Why are people obsessed with this? It was horribly designed when it came out in WoD and a fast-track to carpal tunnel without really being that interesting. It came out and was horrible, and then it got tuned into being incredible, maybe even overpowered. I don’t remember. Then it ceased to exist.
I’m all for innovating warrior but I am really bored of the DPS solution ‘new idea’ for warrior being sword and board DPS.
Because it was incredible fun and sword and board DPS is cool?
Because it is something people have wanted for years and honestly it felt AMAZING we were zipping around slamming into things and we were still strong and we have more protection because of the shield.
The only people that didn’t like it were the tanks because they now had to fight people for the shields and gear with extra armor on it because we also used them.
I feel it was a vocal minority.
That and a dps shield holding fighter class is something niche poeple wants. I don’t mean it in a condescendant way, but it is something a few player do really really likes.
Kinda like “engineer class”. It is never a really popular class compare to “pure archer” but poeple who like that fantasy are really passionate about it.
Tanks loved it, the only people who did not like it were people in arena
I can see the appeal from an aesthetics pov since people growing up playing games like the Legend of Zelda where they play as Link, or the Ys series where they’re playing as Adol Christin, both formidable fighters using a sword and shield to surpass surmountable odds stacked against them.
The rough part is in MMOs most of the time the Sword and Shield fighter is relegated to tanking which some people have unwarranted allergies to playing since they stress themselves out over a slight breeze.
Having played during WoD I can definitely say from experience Glad stance wasn’t really all that fun once you learned how to play it it was quite degenerate in it’s gameplay loop, you spammed heroic strike a lot while also needing to restack the buff that reduced it’s rage by 1/5th of it’s cost as it was a mongoose bite styled mechanic where you could add to it but not refresh the duration.
PvP players from the time, you know the ones who never really did any rated PvP to speak of and sat in random BG queues all day? They have fond memories of it, only because they would stomp the odd noob or two with it.
Players who couldn’t let go of Heroic Strike’s removal also view it fondly. Mind you not like they tactically hit HS to begin with during WoD since you practically keybound it to most attacks anyway due to it’s toolkit removing the ragecost almost entirely.
Would I like to see them have a crack at another sword/shield dps? Eh I don’t think adding a 3rd DPS spec to Warrior is necessary as it just provides more friction gearing in PvE as it would take away from Arms/Fury in a raid or m+ space.
I do however think they could placate those players eager for a DPS based sword/shield spec by enabling both Arms and Ret to xmog their 2h weapon into a 1h/shield combination through the xmog system while also changing their stances/animations according to it so they’ll be fighting moreso with their mainhand weapon and the shield would be more of a cosmetic addon they hold in their offhand and raise when they get hit.
Because it was hella fun. Shields have some of the best gear designs in the game. While tanking can be fun, it can also be stressful, it was nice to be able to slap on a shield and not have to be a tank.
This was far funnier to me than I think was intended. Good job.
I’m more interested in Shaman Tank than Gladiator Warrior. The design space for Warrior just seems more closed than the fourth element for Shaman to wield.
Gladiator stance was a rough sell back in WoD because it made the itemization odd for Prot, if I recall Gladiator scaled off of Armor and Crit/Mastery more than Haste and Crit that Prot wanted. It was also the start of DPS trinkets being taken because tanks wanted to do more damage, I remember the dungeon runs where people fought over items with the tank or the tank would bully people into giving them items.
I remember when Feral shared a spec with Guardian and geared differently in the same spec, the solution there was to split the specs into four. I don’t want to think about the spells that Gladiator would eventually take from protection if they split.
It was definitely intended as a joke 
It was still terribly designed and would have been better with just Shield Charge sharing a cooldown with Shield Block, allowing players to spend their key defensive instead on offense if they so pleased, rather than locking players out of stance-dancing.
You have your opinion and I have mine. Gladiator stance was a lot of fun IMO.
Glad stance in WoD was a lot of fun, if you enjoy the high apm style. Heroic strike spam was easily applied as a macro on every attack. You really never needed to worry about it. You always had something to push with devastate decrease HS cost reductions as a filler skill and then hitting big shield slam and revenge hits. Shield charge with normal charge made you very sticky on targets and just added to mobility. It’s biggest fault was crappy AoE damage and lack of talent choices since the HS spam talent was vastly superior to the heavier shield charge buff.
As for gear fighting, a useless complaint. Classes have been fighting over gear since the start. Crying cause a new dps now wanted a few tank bonus armor pieces is rather dumb when half the classes fight over most of the same combo of trinkets, capes, rings, and necks. It’s like crying any time a new class gets added, oh dks need plate gear or waaah demon hunters also want leather! That’s just how things go. At least itemization changed to help focus each class/specs wanted stats.
With Forever it really shouldn’t be hard to make Gladiator stance work. Require a shield. Remove threat from the extra threat skills like shield slam, or just reduce threat across board in stance. Up damage by 5-10% whatever needed so it’s on par. Make revenge usable with out the dodge/block/parry proc and give it an increased CD. Make Shield Slam scale with AP instead of BV. Maybe increase rage gen a bit if needed. Bam working sword and board dps that uses all the classic kit with a few tweaks via the stance.
If shaman can get tank abilties/talents in enhance, hunter gets melee spec, and paladin gets multiple ret specs I think we can afford glad stance for the few of us who enjoy shield slamming the door in an enemy’s face.
Your first paragraph and third paragraph contradict themselves with Forever warrior’s rage issues. If the high APM is fun you will not be getting that, furthermore it would need to be an entirely new 4th designed spec considering the generation of rage for prot is from defensive mechanics, dodging, parrying, blocking, etc.
In addition to that they reworked everything that would’ve made fury/prot a thing which would’ve also worked rather well with Gladiator stance to specifically steer people away from this gameplay style. So no, it will not work because they quite literally do not want it to work.
Unfortunately while Gladiator is the subject of this post I’ve felt in recent times the design decisions around Warrior have felt tone deaf and very creatively bankrupt.
The amount of damage prot does between either hero spec rn kinda undermines the need for a return of glad stance. Tanking has changed quite a bit since WoD, and tanks just kinda overall do more damage now.
Broken aspects aside, iirc wasn’t Glad intended to be an intermediary spec, as in not intended to out-compete arms or fury?
The rule of cool, dude. People like sword and board. It’s classic. It’s what a lot of folks think of when they think of an armored warrior type. Some people have that concept and enjoy playing DPS. It’s really not that deep or complicated.
The first paragraph is talking about the WoD gladiator. You don’t need to make an entirely new spec for Forever Glad. All you need to do is increase rage gen while in glad stance to compensate. It’s a very easy fix. If they can add threat modifiers to skills they can add rage modifer to stances. Forever prot has the improved blood rage talent to help with rage gen as well.
The whole “literally do not want it to work” excuse is flat out wrong because many of the changes to various classes in Forever are spefically canceling that out. They are making things work cause they want them to work. In reality it doesn’t take much tweaking to make a side spec work. Let me point out that enchancment has talents in Forever that help out it’s threat, gives a reset to stormstrike on dodge/parry, a talent that full on adds parry to the spec as well as even more increased threat with rockbiter, anticpation+toughness talents and other things. So right there, that’s something they want to work and are giving some tools to make it happen. Will it be as good a tank as others? Maybe not but it’s still literally being given the tools for it to work.
It really isn’t that hard to tweak a few things through Glad stance to make prot into a dps.
Which one can do without locking them out of stance dancing and their main defensive as per Gladiator.
I’d honestly rather just remove the two-handed weapon / dual-wield requirements from Arms and Fury skills.
Let it be a damage loss to have a shield without it being a kit loss.
And let anyone who wants to hybrid as a tanky DPS do so.
They just, having opted for additional armor over weaponry, should not expect to deal the same damage as someone who didn’t make that sacrifice, accepting instead that they’ll be expected to utilize that extra armor to at least some degree if they’re to be as worth the slot.
The thing is if gladiator is the best way to play, it does ruin the fun for everyones who created a warrior to be a 2h user. If it is made sub par on purpose. It does ruin the fun for the vast majority of player who want to be a sword and board dmg user.
Age of Conan had a dps class that was strictly sword and board. The class was designed this way from the get go, so poeple knew what they were signing for when they created one.