Fury Warrior Season 2 Tier Set Bonus
Warrior Fury 12.1 Class Set 2pc: Raging Blow damage increased by 15%. During Recklessness Raging Blow extends the duration of Recklessness by 2 sec, up to 6 sec.
Warrior Fury 12.1 Class Set 4pc: Bloodthirst damage increased by 10%. During Recklessness Bloodthirst increases the critical strike bonus of Recklessness by 5%, up to 10%.
Fury's new tier set bonus emphasizes Recklessness, with rotational abilities increasing its duration and value. While the set is a considerable step up from Season 1 in terms of power, trying to fit both Bloodthirst and Raging Blow into the rotation is something Fury has been struggling with for years, as there are only so many free GCDs between casts of Rampage, Execute, and Whirlwind or Thunder Clap. The tier set offsets this by having reasonably low caps: Bloodthirst only needs to be cast twice and Raging Blow three times, though there's no explicit tracker for these effects, so players should be mindful of how many times each has been used.
Slayer gameplay is actually very smooth, thanks to Unhinged automatically casting Bloodthirst and its new rotation already focusing on Raging Blow. As long as Recklessness and Bladestorm can be reliably aligned, it all plays out naturally. Any time they don't align, this becomes more cumbersome, since it's important to apply the increased critical strike bonus early in the cooldown window.
Mountain Thane is not so smooth. The rotation already has a heavy emphasis on Bloodthirst, but Thunder Clap and Blast fights for more of its GCDs, leaving less time to use Raging Blow. It's not too hard to work them in during single target, but multitarget features even more priorities, which can become overwhelming. In both cases, trying to weave three Raging Blows in between the rest of the rotation is more awkward than it sounds, especially when Burst of Power activates, so it would be nice if Thunder Blast could cover that part of the effect.
Slayer Rages
As mentioned above, a new version of Hack and Slash has led Slayer into a new rotation, which once again focuses on Raging Blow. Although this may sound reminiscent of Dragonflight and The War Within gameplay, the button isn't as oppressive as it once was.
Rampaging Berserker ensures that Rampage's priority always remains high.
Hack and Slash now increases the damage of Raging Blow, but no longer refunds multiple charges.
Reduced rage generation outside of cooldowns prevents just endlessly cycling Raging Blow and Rampage.
The rotation now has two distinct phases depending on whether Recklessness is active, which helps keep the rotation from feeling too monotone. This also results in a much healthier rotation, which focuses on Raging Blow, but still demands the use of Bloodthirst and Execute in order to reach the next Rampage.
Recklessness retains that frenetic feeling, while the rest of the rotation uses a wider range of abilities.
Rend has also been removed from the rotation, now automatically applied by a new talent in the same place on the class tree. Storm of Blood is functionally identical to the live version of Improved Whirlwind, but consolidating into a single talent removes the extra keybind and question of when it's better to manually cast instead. Because it's tied to Whirlwind, it does not have a particularly high priority in single target either, so there's no need to track the debuff.
Mountain Thane Blasts
Now more so than ever, as Mountain Thane tuning has reduced the damage of Thunder Clap and moved it into Thunder Blast instead. Intended to make those procs feel more impactful, it also comes with a few after effects.
A weaker Thunder Clap means there's no longer as much emphasis in keeping it on cooldown every other GCD.
Instead, using Bloodthirst to fish for Thunder Blast is much more important, though this also makes Thane's performance more dependent on that RNG.
This is a bit of a mixed bag. Although the tooltip previously suggested that Thunder Clap and Blast dealt similar damage, that ignored the benefits of extra Lightning Strikes and extending the duration of Avatar, which made Blast much better in practice, though Clap was still strong enough that overall performance wasn't held hostage by RNG. Without the consistent performance of Thunder Clap, Fury now has two hero specs which depend on getting good procs.
Keeping Bloodthirst on cooldown like this should feel reminiscent of The War Within Season 2.
Bringing Ruin to Uncapped Targets
The final major change of Patch 12.1 is a rework of Rampaging Ruin, now causing Rampage to deal an extra burst of damage that hits nearby enemies, instead of replacing Rampage's normal damage. The was the major issue with the original version, as the multitarget damage increase was paid for with a decrease in single target capability. Because this penalty no longer exists, Thane can make full use of the talent without concern.
That little dust cloud towards the end of Rampage is the Ruin.
Mechanically, it works almost exactly like Ground Current, striking in an area around the primary target, without hitting it directly. This keeps the talent from being a single target damage increase, or else it would surely be taken at all times. The result is another source of uncapped damage, which is likely to be taken in most situations, so it does increase Fury's multitarget talent tax.
While not one of the higher sources of damage, +5% from a single talent point is actually quite a lot.
Fun can still Flounder
Almost all of these are objectively good changes, the stronger tier set bonus is a welcome improvement, and the gameplay for both heroes is largely better than it was before... though the performance still leaves a lot to be desired. Fury remains a master of nothing, a sustained damage dealer in a world of burst cooldowns and damage windows, which can perform well when left uninterrupted, but rarely has the freedom to do so. The result is a specialization that is actually quite fun to play, but just kind of mediocre.
Fury's PTR raid performance is better than Mythic+, but still only average at best.
