They consistently trade places on who’s parsing better and who isn’t just look at each fight individually for their statistics/rankings.
Rik sucks for melee dps who require uptime in general (sucks for everyone really) but Fury is prone to being more stooged than other specs due to our requirement for tighter positioning for our AoE burst so really that drops fury off on the overall comparison charts.
Stix also has problems for general parsing too since you’re reliant no not getting the mechanic while also reliant on being able to cleave the mobs in a tight location near melee which isn’t ever a case as you’ll have your range dps blasting the adds before you even get a chance to hit them while they get into position.
Most raid encounters place Fury and Arms very close to each other, if one is mid they’re both mid, if they’re upper both upper and low? both low rankings wise in terms of the 95th %ile.
Even looking at ranks per every fight individually at the very top which isn’t plagued by PIs like other specs are, both Arms and Fury generally can parse well on each fight comparatively to other warriors with a few exceptions on certain fight types preferring certain damage profiles for a first kill.
Warriors have always been a multi spec class in terms of raid performance, you’re never not going to play both specs during progression especially with how easily they share gear and it’s been a thing ever since I started playing in wrath.
Hence why I believe that the AoE dmg cooldowns (roar/odyn’s fury/bladestorm etc) need to be buffed as the S1 and S2 nerfs for these are not warranted in the slightest and Fury needs a rework to it’s baseline AoE kit because the limitations set in place for it by both the target cap and it sharing the same class as Arms needs to be adjusted in a way that doesn’t invalidate the other options.
It’s the unfortunate reality though, specs have always been balanced around what best weapons/trinkets were available for them.
Blizzard have always historically tuned specs around these rather than the weapons/trinkets around the specs themselves. It’s lead to some silly balance decisions, especially in seasons where double cantrip 2h weapons have been a thing, call it a fury tax if you will and it happens every time. It shouldn’t but it does.
The introduction of the puzzling cartel chip (whenever we get those and how many we get) will at least allow one or both of them to be available for all fury warriors, but that’s always been the case that Mythic raiders have the edge in their spec’s performance always.
This also falls under our class tree being restrictive to the point that we cannot take utility we have access to due to mandatory points needing to be used for dps nodes and next to zero option to backtrack to pickup utility. There is no doubt at all that there needs to be numbers tuning to buff warriors if they insist on leaving us with little utility as selfish specs need to do the most damage.
We have a strong AoE snare in piercing howl, a 70% snare on a 30s cooldown however it’s never taken at all because we don’t have a single point to spare.
In the end, there is plenty that the warrior class needs overall to bump up it’s utility and giving you a reason to want one in your group for m+ that doesn’t devolve to just does damage.
, you’d be sprinting in capes first. Every time someone points out Fury’s underperformance, here you come with a dissertation and a shovel to bury the conversation.