heroic-strike
Latest
Heroic Strike changes in Cataclysm
The announced warrior and druid rage normalization changes in Cataclysm have brought with them a ton of questions and speculation on how numerous abilities are going to function. One of the largest changes is the removal of "on next swing" attacks. This means the old and trusted Heroic Strike is going to be undergoing a major revmap. Ghostcrawler has provided clarification: Ghostcrawler To clarify on Heroic Strike, it costs a third of your rage bar when you hit the button, but you can't hit it unless you have 10 rage and it will only ever take a max of 30 (since that's essentially a third of your full bar). The intent is that when you don't have a lot of rage, it's not an attractive button. When you are gaining too much rage, then you want to start pushing it. We debated whether or not to push this story before we talked about all of the warrior changes in Cataclysm. In the end we decided players might not focus on anything but the rage changes if we announced them at the same time. However, some of this will make a little more sense with the additional context of the warrior changes. For example, we have a plan to keep tank damage and threat high and we have other systems to let you convert excess rage into damage. source
Solution sought for Heroic Strike/Maul
In the context of a follow-up to the Warrior Q&A, Ghostcrawler mentioned something that he's touched on a few time before: Heroic Strike is a problem. I know what you're thinking: Eliah, you don't have a level 80 warrior! What would you know? Well, that's true, but I do have a Druid tank, and Maul is essentially the same as HS. So I know your pain. For those who don't, the problem with HS/Maul is basically that it's obnoxious to use in a raid situation. You tend to have roughly infinite rage, so you want to use the ability as often as possible, which contributes to the fact that your main tank sounds like a woodpecker is attacking his keyboard (or mouse) when he pushes his Vent talk button. It's monotonous, but you have to do it to maximize your threat. Recognizing a problem doesn't mean they have a solution yet, though. One idea GC had is to make it consume more rage the more you have (like Execute). Personally, I might like it if it just automatically activated above half rage (or so). Others have suggested that the key act as a toggle, which continues casting HS as often as possible until you toggle it off. What's your preferred solution?
WoW Patch 3.1 PTR: Warrior glyph and undocumented changes
We covered the changes (including the undocumented ones) to warriors on the PTR, including the new Titan's Grip 'damage tax' on fury warriors. Yeah, it sucks, I'm not happy about it, but it's probably not going to go away. The idea of Titan's Grip being too powerful is too entrenched in too many minds, so we basically have to hope that the damage penalty only comes into play while you're actually dual wielding and is not just a flat penalty on all of your abilities while you have the talent, which would make offtanking or tanking five man instances quite painful for fury. We'll see how bad it is. Dropping fury warrior DPS by a full 10% seems pretty extreme and it hurts those warriors doing their absolute best the most (if you're putting out 4.4k DPS now, you're losing 440 DPS with this change). I guess it's a good thing I specced my tauren Arms when I did.But enough grumbling. What about the changes to glyphs?
The Queue: Spreading the space plague
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. A bad case of space cancer put me out of commission for the last few days, and for that I apologize. In addition to my apology, I blame the pandas. They caused me to come down with such a horrid plague. I'm back on my feet now though, so the Q&A will continue!jtrain asked...I'm admittedly new to tanking, and I hear people talk about a 'rage dump'. Why would I want to dump rage? I thought the whole idea was to build up a good amount so I don't have to sit there auto-attacking waiting for my abilities to become usable. In Wrath, I never seem to have a problem generating rage and at the end of a fight in which I've pulled several mobs, I usually have quite a bit of rage still available. Am I doing something wrong?
Warrior changes in PTR Patch 3.0.8: Dead parrot edition
Warriors are now the most powerful class in the game. Please delete all other characters and switch to your level 13 Warrior alt you haven't played in three years. Also, please be sure to level bandaging up quickly as 24 other warriors bandaging the main tank is all you'll need to defeat most Wrath raiding content.Okay, now that I've got that out of my system... let's take a look at the three changes they've made to the Warrior class for PTR Patch 3.0.8.First and foremost, the one you'll hear around the campfire the most – Titan's Grip has had the hit penalty removed. Completely gone. It is no more. The Titan's Grip hit penalty ceases to be. It is an ex-hit penalty!'Ello hit penalty? Testing! Testing! Testing! Testing! This is your nine o'clock alarm call!/thumps-the-hit-penalty-on-the-counterNow that's what I call a dead hit penalty.
Lichborne: Of Cabbages and Kings
Welcome to Lichborne, where each weekend, Daniel Whitcomb helps you keep pace with the ever-changing Death Knight class. This week, While Death Knight tweaks continue, there's no big piece of news that really stands out. We got a nice bump in damage to our base weapon strikes, Death Coil, and the abilities that mimic them in the talent trees in the latest build. Unfortunately, poor Plague Strike still sits at a sort of dismal 30% weapon damage, meaning it still doesn't feel like it scales as well as it should. But preliminary reports are still that it's a noticeable DPS increase. At the same time, our PvP utility and survivability was nerfed, but not in completely unexpected ways. Chains of Ice is dispellable again, as the devs felt that between it and Death Grip, it was far too hard to get away from a Death Knight. Again, this nerf is somewhat expected, if not needed, although some argue the nerf is unfair in the face of other classes that have similar abilities to ensnare and entrap opponents. I have to admit that I'm hoping we see, at the least, Chains of Ice getting put on Virulence. If nothing else, that Glyph of Blood Boil is looking a lot nicer. Still, none of the news really jumps out and grabs me, and with the beta patches coming fast and furious, it's hard to write with any authority on something that may be changed next week. With that in mind, I've decided this week to post on a potpourri of odds and ends from around the World of Warcraft as they relate to Death Knights, both stuff that refers back to previous columns and new observations. Read on:
Center your tanking
While I'm pushing through Black Temple and Mount Hyjal nicely as my guild's tank, I am still trying to improve my style and playing elements. There's not much more I can do to build threat – the Devastates, Shield Slams, Revenges, Heroic Strikes, etc., are all going off at the right time. Gear is fine, I can pretty much tank anything in the game at this point and succeed. So why am I still dying? Why am I missing that critical moment when I could put up my Spell Reflect and live a second longer?I think I've found it.It's all about eye movement. Try this: focus your sight to the upper left hand corner of the screen, and now move your sight down to the bottom of the screen. If you have a large enough monitor, you completely lose focus of the text and items near the upper left corner. This is problematic for tanking in that the unit frames (those things that tell you who's in your group and who you're attacking) are by default located in the upper left corner, and the action bars are located at the bottom. So if you want to make sure you're going to hit something – or even look at your keyboard for a moment – you're moving your eyes quite a bit.
