A guide to being successful as SMF warrior (4.3)

4.3 updating has begun. Things are changing quite a bit so see it as a work in progress for now. I moved the FL tactics in order to make room for Dragon Soul encounters. They can be found at http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/3061881635

4.3: Spec

http://wowtal.com/#k=BeB4St5V.aei.warrior.RDZPxp is the default spec. Going 3/3 Incite isn't advised for now even though deep wounds is heavily nerfed. I'll keep this updated though as more research might prove it as actually worth it for SMF, perhaps with the 2 set bonus. 2/2 Booming Voice beats 1/2 and 0/2 even with the set bonus on our old tier.

4.3 Glyphs

Quite straightforward. Get Glyph of Bloodthirst , Glyph of Raging Blow and Glyph of Slam as Prime glyphs. Glyph of Cleaving, Glyph of Colossus Smash and Glyph of Death Wish as major Glyphs and Glyph of Battle, Glyph of Bloody Healing and Glyph of Berserker Rage as minor glyphs. If you’re in a 10 man raid without anyone bringing stamina to the table you obviously want to use Glyph of Command instead of Glyph of Battle

Note: Glyph of colossus smash now also causes CS to apply the first sunder.

4.3 Gearing

Stat priority: 8% hit > 26 Expertise > Strenght >~19% Hit>= Crit > 27% Hit > Haste > Mastery

As SMF has a lot less weapon damage than TG and doesn’t rely on RB damage mastery is our weakest stat. With 4.3 released hit as become a lot more powerful and is considered about even to crit. According to popular spreadsheets it takes about 19% hit for crit to become equally valuable again.. Haste as also gained a lot of power compared to mastery so try to avoid the latter as much as you can. Haste is in fact very close to crit right now.

a) Reforge all mastery to crit. If the piece has crit on it reforge to hit.
b) Reforge all haste to crit. If the piece has crit on it reforge to hit.

Hit is now a lot more valuable (with the exception of madness of deathwing where it's extremely !@#$ as you can't miss deathwing or the tentacles) as rage income matters a lot more on fights where you can cleave away. I can't really put a cap on it where you want to go back to crit, but according to some you can pretty much go all the way to the white hit cap now. I'm currently sporting around 17% hit myself which pretty much means I only have hit/crit pieces and pieces with crit+randomstat which is reforged to hit.


Gems are as follows:

Gemming is pretty simple too:
Red sockets -> Queen's Garnet
Yellow sockets -> Inscribed Lava Coral if the bonus is 10 strenght or better
Blue sockets -> Etched Shadow Spinel if the bonus is 10 strenght or better
Meta gem -> Reverberating Shadowspirit Diamond

The “bis” set can be found at http://elitistjerks.com/f81/t126928-fury_4_3_bis/ but is a work in progress so don't see it as being the final version.

Trinkets are still under discussion but as a preliminary top 10 I'd probably say it's


1) Eye of Unmaking
2) Creche of the Final Dragon
3) Eye of Unmaking
4) Bone-Link Fetish
5) Creche of the Final Dragon
6) Bone-Link Fetish
7) Vessel of Acceleration
8) Eye of Unmaking
9) Rotting Skull
10) Creche of the Final Dragon

Reasoning behind it is that pure strenght still beats all the rest. Normal creche is slightly better than Heroic Vessel simply because it provides 528 strenght (based on an estimated ICD of 110 seconds. This is indeed a weird ICD but according to tests the LFR one has 120 seconds, the normal mode 110 seconds and the heroic mode 100 seconds ICD).

Bone-Link Fetish pretty much becomes BIS at any fight with a decent amount of multi-target events. At Yor'sahj, Blackthorn and Spine of Deathwing it is by far the BIS trinket. Most likely the same for Madness of Deathwing as 1 proc during the Hemorrhage is going to cause massive damage. I think we can safely say that even the normal version is going to beat any other (heroic) trinket by a good margin. The LFR one is probably only on par on fights with a lot of aoe mobs.

Bone-Link Fetish still is pretty powerful on single targets and will most likely outperform anything but the heroic versions of the other Dragon Soul trinkets. The same should count for the normal version of the AOE trinket vs the LFR version of the two others.

Heroic skull barely provides 430 strenght and 517 crit on the average VS Heroic vessel which produces 458 strenght and 460 crit. While 57 crit clearly beats 28 strenght in a straightout scenario my personal opinion is that the difference isn't big enough to cover the fact that the strenght on heroic skull is a proc which means it might go off at various bad times.

Compared to firelands there are a lot more situations in which you simply do 0 dps for a significant amount of time like on Morchok (Black stuff), Yor'Sahj (blobtime), Zon'ozz HC (heroic mode phase 2), Spine of deathwing (When there's nothing to kill), Madness of deathwing (moving platforms). The odds for the Vessel Buff to drop are extremely low with a 20 seconds duration.