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Overall
Fury is comfortably placed as one of the middle performing specs in Uldir and performs well in Mythic+. The high APM, GCD locked playstyle is thematically faithful to the Crazed Berserker and provides an enjoyable iteration of the spec. It offers some of the strongest single-target and sustained multi-target currently in the game while still providing above average burst AoE through talents. Its most evident drawbacks are that its primary niches are uncommon in raiding. The talent tree as a whole is fairly well designed, with choices that can be made based on encounter design, however it does have a few outliers in terms of tuning. The current Azerite Traits while strong are very unimaginative and offer little in terms of gameplay change.
Toolkit/Gameplay
While not having any form of true CC, Fury does bring Intimidating Shout and Piercing Howl to the table as well as the talented ranged stun, Storm Bolt. It offers the powerful raid cooldown Rallying Cry which can be further augmented with the Moment of Glory Azerite trait. It has above average self healing through constant use of Bloodthirst as well as the emergency personal cooldown Enraged Regeneration. Fury can also talent into Warpaint for an incredibly high uptime 10% DR at basically no cost. It’s above average in dealing damage in almost all situations, with two target cleave being the exception, keeping it competitive in most encounters.
While the playstyle isn’t overly complex, the high amount of APM required can be overwhelming for newer players, but is not very punishing for small mistakes made.
Lack of Common Niche
The biggest concern for Fury in the current raid and raids to come is that its strongest types of damage dealing, single-target with no downtime and sustained multi-target, are very uncommon in raid encounters. Although single-target encounters do exist, they all too often have mechanics which push you out of melee or disable your character for periods of time, things which Fury deals with poorly as a result of the bulk of its damage coming from auto attacks and Rampage. Fortunately sustained multi-target can be quite common in high Mythic+ keys, especially on Fortified weeks but is a rare occurrence in raids which tend to lean towards burst AoE and two target cleave. Fury can talent for above average damage burst AoE, however this takes 4 GCD’s to set up, feels cumbersome to use and goes against the “get up and go” flow of the spec. As a result we get overshadowed by numerous other classes who take less time to set up and simply output more damage. Unless either our niche gets catered to or we get a boost to our weaker areas, namely burst AoE, Fury will remain a middle of the pack spec for most raids.
Talents
The talent tree is full of interesting choices with good designs, however, Fury ends up relegated to a single build in most forms of content. Fury has some talents with a clear niche but these situations aren’t common enough for these talents to see a lot of use over the “Cookie Cutter” build. On the other hand, some talents that should have a niche are just so undertuned that they never see use. Rebalancing some of the tiers, specifically the 15, 75 and 100 tiers, would allow more talents to see use and create more diversity in the Fury talent tree.
Level 15
Endless Rage is the clear winner in most situations here due to being universally applicable and just very strong. War Machine is too niche, and even in that niche weaker than Endless Rage, and Fresh Meat suffers from being undertuned damage wise but provides a small boost to healing which is nice in some forms of content like PvP or open world content.
Level 30
This tier offers a choice between mobility in the form of Double Time or CC in Storm Bolt, which is the only stun Fury can choose. The outlier here is Impending Victory, which on a GCD capped spec is very off putting.
Level 45
Sudden Death is the favorite in this tier with it being strong on both single-target and multi-target with the only downside being it has poor interaction with the execute phase itself. Furious Slash while strong on single-target, especially so during execute phase, suffers with downtime and Inner Rage is not only fairly uninteresting but also weaker than the alternatives anywhere outside of long sustained cleave.
Level 60
Warpaint giving 10% damage reduction while Enraged gives Fury a very high uptime of a decent amount of damage reduction as long as they are able to actively attack a target. Bounding Stride fills the role of a good mobility increase while Furious Charge offers a small healing increase which is not only annoying to use but also isn’t very useful in raids or M+.
Level 75
Carnage is one of Fury's strongest talents. Not only is it a massive damage increase due to higher Enrage uptime and more Rampage damage but it also increases the fluidity of the spec. Frothing Berserker is strong in its current role of facilitating higher burst damage, however Massacre is lackluster at the moment even in its potential niche, due to Fury lacking an Execute oriented Azerite trait as well as Carnage being too strong.
Level 90
Dragon Roar is excellent both on AoE and single-target as it does high burst damage in a single GCD and generates rage, all while on a short cooldown. Bladestorm is competitive yet just behind Dragon Roar on single-target but offers more burst in a multi-target scenario. Despite the strength of Fury's bladestorm, it’s still outclassed by many other burst AoE classes, while Meat Cleaver has too small of a niche and thus far has only been able to see some use on Mythic Zul.
Level 100
Siegebreaker is a very strong talent in terms of the damage it provides, however it encroaches on the design of Arms by giving Fury a burst window and doesn’t flow as well with Fury’s playstyle as the other talents on this tier. Both Reckless Abandon and Anger Management attempt to bolster Fury’s use of Recklessness, the former by making it stronger and fit more fluidly into the rotation while the latter reduces the cooldown of Recklessness. Both of these talents are well designed but with current tuning fall behind Siegebreaker.
Azerite Traits
Azerite Traits are an area where Fury can be improved. Several of the traits are decent in terms of damage but don’t change the way the spec plays in any meaningful way. Instead of offering any change to the rotation or giving any buffs/procs for the player to keep track of and play around, the Fury traits instead opt for passive damage increases or entirely uninteractive buffs. Fury traits tend to lose benefit when using more than 1 of the same trait, leading to the interesting position where the best in slot list consists of 3 unique traits as opposed to duplicates of 2 or 3 of the same.
PTR Changes
Currently on the PTR there are two additional traits for Fury which look very promising, pending numbers tuning they have great potential and they are a leap away from the current monotony of the live Azerite traits.
Completely ignoring damage numbers, this trait has immense potential to the spec. Coupled with a Bloodcraze trait this will likely be a must pick (just one) just for the additional rage generation. Assuming it has decent damage, the combo of this trait and Bloodcraze will be a must have in all AoE situations and provide decent self healing which can be invaluable in Mythic+. It is worth noting that this may also increase the value of subsequent Bloodcraze traits in AoE situations depending on numbers tuning.
This trait has an uncanny amount of similarity to Simmering Rage in that it augments Rampage damage further and steroids rage generation with a proc of Recklessness. At current gear levels this will average out to about one 4s activation of Recklessness per minute which is fairly decent on paper. In practice however the proc is very random and thus very inconsistent. The proc, although very random, is very fun to play with as the sudden short window of double rage generation is incredibly noticeable. It does have strong potential to be another pick one like many of our other traits.
