What the hell? Last stand sounded awesome as hell. All these specs with multiple immunities they can cycle through but oh no let’s get rid of last stand. Last stand isn’t even as good as an immunity.
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Yeah removing it in favour of more offensive nodes is definitely an interesting way to go.
But it also being an augment attached to Shield Wall is kinda better for Prot Warrior overall than it’s version that we had since it’s gone from passive every 4minutes that can happen when you don’t want it to, to a controlled 30% health buffer whenever you shield wall which is already on a short enough cooldown through Anger Management and your choice of either Defender’s Aegis and Impenetrable Wall and the moments either of them are better for the given fight.
So I’m definitely a little mixed on it, also in that same vein fury does have Kill or be Killed in it’s spec tree and Arms has Veteren Vitality as Colossus and both have a slightly stronger Second Wind now too in the way of passive defensive options at lower health.
In a pvp sense it would have been fun as hell. No different and lesser in power than classes which have multiple immunities and lay on hands type abilities.
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i mean last stand hasnt been a solid button for years now, im sorry.
I’ll be real, if it was an actual defensive you got to press vs just a passive you’ll most likely never notice then it would’ve been a lot worse of a loss.
We’re not really losing anything major of value as cool as it was thematically.
I a mixed on it. It was fun in duels on the beta, but having the additional damage reduction on defensive stance is actually huge when it comes to burst. And in keys, this will be great to have to reduce a lot of damage.
One problem apparently it only works on targeted damage, so fine for PvP but in PvE it’s almost absent entirely as a dps even if you trigger the condition it’s not a direct hit to get reduced by it’s passive.
oh damn really? I thought it would have worked with aoe damage >_< ugh.
They could have combined it with Bitter Immunity in my opinion.
It is also thematically that it is cool.
So I spent the afternoon doing more testing and this doesn’t appear to be the case. It’s actually pretty cracked - there’s a breakdown in the Discord updates channel.
Good to hear, so potentially in a world where you’re forced to take another talent over it (the whole Fury being more likely to tak BfC and Arms potentially changing to Stance Mastery with higher crit levels s2 onward as a guess) you’re practically out of a solid defensive on one spec if that ends up being the case.
This further cements the belief that the warrior tree still needs a lot more work.
Yeah… Haven’t been in there since SL 
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I mean it’s probably getting retuned, but it’s pretty easy to take.
- Arms can drop Barbaric Training and Slayer Fury can drop Crushing Force with practically no care. Stance Mastery might even be outright better offensively.
- Thane might drop BCmdr instead depending on final tuning, but we’re still looking at about a 1% difference either way.
Of course, the majority of the talent’s value is also tied to Defensive Stance, which is already criminally underused by the vast majority of players, and there’s always going to be a whole lot of low difficulty/farm content where you simply don’t care to use it anyway.
your loss
Talking about feeling good playing, not meta.
I think this is bcause defensive stance is not a fun thing to use for most players.
Like, it is good cause its a damage reduction on demand but the fact that reduce your damage creates a bad psicologic effect, even tho the damage loss is almost irrelevant when using it right.
Something like an ret paladin’s shield of vengence is a way better approach of an defensive imo.
So I don’t think blizzard should remove last stand in favor of that stance buff thing.
That’s exactly why, but it’s also a necessary evil to facilitate its near non-existent cooldown.
- They could rework it to be more palatable, but at that point it starts becoming just another cooldown, of which we already have several. Rather get rid of it at that point and make ER/DBTS/SR better.
- The other option is to lean into it, make that trade more rewarding, and give players more reason to care. In this case, a 15% DR is compelling, but a 30% DR is a lot more so!
That isn’t to say it’s a perfect solution for everyone - it’s not. Some players will still refuse to use it, but that’s where user agency comes in.
Dropping Barbaric Training for Arms would be rough in any AoE build especially since it’s a flat +10% cleave dmg and an extra 5% crit dmg ontop of it also giving the same to HS/Slam. Then again it would entirely be down to a sim question.
I also don’t necessarily think Crushing force is even an option to drop for fury as it’s only competing talent entering into Wild Strikes is Resonant Voice (especially with it’s high AA damage right now), even if it’s a small drop it’s a dps drop nonetheless which you wouldn’t really opt for in a dps focused build.
Yeah, it’s definitely apart of the skill ceiling aspect of the class knowing when to swap to defensive stance to survive damage taken during progression (Salhadar’s Combo comes to mind if you were 3 healing early enough into the tier). Kinda why I like keeping it on the same keybind between dps/tank stances.
Uh yeah… Let’s just say officially no warning perm ban for ‘misinformation’ (even though my call for the cov meta was the extact one that followed for s2, never bought into the venthyr sim bait with how those later fights were set-up for Sanctum and always suggested players the right answer when they came in asking which cov to play, which was either based on their m+/pvp/raid focus or if they didn’t play at any level that was relevant the true answer of it doesn’t matter pick the one you like the cosmetics of. Which is funny as none of it was ‘misinformation’).
Might’ve also called out people for some bad takes and they had a sook about it. No warning though mostly just seemed like a power trip from the mod team (I know you weren’t involved in that at least).
Still allegedly check in from time to time on an alt account 
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Depends on the player, I’ve always liked the whole Battle Stance / Defensive Stance aspects of some other classes in other games.
Xenoblade Chronicles X comes to mind, the first playthrough of it as a Samurai Gunner I used Offensive Stance and Defensive Stance in it’s Artes system quite religiously to burst when I wanted to and tank when I needed to.
WoW’s current version of Offensive (Battle/Berserker) and Defensive Stance pairings give a similar tactical feel to them as they’re easily macro’d to one button and allow for that on the fly ‘dance’.
Imo this is also a much better iteration of stances in general compared to previous versions that locked abilities to that stance, which just caused you to have double ping on your abilities other players didn’t have penalising them.
I would also say though players who dislike the penalty on Defensive Stance would probably feel different about it if it didn’t have a penalty attached it it and there was an additional +10% damage bonus added to Battle/Berserker stance alongside their current passives, which would still lead to the same result but they wouldn’t be putting their nose up at something because they see it as a slight. Even though this would still lead to a penalty on Defensive Stance you just wouldn’t have it obvious in the tooltip.
Yep, it is funny but peop would feel better if thats was the case
That’s imo would be the best thing to do.
I think Arms is being hostage of Defensive Stance and the fact that it is a near non-existent cooldown.
As DK, for instance, are hostage of grips being the thing that Blizzard insists that is raid utility
Like, removing stances and make something like Ignore Pain, Spell Reflect, Die by the Sword be at similar level than Ret and DK cd’s would be way better imo.
IBF is the same DR as DbtS but has a stun immunity instead of a parry. Not sure if IBF gets any further value out of hero talents.
Spell Reflect is already a much shorter CD than most other abilities that can immune mechanics. Although AMS does also immune the similar mechanics + extras that Reflect does not, but it does have a much longer cooldown.
Ignore Pain as it is now on the Beta isn’t entirely awful either and it has supporting hero talents to boost it’s value in Colossus for Arms.
Removing a unique flavourful aspect of the current version of stances to then add in more to these which are already pretty solid to begin with feels like it would be going too far.
Mind you from a defensive PoV we’ve hardly been touched whereas comparable to other specs they’ve been condensed/removed and are in a weaker defensive point than their TWW iterations.
Without going into hero talents we’ve got the following defensive abilities/passives.
Impending Victory
Second Wind
Rallying Cry
DbtS
Ignore Pain/FbV
Spell Reflect
Defensive Stance.
Mind you once we start looking at hero talents we get a fair bit more added to the mix.
Colossus specifically gets either a stronger ignore pain or a ‘cheat death’ passive in Veteran Vitality.
It’s increased bleed passives increase FbV healing by proxy.
Demolish also debuffs targets hit to deal less damage to you. Sort of a defense through offense kinda theming. It’s definitely been very helpful in previous seasons at reducing incoming damage during TWW itself.
I don’t necessarily think it’s bad that we’ve got the option of utilising Defensive Stance within our defensive toolkit, players being a little too skittish in PvP will sit in Defensive Stance a lot more than they should.
Even from a PvE angle I’m only ever really entering Defensive Stance to mitigate high damage portions during prog and almost always ignore it entirely during farm when those high damage moments are no longer threatening anymore due to gear / buffs from the raid renown track.
Yeah and I understand your point. Warriors have layers and layers of sustain and looks like midnight potentialize that even more.
In theory this is beautiful.
But the general feeling of most players (and I could be wrong to assume that but I don’t think I am) when it comes to really play with Arms in a content that the person in question do not yet mastered it, is that something like Ret Pal or any of the DK dps specs, to compare with plate wearers, are way safier sustain wise.
So to “solve” that, if Blizzard is considering that they need to approach the majority for once, maybe less defensives stuff but stronger would be a better way to go. That’s my point.
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Oh yeah I can understand that point entirely, but also I don’t agree with it to a degree as that’s just an incorrect community perception on the matter due to bad players giving it a bad rep.
Think FFXIV and their Dragoon floor tank memes. Not every Dragoon is a floor tank, but every floor tank is a Dragoon.
For example if we’re talking PvE Arms warriors right now are easily one of the last to die in a key during a trash pack because Fueled by Violence is leeching health for you, with proper defensive use during those moments the healer dies you will outlast that pack alongside the tank while almost every other dps will fall flat within the next ~10s while you can easily last an additional 20-30s assuming there isn’t an unrealistic amount of ‘bolters’ still left standing. Even in a raid setting a good Arms or Fury warrior will be one of the last to die too, albeit our death stats are kinda borked by the low end of the playerbase making it look a lot worse than it really is due to no innate cheat death mechanic.
In PvP it’s a little different only due to the nature of Warriors requiring to stay on target to heal themselves (Impending Victory) which does open you up to counterplay where you would be more reliant on others potentially for your survival in that situation if pillar kiting and relying on Second Wind is not on the cards for that moment.
Even going as far as comparing the Warrior defensive kit to DK or Paladin isn’t exactly the right way to look at it either as the weaknesses either of those have are also apparent to players of their spec and there’s still moments where they’ll fail if they’re not paying attention or are still learning the spec itself.
I don’t necessarily think you need to buff a spec’s defensive kit just to make it more noob friendly if said noobs don’t put in the bare minimum to learn how their defensive toolkit works and what they can do with it if they learn a little about where each works best in what situation.