Furious Slash is excessive and unnecessary

[Brakthir]

That's probably more down to a flaw of technique than anything else. If you're trying to do everything with your left hand you're gonna get into issues. About 8 years back I had to go for physical therapy (Osteopath) for my wrists due to RSI. I was a professional musician at the time, I was spending 4+ hours a day playing guitar and the rest of the time I was playing World of Warcraft and started getting some pretty serious and painful problems with my wrsits.

After that I learned to adjust my techniques and approaches to fix the problem. Guitaring aside, part of that learning process was also initially clicking Heroic Strike with my mouse, while doing the rest of the rotation with my left hand. Then I replaced clicking HS with a dedicated mouse button, eventually getting a Razer Naga in 2009 making that solution even better.

So yes, heroic strike with the right hand and the rest with the left hand. No carpel tunnel, tennis elbow esque repetitive strain injuries, only forcing yourself to play entirely on the left hand would do that. Was the same in Highmaul with Gladiator, I could play it at 100% effectiveness with no issues at all in terms of RSI, no pain or excessive fatigue, no problem.

Rend stance dancing was only viable on very few fights, basically single target patchwerk fights like Saurfang. Not to mention if you had any sort of latency issues, you were fucked. And the damage increase was minuscule compared to the risk of screwing up.

The rotation wasn't complex at all. Spam HS because we were rage capped 24/7, hit BT and WW on cooldown and occasionally use slam in between gcds. It was not complex, it didn't promote skillcap.

[Bigbazz]

Rend stance dancing was only viable on very few fights, basically single target patchwerk fights like Saurfang. Not to mention if you had any sort of latency issues, you were fucked. And the damage increase was minuscule compared to the risk of screwing up.

The rotation wasn't complex at all. Spam HS because we were rage capped 24/7, hit BT and WW on cooldown and occasionally use slam in between gcds. It was not complex, it didn't promote skillcap.

It wasn't complex unless you played rend, that's what I said in the post. If you played rend though you added a risk/reward aspect for a small (say 200dps while doing 10k) dps increase, but the risk was on you as a player to not fuck it up and to place the rend at the right place in the rotation while not rage bottoming, if you fucked it up it was on you as a player.

I played rend on most fights, most fights had long patchwerk style single target sections so of course I would. And really if you're playing with lag you were messed up anyway, I probably had around 80-100ms at the time and when you play the game you generally don't talk about having lag issues as the norm. Using "that doesn't count because" lag is silly, how often do you even play with lag? I dunno about you but for me it's not very often, outside of beta testing I can safely say never.

Lets not kid ourselves here, WOD Fury is not in the slightest bit complex. It's a mash the buttons that light up spec and let the RNG do the talking at it's finest, we're talking relative comparisons here.

[Brakthir]

It wasn't complex unless you played rend, that's what I said in the post. If you played rend though you added a risk/reward aspect for a small (say 200dps while doing 10k) dps increase, but the risk was on you as a player to not fuck it up and to place the rend at the right place in the rotation while not rage bottoming, if you fucked it up it was on you as a player.

I played rend on most fights, most fights had long patchwerk style single target sections so of course I would. And really if you're playing with lag you were messed up anyway, I probably had around 80-100ms at the time and when you play the game you generally don't talk about having lag issues as the norm. Using "that doesn't count because" lag is silly, how often do you even play with lag? I dunno about you but for me it's not very often, outside of beta testing I can safely say never.

Lets not kid ourselves here, WOD Fury is not in the slightest bit complex. It's a mash the buttons that light up spec and let the RNG do the talking at it's finest, we're talking relative comparisons here.

I'm not talking about WoD. I didn't play WoD. I'm talking the pinnacle of Fury, which was MoP SoO.

[Bigbazz]

I'm not talking about WoD. I didn't play WoD. I'm talking the pinnacle of Fury, which was MoP SoO.

Well I never mentioned MOP on purpose because that was a more complex gameplay. Honestly though SOO MOP Fury was only good if you had loot coming out of your ass, it felt like shit below Heroic (Mythic as it's called now) gear levels. So plenty of people had poor experiences with MOP Fury too and that was definitely a topic of discussion at the time.. Of course WOD was actually worse but lets not get into that.

I didn't play in MOP after the launch until the midway through SOO where I was super casual running around in LFR gear until I got recruited to raid with a HC Farming guild and got boosted to fully geared. The contrast was absolutely ridiculous, I went from hating Fury with its slow RNG frustrating shite to being fucking Rambo with a chain gun in a few weeks. The contrast in gameplay was extreme, only the top end raiders probably have such a sweet memory of MOP Fury, because they left it on a high note.

And then we have WOD, a smearing turd on the carpet.

[Jngizu]

I agree that Fury without gear was bollocks at MoP, it was actually the same for Cata. I think design-wise, Arms during Cata was probably the best they ever came up with. Gear didn't really impact the gameplay which was fluid, intuitive, and pretty high skill-capped (not as much as SoO's Fury though). Then they decided to destroy it for MoP and it has been this braindead spec ever since.

Anyway, I think I will always miss having to play around CS for Fury, the gameplay now and from what I tested on the PTR is fun and feels pretty "furious" but it just doesn't have the same flavour to me.

[Archimtiros]

Anyway, I think I will always miss having to play around CS for Fury, the gameplay now and from what I tested on the PTR is fun and feels pretty "furious" but it just doesn't have the same flavour to me.

Dragon Roar is basically the same thing.

[Pua]

I agree, we're passed string-lock, though class design generally has more leeway (see recent changes), so I doubt it will change. However, that has little bearing on identifying a problem.

There's always going to be someone who wants to argue for the sake of argument; this thread is obvious example of that - no matter what information is presented to the contrary, there will be people who simply say "nu uh". My problem was simply bothering to engage with them.

I think, typically when discussing design fundamentals, you end up stuck with people who view the game through the lens of how it currently works... And not how the poster is suggesting it should work. This leads to arguments about Furious Slash having a critical strike component, and not how that component is needless under the circumstance being proposed.

Regardless, we'll see the fact of the matter once the guides come out and players are asking "why don't we use Furious Slash?". The problem will further be exacerbated once a set bonus is made that prioritizes Furious Slash and players start realizing they never use Raging Blow anymore. No matter how you slice it, Fury has a finite amount of GCDs and too many buttons to fit into them. Regardless of what ability is prioritized, something ends up getting left out.

As things stand (and at this point in beta), I think it might be most judicious to simply work Furious Slash out of the guides until there's a set bonus that enforces it - and then it's time to get out the pitchforks. Hopefully, if the best way of playing Fury becomes the removal of Furious Slash from action bars, they'll be smart enough to simply work it out of the game entirely rather than forcing players to use it when the rotation doesn't need it.

Sadly, this class design team are laughably calamitous. I've never before seen so many people with so many class-related problems, and the responsibility lands at the door of a team lead (Zierhut) who arrogantly believes he knows best; typically in face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

How else do you explain a spec with too many buttons during an ability prune?

I'm talking the pinnacle of Fury, which was MoP SoO.

A lot of people thought so, but a lot of people didn't.

As a career Protection warrior, I thought Wrath's version of Fury was the best. It "felt" like a Fury warrior should feel, while having a lot of things that separated the good from the great. Ultimately, I think proper rage management is when Fury is at its best and, despite Wrath's version being much simpler, both prioritised that one aspect above all others.

The reason Warlords (and potentially Legion) falls flat, is because the spec ended up proc-reliant (as opposed to proc-enhanced, like Protection); something that isn't fun or engaging when you get a string of bad luck and your raid leader asks if you fell asleep in your chair.

Most unfortunately, there appear to be a lot of specs currently in that boat.

[Deleted]

no it isn't

[Archimtiros]

As things stand (and at this point in beta), I think it might be most judicious to simply work Furious Slash out of the guides until there's a set bonus that enforces it - and then it's time to get out the pitchforks. Hopefully, if the best way of playing Fury becomes the removal of Furious Slash from action bars, they'll be smart enough to simply work it out of the game entirely rather than forcing players to use it when the rotation doesn't need it.

It's quite possible. I've been working on the action lists for Fury and should be reaching some definitive conclusions over the next couple of days (tuning permitting). At the very least, we already know that it's going to be underutilized by most-if-not-all of the primary talent combinations, simply due to more important fillers. This is kind of the crux of the issue details in the OP. If you're not using an ability much/if at all, what's the point in having it? I can tell you right now that the design answer to seeing nobody using Furious Slash much will be to tie tier sets to the ability, forcing it to be used more, which just creates the opposite problem: Instead of not pressing Furious Slash, you end up not pressing other abilities in turn. This is a simple byproduct of Fury's limited GCDs, heck it's already possible for Bloodthirst itself to be sidelined in the rotation with single target high rage generation builds.

The reason Warlords (and potentially Legion) falls flat, is because the spec ended up proc-reliant (as opposed to proc-enhanced, like Protection); something that isn't fun or engaging when you get a string of bad luck and your raid leader asks if you fell asleep in your chair.

I get what you're saying here, and it was definitely a problem in Warlords for Arms, a spec which had absolutely no procs or mechanics until T18 came out. Fury didn't really have that problem though, it's problem was simply being too dependent on RNG (what I've in the past called "bad RNG" because the rotation feels like it works when you have it, but cripplingly broken when you don't; as opposed to "good RNG" in which the rotation feels like it works when you don't have it, and enhanced when you do), and the lack of that RNG led to droughts in the rotation - you simply didn't have anything to do if you didn't proc Enrage.

Legion has largely fixed this, at least for Warriors. Although each spec has their own fundamental flaws at the moment, they both operate off of relatively sound mechanics which add fail safes. For Fury, this was the change to Furious Slash which ultimately saw it as a no-cost/no-cooldown filler. It actually made a great deal of difference to the spec, but then as abilities such as Inner Rage, myriad amounts of procs, and most importantly, Enrage-proccing Rampage (you're welcome), the amount of downtime in the rotation was reduced to effectively nil.

This in turn is what has unfortunately led to Furious Slash being pushed out of the rotation, and it's not really on purpose, it's simply a byproduct of incremental design. A lot of people here forget, when reading something like a suggestion that Inner Rage should cause Raging Blow to generate Rage (instead of doing it by default) in a negative light, that it's actually an exact replica of an earlier version of the talent - quite a competitive one at that.

Arms evolution is a little bit of a different beast, and this post is already getting long, so I won't delve into it here. I'd still consider it leaps and bounds above Warlords though.

[Feril]

NO. KEEP FURIOUS SLASH.

i HATE the way fury plays on live, always something with a fucking stupid needless cd. furious slash stops that. i want to be always hitting something.

That's why I use the no-CD Bloodthirst talent (Unquenchable Thirst) on live, I hate those small-CD attacks.

But it doesn't feel any good if the no-CD attack doesn't generate (or spend) rage directly and is visually repetitive.

I wish Unquenchable Thirst was still a talent in Legion, dammit!

[Archimtiros]

That's why I use the no-CD Bloodthirst talent (Unquenchable Thirst) on live, I hate those small-CD attacks.

But it doesn't feel any good if the no-CD attack doesn't generate (or spend) rage directly and is visually repetitive.

I wish Unquenchable Thirst was still a talent in Legion, dammit!

Those small CD attacks are important for creating an actual rotation, rather than a simple priority list. Playing DH for example, you only have a priority - use X if Fury < Y or use A if fury > B.

Playing Fury and using Bloodthirsts 4.5s CD on cooldown, you've got a rotation. You move through a cycled sequence of events which is defined by the GCDs available within the cooldown (in this case 2). It's easiest to think of it as a tempo or a beat; BT - X - X - BT - X - X - BT.

I'm not trying to persuade you; if you don't like it, you simply don't like it, and there are other classes out there which would better suit your preferences. I'm only pointing out that those short cooldown abilities do serve an important function in creating a rhythmic sequence of actions.

[Feril]

Those small CD attacks are important for creating an actual rotation, rather than a simple priority list. Playing DH for example, you only have a priority - use X if Fury < Y or use A if fury > B.

Playing Fury and using Bloodthirsts 4.5s CD on cooldown, you've got a rotation. You move through a cycled sequence of events which is defined by the GCDs available within the cooldown (in this case 2). It's easiest to think of it as a tempo or a beat; BT - X - X - BT - X - X - BT.

I'm not trying to persuade you; if you don't like it, you simply don't like it, and there are other classes out there which would better suit your preferences. I'm only pointing out that those short cooldown abilities do serve an important function in creating a rhythmic sequence of actions.

Well, there isn't any other "raging berserker" class out there, is it? So if they don't get the fast and wild warrior right there won't be any other class that will fix that for me :P

I just think Fury looks best as a proc-based spec rather than a rotation cycle-based spec. Arms is already CD-based, and it fits well with its theme of calculated attacks. But Fury is a raging, wild and chaotic berseker, and at least for me, it feels more or less that way on live (with the Unquenchable Thirst talent) with a builder-spender tug-of-war sprinked with random procs.

Fury doesn't follow no rules, can't be reasoned with, and will never stop beating you until you both are a bloody pulp.

That's how I see it, and I understand other players have their own visions. That's why I've already mentioned this talent (Unquenchable Thirst!) several times: Blizzard does seem to be trying to use talents this time around to kind of bring different playstyles to classes (like Enhancement shamans who liked their CD rotation attack style, or Paladins who want faster basic generators).

So I just want my no-CD generator-spender cycle with talents or whatever :P

[Archimtiros]

Well, there isn't any other "raging berserker" class out there, is it? So if they don't get the fast and wild warrior right there won't be any other class that will fix that for me :P

In terms of APM, plenty of classes are, Fury really isn't any faster than many others. In terms of your conceptualization on the class fantasy, well, I can't really help you there! The way you think of the classes is the way you think of the classes, regardless of the mechanical similarities or differences.

I'm simply pointing out that if that style of mechanics is what you're after, Legion Enh Shaman and Demon Hunter are probably what you're looking for, as both have that simple priority list built around an unlimited generator, and they're both dual-wield classes which attack quite fast. Keep in mind I'm not tell you that you should be playing those, just that it's the type of mechanics you're looking for.

I just think Fury looks best as a proc-based spec rather than a rotation cycle-based spec. Arms is already CD-based, and it fits well with its theme of calculated attacks. But Fury is a raging, wild and chaotic berseker, and at least for me, it feels more or less that way on live (with the Unquenchable Thirst talent) with a builder-spender tug-of-war sprinked with random procs.

You'd think, but it actually works out to be the exact opposite. Arms (in WoD with T18/class trinket, or in Legion) is mainly proc based, while Fury is the predictable one. This predictability actually lends itself to the "furious" style, as it means you're constantly using your attacks rather than waiting on a proc to unload your meaty ability. That said, there are still a lot of potential procs (more than Arms even) to play with in Legion Fury.

That's how I see it, and I understand other players have their own visions. That's why I've already mentioned this talent (Unquenchable Thirst!) several times: Blizzard does seem to be trying to use talents this time around to kind of bring different playstyles to classes (like Enhancement shamans who liked their CD rotation attack style, or Paladins who want faster basic generators).

Unfortunately, Unquenchable Thirst comes along with a lot of downsides, namely WRT opportunity cost and the requirement to limit the amount of damage BT deals directly (it's the reason for BT being such a wet noodle attack in WoD). Unless the rotation is built entirely with that form of resource generation in mind, it's hard to add in, and wouldn't really work with the Fury model in Legion.

There are however many talents which can change the way you approach the rotation. There are procs (WB), CS style windows (DR), rage cap buffing (FB), sustained rotation (IR), and a number of buff/cooldown talents. I'd call it pretty diverse when compared to what we've seen previously.

[Deleted]

Dragon Roar is basically the same thing.

I wish everyone understood this, in fact DR is better than CS because it buffs the player, not the target so we can hit anything for 20% more damage.

[Brakthir]

I think, typically when discussing design fundamentals, you end up stuck with people who view the game through the lens of how it currently works... And not how the poster is suggesting it should work. This leads to arguments about Furious Slash having a critical strike component, and not how that component is needless under the circumstance being proposed.



As things stand (and at this point in beta), I think it might be most judicious to simply work Furious Slash out of the guides until there's a set bonus that enforces it - and then it's time to get out the pitchforks. Hopefully, if the best way of playing Fury becomes the removal of Furious Slash from action bars, they'll be smart enough to simply work it out of the game entirely rather than forcing players to use it when the rotation doesn't need it.

Sadly, this class design team are laughably calamitous. I've never before seen so many people with so many class-related problems, and the responsibility lands at the door of a team lead (Zierhut) who arrogantly believes he knows best; typically in face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

How else do you explain a spec with too many buttons during an ability prune?



A lot of people thought so, but a lot of people didn't.

As a career Protection warrior, I thought Wrath's version of Fury was the best. It "felt" like a Fury warrior should feel, while having a lot of things that separated the good from the great. Ultimately, I think proper rage management is when Fury is at its best and, despite Wrath's version being much simpler, both prioritised that one aspect above all others.

The reason Warlords (and potentially Legion) falls flat, is because the spec ended up proc-reliant (as opposed to proc-enhanced, like Protection); something that isn't fun or engaging when you get a string of bad luck and your raid leader asks if you fell asleep in your chair.

Most unfortunately, there appear to be a lot of specs currently in that boat.

I don't think you played much Fury in Wrath. Past the first tier, rage was never an issue. There was no "rage management". We were almost always constantly at 100 rage and thus we were spamming Heroic Strike. The rotation wasn't complex either. It was WW and BT on cooldown, occasionally using slam in between somewhere.

[Bigbazz]

Well there was that period in early Ulduar when we were worse off than Naxx due to quite heavy nerfs and a lack of crit gear (our crit gear went down in T8 compared to T7 while other stats increased). It was only with the armor pen buff + slight reversal of Fury nerfs that we got back to swimming in rage. We still had ups and downs with our rage generation and you could definitely say that rage management was a thing on those downs. Fury didn't fully reclaim the dps throne until after TOTC had launched, with only Cleave fights showing the strengths of Fury during ulduar.

[Pua]

I don't think you played much Fury in Wrath. Past the first tier, rage was never an issue.

Assuming you were in top-end gear, yes. If you were part of the majority that wasn't, then rage remained an issue until late Icecrown.

I do like how you quote an entire post and then try to pick an argument on a matter of subjective preference, though.

Stay classy.

[Ezymode]

Its a bit of a shame how 90% of this thread has turned into personal arguments and how good/bad fury was during 'X' expansion, because there was some great points raised here before all of that.

There just isn't room for a 5 ability core rotation, in a spec that is GCD capped and also has to micro manage multiple small buff windows. Its over complicating the entire spec for no apparent reason because the taste for blood buff could easily be added to almost any other ability and achieve a better result. Furious slash is button bloat. Merging Furious Slash with raging blow feels like the best solution. Simply 'not hitting that button' is not a solution. As Archi pointed out, they will just tie a set bonus to furious slash and we will be back at square one, pointing the finger at a different ability.

[Deleted]

Best Solution would be to combine Furious Slash and Raging blow.

Increases crit change of Bloodthirst. Deals X% extra damage but does not generate rage when enraged. Deals damage with each weapon.

[jn27]

FS is at the top of my list for "things most likely going away after legion", but that doesn't mean they ought to wait that long before doing something about it.