Fury Warrior Guide (PvE)

[Devro]

Please Sticky if this guide pleases the Warrior community.

Fury Warrior Guide (PvE)

By Devro

Shameless Self-Promotion: http://furiouswarrior.blogspot.com/ (My Blog)

I created this guide because everywhere I look I see a lack of information or incorrect information being thrown around regarding Fury Warrior advice. Hell, before I joined my current guild, in mid-Burning Crusade through early Wrath of the Lich King, a real life friend of mine made the comment “lawl Warrior DPS, we haven’t got any of that” (paraphrased of course). Now things are different as many people are opened up again to Fury Warrior DPS in WotLK especially with current gear and itemization. Now that Fury Warriors have established themselves as powerful DPS forces to be reckoned with, we now have to deal with the misinformation that is filtered about the internet so that even the most novice of players can take their character and not embarrass the hell out of our class and spec. :P

Contents (Try using Ctrl-F to search faster):

I. Itemization
-Ia. *+Hit
-Ib. *Expertise
-Ic. *Armor Penetration and Strength (MR/GT Explanation Here)
-Id. *Critical Strike
-Ie. *Haste

II. Rotation

III. Gemming

IV. Talent Specialization

V. Glyphs

I. Itemization

This is probably the most argued point of a Fury Warrior and I feel that it’s best to discuss and explain it now and get it over with rather than leave it for the middle or end of this guide (I refer to the Armor Penetration vs. Strength discussion/argument). In my opinion, ranged DPS has an easier time of gearing than melee DPS. Why? I blame Expertise mostly, a stat that has no ranged DPS opposite (think yin-yang), but is a stat that is necessary for melee regardless (you’re welcome to blame whatever or whoever you’d like, but there will be no changes until the new expansion, Cataclysm).


This section will have a short version and a long version. The short version will just tell you which stats you want while the long version will go into why you should want that particular stat. The following starts will be discussed in order of importance from most important to least important.

Short Version

8% +hit – 3% from 3/3 Precision + 164 hit rating (with no Draenei aura) – 3% from 3/3 Precision + 132 hit rating + 1% from Draenei Aura

26 Expertise - ~213 Rating (try for at least 20)

Armor Penetration/Strength – Over 680 passive ArP rating, stack ArP, if not, stack Strength – If you have Grim Toll, stack 788 ArP – If you have Mjolnir Runestone, stack 735 ArP – If you have Needle-Encrusted Scorpion, stack 722 ArP

Critical Strike Rating

Haste Rating

Long Version

Ia. *+Hit

8% +hit is the required amount of hit so that you do not miss with a special attack. As a Fury Warrior, hitting with these attacks are important because they generate the majority of damage for your character/class. On specific fights, I’ve personally done over 50% damage from just Cleave and Whirlwind alone! Missing these attacks is very detrimental to your DPS because you spend rage to use those abilities and the cooldowns but they yield no damage in your favor. So the first thing any Fury Warrior should work to accomplish is to collect 8% +hit.

*NOTE* Fury Warriors get a little help when it comes to +hit. The talent, Precision (3 points maximum) gives you 3% +hit. Beware, even if you have points in this talent, it does NOT show up on your character sheet, so you must keep track of that yourself. I would recommend getting 3 points into Precision because it allows you to focus on other stats that make your character more powerful. 1% of +hit is equal to 32.79 hit rating at level 80, which saves you from collecting almost 100 hit rating from gear/enchants that could be easily used on something else. With 3/3 Precision, you will need to collect 5% +hit to get up to 8%. 5% +hit is equal to 164 hit rating (you actually only need 163.95 but you can’t get less than whole numbers for hit rating). If you can consistently rely on being in a group with a Draenei for their +1% hit aura (or you are a Draenei yourself), then you could drop as low as 132 hit rating. Personally, I prefer not to rely on being in a group with a Draenei so that I never have to worry about being placed into a group with a Draenei just to keep up my DPS.

Ib. *Expertise

Next comes the Expertise stat. Expertise can be thought of as similar to +hit and hit rating. The stat itself reduces the chance for enemies to parry or dodge your attacks. Like with +hit, if you don’t hit your target, you don’t do damage, so maximizing your chance to hit with your special attacks is your priority. So in essence, parry = bad, dodge = bad and miss = bad. Hopefully by now, you’ve already gotten 8% +hit, so you shouldn’t have to worry about that anymore. As melee DPS, it is almost always better to attack from behind your target. Why? If you are attacking from the rear 180 degrees of the target, you don’t have to worry about your target parrying your attack. If the enemy parries your attack, you deal no damage for that attack. So, if you attack from behind the target, you won’t have to worry about parries anymore, which leaves dodge. It takes 26 Expertise (points, ~213 Expertise rating) to nullify the dodge chance of raid bosses (level 83 targets). While having 26 Expertise is not as crucial as having +8% hit, due to a lack of Expertise gear in low level content, you should still focus on accumulating as much as you can without going over 26.

*NOTE* Remember that certain races get racial bonuses that add Expertise if you use certain weapons. Orcs get +5 Expertise for using axes and/or fist weapons, Dwarves get +5 Expertise for using maces and Humans get +3 Expertise for using swords and/or maces. If you are using the correct race/weapon combination, the Expertise bonus WILL show up on your character sheet, so be forewarned.

Ic. *Armor Penetration and Strength

Now comes the most controversial part of Fury Warrior itemization, Armor Penetration (abbreviated at ArP in the future) and Strength. Simply stated, ArP is a stat that sucks unless you have quite a bit of it, at which point, it becomes a better stat to have than Strength. Many people will encourage stacking Strength items and gems, which is fine, but you won’t have higher DPS than someone who stacks ArP (and has a large amount of it) instead of Strength. Think of it this way: Strength gives you Attack Power which directly affects the damage of your Bloodthirst ability. Attack Power also increases your weapon damage which increases the damage of your other abilities (all of which are weapon damage or weapon damage + bonus abilities). Remember, all of these attacks are mitigated by the target’s armor, which reduces the amount of damage you can deal. ArP on the other hand, allows you to reduce the amount of armor that affects your attacks, allowing you to do more damage with each attack. At low levels of ArP (under 680 rating), the amount of armor that is reduced does not have as great of a marginal benefit as does stacking Strength. However, if you have more than 680 ArP rating, then the marginal benefit of having more ArP becomes greater than that of Strength. So the lesson is, if you have less than 680 ArP rating from gear, then stack Strength gear/gems. If you have more than 680 ArP rating from gear, then stack ArP gear/gems.

*NOTE* Sunders, Expose Armor and Faerie Fire are calculated BEFORE Armor Penetration is calculated, therefore you do not want to just gear/gem for 75% and let Sunders/FF take care of the other 25% because it does NOT work that way.

*Grim Toll and Mjolnir Runestone and Needle-Encrusted Scorpion

Three trinkets serve as special cases for the Fury Warrior: Grim Toll, Mjolnir Runestone, and Needle-Encrusted Scorpion. Each trinket, when procced, gives Armor Penetration rating. If you have one of these two trinkets, you will want to gear/gem yourself so that you have 100% ArP/1400 ArP rating with the proc. When you have over 100% ArP, nothing extra happens (no bonus armor is reduced past 100%), therefore you are wasting anything that goes beyond 100% or 1400 rating. If you have the Grim Toll, you will want to have 788 ArP rating to reach 100% with the proc and if you have the Mjolnir Runestone, you will want to have 735 ArP rating to reach 100%. If you have the Needle-Encrusted Scorpion, you will want to have 722 ArP rating to reach 100%.

*NOTE* It is my personal opinion (if possible) to stack passive ArP to as close to 100% as possible without the Grim Toll, Mjolnir Runestone or Needle-Encrusted Scorpion trinkets. Why? With these two trinkets, you are relying on a proc to deal your maximum DPS. Even if the uptime of the proc was 50% (which I am sure is less than 50%), your average % of ArP for the fight would be 75% ArP. If you could accumulate enough passive ArP to have more than 75% all the time, you would certainly do more DPS than someone relying on a proc. So if you have the chance for a Grim Toll or Mjolnir Runestone, I say go for it, but at some point, you may need to be prepared to drop the trinket in favor of passive ArP for more substantial DPS increases. Be forewarned though: I find it much easier to gear around having one of these three trinkets instead of trying to maximize your DPS via stacking as much passive ArP as possible (due to the way +hit and ArP stats are rarely together).

Id. *Critical Strike

Critical Strike rating is something that just comes with time. I wouldn’t ever suggest gemming for Crit as Fury and therefore is near the bottom of importance of the itemization list. It is, however, a better stat than Haste rating because crits deal up to 2.23x damage (talented with Impale and 3% from meta gem).

Ie. *Haste

Haste increases the speed of your normal attacks and Heroic Strike (which is an “on next swing” attack). Other than this, Haste does nothing and there are no significant gains to your swing timer from a few points of the stat and is considered the worst of the stats on this list. Haste does a lot more for casters than melee so try to avoid Haste in favor of another stat if you can, but please do NOT refuse an item because it has haste if it is still a decent upgrade over what you already have.

II. Rotation

A Fury Warrior has 15 abilities that they use quite often and I would suggest that these abilities be on your action bars at all times. They are:

Intercept – Whirlwind – Slam – Heroic Strike – Pummel – Sunder Armor – Recklessness – Bloodthirst – Execute – Cleave – Berserker Rage – Bloodrage – Victory Rush – Heroic Throw – Death Wish

Of these abilities, 5 of them will be used more than the others and they are (in order of most used):

Bloodthirst – Whirlwind – Heroic Strike/Cleave – Slam

Many people will state that you should open up with a Whirlwind and then follow that with a Bloodthirst. On boss encounters, I have found this to make little difference as long as you make sure to always use Whirlwind and Bloodthirst when they are off cooldown and to always make sure you have enough rage to use those abilities when they are off cooldown. At my gear level, I can use Heroic Strike (single target) or Cleave (two targets or more) almost all the time because of my rage generation. I also use Slam as soon as I can get the proc because other abilities can proc the instant Slam and I have gotten 3-4 Slam procs in a row from just using Heroic Strike and Slam.

*NOTE* A helpful macro to avoid channeling Slam when you don’t have a Slam proc:

/stopcasting

/cast Slam

/stopcasting

Bloodrage and Berserker Rage should be used whenever you need more rage. Victory Rush can be used if you have other abilities on cooldown (occurs more often in heroics than raids). Pummel can be helpful but many guilds employ rogues and shaman to take care of that duty. Heroic Throw should be timed right after you swing your normal attacks since it can reset your swing timer.

Death Wish and Recklessness are best timed for when Heroism/Bloodlust is used, however your DPS will surely benefit if you can get more than 1 Death Wish in per encounter and even more-so if you can time one of the two or three Death Wish uses with a Heroism/Bloodlust. Also, using a Potion of Speed along with Death Wish, Recklessness and Heroism yields excellent burst DPS.

Example: In my Trial of the Grand Crusader 25 group (which is heroic ToC 25), I have enough time to use Death Wish on Phase 1 of the Northrend Beasts and have it ready to be used again in conjunction with Heroism on Phase 2 with Acidmaw and then ready to be used again during Phase 3 with Icehowl. This would obviously yield a higher DPS than saving your first Death Wish on Phase 1 to make sure to be ready for Phase 2’s Heroism.

III. Gemming

1: Use the Relentless Earthsiege Diamond - always. (21 agi + 3% increased crit damage)
Why? Because it only takes 1 gem of each color (red, yellow and blue) and can easily be filled by using a Nightmare Tear, explained below. The Chaotic Skyflare Diamond requires 2 blue gems to be used which means you will need to use two purple or blue gems to fulfill the requirement (reasoning explained in #4).

2: Use a Nightmare Tear (+10 to all stats) to fulfill meta gem requirements - always.

2b: Equip a Nightmare Tear in your helm only if the non-meta gem socket is anything but red.
Why? Because you can easily put a +20 Strength, Expertise or Armor Penetration gem in that red socket to get the bonus of socket bonus and save your Nightmare Tear for another slot where you wouldn't normally get the bonus by gemming straight Strength or Expertise.

3: Never gem for a socket bonus unless the bonus gives you +Strength or Armor Penetration (if you have enough ArP to begin with, otherwise stick to Strength).

+Hit, +Crit, +Stamina, +Haste are all useless bonuses to avoid gemming for +Strength or Expertise because the marginal benefit you gain from that +4 Hit rating will not be worth the marginal loss of 20 Strength (which is equal to more than 58 Attack Power with raid buffs). If you really can't miss a +Strength socket bonus, then use an Ametrine cut with +Strength/Crit, +Expertise/Crit or something similar so you at least get some Strength or Expertise out of it instead of losing an entire gem's worth.

4: Don't ever use Blue or Purple gems.
Why? Purple includes the base color of blue, which equals stamina for melee (for the most part). Stamina is a mostly wasted stat in terms of pure DPS and often times socketing purple gems to get a socket bonus is not worth the marginal DPS loss of just using a pure gem like +Str or +Expertise. Blue is obviously worse than purple because it will most likely be a stamina gem and not giving you any DPS benefit.

IV. Talent Specialization

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#LN0hz...zeRVzAo:MGo0zV

This is my preferred talent spec for raiding and heroics. You may notice that I take Anger Management and 1 point in Improved Berserker Rage. I did this to ensure rage generation throughout fights. Anger Management allows me to gain 20 rage every 60 seconds without me having to do anything and the 1 point in Improved Berserker Rage gives me another 30 rage every 60 seconds totaling 50 rage every minute. You *could* gain more rage per minute by putting the point in Anger Management into Improved Berserker Rage (netting you a total of 60 rage every minute) but then your extra rage generation would be based on a cooldown (and uses a Global Cooldown) and would not always be available to you. In addition to this, you would have to be extra careful not to use Improved Berserker Rage at a time when you would get more than 100 rage, otherwise the extra rage is lost and wasted.

I also chose to opt out of Booming Voice and Commanding Presence, which is popular with many other warriors. I did this because in my raids, we have enough Paladins with Improved Might and Warlocks with Imps that I don't need to use shouts, saving me rage, global cooldowns and talent points.

Glyphs

Listed below are the preferred glyphs that I use. Fury Warriors excel in multi-target fights and Glyph of Cleaving is an obvious choice for multiplying the amount of damage you deal. Glyph of heroic Strike is amazing because at higher gear levels, you are using Heroic Strike constantly, and getting rage back helps you use your abilities more often, including more Heroic Strike. Whirlwind is your top-damaging ability so decreasing the cooldown to use it more often is essential!
Major Glyphs:
Glyph of Cleaving
Glyph of Heroic Strike
Glyph of Whirlwind

Of the minor glyphs, the Glyph of Bloodrage is probably the most important for raids (as long as you have Paladins and Warlocks in the raid) because you will no longer lose health for using Bloodrage to get more rage. I enjoy Glyph of Bloodrage most when soloing but its raid potential is also obvious if you don't have enough Paladins in the raid to give Kings and Might. Glyph of Enduring Victory is decent for heroics and great for soloing but does not have as much in raid potential. If you have warlocks to give the health buff and don't need to cast Commanding Shout, then I suggest you be a little selfish and get this glyph. :P
Minor Glyphs:
Glyph of Battle - Mostly for soloing or if there is
Glyph of Bloodrage
Glyph of Enduring Victory

Contact Me

If you have any questions, concerns, comments or ideas, you can find me at:

http://furiouswarrior.blogspot.com - My Blog

Devro @ www.mmo-champion.com - forums

Carcinoma - US Farstriders - Character/Server

[Volten]

Nice guide, well done!

one thing though (only a minor point) Parry haste have been removed or only a few bosses still have it I've heard.


Anyway, grats for the good job!

[Devro]

Nice guide, well done!

one thing though (only a minor point) Parry haste have been removed or only a few bosses still have it I've heard.


Anyway, grats for the good job!

I thought I heard about it being changed a long time ago but had forgotten (I took a break in the middle of The Burning Crusade). Thanks for the tip and I updated the guide!

[Deleted]

#1 - I think you have overestimated the effectiveness of Armor Penetration in this guide. The point where ArP becomes to superior without an Armor Penetration trinket is almost (if not entirely) impossible to reach at this level of content, we just aren't able to deal enough damage. Even using Mjolnir Runestone, it is very difficult to reach the point where ArP becomes superior to strength.

The reason this is so:
As I have stated in the past, Armor Penetration becomes more powerful the more damage you are able to deal (and so has direct links to Strength since it is one of your primary damage increasing stats) because the more damage you deal, the more is mitigated by ArP. If a Warrior deals 1000 damage against an opponent with 50% armor then 500 damage is mitigated and 500 damage is delt, if 2000 damage was dealt against the opponent then 1000 damage was mitigated and 1000 was dealt. More damage was mitigated the second time and so, if ArP was stacked to a greater quantity then more damage would have gotten through the second time compared to the first time (in relative terms).

You can use either Landsoul's Spreadsheet or Rawr to confirm this, but as of now, unless your using full i245 gear and have several pieces of i258 gear (including mainhand weapon and an ArP trinket) then your usually better off gemming for Strength.

This is purely in the case of Fury Warriors. Arms Warriors can reach 100% ArP much more easily without a trinket as ArP becomes superior to strength much more quickly for them.

#2 - Another thing to note is that with your stopcasting macro for Slam. Keep in mind it is not 100% reliable, I myself and several of my Warrior colleagues have noticed that it fails to stop Slam casts at times, and a much more effective strategy is simply get into the habit of jumping every time you wish to cast Slam.

#3 - Your gemming section as a whole is incredibly misleading. Stating that you should always use a 21agi 3% crit meta gem is incorrect. If you have two items with a blue gem slot that yield a bonus of +8 strength then it actually produces more dps to socket one with Nightmare's Tear and one with +10str +15 stamina rather than using the agility meta. For example, the Tier9 Helm and Leggards of Ascension (H) from Twin Valkyr, it would be better to use an orange, red and purple gem in those legs and put a Nightmare's Tear in your helm than use an agility meta and disregard the socket bonus. Again, you can spreadsheet this is you don't believe it.

And secondly, stating that you should never pick up any socket bonus except Strength of Armor Penetration would lead to a dps loss on some items (for example Planestalker Signet (H) that has a +4 agility socket bonus). I would not recommend that you put a purple gem in items that yield these socket bonuses in order to forfill your meta requirement, but only because you are more likely to find better socket bonuses to do so, and the socket bonus would have to make up the +10str lost if you were not. But in the case of yellow sockets, it may be superior.

And of course, stating that Hit and Expertise are poor stats to obtain in the case of socket bonuses is again misleading. Because it would entirely depend upon if you had reached those caps or not. If the player can get closer to the hit rating cap through the use of hit and expertise socket bonus (because the numbers the socket bonuses give are in smaller intervals compared to gems for example) then again, it may be superior. The player has to make that assessment for themselves however, and to get the most out of them they will have to do a lot of Sandboxing in order to come to the best gear setup possible for them personally.

#4 -Opting out of Booming Voice and Commanding Presence is a poor choice considering your reasoning is "Warlocks have imps". Commanding Shout gives a lot more health than an Imp's Blood Pact and you are doing your entire raid a disservice by not picking up those talents. Remember that it's not just your tank that misses out on that health, it is your entire raid, and in cases it can be a raid saver. Pick up Glyph of Commanding Shout over Battle too.

As of now, I have a main Fury spec, the standard (18/53/0) and a secondary spec (19/52/0) which I use for maximum rage generation when I need it the most such as Anub'arak (which includes Heroic Fury, Unbridled Wrath and Anger Management) but only when there is another Warrior in the raid which can buff Commanding Shout and has Commanding Presence that can take over my position in that respect.

[Racetrack]

Fantastic guide Devro! Just about everything a Fury warrior could ever want to know and then some.

Please sticky!

[Hakto]

At certain gear levels crit also rates higher than strength.

Certainly you would never gem straight crit but you may well gem str/crit for an agi or crit socket bonus.

[Hakto]

so much misinformation here don't really know where to start atm, will write something up soon.

[Hakto]

Ic. *Armor Penetration and Strength

Now comes the most controversial part of Fury Warrior itemization, Armor Penetration (abbreviated at ArP in the future) and Strength. Simply stated, ArP is a stat that sucks unless you have quite a bit of it, at which point, it becomes a better stat to have than Strength. Many people will encourage stacking Strength items and gems, which is fine, but you won’t have higher DPS than someone who stacks ArP (and has a large amount of it) instead of Strength. Think of it this way: Strength gives you Attack Power which directly affects the damage of your Bloodthirst ability. Attack Power also increases your weapon damage which increases the damage of your other abilities (all of which are weapon damage or weapon damage + bonus abilities). Remember, all of these attacks are mitigated by the target’s armor, which reduces the amount of damage you can deal. ArP on the other hand, allows you to reduce the amount of armor that affects your attacks, allowing you to do more damage with each attack. At low levels of ArP (under 680 rating), the amount of armor that is reduced does not have as great of a marginal benefit as does stacking Strength. However, if you have more than 680 ArP rating, then the marginal benefit of having more ArP becomes greater than that of Strength. So the lesson is, if you have less than 680 ArP rating from gear, then stack Strength gear/gems. If you have more than 680 ArP rating from gear, then stack ArP gear/gems.

Somewhat misleading here to be honest. You said yourself that with Runestone for example you need 735 arp to soft cap it, you could easily obtain that with gemming from around 550 arp.

*NOTE* It is my personal opinion (if possible) to stack passive ArP to as close to 100% as possible without the Grim Toll, Mjolnir Runestone or Needle-Encrusted Scorpion trinkets. Why? With these two trinkets, you are relying on a proc to deal your maximum DPS. Even if the uptime of the proc was 50% (which I am sure is less than 50%), your average % of ArP for the fight would be 75% ArP. If you could accumulate enough passive ArP to have more than 75% all the time, you would certainly do more DPS than someone relying on a proc. So if you have the chance for a Grim Toll or Mjolnir Runestone, I say go for it, but at some point, you may need to be prepared to drop the trinket in favor of passive ArP for more substantial DPS increases. Be forewarned though: I find it much easier to gear around having one of these three trinkets instead of trying to maximize your DPS via stacking as much passive ArP as possible (due to the way +hit and ArP stats are rarely together).

You need to understand how armour mitigation works to have a better understanding of the value of arp closer to 100%.



You can see from this graph that damage reduction is reduced exponentially the less armour someone has.

Therefore while you feel you get greater benefit from having 75% arp natively without any procs, actually you are never getting into that sweet spot of reducing the armour into that last 5k region where damage reduction falls significantly.

At current gear levels it is practically impossible to hard cap arp as fury without a trinket (without sacrificing other stats).

3.3 will change that.

Id. *Critical Strike

Critical Strike rating is something that just comes with time. I wouldn’t ever suggest gemming for Crit as Fury and therefore is near the bottom of importance of the itemization list. It is, however, a better stat than Haste rating because crits deal up to 2.23x damage (talented with Impale and 3% from meta gem).

You contradict yourself here (crits deal up to 2.23x damage) and crit scales far better than either strength or arp at certain gear levels.

let's use the example of a warrior gemmed for pure str.

Raid buffed he sits at 6.5k ap and 32% crit vs a lvl 83 mob.

Taking into account rng factors, let's use bt as an example. His non crit BT hits for approx 4k.

A bt crit will hit for around 9k, at his current crit % he will crit a bt 3/10 times. If he sacrifices say 100 ap to get his crit closer to 40% by using 10 str / 10 crit gems in appropriate sockets he will see better dps overall. You would not gem crit alone but certainly do not overlook crit or even agi socket bonuses by using orange gems in yellow sockets.

That's why 4 piece T9 is so good for both arms and fury, 5% crit on heroic strike is huge for fury dps.

[Devro]

@ Davantius

#1 - I have not overestimated the effectiveness of ArP in my guide. I currently have mostly 245 and 232 items (with some 226 and 200 items as well) and changing from 75% passive ArP to Strength gems on Landsoul's spreadsheet nets me a loss of DPS overall (and quite a bit). I don't even have 258 items like you claim that I should have to gem for ArP and Landsoul still agrees that I should gem ArP. Also, even when I had 219 and 226 items without the 232 and 245 items, adding ArP over Strength was STILL more valuable, and it's all based off of Landsoul's.

You may not agree with my support of ArP, but I attribute that to fundamental differences in beliefs and we'll just have to agree to disagree at this point.

Even using Mjolnir Runestone, it is very difficult to reach the point where ArP becomes superior to strength.

If you gem for ArP to be at 100% when a MR procs, and it still isn't the point where ArP is superior to strength, then at what point will ArP be superior to strength? I may be misunderstanding the meaning of this statement, but it is quite misleading.

#2 - I understand that the macro does not work perfectly. But on any given raid night, of 4 hours of raiding, there are an average of 2 instances per night where the Slam macro will channel Slam. This is pretty insignificant to me, considering the number of times it does work and how useful it is to me.

#3 - What you detail about gemming is more about the exception than the rule. I'm sure anyone could find a few exceptions to what I stated about gemming. What I gave was a general list of rules when it came to gemming.
For the sake of brevity, I did not want to create a whole list of "If X, then choose Y, but only if Z is not present, but you may choose Y when Z is present only if A and/or B are present" type of rules which makes the guide possibly more accurate at the expense of simplicity.

Also, about not gemming for Hit/Expertise, or even their bonuses... I have already stated that achieving those two caps is very essential, but if it comes down to being 4 hit rating under the cap, I (personally) wouldn't worry about using an orange or purple gem (or perhaps even two) in an item to get that bonus.

#4 - This deals mainly with group composition. If you have a Prot Warrior, then they can cast Commanding Shout, and in my raid, that is what happens. They may not have Commanding Presence, and as a result, there is ~500 hp difference, but at least it is being cast. If you were so gung-ho about maximizing your personal DPS, then explain why you would gimp your personal DPS (via talents and global cooldowns) for 500 hp of raid utility?
Also, if 500 hp meant the difference between a wipe and a save, then I would suggest less sloppy playing (not trying to be elitist or placing blame).

@ Hakto

The first area where I discuss Armor Pen and Strength is assuming you do not have a ArP trinket like MR, GT or NES, which is why it is never mentioned in that section. Instead, I mention those three trinkets in their own section for those that have them and I state that you should gem for ArP if you have those trinkets, however I do not state at what point of passive ArP you should do so if you have the trinket.

As for your chart/graph, I chose 75% as an arbitrary value because it is a value in between those for people who have a GT/MR/NES (who normally gem for passive ArP close to 50% and with the proc will have 100%, so 75% is a rough in-between). I only state that compared to having an ArP trinket, having 75% ArP all the time will net a higher DPS on raid bosses because you won't be depending on a proc, and also because the proc does not have an uptime of 50%.
Also, consider that I also stated in that quote block that if one were to accumulate over 75%, one would certainly do more DPS than having the trinkets.
Again, 75% was an arbitrary reference point and not a set value that I recommended over having a higher %. I understand that the damage scales a bit better in the last 25% of Armor Pen than the first 75% Armor Pen.

About gemming Crit:
In your example, dropping 50Str (which is actually more than 100AP in your example) is equivalent to dropping 2-3 Str gems. But changing 3 gems into Str/Crit gems, you would get 30 more crit rating (ignoring socket bonuses). 30 crit rating is equal to ~.65% crit. That's less than 1% and not even close to 40% crit (which is an 8% difference from 32% in your example.

If you took out 100 str, which is 5 epic Str gems, you would get 50 crit rating (ignoring bonuses). This would give you ~1.09% crit, not much closer to that 40%. But let's take a look at the 100 Str you give up, which is equal to at least 242 Attack Power (Fury Talents + Kings included). I think 242 AP vs 1% Crit, the AP/Strength will win in a marginal benefit vs. marginal benefit.

Now when you mention the 4-piece T9 bonus, I would agree. 5% crit for those abilities is huge and if you can get it, I would be all for it, so long as it doesn't interrupt your other gear choices.

[Deleted]

#1 - I have not overestimated the effectiveness of ArP in my guide. I currently have mostly 245 and 232 items (with some 226 and 200 items as well) and changing from 75% passive ArP to Strength gems on Landsoul's spreadsheet nets me a loss of DPS overall (and quite a bit). I don't even have 258 items like you claim that I should have to gem for ArP and Landsoul still agrees that I should gem ArP. Also, even when I had 219 and 226 items without the 232 and 245 items, adding ArP over Strength was STILL more valuable, and it's all based off of Landsoul's.

You may not agree with my support of ArP, but I attribute that to fundamental differences in beliefs and we'll just have to agree to disagree at this point.
If you gem for ArP to be at 100% when a MR procs, and it still isn't the point where ArP is superior to strength, then at what point will ArP be superior to strength? I may be misunderstanding the meaning of this statement, but it is quite misleading.

Aha! We have a bit of an odd situation here. If I punch your character sheet into Rawr it states that you lose a siginificant portion of dps, even when I match up the amount of buffs that you have to Landsoul's spreadsheet exactly. At first I thought you might be using an out of date version of Landsoul but it seems that you are correct. I think the reason it states ArP gemming is a dps increase in Landsoul's Spreadsheet is because you seem to be using a lot more Armor Penetration gear than the average player and it seems to be scaling better than it should do in comparason to current content gear.

I'll reassess my opinion in that respect. There are a lot of external factors involved in the calculation of choosing Strength over Armor Penetration or visa versa. Though this might be something that you want to point out in your guide. I suggest you experiment with this yourself using some other people's armories in order to get a better understanding of what I'm trying to say.

#2 - I understand that the macro does not work perfectly. But on any given raid night, of 4 hours of raiding, there are an average of 2 instances per night where the Slam macro will channel Slam. This is pretty insignificant to me, considering the number of times it does work and how useful it is to me.

The point is, although the times that it will cast Slam accidently are low, it still happens. Learning to jump when you cast Slam is a much better habit to get into as jumping does not yield a dps decrease at all and avoids that chance that Slam will be cast by 100%.

#3 - What you detail about gemming is more about the exception than the rule. I'm sure anyone could find a few exceptions to what I stated about gemming. What I gave was a general list of rules when it came to gemming.
For the sake of brevity, I did not want to create a whole list of "If X, then choose Y, but only if Z is not present, but you may choose Y when Z is present only if A and/or B are present" type of rules which makes the guide possibly more accurate at the expense of simplicity.

Also, about not gemming for Hit/Expertise, or even their bonuses... I have already stated that achieving those two caps is very essential, but if it comes down to being 4 hit rating under the cap, I (personally) wouldn't worry about using an orange or purple gem (or perhaps even two) in an item to get that bonus.

If you take a list of 100 random players and give them some advice that they should follow. Chances are there will be quite a few people that will have picked up one or two "exceptions" that I have stated in my previous post. By giving them the infomation that you have, they will go away and gem in a way that will not yield optimal dps. If an individual wants the easy way out and just wants to gem all strength then by all means let them do that, but people come to visit dps guides because they want to improve - because they want to be better than your average Warrior - and that is why you need to be more specific.

Otherwise you might want to state from the start "This is just a general guide, but isn't actually very effective if you actually want to produce the highest amount of damage or utility possible for your group".

#4 - This deals mainly with group composition. If you have a Prot Warrior, then they can cast Commanding Shout, and in my raid, that is what happens. They may not have Commanding Presence, and as a result, there is ~500 hp difference, but at least it is being cast. If you were so gung-ho about maximizing your personal DPS, then explain why you would gimp your personal DPS (via talents and global cooldowns) for 500 hp of raid utility?
Also, if 500 hp meant the difference between a wipe and a save, then I would suggest less sloppy playing (not trying to be elitist or placing blame).

The only thing this has to do with group composition is if you have another Warrior in the raid with Commanding Presence. You are basically stating here "lol, personal dps > raid utility" and this is an ignorant way of looking at raiding as a Warrior. You need to mix-max your dps to the best of your ability, but if a dps loss means you can grant a greater advantage to your raid as a result then that is what you must do.

And saying 500 health won't be the difference between a wipe and a save is also dumb. Every piece of health adds up! It's like saying "You know what, I don't need epic gems in my dps gear because a few dps probally won't make the difference", you take every buff/gear piece as a whole entity in a raid composition rather than an individual factor as they all affect each other. And thinking otherwise is lazy, no matter how you try to put it.

This is excluding the point that increasing maximum health also increases the effect of quite a few healing abilities and so, over time, it will help your raid more than is at first apparent. I'm not sure if Commanding Shout increases the effect of Last Stand abilities (I think it does) but don't quote me on that.

If you took out 100 str, which is 5 epic Str gems, you would get 50 crit rating (ignoring bonuses). This would give you ~1.09% crit, not much closer to that 40%. But let's take a look at the 100 Str you give up, which is equal to at least 242 Attack Power (Fury Talents + Kings included). I think 242 AP vs 1% Crit, the AP/Strength will win in a marginal benefit vs. marginal benefit.

And here your missing the point entirely. Critical Strike rating scales in the same way that Armor Penetration does. The more damage you deal, the more damage is increased by the crit rating since it's a multipictive factor. In certain situations where you have a low quantity of critical strike rating compared to your other stats then it can occur that Crit can be superior to Strength for a short period. This situation is very rare, but it can happen. Hakto was pointing out that you cannot tell an individual not to ever gem for Crit, because it can at times be more effective, if only occasionally.

[Hakto]

I think 242 AP vs 1% Crit, the AP/Strength will win in a marginal benefit vs. marginal benefit.

Actually this completely depends on stats and gear.

If you are at 3k ap then yes 242 ap is better than 1% crit, but now apply that to a warrior with 8k ap. The 1% crit will win hands down.

[Ultralisk]

If you are at 3k ap then yes 242 ap is better than 1% crit, but now apply that to a warrior with 8k ap. The 1% crit will win hands down.

This also depends on the crit rate of the warrior. Adding 1% crit when you have 0% crit rate is a 1% dps boost. Adding 1% crit when you have a 50% crit rate is an 0.5% dps boost. Adding 1% crit when you have a 75% crit rate is only a 0.25% dps boost.

I think a few people are a little confused about why stacking lots and lots of ArP is good. The reason is that the benefits from ArP are heavily backloaded until you get to the cap - it should be obvious why from the graphs posted earlier. Armour is tuned to give a linear increase in effective health per point, which means it has strongly diminishing returns in terms of percentage damage reduced per point. However, ArP has no such diminishing returns and gives you a static percentage armour reduction per point of ArP. Pushing it backwards with ArP, you can see that as your ArP increases linearly, the percentage that your target's armour reduces your damage is decreased exponentially. So unlike with crit, where adding 1% crit becomes less effective the more crit you already have, adding 1% ArP gives you more 'bang for your buck' the more ArP you have.