Heroic Strike

Heroic Strike is a warrior ability learned at level 14. It is an instant melee attack dealing (8 + $ap * 0.6) physical damage. Heroic Strike shares a 3 second cooldown with Cleave, but is not affected by the global cooldown.

Talent Improvement

 * Incite Increases the critical strike chance of your Heroic Strike by 5/10/15%, and gives your Heroic Strike criticals a 33/66/100% chance to cause the next Heroic Strike to also be a critical strike. These guaranteed criticals cannot re-trigger the Incite effect. (3 Ranks)

Tips and Tactics
The proper use of this ability is essential for both Fury and Arms warriors who are fulfilling the DPS role in PVE. Heroic Strike hits very hard and is off the global cooldown, which means its primary use is to convert excess rage directly into damage. Because it is off the GCD, it can be used even in the middle of your rotation, so it won't throw off your rotation timing. Heroic Strike has a very low DPS-per-rage, which means basically any other Warrior ability will do more damage for less rage. The primary advantage of Heroic Strike is that it can be used at almost any time, basically making it "extra" damage if you are generating more rage than you're spending.

One of the biggest mistakes new Warrior DPS make is trying to use Heroic Strike constantly when they don't have enough rage. Heroic Strike is tied with Cleave and a full Execute for the most expensive Warrior ability (30 rage). For this reason, you don't want to use this ability every time you have 30 rage. Using Heroic Strike at the wrong time will leave the Warrior rage starved, actually reducing DPS. It is generally suggested that Heroic Strike only be used when the Warrior has 50+ rage, because this will allow the warrior to get off another Bloodthirst, Raging Blow, Mortal Strike or Slam before generating more rage with their next big auto-attack. It is absolutely not recommended to macro Heroic Strike into another commonly used attack such as Overpower while in group play.

Heroic Strike has a 3 second cooldown, so some strategic decision making about when the ability is best used is required. The level 83 ability Inner Rage, if used frequently, will reduce this cooldown to 1.5 seconds approximately 50% of the time. This cooldown is only really useful when the Warrior is generating absolutely excessive amounts of rage. Using a Heroic Strike every 3 seconds under most circumstances will leave the Warrior completely rage-starved for long periods of time. Deadly Calm, the Arms-only talented cooldown, will remove the rage cost of all abilities including Heroic Strike. During Deadly Calm Heroic Strike should be used on cooldown, as much as possible. Inner Rage and Deadly Calm cannot be used at the same time.

Heroic Strike shares a cooldown with Cleave, and they are very similar abilities. They are both instant attacks that are off the global cooldown, and they both cost the same amount of rage. The difference is that Cleave does slightly more damage and hits an extra target. While this makes Cleave slightly better than Heroic Strike (and much more rage-efficient) Cleave is limited by the fact that it can break crowd control and generates aggro on multiple targets, which may not always be desirable. In AOE situations, you should use Cleave instead of Heroic Strike, but in most other situations Heroic Strike is more desirable because it is easier to control. Arms warriors have Sweeping Strikes, which makes Cleave less useful to them.