A Frenzy Warrior Point Of View

[Archimtiros]

The current Frenzy rotation relies almost entirely on Furious Slash, since RB's base damage is so low. While this sounds counter intuitive, it ensures that Frenzy and Taste for Blood never fall, which significantly increases Enrage uptime. Raging Blow use is largely left to Battle Cry and those times where there are enough TfB stacks to guarantee the next BT is a critical.

[Emimi100]

The current Frenzy rotation relies almost entirely on Furious Slash, since RB's base damage is so low. While this sounds counter intuitive, it ensures that Frenzy and Taste for Blood never fall, which significantly increases Enrage uptime. Raging Blow use is largely left to Battle Cry and those times where there are enough TfB stacks to guarantee the next BT is a critical.

Well said.
Exactly, Enrage uptime should be 100% if you don't make any mistake.
I'm gonna be writing about it in much more details later (Check down below!)

[Eninya]

I was wrong. My max BT crits are about 630k with cooldowns, flask, Enrage, etc. Furious Slash is somewhere around 400k, but unsure if I used it during cooldowns.

[Atrainx]

Well said.
Exactly, Enrage uptime should be 100% if you don't make any mistake.
I'm gonna be writing about it in much more details later

Thanks! Will be great to see and test!

[Softbottom]

I wonder how this will play out once it's live.. It would be an interesting build to use.

[Archimtiros]

I wonder how this will play out once it's live.. It would be an interesting build to use.

It won't; we're talking about live, not the PTR.

[Softbottom]

It won't; we're talking about live, not the PTR.

Apparently I need to learn how to read haha

[Emimi100]

Warning : I don't have by any mean the pretension of calling this a guide on Frenzy, these are just the results of my experimentations and are freely left to debates and changes. However, I do have some decent results with this...
so i've got that going for me, which is nice :^)

1) General idea behind Frenzy
There are a few fury warrior mechanics that Frenzy enhances drastically.

One of them is the haste, obviously... but! counterintuitively the Frenzy buff actually scales with your base haste. The talent claims that it increases your haste by 5%, stackable 3 times. In reality, you gain more than 15%. And the more haste you have, the more you gain. That is one of the reasons why you shouldn't run full mastery with that spec (see the point 3).


(out of combat)


(with 3 Frenzy stacks, I promise ;))


So with more or less 50% haste (with a base of more or less 30% (that's the general scenario)), your haste gets close to double... which means you cast a lot more abilities. So.. gameplaywise, it goes a lot faster, and the decisions making has to go quicker and trust me you're gonna have to make decisions.
Note that War Machine and Bloodlust actually work the same way, they also scale on your base haste ;)

Another one will be what I like to call rage predictions. Let me first introduce you to your new most damaging abilities (in mostly ST).
The first one should always be your melees (at least until the execute phase), simply because 100% enraged, 100% attack speed, very high FB uptime.
The second one should be a really close "fight" between your BTs, Rampages and DoSs (depending on the ilvl, maybe current 925 DoS would even be higher than melees, mine is only 890)
Then it depends on the encounter...
But just to give you an idea and to clear out some false ideas, my RBs deal less damage than both my potions of the old war, during an entire fight, simply because I use them in very specific situations, and in no way do I spam it (see Rotation).

I would like to end by mentionning that this talent is very high maintenance (simply because of all that extra haste), demanding (for its gameplay) and extremely punishing because it's extremely difficult not to make any mistake in the rotation (I still mess it up very often), a mistake being a failed opportunity to optimize the current situation. And every mistake you make will break piece by piece your dps and move you further away from the IR DPS.
However, if you play it well, you are able to compete even until the execute phase, during which you basically destroy IR.

2) Rotation
Before going into the whole thing this "rotation" (more like rage management) is, let me go a little bit more in depth and give you the general idea of the rotation (I know that's a lot of general ideas, but you'll understand :p).
See it like this, since you have a lot more haste, how can you benefit it ?
Well, first you can have basically 100% enraged uptime.
You can also have a bigger FB% uptime ! If you basically don't move at all and play it perfectly, I'm pretty sure you can sit around 90% uptime, if not more.
You can benefit 20% more from Odyn's champion procs.
You generate more rage, which means more Rampage, which means more Odyn's champion and more Rage of the Valarjaar procs.
So the goal with that spec is basically cast the most rampages you possibly can because of what is mentionned above, and also because it does a crapton of damage. And in order to do that, you have to generate rage the quickest amount possible while remaining enraged. And with that, rampage has to go off the fastest possible after you hit 100 rage, you don't want to sit at 100 for more than 1 gcd. Ideally you're able to predict that you're going to reach 100 and spam rampage immediatly after you reached it.

To generate the most rage, I haven't found any better way than making my BTs crit the most often possible combined with the Ceann-Ar Charger (fury head legendary).
So I would like to say that Frenzy loses A LOT of potential if you don't use Ceann-Ar Charger.

Ok so the "rotation" looks like this :

• Pull :
FS --> FS --> FS --> BC+Avatar+Rampage --> OF --> DOS --> BT --> Rampage --> FS (with a 26% haste base)



• BC on cooldown :
It's all about rage management here.
If you just casted rampage and you have < 2 taste for blood stacks (and hence you're low on rage), FS --> BT
Always use BT on cooldown even if you only have one stack of taste for blood, because you always have 15% chance of gaining 10 free rage, and also if your Oathbload crits, your taste for blood stack doesn't disappear, and that's extremely powerful here.
If you are still under 70~ rage, use FS --> FS --> BT, or FS --> BT (BT on cooldown).
If you are above 90~ rage after casting a BT, just cast FS once and your autos should generate enough rage for your next gcd being rampage.
If you are a bit under 90 rage after casting a BT, casting FS might not be enough, and that's where you should squeeze a RB.

• BC is about to come back up :
Prepare it.
Since the goal, like I said is to cast the most rampages possible, try to reach 100 rage the second BC comes back.
That way, you can do something like rampage --> BC+rampage.
Note that if you don't hit 100 but you're above 85, you should still be doing that.
You should be delaying your BCs for doing that but not more than 2 seconds.

• During BC :
After the ideal rampage --> BC+rampage, you want to do the following.
BT on cooldown unless you can cast rampage. (note that if oathblood procs --> 36 rage)
RB if you can't cast either. (5+4+4 rage per RB)
Refresh Frenzy stacks at the last second possible, it should replace a RB.
If BC is about the end, don't hesitate to hold rampage for a bit since its damage is spread over a good second, only the first or the 2 first tick(s) will be crit and it's not worth an extra BT if it's possible.

• Preparing DoS + Avatar :
Even if there is only 20 seconds left on my DoS, I will very often use BC anyway, if it's up. Especially during BL or War Machine procs where if you get an Odyn's champion proc, you reduce your BC cd by soooo much.
If you have to wait 10 seconds you might want to wait for it then.
The only thing that changes from the normal BC situation, is that you don't want to lose Frenzy when DoS is ticking. So before rampage --> BC+rampage, use FS once to refresh the buff.
Then again :
FS --> rampage --> BC+Avatar+rampage --> OF --> (Ring of the Collapsed Future -->) DoS --> BT --> Rampage --> FS




• Execute phase without BC :
Well it doesn't change much from the IR execute phase except that it goes a lot faster.
Execute --> FS --> BT --> repeat until you get 100 rage.
Execute --> Execute --> FS --> BT if you're at 100 rage.
Try somehow to dump rage before BC comes back up.

• Execute phase with BC :
Prepare your BC by enraging yourself, once you hit that crit BT :
BC+Execute --> Execute --> repeat until enraged needs a refresh --> BT --> Execute --> repeat until enraged needs a refresh again --> try not to forget your Frenzy stacks.
With this rotation you should be able to use only one BT during your BC window and spam execute like crazy.
If you prepared your BC correctly by FS --> BT (crit), you shouldn't need to refresh your Frenzy stacks until after BC.
At high stacks (20-30), ignore DoS.
Only use it when it comes back at the begining of your execute phase.
If you do use it, it should go like this :
Execute --> FS --> BT (crit (hopefully)) --> Avatar+BC+Execute --> DoS --> Execute,... --> Refresh your enraged buff --> etc.

Important : For all of these situations above, pay really close attention to Oathblooad procs. It can really make a rampage go off much earlier but it's really difficult to react to since everything goes so fast ! Like I said, 100 rage predictions can really make a difference.


3) Build and stats weight
Like I said above, in mostly ST fights, I think Ceann-Ar Charger makes Frenzy much stronger and I couldn't imagine myself playing it without.
For sustained multi target fights, it's ok not to play with it but it definitely handicaps the talent not having it.

As a second legendary, with my current gear, I sim the highest with the BoE crafted belt. Boots, bracers, execute ring (surprisingly), and cape are very close to each other.

What about Melandrus ? Well it's good, it's definitely not bad at all but you still lose so much from a mastery/haste ring.
My 900ilvl Ring of the Collapsed Future sims more than my 890 Melandrus.
That's a shame because the idea of 10% more damage on your auto attack really enhances de machine-gun aspect of the Frenzy spec :/



For stats weight, I'm not a pro, I can't build beautiful curves showing which stat is really better but here is what with my current build my stats weight looks like. But I'm pretty sure it's very similar to the normal IR build.


(I should replace some of my gems with some mastery ones I guess)


(here is what the IR stats weight looks like, it's very similar like I said so your stuff shouldn't change much in order to play this properly)

BIS relics are Unrivaled Strenght (BC trait) in my opinion, RB ones losing sooo much power here.


I would like to finish by and I can't stress enough the fact that in no way I consider this as a fully optimized guide and as a perfect reference. It is a reference nonetheless because there are simply none around and I'm one of the only ones if not the only one (that I know at least) who put enough effort into making Frenzy more than a meme.

Thanks for reading and I hope you can have as much fun as I have playing this way :))
If you have any question, I'll do my best answering them, feel free to contact me aswell.
Have a good one!

[thaddle3]

Warning : I don't have by any mean the pretension of calling this a guide on Frenzy, these are just the results of my experimentations and are freely left to debates and changes. However, I do have some decent results with this...
so i've got that going for me, which is nice :^)

1) General idea behind Frenzy
There are a few fury warrior mechanics that Frenzy enhances drastically.

One of them is the haste, obviously... but! counterintuitively the Frenzy buff actually scales with your base haste. The talent claims that it increases your haste by 5%, stackable 3 times. In reality, you gain more than 15%. And the more haste you have, the more you gain. That is one of the reasons why you shouldn't run full mastery with that spec (see the point 3).


(out of combat)


(with 3 Frenzy stacks, I promise )


So with more or less 50% haste (with a base of more or less 30% (that's the general scenario)), your haste gets close to double... which means you cast a lot more abilities. So.. gameplaywise, it goes a lot faster, and the decisions making has to go quicker and trust me you're gonna have to make decisions.
Note that War Machine and Bloodlust actually work the same way, they also scale on your base haste

Another one will be what I like to call rage predictions. Let me first introduce you to your new most damaging abilities (in mostly ST).
The first one should always be your melees (at least until the execute phase), simply because 100% enraged, 100% attack speed, very high FB uptime.
The second one should be a really close "fight" between your BTs, Rampages and DoSs (depending on the ilvl, maybe current 925 DoS would even be higher than melees, mine is only 890)
Then it depends on the encounter...
But just to give you an idea and to clear out some false ideas, my RBs deal less damage than both my potions of the old war, during an entire fight, simply because I use them in very specific situations, and in no way do I spam it (see Rotation).

I would like to end by mentionning that this talent is very high maintenance (simply because of all that extra haste), demanding (for its gameplay) and extremely punishing because it's extremely difficult not to make any mistake in the rotation (I still mess it up very often), a mistake being a failed opportunity to optimize the current situation. And every mistake you make will break piece by piece your dps and move you further away from the IR DPS.
However, if you play it well, you are able to compete even until the execute phase, during which you basically destroy IR.

2) Rotation
Before going into the whole thing this "rotation" (more like rage management) is, let me go a little bit more in depth and give you the general idea of the rotation (I know that's a lot of general ideas, but you'll understand ).
See it like this, since you have a lot more haste, how can you benefit it ?
Well, first you can have basically 100% enraged uptime.
You can also have a bigger FB% uptime ! If you basically don't move at all and play it perfectly, I'm pretty sure you can sit around 90% uptime, if not more.
You can benefit 20% more from Odyn's champion procs.
You generate more rage, which means more Rampage, which means more Odyn's champion and more Rage of the Valarjaar procs.
So the goal with that spec is basically cast the most rampages you possibly can and in order to do that, you have to generate rage the quickest amount possible while remaining enraged. And with that, rampage has to go off the fastest possible after you hit 100 rage, you don't want to sit at 100 for more than 1 gcd. Ideally you're able to predict that you're going to reach 100 and spam rampage immediatly after you reached it.

To generate the most rage, I haven't found any better way than making my BTs crit the most often possible combined with the Ceann-Ar Charger (fury head legendary).
So I would like to say that Frenzy loses A LOT of potential if you don't use Ceann-Ar Charger.

Ok so the "rotation" looks like this :

• Pull :
FS --> FS --> FS --> BC+Avatar+Rampage --> OF --> DOS --> BT --> Rampage --> FS (with a 26% haste base)



• BC on cooldown :
It's all about rage management here.
If you just casted rampage and you have < 2 taste for blood stacks (and hence you're low on rage), FS --> BT
Always use BT on cooldown even if you only have one stack of taste for blood, because you always have 15% chance of gaining 10 free rage, and also if your Oathbload crits, your taste for blood stack doesn't disappear, and that's extremely powerful here.
If you are still under 70~ rage, use FS --> FS --> BT, or FS --> BT (BT on cooldown).
If you are above 90~ rage after casting a BT, just cast FS once and your autos should generate enough rage for your next gcd being rampage.
If you are a bit under 90 rage after casting a BT, casting FS might not be enough, and that's where you should squeeze a RB.

• BC is about to come back up :
Prepare it.
Since the goal, like I said is to cast the most rampages possible, try to reach 100 rage the second BC comes back.
That way, you can do something like rampage --> BC+rampage.
Note that if you don't hit 100 but you're above 85, you should still be doing that.
You should be delaying your BCs for doing that but not more than 2 seconds.

• During BC :
After the ideal rampage --> BC+rampage, you want to do the following.
BT on cooldown unless you can cast rampage. (note that if oathblood procs --> 36 rage)
RB if you can't cast either. (5+4+4 rage per RB)
Refresh Frenzy stacks at the last second possible, it should replace a RB.
If BC is about the end, don't hesitate to hold rampage for a bit since its damage is spread over a good second, only the first or the 2 first tick(s) will be crit and it's not worth an extra BT if it's possible.

• Preparing DoS + Avatar :
Even if there is only 20 seconds left on my DoS, I will very often use BC anyway, if it's up. Especially during BL or War Machine procs where if you get an Odyn's champion proc, you reduce your BC cd by soooo much.
If you have to wait 10 seconds you might want to wait for it then.
The only thing that changes from the normal BC situation, is that you don't want to lose Frenzy when DoS is ticking. So before rampage --> BC+rampage, use FS once to refresh the buff.
Then again :
FS --> rampage --> BC+Avatar+rampage --> OF --> (Ring of the Collapsed Future -->) DoS --> BT --> Rampage --> FS




• Execute phase without BC :
Well it doesn't change much from the IR execute phase except that it goes a lot faster.
Execute --> FS --> BT --> repeat until you get 100 rage.
Execute --> Execute --> FS --> BT if you're at 100 rage.
Try somehow to dump rage before BC comes back up.

• Execute phase with BC :
Prepare your BC by enraging yourself, once you hit that crit BT :
BC+Execute --> Execute --> repeat until enraged needs a refresh --> BT --> Execute --> repeat until enraged needs a refresh again --> try not to forget your Frenzy stacks.
With this rotation you should be able to use only one BT during your BC window and spam execute like crazy.
If you prepared your BC correctly by FS --> BT (crit), you shouldn't need to refresh your Frenzy stacks until after BC.
At high stacks (20-30), ignore DoS.
Only use it when it comes back at the begining of your execute phase.
If you do use it, it should go like this :
Execute --> FS --> BT (crit (hopefully)) --> Avatar+BC+Execute --> DoS --> Execute,... --> Refresh your enraged buff --> etc.

Important : For all of these situations above, pay really close attention to Oathblooad procs. It can really make a rampage go off much earlier but it's really difficult to react to since everything goes so fast ! Like I said, 100 rage predictions can really make a difference.


3) Build and stats weight
Like I said above, in mostly ST fights, I think Ceann-Ar Charger makes Frenzy much stronger and I couldn't imagine myself playing it without.
For sustained multi target fights, it's ok not to play with it but it definitely handicaps the talent not having it.

As a second legendary, with my current gear, I sim the highest with the BoE crafted belt. Boots, bracers, execute ring (surprisingly), and cape are very close to each other.

What about Melandrus ? Well it's good, it's definitely not bad at all but you still lose so much from a mastery/haste ring.
My 900ilvl Ring of the Collapsed Future sims more than my 890 Melandrus.
That's a shame because the idea of 10% more damage on your auto attack really enhances de machine-gun aspect of the Frenzy spec :/



For stats weight, I'm not a pro, I can't build beautiful curves showing which stat is really better but here is what with my current build my stats weight looks like. But I'm pretty sure it's very similar to the normal IR build.


(I should replace some of my gems with some mastery ones I guess)


(here is what the IR stats weight looks like, it's very similar like I said so your stuff shouldn't change much in order to play this properly)

BIS relics are Unrivaled Strenght (BC trait) in my opinion, RB ones losing sooo much power here.


I would like to finish by and I can't stress enough the fact that in no way I consider this as a fully optimized guide and as a perfect reference. It is a reference nonetheless because there are simply none around and I'm one of the only ones if not the only one (that I know at least) who put enough effort into making Frenzy more than a meme.

Thanks for reading and I hope you can have as much fun as I have playing this way )
If you have any question, I'll do my best answering them, feel free to contact me aswell.
Have a good one!

Really great write-up and I respect your efforts to think outside the box. Though I don't explicitly see you state it anywhere, it seems to me you're implying you only use RB when you've capped your chance to crit with BT via the Taste for Blood buff and BT is already on CD (I suspect that situation is pretty rare).

Which leads to the obvious next point, this just isn't going to work with the Tier 20 set bonuses, as you would gain very little to nothing from the set bonuses due to how rarely you'd cast Raging Blow... or maybe Raging Blow would become the new priority when you had the 50% buff up? Either way, it seems like this play style has significantly less synergy with T20 than IR.... though I'm willing to admit I might be missing something.

[Emimi100]

Really great write-up and I respect your efforts to think outside the box. Though I don't explicitly see you state it anywhere, it seems to me you're implying you only use RB when you've capped your chance to crit with BT via the Taste for Blood buff and BT is already on CD (I suspect that situation is pretty rare).

Which leads to the obvious next point, this just isn't going to work with the Tier 20 set bonuses, as you would gain very little to nothing from the set bonuses due to how rarely you'd cast Raging Blow... or maybe Raging Blow would become the new priority when you had the 50% buff up? Either way, it seems like this play style has significantly less synergy with T20 than IR.... though I'm willing to admit I might be missing something.

Thank you! Your first point is actually correct. In a previous comment, I gave the amount of RB, rampages and BTs I did in my Frenzy Krosus clear and it looked like this ; 21 RBs for ~40 rampages and ~80 BTs.

And again, you're correct about the T20. T20 2p will be almost negligeable. T20 4p will be meh. And the only reason why Frenzy works at the moment is because of T19 2p. So when Tomb releases, I'll keep playing with Frenzy, might or might not dump the T19 4p (since it's not that useful anyways, you're too much enraged).
The only hope I have for Frenzy is keeping T19 2p and having Head & Legs fury legendaries. There might be some weird shenannigans with the new legendary ring, as Archimtiros stated above. But T20 was definitely not designed around Frenzy.
We will see

[Alaexaender]

Thank you! Your first point is actually correct. In a previous comment, I gave the amount of RB, rampages and BTs I did in my Frenzy Krosus clear and it looked like this ; 21 RBs for ~40 rampages and ~80 BTs.

And again, you're correct about the T20. T20 2p will be almost negligeable. T20 4p will be meh. And the only reason why Frenzy works at the moment is because of T19 2p. So when Tomb releases, I'll keep playing with Frenzy, might or might not dump the T19 4p (since it's not that useful anyways, you're too much enraged).
The only hope I have for Frenzy is keeping T19 2p and having Head & Legs fury legendaries. There might be some weird shenannigans with the new legendary ring, as Archimtiros stated above. But T20 was definitely not designed around Frenzy.
We will see

(Disclaimer: prot warrior main here, who decided he won't play fury until fs works)

I would think fs should still work in tomb. To start, haste will be higher, so not having t19 should not hurt quite as much as expected.

I would also think t20 can work for this. After one fs, an rb stack should result in higher damage from bt than a stack of fs buff would (I may be wrong about this, it could be 2 stacks). Additionally, during bc, rb will be significantly buffing bt (if you get 2 stacks of rb before the bc bt, that's an 80% increase to the base damage).

[Stanislav]

how is this build on aoe? i know WW scales like crazy with haste (think those blue bubbles in NH trash drops)

with the DOS nerfs we are going haste anyways, this could be an interesting playstyle

[Softbottom]

Frenzy now lasts 15 seconds (was 10 seconds).

I wonder how much smoother this will make the rotation/room for error.

[Emimi100]

Frenzy now lasts 15 seconds (was 10 seconds).

I wonder how much smoother this will make the rotation/room for error.

That buff to Frenzy is nice... but useless. Your errors aren't dropping Frenzy (which is an error) but

a failed opportunity to optimize the current situation

. I extremely rarely drop Frenzy. I make tons of errors. (note that dropping Frenzy happens 90% of the time because of using DoS, without it, you have no excuse)

I don't understand why 15 seconds instead of 10 seconds but ok, I guess it's "better" now.

- - - Updated - - -

how is this build on aoe? i know WW scales like crazy with haste (think those blue bubbles in NH trash drops)

with the DOS nerfs we are going haste anyways, this could be an interesting playstyle

Well to me it's simple, when you have AoE, IR becomes useless if you're spamming WW. So why take IR ?
There is a difference between constant AoE (where Frenzy would be much better) and burst AoE (where IR is probably better) but where is the limit ?
I don't know.