If it was the fantasy you wanted you could just roll Arms, spec D stance, and make macros to change the icon of Mortal Strike to Shield Slam and Charge to Shield Charge. Then your DPS can suck and you can have your fantasy.
Shame they got rid of the shield graphic for D stance. Can’t do that anymore.
You just sound like an angry person. Glad stance did great Dps and felt amazing lets just do that again. Think it’s time for the ignore if you are just going to troll players on the forums who genuinely love something and you have nothing to offer to the discussion that is meaningful.
If the Devs don’t bring back Sword and Board Dps they are just missing the mark on something that the players really love and more sub opportunities. There really is no reason to not have an Iconic Dps spec of Sword and Board dmg in the game. That’s all there is to it. Good luck and hope you find peace.
No I’m just a realistic person. You sound like a person who can’t accept the fact that the spec was terrible and was terrible for the game.
Except…it didn’t.
I’m the troll but you literally said this
W h a t.
I gave you an alternative to feed your fantasy need. At this point any discussion about glad stance isn’t meaningful to anything because guess what? It’s not even in the game.
You mean like…probably less than 5% of the playerbase?
I don’t even have to try in this argument. Everyone knows who you are and everyone knows you bring no purposeful argument here. You literally pop up on these forums once in a blue moon, complain about prot and glad stance because you can’t do alot of damage and have insane durability as a tank. You derail every other thread with this nonsense and god knows how many arena forum threads you’ve derailed with your “boohoo prot sucks in PvP because I can’t 1 shot someone while being harder to kill than a raid boss” and “Wahh they got rid of my absolutely busted glad stance spec”
You don’t even play warrior anymore and you make it so apparent that you don’t care about warrior anymore because you “play a real tank now” and “prot pally is so much better” so why even troll the warrior forum anymore to begin with?
I’d get it if your ideas weren’t just so outlandish or you weren’t so adamant that you’ve moved on to pally but you make it sound like you really don’t even care about warrior anymore so why complain about it if you don’t play it anymore? And if you do care why do you whine when you’re not the most OP thing in the game? Present reasonable arguments man. Prot doesn’t have to 1 shot someone and be indestructible at the same time to be decent.
I’d buy a 6 month sub right now if they announced the return of glad spec or something like it. Do it Blizzard. Some of the most fun ive ever had in WoW.
First of all, Gladiator stance had one giant tuning knob. The tuning knob was the ability itself, Gladiator Stance. It had a + % damage.
That’s your tuning knob. If it overperforms by 10%, nerf the stance until it’s within range. If it underperforms by 10%, buff the stance until it’s within range.
Other than that, the spec was completely fine. Rotationally, it was completely fine. In terms of toolkit, it was completely fine. It was a complete spec, because it was prot spec.
Their utter incompetence at balancing this game is not a reason for why they could not modify that % damage on the stance ability to put it right in center pack, which is exactly where it was during Highmaul and Blackrock Foundry.
It was completely fine in Highmaul. Not overtuned, not undertuned. Right in the center of the pack.
I am so sick of this ridiculous fallacy. It was easier to tune Gladiator Stance than any other DPS spec in the game.
Look at the DPS numbers for prepatch. Look at the absurd number of covenants, conduits, legendaries and other nonsense they have added into this game, and how Shadowlands tuning numbers have broken the delicate balance in BFA during prepatch because of the Azerite powers on Shadowlands class design. Dropping those borrowed power systems and replacing them instantly reset the clock on every spec in the game, which all have to be individually and meticulously rebalanced going into the new xpac with the new borrowed power systems, each of which have to be rebalanced on top of the classes. Broken combos will be sought and abused, and it will take them weeks if not months to identify them and tune them.
They have added three new classes into this game with 3 new DPS specs since vanilla, and you are telling me that they couldn’t balance a stance with a % modifier on an existing spec that has been present since vanilla? Um, actually they can, and they did. Go look at Glad in Highmaul.
Maybe if they were concerned about balance, they shouldn’t have done a level squish and a stats squish every xpac, which requires them to scale every mob, boss, and class in the game on top of everything else?
Maybe they shouldn’t be drastically recalibrating things like potions, class raid and party buffs, or doing “unpruning” on a whim after abilities were pruned?
I’m sorry, was tuning a giant button that says “+X% damage” more of a challenge than a single thing I’ve mentioned?
Every spec has a tuning aura. While I make no argument that turning the knob on a subspec’s activating stance is hard (its identical to the % damage buff from SMF in concept) it is by definition harder than every single other spec in the game because it’s an additional step. An easy step, but an additional one.
Balancing the subspec was problematic at the conceptual level. A dps with a tank’s mitigation and toolkit runs into problems. Maybe they could’ve made it work. But Backstabbath’s estimation of less than 5% of the playerbase caring is far too generous, it’s far under a percent. Other than the FOTM rerollers, it’s only fans was a niche of a couple people obsessed with the idea of using a shield while playing a role where nothing tries to hit you. If true off-tanking were still a thing in this game, it could find a very effective spot there, but it’s not so here we are.
This is completely irrelevant to any discussion on glad stance.
Right: Elemental Shaman vs Enhancement, you barely notice a difference. Especially now that armor is mostly from on-use defensives and passive armor is a joke. The big passive defensive boon for tanks is the extra Stam and that’s about all.
The role system I feel killed the RPG and ushered in the Action-Adventure game. Since you can’t fill an intermediary space of roles (no true hybrid) and the game was optimized for Mythic raid, it has unfortunately lost some of its original intrigue.
Perhaps irony is that every time there’s a “damage-healer”, everyone flocks to it, invalidating the bad systematic design to roles.
One correction, shield block was changed into Shield Charge (a small DPS cooldown) when in Gladiator Stance, so they did not have the same mitigation toolkit.
They also did not have Defensive Stance (couldn’t switch in combat), and it would be easy to disable the Protection passive ability that gives you +% stamina and Armor, or make it conditional upon being in defensive stance. They made Glyph of Shield Slam conditional on being in defensive stance. Shield Charge was conditional on being in Gladiator Stance and replaced Shield Block.
They did, in Highmaul. It was a functioning proof of concept.
FOTM rerollers aside, I didn’t play it because I like the “fantasy” of sword and board DPS. I played it because I like playing Protection and sometimes I want to DPS. Gladiator literally was this. No new spec needed. Just add a stance, tune, and bingo.
I disagree because it means you can just tune that button instead of anything else (e.g. abilities, talents, etc) and get a flat tuning rate to your entire offensive damage output.
What? The button is a tuning aura, it just only applies in certain circumstances. It is by definition easier to tune the base tuning aura, than the situational one.
Is there a base tuning aura on each class written into the code without a tooltip?
If so, I apologize, I didn’t know that.
My point about Gladiator Stance was that it was apart from Defensive Stance, meaning that you can tune Gladiator’s DPS completely separately from baseline Protection. That insulates the tank spec from the DPS spec.
Bingo, though they seem to strive more and more to avoid using them.
Thank you for letting me know.
It really doesn’t though.
To you.
To you.
Ironic.
It did not.
For the first month.
I’m not sure what you mean by this.
Well, going based on the data from Highmaul from Warcraft Logs.
The Butcher on Mythic:
Mostly clean, single target fight - I had to go through over 6000 logs before I found the first Gladiator at spot #6138 with a truly stunning - 44,150.7 DPS. In July. With item level 700. By contrast, spot 100 - 200 were all over 58,000 DPS with clears from April. Top DPS were over 65k with the top over 70k.
/zone/rankings/6#boss=1706&page=62
/zone/rankings/6#boss=1706
Mythic Imperator Margok:
/zone/rankings/6#boss=1705&class=Warrior&page=5
/zone/rankings/6#boss=1705&class=Warrior
/zone/rankings/6#boss=1705
Total number of Gladiator Warrior logs on Imperator Margok was 9. I stopped counting at 1000 fury warrior logs with mythic full clears on Highmaul. 9 versus over 1,000. You have to get to over 300 fury warriors before you get to the DPS of the top Gladiator Warrior on Margok.
I’m going to say they were never FOTM in Highmaul, even in June.
/zone/rankings/6#boss=1705&class=Warrior&spec=Fury&page=10
/zone/rankings/6#boss=1705&class=Warrior&spec=Gladiator
The first Gladiator Warrior appears, on page 5, beneath multiple Protection Warriors (I checked their casts, no Shield Charge), in position 448 on top DPS in this encounter with item level 700, with 50,642 DPS. This was from June. The first clear by a Gladiator Warrior was from Kaistu in January with 681 item level with 40,159 DPS. Both warriors were dead in the middle of the DPS in their respective raids.
The top warrior, which was Fury, with 78,273.6 DPS in June.
I feel like if you were suggesting that this spec was FOTM or overtuned after the first month, then that appears to be incorrect. The top DPS logged in this fight were Enhancement, DK, Destro, Demonology, Assassination, fire, elemental, one BM, and one Unholy. Enhancement dominated the top 100 on Margok by a large margin.
Gladiator was obviously underwhelming throughout the entirety of Highmaul and underplayed as a result (one of the real reasons I suspect they were cut in Legion).
Blackrock Foundry wasn’t much better. In fact; it was kinda worse for Gladiator. Only 5 Gladiator logs with a mythic Blackhand kill were logged. Compared to 481 Fury Warriors. The top Gladiator log was in position 406 compared to the Fury rankings.
/zone/rankings/7#boss=1704&class=Warrior&spec=Gladiator
/zone/rankings/7#boss=1704&class=Warrior&spec=Fury&page=5
Only 16 Gladiator Warriors cleared the Iron Maidens on Mythic, with the top posting position 257 compared to the Fury rankings at 46823 DPS.
/zone/rankings/7#boss=1695&class=Warrior&spec=Gladiator
Well, what about Hellfire Citadel, when allegedly they were an overtuned FOTM spec?
Only 63 cleared Mythic Archimonde, pulling position 37 against Fury rankings.
/zone/rankings/8#boss=1799&class=Warrior&spec=Gladiator
/zone/rankings/8#boss=1799&class=Warrior&spec=Fury
Against Mannoroth, only 66 Gladiators managed to clear with logs. The top DPS on gladiator was beneath 3,600 Fury Warrior clears with logs.
/zone/rankings/8#boss=1795&class=Warrior&spec=Gladiator
/zone/rankings/8#boss=1795&class=Warrior&spec=Fury&page=36
Again, I reiterate - these numbers are again clearly demonstrating that the real reason that Gladiator was cut was due to lack of popularity. Not tuning.
As a player that lost 2 of their favorite specs (glad spec for warrior and ranged survival for hunter) I can say that Blizz does not care about what the players want. It has been a struggle to find a class that I want to main since WoD. I make do with what Blizz gives me but I’m just waiting for a game to come out that offers me what I want (ranged archer dot spec or sword/board dps spec). Fortunately there appear to be a couple of options coming “soon” and Shadowlands may be my last expansion.
You said center of the pack.
For the first month.
Beyond that, no.
You could’ve asked before you wasted your time.
I suppose that was about the nonsense reply I should have expected.
It’s not nonsense. You were confused to my meaning. You should’ve asked for clarification. Would’ve saved you time looking up information I already knew.
Alright man, my b. No worries.
I was being quite literal, it would’ve saved you time and effort to have asked. As that looks like a good chunk of looking, like something I’d have done.
Future reference too, to post a link, ` before and after. You don’t have to break it up that way.