5.4 Fury PVE Warrior Guide
OUT OF DATE PLEASE REFER TO THE NEW GUIDE STICKIED AT THE TOP
if you find anything wrong please let me know or if you feel anything is missing or explained poorly, any help would be appreciated.
TG VS SMF
The answer lies in the type of fight that you are doing or what the item level of the weapons you have. SMF is mildly superior with purely single target in lower to mid range ilvl, whereas TG has 10-15 percent stronger cleave/aoe and is superior single target in higher end gear (5-10%). If you have higher item level two hander then go with them and vice versa. TG also has the added benefit of extra survivability due to the extra Stamina. SMF also relies on a good execute phase (high up-time sub 20%) which might be hard to come by and most heroic fights have some sort of adds or requires burst above 20%, for this reason if you are pushing heroic content TG is favoured (but not mandatory).
Stat Priority
Below T16:
TG: Hit/Exp>Crit>Str>Mastery >>Haste=Hit
SMF: Hit/Exp>Str>Crit>Mastery>>Haste=Hit
T16 N:
SMF: Hit/Exp>Crit>=Str>Mastery>>Haste>Hit
TG: Hit/Exp>Crit>Str>=Mastery>>Haste>Hit
T16 H:
SMF: Hit/Exp>Crit>Str>=Mastery>>Haste>Hit
TG: Hit/Exp>Crit>Mastery>Str>>Haste>Hit
(This is just a general over view to get the best and accurate stat weight use a simulator, for information on how to use SimC Click
here)
Hit
will reduce your chance to miss the boss with your special attacks and white swings, white swings have a higher hit cap when dual wielding and to be capped will require 26.5% hit.
Exp
will stop your attacks from being dodged from behind and any expertise over the cap will reduce your chance to be parried from the front of the boss.
these two stats are required to stop your attacks from being avoided by the boss, even though these two stats have the highest priority they do become a priority when thinking about gemming, most of your Exp and hit will come from passive on you gear and reforging. To cap these stats you will need a rating of 7.5% or 2550 of the stat or 2210 with a weapon racial.
To gain 1% Hit or Exp you need 340 rating
Strength
Is the highest DPS gain per stat, each point of strength gives 2 attack power. Attack power increase the damage of AP based abilities such as Deep wounds, Heroic leap, Dragon Roar and Execute. Attack power also contributes to weapon damage, when calculating for ability damage for every 14 attack power you will gain 3.3 weapon damage as TG and 2.4 weapon damage as SMF. Even though you get more out of AP from TG in terms of damage, SMF has a higher percentage gain from AP I.E. SMF gains more weapon damage through AP than TG.
grid
Crit
Following very closely behind Strength, Crit is out second best dps stat, it serves more than one function in our DPS. Crit’s base function across all classes is to give the chance to double the damage of the move. The Meta applies a 3% Crit damage effect, this gets multiplied by the Crit multiplier so crits deal 6% more damage under meta. The second function for Crit is to make our BT and CS Crit giving us Enrage and Raging Blow’s, Raging Blows are the core part of our rotation, the lower the Crit chance is the more unlikely we are able to pull off the best CS combo and that’s why its recommended to have a high Crit chance when playing fury. To gain 1% Crit you will need to get 600 Crit rating, also note the when attack a boss level target your Crit will be 3% lower due to the fact the Crit diminishes in value as the targets level is higher (also known as crit depression).
Mastery
Third inline mastery increases our Physical damage while enraged, it does not buff enrage itself but adds a secondary invisible buff I.E. 10% from enrage + the invisible mastery bonus, which means it’s multiplicative when it’s being used to calculate damage. We have a base mastery of 11.20% and we gain 1% mastery every ~428 rating.
Haste
One of the lower DPS stats we have, recently buffed in 5.2 with a passive 50% bonus to all haste that comes off gear (this mean no benefit from lust), Haste increases our attack speed by diving the attack speed on our weapon with haste, the formula is as follows:
weapon speed / (1+ haste rating)
Increasing our attack speed benefits us by giving us extra rage; it also affects the ‘Real Proc Per Minute’ mechanic, RPPM’s formula is as follows:
RPPM*haste*Time since last chance to proc /60
There is an additional part to the formula that increases its Proc chance once it goes over its average ICD but it is irrelevant when concerning haste. Since haste is inputted as a percentage value, every 1% haste you gain will boosts the proc rate by 1%. So if you had a 1% Proc chance with 0% haste increasing your haste to 20% you will have a 1.2% proc chance and because of this no RPPM trink/item/enchant benefits more from haste than the others. You will need 283 Haste rating per 1% haste.
Enchants
Gems
Since Crit is relatively high compared to strength in terms of DPS gain and the fact that secondary stats on gem are doubled we rarely gem anything other than flat crit and the socket bonus has to be fairly high.
Red
Inscribed Vermilion Onyx if the bonus is above 55 strength or above 60 crit, you can also use the Crafty Vermilion Onyx if you can afford the experts.
Blue
Piercing Wild Jade if the bonus is above 60 strength/crit, If you are reforging into hit to reach a cap the threshold for gemming will be less.
Yellow
Smooth Sun's Radiance
Meta
Reverberating Primal Diamond or Capacitive Primal Diamond
Professions
The best professions for a fury Warrior are; Blacksmithing and Engineering. Blacksmithing gives you an additional two sockets which will allow you to gain an extra 640 crit, which is the highest stat gain out of any profession. Engineering will give you 1920 strength for 10 seconds once every minute, this will equal out to 320 strength, the same stat bonus as all the other professions (but skinning). But due to the ability to stack it up with trinkets/BB/DR it makes it a better choice. Skinning is the third best profession as the 480 crit bonus outweighs the 320 strength bonus of other professions.
Talents
This is a quick selection of talents, there are multiple chosen because they are either equally good or in the case of t60 ones AoE and the other is single target. For more info read below.
Tier One
This tier of talents is based around movement by modifying your charge; the choice of this tier will most likely be double time. Juggernaut is only better than double time when you have to constantly charge every 12-15 seconds, which is very rare. Double time will allow you to charge twice and cover a greater distance in a short amount of time.
Juggernaut reduces the cooldown of your charge by 8 seconds making charge a 12 second CD.
Warbringer is fairly useless in PvE as it doesn’t increase your movement but instead slows and stuns the target.
Double Time allows you to charge twice, and will recharge one charge at a time, meaning if you use one charge it will take 20 seconds to get back to two charges and if you use two charges it will take you 40 second to get back to two charges. If you charge twice within 12 seconds of each other you will not gain rage from the second charge.
Tier Two
This tier is focused around healing, for this tier Impending victory and Enraged regeneration are the two main choices, Impeding victory will do the most healing but requires a GCD and is used as a filler in your rotation while Enrage regeneration is more on demand healing.
Enraged Regeneration is burst heal that can be used to save yourself after taking a large hit, Enrage Regeneration will heal a total of 20% (10% instant 10% HoT) every one minute while enraged or 10% if used otherwise (5% instant 5% HoT) (this was changed to eliminate the 30 rage cost).
Second Wind has the most healing output if you are in a situation where you find yourself below 35% often and because of that it is also one of the weakest in the tier and shouldn’t be used unless it’s on a fight like chimaeron.
Impending victory allows you to use a 3/4th victory rush every 30 seconds, it has a higher total healing output than Enraged regeneration, It also does damage to the target.
Tier Three
This Tier is all about control, this one also has no clear winner and is all dependent on the boss you are on.
Staggering should roots all targets that have been snared, this talent isn’t the best choice for PvE as most adds cannot be rooted and if they can be its more than likely this talent will do more harm them good as rooted targets will swap targets if the tank is out of range.
Piercing Howl will snare all targets in 15 yards at the cost of 10 rage, if you need to slow a pack of adds then use this talent.
Disrupting shout is an AoE interrupt on a 40 second cooldown; this talent is the best option out of the three (on a general fight) if there isn’t a need for Piercing Howl.
Tier Four
This is the First tier that is dedicated to damage and focuses around AoE abilities, for this tier pick blade storm for AoE, shockwave if adds need to be stunned or Dragon Roar for single target.
Blade storm is a channeled AoE whirlwind and it inhibits the use of other abilities except for shouts, It does the most damage out of the whole tier but it takes 6 seconds to complete. As TG this talent does a considerable amount of damage that a fight that has any sort of adds this talent will be the best choice. This talent is also the best single target for moderately geared TG warriors and should be used after the first BT after a CS cycle. for more info check out Why Bladestorm
Shockwave is Second in the tier and is the weakest and with the recent nerf it’s even worse, its only function would be to stun a group of adds and it’s very situational. If you don’t manage to hit at least three targets with Shockwave then the cool down will be 40 seconds.
Dragon roar is the best single target for SMF warriors and Low crit warriors, For TG you want to us bladestorm instead if in moderate gear. Dragon Roar will always Crit (Added benefit from Skull Banner) and is one of the highest damaging abilities a warriors has (per gcd). In an AoE situation Dragon Roar suffers from diminishing returns, so the damage per target diminishes as the amount of targets increase and at 10 targets and above the damage stays the same and gets divided between the targets.
Tier Five
This tier is the defensive tier; this one is up to you and is entirely situational/personal preference.
Mass Spell Reflect will reflect all spells incoming to your raid, the problem with this that almost all bosses will not be affected by this and most adds will also not be affected by it, making this talent a poor choice for PvE.
Safeguard Replaces your intervene but add a 20% damage reduction to the target and removes all roots on you, this talent is good for mobility but can’t really be used on anyone who is a tank (you will die).
Reduces the damage taken by the target by 30% and no longer transfers that, this talent is the most useful as a DPS warrior.
Tier Six
This tier is all about cool downs, the best for this tier is Bloodbath for AoE and Stormbolt for single target.
adds a 30% Bleed on the target based on the damage you deal to the target and it’s a rolling bleed (will be explained later in the guide) so the priority which you use abilities does not matter. Being on a one minute cool down it can stack up with DR, Synapse Springs and other trinkets.
Avatar is a 20% damage increase for 24 seconds, while it would seem that this would be a good talent but due to how our rotation works 14 seconds of this buff gets unused (6 seconds of the 1st CS and 4 seconds of the 2nd CS), because of this avatar would mainly be used for large packs of AoE but even then Blood Bath would line up better with Bladestorm.
Storm Bolt is a hard hitting move on a 30 second cool down and as TG it can hit as hard as an Execute but it takes up a global cool down inside your CS. This is the best single target option for TG warriors, SMF will pick this up when they get a Evil Eye of Galakras
Glyphs
Damage
The glyphs below are the ones that directly affect the amount of damage you will do in both single and multi-target situations.
Not as good as it used to be but it is still one of the better glyphs, reducing the CD of heroic leap down 15 seconds from 45 to 30 seconds. This glyph increases mobility as well as damage and is very potent when encountering AoE situations.
The only must have glyph, increasing the rage cap from 100 to 120 allows you to pool more rage for your CS combo’s and gives you more breathing room when dealing with rage gains and managing your rage.
Raging Wind Whirl Wind will do more damage than a Wild Strike as TG but can only be used after a raging blow. As for SMF this glyph only becomes usable when you face an AoE or cleave encounter.
This glyph has been a topic of popular discussion, This is the only glyph we have that is a DPS decrease. The case for using it before was to not waste the crit when concerning BT crit rate. The glyph takes away a portion of the crit and gives you an added duration, this added duration mostly goes to waste as it will only buff our Suboptimal zone in our DPS rotation (outside of CS).
Increases the rage from your charge by 15 rage from 20 to 35 rage, the affect only adds an addition rage to a charge meaning that a double time charge that occurs before 12 seconds after the first charge will not receive the benefit.
This glyph will be you’re number one choice if the group you’re in doesn’t have someone who actively sunders the target.
This glyph is a hefty DPS increase if you are able to interrupt your target frequently, but unfortunately there isn’t many fights where this glyph can be used to its full potential.
Utility
I’ve only included two glyphs in this section under utility as I feel these are the only glyphs can be used in a general sense, the other glyphs are either completely useless or are too niche to discus (but will if there is a demand).
The glyph of Bloodthirst increase the healing done by your Bloodthirst by 100% from 1% to 2%, this will equal out to .5% health per second gain.
Enraged speed increases your run speed by 20% while you’re enraged, since we have a high uptime on enrage (75-90%) this glyph can prove useful and can increase your dps on a movement fights.
All minor glyphs are optional, but you should probably go with blazing speed, it’s cool.
Rotation
Our rotation is split into three different phases; Opening/Burst, Normal and execute. Burst is the opener rotation and also the rotation you will use every minute. The normal rotation is what you will use every other time and the execute rotation is kind of self-explanatory. To excel at a Fury Warrior requires a lot of planning ahead and timing of CD, trinkets (to line them up with the CS combo) and how long till execute phase when concerning Recklessness.
Outside of CS is when we pool rage for the next CS, if you don’t meet any of the filler requirements you should just wait till the next BT.
The rage threshold for the fillers is up to you, if you are good at managing your rage then 70-80 will be fine, if you aren’t so great at managing rage then 50 will be a safe number and give you time to react to rage gains. I would also recommend using a lower rage threshold for TG as the rage gains are sporadic.
These rotations are the Core Basis of the rotations, Things such as Tier bonuses and Trinkets will slightly modify how the rotation plays out.
Main Rotation
The main rotation is the bread and butter of our rotation, you will use when you have CS up and the target is above 20% health, it revolves around using 3 Raging Blows inside of a CS and using as many heroics strikes as possible while the CS debuff is up.
Opener Rotation
Normal Rotation
The reason why you use the raging blow after the CS combo is because the duration of the Raging Blow isn’t long enough to reach the next CS and it will also benefit from buff that are still up. If you are TG use a Whirl Wind instead of a Wild Strike if you have the Raging Wind buff.
Execute Rotation
Execute Filler Priority
You never want to use a non-Bloodsurge Wild Strike during execute phase, if you find yourself in the situation where you have enough rage to constantly execute DO NOT Completly skip BT, while you might think that it would be a gain to skip it the loss of the enrage from BT will net a greater loss due to low enrage uptime, delaying BT by one GCD can help reduce the over cap rage as well as providing the most DPE as DPR is irrelevant in this situation.during a period like this it is safe to heroic strike frequently.
AoE Rotation
Dealing with Raging blows and BloodSurge
Whenever you get two Raging Blow stacks and a BloodSurge at the same time or you get a Bloodsurge during your CS combo you will want to use one charge of Raging Blow and two charge of Bloodsurges and have a 0.5 delay on your next Bloodthirst. Don’t worry about clipping your Bloodsurge as the possibility of clipping a Raging Blow would be worse.
Storm Bolt placement
With storm bolt being buffed in 5.4 and becoming the best single target ability from the tier 90 talents we have to change parts of our rotation to accommodate the GCD it has. Storm bolt should be used on CD which means without the evil eye of galakras trinket there will be storm bolts used outside of CS, but has no meaningful change on the rotation outside of CS. Storm bolt also changes the way we stack our raging blow charges, when SB is going to be up for the next CS cycle( all the time with normal + evil eye of galakras trinket) we don't need to pool one charge of raging blow as the storm bolt will replace the third RB.
Inside execute put SB anywhere during CS, but if the if the situation arises where an AP proc wont last the full duration of the CS make sure SB goes in the last slot in the CS cycle as it doesn't benefit from AP as much as Execute does.
Berserker rage
Originally it was thought that using Berserker rage to fill in the times where you weren’t enraged was the best use, but this is not completely( for a majority of players). The proper use for berserker rage is to fill in the gaps where you don’t have a third raging blow in your CS combo, the only time you will need to use it for anything other than this is when your CS doesn’t crit when you’re in execute phase as the enrage from the BT won’t last for the entire 4 executes. When you reach the 3 RB crit cap BZR is usable as a way to fill in the spots where you aren't enraged.
Macros
Here are some macros that improve the quality of life for a warrior.
DR + Bloodbath
#showtooltip
/cast Bloodbath
/use 10
/cast Dragon Roar
T60 macro
Code:
#showtooltip
/cast Dragon Roar
/cast Shockwave
/cast Bladestorm
/run local G=GetSpellInfo SetMacroSpell("T60", G"Bladestorm" or G"Shockwave" or "Dragon Roar")
NOTE: name of this macro HAS to be "t60" or it will not work
BB macro with engineering
Code:
#showtooltip Bloodbath
/cast Bloodbath
/use 10
Pummel Macro
Code:
#showtooltip Pummel
/cast [@focus, harm, exists][@target] Pummel
Swifty Macro (CD macro)
Code:
#showtooltip Recklessness
/cast Recklessness
/use 13
/use 14
/cast avatar
/cast Blood Fury
How stuff works/FAQ
**More of an addendum to the guide explaining how some mechanics work and will be a part of a FAQ**
Bleeds
A rolling bleed is where the damage over time left on the current bleed is added to the new bleed and the timer resets, for example if you have a bleed that bleeds for 30K over 10 seconds every second. 5 seconds into the buff you refresh it with another 30k bleed, A rolling bleed will take the damage left on the previous bleed and add it to the new one, The damage left on the bleed would be 15k, this will be added to the new bleed and that will tick for 45k over 10 seconds. This is why it doesn’t matter I which order you use abilities inside of a Blood Bath.
Deep wounds is a rolling bleed but instead of damage it rolls time, unlike a typical rolling bleed Deep wounds won’t add the damage from the old bleed, but instead add the time it will take for the bleed to tick again and add that onto the new Bleed, for example you have deep wound on the target and its 2.5 seconds till the next tick, when you apply deep wounds again instead of being a 15 debuff it will now be a 17.5 second debuff. This was done so you can never clip your deep wounds.
Colossus
Colossus smash makes all of the warrior’s attacks ignore the opponent’s armor for 6.5 seconds, with the Debuff recently being buffed to 6.5 seconds (it use to have a delay before it applied making it last just as long) it allows you to use four GCD’s inside the debuff. The ability to put 4 GCDs into a CS shapes our rotation greatly, we do 6.5 seconds of damage every 20 seconds and the rest of the time we are white swinging, using free moves or preventing rage cap.
But what is 100% armor reduction in terms or raw DPS gain? Well, The formula for armor reduction is as follows
DamageReduction = TargetArmor / (TargetArmor + 4037.5*AttackerLevel – 317117.5)
the armor for a level 93 mob is 24835 but with sunders its 21854.8, this means the damage reduction from armor for a mob is 32.08%, which means you will gain 32.08% damage increase while CS is up, this plays into the Heroic Strike VS Wild Strike.
Heroic Strike VS Wild Strike
The reason why you should never use Wild Strike unless you are about to rage cap is because heroic strike does more damage inside a CS than Wild Strike outside of a CS.
Using the gear I have currently I will show the difference between a HS inside of a CS VS a Wild Strike outside of a CS. The formula to calculate the damage of abilities is:
(weapon damage + ap/14 * Normalised weapon speed + base damage) * modifiers
In the formula I’ll be ignoring any modifier that benefits both abilities (just makes it simpler).
Heroic Strike Outside a CS: ((8674 + 16110)/2 +36058/14 * 2.4 + 769)*1.54*0.6782 = 20,187
Heroic Strike Inside a CS: ((8674 + 16110)/2 +36058/14 * 2.4 + 769)*1.54 = 29,766
Wild Strike Outside a CS: ((8674 + 16110)/2 +36058/14 *2.4+1003)*2.30*0.5*0.6782*1.35*1.25 = 25,747
While the numbers seem small they are proportionately the same to live, as I stated before this was done without modifiers that benefits both spells and this is also done without buff so the numbers will seem closer together then what they are. But as you can see a heroic strike does a large amount of damage inside a CS compared to Wild Strike Outside of a CS.
RPPM
Stands for ‘Real Proc Per Minute’ and is the replacement for the old PPM or proc per minute system, Instead of having the proc chance based of weapon speed (favored slower weapons) it is now based off the time since you had the last proc and haste. this was in an effort to make Procs more random and to make classes have an average proc rate no matter how fast they were attacking or the amount of targets, but this has not been successful and hurts the warrior class in terms of the benefit we gain from these trinkets as we stack everything into burst and losing the ability to predict Procs affects this greatly.
In 5.4 RPPM had a major change that affected the usefulness of haste in the RPPM processes, Before 5.4 Haste affected ALL RPPM based procs, It has now changed that it only affects the proc chance of RPPM Procs that Don't cause a Bonus in stats, this means Trinkets that have a proc of strength with no longer benefit from haste. to make up for this all previous trinkets were buffed to off set the affects of haste, But things like LGM or Legendary cloak still benefit from haste.
Windsong/Dancing steel VS Dancing steel x2
So the theory behind this was that the Crit proc Windsong was better than having another dancing steel and the other two stats from Windsong were “a cherry on the top”, but unfortunately this isn’t true. With the new functionality of RPPM each RPPM can proc off of any move, regardless of which hand it’s on I.E. an off-hand move (wild strike) can proc a Main hand enchant and Each enchant has its own separate ID (so an off hand wont override a Main hand proc), which means there isn’t anything inhibiting the use of a doubled up enchant. So if the crit from Windsong was better than a second Dancing Steel, you would roll double Windsong instead. When the first iteration of RPPM came out this was the right way to go (each weapon enchant shared the same buff), Windsong is no longer an optimal enchant for a DPS warrior. The only reason to use it is if one cannot afford Dancing Steel, at the cost of sacrificing DPS.
RAGE
Whether you’re TG or SMF you will gain ~5 rage per second (assuming you don’t miss), the rage you get per swing is based off the attack speed of the weapon. The main hand will gain a RPS (rage per second) of ~3.5 knowing this means we can calculate the amount of rage you will gain per swing depending on the speed of the weapon which means for SMF you will gain 9 rage per swing and TG will you gain ~12.6 rage per swing . For the off hand you will gain Half of the rage as you would for the main hand (1.75 RPS), TG off hand swing will give you ~6.3 rage and SMF off hand swing will give you ~4.55 rage. The decimal proportion of the calculation is banked, so when you swing for 4.55 rage you will only see 4 rage, but the next off hand swing you will gain 5 rage.
Weapon syncing for 4 flurry
Normally when you auto attack the off hand swing will be offset by half of its swings speed I.E. a 2.6 speed weapon *will be offset by 1.3 seconds, This is a mechanic to prevent weapon syncing. You can gain an added benefit (very minor) from flurry when both weapons are synced together as you can have 4 swings consume 3 charges of flurry. This is done because the first swing with two weapons will consume two charges of flurry and the next swing will benefit from flurry while only consuming the one charge left on the flurry. Syncing weapons is usually done by starting combat with one weapon equipped then equipping the other weapon and suffering the global cool down penalty.
Berserker Stance
Berserker stance gives you 1 rage per 1% health lost, this affect does not go through absorbs or any mitigation. You want to switch into berserker stance when you are taking heavy damage that is equal to or greater than 2.5% of your health per second. While there aren’t many fights like elegon where you take a constant high amount of damage, berserker stance is still useful when take high amounts of burst damage E.g. Ji-kuns quills, High burst damage will also be a time where raid cds will be used and could make switching into berserker stance a DPS loss, You will hate spirit shell.
Item Upgrades
This one is pretty simple, you want to upgrade the items that will give you the most benefit and with the upcoming changes to item upgrade you won’t need to hold onto valor and only upgrade BiS items as the cost has been reduced by 1/3rd . The general guide lines for upgrading items as a warrior are Weapons > Trinkets > Chest/legs > Helm > Gloves/Belt > Shoulders > boots > the rest.
Alternative rotations
The Rotations that were put in the top part of the guide are meant for a general basis for our rotation, Trinkets and other situations can cause our opener to chage.
Alternative rotation 1
This rotation maximizes every CD we have, but is harder to pull off and requires good timing. If you have higher latency you can easily push the DR outside of synapse/skull banner causing this rotation to be less than the core rotation.
Extending BT cycles in high/infinite rage scenarios
When we go into a high rage or infinite rage period due to our berserker stance, we change the rotation to make the most benefit out of the extra rage. This can be achieved by using moves that have a higher DPE (damage per execute) rather than the normal DPR (damage per rage). In the normal rotation the Rage threshold for wild strike will become lower and in infinite rage scenario’s you will want to wild strike as your main filler and dumping rage into heroic strike if needed, the HS threshold for this will be around the same as the threshold of WS in your normal rotation.
For execute phase and AoE (not cleave) phases we can extend the time between BT as we don’t need as many raging blows/ none at all, as well as using the highest DPE.
(doubling up on time lines to save trees)
Since enrage has a delay on when it’s applied It can last for 4 globals after the BT/CS crit. This means we can Extend the BT cycle to 4 Globals. At 7.5 second the BT didn’t crit so there is only two globals between the BTs. This can be modified to three globals between BT if your rage income isn’t high enough to support 4 but is still high enough that you would cap doing two.
Expertise/Hit Gemming to gain extra second Priority stats
When you reforge to get to an expertise or hit cap you’re taking away from a stat that could be reforged into the second inline stat in your reforging Priority (we will call this stat B, this would be mastery for warrior’s). E.g. I have a pair of legs with crit/haste, if I was under exp cap the haste would be reforged to EXP to get me to EXP cap, If I instead gem exp/crit that haste would then be reforged in mastery. So by gemming expertise/hit you sacrifice 160/80 of stat A to gain 160 of stat B .
This Gemming method requires three things:
- Under Expertise OR hit cap without gemming or reforging
- Socket bonuses worth getting; I.E. Stat B + socket bonus > A
E.g. 160 mastery + 60 str > 160 crit - When going for exp 160 Stat B needs to be worth more than 80 str (doesn’t apply to hit since there isn’t a second option for gemming green).
To show when this method is effective ill use some example that you will encounter often while gemming:
Example stat weights (taken from a Sim of my own gear):
Str: 4.91
Crit: 5.04
Mastery: 4.50
Red socket 60 str bonus:
Gemming crit: 320*5.04 = 1612.8
Gemming STR/CRIT: (160*5.04) + (80 * 4.91) +(60* 4.91) = 1430.8
Gemming EXP/CRIT converting exp to mastery: (160*4.5)+(160*5.04)+(60*4.91)= 1820.6
As you can see by gemming into exp you gain 200 more points then you would if you went just straight crit.
Hit roll tables
What is a hit roll table?
Basically the hit roll table is the way that wow determines the outcome of an attack, the hit roll table is easy to understand at a base level but might be a bit confusing to understand how it works when first looking into it, and one might assume that the table rolls one table row at a time then move on. The hit table assigns a number to the specified part of the roll table and gives it a number corresponding to its percentage. The special attack table rolls twice to determine the outcome of an ability, it rolls once to determine if the attack was avoided then rolls again to check it the attack would crit.
This plays into one of the main crit caps.
White Hit roll table base values
Roll type |
Percentage/number |
Miss |
7.5% |
Dodge |
7.5% |
Parry |
7.5% |
Glancing |
24% |
Block |
5% |
Crit |
Crit chance |
Hit |
100- Sum |
Here's and example of how it works with a character's stats:
Roll type |
Percentage/number |
Miss |
- |
Dodge |
0.01-5.00 |
Parry |
- |
Glancing |
5.01-30.00 |
Block |
- |
Crit |
30.01-80.00 |
Hit |
80.01-100.00 |
after each part of the table has been designated a number it will now roll between 0 - 100 to determine the result of the attack
Now using the chances for the yellow hit table:
Roll one:
Roll type |
Percentage/number |
Miss |
- |
Dodge |
0.01-5.00 |
Parry |
- |
Block |
- |
Successful attack |
5.01-100.00 |
Roll Two:
Roll type |
Percentage/number |
Crit |
0.01-50.00 |
Hit |
50.01-100.00 |
So what does this have to do with crit caps?
One of the crit caps for every physical based classes is the white crit cap, where essential every white swing is a crit and crit no longer benefits auto attacks. This happens because glancing blows are un avoidable and is higher on the hit roll table, for a class with 0% miss on white swings the crit cap is 76%, but since fury has two weapons the crit hit cap is much lower and is equal to 24 + miss chance - 100. If you have 20% miss chance with white swings your white crit cap will be 56% crit. Crit depression is supposed to go after the roll and cause you white swings to become hits 3% of the time.
RB VS Execute
With the hotfix to RB (20% buff) shortly after 5.4, Raging blow has become noticeable stronger and damage wise coming close to execute which brings up the question where you should use RB over execute.
When your weapons and gear are equivalent Execute will always come out as our top damaging move, but if there is a large disparity between the ilvl of your weapon and your gear the damage can be more slanted towards RB. Make sure you are checking the numbers correctly, and not just what you see on screen (use logs) when making sure what does more damage.
RB + HS VS exe
A popular discussion that has popped up after the RB buff was the fact that a RB + HS did more damage than a execute alone therefore it should be used inside CS over execute, while we do focus to get the most damage out of our CS this statement is untrue. Using HS inside CS sub 20% will reduce how many executes we can do outside of CS. The only time you would HS inside CS sub 20% would be when you going to cap or HS does more damage than execute (both unlikely).
So what happens IF my RB does more damage than Execute?
When RB hits harder than execute the rotation changes so that RB is maximized during CS, it plays out close to what the pre sub 20% rotation but executes replace the BT’s in the rotation and we don’t use heroic strike during CS. When you have an AP proc from a trinket execute takes priority during the CS due to execute gaining more damage from AP then RB does.
Special thanks to:
Chapterhouse
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Roseby