What baffles me is that the greatest controversy Gladiator Stance ever faces was rolling against tanks for shields. That’s fair, they should get priority on stuff like that… but then the following expansion introduced Artifact weapons, an entire expansion where nobody was rolling against each other for shields or weapons. Gladiator stance would’ve been able to thrive there better than ever.
I would really love to see it make a return, I absolutely love the gameplay of prot, but don’t really take to tanking much anymore. DPS is much more relaxing to me.
Warriors are by class fantasy the original knights, the original weapon masters. Give them any sort of weapon and they’ll make it extra-deadly somehow. A sword and board should be no different. Akin to druids finally getting Feral separated into 2 specs, (in the form of Guardian/Feral), I see no reason why Warriors don’t get a 4th spec too in the form of the Spartan/Gladiator spec. It could have a similar gameplay to Prot, but with all of the tanking-related gameplay clipped out and replaced with cool new abilities reminiscent of pit-fighters. Punches, headbutts, spear-tossing.
I’d love to see it happen one day. I miss spamming devastate, getting huge revenge crits, and shield slamming my enemies for massive dmg
Gladiator stance should have never been removed. It was the most fun I’ve had on a Warrior since WotLK with my improved cleave/thunderclap/double devastate AoE specced tank that topped damage meters on any fight with more than 1 mob.
I love the warrior smashmouth gameplay so I have like 6 or 7 of them, but I suck at playing a warrior, so I only have one at near end level. (Even on LFR, my warrior spends more time face down eating dirt than fighting.) So coming from a sucky warrior, I would love a sword and board style of gameplay.
But with that said, I’m not sure if it will work though mainly due to the addition of a shield. The shield will probably make us the hardest DPS to kill, and if we get damage levels comparable to other classes but be a lot more resilient, the qq from dps would be deafening.
So that leads me into a question. If we do get a sword and board dps spec, would we be willing to be perennially be on the bottom of the damage done roster for the spec, especially if fury and arms remain competitive?
I’ve never heard a peep about all those unkillable Elemental Shamans.
Seriously, a shield only adds some armor and 10% block. A new spec could have its defenses balanced around having a shield and still be on par with other DPS specs.
I mained a Warrior in WoD solely because of Glad stance. I was pretty miffed when they continuously nerfed it into oblivion, and eventually removed it entirely.
I had my Warrior only spec’d to Prot during WoD because of Gladiator Stance.
I set up Primary Spec for tanking dungeons and raids and then Secondary was for Glad Stance-focused build.
Was the most fun class for me during WoD and I miss it dearly.
The dev team will be. Their the ones who removed all class identity. I used to love stance dancing on my warrior having to create complex macros in order to max out dps or to survive an attack.
