Warcraft Classic Rage Generation & Don't Shut Up and Compute & Warrior Miscellany

 They simplified it a lot on modern patches, most likely because this equation is back-assward.

 Hidden condition found here: https://vanilla-wow-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Rage

 Simple equation version: https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/rage-generation/320080
Warriors are almost always above the softcap, meaning the hidden condition doesn't matter.

Actual equation:

damage factor, d_f
swing factor, s_f = 2 1/3 * swing timer, alt: 2.333 * s.
damage-beyond-breakpoint factor, d2_f2 = (d_f-s_f) alt: offset damage factor

If d_f is < s_f then rage = (d_f)

If d_f is > s_f, then rage = s_f + (d2_f2)/4

Goes up linearly with damage up to s_f, then linearly/4 with damage when more than s_f.

For offhand weapons, the breakpoint is halved (1.1666 s) along with the weapon damage. For crits, it's all doubled.

This is why you don't shut up and compute. Communicate, both to others and yourself.
Don't aim for the most clever or 'elegant' expression. Use the one tuned for being used. Certainly don't try to be clever and then fail to simplify constants. 3.5/2 lol.



For swing timer 2, linear up to 4.7 rage, then damage/4 from there. For swing timer 3, the breakpoint is 7.

 The last guy in the blizzard thread seems to think d_f @ level 60 goes as 30 damage/rage.
With a 3 speed weapon, you need 210 damage to hit the breakpoint, and then 120 more damage, 330, to get to 8 rage.

 To get from 7 rage to 9, damage has to be more than double (2.14) the breakpoint damage. 9 rage on a 3-speed is not unusual.

 I don't know if WoW rounds rage at random, e.g. 8.42 rage means a 42% chance of awarding 9 rage. It might simply track fractions under the hood, or it could round down and the randomness of first-swing rage is from the fact normal weapon damage range is 1 to 1.5.


 Fun fact: this means a warrior gets even more rage starved every time they go up a level, because the denominator of the damage factor is a function of the warrior's level. If the warrior doesn't train new abilities or equip a new item, they will be weaker and have a harder time, especially before their weapon/defence skills are trained up. Negligibly for one level, but still. They will always generate less rage per hit point of damage done; with a better weapon they'll simply be faster at running through that lower rage total.

 More fun fact: battle shout decreases your rage/fight, as more of your damage is past the breakpoint. Sunder also decreases your rage/fight. Though don't forget they still (negligibly) increase rage/second.


 If you want to see how I got the equation, look at d_f/4 + 1.75 s = d_f, which is the non-stupid expression of the wiki equation at the breakpoint.
4/3 * 1.75 s = d_f.
P.S. Notably I didn't use proper algebra, I ran on pure intuition.

 More pure intuition: you can calculate the damage breakpoint for your level by taking a rage and damage pair. Subtract breakpoint d_f, multiply the remaining rage by four, add d_f back, and divide by d_f. There's your damage multiple of the breakpoint.

 This can be important: will sunder increase my rage per second?
E.g. your breakpoint is at 6 (swing 2.25) and you're generating 8 rage; 233% of breakpoint damage. Increasing damage by ~20%, to 280%, will increase your rage per hit to 8.7. Less than 10% more rage. If WoW rounds rage unkindly it might barely help at all.

 Meaning you can increase your rage with damage (or suffer setbacks on high-armor enemies) but only by a very small amount. 

 

--

 

So anyway, dual wielding and random points about talents. 

Although, as previous, dual wielding is by design 1.4% worse than two-handing, classic fury warrior talents are mostly stronger than arms, easily surpassing the 1% gap, even if warriors didn't have hueg attack power. E.g. dual wield spec is 1.67% damage per point, vs. 1% for two-hand spec, and flurry is about 1.7% too. Sweeping strikes is OP as shit. Imagine cleave hit six times instead of one extra time. 

 Even so, death wish has a better damage/rage rate, shame about the 6x cooldown. +20% damage is equivalent to reducing the mob's HP by 16.6%, so it's a lot like an execute, but cheaper and sometimes you get to use some of it on a second mob. Sadly this is usually weaker than demoralizing shout. Stronger than battle shout, though of course BS is extremely cheap.

 For context, a demo shout is going to be 15-20% of their DPS, functionally an attack that takes 20% of their HP. Sunder will make you do 4% more damage or so, meaning sunder is less than 15% as powerful as demo shout per point of rage. Sunder is in fact far weaker than thunderclap. Yet still stronger than heroic strike if the mob isn't about to die. Players don't use thunderclap while levelling because they are innumerate. 

 (When rares and elites have higher than normal damage, they in fact have regular damage with a multiplier, which means it multiplies the contribution from AP, which means it multiplies the DPS hit from demo shout, meaning it hits the same DPS%.) 

 If you use both demo shout and thunderclap you can reduce downtime so much you can use the dramatically faster bandages instead of eating. Hard to do the math on that, but it's probably faster than sundering and it's certainly way less boring than having to sit for ages every couple minutes. 

 Only use sunder or heroic strike because rend, demo, and thunderclap aren't usefully spammable.

 I've repeatedly seen claims that booming voice is good for rage. This is guillotine worthy. Even if you BS every 1.5 minutes like I do (when the buff starts flashing) booming voice gives you a whopping 2.7 rage per minute for five points. That's 0.045 rage a second. Also booming voice causes demo shout to accidentally pull things. That said the QoL difference on BS is enormous. Booming voice is not good, but it is comfortable and addictive.
 For context for unbridled wrath to be as bad as booming voice, you have to hit fewer than 7 times a minute. Normally you're not in combat all the time, but that's an 8-second swing timer. Meanwhile one point in improved charge is 12 rage a minute (if used on cooldown). Both points = 24. Anger management is 20 rage/minute - although until you get whirlwind the 5 points in tac mastery are silly, making it 3 rage/minute per point.

 Basically what I'm saying is that levelling fury warriors who want to minmax should get improved demo shout, it's by far the strongest non-cruelty option in those ranks. 

 Incidentally anger management says it reduces rage lost out of combat, but what it actually does is generate 1 rage every 3 seconds at all times. While this is indeed 1/3 of the out of combat rage decay...

 

 WoW players are dumb and hate rend. It is indeed bad during raids for two separate reasons. This made it low status, so they don't use it, even though during levelling it's usually the most powerful non-demo-shout skill. With improved rend it's usually stronger than mortal strike, and it produces 90% of the threat/rage as sunder.

 That said if you want to use intimidating shout as an emergency cooldown, it is necessary to skip rend. Usually you can just hamstring and book it, though. 

 Even 40+ when fury warriors have bloodthirst, it's generally best to go charge-demo-rend. Maybe charge-rend-demo if stuff is dying too fast to get all the rend ticks. Level 40 rank 5 rend does 98 damage, meaning BT has to do 300 to be better. (lol) Though certainly with BT and whirlwind there's no place for thunderclap. 

 If you get a crit streak you might clip your rend, but by contrast if you get a bad miss, rend does more damage to mitigate that. It's better when you need it more. It's all worth it when a rend tick kills a fleeing enemy or pushes them into execute range in the middle of your swing timer.

 

 Bloodrage costs too much health while soloing. Use it as an 'oh shit I shoulda banked some rage' button. If you don't use it regularly, it will be up and available in emergencies. E.g. you want to hamstring and book it right now, not a) wait for your 3-second swing timer or b) gamble on a miss. Conclusion: BR.
 20 rage is less rage than it seems. It will not kill your enemy 2-4 seconds faster, but it will increase your next downtime by 2-4 seconds, even if you have bleeding-edge food. Exception: you're using it to fund an execute, e.g. you used mortal or bloodthirst to get them below 20% and now have ~4 rage left. 

 How to use improved slam:

 Bank up all the rage. 85. Then use deathwish. Charge. Slam and bloodrage. Then slam six more times. That will be eight hits in 9-9.5 seconds at +20% damage. Assuming you have a 3.5 speed weapon, that's 370% your base DPS. Regular mobs won't even live through the whole barrage, you don't need deathwish for them. Bam-bam-bam-bam-squish.
 Does +270% seem like enough to you?
 Mob go splorch.
 Slipping in a quick slam is fun too, "wait let me just re-hit real quick." I.slam is a great use of rage if you're not level 40 yet. Remember your swing timer restarts at the start of the swing animation, not when the damage appears. It's true that after 40, it won't help your daily grind much. Mainly it lets you burst down troublesome opponents.

 Slam does effectively cost more than 15 rage, due to pausing your rage generation, but with i.slam but it's less than 20. Sadly it also costs at least 1sec/swingtimer% of your regular white DPS. Way better than heroic but not as good as whirlwind. 

 Consider level 50 and recklessness. 700% base DPS. Yeah your sweeping strikes AOE is cool and all... They tell me warriors can't kill elites, but seems to me nobody ever wanted it enough. I need someone to try this on a devilsaur real quick.