The Future of Heroic Strike

[Lore]

Ghostcrawler made an interesting post on the Tanking forums today, regarding Heroic Strike and tank mechanics in general:

[blizzard]The problem is that bosses hit really hard these days and we have given warriors a lot of ways to make their attacks cheaper. As a result, warriors are often flooded with rage while tanking anything remotely dangerous. You can literally HS every single white hit.

We can't just cut the rage per damage number without a lot of testing, because that would affect not only tanks in low-rage situations (like tanking a heroic with great gear) but it will also affect dps warriors, especially in PvP. Hitting a warrior is always a double-edged sword in PvP because you are giving them resources.

A long-term change would be to make even more of tanking warrior threat come from damage done and really scale back the threat from damage taken. Maybe you would HS after a big dragon breath or something, but you wouldn't be able to turn 90% or more of white hits into Heroics. Of course we'd have to make sure threat overall didn't suffer, so you can see how this gets to be a pretty big change (bigger than 3.1 in any case).

The other approach is to let HS be a toggle or something else that can bleed off rage without requiring the player to hit the button virtually every 1.6 sec (or faster).

Yet another approach is to get rid of the on-next-swing concept. Make HS something you do when you have lots of rage and make Devastate something you do when you don't have as much. Again, we'd need to make sure that the tank could do something if they felt aggro slipping away.

Even longer term we need to think about whether we're even happy with this model of tank takes damage and converts it into threat or not.[/blizzard]

Source

[Horacio]

Well, its something on their radar at least but as has been mentioned before, it 'works' well enough, its just the mindless spam that is really a pain in the arse. And the cramps in the hand/wrist.

[Kazeyonoma]

hey seems like they listened to the Heroic Strike topic.

[Krenian]

Kinda scary. I was talking about the 8 second Howling Blast to be more fluent with the motion and they listened too o.O

[Jungy]

Have they ever thought about making abilities like HS or Dev do more dmg when your rage is BELOW a certain number? That would be kinda cool in a low rage situation, or like GC said, when your running heroics with better than average gear. So far, tanks (with the exception of DKs) are the only specs that can actually do worse the better our gear gets. Right now isnt so bad, but thinking back in BC when a tank was in Hyjal/BT gear, heroics were a little harder since there wasnt any rage gain.

[Kahmal]

I'd still prefer them to leave it the way it is so we can have that edge over most Prot Warriors by just binding it to the mousewheel.

I'm also worried Blizz will do something stupid...

[Jin17]

How cute,another topic a-la "we're "thinking" of doing something but we're not sure what it is yet,but we're gonna do it....or not"

Easiest way to chicken out of your duty is to give others a reason to discuss your work so that they don't ask you why you're not working

As if they couldn't simply make heroic strike a passive ability that lets you do more threat for auto attacks when your rage is lets say over 40 or 50 perhaps,easiest way around this damn topic.

[klor]

And then what happens to your threat in low rage situations when you cant choose whether to heroic strike or not for that extra edge? And what happens to DPS warriors? They dont hit heroic strike for the threat, they hit it for a rage dump and additional damage.. that would just be another nerf to them... so alas, that is not the "easiest way around this damn topic"

:-/

[Tharr]

In my opinion on next attack attacks are fine, Heroic Strike are fine. It's rage that's the problem really.

Even longer term we need to think about whether we're even happy with this model of tank takes damage and converts it into threat or not.

That is what they need to do, no band aids to "fix" Heroic Strike please.

[Xav]

[Morgantis]

tbh remove heroic strike and make it that -> in defensive stance your melee attacks count as heroic strikes and make heroic strike only usable in Battle or zerk stance would help alot and remove 1 less warrior spam button

[Roana]

tbh remove heroic strike and make it that -> in defensive stance your melee attacks count as heroic strikes and make heroic strike only usable in Battle or zerk stance would help alot and remove 1 less warrior spam button

I had been thinking about restricting Heroic Strike and Cleave by stance, too, but the problem with that is that it hurts soloing as a protection warrior. Unless, of course, the damage of other abilities, such as Devastate and Thunder Clap, got buffed accordingly.

[Timetheos]

I think the toggle is something Cider suggested a while ago. I have a G15 keyboard, and one of the macro keys is basically that: a toggle button. I push it, then every 100ms (I'm optimistic :P) it simulates a HS keystroke. I push the key again and it toggles off. This way I also have a single use HS, which is what I use most of the time.

If implemented correctly it'd be a really good solution, but the regular HS we have at the moment should probably stay, alongside it.

[Kahmal]

I dont see how a toggle system would help, the point isn't so much that Heroic Strike is a pain in the ass to spam, but more that its just too situational of a threat mechanic that we rely on too much.

And toggling is just lame...I mean image if we could of just toggled Old School Shield Block?

[Eisen]

I don't mind them changing it...my 5 key is gonna asplode soon. As long as we don't lose TPS because of it.

[shiz98]

And toggling is just lame...I mean image if we could of just toggled Old School Shield Block?

They tossed the old Shield Block because having to press the same button every 5 seconds was not fun. Of course, now we have to press the same button every 1.6 seconds, which is hardly any better.

Time's method seems to be the way to go, but unfortunately, I think using a keyboard macro like that is a ToS violation (though I've not read them myself in quite a while).

[Thrym]

I don't want to see the "on swing" abilities go away. I really think this adds alot of the flavor that the warrior tank has over other classes. For the same reason, I don't care for automating the process with a toggle, or putting any kind of cooldown on it.

I don't see our rage going down. If we aren't getting full bars from massive hits, we're going to get similar amounts of rage from other sources, all in all.

I really think the easiest overall solution is changing the Heroic Strike mechanic so that it works as well or better with a slow weapon.

I used Broken Promise for awhile, and using HS roughly every other GCD was markedly more comfortable than squeezing it between every GCD. It didn't remove change the general feel of playing the warrior, but it did was noticable.

Heroic Strike as a singular ability is the last tie tanking has to fast weapons. If it where compatible with slower ones, we could transition to them pretty easily.

[Jackripster]

A long-term change would be to make even more of tanking warrior threat come from damage done and really scale back the threat from damage taken.

For mine this would be a better long term answer, with the addition of 3 more classes all equally capable MTs this would allow us to be equally viable OTs. No more rage starvation from avoidance streaks, and allow us to scale up with our gear rather than down grading for heroics and the likes. Im not sure why it would be too big for 3.1, i wouldve thought they'd have enough data on these type mechanics from Druids. Fingers crossed it isnt too far away

[Heladys]

Heroic Strike as a singular ability is the last tie tanking has to fast weapons. If it where compatible with slower ones, we could transition to them pretty easily.

I'm not so sure. I still see a clear affinity to faster weapons for:

a) the ability to tab target and spread the love faster
b) smoother rage intake, less crippling miss streaks
c) better affinity with crit-proccing builds like deep wounds
d) better affinity with on-hit enchant procs like the new Blade Ward

Now granted, all those could change too. But we'll have to see.

[Heladys]

If Heroic Strike went from (Weapon Damage)+X to 2-3x(Weapon Damage), that'd start skewing us pretty quick toward slower weapons.

We'd damn sure want to use it every swing, still, but the rage cost could come up accordingly, and when you did use it, you'd sure feel the benefit in a hurry.