This is not to say that the DF Stances could particularly encourage Stance-dancing. But let’s make two assumptions here, after which I have a couple questions for you all.
Assumption 1: Berserker Stance will be retweaked to be competitive with Battle Stance.
Assumption 2: The stances may take on additional constraints by which to make their swaps more thoughtful, avoiding their being reduced to macros.
Working from those two assumptions, I have two questions:
What kind of “stance-dancing”, if any, do you want to be possible for certain Warrior builds? (This need not reference former WOW iterations, none of which have been particularly good. Instead, feel free to define how you think it should be ideally realized.)
How do you want that capacity to be situated? Should it have playstyle-defining and -augmenting power but be much more expensive and optional, or do you want this to be widely available?
This to me sounds like any major defensive or offensive cd so no i dont want stances to be as such.
Stances to me, is an awarness of my current footing in any given combat situation. Its not something im constantly paying attention to and or considering when a swap is warrented. Stanced are very passive by nature so no swapping from battle to defensive during a 2v1 pvp match would not have yielded a more favorable outcome.
I can ramble on and on but imo stances are iconic to warrior and its three subsequent “specs”. Idk about you but the quests back in vanilla/tbc/wotlk that were required to learn a new stance really appealed to me and i felt connected to my character as he progressed being a warrior.
I have alot more to say on this but boy am i atoked to see the return
Fair, but would you still be feel thus connected if they were reintroduced as they were then… today?
Imagine them as they were in the current setting. What if, as per all past iterations, they were essentially just a means of forcing additional macro lines to certain skills. That’s especially limited if, as you’ve said above, you don’t want them to be impactful in themselves and wouldn’t want them to be rotated even in the course of, say, a PvP match (at least when you outnumber the enemy, as per your 2v1 example)?
Do you really want them just to function as negligibly in and of themselves as they did in the past? And how often do you even want them to be used, at any rate? You note that they were iconic to Warrior before, but without abilities being locked behind them (for worse or, imo, better) but simultaneously don’t want them to be something you’re “constantly paying attention to or considering.”
So, what’s the intended pace there? One stance per fight, as per your PvP example? Required semi-regularly for certain builds, as per past iterations you found iconic? Merely macro-lines attached to otherwise seemingly any-stance abilities, as per Cataclysm?
Certainly i would not feel that connected to stance dancing if it were introduced today. I like (liked) it for nostalgia factor, but all in all it was clumsy at best and annoying and tedious as worst.
I’m okay with the original intention of stances but we’d need more abilities back baseline for that to work, like revenge and disarm. It also showed your competence as a warrior to switch stances appropriately.
As stances are now, defensive stance has a clear purpose but battle stance and berserker stance may need some tweaking to help them stand out from each other.
No i would not like stances as forced additional macro lines to use certain abilties…we have been there and done that.
Stances should be trade-offs ie d stance reduces dmg taken & done and zerker increases damage taken while also increasing dmg done. It is the impact of those tradeoffs i dont want to see becoming so descisive that, using the example of pvp, accidently using the wrong stance would mean certain death.
This is the million dollar question and in my opinion the answer rests in what exactly the trade offs for each stance are. The pvp example i used means that your in d stance to prioritize staying alive in a 2v1 fight for as long as possible. Lets say in the fight your able to cast aoe fear and at that point switch to zerker stance for a speed buff.
Nonetheless these are the right questions we should be asking and as much feedback as possible is welcomed
I played Wrath and into early Cata and quit only to return for Shadowlands.
I do not miss stance dancing and needing macros just for crap like spell reflection.
I would hope no abilities are restricted and they find a way for battle and berserker stance to be competitive. Maybe something where depending on boss burn phases, I would want to switch stance for better damage or rage generation.
Stance dancing should be effortless and be used in macro’s if desired. If not then it leads to huge problems especially for PvP where micro-seconds matter. An Arms warrior switching to Battle Stance from D-stance and getting hard switched too instantly cause he can’t get back into D-stance would suck.
I know Blizzard has this idea about how Stances should work but that isn’t good in application of actual gameplay. It just becomes limiting or detrimental which is bad design.
I think the trade-off is already fine enough if you sit in d stance you don’t get the 3% crit, and 15% reduced effectiveness of movement impairing effects.
Isn’t opportunity cost largely the point of uptime choices, including stances?
If one could instantly swap between them, they’d provide far less gameplay, no? Not to mention that there benefits would have to be toned down on the basis of offering no real costs outside of carpal tunnel or prior macro work and no counterplay…
I don’t want to “stance-dance” at all. I don’t know why so many warrior miss it, it was clunky and unnecessary, specially with certain abilities tied to switching stances. It should be, at best similar to an AURA like paladins have. You click a button and get the benefit according to the situation you’re in.
I liked stance dancing. Despite it eating your rage, it gave you reasons to think about rage management and determine if it made sense to switch stances to use abilities that had proc’d (like Overpower), or switch stances to use a defensive cooldown, and these kind of decisions were fun to me. But, I understand the viewpoint that others have about it not being fun to them.
As far as I see it, there are 2 ways to bring back stance dancing.
Make each stance have exclusive abilities again like they used to.
Make each stance have procs which cause something cool to happen if you switch to another stance during the proc window.
Now, I doubt stance dancing in its old form (#1) will ever return, despite it being more fun in my opinion. So, I think if they want stance switching to still happen in a limited form, the way to do it is #2. For instance, some random ideas thinking only about you currently being in Battle Stance:
If you crit with Mortal Strike, Bloodthirst, or Shield Slam while in Battle Stance, then you can switch to another stance and maintain the effect of Battle Stance for the next X seconds.
If you crit with Mortal Strike, Bloodthirst, or Shield Slam while in Battle Stance, then, your next Mortal Strike, Bloodthirst, or Shield Slam
a) causes you to take X% less damage for Y seconds (if you use it in Defensive Stance)
b) gives you X% more auto attack speed for Y seconds (if you use it in Berserker Stance).
If you crit with Mortal Strike, Bloodthirst, or Shield Slam while in Battle Stance, then your next stance change within X seconds also casts Whirlwind.
These are just examples to give an idea of what could be done to make limited stance switching exist without making it happen constantly. The catalyst (trigger, whatever you want to call it) for what procs an effect that would make you want to switch stances could be something that only happens every so often instead of super regularly. Probably critting with your spec-defining ability is something that would still happen too regularly. But, the idea is more about the procs than it is about the trigger for the procs.