Fury: socketing for crit and ignoring Execute is viable?

[Mirishka]

I did Raid Finder today on my hunter, and wound up in a group with a SMF Fury warrior who pulled staggeringly high dps. He was far and away on nearly every pull, trash and boss, easily 30% or so higher than I manage on my TG Fury warrior. To put it simply, he did the highest dps I've seen anyone manage yet at 90.

After the run I looked Recount over, I wanted to get a feel for his damage sources/priorities and was surprised to see that he did not use a *single* Execute. Literally, not one. I also noticed he had a very, very high amount of Raging Blows (much higher than I average for a raid). Puzzled I went and armory'd the guy - every single one of his gems was crit rating aside from the 500 STR/sha-touched one. It left him around 29.60% crit, hit/exp soft capped, and pretty unremarkable amounts of haste/mastery. The crit gems boggled me, I have never heard of that being even remotely viable, even for Fury.

Am I missing something here? Since when is ignoring execute and gemming exclusively for crit the way to go? I keep up on the warrior stuff pretty closely (though, more tanking than anything) and this legitimately blew my mind.

[the kins man]

You pay attention to warriors and you didn't know dps warriors were supposed to gem for crit? It is going to be hard for me not to sound sarcastic with this post.

With warriors, our primary stat is strength, every piece of gear we have has strength on it. However, for gemming, strength is secondary to crit (I believe the only exception to this is when you have jcing on your toon, and you have to use the two strength jc gems.) The higher the crit, the more time you spend enraged. The more time you spend enraged, the more damage you do with the extra 10%(I believe that is it) Crit is top reforging stat and gemming stat by far.

In terms of not using execute, I have never heard that. He might be comfortable with the raging blow, priority list that he normally manages. I know when I was first learning to pick up dps at 90, as it was the first time I played a warrior, I had issues working execute into my rotation. He might be in that boat, but who knows.

[Hakto]

He should still be executing, bit hard to comment further with no figures or actual numbers.

[Mirishka]

You pay attention to warriors and you didn't know dps warriors were supposed to gem for crit? It is going to be hard for me not to sound sarcastic with this post.

Well I appreciate that you tried to not sound sarcastic.

And yes, I do follow warrior changes/posts very closely. And I have always, always read that gemming STR netted more dps than anything else - even the best dps warriors that I know (the ones in my server-first killing guilds) gemmed for STR at least as far along as Dragon Soul. The only time I knew to make an exception was for a significant STR socket bonus and even then, to use a STR hybrid gem like Inscribed/etc. So, however noobish as it makes me sound, gemming for nothing but crit is news to me.

And yes I know that crit is far and away THE best secondary stat for Fury. I just didn't realize that even applies to gemming now. Even his JC gems, btw, were crit rating.

And I see that the 0 executes is new to you as well. :P That probably struck me as odder than the gems, tbh.

---------- Post added 2013-04-21 at 08:17 AM ----------

He should still be executing, bit hard to comment further with no figures or actual numbers.

Sorry I don't track world of logs/etc for Raid Finder. :P if it helps here is his armory:

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...or/Qake/simple

He appears to be Titan Grip in it, but he definitely was SMF spec during the run, I inspected to see which weapons he was using. Had a 522 mainhand 1H, 502 offhand 1H.

This is the first time since hitting 90 that I've been in legit awe of someone else's dps. I've never made a topic like this before, if that tells you guys anything.

[Nirty999]

First sticky post on this forum: http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...-Warrior-Guide

With MoP came a change to the traditional gemming system; You obtain less primary stats per point from gems than you do secondary stats. The secondary stats on gems are double the amount of primary stats, which makes secondary stat gems(specifically crit) that much more valuable. This does not mean that strength is useless to us, because that is far from true. All it means is that when it comes to gemming, crit takes precedence because you can, point for point, obtain more value from it.
Crit is being valued so high now because both Bloodthirst and Colossus Smash critical strikes proc the Enrage buff and this is a major component of our DPS as fury because it enables the use of Raging Blow, as well as giving us increased damage while it is active. Bloodthirst has twice the critical strike chance and essentially we're aiming to get almost guaranteed enrages from BT.

[Ishamyyl]

Landsoul's spreadsheet probably rated 2 crit > 1 str for his gear finally. Kreps, method's fury warrior, gems the same way, with 2 str/crit and crit/hit gems randomly for bonuses

[meteo]

Landsoul's spreadsheet probably rated 2 crit > 1 str for his gear finally. Kreps, method's fury warrior, gems the same way, with 2 str/crit and crit/hit gems randomly for bonuses

It doesn't matter what you play. The SEP of crit will always be higher than 0.5.

[Deleted]

And yes, I do follow warrior changes/posts very closely. And I have always, always read that gemming STR netted more dps than anything else - even the best dps warriors that I know (the ones in my server-first killing guilds) gemmed for STR at least as far along as Dragon Soul. The only time I knew to make an exception was for a significant STR socket bonus and even then, to use a STR hybrid gem like Inscribed/etc. So, however noobish as it makes me sound, gemming for nothing but crit is news to me.

MoP is out for exactly six month, time to move on. Fury gems for crit because they desperately need to be enraged -> more raging blows (and don't forget that bloodthirst gets twice the amount of crit value) and arms wants more crit because they are in now danger of crit-capping with overpower and it also helps them with their fury generation (via enrage).

As far as i'm aware Deathknights are the only plate wearing class left who can gem brainlessly for strength, paladins favor haste as great as we favor crit.

On the execute thing: it's the hardest hitting ability by far, hits almost twice as hard as raging blow. Especially as SMF with it's addtional +35% damage boost, not using it at all is a ~ 10% potential damage lost.

[Angelicat]

I looked up the logs of his guild runs and he definitely uses execute. Maybe your recount/skada didn't track it for some reason?

Here's a Prim log he did http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-5l...=10001&e=10435

[Kankipappa]

On the execute thing: it's the hardest hitting ability by far, hits almost twice as hard as raging blow. Especially as SMF with it's addtional +35% damage boost, not using it at all is a ~ 10% potential damage lost.

It's all about gear and spec Imho. With TG and having good weapons but not enough AP might show this false. ON my experience, while I have horrible weapons on current standards due to my bad luck, my executes average around 3-5% on damage done. Unless my trinkets get really lucky to chain proc on execute range so I get massive AP boost, extra crit and got recklessness, then I've seen it do like 10%, especially if there is a vulnerability phase like on horridon.

Most times on my gear though a single RB with HS actually nets way more damage, what is quite sad tbh...

[Deleted]

ON my experience, while I have horrible weapons on current standards due to my bad luck, my executes average around 3-5% on damage done u

Weapon DMG has nothing to do with execute dmg

[Kankipappa]

Weapon DMG has nothing to do with execute dmg

But it does on RB and HS, what in terms should increase RB's damage compared to executes... Just for a comparison on my gear, average execute without anything else than enrage hits around 120k, RB alone does similar damage with offhand combined. Colossus brings execute to somewhere 190k, and i've seen some 220k crits without CS, 300k with CS. Enrage buff (with 30% mastery for me) and it's around 400k - trinket with 8-10 stacks + banner jumps that around to 800-900k where my RB cannot compete, since it only crits around 500k combined on 10 stacks.

However without the trinket proc my RB actually nets way more, no matter if CS is or isn't up, since with enrage + cs alone it does around 200-250k. Because RB is "quite free" on rage cost, you can hit HS there too compared to spending it to a single execute. Probably way different on SMF but that's how i've had experience with execute after 5.2 release...

[Mirishka]

I looked up the logs of his guild runs and he definitely uses execute. Maybe your recount/skada didn't track it for some reason?

Here's a Prim log he did http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-5l...=10001&e=10435

See I was thinking that too, but Execute showed up for every other warrior in that run on Recount. I actually checked them for the purpose of being sure my Recount wasn't borked somehow in regards to that spell.

In any case thanks for the replies, it was definitely an education of sorts to come across this guy.

[Darkfriend]

It's all about gear and spec Imho. With TG and having good weapons but not enough AP might show this false. ON my experience, while I have horrible weapons on current standards due to my bad luck, my executes average around 3-5% on damage done. Unless my trinkets get really lucky to chain proc on execute range so I get massive AP boost, extra crit and got recklessness, then I've seen it do like 10%, especially if there is a vulnerability phase like on horridon.

Most times on my gear though a single RB with HS actually nets way more damage, what is quite sad tbh...

You're playing a warrior poorly than. Execute phase for TG/SMF IS THE EXACT SAME. Execute is the highest DGCD ability. After all CDs are out, your execute phase is just this: 1.) Execute to prevent rage cap (instead of unbuffed WS pre execute) 2.) BT on CD (except during a CS phase) 3.) RB as they proc (except during 1 or 2 or during a CS) 4.) BT-CS-EX-EX-EX-EX while enraged instead of BT-CS-RB-BT-RB-RB.

Also, you should be gemming +320 str as a JC instead of +480 crit. At no point this current tier is the SEP of crit greater than one. As a result, +320 more strength will always be better than +320 more crit.

[Waltzinblack]

Have you lived in a fucking cave for the last year?

Infracted

[Tekkommo]

If you've actually DPSd as Fury this expansion, I cannot believe you did not know to gem Crit, you obviously don't follow Warriors closely.

He has the meta gem, so that boosts dps by quite a bit.

[FobManX]

My guess is that your Recount was factoring in lots of trash as well, and he was getting consistent 3 stack Meat Cleaver Raging Blows which do quite a bit of AOE damage.

Crit is king. Has been all expansion.

[keythstonetltq]

I stumbled upon this thread and was shocked to see that the OP had posted my very own profile (yes, this is Qake and I know my username is not close. I made it a while back and cant change it). I will clear things up for those in this thread.

I was logged out in TG on accident. I actually got the LFR off-hand in the LFR runs that day so if you looked at my stats i was over hit and expertise cap by quite a bit because I simple put them on to see how my stats changed before I mindlessly logged out. If you check again I am in the SMF gear that I was in on that LFR run the OP is describing, so he is not crazy.

We were in the second wing of ToT LFR, and the particular encounter the OP is describing was Ji'Kun. I was having fun by going to the first nest and simply grabbed the 5th set of wings (I made sure there was a healer and 3 other dps doing nests so we would not fail) and I continued to dps the boss and use the unlimited wings to grab the well fed buff every time and wail on the boss. The reason that there is no execute damage that he saw was that I died at like 23% because I used the extra action button to fly and keep up dps by avoiding down draft; but as a lot of us know if the tanks are too far from the boss and you are closest afterwards, well you are going to get hit in the face. No one rezzed me so there you have it. Every warrior executes, I was just too dead to do so.

I have been running LFR recently testing fury again since i just got the 522 1-handed weapon. I mostly raided as Arms this expansion for the simple fact that for the longest time I had only 1 epic 2 hander (522) and 2 1-handers both 502 ilvl. The logs posted by Angelicat had no crit buff and that was my first day back as fury so be gentle =)

[Mataru]

So our mystery is solved. I think the OP needs to pay more attention to fight mechanics before going "omg someone doing 200k dps on a fight where you can have over 100% dmg buff up 80% of the time". Also gemming STR with JC only gems is not necessarily always correct.

[Xanthan]

Also, you should be gemming +320 str as a JC instead of +480 crit. At no point this current tier is the SEP of crit greater than one. As a result, +320 more strength will always be better than +320 more crit.

You gem 480 crit. It's worth more than 320 strength. You can't just compare 320 strength to 320 crit and ignore the fact that using a strength JC gem means you're not using a crit gem.