ID: #4889skunkee ( ago) [on Strike of Breaking I]
For those who roll warrior and are confused on how this ability works -- additional ranks are automatically learned as you progress through levels. Once you hit level 10, you learn Rank 2. Level 20, you learn rank 3, and at level 30 you learn the final rank of 4. This is a "Combo Ability" per the dev team - and it behaves strangely compared to other abilities.
Even if you learn the new ranks, your strike of breaking will always start out at Rank 1 on your technique bar. If you use rank 1 on a mob, it starts a 30 second cooldown timer on rank 1 and "unlocks" rank 2. Your Technique bar will show that Rank 2 is available to use. If you do not use Rank 2 within 10 seconds, it will downgrade back to Rank 1 and any remaining cooldown on Rank 1 will still be ticking. Every time you use a lower rank and have a higher rank available, the Rank "upgrades" to the next one in your technique bar.
Rank 1 does some damage and threat, puts a debuff on the mob, and a buff on you. When you use rank 2, it overwrites the debuff on the mob with the stronger version and gives you the stronger AC buff. Same with rank 3, same with rank 4. This ability does NOT behave like a "stacking" debuff -- each rank of the strike of breaking is its own unique debuff. This allows for some weird behaviors such as:
- If you are tanking multiple mobs, you can stack 3 ranks on mob A and then use rank 4 on mob B. Mob A will have -30% AC, and mob B will receive the -35% AC debuff of rank 4 right away.
- If you are tanking in a long fight such as the White Wyvern or another mob that has a big health pool and the mob lives long enough for the Strike of Breaking cooldown to refresh -- you start out back at Rank 1 and the Rank 1 debuff will overwrite the Rank 4 debuff on the mob. It does not refresh the "full strength" version of the self buff and the mob AC debuff so if you want Rank 4 + the max rank AC buff, you have to do the full cycle of Strike of Breaking again. This is clunky from a threat generation standpoint if you leverage Strike of Breaking as a staple threat ability because you are changing your +AC% buff to lower values and the mobs -AC% debuff to lower values until you can get the full Rank 4 version up again.
- Other classes that have AC debuffs will shut off the AC debuff component of this ability. Shamans that use the AC/Speed debuff will turn off your ability to debuff the mob's AC. Rogues corrosive poison debuff will do it too. You can still do damage+threat, and I believe that the self AC buff works.
