The Warrior’s Charge: Fury talents in Legion

So I’ve gotten to play around with the two available Warrior specs in the Legion alpha, Fury and Protection. Today I’ll be talking about the Fury talents. We talked about Protection last time, but there have been some changes to the talent trees since then, so we’ll be talking about Fury without preconceptions from last time. I’ve played Fury on a premade level 100 in the green starter gear, and so I feel fairly secure in saying that as of yet we’re not well tuned. That’s to be expected this early in the Alpha process.

However, aesthetically Fury feels great. Our animations are drastically improved. It’s clear that a lot of work went into them. The Fury Warrior Artifact quest chain seems a little off at the moment — it’s fun, but it varies wildly in difficulty from too easy to far too difficult and back to easy again, another legacy of the tuning process. Once you have your Artifact and head to a zone (I chose Highmountain) the difficulty smooths out a bit.

Okay, so let’s talk about the talents and my personal take on them after using them.

The furious ones

I’ll never get tired of that.

Anyway, one thing that I feel needs to be said is that as of right now, Fury is absolutely a spec of choices — and sometimes you can make choices based entirely on what you like better, not what does the most DPS. Partially this is because I’m leveling on this character, and one’s leveling choices are often different than what might choose for dungeons or raids. But also it’s because there really are options here. Some of these decisions are entirely rooted in what you want to do. Do you want to maximize your AOE? Focus on staying upright? Get lots of single target attacks? Do you really want Heroic Strike back for no reason I can understand? Go nuts — Fury will allow you to choose any of those things. And with the talent system no longer requiring reagents there’s no reason not to switch on the fly to match the circumstances you find yourself in.

The level 15 tier allows you to choose between Shockwave, Storm Bolt, and Sweeping Strikes. Shockwave and Storm Bolt work almost exactly as they do now, so choosing between them is saying I want a cone stun that does frontal damage vs. I want a single target stun that does crazy damage against bosses. Sweeping Strikes is now a passive ability that buffs your Execute and Raging Blow to hit a second additional target, making it a solid passive AOE choice. There’s no clear winner here. It comes down to what you want to do. I chose Storm Bolt for leveling, but I can see lots of situations where either of the other two would be a better choice.

Level 30 talents are an eclectic bunch. They are:

• Seething Rage, which reduces Enraged Regeneration down to a 1 minute cooldown and unshackles it from Enrage so you can use it as soon as it’s up
• Bounding Strike which reduces your Heroic Leap cooldown by 15 seconds and gives you a 70% boost to run speed for 3 seconds after you use Heroic Leap
• Furious Charge, which reduces the damage you take by 20% for 5 seconds after a charge

I’ll be honest — so far for leveling I absolutely love Seething Rage. It makes Enraged Regeneration an ability that’s worth having. The other two are interesting, with Furious Charge adding a different kind of damage reduction than we’ve seen before, but overall I think Seething Rage is the clear winner here.

At level 45 we choose between Endless Rage, Overpower and Avatar. This tier is a big preference one — I’m sure in time someone will come along and tell us which of the three is a pure DPS increase over the other two, but for right now it’s down to this: do you want more rage to attack with, an extra attack, or a DPS cooldown? I went with Endless Rage because I like passive talent choices, stuff I can select and then never have to worry about again, and I already felt like I had enough buttons to press, but that was a purely personal and subjective choice. Which is why I really like the level 45 tier, because you can make a choice like that and it works.

Second Wind needs a redesign

I covered the level 60 tier last time. It’s exactly the same for Fury as it is for Prot, nothing has changed, and Second Wind is still not very good. It’s better for a Fury Warrior in a raid or dungeon since you could expect there to be times when you weren’t taking damage (as compared to a Prot Warrior who should be tanking, and thus, taking damage) but it’s still not great. I’d nominally take Second Wind over Imposing Roar, but it would come down to how much damage I’ll be taking and how often I expect to take it. A fight where I knew I’d be taking damage throughout, Imposing Roar wins, and if you just want to charge more often and skip figuring this nonsense out, go ahead and grab Double Time.

At level 75, we can choose between Enraging Blows, Frenzy, and Bladestorm. Bladestorm is your clear winner if you want to do AOE damage. Enraging Blows is nice if you have Overpower or otherwise want more rage generation, while if you already took Endless Rage I feel like you’d be better off with Frenzy. This is one that not only depends on personal preference but it’s also somewhat dependent on previous talent choices. Frenzy is a nice rage dump if you’re swimming in rage, Enraging Blows is useful if you’re rage starved.

Once we get to 90 we get another tier of talents that work with previous tiers in such a way as to change your choices appropriately. Heroic Strike, for instance, is a good rage dump and one that interacts well with Enrage, getting double the normal Enrage damage bonus. It’s also off the GCD. If you missed HS spam, it’s back. Meanwhile, Into the Fray gives you more Haste (and thus more rage and white damage) the more enemy targets there are around you. If you have Frenzy and its rage bonus, Into the Fray gets some interesting synergy there. Finally, we have Unquenchable Thirst, a flat 10 bonus rage per Bloodthirst. Honestly, as much as it pains me to say, if you’ve already taken Endless Rage and/or Enraging Blows, it feels like Unquenchable Thirst is pushing things a little. I mean, you might need all three rage generation talents, but I don’t think it’s very likely. Still, they’re there if you want them. I think we’re more likely to see some take Heroic Strike because they love how it works with Enrage and that it’s off the GCD, while others will take Into the Fray to take advantage of the potential haste boost potential.

Finally the level 10o tier sees us choosing between Carnage, Reckless Abandon, and Dragon Roar. Frankly, I love all of these talents. Dragon Roar is the winner if you’re after pure AOE damage, but it has a short cooldown at 20 seconds so it’s not a bad choice for single target either. Remember, Dragon Roar ignores all armor and is always a critical strike, so it’s a pretty solid talent choice here. Carnage buffs Rampage, and Rampage is one of my favorite new abilities, plus Carnage is a passive ability so if you like reducing the number of buttons you have Carnage is a good choice, plus it really does increase the damage on Rampage to scary awesome levels. Since Rampage always hits as if you were Enraged, it’s a very solid single target contender. Reckless Abandon does almost the opposite from Carnage — it buffs the new Recklessness so that it has a 30 second cooldown and, every time you hit that new cooldown, you generate 100 rage. That’s a big chunk of rage every 30 seconds. It really comes down to another situation where you’re not only customizing how you deal your damage, but how you generate your rage. I like Carnage the most, but I think any of these talents would work depending on your previous talent choices and play style.

Your house of broken bones

As of right now, I think Fury is in pretty good shape. I expect some iteration once we’re in a damage balance pass — I think Reckless Abandon might get its rage bump nerfed, for instance. A free 100 rage every 30 seconds? It’s a very bursty way to do things. But we’ll see once we’re closer.

Next time we’ll hopefully look at Arms. If we get lucky, maybe they’ll make Arms playable by then.