Frenzy obsolete with fury/warlords combo?

[Grand_Wazoo]

I noticed most of the top warriors using a Fury/Warlords combo does not use Frenzy but instead use Rending slash and Cleave. Are these really better than Frenzy for this build?

What's the general thinking about this?

[BalthasarHohenheim]

It depends on which build you are looking at.
There are currently 4 viable (as in can reach Trial 130+ with realistic gear) builds for warriors:
1. a Shockwave + Vampiric Blades build using 4-6 pieces of Warlord and 0-2 pieces of Fury
2. a Tornado build using 4 pieces of Fury and 2 pieces of Warlord
3. a Cleave + Bladestorm Armamends build using 2-4 pieces of Warlord and 2-4 pieces of Fury + a Cleave Bracer of Mastery
4. the classic Shield Warrior

2 and 3 are currently a bit interchangeable but if Tornado really cannot crit as a few people on these forums reported then 2 will undergo significant changes in the future.

Of these 3 will always use frenzy (since their damage scales directly with attack speed) while 1 will never use it (as the attack speed barely adds any damage and the movement speed is utterly useless for a build that doesn't walk). 2 and 4 may use it (and I would say it is better than Rending slash in both) but don't have to.
The reason why you only see Rending slash and Cleave is because the Shockwave build is dominating at high Trial levels at the moment because of shockwaves ridiculous damage ceiling (due to double dipping of buffs/ crit damage).

[Grand_Wazoo]

Make sense...Thanks for the detailed explanation.

[7string]

There are also 2 different builds according to the goal - XP farming or pushing. (Not counting gold farming for which I use the ephemeral gear - not the ephemeral jewelry). I used 4 Fury/2WL for all of gold ANB. I used the Bladestorm axes for XP farming and switched to Vampiric blades for pushing, but kept Whirlwind as an active ability the whole time. The power of the 4 Fury tornadoes is just so fun at farming level trials that I wanted to see how far I could push it into higher trials. At trials up to 105, Frenzy works better for XP farming as you just want to run the tornadoes across the map as quickly as possible, using Shockwave as needed between runs. But I find I am always using Rending Slash as primary because it helps to build the bleed for a quick Shockwave takedown. The build I am using now for XP farming in the season is 4Fury/2WL; Rending slash primary/Frenzy secondary; and Vampiric Blades. It works very well with TL105 runs of 60-90 secs and 3758%XP. But as I moved to higher Trials in the ANB, Cleave seemed to do a little better than Frenzy. This all worked very well for me in ANB until I begin to hit a wall after I completed TL 120 (which I got to much faster than I expected due to WW with Fury Tornadoes). I managed to get to TL 125 with Whirlwind still active, but I just didn’t have enough time to get to 130, and had to settle for TL126 and barely made the top 250. WW at higher trials was just was too slow dragging large mobs back and forth waiting for them to die. If I had enough time and resources I would probably opt for 4Fury/2WL for XP farming and maybe pushing up to around TL120, and then shift to 4WL/2Fury for final pushes. I just didn’t have enough time and resources to craft 2 more WL gear pieces in the Gold ANB. I’m playing with tweaking the builds now, and as the top 100 players have shown, having a shockwave bracer with lots of fire damage is essential for higher trials. Just wish I could find a build that could keep the 4 Fury speed of whirlwind and tornadoes... A bit of extra parry does seem to be important for a 4WL build in order to WW proc frequently...I’m playing with that...

[TheExorcist]

i would try to build Fury/warlord with RS/Cleave later. looks interesting
thanks for nice discussion

[Benedicto]

We might keep our SW gear until they rework it to be competitive again...

[Nondescript]

Yes Cleave is far superior than frenzy. Top warriors is really only considered build 1 with 4Wl and 2 fury. There are other different builds at the top, but they take a bit more skill/motivation that the average player does not have. Basic attacks do no damage, so you need to look at the secondary benefits they add. Frenzy gives you speed+life steal (minor). The vampiric blades give you life steal and speed is replaced with battle rage that is up nonstop from itz and parry proc. So frenzy becomes redundant. Cleave gives enemy damage reduction, and allows larger pulls, which is HUGE, thus cleave wins by a longshot. Arguable cleave is even more important than even rending slash.