This expansion in particular has proven that Protection Warrior has a solid, fluid DPS rotation. However, I don’t always want to tank when I’m playing Protection Warrior. I can understand if it would be difficult to balance, but I would like a Protection Warrior-style for a DPS role. If not the talent Gladiator Stance, then perhaps as a fourth specialization. Making it its own specialization would allow for better (easier) tuning. In terms of artifact weapons, it can share one with Protection. In terms of gameplay, it could function as a somewhat hybrid. It can utilize some of the tools of Protection (Demoralizing Shout, Shield Block, etc).
In terms of the core rotation, I think the rotation Protection Warrior has is fine, but it could benefit from some tweaking. For example, this theoretical Gladiator specialization would still have Devastate, Shield Slam, Revenge; and Thunder Clap. They would also get Heroic Strike and Cleave back. Shield Slam and Thunder Clap would work off a charge system; similar to the charge system the Brewmaster Monk’s active mitigation does. A Gladiator could hold three charges at most. Each use of Shield Slam and Thunder Clap consumes a charge. Thunder Clap uses increase the damage of Thunder Clap for a short time (stacking), and using three charges in a short time increases the damage of Revenge and Cleave for a short duration. Shield Slam increases the damage of Shield Slam for a short time (stacking), and using three charges in a short time increases the damage of Devastate and Heroic Strike for a short duration. Gladiators would still have access to Deep Wounds, and each tick of Deep Wounds would have a low chance to grant a charge. If Deep Wounds critically strikes, it is guaranteed to grant a charge.
tl;dr: Bring back DPS Warrior please. I miss it, and the unpruning of Shadowlands would be a good time to look at the idea again.
Dude, instead of creating another Post, add your thoughts to one of the already present ones, there are like 50 Glad stance post in the last month alone. Stop spamming the forum when there is already a discussion about it open.
There are 2 warrior dps specs and prot warriors can dish out very impressive dps for a tank. Seems like you’re asking for something that already exists.
Gladiator stance as it was designed in MOP worked just fine.
Was it an optimal spa spec? No, but there are always mid/lower level specs. It was competitive though.
As normal, Blizz thinks new expansions are designed for changing things that work with things that don’t. I’m still baffled at how they simply erased the epic class weapons from legion.
They were specific to that expansion. Just like azerite armor will go away after bfa. Please do not confuse temporary expansion features with “permanent” abilities.
They haven’t removed the weapons themselves, just the ability to level it up via artfiact power. Mainly because of artifact power changed from the weapon to the neck in BFA.
Blizzard has said they are trying to make it so that the Heart of Azeroth will still work fine outside of shadowlands content. So to that extent, Azerite armor should also work outside of shadowlands content as well. This was during the Q&A session at blizzcon 2019.
I believe the baffling part they’re referring to is -why- it got erased. Like, why -was- it a temporary feature that only lasted one expansion? The idea of only using some things for a singular expansion (glad stance, artifact weapons, essences, etc) is more the issue. If a system is good, it should be carried over; not binned entirely. I know that Azerite Armor was “supposed” to fill the role of artifact weapons, but there’s not been a single moment where that’s what happened. It’s like going from a giant smart TV, to one of the small TVs still needing antennas. Sure, they’re both still TVs; but that’s about where the similarities stop. Blizzard removing systems that worked is an arguably bad trend to continue, and hopefully they revert some of those changes with Shadowlands.
It’s really not baffling at all though. They’re trying to keep things fresh and interesting from xpac ro xpac. If it were the same systems always it’d get super stale super fast. Just because artifact weapons were kool while azerite armor and HoA sucked doesn’t mean they should give up trying new things.
However, the complaint was pretty specific that the loss of artifact progression nullified the whole xpac. This is not true since the quests, dungeons, and raids are still accessible and doable. It’s old content now that is just either leveled through or farmed. But to complain about progression being removed from a past xpac just seems silly.
These are two entirely separate things. Glad stance is not a good thing that blizzard decided could only be here a brief moment. They put it in, realized it was broken and no one was using it anyway, so they ignored it for the rest of the expac and then removed it. It was a thing they tried, didn’t work, and they chose to pull it rather than fix it based on low interest.
Artifacts were put in from day one as a one expac only system. Their view was by not having to sustain it forever, they could go crazy and have fun with it. So they deliberately made it awesome but unsustainable because they knew it only had to last one expac. Personally I wish they’d scaled it down to something sustainable once the expac was over rather than remove it, but such is life.
They didn’t ignore it completely, they did buff it by making you get 50% bonus mastery from all sources while in the stance in 6.2
And it was popular at the start of WoD, however blizzard decided to nerf prot as a whole in a massive way during Highmaul instead of just the stance itself (which they would later do).
I think if you pay attention to the rest of what he said and not just the “tl;dr:” section, you’ll see that he’s not asking for what already exists. He wants to play a Prot style warrior… i.e. sword and board, Without having to be/queue as a tank. Currently, that is not an option in WoW but was an option in WoD. I would also be very happy to see the gladiator warrior playstyle brought back in some fasion as a DPS role rather than only the option to tank.
I do understand why they removed gladiator stance to begin with, the tuning on it was ridiculously powerful, and there was no stat priority change or difference between running Prot(Tank) and Gladiator(DPS). within the same spec besides just switching one talent. Gladiator warriors absolutely demolished in a PVP environment and did need some serious reworks in balance.
I will say that I never had more fun playing a Warrior than I did with gladiator stance, and I’ve played a warrior since vanilla WoW. Gladiator (Sword+board DPS) felt right, and Shadowlands would be the perfect opportunity for it to return in some form.