Updated Patch Notes: Patch 3.3 PTR - Warriors

Warriors

• Blood Frenzy: This debuff is no longer considered a Bleed effect that can be removed separately from the actual Bleed effect which caused it.
• Bloodrage: Tooltip now adjusts to show effect of Anger Management on this ability.
• Glyph of Cleaving: Now updates the tooltip of Cleave to show that more targets are struck by the ability.
• Glyph of Hamstring: Now updates the tooltip of Hamstring to indicate it has a chance to immobilize.
• Glyph of Vigilance: Now updates the tooltip on Vigilance to show that more threat is transferred.
• Mocking Blow: Tooltip clarified to indicate taunt immune targets will not take damage from this ability.
• Rampage: Rampage now behaves correctly as an Enrage effect when interacting with the Enraged Regeneration ability.
• Recklessness: Heroic Throw and Shattering Throw will now benefit from this ability and consume charges of this ability. In addition, Recklessness now behaves correctly as an Enrage effect when interacting with the Enraged Regeneration ability.
• Sudden Death: Corrected inaccurate information in combat log tooltip.
• Sweeping Strikes: Corrected inaccurate information in combat log tooltip.
• Vigilance: The threat transfer granted by this ability will now reactivate when Tricks of the Trade or Misdirection cast by the Vigilance target expires.
• Warbringer: Tooltip typo corrected.

Well, a lot of things were fixed, but nothing new changed or added yet. Blizzard has mentioned something about Heroic Strike, though, when it was brought up on the forums*.

The question was:

Why no heroic strike fix?
Not to beat a dead horse, but why on earth hasn't there been a fix implemented for constant heroic strike spam yet?

This is a serious quality of life issue that is a bit silly to still have in the game....

And the answer, from Ghostcrawler:

We have become pretty dissatisfied with the on-next swing mechanic. Come Cataclysm, we'd love to get rid of all of them. Obviously that will necessitate some pretty significant changes in how warriors generate threat or do damage (unlike Maul or Rune Strike, Heroic Strike gets a lot of use outside of tanking), which makes it too risky a change for 3.3. We think some of the other ideas like toggling the ability are also risky in the sense that they might require a lot of iteration to feel right, or worse, might mess up threat generation or damage dealt.

The original design of HS as a tanking tool wasn't that you replace every white swing with a Heroic Strike. You did it when you wanted to burn off rage. These days tanks (and increasingly dps warriors too) are rarely rage starved beyond perhaps the first few seconds of the fight. That turns Heroic Strike into a button you always push.

A couple of other ideas we have considered, as someone above referenced, were making Heroic Strike do more threat the more rage you have but also spend more rage. Another is that you somehow go into "high rage mode" at which point everything costs double but hits harder. This would work for dps warriors too. Those are just ideas at this point, not announcements. Please don't tell us in a few weeks that you were promised these changes for 3.3. :(

As of right now, I really hope that Heroic Strike does not turn into another 2-5 minute cooldown. It is, after all, a primary part of Fury DPS, and and some Arms Warriors have thrown it into their rotations too. Yes, he did say this it was not an announcement, and yes, Cataclysm is some time off. It is way too early to tell what the state of Warrior DPS will be at the end of Wrath, much less the beginning of the next expansion.

(* From the official World of Warcraft forums, here.)