Loading ...The Removal of “On Next Attack” Abilities
It’s no big secret that Heroic Strike won’t be an “on next attack” ability in Cataclysm. There’s a very good chance that Cleave is going to get a similar treatment. Which begs the question…
To GCD or not to GCD?
Will Heroic Strike and Cleave be on the Global Cooldown (GCD) or not? One might make the debate that by being off the GCD (like Shield Bash) that they’re more powerful, more convenient while being on the GCD (like Concussion Blow) they’re less powerful, but I don’t see it that way.
It’s all about balance.
On the GCD > Not
My initial gut reaction to the removal of “on next attack” abilities is that they must turn into abilities off the GCD. After a lot of reading on the debate though, I’ve been forced to logically consider the decision Blizzard has before them. As I said above, it’s all about balance. By taking Heroic Strike and Cleave off the GCD, they’re making them stronger. They’re essentially buffing us which means 1 of 2 things:
- They’ll have to nerf something.
- Or, they won’t be able to buff something else.
No matter how you slice it, everything comes at a cost. Now consider this…
Heroic Strike and Cleave off the GCD also plays very similar to Heroic Strike and Cleave on next attack. There just isn’t a whole lot of difference between Heroic Striking off the GCD and Heroic Striking with a 1.5 second speed weapon on next attack. Basically, Heroic Strike off the GCD isn’t going to remove Heroic Strike from our mouse wheel.
Welcome to the Point
Make no mistake, they could balance Heroic Strike and Cleave as “on next attack” abilities because they already did it back in The Burning Crusade. The point of removing “on next attack” abilities isn’t to balance things, but instead it’s to remove an annoying way of playing the game.
The big gain we’ll see from putting Heroic Strike and Cleave on the GCD is it’s going to make setting up our keybindings as Warriors a whole lot easier. (It’ll also make being a clicker less of a disadvantage too) Before Heroic Strike needed to be bound to the kind of key that you could press at the same time as another part of your regular rotation. It was an ability that commanded above top priority key placement which is why so many of us opted for binding our mouse wheels to Heroic Strike.
Now we have the luxury of binding our regular rotation to something like 2, 3 and 4 and Heroic Strike/Cleave to Shift-2/Shift-3. Basically, we don’t have to treat them as above top priority anymore because they aren’t.
Further Evidence
They’ve already previewed the new passive ability we’ll be gaining in Cataclysm known as Inner Rage. There’s really no point in worrying about the early numbers mentioned, it’s the concept that’s important. At high rage (probably 100), we’ll be gaining a temporary damage increase making our abilities cost more rage for the duration of the buff. This buff will be balanced in such a way that it’s beneficial to unexpectedly activate Inner Rage, but that it won’t be beneficial to force yourself into “Inner Rage” mode by saving rage. Simply put, it’s an automatic rage dump.
What an automatic rage dump does is shifts the role of Heroic Strike away from being a rage dump and instead slots it in the position of an ability you want to use at high rage for maximum benefit. (a theory that is further reinforced by the new varied Heroic Strike rage cost) Heroic Strike as a high rage ability rather than a rage dump ability means that Heroic Strike doesn’t need to be off the GCD to be effective.
So, What does this mean?
Blah, blah, blah, keybindings, blah, blah, blah, rage dump… get to the REAL point.
Heroic Strike is going to be an actual part of regular threat system rather than the ability we occasionally or constantly used while our left hand developed carpal tunnel from repeating the same rhythm. It’s going to turn rage into an actual resource in a way unlike even The Burning Crusade experience. Rage will shift from something we primarily react to, to instead something we control. I’m talking about a system that is both simple and skillful. A game developer’s dream.
Easy to Learn. Hard to Master. Fun to Play.
May 3rd, 2010 at 10:41 pm
Good news more gameplay fun, keep it up bro you been an awsome source of info for the warrior tanking community. Thank for the time you put in here!!
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May 4th, 2010 at 12:16 am
Now that the on next strike abilities are gone, does that mean that slow weapons are now better for tanking?
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Veneretio reply on May 4, 2010 1:09 am:
If nothing changes, then yes, slow will be better threat/dps wise. Not likely so much better to warrant using a vastly lower tier item though.
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Onyxhorn reply on May 4, 2010 11:00 am:
And ultimately, this makes sense. War/Pal Tanks, 1h Fury, DW DK’s and potentially Enh. Shammies (AGI still probably > STR) all wanting the same high STR/STAM, low speed 1h weapons means less loot table needs to fill and Reforging can handle the subtle differences between whether that 2.5 speed Axe has Haste for DPS or Dodge for tanks. Fits right into line with their goal of more and more classes able to use the same items for different ends.
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Signu reply on May 4, 2010 2:06 pm:
Ideally, they would remove tanking weapons all together and give us a few tanking enchants to choose from. This would be more like DKs and Druids.
Lindentree reply on May 5, 2010 1:20 pm:
Removing tanking weapons sounds pretty likely to me, since they’re trying to give dps gear more stam anyway, and since in the past tank weapons have often not been treated as survival slots anyway (e.g. weapon enchants pre-Ulduar).
May 4th, 2010 at 1:23 am
I have to think that HS/cleave off the GCD would have to be weaker than if they put them on the GCD. If they are off it, it opens the door for some threat and damage abuse.
Imagine the damage possibilities of a tank fully talented cruelty and incite plus all the bonus damage talents for shield slam.
Raise your hand if the thought of being able to use both HS and SS at the same time in the above scenario makes you giggle like a school-girl.
And you know that there would be some prot warrs out there stacking crit and slapping on all the block gear they could just for the damage boost and crits for PVP. Everyone else would be screaming OP in the forums within the first hour, and I wouldn’t blame them.
I’m not saying it has to be on the GCD, but it will have to be carefully balanced either way
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Belak reply on May 4, 2010 7:18 am:
You just described the current situation in Wrath.
I can’t wait to get heroic strike and cleave off the “on next swing” mechanic. I am a bit concerned about what that will do to our multi-target tanking ability, but I have hope they will balance it appropriately.
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May 4th, 2010 at 4:39 am
It will be interesting to see how they balance it in the end. Personally, I hope it is off the GCD, but I am curious damage/threat wise where they will slot it. I would like to see it fall something like this:
>80 rage - Heroic Strike/Shockwave, Shield Slam, Revenge, Devastate
50-80 rage - Shockwave, Shield Slam, Heroic Strike, Revenge, Devastate
30-50 rage - Shockwave, Shield Slam, Revenge, Heroic Strike, Devastate
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May 4th, 2010 at 4:43 am
My only fear is heroic strike is becoming Execute for defensive stance.
However Blizzard makes great games, and makes them well. When it comes to significant changes I trust them to balance it, even if it is 4 patches later. As this is only a small portion of the changes we are going to see it’s hard to make a judgment call without seeing how it fits into the big picture, more then the sum of it’s parts kinda deal. Therefore I will wait to see it in action before I comment too harshly.
That being said, I like “on next attack” abilities, they add flavour, a different mechanic. The only thing I dislike is how spammy heroic strike has become. If it didn’t have to be used every swing it would be a decent mechanic.
It’s hard to judge how this change will effect our play, without seeing how it fits into the big picture.
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Arold reply on May 4, 2010 3:59 pm:
I kind of suspect that Execute is going away entirely and HS/Cleave are taking it’s place. But we’ll see.
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Everblue reply on May 5, 2010 2:57 am:
There’s a post from GC a way back when the removal of on next swing abilities was announced in which he said that heroic strike would work like execute does now. I can’t find the quote now, but what I took from that is that heroic strike would be on the GCD, and would work like execute for fury and prot.
That required me to read something into the comment though, and of course their intentions can change.
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May 4th, 2010 at 5:42 am
Hmmm… Interesting… On one hand, I like cleave/hs being on a different cool down because essentially it lets you activate 2 abilities at once… I click HS, then i hit #2 for Shield Slam… Slam goes off, I hit TC, Devestate, whatever and the HS goes off somewhere in between. My main is a Hunter (I moonlight as a tank, cuz it really is much more fun being in the front!) and having things on totally different cool downs is handy ie: Bestial Wrath.
On the other hand… one thing i hate about HS/Cleave is if I haven’t managed my Rage properly, when I engage in the above scenario the HS will steal the rage I was going to use for my TC/Devestate/whatever… so it’ll be nice to just add HS/Cleave to my normal rotation, and KNOW when they are going to go off.
Also, to go with some of the other posters points, Blizz does a good job with play testing, and small changes like this every few months keeps the game interesting and forces you to play the same old rotten toon in a slightly new way. I trust them to do a good job with the balancing…
***Covers head from expected barage of tomatos***
Good post, Vene!
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May 4th, 2010 at 7:44 am
Thanks for the awesome article, Veneretio! I’ve always appreciated your perspective. It sounds like you are spot on as far as warrior tanking in Cata is concerned, and so far I agree that making Heroic Strike a part of the normal rotation is a good idea (especially for single targets), even more so after the buff from Inner Rage.
Good insight, and thanks again.
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May 4th, 2010 at 8:42 am
If it was off the gcd they would have to have some form of a cool down on the ability itself. Otherwise you could macro in 10 heroic strikes and dump your entire rage bar instantly. May not seem like a huge deal but keep in mind that this is also an attack that dps warriors use… so a pvp warrior could get 100 rage and then practically one shot their target.
Adding in a cool down to heroic strike would somewhat defeat the purpose of it to begin with. Not to mention it really doesn’t change the fact that warriors shouldn’t have to hit 2 buttons every gcd just to keep up with other tanks.
So yeah an instant attack on the gcd would fit the bill.
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May 4th, 2010 at 10:54 am
Another warrior tank in my guild and I were discussing this just this past week. Ultimately, I think Devastate is likely to be the most heavily impacted ability by changes to HS/Cleave IF they are put on the GCD. Right now when multimobbing, I assume most SS the primary target so that SS, Rev, & TC cooldowns are always ticking. With those cooldowns that still leaves a lot of GCD’s to throw dev on a few targets. Instant cleave on GCD would push those devs further back if not off the multimob prioritization altogether.
For bosses, obviously devastate will still be necessary to get the 3 stacks of Sunder up and maintain them, but apart from that, if HS is on GCD w/ no cd it would almost have to do more damage than dev to make up for the lack of debuff, therefore pushing Dev further back on the boss priority list also, aside from refreshing sunder.
The bottom line is that with only 3 GCD’s available in between SS’s (fewer if S&B procs…which would also GREATLY be effected if Dev falls lower in the priority) and one of those most likely going to a Rev on each cycle through, and many more being used to keep our 3 debuffs refreshed, it’s going to be very very interesting to see how and where an instant GCD HS would fit into things. I’m not saying it’s bad, not having to spam HS is a huge quality of life win for the brotherhood of the brown name text. I just expect a pretty serious shakeup of how warriors play. Maybe not as massive as the Shield Block change was, but massive nonetheless.
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Brugg reply on May 4, 2010 12:26 pm:
“For bosses, obviously devastate will still be necessary to get the 3 stacks of Sunder up and maintain them, but apart from that, if HS is on GCD w/ no cd it would almost have to do more damage than dev to make up for the lack of debuff, therefore pushing Dev further back on the boss priority list also, aside from refreshing sunder.”
From what I have read I beleive this is why or at least partly why Blizz is changing from sunder having 5 stacks to having 3 stacks. it goes up faster and lessens the impact of the stack falling off.
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Veneretio reply on May 4, 2010 1:29 pm:
Certainly makes you wonder what may come of the Glyph of Devastate and Glyph of Sunder. The former may become largely unnecessary whereas the latter could become a popular choice.
That said, I think we can all agree that we’d like to see a whole bunch of new, interesting glyphs to choose from in Cataclsym.
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Onyxhorn reply on May 4, 2010 2:20 pm:
Oh absolutely. I love the extra dimension that glyphs added in Wrath… being able to take customization beyond just your gear and spec but being able to customize the actual abilities that you use to fit a scenario… genius. Very curious to see what a Glyph of Heroic Leap could offer… shorter cd? More damage? Longer stun? Increased range? No minimum range? (That last one gets my vote… 2nd shockwave anyone? Crazy OP but hey, it’s not MY job to balance this stuff.
)
But yeah, any change to our ability prioritization is almost 100% likely to necessitate a total glyph overhaul as well.. which is fine. Inscriptionists have alts to feed, too.
May 4th, 2010 at 12:48 pm
Personally, I like pushing several buttons at the same time with a Warrior tank (and a druid tank as well). It gives more rhythm to the game play. I have a paladin tank and it bores me to hell partly because I never push more than 1 button at a time.
Currently, on next swing attacks have two major gameplay issues:
- they consume the rage when they fire off, which is on next swing, which can lead to severe rage management issue when you are not in an infinite rage scenario. This is less an issue though for Protection Warriors than for Bears, due to us using fast weapons, so the delay from activating HS/Cleave to rage consumption is quite low. It is however really noticeable on a Bear (or on a Protection Warrior with a slow weapon, or even an Arms warrior) due to slower swings.
- they get very spammy particularly on a Protection Warrior (fast weapons) due to how rage works today.
Putting them off the GCD but with a 3s cooldown (or something like that) would solve both those issues, particularly with the rage changes (announced as no more “infinite rage or rage starved”) meaning we won’t be supposed to use it everytime it’s off CD, and the mechanism changes making it use more rage for more efficiency if you have lots of rage.
I really hope they don’t put it on the GCD, or I’m pretty much certain it will make Protection Warriors and Bears as boring to play as a paladin.
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cidninja reply on May 4, 2010 7:04 pm:
as long as nothing (else) happens to warbringer, prot warriors will never be boring to play imo!
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Zellviren reply on May 5, 2010 1:43 am:
I would like to think that Warbringer will see the nerf reversed, with it once again breaking roots. With everything else I’ve heard about Cataclysm, there will be no reason not to.
Oh, yeah.
Windfury procs.
-.-
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May 5th, 2010 at 3:35 pm
It isn’t broken now, I don’t know how they thing they’re going to fix it. I sure as heck would rather scroll up or down (HS or cleave) than have to hit a shift key for any abilities (something I don’t need to do with my current keybindings).
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May 6th, 2010 at 10:17 am
The real problem with putting cleave on the GCD is it will turn warrior AoE tanking into the same fixed rotation snoozefest every other tanking class has alread.
Right now AoE tanking on a warrior is one of the things I find most fun in the game, you have a lot to do, a lot of abilities to use etc. etc.
If cleave goes onto the GCD then AoE tanking will become:
Thunderclap, Cleave, Cleave, Cleave, Thunderclap, Cleave, Cleave, Cleave. Repeat until you die of boredom, swap the odd cleave for a Shockwave when its off cooldown.
This is the main issue with the change in general. The main reason I enjoy warrior tanking is because it is rather ridiculously hectic. Having to be more careful about your rage sounds good in theory but anyone who has tanked as a DK will know that spending half the fight sitting around waiting for resources so you can use some abilities is not fun. It is boring as hell.
If you dislike the complex and often hectic nature of warrior tanking there are already three tanking classes with much simpler tanking mechanics to choose from. Taking away the one complex play style just so the class becomes as easy to play as the others is just taking away a playstyle for no reason.
Lastly, I will say this with certainty, if you are skilled at playing a warrior this is going to end up being a nerf to you. Because it is pretty much impossible to do everything perfectly as a warrior now the class is balanced around sub-optimal play. Someone in Blizzard had to say, well, if the warrior uses their heroic strike 80% of the time thats good enough, or if they manage 80% efficiency on their AoE rotation thats good enough. This becomes the point at which warrior is equal to the other tanking classes. Anyone can AoE tank with 100% efficiency as a paladin, that makes the class easy to balance, Druid is pretty close, DK not too far behind either. Then you have the warrior class which is hardest to play, this means they can’t balance around perfect play, and that means that the closer you get to perfect play the further you can get beyond the upper limits of what is achievable by the other tanking classes.
Thus you get lots of terrible warriors complaining that the class sucks. The class doesn’t suck, in fact played correctly it is probably the best overall tanking class in the game, the problem is that playing it correctly is difficult. This difficulty is what makes it interesting but also makes it hard to balance. So despite paying lip service to the fact that they enjoy the playstyle warrior is getting turned into a simple, one ability per GCD tanking class like every other. That will make it possible to balance around 100% efficiency in performance which has to be a nerf if you know what you are doing.
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May 7th, 2010 at 1:49 pm
Big question here for DK tanks: Rune Strike is a massive threat move for us. Imagine Heroic Strike meets Revenge, where it’s activated by avoiding an attacking, it’s on attack, is high threat, and boosts swing damage. What’s going to happen to Rune Strike, because while you guys use 1.5-1.7 speed weapons, we’ll be two-hand tanking.
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Malevolente reply on May 9, 2010 11:26 am:
More than likely it will become a revenge like manuver, where we have to wait for it to light up then use it.
Oh, and it will have a cooldown.
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May 16th, 2010 at 11:39 am
Having tanked with a warrior for several years now, I can say that while I enjoy the fact that using heroic strike and cleave effectively adds an extra challenge to things, I’m also incredibly sick of how heroic strike functions on boss fights. The simple fact is if you’re being hit by any raid boss in ICC, you’re going to have tons of rage and thus are going to be spamming HS non stop. In my opinion, on bosses at least, it becomes less of an added challenge and more of a “damn, my fingers are getting sick of this constant button mashing of HS.” So, I for one am looking forward to them changing how it functions. It’s no longer a skill thing, but more of a “how good are you as spamming a button?”
When I think back to pre WOTLK days, back when it was even more of a challenge to tank with a warrior, it wasn’t the spamming of HS that made things fun, it was the constant tab targetting you had to do to aoe tank before they added all of our extra aoe moves. That required more than just button spamming. It required awareness of your agro on all mobs, and a finely tuned rotation that, if done incorrectly, would lose agro on a mob easily. Now it’s to the point where any decently geared warrior can stand there pressing the same buttons and hold agro on trash and bosses alike.
I suppose what I’m really getting at is, while the HS change is a welcome one to me, ultimately I hope they make more fights less of a tank and spank situation. There’s tons of fights where dps is moving non stop, and watching out for tons of things the boss does while the tanks just stand there button mashing and getting even more bored. At this point, with very few exceptions, I think tanking has become the easiest roll to play due to it requiring very little movement, and no real depth to what we’re required to do.
Bring back the tough to tank fights! Sarth 3D used to be insanely tough and fun as an add tank. Fixing HS won’t fix the stand still boredom imo.
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