Fury Warrior PvP Guide in Battle for Azeroth (BfA 8.1)

1. Spec Overview / Place in the Current Meta for Fury Warriors

Fury Warriors are a very unique melee specialization. They lack crowd control and have very little utility. However, they have very strong single-target cooldowns. What makes them scary is how quickly they can deal damage and how short their cooldowns are. Combine their strong damage and short cooldowns with a class with crowd control and they are unstoppable.

1.1. Strengths of Fury Warriors

• Very high burst damage
• Easy to swap targets
• Good mobility

1.2. Weaknesses of Fury Warriors

• Damage can be unpredictable
• Very little cleave damage
• Very few defensive cooldowns

2. Stat Priority for Fury Warriors in PvP

The stat priority for Fury Warriors in PvP is as follows:

1. Strength;
2. Haste;
3. Mastery;
4. Versatility;
5. Critical Strike.

Strength is the best stat in all situations. Haste is the strongest secondary stat at all times due to it reducing the Global Cooldown on abilities and increasing your attack speed. Mastery ( Mastery: Unshackled Fury) increases all of your damage while Enrage is active. This is crucial for increasing your overall damage output.

3. Azerite Traits for Fury Warriors

Azerite traits are unlocked in you helm, shoulders and chest. With each Azerite level in your neck, you get closer to unlocking the center trait in your gear. These traits vary from increasing damage of certain abilities to helping increase your survivability. Depending on what traits you use, it can completely alter your playstyle and what talents you should be using.

3.1. Outer Rings

Below are the best Outer Ring traits.

1. Reckless Flurry
2. Pulverizing Blows
3. Simmering Rage
4. Archive of the Titans

Fury Warriors do not depend on one single trait to increase their damage. Instead, they want a mix of the above traits. Simmering Rage and Pulverizing Blows both increase the damage of your next Rampage. Rampage is a crucial ability in your damage rotation and these traits will help your sustained damage output. Reckless Flurry has a chance of reducing the cooldown of Recklessness. This will result in being able to deal burst damage more often. Archive of the Titans increases your primary stat, Strength. This is an increase to your overall damage.

3.2. Middle Ring

Below are the best Middle Ring traits.

1. Overwhelming Power
2. Elemental Whirl
3. Gutripper
4. Earthlink

The Middle and Inner Rings are important for additional damage and stat bonuses. Elemental Whirl, Overwhelming Power, and Earthlink give an increase to your stats. These are minor stat boosts, but still increase your damage. Gutripper will help increase both your single target and spread pressure.

3.3. Inner Ring

Below are the best Inner Ring traits.

1. Longstrider
2. Resounding Protection
3. Impassive Visage

All of these traits give you additional ways of surviving. These are all passive, but are crucial to have.

4. Gear Recommendations

4.1. General Guidelines

In general, Fury Warriors want to get trinkets that line up well with Recklessness. These trinkets can have a passive or on-use effect. The stats you want to be increasing are either Strength or Versatility. The reason you want to increase Versatility is because it increases both your damage and healing. Strength is great for increasing your consistent damage output.

To be successful in 3v3 arena, you need to have at least 2 pieces of gear with the Reckless Flurry trait. You will also want either Azerite Veins or Gutripper in the second tier.

Below, we list the items that have these traits.

4.1.1. Helms

• Glaciercrest Helm;
• Sinister Gladiator's Plate Greathelm;
• Sinister Gladiator's Plate Greathelm;
• Sinister Gladiator's Plate Skullguard;
• Sinister Gladiator's Plate Skullguard;
• Dunecrawler Faceguard;
• Gridrunner Galea.

4.1.2. Shoulders

• Sinister Gladiator's Plate Shoulderguards;
• Sinister Gladiator's Plate Shoulderguards;
• Sinister Gladiator's Plate Shoulders;
• Sinister Gladiator's Plate Shoulders;
• Kraken Shell Pauldrons.

4.1.3. Chest

• Breastplate of Divine Purification;
• Sinister Gladiator's Plate Chestguard;
• Sinister Gladiator's Plate Chestguard;
• Chestplate of Apocalyptic Machinations;
• Stormcrash Chestguard.

4.2. Recommended Items

Sinister Gladiator's Maledict is absolutely the best trinket you can have. The on-use damage and healing absorption is capable of forcing defensives by itself. This can be used by itself or while you are using your burst rotation to force multiple cooldowns out of enemy teams.

Sinister Gladiator's Insignia has a good amount of Versatility on it and has a passive effect. This effect increases your Strength. This increases your sustained and consistent damage.

Darkmoon Deck: Fathoms is not an item you get from PvP. Instead, you will have to look at the auction house or find an someone with the Inscription profession. This trinket also gives a passive effect. You cannot control the proc, but the damage this trinket can do is substantial. You will quickly notice a large increase to your overall damage.

Sinister Gladiator's Badge is strong for the Versatility and the on-use Strength effect. This will drastically increase the damage you deal while it is active and should be used while Recklessness is active.

4.3. Weapon Enchant

Enchant Weapon - Deadly Navigation and Enchant Weapon - Versatile Navigation are the best weapon enchants. You will be duel wielding weapons and having one of each of these enchants on your weapons. These enchants give you a strong Critical Strike and Versatility buff that can be crucial in multiple ways. The Versatility proc increases your overall damage output and is great if you can line it up with your burst. It is also good for when you get put in a stun and a team swaps to you. The damage reduction might be enough to keep you alive.

5. Talent Choices for Fury Warriors

Level	Choices
15	✘ War Machine	✔ Endless Rage	✘ Fresh Meat
30	✘ Double Time	✘ Impending Victory	✔ Storm Bolt
45	✘ Inner Rage	✔ Sudden Death	✘ Furious Slash
60	✘ Furious Charge	? Bounding Stride	✔ Warpaint
75	✔ Carnage	✘ Massacre	✘ Frothing Berserker
90	✘ Meat Cleaver	✘ Dragon Roar	✔ Bladestorm
100	✘ Reckless Abandon	✔ Anger Management	✔ Siegebreaker

While the above table provides a generally accurate overview of the viability of talents, some finer points are discussed in the sections that follow, and we recommend you read those for a deeper understanding.

5.1. Tier 1 (Level 15) Talents

Endless Rage is the best choice in this tier. This talent allows you to generate Rage faster. This is a passive talent and works well with Raging Blow. Raging Blow refreshing Enrage, resulting in you generating Rage.

5.2. Tier 2 (Level 30) Talents

Storm Bolt is the best choice in this tier. This is a great way for you or your teammates to catch up to a ranged DPS that is running away. You can also use it on a healer to setup additional crowd control on them.

5.3. Tier 3 (Level 45) Talents

Sudden Death is the best choice in this tier. This talent increases your overall damage output and makes your damage seem random to the other team. This can result in them using defensives when you did not use an offensive cooldown.

5.4. Tier 4 (Level 60) Talents

Warpaint is the best choice in this tier. By taking 10% less damage while Enraged, you do not have to play so defensively. You can continue to push into the enemy team and stay aggressive.

If you do not think the enemy team will focus you at all, Bounding Stride is the best choice in this tier if you want mobility when playing against casters.

5.5. Tier 5 (Level 75) Talents

Carnage is the best choice in this tier. This talent allows you to use Rampage more often, resulting in a large increase to your damage output.

5.6. Tier 6 (Level 90) Talents

Bladestorm is the best choice in this tier. Not only is this ability used for its damage output, it can also be used defensively. If your healer is in crowd control, you can use Bladestorm to avoid being stunned or put into crowd control.

5.7. Tier 7 (Level 100) Talents

If you want to use your burst cooldown, Recklessness, more often during an arena match, Anger Management is the best choice in this tier. This drastically reduces the cooldown of Recklessness. However, if you want more sustained damage, Siegebreaker is the better choice. It is up to your team's strategy.

6. PvP Talents for Fury Warriors

The first PvP talent tier is will give you a choice between Gladiator's Medallion, Relentless, and Adaptation. Gladiator's Medallion is the best choice in this tier. It is great for removing crowd control on you that your healer cannot dispel.

You can choose 3 of the following PvP talents. Each of them has their uses, but some are better for certain strategies than others. The top three choices are the most useful, but can be replaced with other PvP talents depending on your team's goal.

Enduring Rage is a mandatory PvP talent. This increases the duration of Enrage and Raging Blow helps extend the buff. This helps you manage the Enrage buff and works great with Anger Management.

Thirst for Battle is crucial when playing against a team with multiple slows. This PvP talent drastically increases your mobility and works well with Piercing Howl to slow enemies.

Battle Trance is great for increasing your survivability. The downside to this PvP talent is that you might be switching targets often. If you do, you will need to use Raging Blow twice against on the same target to gain the buff. If your team's goal is to stay on one target, this is a great choice.

Disarm removes the enemy's weapons and shield for 6 seconds. This is great versus a team that has a melee on it that will focus you. You can use Disarm during their burst and negate all of the damage. You can replace Battle Trance for this PvP talent.

7. Racial Bonuses for Fury Warriors

Racial bonuses can provide interesting PvP benefits. Here are the best races to choose for each faction.

7.1. Horde

Orc is the best race for Fury Warriors, thanks to the passive Orcs have( Hardiness), reducing all stuns greatly improves survivability.

7.2. Alliance

The Human bonus ( Every Man for Himself) is a great way to escape stuns and works great with the Relentless PvP talent.

If you do not want to play Human, the Dark Iron Dwarf racial ( Fireblood) is a great defensive that can also help increase your burst damage.

8. Playstyle for Fury Warriors

The Fury Warrior has one role when in an Arena: do damage. Fury Warriors lack crowd control and the ability to peel for teammates. Players should focus on maximizing their damage as much as they can. Warriors lack mobility, that is why when you get to the enemy you should deal as much damage as you can to them. Warriors have the ability to single-handedly force cooldowns (trinkets and defensive spells) from enemy players. They have great sustained damage and very short burst cooldowns.

8.1. Before Gates Open

Have a plan for who you will be mainly using your crowd control on. Although Fury Warriors do lack crowd control, they still have Intimidating Shout and Storm Bolt. Stormbolt is great for setting up crowd control on an enemy healer. For example, you can use Stormbolt and your Mage can cast a Polymorph after that.

You should also use Battle Shout to increase the attack power of all of your teammates.

8.2. Offensive Rotation

8.2.1. The Opener

The opener refers to your team's opening crowd control chain and damage done as soon as you get out of the gates. The main goal in the opener is to force your enemies to use their cooldowns.

If the enemy healer uses their trinket in the opener, they are in trouble. In the opener, Fury Warriors should focus on sticking to an enemy and dealing large amounts of damage to the target.

This is the rotation you should use on your target at the beginning of the game.

1. Use Charge to close the gap between you and the target.
2. Use Piercing Howl to keep the enemies slowed.
3. Use Siegebreaker off cooldown.
4. Use Rampage if Enrage is not active.
5. Use Execute if you get a Sudden Death proc.
6. Use Bloodthirst to gain Enrage.
   • There is only a chance to gain Enrage after using Bloodthirst.
7. Use Raging Blow.
8. Use Bloodthirst off cooldown.
   • With the Thirst for Battle PvP talent, this will also clear all of your snares.
9. Use Raging Blow.
   • This will give you the Battle Trance buff as long as you used both Raging Blows on the same target.
10. Get crowd control on the enemy healer (you can use Intimidating Shout, Stormbolt, or have a teammate do this).
11. Use your burst rotation.

8.2.2. Burst Damage

When you have the enemy healer in crowd control and you are trying to kill an enemy, you use your burst damage.

Try to be at 100 Rage before using your burst cooldowns. It is not necessary, but for maximum damage, it is recommended.

1. Use Charge to close the gap between you and the enemy.
2. Use Recklessness.
3. Use Rampage.
4. Use Siegebreaker.
5. Use Bladestorm.
6. Use Raging Blow.
7. Use Execute if you get a Sudden Death proc.
8. Use Execute if your enemy is at low health.

While you are using your burst rotation, you want to always maintain Enrage with Rampage or Bloodthirst. Use Recklessness to drastically increase your damage output. Use Bladestorm to avoid incoming crowd control. After this, you want to make sure you are using Raging Blow and Siegebreaker as often as you can. Use Bloodthirst off cooldown. Use Execute if you get a Sudden Death proc or if an enemy is at low health.

8.2.3. Sustained damage

Sustained damage is damage you do when your burst cooldowns are not available.

1. Use Charge to close the gap between you and the target.
2. Use Piercing Howl to keep the enemies slowed.
3. Use Siegebreaker off cooldown.
4. Use Rampage if Enrage is not active.
5. Use Execute if you get a Sudden Death proc.
6. Use Bloodthirst off cooldown to gain Enrage.
   • There is only a chance to gain Enrage after using Bloodthirst. This is why you want to use Bloodthirst as often as you can.
7. Use Raging Blow.
8. Use Bloodthirst off cooldown.
   • With the Thirst for Battle PvP talent, this will also clear all of your snares.
9. If the enemy team is stacked, use Whirlwind.
   • This helps with spread damage, but most importantly can generate a lot of Rage.
   • You will also gain the Whirlwind buff. This helps you hit multiple targets with any of your single target spells. You will normally want to use Execute or Raging Blow.
10. Use Raging Blow.
    • This will give you the Battle Trance buff as long as you used both Raging Blows on the same target.

8.3. Defensive Techniques

Enraged Regeneration is your main defensive ability. Use this when you are low on health and your healer is in crowd control. The Honor Talent Slaughterhouse works well with this ability. If you are being focused and you are attacking an enemy at low health, use this and start using Bloodthirst to quickly heal yourself.

Intimidating Shout is one of the strongest Warrior cooldowns that does not deal damage. This ability should be usually used on a healer to try to get a kill on an enemy. The other use for this is to peel for yourself or your teammates. This is a strong AoE fear that can easily help your team stabilize when under pressure.

Heroic Leap will mostly be used to run down enemies. However, there will be times where having to survive is more important than getting a kill. If you are being focused, you can use Heroic Leap to leap to your healer and away from the enemy team.

9. Best Team Compositions for Fury Warriors

Now that you have the correct talents and understand your damage rotation, it is time to step into the Arena with your team. Fury Warriors want to stay aggressive with their passive ability, Enrage. You have more mobility than Arms Warriors and can stay connected to a target much easier.

9.1. 2v2 Arena

In 2v2 Arena you will be focusing on single target damage. You will often want to use Storm Bolt on your main target so they cannot move while you are dealing damage. Because your damage is somewhat unpredictable, healers will struggle to rotate cooldowns properly against Fury Warriors.

Here is a list of the best team compositions for 2v2:

• Fury Warrior + Mistweaver Monk
• Fury Warrior + Discipline Priest
• Fury Warrior + Restoration Druid
• Fury Warrior + Holy Paladin

9.2. 3v3 Arena

Your role in 3v3 is similar to 2v2 Arena. You will likely be focusing on maximizing your single target damage. When your team has damage, you will want to use Stormbolt on the enemy healer. Be careful while Enrage is active because you are taking additional damage. Save some of your mobility to run away from damage if the enemy team is focusing you.

Here is a list of the best team compositions for 3v3:

• Fury Warrior + Havoc Demon Hunter + Mistweaver Monk/Holy Paladin
• Fury Warrior + Frost Death Knight + Holy Paladin/Restoration Druid
• Fury Warrior + Outlaw Rogue/Assassination Rogue + Discipline Priest/Restoration Druid
• Fury Warrior + Enhancement Shaman + Restoration Druid
• Fury Warrior + Ret Paladin + Holy Paladin/Restoration Druid

10. Useful Macros for Fury Warriors

Macros are crucial to be successful in PvP. They allow players to use abilities on enemies without having to target them. This helps increase overall damage/healing and general awareness in the arena. Here are a few macros that all Fury Warriors can benefit from.

10.1. Stormbolt 123 Macro

• #showtooltip Stormbolt
• /cast [target=arena1] Stormbolt

Using this macro will use Stormbolt on arena enemy 1. This makes it easier to crowd control an enemy while staying focused on your target. If you want macros for the second and third enemies, simply change the arena1 to arena2 or arena3.

10.2. Disarm Focus Macro

• #showtooltip Disarm
• /cast [target=focus] Disarm

Put an enemy on focus and this macro will use Disarm on that player while you are still focused on your target.

11. Changelog