Patch 5.4 patch notes
Virtual Realms feature revealed
The Proving Grounds are coming
The latest patch 5.4 newsSolution sought for Heroic Strike/Maul
by Eliah Hecht 
Jul 24th 2009 at 9:00AM
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?
Reader Comments (Page 4 of 5)
Czernobog Jul 24th 2009 11:28AM
A bit of an outside-the-wow-client-box solution I found that works for HS and abilities that have this same problem is altering the functionality of holding down a key, I have it so it's the same as pressing it twice a second. Typically found in the accessibility and/or keyboard settings for your respective OS.
That way you can just hold down the HS button and continue using you other skills as you desire - it works roughly the same as the "toggle" except this is an active 'switch.' The default behaviour of HS remains.
Daniel Jul 24th 2009 11:42AM
I don't like any of the suggestions quite frankly. Marcos help but they don't address the underlying problem, namely that the mechanic itself doesn't make a whole lot of sense. The purpose or Maul (I play a feral) is really a rage sink. There are situations where you are generating rage faster than you can use it and the goal is to help the tank use that rage rather than it simply go to waste. The twist however is that there are situations where it's an effective tool below 100%. One such situation is where you are soloing elite mobs. Threat generation is not a problem and waiting until you hit 100 rage could mean you are dead or severely behind the curve. So they idea that you have a proc on 100 rage is a non-starter as far as I am concerned.
The problem I have with it procing at less than 100 rage is that it becomes just one more data point I have to keep track off. In addition, if my CD is up at 45 rage and I have to wait another second (or however long) to get to 50 rage then that is an effective loss of DPS. For those moments my tank is doing nothing.
The toggle is probably the best of the suggestions for raid encounters but again I'm not so sure it's the ideal solution when soloing. I'm a little leery of how it would work in practice. It might be fine; I guess I'd like to experience how it works before passing judgment.
Engerz Jul 24th 2009 11:57AM
I have mine set on the mouse wheel button :3
Nafari Jul 24th 2009 12:33PM
I have it macroed to the right mouse button on all my bear abilities. Yes, I am a keyboard turning tank (although if I need to turn fast, I use the mouse during the global cooldown).
It's possible to make a macro that will turn on Maul AND do the underlying ability when right clicked, and will only do the underlying ability on left click.
I did a post on this in my otherwise defunct blog at
http://hybridenvy.blogspot.com/2009/04/druid-tank-macros-for-mouse-clickers.html
Shoryu Jul 24th 2009 12:11PM
Uhm yeah, ok GC, if you are gonna nerf HS so that it consumes like 30 rage, you will be nerfing Fury DPS as well, wasnt the TG penalty enough for you? Its like a big kick in the balls just because they dont like the fact that you have to spam a button. Then make up for it elsewhere.
Oteo Jul 24th 2009 1:22PM
Maul is a bread-and-butter threat attack, one of our best for threat generation, so I would hate to see a situation in which we only had it at full rage, or it used more rage the more rage we had... To me this sounds like it would be a problem in fights where we're getting adequate rage, but we don't always have a full bar, especially because Agi-stacking bears like myself have high enough dodge that incoming rage can be sporadic: you're going along great, you get a big chunk of rage with a well-placed kick to the face (face-kicking make bear ANGRY D:
Dbodinem Jul 24th 2009 1:25PM
As a bear tank, I macro Maul with Lacerate on one keystroke. And then I macro Maul with Mangle on another. And finally I even Macro it to Swipe. So, hopefully, I never miss using it. One of those abilities is bound to be off the GCD. I don't usually grind as a bear unless I know I'm gonna be able to generate a lot of rage (taking on multiple scourge and the Flag Bearers, or multiple combatants at Jotunheim). If I'm feral specced and doing those dailies, I'll either resign myself to multiple mobs (kiting even) or just go in Kitty form.
Though admittedly, I hate the mechanic of next strike so would love to see it changed.
poison1916 Jul 24th 2009 1:24PM
Because macros like this are too hard for people to make the skill is clearly broken.
/cast !Maul
/cast Lacerate
allen Jul 24th 2009 1:27PM
we'll probably get a "spec into" instant attack.also should thunder clap be stronger? and shouldn't bears get a version of that too. like a "stomp" or something?
TobiasX Jul 24th 2009 2:46PM
You missed Rune Strike. I know Death Knight's are the "flavor of the month" class to most people but I'm still insulted.
Sorro Jul 24th 2009 3:18PM
Make it a toggle. Problem solved!
Alveredus Jul 29th 2009 1:22PM
I have a solution but my solution factors into what I'd do with a rage overhaul.
The ideal, in some ways, to alleviate gearing issues with rage would be to make it more like energy, independent of how much you can take hits or how hard you hit. The problem is that makes it, well, into the same thing as Rogue energy.
Here's my rough idea for a new rage mechanic:
Rage steadily increases over time. As rage increases, attack speed goes down and crit chance goes up. When the rage bar is at full, you start taking a negative resilience debuff that stacks every second.
Instead of abilities COSTING rage, they VENT rage. The point of a rage bar is no longer to fuel abilities. There are tricks you can pull by letting your rage bar get high but there's added risk/tradeoff.
For PvE DPS, you would want to keep rage low to avoid getting crits that pull aggro. For PvP, the goal is to hit things to vent off the rage before it becomes a liability.
More desirable abilities would tend to have a lower rage "cost" because the ideal would generally be to vent more rage rather than less.
Rage Management would slow rage gain past the 50 mark and Endless Rage would increase the rage cap, allowing bigger crits. Prot would generate rage at a slower rate, being more "cool-headed". In place of traditional stance penalties would be simply that each stance generates rage at a different rate, with threat, mitigation and resilience bonuses for each.
Shouts would be increased in duration to regular length buffs but would increase your rate of rage gain for the buff's duration.
At this point, Heroic Strike and Maul would change mechanically from their traditional "rage dump" mechanics. They would have a low rage cost, which risks allowing your rage bar to get too high. Because of this, other abilities become more desirable unless your rage is already low. They might be okay towards the beginning of a fight but you have to start cycling them out of the rotation as your rage bar gets too high.
Neirin Jul 24th 2009 4:25PM
First problem I saw: Maul isn't really part of a "rotation" per se, it's just something we do while we have our actual rotation going. Since it's not on the gcd and is queued to your next attack, it's essentially independent of rotation-like limitations.
Neirin Jul 24th 2009 4:20PM
I have both a warrior and a druid and I have tanked on both (though my warriors is still fairly undergeared) and I just wanted to point out a few things. Warriors are definintely more annoying to spam with because their swing timer is generally shorter and they have more skills to use in that time aside from heroic strike. Manually trying to hit HS at the same time as you use all your other skills is pretty crazy compared to a druid. The trade off for a druid, who only really uses a few tanking buttons, is that maul is about 1/2 of our threat.
I'd kinda like a toggle that just turned on auto-HS/Maul, but for now I've found that it's better to simply set it so that one hand is dedicated to it. Scroll wheels or mouse buttons are the most obvious, though I know a few people that set it to = and simply have both hands on their keys.
Alveredus Jul 24th 2009 4:42PM
Toggles would make sense if rage was turned into an desirable trait or at least a trait we managed rather than automatically assuming "more rage is better"/"unlimited rage is ideal".
At that point, HS and Maul could function as toggles but passively increase rage gen while active.
Alveredus Jul 24th 2009 4:43PM
I meant UNdesirable trait.
Alveredus Jul 24th 2009 4:39PM
Yeah. There's a lot of fundamental overhaul something like this would involve.
Part of that might be making Maul into a HS clone.
I was mainly thinking in terms of gearing/"feel" issues.
Not saying this would be an EASY solution to implement but I think it's the type of direction warriors will have to go and bears will get dragged along with warriors on.
Yaikage Jul 24th 2009 5:02PM
To all you DK's out there, Rune strike is not the same as Heroic strike because of oppurtunity cost. You're main abilities use runes, it's the reason you have a set rotation. You will always have the abliity to use the core of your rotation. Rune striking too much won't prevent you from using those basic abilities. Of the abilities that use Runic power, Rune strike is the one that deals the most threat per runic power, of all abilities to use your RP on, Rune strike is the best, so spamming it doesn't detract from anything, except maybe your ability to use defensive CD's. Also, RS won't neccesarily kill your RP because you're still using rune abilities and it's only after parry/dodge so you don't use it EVERY time.
On the other hand, warriors need rage for everything AND HS. Plus, HS means we don't generate rage from weapon swings. Add in a dodge/parry streak, and suddenly we can't use our highest rage abilities. Furthermore, on phases w/o boss damage, like XT's heart, or on Archavon where's he's shooting or charging a raid member, you don't gain any rage if you spam HS and lose it instead. HS is very low on the threat list, it deals less threat than devasate+white while taking MUCH more rage.
In short, spamming HS without control means overall less tps b/c the RNG makes you rage starved even on a patchwork fight while spamming RS means high and efficient tps and is wanted. Good warriors shouldn't macro HS too much because it makes us unable to react to low rage situations, esp since with a 1.5 speed weapon it means burning about 20-30 rage every GCD AND missing out on weapon rage (assuming 600 damage hit, that'd be about 8 on reg hit or 16 rage on crit.
Erik Jul 24th 2009 5:50PM
I have been a warrior tank for along time. I have Heroic Strike Macro-ed with Devastate, Revenge and Shield Slam for boss fights. I also have the 3 talents alone for low rage encounters. The Heroic Strike will almost always go off during the global cool down. I find most low rage encounters are tanking trash mobs. I keep Berserker Rage, Heroic throw and Bloodlust macro-ed with charge for a quick jump start in rage and it insures that something is hitting me to generate more rage. Be sure not to target the same trash mob as the AoE tank and you will have aggro. By the time I get off thunderclap, shockwave and a cleave, the mobs are dead anyway and not a rage problem. If I am not MT on boss fights, I respecc to fury.
Talelon Jul 25th 2009 1:56AM
As a fury warrior it would be nice to be able to use it on something like a toggle, seeing as I use Heroic as rage dump, that way all MH attacks would be Heroic Strike until I turned it off. That would definitely make the woodpecker-ness of it all go away.
that's just my thought though