Fury Warrior DPS Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities — Shadowlands Pre-Patch 9.0.1

Welcome to our Rotation page for Fury Warriors. On this page you will find everything you need to know about actually playing the spec in Raiding and Mythic+ scenarios.

If the rotations below seem overwhelming to you, you might benefit from visiting our Easy Mode page which outlines a close-to-optimal rotation in simpler terms.

The content on this page is purely PvE-related. If you are looking for PvP Rotation Tips, please visit our PvP page below.

The Fury rotation is a conditional priority list, which can change depending on talent choice. Use the checkboxes below to make the appropriate customizations.

• Onslaught
• Dragon Roar
• Bladestorm
• Siegebreaker
• Multiple Cold Steel Hot Blood traits
• Condensed Life-Force Major Essence
• Memory of Lucid Dreams Major Essence
• Blood of the Enemy Major Essence

1. Cast Rampage if Enrage is not active, or at >90 Rage.
2. Cast Condensed Life-Force (see note below).
3. Cast Memory of Lucid Dreams (see note below).
4. Cast Recklessness on cooldown, or whenever burst is needed.
5. Cast Blood of the Enemy during Recklessness (see note below).
6. Cast Siegebreaker during Recklessness or inbetween Recklessness's cooldown.
7. Cast Execute with Sudden Death or below 20%.
8. Cast Bloodthirst.
9. Cast Bloodthirst if Enrage is not active.
10. Cast Onslaught while Enraged.
11. Cast Raging Blow when at two charges.
12. Cast Bloodthirst on cooldown.
13. Cast Dragon Roar during Enrage.
14. Cast Bladestorm during Enrage.
15. Cast Raging Blow for Rage.
16. Cast Whirlwind as a filler.

Whether due to the target being below 20% (35% with Massacre talented) health or Sudden Death proc, Execute usage does not appreciably change the priority listed above, it merely generates extra Rage in order to use Rampage that much sooner.

Major Essence use varies depending on the type enabled.

• Condensed Life-Force should be cast before using Charge on the pull, and always aligned with Recklessness afterward.
• Memory of Lucid Dreams should be cast before using Charge on the pull, and on cooldown afterward. When using Anger Management, it should be aligned with Recklessness with minimal delay whenever possible.
• Blood of the Enemy should be used immediately after Recklessness, in order to maximize its short duration.
• Direct damage Essences should be used immediately on the pull, with subsequent uses anytime Recklessness and Siegebreaker are not active.

Essences except for Blood of the Enemy should always be used before the pull along with potions such as Potion of Unbridled Fury, prior to Charge or Recklessness.

Because Charge is off the global cooldown, opening combat with Recklessness followed immediately by Charge will lead to a net increase in Rage generation on the pull with no additional downtime, however it is crucial to ensure that the target will not be moving substansially, or else you will easily find yourself moving to the bosses former location, and wasting precious buff time trying to reposition. An exception is made when talenting Reckless Abandon, as it generates enough Rage alongside Charge to open with Rampage anyway.

After Recklessness, the rotation proceeds as normal. Because the cooldown doubles Rage generation, Rampage will be cast much more frequently, potentially as often as every other global cooldown. For this reason, Rampage should not be delayed unless reapplying the Whirlwind buff to cleave, and care should be taken to avoid ever overcapping Rage.

Prioritize Whirlwind whenever the buff is not active, roughly every third global cooldown, in order to ensure single target single target attacks continue to cleave. Otherwise, continue to follow the normal rotation detailed above.

For maximum burst:

1. Cast Bloodthirst if not already enraged.
2. Cast Whirlwind for two stacks of its buff.
3. Cast Blood of the Enemy.
4. Cast Recklessness if able.
5. Cast Rampage to refresh Enrage.
6. Cast Bladestorm or Dragon Roar.
7. Cast Onslaught if talented, otherwise Bloodthirst.
8. Cast Whirlwind to refresh its buff.
9. Continue cleaving the single-target rotation.

Essences follow the same use-case as on single target, with the exception of alining them to coincide with multiple targets when possible. When using Essence of the Focusing Iris, try to time the cast to complete as soon as the targets spawn or are grouped up, in order to maximize time spent attacking them.

Recklessness does not directly increase damage, so there is less advantage in aligning it with other talented cooldown abilities, although most will line up naturally regardless. In general, no cooldown should be delayed more than a few seconds for any other, outside of preparing for burst AoE (see the multitarget section above), or a timed damage phase, such as Heroism/Bloodlust or specific boss mechanics. This is particularly important when talenting Anger Management, since it can throw off the abilities natural alignment.

The increased critical strike of Recklessness is relatively minor, while doubling Rage generation amounts to a larger damage increase, due to casting Rampage much more frequently. While the rotational priority does not change, the increased Rage generation makes it much easier to overcap, so care should be taken when using high Rage abilities such as Raging Blow.

While both are very competitive on signle target, the decision between Bladestorm and Dragon Roar on multitarget is dependent on frequency. Both deal high burst AoE damage, but Bladestorm's is more concentrated on a longer cooldown, making it ideal for large groups of enemies on minute long intervals, while Dragon Roar is better suited for more frequent spawns.

Maximizing Siegebreaker is dependent on getting as many Rampage casts inside the damage debuff as possible, such as pooling enough Rage to cast Rampage immediately after Siegebreaker.

Most Azerite traits are passive bonuses that do not need to be managed, though some of their effects can misleading:

• When using Pulverizing Blows, do not delay Rampage in order to stack the effect. The average amount of Raging Blow casts is only 2-3 per Rampage.
• Simmering Rage only ever grants 1 Rage per hit, for a total of 4 Rage per Rampage cast, regardless of the number of Simmering Rage traits in your gear, the Recklessness buff, or cleaving multiple targets with Whirlwind.
• Reckless Flurry only reduces the cooldown of Recklessness by 0.1s per autoattack, regardless of the number of Reckless Flurry traits in your gear.
• If Unbridled Ferocity procs while Recklessness is already active, it will add 4 seconds to the buff, up to its maximum duration. However, if Recklessness is cast during the Azerite proc, it will overwrite it with the regular max duration buff. Therefore, Recklessness should not be cast until any current Azerite procs have ended.

On average, one target needs to die every 10 seconds for War Machine to keep up with Sudden Death in sustained combat. For this reason, it tends not to less practical in most raid encounters, and is better reserved for fast paced dungeons and open world content.

Rampage can be delayed slightly if Enrage is already active, but care should be taken to avoid wasting Rage due to overcapping. Normally this delay should be no more than one extra GCD.

The goal of the Fury rotation is a continual feedback loop of generating Rage, spending it on Rampage, and triggering Enrage, which increases Haste to allow more Rage to be generating, feeding back into the loop. Bloodthirst also helps this process, with a 30% chance to trigger Enrage, and it should be kept on cooldown to benefit from this chance as much as possible. All other special abilities generate Rage, making it important to fill global cooldowns in order to always be generating Rage.

Warriors have a great deal of active tools through Charge and Heroic Leap that allow for instant movement across large distances. Finding ways to maximise your uptime on a target through intelligent use of these is crucial, as downtime is extremely detrimental to the flow of Fury's rotation. The talents Double Time and Bounding Stride are particularly useful in any encounter which demands heavy movement.

Fury's defensive ability comes in the form of higher base stamina due to dualwiedling two two-handed weapons, and considerable self-healing through Bloodthirst, Enraged Regeneration, and Victory Rush, as well as various talents which improve those abilities. The increased health and self-healing make Fury very tanky in sustained combat, although less able to deal with frequent bursts of high damage. In those cases, Enraged Regeneration is best used preemptively, with Bloodthirst cast as often as possible over the 8 second duration to benefit from its increased healing.

Warriors also have access to Rallying Cry, one of the few defensive group cooldowns in the game. It is typically used to help the group survive key encounter mechanics rather than as a personal cooldown. Keep in mind that it is on the global cooldown, so be ready to use it when needed.

Fury also brings Battle Shout, increasing all party and raid members Attack Power by 5%, which should be applied before combat begins.

For information about Mythic+ as a Fury Warrior and the rotation you need to use in this game mode, please refer to our Mythic+ page.

WeakAuras can have a tremendous effect on your performance, helping you track important buffs, debuffs, and cooldowns. Since this is a broad topic, we made a page dedicated to it.