Disclaimer: I am a low-level Warrior (as you can tell).
Every time I use Defensive Stance to try to mitigate damage (especially when more than one enemy gangs up on me), it doesn’t help. It feels like I take the same amount of damage as if I was staying in Battle Stance. Is it even worth using Defensive Stance while PvE leveling? Or does it become more useful (actually reducing damage) at higher levels?
Note: Atm, I am putting points into Arms, but I fully plan on also speccing into Protection for survivability/tanking.
if an enemy is going to do 100 damage, and you’re in defensive stance, that’s only 10 damage, which is kinda hard to notice. Go fight a pig and watch your combat log, then stance halfway through the fight: you’ll see the numbers change but not a lot. You’ll see extra effect as the numbers go up.
However, much more important is the threat generation and move accessibility. As you’ve probably already figured out, certain moves can’t be used in all stances, such as charge, so the move accessibility is self explanatory. Notable stance-locked moves that you’ll want to know about as prot spec include berserker rage, intercept, and pummel from berserker stance, Charge, mocking blow, and retaliation from battle stance, and shield slam in defensive stance.
As for threat, each attack has a default amount of threat. Each stance carries a threat modifier the tooltips don’t really spell out for you: Berserker is 1.0, Battle is .8, and defensive is 1.2. Thus, anything you throw from battle stance is actually dealing reduced threat, but any move used from defensive stance has its threat multiplied by 1.2. since most of your threat heavy moves (sunder armor, revenge, shield slam) are available from defensive stance, this is actually a better reason to stance than the damage reduction itself.
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Thanks for all the detailed info! I’m curious if it is worth using Defensive Stance out in the wild, when fighting one-on-one with an NPC enemy, or if I should save it for when more than one enemy gangs up on me. I can survive fighting a single enemy within my level range staying in Battle Stance, but anything more than that and I see why people complain about vanilla Warrior’s survivability.
There are a few upsides. I use defensive stance when skilling up a new weapon, and defensive stance sword/board will allow you to take multiple enemies in succession without eating, so if you’re low on recovery items and respawns have trapped you it’s worth looking at. The rest of the time, I find I’d really just prefer to put 'em down quicker, so I eat the extra damage and stay in battle stance where I can use slam and execute.
As for multiple enemies, fighting multiple enemies at once as a warrior can be a pretty tenuous proposition most times. if I’m fighting things on my level, I almost never pull it off without using a cooldown of some kind, or a resource like a potion. it hasn’t mattered too much if I’m in battle or defensive stance for most of the fight, tbh, but berserker stance in this situation is a great way to get your bum kicked.
Since you say you’re going deep protection spec, you’ll get access to a stun on a 45 second CD: when mobbed by 2 enemies I like to kill one, use this, and bandage. it’s your best bet that your talent options will be giving you.
Stance dancing wherever you are is part of the warrior fantasy in Vanilla.
When you get higher level berserker stance is really strong to hop over to after the charge even with the extra damage you takr. Berserker rage really helps your rage and damage. Even then when you see a dodge happen you pop over to battle to nail them him with an overpower that likely crits.
I suggest making macros for stance specific abilities. Overpower, rend, whirlwind, etc are all on macros that force me to swap to the stance. On top of that you should carry a sword and board to pop on if things get greasy. I have a naga mouse and 1, 2, and 3 are my current weapons that I can quickly rotate to.
It does get better by the way. Sub 30 is painful, post 30 is good with gaining SS, WW, and berserker rage throughout those levels. Get WW axe asap if you can because it’ll last into the 40s. Post 40 has been ezpz for me so far and I have no fear of pullong 2, sometimes 3 mobs with a charge into SS into whirlwind. Sometimes it does bite me if I’m greedy, but overall feels really good for me now that I’m in the 40s and picking cruelty up.
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