Trying to get better at my warrior. I often find myself sitting D stance for entire arena matches or BGs, and obviously my damage is suffering because of it.
Usually I used Sharpen and use D stance before the match starts, and I don’t ever really come out of it.
The more I play though, the more D stance seems like it should just be used as a defensive cooldown, right? One to pop when you feel uncertain or you know burst is coming, but otherwise you’re in B stance?
Looking for advice from more experienced warriors.
That’s more or less the case with dstance. I’m 2524cr on war and unless I’m directly targeted and tunneled with my healer in full cc I sit battle and just pump out more pressure than they can handle. It’s exetrmely rare I ever sit it unless I’m fighting RMP/jungle, in which case I sit it when rogue has kidney off CD and swap out after he uses it to pressure than back as it’s coming off, samething for jungle but with their stun/trap set ups. Ofc for jungle you’ll know if their targeting you ahead of time to decide if it’s really needed.
Battle is when you’re ahead and trading favorably, so basically when you have the CD and/or CC advantage
Defensive when you aren’t trading favorably and/or are concerned that you’ll either be swapped to (ret/warr hitting your partner) or set up on (polymorphed by rm until you’re back off dr)
It’s fine to start in defensive, but don’t pre-sharpen. It’s for eating heals, not the extra MS damage.
You’ll fall behind in terms of pressure by indefinitely sitting defensive.
It’s basically a double strength mortal strike for six seconds, so you’ll want to try to use it when you think the target will take heavy healing. Example being when you’re bursting, and/or the healer (or dps, if they can self-heal) is coming out of CC.
Lets say you storm bolt an enhancement shaman, and whack him down to 50% from 90%, you might consider sharpening as the stun is fading to prevent his instant healing surges from being as powerful.
Or sharpen a Warrior as his Rdruid is coming out of the hoj your Paladin put him in, and if he isn’t paying attention he might throw his swiftmend into the sharpen.
I played a handful of games today trying to be aware of my stance and it was WAY better. Several 20k crits, which is fun as heck.
As I keep playing I’ll try to be more aware of that use. I was sharpening too early for sure, kind of on the opposite side. Sharpening as part of the burst instead of as a way to keep the pressure on following a go.
Thanks for your help! If you have any other general advice, I’d love to hear it.
Two biggest ones are probably making sure you have a way of “sticking” your damage, like having charge and/or leap off CD when you go to bolt warbreaker somebody so that you aren’t getting kited on that (or conq banner for instance).
Then just kind of have a plan (and be on the same page as your team) as to what you’ll be peeling. Disarm on Warbreaker then Duel on Doomwinds can stuff the whole enemy teams setup and that’s just you pressing two buttons at the right time.