TL;DR - give Fury the ability to use a shield in lieu of a 2H weapon in their off-hand in Shadowlands.
Given the outcry (myself included) to resurrect the Gladiator in some form for WoW, I thought this might present itself as the best solution in the upcoming expansion. The solution is this:
Gladiators, We Salute You (Fury, Passive)
Fury warriors can wield a shield in lieu of a 2H weapon in their off-hand.
“Are You Not Entertained?”
It appears that Shield Slam and Shield Block are returning to all classes. For offensive stats, the shield would just need to use the equivalent 2H damage stats of an item with the same iLvl. I’d say the trade-off of being able to use Shield Slam and Shield Block (even in their gimpy forms) means that shields don’t need to have offensive abilities on them, just damage stats.
I know it can’t be that simple, so what am I missing here? How would this upset the balance?
IIRC it was removed because of a combination of people getting upset that a tank was outDPSing them, people angry that a tank was stealing their DPS gear/a DPS was stealing their tanking gear (shields), and because having to balance what was essentially a 4th spec made Blizzard’s job a lot harder.
Thing is, in Shadowlands all specs can equip shields, and with Shield Slam and Shield Block coming back to all specs, implementing a sword and board playstyle for Arms or Fury would be fairly doable. For example, a talent for Fury that gave you a % damage buff with a shield equipped, increased Shield Slam’s damage significantly, and replaced Shield Block with Shield Charge… it wouldn’t make people that want to DPS with Prot’s playstyle happy, but it’d get the job done.
It was removed because it was bad and redundant. It was broken for like the first 3 weeks of a patch but then got smashed with the nerf bat and was useless for the rest of the expansion.
I don’t know what point you’re trying to make with this comment, but if I had to guess, it’s that glad stance should be put back in the game because there’s specs in the game currently that aren’t FOTM.
To which I respond with: what a terrible argument. The way the game has changed since then, sure there are specs in the game currently not FOTM, but at least they are viable. You must have a short memory. Glad stance post nerf wasn’t viable. At all. If you tried to join a group as a glad spec warrior you were laughed at. Sure, those 3 weeks where glad stance was broken was cool and fun, but it was actually probably the worst thing that happened to warrior since WoW began after it was clubbed into the dirt with the nerf bat. So much so that they removed it. You want the real reason it was removed? It was a balancing nightmare. I’d hate to be the guy trying to figure out how to balance it. Everyone asking for glad stance back is really just asking for a DPS spec that’s also a tank because it does more damage than most DPS specs while having higher defense and can switch to a tank at the press of a keybind.
Let me ask you this: would any of you still play glad stance if it meant you equipped a purely aesthetic shield, with no stats or armor value?
Yes, I would. I love the look of prot, being able to dps while looking like a tank would be wonderful. That said, I doubt it will ever return. They couldn’t balance it for crap. And while I would love the aesthetic look, I think Blizz would say it is too confusing to people, especially in pvp.
Those are the heroic / mythic HFC logs of mine back in patch 6.2.
The point i’m making is saying “it did terrible dps” is a poor excuse to remove something. Because there will always be a dps spec at the bottom, so clearly blizzard should remove that one from the game because it is at the bottom.
Gladiator was viable.
I’m guessing you never played gladiator did you?
You couldn’t swap between glad stance and defensive stance in combat. So I have no idea where you are getting this whole “you have higher defense and can switch to tank whenever you feel like it” from. Hell when it came to the actaul legendary ring, you had to use the dps one in gladiator stance.
Shield block also got changed to shield charge when you are in gladiator stance. So you couldn’t use shield block while in gladiator stance.
Only because blizzard made it one. They had the smart idea of nerfing the damaging abilities themselves instead of adjusting the damage modifer the stance itself gave while you were in it. Which they later did anyway. Blizzard also did buff gladiator stance in 6.2 by making it so you get 50% bonus mastery from all sources while in Gladiator Stance. We are talking about a company that nerfed heroic throw and charge during 7.1 because “they did too much damage”.
There is a difference between the talent (Gladiators resolve) and the actual stance.
If you want to talk about something, at least get the actual facts correctly instead of spitting out random crap.
I don’t understand what are you asking here?
You might as well apply the same to holy paladins, elemental and resto shamans. As they can use shields and don’t get anything from them other than being a stat stick.
For you. I’m sure everyone who really min/maxed the hell out of it thought it was viable when they out DPS’d an afk MM hunter auto attacking a boss.
I’m going to be honest. Those logs don’t really help your case.
I see you’re the kind of person who was passionate about the spec and thoroughly enjoyed it, so you min/maxed it to the best of your ability. Unfortunately all in all what I’m getting from those logs is that in heroic you were at best middle of the pack DPS with the exception of a couple fights, and in mythic well…we just won’t talk about that.
The thing is, I’m not saying you are/were bad. Actually I’m saying the opposite.
It isn’t a poor excuse to remove it when it’s also a balancing nightmare. Of course, there’ll always be a bottom DPS spec, but the difference is the bottom specs today aren’t like bottom specs then, where your max possible DPS still equals out to average Joe afk in the back of the raid auto shotting the boss.
I did play glad stance. For about 3 days. I switched to fury when I realized how cheesy it was. I’m aware you couldn’t swap between glad and D stance in combat. There was no need to in PvE to do it in combat anyway, you were either a tank or you weren’t. But in PvP you could duck behind a pillar, drop combat, and swap. But I digress because we’re not talking about that. Even in glad stance you had higher defense than the average DPS spec, because obviously you were wearing a shield, as well as the whole protection specialization tree at your disposal. Even if you couldn’t swap in combat, changing from tank to DPS at the push of a button from one fight to the next made it a little obnoxious. Speaking of obnoxious, that APM…boyyyyy.
I don’t even know what to say to this. You honestly don’t think Glad stance was a balancing nightmare? Lol. It’s the same reason they won’t add SMF back.
It’s a simple question. Would you play glad stance if the shield was purely aesthetic with no stat stick?
You’re also conveniently leaving out the part where Glad Stance was absolutely ridiculously good in Highmaul, and then was still bad enough to sink to a bottom 5 spec by the end of that tier. Or the part where it was dead last throughout Blackrock Foundry.
Everything is a balancing nightmare if we are being honest. Again we are talking about blizzard here. Who felt it necessary to nerf the two least damaging abilities warriors have in the middle of Nighthold. Both of which you cannot use if you are in melee (which is where warriors should be).
And what was so different about pressing a button and swapping to say arms or fury? The cast time?
I would love for you to prove this little hyperbole of yours.
Honestly if you could do endless 30 with a spec, it is fine to use in raids.
Some of us try to offer solutions or at least get the creative juices going. I’m not just complaining for complaining’s sake. But if you want to be sore about it, feel free.
