Found a bug: if you queue heroic strike, then you cannot queue other spells

[Hadda]

What does "queue other spells" mean here? Basically you can queue a spell at most 400 ms before it becomes ready. For example, you can queue the next spell before the current spell finishes casting; or if the next spell is in cooldown, you can queue it 400 ms before it completely cools down (this include GCD).

This spell queue works fine, until you are also queuing spells that works with your next weapon swing (heroic strike and cleave. i haven't tested DK/Druid yet, but it could also be the case). If HS/Cleave is in queue, then there won't be any queue for other spells, say bloodthirst. So instead of putting bloodthirst in a short queue, the game will try to cast the bloodthirst immediately. Then of course it would fail, because the server knows the spell is not ready yet.

I have made a video recording and posted it on Blizz forums -> bug report, but got no response whatsoever. So what do you think?

[MrLachyG]

They don’t respond to bug reports on the forums

[Mbcivic]

It has been a great while since I played Vanilla and even then I didn't get into it until the tail end and may be remembering incorrectly but this behavior isn't a bug, it's the design of those spells that affect your next swing. Essentially, you have to time your use of heroic strike/cleave with your auto-swing timer. Same thing with hunters and their abilities and auto-shots.

[Hadda]

It has been a great while since I played Vanilla and even then I didn't get into it until the tail end and may be remembering incorrectly but this behavior isn't a bug, it's the design of those spells that affect your next swing. Essentially, you have to time your use of heroic strike/cleave with your auto-swing timer. Same thing with hunters and their abilities and auto-shots.

I just checked one of my video recordings from 2010. It seems I could queue instant casts properly with heroic strike queued at the same time.

[Bigbazz]

What does "queue other spells" mean here? Basically you can queue a spell at most 400 ms before it becomes ready. For example, you can queue the next spell before the current spell finishes casting; or if the next spell is in cooldown, you can queue it 400 ms before it completely cools down (this include GCD).

This spell queue works fine, until you are also queuing spells that works with your next weapon swing (heroic strike and cleave. i haven't tested DK/Druid yet, but it could also be the case). If HS/Cleave is in queue, then there won't be any queue for other spells, say bloodthirst. So instead of putting bloodthirst in a short queue, the game will try to cast the bloodthirst immediately. Then of course it would fail, because the server knows the spell is not ready yet.

I have made a video recording and posted it on Blizz forums -> bug report, but got no response whatsoever. So what do you think?

I'm not sure this is a bug, because WOTLK didn't have spell queue, it's a modern feature that has been ported to a game that has gameplay elements that no longer exist. What you should do is play the game like in WOTLK, which means you should spam your keys as abilities are about to come off cooldown.

I just checked one of my video recordings from 2010. It seems I could queue instant casts properly with heroic strike queued at the same time.

You definitely couldn't because it did not exist in WOTLK, it was a Cataclysm feature.

[endur]

I don't have a clear memory of how heroic strike worked in this specific version of Wrath.

However, I do remember how Heroic Strike worked in BC.

In BC, heroic strike was not on the global cool down, so you would macro heroic strike to all of your warrior abilities which were on the GCD.

Example macro:
/cast Shield Bash
/stopcasting
/cast Heroic strike

They eventually changed heroic strike so that this didn't work.

[tomten]

What does "queue other spells" mean here? Basically you can queue a spell at most 400 ms before it becomes ready. For example, you can queue the next spell before the current spell finishes casting; or if the next spell is in cooldown, you can queue it 400 ms before it completely cools down (this include GCD).

This spell queue works fine, until you are also queuing spells that works with your next weapon swing (heroic strike and cleave. i haven't tested DK/Druid yet, but it could also be the case). If HS/Cleave is in queue, then there won't be any queue for other spells, say bloodthirst. So instead of putting bloodthirst in a short queue, the game will try to cast the bloodthirst immediately. Then of course it would fail, because the server knows the spell is not ready yet.

I have made a video recording and posted it on Blizz forums -> bug report, but got no response whatsoever. So what do you think?

Havent played vanilla or classic in ages but I did main warrior for ages and I want to distinctly remember heroic strike/cleave specifically is queued to be on your next melee hit. Its even in the tooltip for it. Which means its supposed to work like that.

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You definitely couldn't because it did not exist in WOTLK, it was a Cataclysm feature.

Pretty sure he could as it was designed to work on your next melee hit.

[Bigbazz]

Havent played vanilla or classic in ages but I did main warrior for ages and I want to distinctly remember heroic strike/cleave specifically is queued to be on your next melee hit. Its even in the tooltip for it. Which means its supposed to work like that.

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Pretty sure he could as it was designed to work on your next melee hit.

Heroic strike is an on-next hit attack, he's talking about the lag tolerance feature which was added in Cataclysm. Entirely different topics, lag tolerance works with one ability at a time, Fury can queue HS while casting a 2nd ability. The same issue existed in TBC Classic with macros using multiple spells not working properly (particularly Death Wish + Blood Fury for some reason).

The default for this is 400, dropping it down makes the game feel better. This isn't a bug, it's a modern feature that isn't designed or optimised to work with Classic, that never existed in the original game.

I don't have a clear memory of how heroic strike worked in this specific version of Wrath.

However, I do remember how Heroic Strike worked in BC.

In BC, heroic strike was not on the global cool down, so you would macro heroic strike to all of your warrior abilities which were on the GCD.

Example macro:
/cast Shield Bash
/stopcasting
/cast Heroic strike

They eventually changed heroic strike so that this didn't work.

Doing something like this is something really really bad players would do, it's not normal gameplay. Heroic Strike was used for rage management, and you would very often not have the rage to use Heroic Strike. Macroing it to all your abilities would cause you to just rage starve all the time, whether tanking or dps you're talking about clown levels of performance, like kicked from the raid performances.

And actually they didn't remove this possibility until Heroic Strike was removed entirely in Legion. But even in Legion you could do it with Focused Rage. Again doing something like this was a sign of a really bad player, terrible gameplay advice.

[Hadda]

You definitely couldn't because it did not exist in WOTLK, it was a Cataclysm feature.

Spell queue was there before cata. The only thing changed in Cata was that it became possible to change the size of the queue window. I am not allowed to post links here but feel free to search for an article from March 2010 by SIHMM: "lag-wow-and-you"

[Bigbazz]

Just watch this OG video, play the game as you would in WOTLK and you will get results as you did in WOTLK.

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Spell queue was there before cata. The only thing changed in Cata was that it became possible to change the size of the queue window. I am not allowed to post links here but feel free to search for an article from March 2010 by SIHMM: "lag-wow-and-you"

No you're getting confused, that was spell batching. Again this is a different thing. I even googled your article and the author has the qualifier.

I write “how we think” it works because truth is that nobody really knows for sure

The guy was just guessing on what was going on with the servers. Any advice other than what Kripparian says in WOTLK is bad advice, don't attempt to play the game like you can in retail. The addition of custom lag tolerance/spell queue window in WOTLK Classic is different to how it worked in original WOTLK (there is no spell batching, there is lag tolerance), but you should play Warrior like original WOTLK.

Queue HS as normal, spam BT, Whirlwind, Execute to reduce latency impact. Adjust your spell queue window down to 100ms, will feel nicer to play.

[Hadda]

Adjust your spell queue window down to 100ms, will feel nicer to play.

Thanks. I will take your advice and try it out next time when I have a chance. That being said, I still consider this a bug that should be fixed or at least improved. With the default 400ms queue window, the game play feels awful.

[Bigbazz]

Thanks. I will take your advice and try it out next time when I have a chance. That being said, I still consider this a bug that should be fixed or at least improved. With the default 400ms queue window, the game play feels awful.

I don't think it's a bug tho, even in Legion this was an issue. If you ever played Focused Rage Arms Warrior you would know how Warriors would stagger the use of Focused Rage between their other GCD's to avoid what felt like the spells were getting "stuck" in server latency and it would cause additional latency, like the ability would clog up the system if you used it at the same time as another ability. Because of this performance/lag related issue a lot of players could be seen weaving the FR ability half way around the GCD because it would eliminate this sluggish response behaviour. Especially noticable when players were trying to fit 5 GCD's within the Battle Cry (recklessness) window, if you didn't stagger you would need like 3% more haste to make it work.

That's effectively the same thing you're experiencing here. WOTLK Classic is never going to be the exact same because it runs on Legion or newer version of the WoW client (perhaps BFA or Shadowlands now?) and while original Classic had spell batching put in by request to mirror Vanilla, it was removed just before TBC came out, while retail WoW had spell batching naturally in some form until WOD, but that spell batching also varied from expansion to expansion and in Cata we got custom lag tolerance.

Spell batching was effectively baked in lag, the lag tolerance is a true spell queue system that reduces lag but it can only handle one spell at a time. The problem with lag tolerance is that it can make the game feel janky/laggy as hell at high settings, even if in theory it should be reducing lag it can make the game feel like the opposite is happening. And again weird behaviour with Fury Warrior because of the 1 spell limitation that has always existed, on a class that consistency uses 2 abilities at a time, the only issue could be that heroic strike is being considered by the system and maybe it would be better if it wasn't.

[Huzzaa]

Thanks. I will take your advice and try it out next time when I have a chance. That being said, I still consider this a bug that should be fixed or at least improved. With the default 400ms queue window, the game play feels awful.

I've had this set to 0 since day 1, to basically return it to the way it felt back in the day.

And to spam abilities, I use a little of something which the very same man (Kriparrian) posted on one of his vids. Albeit, over the years, improved and customized.

The lag tolerance feature is nice, until you need to change a decision of what to cast, and if that decision hits in the queue window, your old ability will fire instead. This feels horrible and is the exact lag that is being spoken of.
It's supposed to work at proper settings matched with your latency values but even then, it feels off to me, so in general, I've always had it off. 0

[Bigbazz]

I've had this set to 0 since day 1, to basically return it to the way it felt back in the day.

And to spam abilities, I use a little of something which the very same man (Kriparrian) posted on one of his vids. Albeit, over the years, improved and customized.

The lag tolerance feature is nice, until you need to change a decision of what to cast, and if that decision hits in the queue window, your old ability will fire instead. This feels horrible and is the exact lag that is being spoken of.
It's supposed to work at proper settings matched with your latency values but even then, it feels off to me, so in general, I've always had it off. 0

I think off feels the best, but technically speaking having a small amount of it will always be better at reducing any dps lost through latency. At high settings though it really does feel awful. I remember complaining about this constantly in WOD and I just couldn't understand what was happening, best day ever when I discovered that this was the cause.

I think back then I optimised it to 88ms, to where the game felt and played good but there was still some leeway to where I was getting benefit. Up at 400 it's absolutely gonna make a lot of people just play worse imo, I have no idea why they default it to that and make it an invisible setting.