In this article, we list your Fury Warrior (WoW MoP 5.2) core abilities and how they should be used together (rotation). We also explain when to use your various cooldowns. Then, we go deeper and present all the subtleties that playing a Fury Warrior will face you with.

The other articles of our Fury Warrior guide can be accessed from the table of contents on the right.

This guide has been reviewed and approved by Gondlemstyle, one of the best Fury Warriors in the world, who raids in Midwinter.

1. Preface↑top

Playing a Fury Warrior properly (in a way that results in good DPS and beyond) is more difficult than in the case of most other classes. You can do reasonable DPS if you execute a simple rotation, but your DPS will not be competitive until you learn to master the rotation and playstyle in full.

In the section that follows, we strive to present the optimal rotation as concisely as possible, but it will still probably appear very daunting to you. You will need to understand all of it if you are to truly perform well as a Fury Warrior.

If you are new to the Fury specialisation, and you are looking for a quick and easy rotation to act as a starting point, then you should check out this section.

2. Single Target Rotation↑top

The entire Fury Warrior rotation revolves around the periods of time when the Colossus Smash debuff is up on the target. While Colossus Smash is on cooldown, you will essentially be preparing yourself (pooling rage, saving certain abilities) for Colossus Smash being applied. While Colossus Smash is active, you will need to perform the most efficient sequence of abilities possible to make the most of the debuff. Finally, you will have to treat things a bit differently when the boss is below 20% health. We treat each case below, and then go into more detail later on in the guide.

2.1. Preparing for Colossus Smash

When the debuff from Colossus Smash is not active, you should follow this priority system:

1. Use Bloodthirst on cooldown.
2. Use Heroic Strike.
   • Only if you are about to reach maximum rage (you are at 105 or higher), and Colossus Smash is not coming off cooldown in the next two global cooldowns.
3. Use Raging Blow.
   • If you have two Raging Blow charges, and Colossus Smash is not coming off cooldown in the next two global cooldowns.
4. Use Wild Strike.
   • Only if you have a Bloodsurge proc.
5. Use Dragon Roar (if you have taken this talent).
6. Use Raging Blow.
   • If you have one Raging Blow charge, and Colossus Smash is not coming off cooldown in the next two global cooldowns.
7. Use Battle Shout if your rage is low and Colossus Smash is going to be available soon, or is currently available.
8. Use Shockwave (if you have taken this talent instead of Dragon Roar).
9. Use Wild Strike without a Bloodsurge proc, to dump rage.
   • Only if Colossus Smash is not coming off cooldown in the next two global cooldowns, if you have high rage, and if dumping it with Heroic Strike is not enough to avoid capping.
10. Do nothing in order to save rage for your next Colossus Smash.

During this time, your goal is to have a full rage pool and 1 or 2 Raging Blow charges when using Colossus Smash. You want to use Colossus Smash on cooldown, and simply optimise your management of rage and Raging Blow so that you are always prepared for when Colossus Smash can be used. That said, if you are low on rage, you can delay Colossus Smash slightly.

2.2. During Colossus Smash

While the Colossus Smash debuff is active, your rotation is as follows:

1. Use Bloodthirst on cooldown.
2. Use Raging Blow.
3. Use Wild Strike
   • Only if you have a Bloodsurge proc.

Heroic Strike is off the global cooldown, and this should be spammed during Colossus Smash (assuming your rage allows it). You should also use Heroic Leap on the target, if you can. This is also off the global cooldown.

2.3. Execute Range (Sub-20%)

Generally speaking, using Execute takes priority over everything except Bloodthirst. Your goal is to maximise the number of Executes you can use during Colossus Smash. That said, things are a bit more complex than that.

2.3.1. Preparing for Colossus Smash

What you do while preparing for Colossus Smash sub-20% health depends on the amount of rage you are generating.

• If you are not generating any extra rage from damage taken, then you should
  1. Use Bloodthirst on cooldown.
  2. Use Raging Blow.
  3. Make sure to save up a full rage pool by the time Colossus Smash becomes available.
• If you are generating extra rage from damage taken, then you should
  1. Use Execute.
  2. Make sure to save up a full rage pool by the time Colossus Smash becomes available.
  3. In case the incoming damage is not high enough to provide you with unlimited rage, use Bloodthirst as well.

2.3.2. During Colossus Smash

While Colossus Smash is active, you should use your rage to spam Execute.

3. Berserker Rage↑top

Berserker Rage plays a crucial part in your DPS performance. We treat this ability as a cooldown, so you will find it in the cooldown sections.

4. Multiple Target Rotation↑top

The AoE rotation depends on how many adds you are facing and how good your rage generation is. In any case, you should always make sure to use Heroic Leap against the targets, if possible.

If you are facing 2-4 enemies you should:

• use Whirlwind to stack the Meat Cleaver buff up to a number of stacks equal to the number of enemies, minus one;
• use Bloodthirst, Colossus Smash, and Raging Blow as you would against a single target;
• replace Heroic Strike with Cleave for dumping rage.

If you are facing 5 or more enemies you should:

• use Whirlwind as much as possible;
• use Bloodthirst on cooldown, to generate rage;
• use Raging Blow when low on rage, to use up your stacks of Meat Cleaver (generated by the Whirlwind spam).

5. Cooldown Usage↑top

As a Fury Warrior, you have several DPS cooldowns. Additionally, you can obtain two more DPS cooldowns from your talents of choice.

• Berserker Rage should be used to help with your Enrage uptime. This is subtle, and we tackle it in depth in a later section.
• Recklessness should be used as many times as possible throughout the encounter. It is ideal to stack it with other cooldowns.
• Skull Banner should be used as many times as possible throughout the fight, but keep in mind that the rest of your raid should benefit from this as well.
• Shattering Throw is essentially a raid cooldown, so keep in mind that the rest of your raid should benefit from it as well.

For more details on these cooldowns, as well as on the cooldowns granted to you by your talents, refer to our detailed cooldown usage section.

6. Stance↑top

Battle Stance grants you a lot of rage with each melee attack you make, but grants you no rage from damage taken.

Berserker Stance grants you half the rage that Battle Stance does, from your melee attacks, but also grants you rage from damage taken.

Other than this, there is no difference between the stances, and your abilities are not conditioned at all by your current stance. Therefore, you should use Berserker Stance when there is heavy raid damage, and Battle Stance otherwise.

7. Mastering Your Fury Warrior↑top

The guidelines given above will enable you to play your Fury Warrior with good results. If you want to push things further and master your character, then we advise you to continue reading.

7.1. Titan's Grip or Single-Minded Fury

At the moment, Single-Minded Fury provides higher single target DPS than Titan's Grip, assuming equal item level weapons. The difference is very small though, as small as 1-3%. The important thing is weapon damage, though, meaning that you should choose based on what your best Main-Hand weapon is.

So, you are better off with an item level 535 Main-Hand and a 509 Off-Hand, than with two 522 weapons.

When choosing between equivalent weapons, there are a few things to keep in mind.

Single-Minded Fury is better for single target DPS, mostly during the execute stage of the fight. So, if the fight you are progressing on has a particularly important execute stage, Single-Minded Fury is preferable. Conversely, Single-Minded Fury lacks initial burst.

Titan's Grip provides better cleaving and AoE damage in most situations, and the more targets you have, the better Titan's Grip will be. So, in a cleaving-heavy fight, Titan's Grip is best. Titan's Grip also provides you with more Stamina (since the Two-Handed weapons have more stats on them) which can boost your survivability on progression content.

7.2. Rage Generation

By default, your rage is generated from two sources:

• Dealing damage with auto attacks.
• Using special abilities that generate rage ( Charge, Bloodthirst, etc.).

Exceptionally, if you are in Berserker Stance, you also generate rage from damage taken.

Your rage is mostly used by abilities in your rotation, although some utility spells also cost rage.

7.3. Basic Rotation

If you are new to the Fury specialisation (or you have not played it in a long time), then this section is for you.

To begin with, you should always cast Colossus Smash on cooldown, and save your rage so that you go into Colossus Smash with a full rage pool.

• Before Colossus Smash.
  1. Use Bloodthirst on cooldown.
  2. Use Raging Blow (make sure to have at least 1 charge available when you do cast Colossus Smash).
  3. Use Wild Strike (only with a Bloodsurge proc).
  4. Use Dragon Roar.
  5. Use Battle Shout.
• During Colossus Smash, use precisely the following spell sequence:
  1. Raging Blow;
  2. Bloodthirst;
  3. Raging Blow;
  4. Raging Blow.

Outside of Colossus Smash, you should make use of Heroic Strike only to avoid being at maximum rage. During Colossus Smash, you should use Heroic Strike as much as you can.

When the boss is below 20% health, Execute becomes much more important. Outside of Colossus Smash, you should use it instead of Heroic Strike (to ensure that you do not cap your rage). During Colossus Smash, it is the only ability you should use.

Please keep in mind, as we said, that this section presents a very basic look at the rotation. In certain ways, it could be argued that this rotation is not accurate. If you want to really play a Fury Warrior well, we advise you to read the rest of the guide.

7.4. Key Concepts

7.4.1. Deep Wounds

Deep Wounds is a passively applied bleed effect. Even though you will often see this mentioned in tooltips, you do not need to concern yourself with it. Simply assume that you will always have it active (if you are following our recommended rotation).

7.4.2. Enrage

Each time you critically strike with Bloodthirst and Colossus Smash, you become enraged, dealing 10% increased physical damage for 6 seconds. This will happen passively, so you do not need to concern yourself with it too much. Being enraged is a pre-requisite for certain abilities ( Enraged Regeneration is free of cost, for example, if you are enraged), so it is advisable to have a way of monitoring this buff.

7.4.3. Bloodthirst Usage

As a rule, Bloodthirst is your most important damaging ability, because it generates rage and enrages you. So, this ability should be used on cooldown, except for when the boss is below 20% health and the Colossus Smash debuff is applied.

Essentially, you will use Bloodthirst every third global cooldown, with two filler spells in between. Choosing your filler should be done based on the priorities listed at the top of the page, all while taking into account how much rage you currently have.

As we mentioned before, it is sometimes viable to do nothing for one or two global cooldowns between Bloothirsts, in order to conserve rage for when you use Colossus Smash.

7.4.4. Colossus Smash

Properly managing the debuff applied by Colossus Smash is a crucial aspect to Fury DPS.

The general rule is that you want to use as many damaging abilities (and your most damaging abilities) while the debuff is active. Given its duration, you will at most fit 4 global cooldowns in, although with latency, 3 is a more realistic number. In addition to this, you can use abilities that are off the global cooldown.

To begin with, you should always prepare for a Colossus Smash, and only cast it if the following conditions are true.

• You have a high amount of rage (at least 80).
• You have one or two charges of Raging Blow.
• You are enraged.

If you are not enraged, then you should use Berserker Rage to enrage yourself, and if Berserker Rage is not available, you should delay your Colossus Smash until you become enraged from a Bloodthirst, or until Berserker Rage becomes available.

This is the ideal Colossus Smash spell sequence:

1. (before Colossus Smash) Bloodthirst;
2. Colossus Smash;
3. Raging Blow;
4. Bloodthirst;
5. Raging Blow;
6. Raging Blow.

All the while, you should be spamming Heroic Strike, and ideally also damaging the boss with Heroic Leap. As you can tell, that requires a lot of rage, so it is recommended to save your abilities and pool rage in preparation for a Colossus Smash.

While the boss is in execute range, Execute becomes the top priority under Colossus Smash.

In addition to this ability usage, it is very important to have as many DPS cooldowns up as possible while Colossus Smash is up. Most importantly, you should try to line up Bloodbath, Recklessness, Skull Banner, and Synapse Springs (for engineers) with Colossus Smash. Dragon Roar already ignores armor and therefore does not benefit from Colossus Smash.

7.4.5. Wild Strike and Bloodsurge

Your Bloodsurge passive ability talent grants your Bloodthirsts a chance to make your next 3 Wild Strikes cost 30 less rage and only trigger a 1-second global cooldown.

You should have a means of tracking when this proc is active, through an add-on such as Power Auras.

Wild Strikes that benefit from a Bloodsurge proc are a much higher priority than those that not. In fact, as you can notice from the priority list above, Wild Strikes that do not benefit from a Bloodsurge proc should only be used as a means to dump rage.

7.4.6. Raging Blow

Raging Blow is not available by default. It becomes available each time you become enraged (either from Enrage or Berserker Rage). Each time you become enraged, you can use Raging Blow once. If your two enrages stack (either because you used Berserker Rage while you were enraged, or because Enrage procs while Berserker Rage is active), you will be allowed to use Raging Blow twice.

7.4.7. Sunder Armor

If no one else in your raid is providing the Sunder Armor debuff, then you should make sure to be using Glyph of Colossus Smash. This will ensure that your Colossus Smash hits always apply/refresh the debuff.

7.5. Detailed Cooldown Usage

7.5.1. Recklessness

There is no great subtlety to using Recklessness. Simply make sure to use it as many times as possible during the encounter, and try to stack it with as many other cooldowns as possible (especially with Skull Banner and Heroism/ Bloodlust/ Time Warp).

7.5.2. War Banners

Skull Banner is by far the most important of your banners. While we advise to always use it together with Recklessness (and Avatar, should you chose that talent), you must keep in mind that it is an extremely powerful raid buff. As such, if there is a time when your raid would benefit more from using the cooldown, than you would by stacking it with your other cooldowns, you should put the raid's best interests first.

Demoralizing Banner is also a raid cooldown of sorts, although it is a fairly weak one. You should coordinate with your raid leader, or at least with your tanks, in order to figure out the best time to use it.

Mocking Banner is mostly useless in PvE raids, but it could have some merit against adds.

7.5.3. Berserker Rage

Berserker Rage is a very powerful DPS cooldown, especially so when you consider that it only has a 30-second cooldown. Berserker Rage must be considered together with Enrage.

Their effects do not stack, so using Berserker Rage while Enrage is active is a waste. As such, you should keep in mind that Enrage will proc off Bloodthirst and Colossus Smash critical strikes, and adjust your Berserker Rage usage accordingly:

• Always make sure that you are enraged while under the effects of Colossus Smash (6-second debuff). If the Colossus Smash itself did not proc an enrage, then you will be presented with the following two posibilities:
  • The Bloodthirst which you used before Colossus Smash did not proc Enrage, in which case you should use Berserker Rage immediately after Colossus Smash.
  • The Bloodthirst which you used before Colossus Smash procced an Enrage, in which case you should use Berserker Rage as soon as this Enrage expires.
• Try to maximise the uptime of your enrage state. The safest way of making sure that your enrages do not stack is to always wait until after a Bloodthirst- Colossus Smash sequence, and if neither resulted in an Enrage proc, then use Berserker Rage.

7.5.4. Shattering Throw

Shattering Throw is a raid cooldown above all else. As such, you should always prioritise your raid's best interests when determining the time to use this ability. We advise that you consult with your raid leader, as well as with other Warriors.

7.5.5. Tier 4 Talents

Shockwave and Dragon Roar are both valuable when used against a single target, despite the fact that they are designed with multiple targets in mind. As such, no matter what you choose, you should incorporate it into your rotation by using it on cooldown.

Bladestorm is a slight DPS loss against a single target. As such, it should only be taken and used when you can benefit from one of its other effects, or when you wish to deal AoE damage.

Consider the multiple target properties of these abilities, and if there is a situation that is suited for them, try to save them for that time. For example, if a pack of adds is just about to spawn, it is fine to delay your ability slightly so as to make better use of it (or to make use of it at all, in the case of Bladestorm).

7.5.6. Tier 6 Talents

Avatar should be stacked with Recklessness and Skull Banner at all times.

Bloodbath should be used on cooldown.

Storm Bolt should be used on cooldown. Due to its short cooldown, it will essentially become part of your rotation.

8. Changelog↑top

• 07 May 2013: Removed mention of Glyph of Raging Wind being a DPS increase for Titan's Grip Warriors.
• 28 Apr. 2013: Further clarified and refined the single target rotation/priority. No changes in content have been made, but certain things have been rephrased to make it easier to understand. Also added a more specific mention for cooldown stacking during Colossus Smash. Added a preface that explains why the initial single target rotation for Fury Warriors is so complex, as well as a section that provides a basic look at the rotation.
• 25 Apr. 2013: Specified that Bloodthirst should be used on cooldown at all times except when the target is below 20% health and the Colossus Smash debuff is active (as opposed to simply when the target is below 20% health).
• 23 Apr. 2013: Made considerable updates to the entire page. Revamped the rotation section, and added sections on Bloodthirst and Colossus Smash usage.
• 04 Mar. 2013: Patch 5.2 update.
  • Removed mentions of Deadly Calm, following its removal from the game.