Loading ...At least, 41% of Tanks aren’t Heroic Striking enough.
…and this doesn’t include the tanks that are level 8. This is you guys. Yup, you.
In my most recent poll, more than 500 of you let me know how you use Heroic Strike and I’m not going to lie, the results were a little surprising.
The Clickers, 20%
1 in 5 tanks click Heroic Strike. That’s a lot guys and gals and that’s not a good thing. There’s 2 cases with this, one’s bad and one’s ugly.
a) The Bad Case
You have your main rotation of Shield Slam, Revenge, Concussion Blow, Shockwave and Devastate all bound to keys. This allows you to utilize your left hand to do your proper rotation and allows you to use your right hand with the mouse to click Heroic Strike whenever your rage gets too high. This can work… until you have to move. I bet you don’t use Heroic Strike at all when you move. You probably have never maintained Heroic Strike usage while using a cooldown either.
b) The Ugly Case
You click your main rotation and you click Heroic Strike. There’s just no possible way you can move fast enough. You’re going to be lucky to keep up with your main rotation even. Basically, if you manage to somewhat pull off your main rotation, you’ll end up never using Heroic Strike. If you manage to Heroic Strike effective, you’ll screw up your main rotation massively. It’s lose-lose and it’s even worse once you have to move around.
Macro Men, 15%
As a former member of the Macro Men, I can say confidently that you’re lazy and if you don’t know it, you do now. Heroic Strike lands whenever your weapon swings. Your weapon does not swing at the same time that you do your main rotation. If you’re using a Macro, you’re missing numerous opportunities to dump rage. You’re also making it impossible to use Heroic Strike by itself.
Why would I want to just Heroic Strike?
For bosses that spawn adds. Once you’ve got a massive threat lead, you can just start spamming Heroic Strike around the time the adds are expected. This will allow you to have your global cooldown free to Thunder Clap or Shockwave immediately once the adds spawn ensuring no one gets hit. The fact that the current content allows DPSers to “take a hit” is no excuse.
I’m no User, 6%
Heroic Strike is a massive amount of your threat/damage especially in today’s world of High Rage situations, not using it is doing a gross disservice to your team as you’re greatly hindering your own personal dps as well as your groups ability to go all out on their own dps due to low threat. If you’re not using Heroic Strike and struggling with threat, now you know why. If you’re new to the world of Heroic Strike, try reading this oldie, but goodie: Heroic Strike, more than a Rage Dump.
Wheelers, 6%
Hello my fellow siblings, how are you enjoying the world of Wheeling? This is where I sit currently with my Heroic Strike usage. I’m finding it to be quite effective especially when I have to maintain my regular rotation + Heroic Strike + move + talk on vent. Is it ideal though? I’m not certain. Currently, I bind Heroic Strike to wheel up and Cleave to wheel down and I’ve definitely noticed that I’ll occasionally Cleave instead of Heroic Strike due to miss-wheeling. This is a problem.
So, what are you going to do?
I’m going to bind it to a key as well and go back to the key as my primary Heroic Strike button. In the past, I’ve always bound Heroic Strike to a key and I’ve prided myself on being very good at utilizing it and it’s because it was bound to a key that I could accomplish this. I still will be using Heroic Strike on my wheel as well since I find it very useful for good Heroic Strike usage while Strafing and Tabbing, but unfortunately, the wheel alone is not enough. Random Cleaves are simply unacceptable for standard tanking.
The Kings of the Key-dom, 53%
Pat yourself on the back, you’re doing it right. Now granted, I’m assuming you have your Heroic Strike key in some meaningful area that you can constantly spam easily while moving or talking and maintain your regular rotation at the same time. If you’ve bound Heroic Strike to Shift-1 and Shield Slam to 1… then you’re doing it wrong. If you’ve bound Heroic Strike to something unreachable like F12, then you’re doing it wrong, too.
Adequate isn’t Enough
It’s true, we play in a world right now that allows us to be sloppy. I guarantee there’s someone that doesn’t use Heroic Strike that’s progressed farther than I have and as a result, has got a whole lot better gear than me too. The Main Tank of your guild could be this person too. That doesn’t make it right. If you’re clicking, macroing or not even using Heroic Strike… then you’re simply not Heroic Striking enough. If you’re wheeling Heroic Strike, you may want to consider Binding it to a key like me because unless you’ve got Heroic Strike bound to Wheel up and Wheel down, you’re probably making mistakes too.
The keybound and the converted to keying, remember binding alone doesn’t immediately make you better. You still have to press the button. It doesn’t do you any good having a key bound to Heroic Strike, if you’re unable to use it effectively. So make that key meaningful and pay attention to your rage. It still remains true that if you’ve got 50+ rage, you should be Heroic Striking until you don’t. If you never go below that in an entire fight, then you should literally see zero Swings in your WWStats and All Heroic Strikes.
After all, that’s the goal here folks. If it’s a high rage situation like Main Tanking Patchwerk, we don’t ever want to swing. We want to do a flawless regular rotation and have 100% Heroic Strike usage. And, if you think it doesn’t matter… that doesn’t make a difference… well the day you walk into Ulduar and wipe at 1% on a brand new boss… I want you to realize that if you’re Heroic Striking wrong that you’re just as responsible for that wipe as the DPSer that was dead for half the fight.
The time where mediocrity is adequate will not last forever, will you be ready?
January 26th, 2009 at 11:56 am
I am hugely unhappy with my keybindings atm and feel them to be not so efficient. I could accomplish more. This why I am gunning for either G11 or a G13/n52te for my birthday. At the moment, my setup is Auto-Attack on 1, Taunt on 2, Dev on 3, Revenge macro on 4, HS on 5, SS on 6, etc. I try to hit 5 as often as I can, but sometimes I just plain forget, and that’s bad. Bad Kadomi, no biscuit. If I will use it more often, will King Ymiron give me a sword because I have been a good girl?
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Veneretio reply on January 26, 2009 12:01 pm:
It can’t hurt your chances
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Hao reply on January 26, 2009 12:10 pm:
Logitech is selling their G15 on their website (the old, better version) for $79 if you can afford it.
I’m a wierdo (i use both my mouse to click and fingers to press my hotkeys, but I know Heroic Strike is a “next swing” skill. So I always have Heroic strike clicked ready to go as a “next strike” while I am doing my normal rotation and while I have plenty of rage.
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Cleaved reply on January 26, 2009 12:39 pm:
I’m also a “wierdo” in that I click and key-press. I also use Quartz with a swing-timer shown at the bottom of my screen. Using the swing timer lets you keep your Revenge => HStrike Macro and just mash it before and after each swing. If you hit the button and Revenge isn’t ready, it still HStrikes. Since HStrike is “next swing” watching the Swing Timer you know when it went off and when to press it again. IMO, its a matter of preference.
I have considered moving it back to its own binding lately though, as DPS and rage-dumping might be easier… we shall see (^_^)
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Yarock reply on January 26, 2009 1:40 pm:
In response to the first poster using 1 for autoattack - I macro all my attacks with /start attack then /cast devestate, etc. I’m not sure why you would use prime real estate like 1 for that. If I need to stop attacking I *gasp* mouse-click - I suppose I should keybind everything but buttons that I very rarely hit I won’t remember the keybind anyway so it’s pointless.
In response to the southpaw (alzenoth) you use your mouse 100% of the time for movement? Where is forward/backwards/strafe? Arrow keys I suppose?
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Kadomi reply on January 26, 2009 3:34 pm:
Yeah, I have often considered changing auto-attack and just using right-click for it. I will re-map my keybindings as soon as I have my new keyboard. You’re only reinforcing my desire to clean up and improve.
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Alzenoth reply on February 11, 2009 10:30 am:
Correct. Arrow keys still provide fine movement control and I have no issues maintaining rotation since everything is right there. In fights like patchwerk where I don’t have to move, my mousehand is usually feeding me
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matrisking reply on April 27, 2009 10:46 am:
re: Yarock
I know this is a few months later, but what a great idea. I’m going to make that change asap and throw HS on 1 (or possibly re-work my hotkeys entirely, so many possibilities with an extra key right there)
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Kaetlynn reply on January 27, 2009 1:28 pm:
I have auto attack on 1, heroic strike on 2, my Revenge/Shield Slam macro on 3, shield bash on 4 (it’s always been on 4 - if I see a cast bar I hit 4 on all my toons force of habit - it cannot move).
devastate, thunder clap and demo shout are all next to each other to be clicked.
I’m still messing around with my key-binds, but I think this is a winner for me.
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Brady reply on March 12, 2009 9:00 am:
why are people assigning auto attack? it just takes up a space on your action bar, just using right click will trigger auto attack so you can manage your bar a little better.
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Veneretio reply on March 12, 2009 9:15 am:
Because occasionally you want to turn off your auto-attack (due to boss abilities among other things) and it’s easiest to do this with a key assigned to it.
Ilahendil reply on September 20, 2009 9:37 pm:
I use Shift+E for Shield Slam, E for Devastate, Shift+2 for Heroic Strike, 3 for Revenge, 4 for Concussion Blow, Q for Shockwave. Though, it should be said, I don’t often AoE-tank, I tend to let paladins do that. I have Imp TC in my spec, however, so it’s not really a problem to AoE tank unless my pack is the first one for the nuke.
But the single target setup is close to flawless — I could probably sneak in even more HSes in there, as I see “melee” still doing a lot of damage on Recount. But still, it works brilliantly for me, peaked 8k TPS on trash a while ago.
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January 26th, 2009 at 12:16 pm
I got stuck in the macro sense from when I did some UA tanking. Now I macro HS to my Revenge and spam the 3 button constantly, even if revenge is on CD. However, it definitely has made me do some revenges instead of SS, which reduces overall effectiveness therefore making it a moot point.
But it’s so easy to be lazy! I’ll get to putting it on it’s own button… eventually…
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LarsBerg reply on January 26, 2009 12:33 pm:
I do exactly the same thing - it’s even on the same number! I have to admit that I find this exceptionally creepy.
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marklar reply on January 26, 2009 2:22 pm:
this is me too (except button #2). spam revenge during GCD and keep up my normal rotation with the other buttons.
it seems to be working ok for me - i had 7 white swings on my last patchwerk fight.
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Urus reply on January 26, 2009 4:56 pm:
I have this macro on #3 too, and I use it the same way as you guys! My problem with constantly spamming the macro button is that I just can’t get into a rhythm that way. Constantly mashing on the 3 key gets me flustered and makes it a lot harder to keep up the rotation (and it’s probably a one-way ticket to tendinitis, too!).
I like the idea of a swing-timer mod, but I don’t like using a lot of addons if I can help it. I think I’ll get the same effect by putting HS somewhere out of the way on the action bar so I can see the white highlight around the box when it’s queued up. When the white outline goes away, I can hit the macro button.
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Arold reply on January 26, 2009 7:32 pm:
Now here’s the REAL trick: I Have the revenge/HS macro on 3, and have an normal Heroic Strike button on a bar above it (unbound). Then I know to hit an extra 3 when the light goes out. Of course, it may help that I’ve got a slow weapon right now.
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Urus reply on January 27, 2009 8:20 pm:
Yeah, that’s exactly what I was talking about above. I tried it today and it worked like gangbusters! I highly recommend it.
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January 26th, 2009 at 12:25 pm
I used to be a keybinder for heroic strike but found that with the sheer amount of button mashing I due that it was sometimes unreliable that I’d get 100% uptime in infinite rage situations.
Now I have a G9 with a frictionless mouse wheel which I can basically wind up and it will auto queue HS until it stops spinning. That leaves me free to mash GCD stuff on the keyboard without any concerns about missing a HS.
If I find I’m running out of rage, I just stop the spinning and either go back to single rolls, or use my old key binding.
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Mojin/Hawksong reply on January 26, 2009 3:22 pm:
I have a G9 too, and you know I never thought of that trick. I’ll have to try that out. Thanks!
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January 26th, 2009 at 12:31 pm
I have my Heroic Strike bound to 2, and my rotation attacks in 3-??. I use a /cast revenge, /cast heroic strike macro instead of plain old revenge, and I’m thinking about dumping HS from my bar all together. If I want to use it, I just hit my Revenge macro. If Revenge is up, great, if not, it works the same way a normal HS click would. Am I crazy for even thinking about dumping it from my bar?
I should also mention I am using the Glyph of Revenge.
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Steele reply on January 27, 2009 5:04 am:
yeah, i do the same. Macro for revenge and HS, macro for thunderclap and cleave… Macro for Charge and taunt.. macro for shieldblock & berserker rage, macro for shieldwall, laststand & regeneration… and more… all i need for tanking are the numkeys 1-9 with an occasional click on demo/warshout.
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January 26th, 2009 at 12:41 pm
I must admit I have always been a clicker. I really should try some key binding. Not sure how I should do it though.
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Chet reply on January 26, 2009 3:31 pm:
I’m a clicker too. I got into the habit on my mage, where it really isn’t a big deal, but I’m trying to break it. Finding keybindings that I like and that work for me is hard though. However I am still working on it, and I’ve at least gotten to the point that I don’t click some of my abilities, like charge and taunt. I like the idea of the mousewheel up = HS, down = cleave. I hadn’t ever thought of that. I just have to make sure I don’t have the same problem you have with it, vene, or it might not be worth it.
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Chet reply on January 28, 2009 8:23 am:
so, in trying out the mousewheel HS, I’ve discovered something very beneficial (to me anyway). Mousewheel doesn’t work when I’m moused over my buttons (might have to do with bartender or another addon) so it’s forcing me to use my keybinds, and you know what, I can see what’s going on SO much better now, and while my threat output hasn’t improved yet, that’s because I’m still a bit sluggish with my keybinds.
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Chet reply on February 9, 2009 11:04 pm:
so, I don’t know if you discourage linking wws on here, ’cause I haven’t ever seen anyone do it, but I just wanted to say that if it weren’t for this post, I probably would only have a little more than 1/2 this DPS on Patch (the rest of the raid, I was a bit low, but it was partly because me and the pally trade off tanking, and partly because I was still learning a couple of the fights (We’re a very casual raiding guild)
Anyway, long story short, 1 swing on Patch10 (and one cleave, oops):
http://wowwebstats.com/esivijgjypz2w?a=x300ec7f&s=108375-121924
Veneretio reply on February 9, 2009 11:32 pm:
WWS are definitely welcomed additions to comments. Very impressive Heroic Strike uptime
Cleaved reply on January 26, 2009 4:03 pm:
I like to click mostly in fights requiring high mobility, then when I am not moving I transition back to keybinds. Coming from a lot of FPS experience, I find it easier to click buttons while strafing or moving using QE/WASD.
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Meneerkoe reply on January 30, 2009 3:13 am:
High mobility fights were the reason for me to become (partly) a mousemover.
Now I can use all my abilites with my left hand and fully control movement with my mouse.
Having your hand glued to wasd while also trying to keep up a rotation and HS was like playing twister with one hand.
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Cleaved reply on February 4, 2009 4:54 am:
I don’t see how you can Strafe or Back-pedal with mouse movement. You have to turn and run, putting your back to the mob, unless you use some sort of binding on the mouse for Strafe and Backwards. Maybe I should just make M1 and M2 together… Back-pedal instead of Forward as they are defaulted to? Still doesn’t solve the Strafe issue. I could re-task my 2 side mouse buttons from auto run and my mount, to Strafe Left and Strafe Right I reckon.
Coming from FPS games, as I said above, its hard to break the Strafe/Back-pedal habit of using WASD/QE. It doesn’t hurt my TPS or Heroic Strike very much, since I use a Swing-Timer to ensure my HStrikes are going off.
January 26th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
I like my revenge/heroic strike macro and will keep using it because it puts two key skills in easy reach without having to use a modifier that gimps my hand (and thus my mobility). When revenge isnt availible, heroic strike will still que when I hit the macro, and I have heroic strike pulled to an unbound spot so I can keep an eye out and make sure its always cued up when I have the rage.
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January 26th, 2009 at 12:45 pm
Effective keybinds are those whom you build muscle memory for. I’ve seen some horribly laid out keybinds but the guy knew them and they worked well. I am left handed and that is my mouse hand so I’ve setup the numpad for all my keybinds (ergonomic reasons).
1 - devastate
2 - revenge
3 - shield slam
4 - heroic strike
5 - shield bash
6 - thunderclap
7 - shockwave
8 - concussion blow
9 - cleave
0 - shield block
. - berzerker rage
+ - intervene/taunt macro
- - spell reflect
* - disarm
/ - bloodrage
page down - shield wall
page up - last stand
end - charge
home - shoot
insert - reserved for raid warnings, currently “KILL >> power spark
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January 26th, 2009 at 1:14 pm
I’m curious; if we’ve done the whole mouse wheel up HS/ mouse wheel down Cleave, and are not experiencing any issues of accidentally cleaving when we mouse wheel up, would you recommend keeping our Heroic Strike as is?
- Wütend
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January 26th, 2009 at 1:14 pm
I don’t know why people bind auto attack. I found an out of the way key (shift+3 for me) to be /startattack and esc works well enough for stopping attacks.
1 is heroic strike - and in high rage situations it is the space between shield slam and devastate.
2-1-3-1-4-1-4-1-2-1-3-1-4-1-4-1
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Arvernien reply on January 26, 2009 5:02 pm:
This is similar to the method I use and I find it works well. I have been analyzing my HS frequency and 2 weeks ago I was at an unacceptable 50% melee/50% HS. On Sunday I did a few heroics and I was getting better than 95% HS counts. In Nexus on Keristraza (the annoying pogo stick dragon fight) I hit 85% HS but I blame jumping.
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Veneretio reply on January 27, 2009 8:17 am:
Less than 100% HS is acceptable if the rage isn’t there. The standard rotation still should always be done instead of HS if rage is an issue.
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Djiss reply on January 28, 2009 4:47 pm:
“I don’t know why people bind auto attack.”
Me neither.
“T” is bound to Auto-Attack by default.
You can also right-click.
In my case SS, Rev, Dev are all macro’ed with a /startattack in it.
It’s obvious that if I want to shield slam something… I ALSO want to start attacking it.
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January 26th, 2009 at 1:29 pm
My heroic strike key is on a mouse button. With this solution i can keep my rotation up with my left hand and move while spamming my button with my thumb.
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q reply on January 26, 2009 5:07 pm:
Yup, I support this idea.
Get a mouse with as many buttons as possible. Its like growing more fingers out of your left hand, only with your right hand!
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Kadarin reply on January 27, 2009 1:29 pm:
I have it on a mousebutton too and I really like it. Shift-MB3. (It would just be MB3 but I’ve had execute there for so long to PvP I’m sure it would take me weeks to unlearn my instincts) I was thinking of using Alt-M3 for Cleave.
As Urgul said having it on the mouse is great as it doesn’t mess up your rotation with GCD abilities.
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January 26th, 2009 at 1:36 pm
I’ve had mine bound to my wheel button since pre-BC, but it’s never been a wheel up or a wheel down, it’s a press on my middle mouse button. It’s always worked amazingly well for me. Incredibly simple access allows me to maintain my HS no matter what else I need to be doing.
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January 26th, 2009 at 1:52 pm
I like the mouse wheel idea (particularly since I have a simple mouse with minimal buttons) but right now I have my wheel click bound to my fishing macro…. hmm… priorities….
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January 26th, 2009 at 2:05 pm
I have revenge and HS macroed together and I spam it, cleave / SS on wheel up and wheel down with a mouseover sunder macro bound to wheel click, it works very well. Looking at our last patchwork fight I was 140HS and only 9 swings. Thanks for the post, it’s good to hear other people’s techniques.
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January 26th, 2009 at 2:09 pm
This has been bound to my 1 key since the expansion hit.
#showtoolip [help] Intervene; Charge
/startattack
/cast [harm] Charge; [help] Intervene
/cast [harm] Heroic Strike
/cast [harm] Revenge
I admittedly don’t mash this as fast as I should because I had been tanking with that 2.6 speed axe from a quest somewhere. Making the switch back to a 1.6 is taking some getting used to.
I have only gone charging across the screen after my target died a couple times (hasn’t wiped us yet).
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January 26th, 2009 at 2:23 pm
clicker since nov 06′ =P
ive never had a prob with anything especially heigan
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January 26th, 2009 at 2:28 pm
I have HS on one of the side buttons of my mouse (button 5) and cleave as Shift+button 5. This works great for me as I can still mouse turn, move and click on my larger cooldowns (shouts, Sheild wall etc) all the while spamming HS or if I hold shift cleave. My left hand takes care of all my normal rotation skills. This is more important to me after seening the spamming article on tankspot where the guy did 3k+ dps in meh gear.
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January 26th, 2009 at 2:36 pm
If not for reading this website I wouldn’t have realized how important it was to HS to dump rage on bosses. I’m new to tanking, so after reading some of your earlier posts here I created a whole new action bar 1-12 (not bound to those of course), where I added /cast heroic strike to the end of all my normal moves. So when I’m coming up on a boss encounter, I just switch to my boss bar. I still haven’t remembered to check recount, but hopefully I don’t have much white damage anymore on bosses. Clearly not an advanced set up, because among other things it means I never cast HS on trash since it’s all tied to my boss bar. But I’m having enough trouble keeping track of whats going on and working my rotation, so it’s a nice stopgap for me atm. I like the zero friction mouse wheel spin idea, and I buy mice/keyboards like my wife buys shoes, so I’ll have to get one and try it out.
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Veneretio reply on January 26, 2009 3:08 pm:
Not a bad approach to it, at all. Eventually, you’ll find that you’ll move away from macros entirely. Definitely priority #1 is the regular rotation, it’s something a lot of us old timers take for granted some times, I think.
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Mandragoran reply on March 26, 2009 11:42 am:
I got a zero friction mouse and put Heroic Strike on wheel up, and Cleave on wheel down. Tanked my first 5 heroics that way, and have actually seen Cleave as my #1 damage source a few times, usually 2nd to SS. Giving the mousewheel a flick and repeatedly queing HS/Cleave is really nice. Now I’m probably suffering from over-HS/cleaving, not sure if Cleave should ever be your #1 damage move (glyphed because I was worried about AOE threat). I’m pulling around 1200 dps though and keeping aggro, which is a solid contribution for the content I’m on, but don’t want to get into bad habits either.
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January 26th, 2009 at 2:59 pm
I’m really not sure the “macro man” solution is as bad as you suggest. Here’s how I use heroic strike:
Macro 1:
/cast Revenge
/cast Heroic Strike
The classic “glyph of revenge” HS macro. As others have noted, you can just hit this when revenge is on cooldown in order to queue up another HS. But, you say, what about those times when you want to use heroic strike and *not* use a GCD on revenge (say when, e.g. SS just became available)?
That’s what Macro 2 is for:
/cast Shield Slam
/cast [mod:shift] Heroic Strike
This macro uses shield slam when you press it and, if you hold down shift while pressing it, it also queues up a HS. As with the revenge macro, you can just hit this with shift down while SS is cooling down and still get a HS. Granted, this macro will fail to cast HS in the case where SS is available and you don’t have enough rage to both SS and HS. But in that situation, why would you want to use HS over SS?
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Matt reply on January 26, 2009 3:05 pm:
Forgot to add:
I suppose if you’re really picking about keeping a GCD free, and want to be frugal with keybinds (like me) you could modify the SS macro like this:
/cast [no mod:alt] Shield Slam
/cast [mod:shift][mod:alt] Heroic Strike
That way, you can force a HS alone by holding down alt (and, yes, I really can use these modifier keys while moving, but your results may vary).
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Arvernien reply on January 26, 2009 5:04 pm:
Be aware that Macro 1 as you have written will cause you to miss procs of your glyph of revenge if you use one. The glyph often procs after the HS that’s been queued by your macro so you won’t get the benefit of the glyph. Since the glyph proc lasts 10 seconds you will eventually get the benefit but only if you also have HS on some other button.
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Meatgazer reply on January 27, 2009 7:51 am:
Remember, when doing the macro with revenge, you want it to be
/cast revenge
/cast !Heroic Strike
That way, if you already have HS queued up, it won’t unqueue it.
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January 26th, 2009 at 3:14 pm
I find it much better to bind HS to a key not near my normal “priority” keys (SS, Rev, Dev etc). I have had HS bound to the “B” key for some time now, cleave is “V”. This lets me mash away like mad with my thumb (when rage permits) and for me anyway, makes it very easy to use my main abilities. Thumbage = WIN. Much easier to hit C-N with your thumb than hit anything past say 6 or 7. Key for me is that it minimises hand movement.
All movement on mouse, 5 button mouse with extra left and right buttons for strafing and backing up I just press mouse wheel.
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January 26th, 2009 at 3:30 pm
Do I really SUCK? I just use the mouse to click the buttons and use the keys to move. What do you do if you need to kite a boss, like the bosses in Heroic VH? Do you really kite with “click to move” on the mouse? I never have anyone pull mobs off me - my threat is usually through the roof (over 1,700 tps when I look). Really? Only 8% of tanks are like me? WOW. I guess I do suck but I don’t think I can move without the arrow keys. Damn.
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Noizlanif reply on January 27, 2009 2:10 pm:
Really? Only 1700 TPS? That is extremely low compared to tanks who actually use keybindings. I know myself can pull anywhere from 2800-3k. You will come to find that such little threat later on will cause your dps to pull on raid mobs. I am not trying to be condescending, but you are limiting your own ability.
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Noizlanif reply on January 27, 2009 2:13 pm:
Disregard what I said, I did not read below and fail at life.
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January 26th, 2009 at 3:56 pm
I’m half and half with the keybound/clicking, it really depends if I’m moving alot. With #1 SSlam #2 Revenge #3 Devestate #4 Heroic Strike #5 Tclap, then #G Shield Bash #R Taunt, only thing that isn’t bound close by is Cleave, which I tend to always click (I know, I should change that). HStrike is always in range of a key press.
Personally I tend to find myself (atleast in Heroics) HStriking too much, as I often find myself rage starved on trash. Though I’ve had this problem since TBC, I’ve still not managed to stop the bad habit.
And to clarify I still move with WASD and can use my 1-5 keys at the same time. Just if I get lazy, I tend to find my cursor hovering over HStrike, so I can just press and click. Oh well…
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January 26th, 2009 at 4:16 pm
Go PVP a bit. Learning to move with the mouse will take a little while but it will revolutionise your game play. “Click to move” only means you will run to the target you just tried to attack. Mouse movement is about holding down both mouse buttons which lets you move much more freely and turn infinitely faster than with keys. Moving with your mouse also gives you the opportunity to move your camera around much more easily to see what is going on around you. You cannot do that when clicking abilities.
1700TPs should be more like 3-5k when using abiltiies properly and the best way to do that is as Veneretio pointed out, Keybinds and mouse movement.
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January 26th, 2009 at 4:21 pm
I have heroic strike bound to my mouse thumb button(foward), Mouse wheel click is taunt, and back button is spell reflect(was shield block in TBC). When I hold shift, taunt becomes mocking blow, heroic strike becomes cleave, and spell reflect becomes shield bash(Should I reverse that?). Basically everything off the GCD is on a mouse button.
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January 26th, 2009 at 5:01 pm
Well, I use a binding and I’ve bounch my revenge to HS. So whenever Revenge is on CD I’m still spamming HS
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January 26th, 2009 at 5:38 pm
Well, I personally don’t find that keybinding it is all that effective. It’s a lot more difficult to click two keys than it is to click a key with one hand and scroll the mouse wheel with the other. Of course, I’ve had it bound to the wheel since I started tanking a little over a year ago, so I may be biased.
I used to have HS on wheel down and Shield Block on wheel up. Essentially, I was just flipping the wheel back and forth constantly on boss fights. My HS usage and SB up time were both almost 100%
Now that I can’t spam SB (thank God) I haven’t found anything good for wheel up. Cleave for me is actually shift + wheel down, so I don’t have issues with that.
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Khrushchev reply on January 26, 2009 5:39 pm:
And by “click” in my first paragraph I meant “press the key” rather than mouse-click.
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January 26th, 2009 at 7:00 pm
You know that scene in “Big” where tom hanks is jumping on that ginormous keyboard?
that’s what my fingers look like while tanking…middle finger on HS and ring and index bounce around to hit the other important things
my goal this next reset is to have 3 melee swings on patchiepants (the first auto swing invariably always goes off after i heroic throw and shout something in vent like “eat steel evil bastard!!!”
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January 26th, 2009 at 8:04 pm
I really really really need to put cleave on Shift-2 to take place of HS when I want it. I’ve been too lazy to do it sadly.
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January 26th, 2009 at 11:30 pm
i’m running with
1- dev
2- ss
3- rev
4- hs
5- taunt
a- shockwave
d - conc blow
and other stuff with modifiers. i like having HS on 4 because i can use my index finger to press it while ring and middle are moving me around. a and d are bound rather then q+e in order to just have to get used to having no turning keys (hah) rather then getting used to differently placed strafe keys, helps a bit when your moving away from vanilla bindings
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January 26th, 2009 at 11:32 pm
I actually answered keybind, even though I have Heroic Strike on a macro.
But aside from having it on Revenge macro due to glyph, I also have it on a separate button should I need to use HS when Revenge is up but I want to use global cooldown for something else(happens more often than one would think).
Upside of playing on a laptop; my f1-f5 keys are pretty close to my actual rotation keys, I can bind a few useful things there. Namely, Last Stand f1, Shield Bash f2, Heroic Strike f3(it’s closest to my rotation in my key setup), Cleave f4.
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January 27th, 2009 at 1:50 am
Here’s some keybind help which works for me:
First of all, you do not need A and D buttons to turn, that’s what your mouse is for. Hold down right click and do the turning with your mouse, it’s huge.. So now you have your A and D buttons to bind for your main usage, and the buttons around too. You can easily use these buttons to bind your : Z X C A D F R ` 1 2 3 4 5, you can use alt ctrl and shift versions of those keys to bind seldom used skills. Also, you dont need to keep an autoattack bind specifically, ‘coz in game version has ‘T’ bound for that.. I would suggest keeping seldom, and/or generally noncombat skills bound to the keys rightside of the keyboard..
My layout is like this:
1-heroic strike
2-revenge
3-shield block
4-taunt
5-thunderclap
8-demo shout
9-blood rage
0-shield bash
-racial
= battle shout
A-shield slam
D-devastate
C-cleave
R-spell reflect
X-execute
Z-mocking blow
F-concussion blow
`-hamstring
ctrl-1 bandage
ctrl-2 shield wall
ctrl-3 retaliation
J-recklessness
and I’m a fury warrior
That’s my tanking layout
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January 27th, 2009 at 2:44 am
I currently have heroic strike bound to my 4th (or 5th) mousebutton - one of the thumb ones. After some odd misfires I replaced the standard action of heroic strike with a macro, however.
/cast !heroic strike
I otherwise had problems occasionally with turning off HS unintentionally.
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January 27th, 2009 at 6:23 am
How do the people who have their abilities bound to the top row control their movement? I use a standard first-person shooter WASD setup for forward-back / strafe left-right movement and turn with the mouse. I have my abilities bound to the various buttons around my home keys (Q, E, R, T, F, G, C, etc.).
I just can’t imagine trying to move and run an effective rotation with my abilities on the top row.
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Brey reply on January 27, 2009 8:35 am:
I feel the same way. I only go up to num key 5 because after that it’s too far away. I have all the letters around my movement keys bound, with heroic strike currently occupying the V position. After all the keys got used up, I went with shift-(insert key here) using the same keys. Movement is very important and I can’t imagine ever taking my fingers off my “arrow” keys” (WSAD).
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tPaste reply on January 29, 2009 12:13 pm:
Yeah, I never figured that out either in a normal setup which I used while leveling initially…
Then eventually I broke down and decided to give the Nostromo a try…the Nostromo really helped me out with this issue. Gives me 11 keys all close together (which I map to 1 through 0 and -…= is on a thumb button) and it has a directional pad that I map to the WASD forward-back-strafe left-strafe right setup. meaning, I can keep a fairly solid rotation and move pretty well at the same time.
Before I got a Nostromo I was a total clicker, and I could just tell I wasn’t playing up to my potential. Clicking was just to slow for me. Now granted it took time to train myself to use my Nostromo (it was a bit weird at first going from WASD to a directional pad), but it’s been totally worth it. Now if only I could get a reverse nostromo for my right hand that optical mouse in it I’d be SET
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January 27th, 2009 at 6:41 am
Maybe I’m just short on caffeine this morning but did you put up the best way to get HS in the rotation consistently? I am finding it harder and hard to keep aggro now that all my dps’ers are getting uber geared. It is to the point where I want to take a week off from raiding just to figure out a better rotation / keybindings. Plus I still can’t get an epic weapon to drop for me.
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tPaste reply on January 29, 2009 12:19 pm:
Finally, tanks are starting to admit this. I definitely feel like threat isn’t scaling quite as well as it seemed like it would at 70…I’m kinda concerned as I get closer to the Hit and Expertise cap (and if I get some lucky drops can hit it this tier) where more threat is going to come from. Sure I’ll have more strength on gear for BV as tiers progress, but I’m starting to become seriously concerned that it won’t scale real well with DPS damage. =/
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FoxOfWar reply on February 8, 2009 5:30 am:
Same here, really. I just got the expertise “soft cap” (5.6% IIRC), and am about 6% hit, and still I’m sometimes getting overthreated if I get sloppy for a moment, particularly on AoE pulls. But even on single targets at times - I notice myself burning my Mocking Blow(with Glyph of Barbaric Insults) cooldown more of then than I’d really like, just because I’m getting overthreated. And yes, Mocking Blow - taunt is on cooldown more often than I’d like it to be.
Granted, I’ve been gearing somewhat for survival “since threat is so easy”, but now that the dps are starting to get geared, I had to put Vigilance back to my spec and can’t even think about dropping Impale/Deep Wounds now. Been gemming/enchanting to get back to the threat game, too.
Just gotta start telling people to “stay under the threat of all tanks”, all over again.
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January 27th, 2009 at 6:55 am
I have it bound to F2, that way its just a fast finger up to keep my rotation going.
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January 27th, 2009 at 7:05 am
I’m with a lot of the other guys in that I’ve got my Rev and HS macro’d together to take advantage of the glyph. When I’ve got excess rage I just spam the macro in addition to my other rotation abilities as the CDs come up.
My Mac MightyMouse is pretty useless as far as the wheel or side buttons go.
I don’t get to raid much, just the occasional Vault/OS, don’t have time enough for PUG Naxx or guild enough for wing-by-wing clears. Is there any boss in Heroics that would be a good place to measure my HS:swing ratio?
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Arvernien reply on January 29, 2009 12:46 pm:
I have been using the final boss in heroic UK to check my HS ratios. But really any boss will do if you fight them frequently enough. It’s easy to get high use on simple tank and spank bosses and this is good practice. The real challenge is to get a high percentage on complicated bosses. Vene didn’t put in a target percentage in his post but I’m shooting for 95% or better. The slower your weapon the higher percentage you should get.
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January 27th, 2009 at 7:06 am
Right now I am lazy and have it macroed with Devastate.
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January 27th, 2009 at 7:20 am
My attacks/abilities have been bound to my keypad since day 1, when my roommate recommended I do so. Once I got into the practice of tanking, and learning the right way to get and hold threat, I haven’t had any problems with my key placement or rotation. To each his own, of course, but that is the way that was best for me.
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January 27th, 2009 at 7:34 am
Im with Bran…same deal here…Rev/HS macro’d and keybound…easy enough to spam HS when rage is high.
I bought a Microsoft Sidewinder keyboard for myself for Christmas, which has allowed me to put my keypad on the left side of the board. This has been a huge help…all my main tanking abilities are bound to to it, with taunt on the nice big 0 button and spell reflect on the + button (when I do need those, I need em fast its helpful to have them on the large keys.)
Also…this keyboard has 6 additional macro keys on left side of board…and I have bound my survival abilities to that (trinket usage’s, shield wall, last stand, pots, etc.)
Mouse movement is critical…all my movement abilities are bound to my mouse - strafe L/R on side buttons, back up & jump on top buttons (along with autorun for convenience.)
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January 27th, 2009 at 9:08 am
I use a macro tied to my devastate (on 3)
Itll turn revenge on (even if devastate is on cooldown) and wont turn it off if used twice
So I basically hit that macro after every strike, and after every skill I use (I push 3 alot)
Generally I hit about 85-95 HS
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January 27th, 2009 at 9:14 am
Sounds like a lot of us are using Rev/HS Macro and just continuously spamming it. Is that bad or good?
Where do I get the web stats stuff to see how many times I’m getting a HS vs white attack?
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Thox reply on January 27, 2009 9:45 am:
I don’t think you necessarily need a Web stats site. Recount (an Addon) can give a pretty great breakdown of which attacks you’ve used, the damage caused, and how many misses/parries/etc. Obviously if you’r looking for stats against you, I think you might have to look into the web stats thing but if it’s just your own (and your party members with recount) attacks, it works really well.
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Veneretio reply on January 27, 2009 9:53 am:
http://wowwebstats.com/2kzh3mlr3ywgs?s=395013-416623&a=x31f82a4
There’s the log for a Warrior’s crazy fast Patchwerk kill. You’ll notice he’s hit with Heroic Strike 55 times and at the bottom, there’s 2 Regular swings making this very close to a perfect Heroic Strike uptime. Suffice to say, the results speak for themselves.
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Tankette reply on January 28, 2009 10:20 am:
I’ve seen that but unfortunately couldn’t get the video to work. So I am still clueless as to how he’s doing that.
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Veneretio reply on January 28, 2009 11:41 am:
He does it by hitting the Heroic Strike button constantly and really, really fast.
Gellan reply on February 15, 2009 6:05 pm:
Here is a log of my last patch fight using macro’s
http://wowwebstats.com/ei53yhzta4ekk?s=381265-412760&a=x1d84c86
I use a rev/HS macro and I’ve also got a dev/HS macro which I mash instead of straight devastate when rage permits.
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marklar reply on January 28, 2009 12:27 pm:
before your fight, type /combatlog
afterwards, you can upload the log file to wowwebstats yourself - no addon necessary.
i have SS=1, rev/HS=2, dev=3. during the GCD, i’m mashing #2 as fast as i can to keep HS up. hit the appropriate button when GCD is up.
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January 27th, 2009 at 10:08 am
My fellow hunter recomended me propper piece of hardware which has made me forget about clicking once and for all. I could never switch to keybord keybinds. I found it like playing GTA games using keyboard comparing to playstation gamepad.
Microsoft Strategic Commander allows me to bind 26 actionkeys and use them without moving my fingers, at the same time I can do all movement.
http://www.adriansrojakpot.com/Reviews/MS_Sidewinder_SC/MS_Sidewinder_SC_01.htm
I have installed Dominos addon and configured 4 action bars (3 columns x 2 rows) to make us of it more intuitiative. It is faster than any keyboard.
My right hand does not have much to do. Except fast camera rotations.
Product is discontinued but you can still get it on ebuy or such. Independend driver is developed, works with vista and windows 7
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January 27th, 2009 at 10:28 am
You just want to be careful that you’re not running yourself out of rage with Heroic Strike. It’s great to try to get it in on every swing on Patch ( especially if you can get all your hasted parry attacks to be heroic strikes ) but if you push it too far, you can get into the habit of spamming heroic strike over your standard rotation, which will really drive your threat into the ground.
Make sure you’ve always got enough rage for your next GCD attack.
—–
HS seemed like a pretty nifty ability when it was a regular choice. But in many raid situations, it’s use is so ridiculously frequent that it’s not even a choice. And these are encounters that aren’t really threatening to a decently geared tank. Part of me feels they should just add the threat and damage into our base swing and be done with it, rather than prot warriors spamming twice as many buttons as any other class.
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mavfin reply on January 27, 2009 8:10 pm:
I see having more buttons available as a plus, not a minus. If I wanted less buttons to push, I’d tank with a druid. If I wanted a more or less set rotation, I’d tank with a paladin. I *like* the interactivity of the warrior, and have for a long time, it’s just even better now.
As far as HS, I have it bound where I can queue it up easily.
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Chet reply on January 27, 2009 9:47 pm:
Isn’t that the way warrior tanking has always been though? That’s actually only 1/2 rhetorical, ’cause I didn’t tank in vanilla (I barely played in vanilla). In BC, though, it was all about spamming shield block (and in turn the rev it procs) every time the cooldown was up, especially on raid bosses that could crush you. Well now it’s not a matter of survival, but HS spam is definitely all about letting your dps go all out if you’re undergeared, or maximizing your own dps if you aren’t. Seems like Blizz just wants warriors to always have a button to push, lol.
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January 27th, 2009 at 1:01 pm
Belink N52te……I have used this game pad for years (Just bought the new version today as a button went bad…..too much heroic striking
)
I have an “easy” button for everything except shield wall and the 30% health gain move (name excapes me at the moment) - and I should and will get those setup……just been lazy.
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January 27th, 2009 at 1:14 pm
I made HS bound to 1 and click my other abilities while hitting one constantly. Havent been able to try it out in a hig rage situation yet.
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January 27th, 2009 at 3:13 pm
Not sure why, but I am vastly under-using my 5 button mouse.
Only thing I use it for ATM is auto-run. I’m definitely going to try to bind some stuff to it (HS specifically).
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January 27th, 2009 at 5:20 pm
nice post Vene.
after seeing Xav´s Patchwerk video on tankspot, I felt pretty motivated to get the hell out of my HS button on our next trip to Naxxramas. To my own surprise i did about 2.65k dps while MT´ing the big scourge. Wasn´t expecting this huge amount of damage increase, as I wasn´t even wearing any off gear such as trinkets.
anyway, I just wanted to confirm this good post with a more or less experience of my own.
btw. my keybindings are as follows:
1 - devastate
2 - shield block
3 - shield bash
4 - revenge
mousewheel-click -> heroic strike
shift+g - shockwave
h - concussion blow
as i good pretty used to my hotkeys in BC, I´m still unsure about a better button to place the two above mentioned skills, but for the moment, it works fine.
cheers, travor
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January 27th, 2009 at 6:05 pm
Im at the problem with having to few, easy to reach, buttons at my keyboard.
1-Cleave (great for aoe groups)
2-Shield block
3-Rend
4-SS
5-taunt
6-shockwave
7-revenge
8-spell refl
9-heroic strike
0-concussion
+-shield wall
\-last stand
bound the lesser important ones as Devestate, hp potions, other potions and such at the NumPad 1-9 +-*. This comes really in handy as im a leftie, and uses my left hand to control my mouse
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January 27th, 2009 at 6:38 pm
I fully support the use of the Belkin n52te. It has changed mt game. Also I have learned some things about HS, things that will help me kill things.
! I need to add that to my macro. I currently have the revenge macro on my pinky finger top row and I use the bartender addon to build my action bars to fit the layout of the n52te. I also have HS just above that unbound, but I have learned here tonight that I am just not using it enough.
And if I that G9 trick was cool. Makes me want one, but not for $70.
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January 28th, 2009 at 12:18 am
I have a mouse with 2 extra buttons on the left side reachable by thumb. Suffice to say, I bound HS & Cleave to these buttons, and it has worked flawlessly ever since. I can move my mouse to change view flawlessly, and use keyboard to strafe while doing rotation & heroic striking. That means doing both things while moving backward/forward/left/right & viewing general area (e.g. Malygos vortex).
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January 28th, 2009 at 12:44 am
uh-oh, guess I have to admit to being a “macro man”… With the enormous threat output, HS has simply fallen off the cycle. Might be worth getting it back there. Curse this lazyness =)
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January 28th, 2009 at 1:39 am
I am a clicker, 2 is disarm 3 is HS 4 os talk on vent, My left hand takes care of those and movement but I click 5 to = for cleave, shockwave, conc blow, shield slam, revenge, devestate, thunder clap, taunt.
Shield blocks and trinks are under (spartanUI) so I can spam 3 while moving and doing my rotation, it works well but I still don’t use cleave much.
I like my setup because I can keep one hand on the mouse and one on the keyboard, I can move freely while keeping up my rotation. If I was not a clicker I would have no way to use interrupts and defence skills, I would more akwardly and die alot. I don’t see how it is possible to not click skills, or maybe I just use too many (15-20 different buttons to click/press in a boss encounter).
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January 28th, 2009 at 5:13 am
The only things I “click” are things I apply outside of combat.
Through regular keys, shift keys and control keys one should never have to click.
Also helps that I use ESDF as my movement, not WASD. I end up with my keys being 123456TGBVCXZAWR (Q is still reply to whisper for me haha) in addition to shift and ctrl all of these plus shift ESDF. That’s more than enough keys to handle being a warrior.
My mouse buttons do not perform any actions and are strictly for movement. Auto-run for example is my thumb mouse button while middle mouse is my push-to-talk key. My scroll wheel I use for zooming in and out, because frankly, I need to be able to contorl my view of the fight without having to interrupt my rotation. Hence keys = action, mouse = moment. 100% separation of the two is required.
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January 28th, 2009 at 8:47 am
I will say, of all the advice you could give about increasing threat through Heroic Strike, binding it for easy spam is probably among the best. Since I use a classic WASD setup, I bound it to “2,” to reach it with my middle finger (usually on the “W” key). I can always press both mouse buttons if I need to move forward.
The first fight I learned to make this work was (perhaps not surprisingly) Gruul. Not too different from Patchwerk. It probably nearly doubled my TPS.
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January 28th, 2009 at 11:39 am
How does one bind Hs to a mouse button, silly question i know
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Chet reply on January 28, 2009 2:37 pm:
I threw it on a bar, then hotkeyed the bar button. This is easily achieved with Bartender mod, but also possible by going into your main menu to keyboard shortcut menu, then just set it there. Just make sure you know which bar you put it on.
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January 28th, 2009 at 1:12 pm
What about the Spammers? Do they count as clickers? If I see my rage bar full, I spam the f*ck out of my Heroic Strike button, peppering in my other attacks until my rage by is where I want it to be.
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Veneretio reply on January 28, 2009 2:07 pm:
That’s not so much spamming as it is playing correctly. Just remember that your peppering part should be a perfect standard rotation. You’ll want to be doing your rotation while simultaneously spamming HS during High Rage situations. That’s where you’ll see the really high dps/threat numbers.
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January 28th, 2009 at 9:38 pm
I just wish I could find a button to put it that isn’t out of the way. Having played my warrior for years on end with the same keybindings (exceptions for new abilities). Currently I use a macro, as many others in this thread have stated, that queues HS with every push, and Revenge every time it’s available. My button layout is
1- Taunt
2- Dev
3- Rev/HS
4- SS
5- ConcBlow
6- TC
F- Charge
G- Shield Block
H- Shield Bash
Shift1- Battle Shout
Shift2- Comm Shout
Shift3- Demo Shout
Shift4- Shockwave
Shift5- Disarm
Shift6- Int. Shout
Shift F- Bloodrage
Shift G- Cleave
Shift H- Intervene
Shift C- Trinket slot 1
Shift V- Trinket slot 2
Shift T- Racial (Orc, so Blood Fury [also macrod with ThunderClap])
Middle Mouse- Heroic Throw
I’ve got a floating bar much like Ciderhelm with major cooldowns (Berserker Rage, Shield Wall, Last Stand, etc.) that is positioned so in an AoE situation with constant target changes, I’d rarely have to move my mouse more than an inch to reach it.
T and my forward thumb button on my mouse are for mounts, ground and air respectively. I wouldn’t give up using T for my ground mount simply because I’m stubborn and PvP a fair bit, and I wouldn’t like such a spammed ability to be on my mouse as I feel that the button is rigid enough that it could falter my targeting/moving if I were spamming it.
Plx halp find a heroic strike button!
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January 28th, 2009 at 11:14 pm
Great post! I stopped macroing HS with revenge and bound it to wheel up and wheel down after reading this….now I just roll the wheel back and forth. Loving it! Only 3 swings and 177 HS on last patchwork 25 kill. I love your advice but I don’t always follow it blindly =) Little bit here, little bit there and combine for my own preferences. Keep up the great work!
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January 29th, 2009 at 5:55 am
I used to click on HS. There was a button in the middle of my screen that I used to constantly click the button when I had too much rage.
Also I have it macroed with Revenge (have the glyph).
But your idea with mouse wheel… just wow! Love it love it never gonna change it! I’ve got about 400 sustained dps and HS was above SS on my damage done.
Thank you Veneretio!
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January 29th, 2009 at 7:29 am
Coming from an FPS gaming backgroud it still surprises me how few tanks seem to bind to side buttons on their mouse.
Mouse 4 for me is Shield Block and Mouse 5 is Heroic Strike. Still leaves my left hand to do rotations and my mouse to do turning and panic buttons. I’m not happy with my panic button set up at the moment though and intend to look into it.
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tPaste reply on January 29, 2009 12:59 pm:
Unfortunately for me one of those is my “Talk in vent” button and the other is auto run. I just never got the hang of pushing both mouse buttons to run, and found it awkward when trying to turn my camera to look while running, but not actually turn my character (which I do a lot)…so I’m sorta forced into clicking auto run to make that happen.
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January 29th, 2009 at 8:08 am
I wouldn’t say macro’s are all bad. I have HS macro’d to my Shield Slam, Revenge and Devastate buttons, but I also have an HS key that I spam during rotations. This way as long as I’m spamming one of those 4 keys, I know HS is qued. HS is my primary damage and accounts for 1/3 of the total damage.
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Gallin reply on January 29, 2009 11:33 pm:
Macros aren’t all bad. I personally don’t use them, unless they’re targeting macros for fights like Horsemen in Naxx (so I can make sure my taunt goes off on the right mob). My buddy forced the “WASD” movement and Keypad 0-9 ability hot keys on me in the beginning, so I can’t do it any other way. But that doesn’t cripple my TPS or DPS; on the contrary.
I actually tried to keep HS going tonight in 10 man Sarth and Vault, and pushed 5.6k TPS and 2.4k DPS; so, I can honestly say that hot keys are good…depends on the person.
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January 29th, 2009 at 9:16 am
I use a Nostromo and have on my mine line
Ringfinger - Rev, dev, HS (pointer finger), SS.
I have a modifier(pinky) that turns HS into Dev+HS or Dev+Cleave. If I burn a GCD on SW or TC first the fact that Dev is bound becomes a non-issue and just the cleave or HS will go off.
I like the Dev+HS for stacking sunders on on my opener and Dev+Cleave on trash to make sure I don’t miss chances to Proc S+B if I have a GCD available.
Once I’m in a normal rotation I pretty much just spam presses with my pointer(and ring finger if rev is off CD) on bosses once my sunder stack is up. I’ve had SS come in at 23% of damage and HS 20% in normal instances that don’t have much trash, surprised myself there.
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January 29th, 2009 at 9:22 am
I am in the group who believes that using macros isn’t bad. I think it improves your overall game by allowing you to focus on the timing of other moves.
I have Shield Slam, Revenge, Devastate, Thunderclap, and Shockwave all bound to (gaming) mouse buttons.
Using macros I have a shift-click version of all these abilities with a cued HS. I also have an alt-click version for Cleave.
Since for any tanking weapon the swing timer is longer the global cool down, I have can have HS cued up perpetually whenever I hold down shift. I can easily do this moving, etc. In low rage situations I can burn down rage by holding shift. It is very intuitive. Shift is the “burn rage” button.
In situations where you would only want to you HS without special moves, I have a key for it, but seriously, those situations are rare.
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January 29th, 2009 at 11:55 am
I have F as heroic strike by itself and also the rev/hs macro.
My wrist simply can’t keep up with heroic strike in a primary 1234 position.
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January 29th, 2009 at 12:49 pm
I was unable to get any of the mouse buttons to bind. In the keybindings section I’d click the action I’d want bound to a mouse button and nothing would happen. I could only bind the left and right mouse button and the wheel. Any suggestions?
I want to add some movement actions to my mouse like walk backwards and strafe.
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January 29th, 2009 at 3:25 pm
After seeing so many keybinds, I must ask, what are you people doing with the ZXCVBNMGHJRT buttons? Cause I see some of you guys binding stuff to 678..and other unreachable places.
F1-5 Are also awesome for extra stuff if you don’t have a gaming mouse.
For example, I use an MX Revolution with 12 switches (4 directional wheel, mid button, 2 sidebuttons, 3switch sidewheel) So that makes:
-stuff separated by “/” is either stance or modifier dependant-
-stuff with “*” is on a mouseover macro-
MOUSE
Sidewheel - Stances
MWUp - Heroic Strike / Cleave
MWDown - Shield Block
MWLeft - Shield Bash / Pummel
MWRight - Concussion Blow
SideUp - Charge / Intercept / Intervene
SideDown - Hamstring / Rend* / Taunt* / Challenging Shout
Middle - Autorun
KEYBOARD
| - Heroic Throw / Shoot&Throw / Engineering Rocket
1 - Enraged Regeneration
2 - Overpower / Whirlwind / Revenge
3 - Execute /
4 - Victory Rush / Disarm
Q - Devastate
E - Shield Slam
R - Reflect Macro
T -
F - Thunder Clap
G - Upper Trinket
H - Demoralizing Shout
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January 29th, 2009 at 9:07 pm
After reading all this I must say…I have no idea how anyone can possibly run out of convenient space to place abilities. Shift and Alt are your friends. I can’t believe nobody has suggested binding shift-w,a,s and d. While you’re at it bind shift-e,r,f,c, and x. You can throw your abilities (or macros) wherever you want and bind everything to “bottom left action bar 5″ or whatever it may be.
You can also bind shift-mouse button keys. I use a G5 which only really has two extra buttons (middle mouse and thumb), but by using shift and/or ctrl and/or alt I can bind 8 different abilities on 2 buttons. (easier to just have 4 though lol).
With this configuration the only additional keys i need are 1, 2 and 3. My hands never move from the “home row” so to speak. Your fingers have to be there anyways so you may as well shift-bind them. Whether your using a shift-mouse, or shift-keyboard command, you still retain mobility. (I don’t recommend using shift-q or shift-z, or a mouse wheel binding.)
The exact position of each ability doesn’t really matter, because no key (that i have mentioned) is any more convenient than another. You just have to practice for a bit and memorize your bindings. Like I said, your hands are there anyways and your pinky hovers around the shift key… If you think 1,2 and 3 are the “top priority” keys, think again.
Why move your hands when you can….not? You should never ever have to look down at the keyboard while you’re playing to find some random key. Forget 1-9 and start with Shift-W
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January 29th, 2009 at 11:28 pm
Vene, as always, your articles have improved my tanking once again…well, on single target mobs anyway!
I’m popping HS every chance I get as long as I have the rage to do so, and it’s rasied my TPS by over 1000…ran 10 man Sarth and 10 man Vault tonight, and noticed a huge difference in my threat and DPS. Thanks again, man!
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January 30th, 2009 at 9:15 am
If I can’t have HS on my wheel, can I at least put my next/previous enemy rotation on the wheel? Even after all these years of playing, tabbing and the other keys I’ve tried just don’t work for me.
I may be special when it comes to that, and it’s not even the cool special.
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January 30th, 2009 at 10:45 am
e - devastate
f - heroic strike
c - shield slam
shft + e - concussion blow
shft + f - shockwave
shft + c - chal shout
3 - revenge
shft + 3 - tclap
q - taunt
shft + q - last stand
g - shiel wall
shft + g - defensive stance
x - shield bash
v - spell reflect
shft + v - battle shout
2 - shield block
shft + 2 - commanding shout
1 - demo shout
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January 31st, 2009 at 8:40 pm
While it is said that using a macro for HS is wrong, I feel like the way I use it is actually more effective than straining your fingers repeatedly pressing the HS button (or Revenge/HS). My setup is as follows:
1 - Dev
2 - Shockwave
3 - Rev/HS
4 - SS
Shift+1,2,3,4 — Ability+HS
This way, I can simply hold the shift key while performing my tanking rotation to add HS to it. This way, I can keep a high % of HS uptime, while not having to make 10 keypresses per second. This strategy utilizes macros, while still allowing you to use HS or not when you need it. Very, very rarely do I rage starve myself on accident, or do I miss a HS when I need it. Does anyone else use this strategy and see how it could be considered “doing it wrong/not using HS enough”?
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February 2nd, 2009 at 6:50 pm
I have HS bound to a mouse key, but I’m nervous about spamming it because I know it can be cancelled before firing. How can I effectively prevent this?
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Meatgazer reply on February 3, 2009 11:19 am:
Bind this macro instead. The ! will make it not cancel and existing HS.
/cast !Heroic Strike
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February 4th, 2009 at 3:33 am
I have had great succes with using WASD/mouse for movement. I dont have strafe bound, but the A and D buttons that turn me, works as strafe when I hold down my right mouse button.
After that, I just added bindings that “feel right” aroung WASD. Q, E, F, Z and X with different workings while holding down shift. My rotation is at 1 (Devastate), 2 (Shield Slam), 3 (revenge) and I have 4 for Shield Block.
My heroic strike is at the perfect spot for me to spam: The space button. My left thumb sits so perfectly for it, and I can keep spamming it all the time without any interference to the rest of my left hand.
This way, I am only using the left side of my keyboard, moving around with a combination of my mouse and WASD-keys (as long as I only click one of the WASD-keys (works surprisingly well while holding down the right mouse button), I can still hit 1, 2 and 3 for my rotation while running around like crazy.
I kinda thought about just doing like mentioned before, and make boss macros (where HS is being triggered by all of my other threat abilities), but I remember back in BC when I did that with Shield Block… Forgetting to change into the boss bar was… bad xD.
For those who wonder how I ever survive without jumping like crazy all the time, jump has been bound to Home, so it’s not a total goner as it’s still needed to cross slime before Patchwerk and stuff :P. But seriously, not using the perfect space button for some nice mashing is just a total waste in my eyes =).
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February 4th, 2009 at 5:29 am
Ok so this post got me curious. I use a revenge/HS macro and have that on my 1 key. I constantly tap 1(several times a second) with my ring finger and use my middle finger to work my way with whichever priroity attack is up next. But that 1 key is always getting pressed.
So I looked at my WWS from last weeks patchwerk and I had 109 HS and 5 swings. So I don’t necessarily think what I’m doing is the wrong thing. However, I know I may not be optimizing my other abilities. You sometimes get a rythym of 1-2(devastate) going and have to wait a GCD to fire shield slam.
So I decided to try it last night and see how it goes. On patchwerk I had 94HS and 4 swings so really I don’t see any improvement there. Now granted having my left hand free of constant motion allowed me to slow it down and I probably did better at hitting whichever attacks were up in the right priority. As opposed to occasionally not getting that shockwave for a couple GCD’s.
However, what I didn’t like was it tying up my mouse hand for the most part. Granted there is a get used to it component but I use my mouse for various things in the fight(moving around, looking around at what the raid is doing, clicking on lesser used abilities like shouts, clicking on stuff like trinkets and shieldwall near end of fight).
I also found that because I wasn’t spamming buttons I had to be more focused on my key’s to see which were ready and that led to some tunnel vision. Whereas with normal I’m confident I’m still doing a decent(albeit maybe not optimal) rotation while taking that split second to watch for something going on around me, check raid health, missing buffs, trash pats etc.
I might give it some more time but I think I like having my left hand dedicated to rotations and my right hand(mouse) free to do whatever else I need to do in the fight. And looking at the logs I’m not certain the marginal increase in optimization is worth losing my increased ability to be reactive to changes in the raid environment.
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February 11th, 2009 at 11:08 pm
I found binding heroic strike to the side button on my mouse gave me the most freedom to do whatever else I needed to. Since you’re clicking it with your right thumb, you can still move, turn and click with your mouse, and maintain your rotation with your left hand.
Might not be an option for those without a G5 or similar mouse, but since I use it more than any other tanking ability when MTing a boss, not wasting other more useful fingers works
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February 13th, 2009 at 2:41 am
I use what feels natural to me. That in the end is whats really gonna get you comfortable tanking tougher instances and raids. If you fell awkward the whole time, and aren’t relaxed, your gonna misclick etc. and make mistakes in your rotation.
Follow general principals sure, but for the most part clone-ing (late. couldn’t figure that one out lol.) probably wont really work right for.
I have Charge / SS / Dev / Rev / HS
Then Mocking/Disarm/ShockW/Cleave/ TC
in a custom iu box 2 rows of 5.
Hotkeyed to main rotation on 1-5. F1-F5 on a laptop with the extended keyboard, sit smaked together on two neat even rows fyi
On the left of that i have a smaller box for shouts, intevene (for running faster in instances lol) pre battle stuff mostly, on the right another with life saving stuff, sw,sb,st,pots.
another smaller 2×5 row has taunts,bloodrage,target macro, stuns silences. only 1 is macro’d F1=Taunt. I remember F1 as my emergency catch a mob mashing button.
Boss’s:
I high rage places, i can use global cool with fingers, and non’s HS/Cleave (and TC) with mouse. sometimes don’t hardly move it off 100 rage. I cant even burn it fast enough to move the bar sometimes. and i have no rage talents. get a rythem going.
Cools Like this:
HS-click
CL-click
GC-finger
As you start to burn off the rage you can slow this patten a bit by clicking a little slower, or returning to HS only. Fast Threat.
In heroics where you chain pull fast and have rage to start with, it helps build really fast threat for those aoe’rs, SW sets up demo perfectly as a pause in while you rear back you head and roar
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February 15th, 2009 at 9:04 am
I can’t see how you couldn’t fit enough bindings for everything. I’ve got a G15-keyboard, but I utilize none of the G-buttons for in-combat actions. My bindings are as follows;
1: revenge
2: heroic strike
3: intervene
4: taunt
5: shield slam
6: mocking blow
7: disarm
F: devastate
Q: shockwave
Shift+Q: conc. blow
E: shield block
shift+E: spell reflect
Ctrl+E: shield wall
V: thunderclap
shift+V: demoshout
shift+1: shield bash
shift+2: cleave
shift+3: bloodrage
shift+4: int. shout
shift+5: battle shout
shift+6: various consumable, healthstone etc.
shift+7: last stand
Ctrl+3: charge in every stance
Ctrl+1: berserker rage
Ctrl+2&4: Trinkets
Ctrl+6: enraged regen
Ctrl+f: heroic throw
razor-buttons bound to ctrl+y,g & j: Stances
Ctrl + respective buttons: Weapon switch & stance switch
Shift + T: Focus Target
Shift + G: Human racial (Also known as pvp-trinket)
And that leaves me with no mouseclicking whatsoever.
Just thought I’d share for some un-apparent reason : P
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February 16th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
I found this article to be very helpful with how I view my DPS as well as other aspects of being a tank. I noticed though that even with rage reductions in all areas of the prot tree that I had actually began to run out of rage during boss fights. Obviously I had been spamming heroic strike as well as the usual suspects to dissolve rage, but the problem I have been having lately is one of dry spells in rage amounts (using rage up too fast?).
If my rotation is off a bit, I could use a little advice on how to optimize the output of the attacks that are generated.
My basic rotation depends on the fight of course, but for boss fights it usually goes as follows:
BR. Dev, Dev, Hero, Dev, SS, Hero, Rev(if active), Hero, Dev, Hero, rinse and repeat.
Depending on how many times my Rev proc’s, I use it as often as possible.
Any advice you can shed on the subject will be more than helpful as I am still new to the tanking field.
And by the way.
I just read the article about MT stepping down. I am an OT in my guild and other than basic mob pulls, I think being the OT can be just as technical if not more technical than the MT position. Just like a few of the replies to that article stated, any moron with a keyboard can mash keys and look good, true skill is defined by the ability to maintain and if needed haul butt to save a healer. Many tanks I have seen lately have slid through the cracks and are only now looking to be found out. I admit for a time I thought I may be one of them but the main thing that I know that sets me apart from the mashers is the ability to ask for help and REALLY pay attention to those trying to give you advice.
The most arrogant people in this game are tanks, me included. We have to have that confidence in our abilities or we are useless to whatever party we are in.
Thanks for the help,
Jac
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MadTanker reply on February 20, 2009 5:15 am:
“The most arrogant people in this game are tanks, me included. We have to have that confidence in our abilities or we are useless to whatever party we are in.” /clap
Well Said.
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February 18th, 2009 at 9:10 am
Shift + w/e button u place arent really bad if you are very good at effective binding [like me] if u got mouse with side buttons u can have 1 acting as shift and other for push to talk for vent etc. This allows u to easly use any of ur binds by pressing the sam keys but with addition of mouse button acting as shift.
Very easy and effective but takes a time to get used to.
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February 19th, 2009 at 7:25 pm
I think you forgot about one group of people, like me…
I personally used to be a Clicker, of the A catagory. I honestly, do not know how people keybind HS in a location that is feasible to use without getting some form of injury. (All the recent speach on Tankspot about HS causing repetivie motion injuries has some truth to it.) I used to use keybinds with my left and click HS with my mouse. For a long time… and it worked. Until the day we had hit Illidari Council and I had to tank the damnedable Paladin. Since that first day, I have been a different type of clicker. As my HS is now bound to my second thumb button on my mouse. With this set up, I can tank the way i am used to, while still being mobile and moving without ceasing the rotation needed to keep top threat.
Not everything is as cut and dry as you make it out to be.
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March 24th, 2009 at 10:21 am
I’m a ‘wheeler’ (In an extreme sense…) and while I’m open to change I am not convinced that it’s less efficient than keys. I recognize I am in the minority with my binds, but I feel it is best.
First, I use the following setup:
MUp: Devestate
MDn: Heroic Strike
Shift+MUp: Shield Slam
Shift+MDn: TClap
Alt+MUp: Bleed
Alt+MDn: Cleave
(Ctrl is reserved for camera moving)
Additionally I abuse Mouse 4 and Mouse 5 as follows:
M4: Revenge
M5: Charge
Shift+M4: Concussion Blow
Shift+M5: Shockwave
Alt+M4: Victory Rush
Alt+M5: Intervene/Retaliation/Intercept
Ctrl+M4: Heroic Throw
Ctrl+M5: Disarm
Secondly, why I feel this is best:
1. Using the mouse wheel allows the user to quickly ‘use’ an ability 3 times with one action. This translates into my game getting spammed with me telling it to Shield Slam as soon as my GCD gets close to going away. There is no way to press a keybinding fast enough to approach this level and keybinders.
2. Using fingers that ordinarily rest on WASD (ring/middle/index) to press keys deprives the warrior of mobilization momentarily. The same can be said of the thumb to a lesser extent. All of the above keys composite my most often used abilities and can be pressed while moving in any direction.
3. The only movement required to change which of the above abilities I am using is to move my pinky (Yes it gets a work out) from shift to ctrl (And I don’t use ctrl very often). Keybinds require whatever fingers to move, and in the event you intelligently position one finger to do instants and the other to modify normal attacks, you suffer further decreased mobilization.
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April 13th, 2009 at 5:53 am
Hey there.
Nice article - indeed you are correct on the heroic strike issue.
HS should be constantly spammed if you are (like me) a tad undergeared for naxx 25 as an example. I am never ever under 50 rage on any boss fights and thus HS is a constant spam for me.
Although my rotations are not what you have described, i still lead by a good 30-35% threat. Not counting over the 100% margin of error.
I keep clap on at all times, demo up on all times and use shocwave on cd.
Other than that my own rotation is
SS-> Revenge (if procced) -> Devastate -> HS for rage dump.
And i also keep event alert to always see the sword and board procs.
Cheers
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June 8th, 2009 at 12:27 pm
Honestly the biggest improvement i ever made to my tanking was to bind strafe left and right to my mouse wheel…
No not mousewheelup and mousewheeldown, I have a mouse with a wheel that tilts (logitech G5).
If you do this then you don’t need to use your keyboard to move at all anymore (except possibly those rare situations when you cant strafe because if you do the boss will move too much (ie: Thorim, Thad), personally though I just hit both primary mousce buttons to turn on auto run, jump straight through, then tun off autorun and turn around (all using the mouse) durring the jump’s hang time).
If you do that, then having good heroic strike hygine should be easy.
Personally I bind 1=cleave and 2=heroic strike so I can spam them with my ring finger on my left hand while doing my “rotation” with my much more versitile and clever index finger in the middle of the keyboard (6=revenge, 7=shockwave, t=devestate, y= shield slam, u=concblow, 5=thunderclap), other fingers are given duties commensurate with their abilities middle finger handles 3=taunt, 4=charage/intercept cast sequence macro (set so if charge is up I charge), pinky handles ~=demo shout, the thumb handles jumping. I don’t have any alt/shift/ctrl binds for anything I use “in a fight” and reserve those for non critical things such as opening the social interface.
I also have 8=intervene, which i hit with my index, but I probably could improve my charge/intercept macro to intervene if mouseover target is friendly, and charge/intercept if it is hostile… but i’m lazy, and afraid of not paying attention to my mouse pointer and doing the wrong thing.
I think the biggest mistake people make when selecting keybinds is that they try to keep their hand in a “normal” “typing” position instead of a game controller. The second biggest would be trying to maintain the out of the box buttons like h=help frame (who uses the in game help anyway? my h=zerker rage).
I must confess though I have not yet managed to unbind r from reply…
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Cornfedhick reply on June 8, 2009 3:08 pm:
I do the same thing with my mouse for strafe. While it is natural to keybind around the WASD keys it limits you to just the left side of they keyboard. I like to use the 4-7 for my most used abilities, Rev, SS, Dev, TC, and that gives me room to reach with my pinky finger for more keybinds to the left and lower left and for my index finger to the right and lower right.
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