I put up the original 4.1 patch note text HERE and you can find updated notes on blizzards blog http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/2356431. Although there are a handful of other changes from the original notes (shown in red on their blog) there’s one in particular that I think could potentially be a sign of things to come.
Category: Warrior
Daily Thoughts: Warrior 4.0.3a
Most warriors know by this point that blizzard, using their mighty nerf hammer, struck furious down the haughty warriors and nerfed their precious damage into oblivion, leaving warriors impotent and senile. Or did they? Check the patch that has sent many a search to this blog (and many others I’m sure, but I don’t have their statistic pages) asking, “fury warrior nerf 4.0.3”. Actually, about 50% of all the search terms used to find my blog since 4.0.3a are in regards to the Great Warrior Nerf of 2010. I must admit, I was even a bit concerned seeing a 17% nerf to most of the fury dps toolkit.
So how demolished was my warrior dps after all? Well…It wasn’t. That’s right, you can put your warrior fears to rest. At least fury ones, I hear arms is pretty bad again, but I don’t play that to test it myself. All in all my damage on a test dummy was between 5-10% lower so yes, a nerf, but not world ending. I saw a lot less of my attacks hitting over 10k, which isn’t surprising. On the other hand, I still topped damage in the 3 heroics I did, pretty much every pull. I have to worry about pulling threat from decently geared tanks still, which makes me happy.
So in short, Fury warriors are OK after all. You might not be quite as much of a beast as before, but don’t think you need to go roll a mage now in order to get a raid slot.
Daily Thoughts: Fury Warrior In RS & ICC
I have to open with this: By the time I finish writing this post, I should have Wrathful Gladiator’s Decapitator . This will not be acquired through any particular PVP skill on the warrior, but through grinding of BG’s, WG, and random heroics. It costs 2550 honor and is the best a warrior can get outside of drops from ICC. Even with resilience wasting a stat for a PVE player, the damage on the weapon and pure attack power (324 AP) is nothing to scoff at. Keep in mind this is the item level 264 version and the 277 version is still only obtainable with rating. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong on that last bit, but I don’t have enough honor points on any toon to attempt to buy the 277 version now.
It’s good to be able to say that Fury Warriors can still do great competitive DPS even with the rage normalization and loss of ArP.
Ruby Sanctum: Halion
Halion is not a friendly fight for a Warriors meters, especially when asked to switch to the physical realm and the twilight realm during the last phase. Fortunately, it is otherwise a pretty easy fight for melee dps. In the first phase, and if you are topside during the third phase, it is a standard dragon tank-n-spank with some fire to not stand in. In the second phase, and if you are in the twilight realm during the third phase, it’s also a standard dragon fight with purple fire to not stand in. Melee gets it easy inside the twilight phase because when the orbs connect their frickin’ laser beam, we can keep dpsing at basically full strength as we move to the side to not be cleft in twain. Also, the trash can be a little bit fun leading up to Halion.
ICC: Hardmodes:
Fury DPS in ICC is pretty much just bloody buckets of fun. With 10k dps on Marrowgar and 12k on Saurfang, I’m able to do very satisfying damage. Keep in mind, I’m not decked out in 25m gear on my warrior. As of this raid he was only using a 251/219 weapon set. Without a ranged slow or easy stun, Fury doesn’t really end up having a “job” during any of the fights in ICC. Interrupt Deathwhisper, deal with the correct adds on Putri, Valinthria, and LK (all same as any dps class really) and do mindless, raging dps. It’s a nice change coming from heals as a main spec. For me, doing dps in a raid is a lot more relaxing than heals for most content. Admittedly, with how ez-mode much of WotLK content is, healing can end up requiring less attention than dps. As for all the hardmodes that we’ve attempted so far, only Putricide has proven difficult. I think we had 4 wipes on him during our first round of attempts. Outside of him, we’ve cleared all bosses in HM except Princes, Sindra, and the big LK. Princes shouldn’t be too much trouble when we get around to them, but so far we haven’t done any attempts.
Today is a good day to be fury, though the future does hold a great many uncertainties. Can we hold back cleave spam on trash in order to not break CC and get our faces smashed in cata instances? Will blizzard nerf us into the ground while they laugh on the yachts? Is that guy named justinbieberz in trade chat really Justin Bieber? The last one easily scares me the most. Only time will tell. For now, keep careless smashing your face into things Fury Warriors, it’s why GC gave you big pointy helmets.