I believe it has the superior animation/sound/mechanic.

Yeah makes sense.

[Archimtiros]

I'll be honest I'm surprised you think this is really a cause worth fighting for, by taking Wrecking Ball you've created an additional lack of space for Furious Strike and on Anomaly for example it's not really the optimal talent to take, if you'd taken Avatar you'd have had a nicer balance of Furious Strike as the filler ability.

That's the problem though isn't it? I know fully well that taking Wrecking Ball and Dragon Roar exacerbate the issue, and I meant to expand on that fact, though I was hitting the character limit and didn't want to overflow into two posts.

However, consider these points:

1. Should talents work against each other?
If choosing Wrecking Ball and/or Dragon Roar minimize the use of Furious Slash, is that not an issue that warrants being addressed?

2. What happens when balancing comes into play and Avatar is weighted less than Wrecking Ball?
I'd also point out that you're using a multi-target fight to make this argument, which is already weighted against Furious Slash due to Whirlwind eating GCDs. Similar to the issue with Execute, removing a button from the equation would make the rotation smoother as a result.

2. Does Fury need 5 primary rotational abilities?
Arms has 4, Prot has 4, many other specs have 4 or even less. Note that one major reason for removing HS from Fury in the MoP - WoD transition was that it had too many buttons; it also had 5 and was reduced to 4.

3. As your rage generation increases, and you spend more time enraged, Furious Slash is pushed out regardless in favor of RBx2 and Rampage.

4. Wrecking Ball isn't the only proc which does this. Rampage, Execute, Sudden Death, Sense Death, Dragon Roar, and Odyn's Fury all contribute to the issue. Execute is perhaps the worst, and I'd encourage you to look at that portion of logs to see how easily it is taken out of the rotation.

The suggestion outlined above addresses all of those points, without substantially altering the rotation.

[Sethanor]

I am with Archi on this one.

1) it never made sense to me that they try and push an off-hand attack into the iconic state that a dual-wield attack (RB) is
2) RB has by far the superiour animation, sound and feel to it... nothing says "berserker" more than a frenzied attack with both weapons.
3) FS & RB fill basically the same spot, allthough they conflict with each other cause of the different effects (dmg vs buff). merging them would fix that.

FS always reminds me kinda of this:
but not in the cool "guitar move" sense, but in this retard flailing his arm around kinda way xD

[Ezyah]

Yeah i noticed the same thing yesterday, moreover, it seems that if you take Endless rage and provided you have a bit of crit, you can maintain close to 90% uptime on enrage with almost never using furious slash which is, somehow, making the whole "do everything you can to become enrage" pointless.

[Rashi]

Might be the wrong thread to ask this, but how does the rotation/prio list actually look atm?
I Friend of mine told me he went with
BT>x2 RB>Ramp x2RB with WW fillers on proc
Rince and repeat?
This sounds very very dull to me, Could anyone clarify?

[Saiona]

As much as I hate furious slash. Fury on beta is still better than it is on live.

[Kaljurei]

I have a really bad feeling about the incoming reaction from Blizzard to your post.

I'd rather you had not made it, although your point was valid. We don't want to use Furious Slash. According to your post, we use it very rarely anyway. This is a problem because you know that we could merge those mechanics the way you outlined to fix it, but Blizzard won't do that, they'll buff the fuck out of Furious Slash or nerf the hell out of Raging Blow.

But sure, let's be optimistic and hope that either Blizzard will fix it, or they'll do nothing about it, because the alternative is worse and we all know it.

[Ferozan]

Good post. Basically gives a real situation where FS proves it's not so useful on a certain build.
The problem is that, on builds without DR/Wrecking Ball/Inner Rage, you would need to use it more, even if it is not optimal.
Blizzard want people to have illusion of choice, so they probably would not merge them, because Celestalon totally loves Wild Strike/Furious Slash, because it feels so furious.

It is exactly the same problem with Slam and WW as arms. 2 Buttons that almost do the same thing. WW even replaces Slam with a talent.

[Caargon]

1. Should talents work against each other?
If choosing Wrecking Ball and/or Dragon Roar minimize the use of Furious Slash, is that not an issue that warrants being addressed?

I don't know, seems more in line with that "build-a-rotation" idea Blizzard was going with for warriors, kinda like how arms can replace slam with whirlwind. You take these talents, you get to ignore furious slash. I do agree it's a shit ability that doesn't need to exist though.

[Artunias]

They need to do SOMETHING about the crit enabling of BT. Especially when it comes to execute and aoe.

Whether that's merging, or giving baseline crit back, or letting other abilities stack the crit. They just need to do something, but his post is exactly on point and provides some great examples and reasoning behind why the ability is just button bloat.

[Sethanor]

It is exactly the same problem with Slam and WW as arms. 2 Buttons that almost do the same thing. WW even replaces Slam with a talent.

not the same at all as slam vs ww is single-target vs multi-target ability overall.
yes i know that you use both on single-target but its still not the same scenario as FS vs RB.

blizz just needs to get over their "massive hard-on for WS/FS" ... they want it to work, but it just doesnt get the feel of raging blow (and it never will, even if it would to 5-times the damage, the ability would still feel wrong, esp. with that annoying sound-effect -.-)

edit: typo

[madmossy]

Been messing about on the PTR with my copied warrior and no matter what build I try I always end up forgetting about FS. When I have taken the talent that gives haste I always forget about it as it runs out way too fast.

[Ferozan]

not the same at all as slam vs ww is single-target vs multi-target ability overall.
yes i know that you use both on single-target but its still not the same scenario as FS vs RB.

blizz just needs to get over their "massive hard-on for WS/FS" ... they want it to work, but it just doesnt get the feel of raging blow (and it never will, even if it would to 5-times the damage, the ability would still feel wrong, esp. with that annoying sound-effect -.-)

edit: typo

Slam VS WW and FS VS WW are the same scenarios that Frost DKs always had with Icy Touch VS Howling Blast. Even Freezing Fog proc works like Wrecking Ball, the only exception is that a Freezing Fog Howling Blast does not give Runic Power because it is free and it is enabled through obliterate instead of autoattacks. They just removed Icy Touch in Legion from Frost DKs because it was useless when you have Howling Blast with the Same Cost, More Damage, AOE and also spreads diseases.

You can even look at Howling Blast as a Runic Power generator/Rune spender like Whirlwind could be a Enrage Enabler with the Taste for blood stacks if it gave them, as FS does.

We should have WW doing what FS/Slam do and have talents that empower WW on AOE situations in exchange of single target DPS OR have FS/Slam with talents that turn them into AOE options. These would help the button bloat that fury has and would allow the active talents to blend easier in the rotation.

[Murlocbait]

We should have WW doing what FS/Slam do and have talents that empower WW on AOE situations in exchange of single target DPS OR have FS/Slam with talents that turn them into AOE options. These would help the button bloat that fury has and would allow the active talents to blend easier in the rotation.

Gotta disagree. I like that warriors have different priorities/rotations in single-target vs AoE/Cleave. I don't want WW in single-target rotation - in fact it's one of the most loathed aspects of WoD Arms. I should push different buttons to kill 4 things vs 1 thing. Keep WW for AoE only and leave single-target with its own rotation.

[Krom2040]

I don't necessarily mind Furious Slash as a garbage filler skill to use when nothing else is available, but I have a *major* issue with how it fits into the Execute phase, or more specifically just how crappy the Execute phase rotation feels right now. During the out-of-Execute phase rotation, you build up rage with BT/Raging Blow and then spend it on Rampage, which of course has the benefit of Enraging you and allowing you to then build some rage back up again with more Raging Blows. That situation completely fails to exist during Execute phase, so you have this major tension between spending valuable Enrage time on Raging Blow to get rage for Execute, vs. actually spending it on Execute. Then you run into a situation where you finally have enough rage to Execute, and... you can't get Enraged to actually use it. So you just cap out and sit around like an idiot, spamming your crappy Furious Slash rotation.

I just really don't like the way that Fury feels right now for Execute, which is supposed to be a big part of our damage. I feel like it needs to Enrage you or something. It feels uncomfortably unpredictable right now.

EDIT: To elaborate on how exactly Execute fits into the Furious Slash discussion: The pre-Execute rotation currently relies on a combination of Blood Thirst and Rampage to get Enraged, of which Furious Slash is an important component of buffing Blood Thirst. Then of course you spend your Enrage time on Raging Blow.

The problem arises in that Execute phase loses the Enrage behavior of Rampage, because you're expected to spend that rage on Execute instead. But because you've lost that component, you instead have to rely entirely on Furious Slash and Bloodthirst to get that Enrage going, which can be a very RNG process taking 6 or 10 seconds. Because Furious Slash not *just* filler but also an irreplaceable part of making Blood Thirst give you Enrage, the entire Execute phase gets *extremely* busy, RNG and frankly just awkward.