Fury has undergone significant changes in both its talent tree and core mechanics. Doubling down on the value of Haste, the spec now provides large statistical bonuses which play to the concept of a fast attacking berserker. The rotation still revolves around maintaining Enrage primarily through the use of Rampage, though Rampage itself is also more prominent in being one of the primary sources of damage both in and out of the Execute phase. While none of the artifact traits have been carried forward, the majority of concerns from Legion have been addressed, and the spec as a whole feels greatly improved.

What’s been removed

• All artifact traits, including Odyn’s Fury. As a result, rage generation has been reduced by 30-50%.
• Legendaries and certain specialty items such as Convergence of Fates work until level 116.
• Furious Slash is no longer part of the base rotation and has been replaced by Whirlwind.
• Avatar, Bloodbath, Frenzy, Outburst, Shockwave, War Machine, and Wrecking Ball have been replaced.

What’s been added

• Anger Management, Furious Slash, Impending Victory, Meat Cleaver, Siegebreaker, Sudden Death, and a new version of War Machine are all new talents.
• Victory Rush has been added back to Fury.

What’s different

• Enrage is large haste buff, similar to Legion War Machine, which allows fast paced gameplay.

• Titan’s Grip no longer increases maximum health, due to no longer taking increased damage, though Fury still has extra stamina due to dual wielding 2h weapons.

• Bloodthirst now has a flat 30% chance to proc Enrage.

• Execute as a rage generator enables Rampage (and Enrage) to be used naturally throughout the Execute phase.

• Raging Blow no longer requires Enrage but has charges, making it similar to Legion Inner Rage, but with a more dynamic rotation.

• Rampage deals damage 4 times instead of 5, and now correctly scales with Haste.

• Whirlwind as a rage generator better facilitates cleaving without losing Enrage uptime. Cleavable abilities are Bloodthirst, Execute, Furious Slash, Raging Blow, Rampage, and Siegebreaker.

• Recklessness (formerly Battle Cry) allows Rampage to be used much more frequently within its duration, but is on the GCD.

• Rallying Cry (formerly Commanding Shout) is also now on the GCD.

• Bladestorm is now much shorter, allowing it to be more easily covered by Enrage.

• Carnage’s damage increase better competes with Frothing Berserker’s buff.

• Dragon Roar is now a short frequency burst AoE ability to compete with Bladestorm’s longer cooldown.

• Endless Rage copies Ceann-ar Charger.

• Fresh Meat is actually good now.

• Frothing Berserker triggers on Rampage cast, removing the issue of using Rampage too early and missing out on its buff.

• Massacre is no longer required to enable Enrage sub-20%, and now allows much greater use of Execute throughout the encounter.

• Reckless Abandon increases Recklessness burst, due to the specs emphasis on Rampage damage.

• Warpaint is a stronger damage reduction, due to Enrage no longer increasing damage taken.

Talents

There have been few talent changes so far, though other changes have impacted their use considerably.

15 - War Machine / Endless Rage / Fresh Meat

• War Machine is weaker than in Legion, unless targets are dying frequently (avg. 1 every 6 sec).
• Endless Rage synergizes with Carnage and Recklessness, working best in sustained combat.
• Fresh Meat pairs well with Frothing Berserker, and is more useful for intermittent combat.

30 - Double Time / Impending Victory / Storm Bolt

• Impending Victory is a poor trade at 15% heal for 10 rage. Double Time + Furious Charge will amount to more healing in most situations, without spending rage.

• The removal of Shockwave makes Storm Bolt more useful by default, though the prevalence of other class stuns and competition with Double Time will make it situational at best.

45 - Inner Rage / Sudden Death / Furious Slash

• Inner Rage allows more filling without changing the rotation, and less filler use.
• Sudden Death facilitates the rotation through burst damage and rage generation.
• Furious Slash effectively replaces Whirlwind on single target, generating more rage, dealing more damage, and maintaining the Haste buff, which multiplies with Enrage and Frothing Berserker.

60 - Furious Charge / Bounding Stride / Warpaint

• Furious Charge is still impractical to use and further devalued by the addition of Victory Rush.
• Warpaint is a much stronger defensive option.

75 - Carnage / Massacre / Frothing Berserker

• Carnage is better, though functionally unchanged.
• Massacre increases Execute time by 75%.
• Frothing Berserker has a great quality of life improvement, and balances less frequent Enrages with a damage/Haste buff, which multiplies with Enrage and Furious Slash.

90 - Meat Cleaver / Dragon Roar / Bladestorm

• Meat Cleaver speeds up the primary rotation without adding anything new to it. It doesn’t synergize with Furious Slash, but works well on sustained multi-target.
• Dragon Roar is the short version of Bladestorm, with half the cooldown, damage, GCD, and rage generation. It synergizes well with Siegebreaker, frequent multitarget pulls, and questing.
• Bladestorm fits better into Enrage, competes with Dragon Roar for longer-interval AoE, and is still strong on single target, though the shorter duration makes it weaker than Arms’ version.

100 - Reckless Abandon / Anger Management / Siegebreaker

• Reckless Abandon allows 2-3 extra Rampages throughout Recklessness, making it a long interval burst option, and gets much stronger with anything that lowers Recklessness’ cooldown.
• Anger Management reduces Recklessness cooldown by ~30%.
• Siegebreaker returns short cooldown, burst window gameplay, nearly identical to Colossus Smash, which lines up well with Recklessness and synergizes with Dragon Roar.

Overview

Speed Demon

While the rotation plays effectively the same as in Legion, it’s made distinct by its emphasis on on Haste buffs to create a fast-GCD play style not found elsewhere within the game. These buffs, 25% from Enrage, 10% from Frothing Berserker, and 6% from Furious Slash, multiply and combine to push Fury into the 70-90% range, and quite possibly even higher, depending on the base amount from gear.

This change feels good, and helps promote the “furious” class fantasy, while also allowing the spec to feel different from Arms, which is a good overall change. As you gain more Haste, the gameplay loop also speeds up – you get more auto attacks and GCDs in the same amount of time, which translates into more rage, more frequent casts of Rampage, and more Enrage uptime as a result.

Talents and Toolkit

Gone are the redundant cooldowns, which largely mitigates the impact of the GCD changes, and the talents are now laid out in a much more logical fashion, with rows that uniformly impact Rage generation (15), enhance the primary rotation (45), Rampage use (75), multi-target (90), and cooldowns (100). The addition of talents like Sudden Death, Siegebreaker, and Dragon Roar make the rotation much busier, addressing concerns of the Bloodthirst – Raging Blow – Rampage loop becoming too static, bland, or boring.

Likewise, a dedicated AoE talent row helps offset the historical opportunity cost of picking AoE talents over single target ones, even if the choices aren’t quite as well defined as they should be. As things stand now, Meat Cleaver doesn’t compete with its burstier competition, while Dragon Roar and Bladestorm are too functionally similar to be distinct; the difference between them effectively comes down to needing AoE every half or full minute.

Comparison to Arms

Both specs now have very strong competing toolkits. Both specs can greatly improve their Execute phases, while Fury’s Whirlwind changes make dynamic cleaving much more accessible, leaving the specs near evenly matched in the 3-5 target range, although Arms still has the advantage on two targets due to Sweeping Strikes. Arms’ version of Bladestorm is also much stronger than Fury’s (nearly double), although it also takes more than double the amount of time to deal its full damage, due to the delay on Deep Wounds. Although this means that Arms will likely have the superior burst AoE, it could fall short once gear inflation kicks in and those targets which used to survive the full duration of Arms’ Bladestorm and Deep Wounds start dying halfway through that damage during farm content.

Defensively, Fury is very strong, no longer taking increased damage and gaining even more self-healing than in Legion. Arms still has a slight advantage in on-demand mitigation via Defensive Stance, but lacks the self-heling to recoup lost health without a dedicated healer, and incurs a short damage penalty for doing so.

Ultimately, the difference between the two specs will come down to tuning and circumstance, but the changes thus far have alleviated 99% of the concerns left over from Legion, putting it in a very strong position for success, as well as a genuinely enjoyable experience for anyone who appreciates fast gameplay.