Heroic Strike STILL too important (Protection).

Exactly as the title says, really; Heroic Strike, when married with the talent Incite, is still far too important to performance as a Protection warrior and the balance really needs shifted (particularly at high levels of Vengeance). Exhibit A will be the following parse:

http://worldoflogs.com/reports/qy7mf...?s=6404&e=6766

I've deliberately chosen Shannox as I get high uptime on the boss and take an amount of damage that keeps Vengeance meaningful with rage income steady. Essentially, here's what you're seeing:

1) Heroic Strike is responsible for over 32% of my damage, beating Shield Slam by over 12%.
2) Out of 128 swings, 51 of them critically struck - over 40% (18 swings were dodged, parried or missed).
3) My baseline critical strike rating is 20%; this means Incite is good for about another 20%.
4) All in all, Heroic Strike is contributing almost two million damage with Incite taken.

Now it shouldn't take a genius to figure out that this combination is extraordinarily powerful. I know it's tempting to say "great, let's pick up Incite and be imba"; but this plays a part in our overall balance. The difference between a warrior without much rage, Vengeance or Incite and a warrior with those three things, is ludicrous. When you also consider that warriors are STILL behind the other three tanks on Shannox, despite the contribution of Heroic Strike, something is amiss.

We were told that the redesign of Heroic Strike was to make warriors less dependent on it. Here we are, though, still seeing it as the most significant contribution to our DPS and our threat. It's not overpowered per se, because warriors as a whole are still behind. But it's pretty clear that it's too big a part of our output, while other things are too small.

Luckily, spotting the weed among the flowers is easy. Just take a look at Revenge.

Despite a Prime glyph and two talent points dedicated to it, Revenge is abnormally weak on single targets. In order to make a comparison more readily meaningful, you'd have to double the number of times it landed and double the damage of it up to 58 hits and a total contribution of 835704. Ignore Heroic Strike for a second... Despite hitting roughly as often and for more per hit, Revenge remains eclipsed by the damage contribution of Devastate.

The thing is, it's not just a case of nerfing one attack and buffing another. Because Revenge cleaves (when talented), buffing it would be overpowered on more than one target. Additionally, its damage per swing is actually in 3rd place with only Shield Slam and Shockwave beating it; and the latter doesn't top it by much. The weakness with Revenge comes from its scandalously low critical strike rate. While this parse could just show it being uncommonly bad, even doubling for a better look puts it at less than 7% compared to 40% (Heroic Strike), 29% (Devastate) and 22% (Shield Slam).

The solution I'm proposing is fairly simple.

Buff the critical strike chance of Revenge, presumably via Sword and Board, and then nerf either Heroic Strike or Incite accordingly to bring warriors back in line.

Not only does this move the emphasis away from Heroic Strike, as was promised since Cataclysm's beta, it clears up the debate around Revenge Vs Devastate and significantly assists warriors in low rage situations; a scenario where we remain very weak.

Or move Incite out of the Prot tree completely as it doesn't seem to fit with the others.

But really - the answer being an ability you can use once every 6 seconds? Revenge will always be behind. And it's not like you're trading heroic strike for revenge, even a buffed revenge you're trading for a devastate/shockwave/(rend/tc). So to make up for the difference you'd have to buff revenge out the wazzo to the point it's the go to ability in order to replace heroic strike's damage for balancing purpsoes.

Readjusting damage distribution for prot warriors is going to take far more than just buffing revenge. And nerfing incite doesn't help, then you're just further gimping DPS specs.

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Never fear though - Blizzard seems to already be on track to fix it. Part of the active tanking ability usage they've talked about is throttling rage - which is the reason why HS is so high right now, rage is basically inifinte. In an active tanking world where you have to choose between DPS and survability, a world we don't live in right now, natural usage will favor less HS.

I don't really see this as a problem with Heroic Strike itself. It is all that makes rage interesting for a prot warrior. Without it, we would just be pressing 1 button every 1.5 seconds, almost in a rotation were it not for sword and board. Heroic strike means that when we have more rage, we can press more buttons. If we do it well, we maintain our core rotation and are rewarded by a non-trivial bonus damage. If you stuff it up and overburn your rage, your rotation suffers (as it should). If you diminish the importance of heroic strike, you reduce the skill required to play a warrior well.

Heroic strike is nowhere like the problem it was before, where you were effectively punished for not pressing the key every second.

Do I think rage income is perfectly tuned? Probably not, and having enough rage to just mash HS most of the time might be a symptom of that. Not one I care deeply about though.

Do I think revenge needs some serious attention? Absolutely. I think baseline revenge should do what glyphed revenge does now, and that glyphed revenge should do something cool (possibly survival oriented).

Right now i've to hit heroic strike on cooldown and need nearly a 50% uptime on inner rage to compete with other tanks on damage dealt, that's just to much. Making HS more expensive for tanks (like 50 rage) and only really useful above 75 rage would be a step into the right direction. It should be a bonus and not a part of our rotation we can't maintain while
a) offtanking or use frequently enough on tank swap fights like Ragnaros
b) tanking casters
c) being on low rage in general

And this won't change in a survial oriented setting, we'll still only can hit those frequently in a high rage scenario, that's the nature of a ragebar instead of unlimited mana or replenishing runes on timers.

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But really - the answer being an ability you can use once every 6 seconds? Revenge will always be behind. And it's not like you're trading heroic strike for revenge, even a buffed revenge you're trading for a devastate/shockwave/(rend/tc). So to make up for the difference you'd have to buff revenge out the wazzo to the point it's the go to ability in order to replace heroic strike's damage for balancing purpsoes.

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Buffing Revenge is exactly the way to go.

Heroic Strike was never supposed to be our best button in this expansion, competition for the GCD or no competition. Yet in an otherwise strong situation (and a decent parse), that's exactly where it is. Revenge, on the other hand, is being beaten out by Devastate precisely because the critical strike rating on it is so low. If said rating was buffed, using it on cooldown is an unambiguous DPS buff for Protection and it's most definitely warranted.

Could we use Shield Slam? Not really, we're already too dependent on it. And using Devastate doesn't really work either, because it's already sporting 15% extra critical strike rating as well as 15% extra damage from War Academy.

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And nerfing incite doesn't help, then you're just further gimping DPS specs.

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Not necessarily. It wouldn't take a huge leap to readjust a couple of deep Arms/Fury talents in order to make up the difference. Something like Impale for Arms, or Flurry for Fury; they're mandatory talents in any event, so the difference to DPS players is zero.

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Originally Posted by Zellviren

Buffing Revenge is exactly the way to go.

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No it's not. If you're going to cut Heroic strike, and ability you are using about every 2 seconds or so (with inner rage up), you can't replace it with a 6 second ability unless it's a freaking nuke. You're greatly over-estimating the damage potential of revenge. You cannot nerf HS by what, 50% so it's guaranteed to be below 'tank' abilities by buffing revenge's crit.

Especially when HS's damage is say, 30k or 0. And Revenge is be whatever it is or Devastates 25k. 55k Revenges in this scenario? Still wouldn't do it. Need more like 100k revenges to replace the damage, which would be odd because everything else would be so much lower.


All the abilities would need to be rebalanced.

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Originally Posted by Zellviren

Heroic Strike was never supposed to be our best button in this expansion, competition for the GCD or no competition. Yet in an otherwise strong situation (and a decent parse), that's exactly where it is. Revenge, on the other hand, is being beaten out by Devastate precisely because the critical strike rating on it is so low. If said rating was buffed, using it on cooldown is an unambiguous DPS buff for Protection and it's most definitely warranted.

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Going to what Swelt said. So? HS as a pure rage dump isn't great, it's odd, no doubt. I think we'd all want SS to be tops. But again, buffing revenge by itself isn't the answer.

I also think everyone agrees Revenge should be buffed - but that's apples to oranges to HS. Revenge should be buffed on it's own merit, not because HS does too much damage.

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Originally Posted by Zellviren

Could we use Shield Slam? Not really, we're already too dependent on it. And using Devastate doesn't really work either, because it's already sporting 15% extra critical strike rating as well as 15% extra damage from War Academy.

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So replacing SS or Devastate just so you have to hit a different button in the answer? I like Swelt's idea where you build survability into it, like Devastate has. Otherwise you're doing nothing. You're just repalcing one DPS button with another, which doesn't really solve anything.

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Originally Posted by Zellviren

Not necessarily. It wouldn't take a huge leap to readjust a couple of deep Arms/Fury talents in order to make up the difference. Something like Impale for Arms, or Flurry for Fury; they're mandatory talents in any event, so the difference to DPS players is zero.

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So... take away 3 talent points and spend them on what? There's nothing left that has any raid value that DPS warriors can really take, well, maybe Arms might want a few more of Fury's talents, but Arms doesn't have anything for Fury after DW.

And now you're talking about redesigning all three trees because you don't like how much you use heroic strike.

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I don't disagree with the principal. But the core problem is, as it has been mentioned elsewhere, WarTanking is very much DPS light.

Buffing Revenge and nerfing HS doesn't change this. They're still simply DPS buttons now. (Unlike SS and Dev which have some additional utility)

So does it really matter where tank DPS comes from... if it comes from DPS button A or DPS button B if there's not actual 'tank' reason to hit that button? Just raid DPS?

WTB old inner rage?

considering the change to future change to tank design being built around active mitigation i think this is a moot point

I'm talking about buffing Revenge and stipulate it's the way to go. So, you start with:

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No it's not.

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Then move to:

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I also think everyone agrees Revenge should be buffed...

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If you're going to be so snide and dismissive, at least try starting with logical consistency; you'll be amazed what it does for your argument.

I'll start the rest of your post with the end, though.

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So does it really matter where tank DPS comes from...

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As a matter of fact, it does. When output varies wildly thanks to inconsistent availability of an attack (in this case, rage income being the culprit), it's a problem. To be blunt, I'm not entirely sure why you can't see this because it's blindingly obvious.

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You're greatly over-estimating the damage potential of revenge. You cannot nerf HS by what, 50% so it's guaranteed to be below 'tank' abilities by buffing revenge's crit.

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Point to where I suggested gutting Heroic Strike by 50%. I'm pretty sure the only insinuation you can make is that I believe Heroic Strike (and by proxy, Incite) is too powerful, and the low critical strike rating on Revenge makes it too weak.

Stop pulling arguments out of your arse.

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I like Swelt's idea where you build survability into it, like Devastate has.

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That is extremely unlikely to happen prior to 5.0, as I suspect it'll be part of the "active mitigation" overhaul. I'm talking about 4.3.

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You're just repalcing one DPS button with another, which doesn't really solve anything.

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No, the idea is to improve warrior DPS in low-rage situations and stop it from being balanced around Heroic Strike. What part of this is so tough to grasp for you?

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So... take away 3 talent points and spend them on what?

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You've totally misunderstood what I was suggesting; merely that you could shift the critical strike lost to talents that Fury or Arms warriors take anyway. This means their specs don't change and they still pick up the same talents.

In any event, you've got your wish. I'm out of here. Getting treated to outright hostility because I suggest something you don't happen to agree with is something I won't subject myself to; this is particularly true when you didn't even understand the point in the first place.

Good bye.

I agree that revenge needs to be buffed, its super weak per global use compared to majority of abilities - I only use it in heroic 5m. If you add deep wounds + crit rate of devastate its hitting harder. Devastate does not need to be proc'd, has no cooldown, etc.

The non cleave portion could be buffed and the 2nd strike left alone (like DK heart strike).

I'm very surprised this idea is meeting resistance as it's top of my list of things that need to be changed next patch and has been for a few months.

I am completely consisent with my statments. Revenge can't replace HS damage is NOT the same as Revenge needs buffed. Both my statements are valid - 1. Revenge would not be able to funcitonally replace HS damage on it's own, which is what you propose and 2. Revenge should be buffed regardless of of what happens to heroic strike. They are not mutually exclusive where one directly contradicts the other.

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Originally Posted by Zellviren

As a matter of fact, it does. When output varies wildly thanks to inconsistent availability of an attack (in this case, rage income being the culprit), it's a problem. To be blunt, I'm not entirely sure why you can't see this because it's blindingly obvious.

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Rage is basically infinite, or near so in all but a few moments in fights. You can button mash to your hearts content unless you outgear dungeons. Rage isn't an issue. And the only true tank DPS check, Alysrazor, WarTanks are pretty damn good.

Where are these situations where rage is an issue? Tanking every fight on normal on both 10 and 25 and 25m H:Shannox, I haven't seen a single fight where I'm hurting for rage.

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Originally Posted by Zellviren

Point to where I suggested gutting Heroic Strike by 50%. I'm pretty sure the only insinuation you can make is that I believe Heroic Strike (and by proxy, Incite) is too powerful, and the low critical strike rating on Revenge makes it too weak.

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30% of your damage is HS, which is too much. SS, next on the list is 20%. You want to nerf HS but only by a small %? If you actually want HS to be less critical, it has to become less critical.

HS has no real opportunity cost. Rage is high to near infinite. It's on a GCD by itself. Theres really no reason NOT to push the button. So the only way to change the status quo is to really nerf the heck out of it. You'll still spam it in the status quo because there's no reason not to. But reducing it slightly isn't going to reduce it's impact on overall damage distribution which seems to be the crux of your argument.

Not exactly pulling that out of mid-air.

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Originally Posted by Zellviren

That is extremely unlikely to happen prior to 5.0, as I suspect it'll be part of the "active mitigation" overhaul. I'm talking about 4.3.

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You can talk about 4.3 all you want. It's almost certainly going to be part of 5.0 and it's really not a problem now. It's a superficial example of the underlying problem that these are DPS buttons a tank uses, not survival buttons a tank uses.

The simple reality is WarTank damage is balanced, fairly well, around the current setup. What incentive is there to try to rebalance WarTank damage at this point? So you can feel a little better about how big or small the % is next to different abilities?

WarTank DPS is very comprable, under current conditions to all other tanks. What would be the benefit to rebalancing warrior abilities this close to the next xpac when they're already going to tear the entire car apart?

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Originally Posted by Zellviren

No, the idea is to improve warrior DPS in low-rage situations and stop it from being balanced around Heroic Strike. What part of this is so tough to grasp for you?

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So dungeons? Because that's the only low-rage situation I've encountered at the moment. Being balanced around HS in raids isn't a problem. Unless there's been a very recent rage nerf, I don't see the issue.

All you've said is HS being a large part of WarTank damage is bad. How? You've asserted that it's bad in low rage situations - but where are these situations? You've already said Shannox isn't a low rage scenario. Which ones are? Baleroc isn't. Beth isn't. Rhy doesn't really matter. Domo isn't. Alysrazor is only for brief moments when the birds eat worms. Rags isn't. Where is the problem you're trying to solve?

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Originally Posted by Zellviren

You've totally misunderstood what I was suggesting; merely that you could shift the critical strike lost to talents that Fury or Arms warriors take anyway. This means their specs don't change and they still pick up the same talents.

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I can agree with moving it out of the prot tree, where it doesn't really seem to fit. Not sure buffing already key talents else where is the answer though. But that's relatively minor. And doesn't really matter to the more core point of how to redistirbute lost HS damage.

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Originally Posted by Zellviren

If you're going to be so snide and dismissive,

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Not agreeing with you is hostility? I'm actually pretty interested here. I can be snippy. I've gone back and re-read everything. I don't see it. The never fear, it's already going to happen?

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Originally Posted by Zellviren

In any event, you've got your wish. I'm out of here. Getting treated to outright hostility because I suggest something you don't happen to agree with is something I won't subject myself to; this is particularly true when you didn't even understand the point in the first place.

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Actually I understand the point quite clear. You have a problem with HS being a core function of WarTank damage and Revenge being pushed to the side. You want to buff Revenge and nerf HS in some way. And you want it NOW. Now when the car gets rebuilt in 5.0.

But your logic is flawed. To recap:

A) Revenge and Heroic strike are BOTH DPS only buttons. They have no survival utility. Swapping them is a perception only issue.

B) You've asserted that rage is a problem. But never shown it to be (though dungeons at this point because of the low damage are low rage), and it isn't.

C) You've stated 30% HS is too much and want it less important, but never give a guidline. Maybe I mistakenly assumed you'd want true tank abilities (SS, Dev, Rev) to be more important than HS. So I see it as a big nerf to HS.

D) You've said you want to buff Revenge to replace HS. HS is an ability that you use every 2 to 2.5 seconds or so on average (when factoring in IR). Revenge is at best every 6 seconds. HS is all by itself. Either you hit the button and you get X damage or you don't and you don't. Revenge is a trade off, so if you hit it, you're not hitting SW, SS, Dev, Rend, etc.

So to buff Revenge to fill the gap created by nerfing HS (Okay, lets go 20% nerf to HS since you apparently are fine with it still being the top source of damage by % because 50% is too big of a nerf) you need to replace 20% of 3 heroic strikes with every revenge. You first have to buff Revenge to the point that it is equal to any other DPS option (Shockwave, SS, Dev, etc) and then buff it again so it replaces 20% of 3 heroic strikes.

Revenge would become the go-to nuke if you did this. Maybe a HR SS would top it, but that might be about it.

E) Ultimately, such a change is still a change in perception only, since they are both DPS buttons and unless you can show me otherwise, I don't understand how FL can be called low rage.


You've presented no clear harm. Just the assertion one exists. Where damage comes from is really only a matter of perception. In 5.0 it sounds like it'll be different. But for 4.3, without active tanking, whether HS as a core part of WarTank DPS is a 'good' or 'bad' idea is a matter of perception. The game is balanced pretty well how it is.

At the 25m H level - WarTanks are top DPS in 4 of the 7 fights, 2nd in 1 and last in 2.
http://raidbots.com/dpsbot/Overall_D...efault/#1s0000

At the 10m H level - WarTanks are are last in 3 fights I think, most notabley Shannox, but never by more than 10% and usually be only a % or 2.
http://raidbots.com/dpsbot/Overall_D...efault/#1s0000

Where is the harm since 4.3 will almost certainly be an infinite, or close enough that it feels that way, rage raid as well. Where is the harm in the current design that is gimping WarTanks?

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Originally Posted by Kavaren

I agree that revenge needs to be buffed, its super weak per global use compared to majority of abilities - I only use it in heroic 5m. If you add deep wounds + crit rate of devastate its hitting harder. Devastate does not need to be proc'd, has no cooldown, etc.

The non cleave portion could be buffed and the 2nd strike left alone (like DK heart strike).

I'm very surprised this idea is meeting resistance as it's top of my list of things that need to be changed next patch and has been for a few months.

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Buffing revenge isn't an issue. It's the idea that buffing revenge is all that is needed when you nerf HS so that it's not central to WarTank DPS and that 4.3 is the right time to do that.

This conversation is full of moot points.

Threat is a joke, and there is only one fight where tanks need to do good dps to kill the boss, and warriors do very well on that one boss.

Im sure things will change in the next expansion when they swap over to their new tanking philosophy, and none of the changes will be what you guys want here.

WAR dps is good I agree, it's just that Revenge is out of tune. I'm fine with how HS is.

DPS always matters, and Revenge will be even worse in 4.3 on the continued trend. We can pre-empt this now with discussion.

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Originally Posted by Kavaren

WAR dps is good I agree, it's just that Revenge is out of tune. I'm fine with how HS is.

DPS always matters, and Revenge will be even worse in 4.3 on the continued trend. We can pre-empt this now with discussion.

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pre-empt 1 patch worth of one ability sucking and another ability being over tuned?
chances are, in the next expansion, shield slam will negate damage after its use, and revenge will offer some sort of heal (if it still exists.. its probable that victory rush could take its place).

in 5.0 heroic strike will likely be the only ability that offers nothing but a rage dump, and a large amount of damage/threat. Mainly because its the only ability that all 3 specs use on a regular basis in their rotations.

I guess i just dont see the fuss. and so, im leaving.:o

I just want to see SOMTHING from blizz. I look at my prot warrior, and a good portion of my abilities are basicly pointless in pve. rev is rapidly moving up the list ( sadly ) and this isnt the first prot ability that has lost its usefullness in the prot spec for pve tanking. who knows. we will find out soon enough.

Talking about 5.0 , 5.0 tanking model, etc.... is irrelevant, that's like 10 months from now.

Warrior abilities (well, all tank abilities, minus dks) have always been balanced around threat output, and still are. but because they all generate so much threat now thanks to the buff to threat across the board, they are all quite useless.

Theres just nothing that they can do right now asside from revamping tanking early, which wont happen. The only thing they can do is increase your DPS.. and again, a tank doing a few hundred or even a thousand dps more, just wont matter..

Yeah yeah i know.. "dps always matters". But chances are, if you are relying on your tank to pump out his best dps to kill a boss.. you have a bigger issue than your abilities not quite feeling right dps wise.

At least heroic strike isnt activated on next swing, with no CD or GCD anymore...

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Originally Posted by Kavaren

Talking about 5.0 , 5.0 tanking model, etc.... is irrelevant, that's like 10 months from now.

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For us yeah, but for blizzard i'd consider it the other way around They just don't care about fixing this expansions models anymore. Rev's been a lame duck for the past 9 months, and had exactly the same problem in 3.2

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Originally Posted by Kavaren

Talking about 5.0 , 5.0 tanking model, etc.... is irrelevant, that's like 10 months from now.

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blizzard doesnt look at thing on that sort of time scale. This expansion has 1 tier left, and remodeling heroic strike in any way will require a major change to all warrior specs. they wont do it this late in the game.

i'm still hoping for a buff to Imp Revenge. Have it hit one target twice if it can't cleave. I want my Bone slice equivalent thank you very much.