Loading ...Level 70 Glyphs making Bad Macros Good!
At level 70, you’re going to get access to 2 Major Glyphs and 3 Minor ones and later at level 80, you’ll get access to a 3rd Major Glyph. Since we’re still chillin’ in the level 70 world for the next month, we’re going to just look at a setup of 2 Majors + 3 Minors for Raiding. (…and I’ll be skipping the glyphs that obviously we can’t get yet)
2 Major Glyphs for Level 70
1. Glyph of Revenge
Revenge has always been a stable in a Warrior’s threat rotation and as a result, it’s easy to see that this is going to be a very powerful Glyph. In order to maximize the effectiveness of this Glyph, this is where the macro I hinted at in the title comes in.
/cast Revenge
/cast Heroic Strike
If you remember reading, 5 Macros that Suck, you’ll recognize this is a bad macro. Or, I should say, it used to be. Now, that macro will ensure that you’re making use of that free Heroic Strike every time you use your Revenge. A word of caution though, this macro will use Heroic Strike every time you use it even if Revenge isn’t lit up or is still on cooldown.
2. Glyph of Heroic Strike
Thanks to Incite, this Glyph is going to trigger quite frequently. While certainly we’re finding ourselves constantly in high rage situations, this Glyph ensures that over Heroic Striking doesn’t get us into trouble. In fact, between this Glyph and Glyph of Revenge you can get away with combining Heroic Strike with both Devastate and Shield Slam too and not have to worry about rage starvation on bosses.
Overall, both Glyphs make ideal sense when approaching the raid game from a “let’s do as much freakin’ damage as we possibly can while tanking standpoint”.
3 Minor Glyphs for Level 70
There’s only 6 Warrior Minor Glyphs at this time which doesn’t make for much of a choice considering they aren’t all dedicated to tanking. Here’s the 3 that I’ll be using for the time being.
If you find that you’re going to be the Warrior keeping Battle Shout up for the raid then you should definitely consider using Glyph of Battle instead of Glyph of Charge. In fact, even if you aren’t going to be keeping Battle Shout up most of the time, if you aren’t speced into Warbringer then you should still be using Glyph of Battle. So as you’ve probably guessed by now, the reason I’m using Glyph of Charge is because I won’t be keeping Battle Shout up and because I am speced into Warbringer.
Wrap Up
Glyphs are definitely an interesting twist for us and while the above represents a nice, easy way to approach most raid Main Tanking situations that doesn’t mean that you won’t be customizing your Glyphs frequently in Wrath of the Lich King. Remember just like we’ve learned in TBC to gear and spec for the encounter so too shall we find that it’s advantageous to Glyph for the encounter as well.
Don’t worry, I’m sure Glyphs will go down in price too 
October 17th, 2008 at 12:45 pm
Hmm, Heroic Strike instead of Sunder. Me, personally, I am loving my sunder armor glyph but I it is very circumstantial and making tanking in heroics ‘easier’. (Like it needs to be easier now with thunder clap, Shockwave, oh now they never leaving me alone, cleave, devestate, sunder hitting random dude.)
But I can certainly see that heroic strike will certainly play a more important role for tha main tank in the main tanking situation. Just now I am laughing as I charge into 6 mobs in mgt hc (thanks for pointing out the use of spell reflect in your spec which i have gladly stolen!) and amusing myself at the fact that 6 mobs wont leave me alone and the dps can hit what they want.
The minors, yes I am going to be using them. Tempted actually to take the battle one cause I forget to put it up often enough and that glyph will cover up my shodiness. Bloodrage is useful but so is battle. Hard to make a concrete decision as both are circumstantial and a question of taste but if push comes to shove I would take the bloodrage cuase that extra health can make all the difference on a bad pull / encounter.
Glyphe of Sunder Armor - great for trash tanking. (offtanking I am thinking here.)
Glyph of Heroic Strike - great for main tanking and making sure the maximum amount of threat is produced. Love this and will more than likely switch when tanking becomes challengoing again.
Oh and Vene - I love your site! Don’t ever stop! You turned me from average to tank to awesome tank. I really appreciate all the work you put into making us warrior tanks perform better by sharing you knowledge and experience.
[Reply]
October 17th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
Try this…
#showtooltip Revenge
/cast Revenge
/cast Heroic Strike
It should be grayed-out when Revenge isnt up.
[Reply]
admin reply on October 17, 2008 2:24 pm:
Yup, that definitely works. I’m simply cautioning that if you accidentally hit it or spam the button then you’ll be spamming Heroic Strike.
[Reply]
Draco reply on October 17, 2008 5:30 pm:
I thought in other macros that it is possible to make a sequential order so that if revenge cant be cast then HS wont either.
[Reply]
megagrogan reply on October 17, 2008 6:31 pm:
thats only true if both abilities are on the GCD, but heroic strike isn’t
October 17th, 2008 at 2:00 pm
I’m using the following macro for the revenge/heroic strike combo. After using revenge it switches to heroic strike, but resets to revenge after two seconds if you don’t use heroic strike (it also resets after using heroic strike):
#show
#showtooltip
/castsequence reset=2 revenge, !heroic strike
This basically allows you to mash that button for when revenge becomes active and for the rest focus on your normal rotation with Shield Slam and devastate. On bosses I never seem to run out of rage so I’m spamming HS as well.
[Reply]
Deepsea reply on October 19, 2008 12:51 pm:
This macro is fantastic!
I’ve tried several versions out since implementing the Revenge Glyph but this is easily the best version for my playstyle.
Thanks Kranmar!
[Reply]
Pitstarter reply on October 20, 2008 9:22 am:
Very sweet macro there Kranmar!
[Reply]
Elviswind reply on December 7, 2008 8:12 pm:
What’s that first #show for?
[Reply]
October 17th, 2008 at 3:00 pm
After the patch one thing I needed to do was re-arrange the interface around so I started using the Rev/HS macro. Problem is I suspect sometimes that HS goes off without benefiting from the Glyph of Revenge. This will cause a rage starvation problem against soft hitting mobs. The other downside to this is the Glyph only halves the effective rage cost of HS since you’re still giving up the rage gain from a white swing. I may persist with this set up since it conveniently groups the 3 primary attacks.
The other macro I’m using is charge/taunt. Admittedly this was a better idea before they buffed taunts range. Still its a bit workable since the two abilities exist apart from each other. Its still convenient for a grabbing errant mobs.
[Reply]
admin reply on October 17, 2008 3:23 pm:
That’s an excellent point about HS still consuming your auto-attack. Certainly a factor we shouldn’t discount with our auto-attacks doing more and more damage thanks to AP. (thus netting us more rage) You’re right that we’re missing out on more rage than we think. That being said… the Heroic Strike Glyph can help compensate for that for the time being.
All this considered unless something changes between now and level 80, I foresee rage starvation being a thing of the past.
[Reply]
kahalm reply on October 17, 2008 6:59 pm:
“Problem is I suspect sometimes that HS goes off without benefiting from the Glyph of Revenge.”
This is definitly the case, seems to happen if you hit the revenge button right before the autoattack. looked it up in my combatlog was like:
Revenge
HS
Gain glyph of Revenge ;/
[Reply]
Eamo reply on October 22, 2008 4:08 am:
The heroic strike and revenge glyphs really shine though where you have patchy rage generation. It means that once you get up to 80-100 rage due to any sort of damage spike it will take 8-10 seconds to use it all up instead of the 6-8 seconds you can burn through all that rage now. That means you can go longer between taking hits without having rage issues and still keep up a full threat rotation.
[Reply]
October 17th, 2008 at 5:21 pm
Same glyphs I picked.
[Reply]
October 18th, 2008 at 1:28 am
I thought about that macro early on & decided against it. I think I may remove HS from my hotbar & put Cleave in its place (using the HS+Revenge macro as well).
What I see myself doing is simply hitting the Revenge/HS key regardless of whether Revenge is lit up while tanking. Excess rage? Hit the macro. Revenge was lit up? Oh, neat - free HS. Hit it again in tandem with another key. It’s basically a spam fest for excess rage situations & a minimally intrusive macro for all other situations the way I see it.
[Reply]
October 18th, 2008 at 6:48 am
I took Revenge and Sunder Armor yesterday. Beautiful. I grabbed Sunder Armor for 5-man tanking, which worked amazingly well.
[Reply]
October 18th, 2008 at 6:59 am
I’d hate to say it Vene but I think this macro deserves to be in your previous article. The fact that you’re willing to say the last macro is bad just because you lose a couple seconds of another potential Shield Slam in that article.
And then in this article you suggest a macro that is very much broken unless of course, you’re timing your Revenge so that it isn’t cast right as your swing timer is up. I tested this macro early on in the PTR and found that I kept losing my glyph of revenge buff because my macro caused Heroic Strike to go off before Glyph of Revenge was procced. And I didn’t notice until later that it was happening, so if I’m going to have to pay attention to the buff then I should probably just throw the macro out the window and do it manual instead of potential rage starving yourself and missing that Sword and Board proc because of it.
[Reply]
Arideni reply on October 19, 2008 12:47 pm:
A macro can’t play the game for you, but it can make things easier. The main problem I see everyone complaining about is how the macro uses Heroic Strike & may not catch the “free buff” portion from Revenge. Solution? Hit the key again. That Heroic Strike shouldn’t hurt you, especially at 70, since rage is now so easy to come by. Hit the key again. The next HS is free, so it balances out.
The problem you describe above is that you have to pay attention to the macro & time it right. OK. So if you do it manually, you don’t have to pay attention? In either case, one must pay attention to the procs & cooldowns. Get an add-on for scrolling text, or use the one built-in — it provides a notice of all buff gains & fades. It couldn’t be easier to track unless it was a verbal message (”Hit Heroic Strike now!”).
[Reply]
Albinobeard reply on October 19, 2008 1:37 pm:
Its a wasted macro if it doesn’t work the way you want it to, not saying macros are valuable resources or anything like that. What I am saying is that if the macro doesn’t work all the time or it doesn’t work to your advantage 100% then stop using a bad macro like Vene’s article before this one was about.
However, you are right that the second heroic strike doesn’t always hurt you especially at level 70 but we don’t know if it will start hurting us at level 80 or not. So do what Vene said in his last article, stop using a bad macro now so you’re ready for then.
[Reply]
October 19th, 2008 at 12:36 pm
I wish I knew more about Macros. I know the bascis and the showtooltip/revenge/HS combination I can do.
Question is how intuitive are macros? I know we can check the stance and put an “if” statement in there that switches us from one stance to another depending on which stance we’re in…so…any macro-masters out there who know whether we can add an “if” that checks to see if the free buff is actually active before it triggers HS.
Like the previous posters…would love to get the benefit from the Glyph but would hate it if the timing caused you to spend prior to the buff.
[Reply]
Arideni reply on October 19, 2008 12:42 pm:
Why wish when you can make it happen? There’s no checking system as far as I know, though it may be possible with an add-on to accomplish something similar to what you suggested.
[Reply]
ebs2002 reply on October 19, 2008 7:14 pm:
There’s no way to test if a certain buff is up. The reason we can stance dance is because “stance” is one of the permissible clauses in the conditional part of a command (ie, the [ ] part). There is no clause for buffs.
An add-on may be able to do this, but I’m pretty sure it’s outside the scope of what an add-on can do, too
[Reply]
Posolutely reply on October 20, 2008 6:32 am:
An addon cannot do this either. If it could, every warrior would have it for checking if our shouts are up to keep them up
Machus reply on October 21, 2008 3:15 am:
Example of making a macro conditional on your stance:
/cast [stance:1] Shield Bash; [stance:2] Shield Bash; Pummel
[Reply]
October 20th, 2008 at 2:15 am
Why not Glyph of Mocking Blow instead of Glyph of Bloodrage?
I think that now Mocking Blow is a good aggro-maker and I use it in my rotation.
I took Revenge and Sunder Armor major glyph for the moment.
But I want to try also Heroic Strike asap. ^^
[Reply]
admin reply on October 21, 2008 9:01 am:
I don’t think Mocking Blow warrants use in your rotation. Devastate and Revenge both can proc Shield Slam. It doesn’t really make sense to use anything other than those 3 for single target threat with the possible exception being Concussion Blow when it makes sense to stun.
[Reply]
October 20th, 2008 at 9:09 am
I tested out the macro in Mount Hyjal and it worked just fine. With having the macro I figured I didn’t need Heroic Strike on my task bar any longer. On the waves of trash that was ok but on the boss fights I ended up at 100% rage most of the fight. I was only hitting the macro when Revenge was ready though. I’ll need to spam that macro a little more I guess. I didn’t think about it triggering Heroic Strike even when Revenge was on CD.
[Reply]
October 21st, 2008 at 5:47 am
Even spamming HS you will stay maxed rage in most situations in 3.0.
[Reply]
October 22nd, 2008 at 4:12 am
Whatever about playing as Prot. If you are Arms and going to be doing much off tanking the combination of the Heroic Strike and Revenge glyphs with the 1 second revenge cooldown you get as Arms allows for pretty impressive single target threat.
[Reply]
November 5th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
I’m curious to what you guys think about the sunder armor glyph. With or without puncture, sunder armor could suddenly become a cheap cleave alternative that stacks sunders on 2 mobs simultaneously, allowing for quicker high threat devastates. Blizz does seem fond of the occasional “2 giant bodyguards” pulls (the one before Hungerfen comes to mind).
[Reply]
November 7th, 2008 at 10:39 am
I love the sunder armor glyph… I use it with the free heroic strike glyph. Multi mob tanking is sooo ez now
[Reply]
November 7th, 2008 at 2:49 pm
/cast Revenge
/cast Heroic Strike
i’ve tried his macro and i really didn’t like it. what i don’t like about it is the following if i queued up heroic strike/cleave already, the macro will remove heroic strike/cleave from queue. i know it isn’t a biggie, but it’s one less thing to worry about (reapplying hs) so i’ve returned to manually use heroic strike again after revenge. it’s not like it has a small time window, 10 sec after revenge is time enough to use that revenge.
It has some use for trash aswell, this way i don’t waste a free heroic strike on a mob that’s nearly dead
[Reply]
November 11th, 2008 at 10:51 am
This is the main macro i spam when im tanking (using shield slam and such manually)… i throw down a metric ass-ton of tps with it, so check it out:
#showtooltip Heroic Strike
/castsequence !Heroic Strike,!Heroic Strike
/castrandom Devastate,Revenge
I use glyphs of revenge and HS
The macro keeps Heroic Strike cast so it goes off on every swing, revenges when it’s up, and devastates when it isnt… if you’re rage starved, use the same macro without any of the heroic stuff, but if you’re tanking anything worth tanking, rage isnt a problem.
I use the same macro with cleave instead of HS when i’m tanking 2-4 mobs, and wiggle to spread my cleave dmg around on all the mobs on me
[Reply]
Psy reply on November 11, 2008 7:27 pm:
That’s a castrandom.
Which means it isn’t guaranteed to cast revenge when it’s up, it just has a 50% chance.
[Reply]
Meatgazer reply on November 12, 2008 7:53 am:
Isn’t there also a chance that it will try and revenge, it won’t be up, and won’t do anything?
[Reply]
November 11th, 2008 at 12:30 pm
mocking blow is used when taunt is down… providing the mob is tauntable.
[Reply]
November 25th, 2008 at 4:35 pm
I tried this for a while and ditched it. Maybe while instance tanking (but there, I’m often using cleave if rage is plentiful anyway), but definitely not soloing.
Thing is, “free HS” isn’t free. With the HS glyph, maybe it’s a break even, but the lost rage from swinging means that if I revenge w/ 10 rage and I know I can shield slam next GCD, that swing better be white so I get to the 17 rage I need to shield slam. At least w/ the HS glyph I’m rolling the dice and I still get rage if it crits.
Incidentally, in the example where I hit a white hit and SS, *then* I queue the free HS, generally, when SS is safely on cooldown.
This macro is situationally useful, but for me at least, it wasn’t working out.
[Reply]
December 5th, 2008 at 8:50 am
I use a macro that is /autoattack+devastate+heroic strike all in one.
I also have a macro that is sheildblock or revenge…
For normal 1 or 2 mobs I can spam those and weave in SS when sword and board proc’s and its ez mode. Folks may flame but god it works so well.
If you are in a fight where you have to shield block at a certain time due to spikey incoming dmg then please move your 2nd macro and put revenge in its spot and have shield block nearby.
I dont have to look for my free heroic strikes(revenge glyph), I always have shield block up at the beginning of the fight for added agro, proc’s ect… and everytime shieldblock comes off of cooldown I use it.
With the right talents and glyphs you get so much synergy with shieldblock, double dmg shield, revenge procs which helps proc sword and board and free Heroic Strikes… Incite which helps your heroic strikes…. It works great for me. Folks flame me for having a bad macro, until I have problems it is win for me. Helps me weave in concblow/shockwaves easily into my rotation for added dps because I mainly just have to watch for sword and board procs and cooldowns.
[Reply]