#1 - June 27, 2014, 8:20 p.m.
Obligatory website link for the feelings: www.heroicstrike.org
I don't know what the long-term plan is for Fury, but if the last 4-5 weeks are any indication, just stop, revert everything in the last 5 weeks, and don't touch it except for tuning.
First, it was berserker stance. I didn't particularly like that, but I understand the reasoning behind it. Probably only properly used by the top 5-10% of fury warriors.
Second, it was deep wounds and meat cleaver. Deep wounds I am ambivalent about, however, meat cleaver is an entirely different story.
**edit** Meat cleavers back. That's great!
But you know what? I didn't feel strongly enough to post a thread about all of that. Specs need to change/evolve over time, and hard decisions have to be made occasionally. I'd much rather keep meat cleaver, but I'm not going to war for it.
Then, I logon alpha today and after searching through my bars to see where heroic strike is... that's weird, it's not here.
https://twitter.com/Celestalon/status/482024138303746049
Now, THAT is a reason to go to war.
First, there is not a spell in Fury's spell book that is more iconic than heroic strike, but the decision was made to instead keep wild strike, an ability that no fury warrior has ever had strong feelings for. This isn’t even including the gameplay implications.
https://twitter.com/Celestalon/status/447164226675560448
Focusing your rage spending inside Colossus Smash windows, without wasting rage, is very much an intended gameplay element.
It’s a little hard to focus my rage inside of CS without heroic strike.
I think the following 2 videos are perfect for describing how different the game feels without heroic strike. I'm so glad I made a video before they removed it. The gear/character are the same in both videos.
This is how fury played the build before heroic strike was removed:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rORmST6sdTc
This is how fury played after the build:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9TWRG6g4_Y
That is a completely different spec.
Updated:
The new and improved wild strike is on the beta servers. I tried it out for a while, and it’s… not very good. If this is meant to replace the feeling of pre-wod fury, then they missed the mark by a mile.
The 0.5 second GCD makes it near-impossible to play with precision, you’ll either spam the key and fire off more wild strikes than you want, or you’ll be more deliberate with key presses and have dead-gcd time between wild strikes. Also, Fury just doesn't feel right not spamming the keyboard.
You might say, “But there are more open GCDs so dead-gcd time doesn't matter!”…. well, that’s true. Except for inside of Colossus Smash, where globals are at a premium and accidentally hitting wild strike an extra time could mean not getting storm bolt off inside of the debuff, and dead-gcd time could do the same.
Ultimately, there IS a difference between spamming 2 keys every 1.5 seconds, and spamming 1 key every 0.5 seconds. Having 2 keys with separate 1.5 second cooldowns (On-gcd/off-gcd) that can be pressed at the same time allows for precision while spamming.