What if they brought back stances, Battle Stance single target, Berserker Stance: AoE, Defensive Stance: defensive. They could share 1-3 sec GCD with each other only. This is about class fantasy and playstyle only, not numbers.
Slam - Whirlwind - Revenge, would change into each other to match your stance.
Bladestorm - Recklessness - Avatar, same as above
Battle Stance: Damage to your primary target increased by x%
Berserker Stance: Damage increased by y%
Defensive Stance: Decrease damage taken by z%
As a side note, maybe make Avatar increase health like in Warcraft 3? Remove Last Stand? Combine? Talent?
Edit: You donāt lose rage when changing stances.
Coming from druid, which are still form locked, I can say that this is an outdated principle for the ānewerā paradigm of High APM play.
One global is expensive. Two is emotional.
I feel the stance differences are handled well now through the specialization changes. I will say itās frustrating to be unable to use certain abilities with a shield equipped as Arms (canāt Mortal Strike), making unpruning frivolous.
I think Stances as Talents are a great idea. For Prot, selecting between Gladiator Stance and Battle Stance as a possible talent row. For Fury and Arms, both getting Defensive Stance as a talent option (with their original stances ā Battle or Berserker as the ābaselineā invisible stance). Thatās the only way I see Stances fitting back into the game model.
Mixing defensive and offensive power into the same cooldown (Avatar + Last Stand into a single button) has not been a good system in the past. You typically want to use your offensives on cooldown (except holding to align/stack where possible), but defensives you want to use pre-emptively for key damage phases (or when your raid lead calls). Placing them on the same timer really screws up the ability to use them meaningfully and without angst.
It doesnāt have to be low APM. It could be 1sec gcd for stances. Doesnāt trigger gcd on any other abilities.
I totally agree on that point. I didnāt post it but if they just made you bust out a generic shield during shield block without having to change equipment, like they did for spell reflect. Only problem I could see with that is having both ignore pain and shield block?
I also agree having a sword and board damage spec, spartan fantasy! Just need to add 1h spears!
Just out of curiosity, when was there a noffensive and defensive cooldown in the past? And, Iām not too worried about prot losing an offensive cooldown. They could switch stance for a better damage cooldown, or hold it for defense. Youāre not really there to pull the highest numbers anyway.
My 2cents
One other problem with stances I see, it having too many buttons. But, it just depends on how they would implement it, and maybe how many abilities turn into other abilities? What if ignore pain is in battle, berserker, and shield block in defensive? That would be a bigger change for prot though. Would have to rework some things in their kit if they lost having both.
With respect, all of those ideas sound archaic and cumbersome just for the sake of nostalgia, I personally never want stance dancing to return and our abilities being locked each stance at a time for the sake of āClass flavorā miss with with that.
Fortunately for you thereās these great classic options for WoW where you can stance dance to your heartās content. Keep that crap out of retail though thanks.
With all respect, thereās nothing archaic about the updated version I had in mind. Iām sorry you feel that āclass favorā is joke, but thatās not really how everybody feels?
And fortunately for you, thereās a lot of other threads you contribute to instead if you like, So keep your opinions out, thanks.
Nah Iāll drop my opinion if I dang well please. Iāve played the class for 16 years, fought against Tactical Mastery, fought against Stances, was glad they were removed the class is better for it.
People who oppose Stances returning generally seem to think they would return exactly as they were with the same issues. Warriorās fantasy is watered down without baseline Stances and they should come back. Maybe not for the entire class, but at least for a spec (Arms? Or a 4th spec?).
Stances should be off-GCD and you shouldnāt lose any rage from swapping between them.
Battle Stance: increases damage output by 5%.
Defensive Stance: reduces damage intake by 20% and output by 15%.
Berserker Stance: increases leech by 20%.
It would be amazing if they came back baseline for a Gladiator spec.
I think youāre right on a lot of that. If they were a separate GCD, as @Tackle outlined, it could help fit better into the design. I would argue though that baseline stances already exist on the specs, but are just hidden auras. When youāre Arms and talent Defensive Stance, the button changes to Battle Stance when you would disable. Thereās no corresponding buff on your character, but the game āassumesā a baseline Battle Stance is always up (unless swapped).
I love that you note the Defensive Stance needs a heavier damage cut. Right now in Live, the stance reduces incoming by 20% but outgoing by a meager 10%. Itās really not balanced, and should be 15% less outgoing.
Hereās my thought on making stances work:
Prot can select Gladiator or Battle (2H)
Fury and Arms can select Defensive
These would be talent options, making a current competitor or two baseline for the spec.
When you talk about the baseline auras, e.g. 5% damage or 12% leech, I think those are better off being baseline spec tools or competing talents to the Stance options. The primary reason is to enable the stance fantasy if thatās your preference, but also not obligate anyone to it.
That last remark also assumes some kind of legitimate attempt is made at balancing talents and specs, which we unfortunately havenāt seen since Legion and Artifact Traits.
Iāve wished for stances to return for a while now. My thought on (all) class abilities has been this: if it was something you earned in a class quest during classic/vanilla, it should never have been pruned. Quests like these, at least for me, did much to help shape the classās identity.
Totally agree that stances should be independent of rage generation and that our abilities shouldnāt have stance requirements. However, Iād do it a little differently than the ideas proposed above.
Battle stance - Taking damage gives you a chance to perform an immediate counterattack on your current target for X damage.
Defensive stance - Damage taken is reduced by X%.
Berserker stance - Range on all melee attacks is increased by 3 yards. Movement speed increased by 3%. Taking damage has a chance to reduce the cooldown of your Charge and Heroic Leap by X seconds.
Stance swapping completely off the GCD, but incurs a small cooldown.
These would allow for warriors to be making dynamic decisions based on the combat theyāre currently in. Defensive stance when you really need the extra damage reduction, battle stance to battle your current target, and berserker for some additional wild-swinging style range and when you need to catch up to a target who may be training you. I feel the design of the other two stances is such that, while you could just sit in defensive, the tradeoff would be that you arenāt getting the damage benefit from the other two stances.
As for Gladiator stance, I donāt have terribly strong feelings about its return. But what Iād personally do is turn it into a prot pvp talent as follows:
Gladiator stance - Merges the effects of each of your three stances and replaces Shield Block with Shield Charge.
Anywho, this is just something from my personal wishlist for warriors. Iād love to see stances returned but redesigned somehow that we have the benefits of stances without the drawbacks that they originally had.
I mean I do get the sentiment here, but I think the idea seems cooler than how it would actually function. In reality, youād wind up in situations where this particular spec would need to go through two button presses to use one ability - as opposed to every other class/spec.
That is unless you have macros for everything. I personally really enjoy creating macros for my spells, but I think there are plenty of other people who would see this as more of a nerf than anything else.
The issue with stances has always been a few things.
1.) If you take the stance route of Vanilla where spells are locked, you get a cumbersome system with no benefits.
2.) A X% stance turns into simply aura swapping or camping in a specific stance. In MoP Bererker Stance was useful like one fight? Every other choice was Battle or Defensive.
You either get this weird system that has the illusion of benefits or you get a system that hamstrings the Warrior.
Flavor is something the class could use more of, but stances are not the answer. Visual effects, or taking the route of the Diablo 4 Barbarian with multiple weapons, is a much better way to add some flavor to the class.
True, but thatās exactly why weāre discussing returning and reworking said stances, not just reintroducing them as they were before they got removed.
Obviously Iām gonna prefer my idea to the OPās, but even taking their approach of:
Battle stance: ST
Defensive stance: Defense
Berserker stance: AoE
automatically gives you more dynamic gameplay because youāre switching your stance based on situational needs.
Thing is we already have the sick visuals and the multiple weapon options. Stances gave us the flavor of a fighter whoās mastered the ebb and flow of combat by changing up how they fight based on situational needs.
It could be as generic as:
battle stance for utility/mobility
berserker stance for offense
defensive stance for defense
It could be as complex as changing the stance as part of the rotation. Use 1-3 abilities then change stance. Repeat.
And again to help with ability bloat, these buttons could change depending on stance.
Thereās more you could do, Single target sustain, single target burst, cleave sustain, cleave burst, aoe sustain, aoe burst. And all of that is accomplished through buffs, debuffs, bigger damage cds, and smaller damage cds.