Not One but Two Freaking Two-Handers – The Fury Warrior

Fury in Wrath

What's the first thing that comes to mind when most people think of Fury Warriors, what is the one talent in all of Warcraft that allows to tell that this Warrior is Fury, and what is the one talent that is in every other classes mind is far to overpowered.

Yes Titans Grip, the only talent 51 point talent from all 30 talent trees that is simultaneously mandatory for a spec to do competitive damage and yet the reason it can't do competitive damage. The talent that everyone in the game was comparing their own 51 point talents against when it was first announced. And probably the only 51 point talent that has received so much attention to balancing in only one year (I don't actually know if that ones true).

So now you're running around with two great big weapons, feel like awesome yet? If you don't well there's something wrong with you.

Now Titans Grip isn't the only talent Fury warriors got of course, there's Heroic Fury (which is not as cool as Heroic Leap by a long shot), a version of Mortal Strike for PvP, and Bloodsurge (which is also quite cool).

The thing is however that because there was not that much added the Fury Warrior has remained largely the same since TBC, except now he's dual wielding two-handers and throwing in the occasional instant Slam. The same is true of the Fury tree itself, there really is not that much different to TBC. Yes Flurry finally got unlinked from Enrage (something Fury Warriors had been wanting for a long time), Armed to the Teeth was added and Rampage was made a weaker Leader of the Pack that you didn't need to refresh every 30 seconds, but there is still a lack of 'fun' talents in the tree and so almost every Fury spec looks the same.

As for glyphs there is an even smaller choice, I have only ever seen 3 major glyphs I would use for raiding as a Fury Warrior, with perhaps 2 others that could be used for soloing/grinding.

In short Fury needs an overhaul and I hope that Cataclysm will be used as the ideal environment to do this.

As for gear, there's a lot of work to be done to get 2 very good two-handed weapons, considering you're up against Death Knights, Ret Paladins, Arms Warriors, and in some cases Hunters and Feral Druids. Also keep in mind that Fury Warriors scale better with gear that almost anyone else, so expect a kick in the teeth every time new content is released in order to keep Fury damage in check.

Fury in Cataclysm
Blizzard have said they want to redesign many of the talent trees, removing many of the +damage and +hit talents and replacing them with more fun talents, the trees will be staying at 11 tiers so this opens the possibility for trees to go wider.

I hope that the Fury Warrior becomes more than a 3 button wonder, and also that some way to stop a penalty from being applied to Titans Grip, because lets face it, Two Freaking Two-Handers.

Introducing The Warbringer

About

The Warbringer goes by the name of Ashir. When it comes to World of Warcraft the two things I love in game are my guild (the largest hive of scum and villainy on the internet) and the Warrior class. I'm starting this blog as a means of talking about World of Warcraft from my perspective for anyone out there that is willing to read my drivel, whether I maintain this design idea is unknown at the moment but hopefully there will be something here for anyone that comes along.

The Player 

In the strange otherworldly realm known as RL I am known as Ash, I'm 26 year old guy living in Nottingham in the UK, working for a US security hardware company. Hobbies include but are not limited to World of Warcraft and other PC gaming, PS3 gaming, books (mainly sci-fi and fantasy), almost any genre of film, especially poor/cheesy films, I'm also a big music fan of almost any kind of music and when I have time I like putting together my own videos of various types. I do not like people who are unwilling to learn, ignorance, stupid questions, and chavs.

History

My World of Warcraft story started one rainy day in October 2006, a friend and I had been talking about giving the game a try after another friend had been talking to us about it. I've been a gamer for years but mainly on consoles while in college I picked up PC gaming mainly for FPS and RTS games. We started on a 10 day trial because it was free and what did we have to lose. The first character I made was a Human Warrior on the Spinebreaker-EU realm called Ashinblack (a multiplayer gaming handle I was given by friends in college). This being my first MMORPG I had no idea what was expected of a warrior or what they could do, all I had to go with was the class flavour text and the idea of playing a berserker style character had always appealed to me in single player RPGs. Towards the end of the trial period I got into a Deadmines group needing a tank, I painfully learned what it was to be a tank and after what seemed like an eternity we successfully cleared the instance, it gave me a taste of what was to come and I liked it. By the time The Burning Crusade was release I was still in the mid 30s due to my casual playing and mild altoholicism. I eventually made level 70 in April 2007 (thereabouts) changed from Arms to Protection began my TBC life as a main tank in 5 man instances. 

While I was still leveling I joined the guild Elders at Play in February 2007, a small guild whose focus was to create a social guild for leveling and instance runs, it was a perfect fit for me, and I've been with them ever since. It took a few months for us to start getting a good number of level 70 characters to our roster and one day we had a crazy idea to go and try out the Karazhan raid, it was a wipefest. We were not even able to kill Attumen the Horseman, but it gave us a taste of the raidgame, and again it was good. So we went away started gearing ourselves up working on our raid communication, and the like and we went back a couple of months later, after a few attempts we managed to down the Horseman and guild chat went crazy, no-one had expected us to pull off a single kill. So we went on to Moroes, the kicker being we didn't have a single level 70 priest, doubt filled the raid that it would simply not be possible, but our 2 paladin healers, 2 hunters and our infamous (to us) DPS warrior pulled out all the stops to keep the adds under control as they were killed off. It resulted in a one-shot, again we couldn't believe it.

From that point on the guild started the often difficult transition from a leveling/family guild to a semi raiding guild, the most important aspect was always our social side but we wanted there to be something for everyone. These early raids secured my role as one of the guild main tanks for raids and I never looked back, towards the end of TBC however I began feeling burned out of the tanking role, almost 2 years of tanking and raid leading had taken its toll so I decided to go Fury for Wrath of the Lich King and go back to Protection after leveling. However due to work and being out of the UK for the WotLK launch I found myself not being able to access the expansion until 2 weeks after everyone else had. Being so far behind and with a new generation of Warriors already at or on the way to 80 meant I was no longer needed as a main tank and so I have been Fury for the endgame, and yes I love it. I still have Protection as my secondary talent build so I've not completely given up my love of tanking.

Today EaP is a guild that welcomes any kind of play be it leveling, endgame raiding, PVP, or even Achievement chasing. In the years since joining I have seen the guild go through many phases, I've seen huge drama queens, rage quits and people come and go, and come back. I've been a regular member, raid leader, and a guild officer, until work got in the way and I went back to being a regular member due to playtime limitations. Recently due to the strain of the low Alliance population on Spinebreaker putting pressure on the guild we transferred to Frostmane-EU where we are now thriving again.

My Warrior is now called Ashir, named after the chief god of the Assyrians, who was the god of military prowess and empire.