Q: Can you use Battle Fury and use another card to prevent the 1 damage to my hero and still ready my hero?

A: No. You must pay the cost fully before you can trigger the effect. If the cost is to take a damage but you prevent the damage, then you have not paid the cost and therefore cannot resolve the effect. -(Developer Ruling, Hall of Heroes)

Importantly, at the time of writing, the ruling listed here has been updated and effectively overruled by FFG (which is something that happens fairly regularly, so be logical when it comes to which developer rulings you choose to follow, and don't take them as being written in stone).

Taking damage is not the same as dealing damage. So you can prevent the damage (for example, with Tough) and still be considered as having paid the cost, as the damage was dealt, it just wasn't taken. See Ruling #260 on Hall of Heroes (amongst others affected by this new ruling).

As far as actual reviews go, Battle Fury is pretty invaluable if your hero regularly has 3+ ATK available to them, and has decent defensive ability and recovery. In multiplayer, this combos heavily with decks that focus on readying, like Repurpose-focused protection decks, Quicksilver, or stat-boosters like Spectrum and Rogue, as you can hand them out to the rest of your team. So think beyond just how useful it is for your own hero to ready up!

I made a review of Blood Rage where I talk about how much worse it is than similar options in other aspects, and I think we should talk about Battle Fury too since it's in a similar position.

This is a loose cycle of 1-cost upgrades that ready you after performing an action associated with the aspect.

First up is...

Indomitable

Indomitable costs 1 and readies you whenever you defend. The defense doesn't need to be anything special. You don't need a perfect defense. Just any defense will do. And you can play as many of these as you want.

Next is...

Justice Served

Justice Served is a bit more restrictive now. It only activates when you clear the last threat from a scheme and is max 1 per player. The good thing about this is that it doesn't need to be a side scheme. You can get the benefit just from clearing the threat off the main scheme. It doesn't matter what you or the enemy has in play as long as there's threat on some scheme you can finish removing.

And that brings us to Battle Fury. Same cost as the others. It requires you to defeat a minion, meaning it only works while a minion is in play. It's limited to one per player just like Justice Served. Right on the surface, it seems less useful than Justice Served.

But for some reason, it also deals 1 damage to you.

Why is Aggression dealing itself damage to do things other aspects get for the same cost?

You paid 2-ER. Then you killed a minion. That should get you a ready. Why are you dealing one damage to yourself after?

I want to say that maybe there was some type of plan to have a pain archetype in Aggression which would reward you for taking damage. Something like Spider-Ham's ability. If Aggression did get an archetype like this, it would add some synergy to cards that are otherwise worse versions of what other aspects already do. If we do get an archetype like that someday, I might forgive this and Blood Rage tacking downsides onto what other aspects do for the same cost.

But today, there is no such benefit unless you're playing Spider-Ham. And it just feels like FFG has been intentionally punishing players for wanting to play Aggression.

Readies are good enough in some decks that it's worth it anyway. If you're using Combat Training, Aggressive Conditioning and Innate Aggression, your basic attacks are dealing about 5-6 damage per hit. Any source of readies in that scenario is a good source of readies. This is one of the best sources of readying yourself in Aggression, even if it's worse than similar cards from other Aspects. But it is annoying just how much worse it is than those similar cards from other aspects.