Gladiator dps, do we have any aoe?

[Zantos]

Aside from a possible talent or two, do gladiators have viable aoe? If so, what is it?

[Archimtiros]

Thunderclap applies Deep Wounds, but should not be spammed (depending on number of targets can be used in place of Devastate, will have to look into it more). Glyph of Cleave allows Heroic Strike to hit an additional target (wish it was two though!). Otherwise, its just talents.

[Cerilis]

What about revenge? Or do you need defensive stance to use it?

[Zantos]

What about revenge? Or do you need defensive stance to use it?

That would work too. It has a slight aoe to it.

[Archimtiros]

What about revenge? Or do you need defensive stance to use it?

Revenge is AoE damage but it isn't really used for AoE. There is no way to reset it either randomly or on demand, so you'll just use it on cooldown. If you are doing some kind of incidental AoE (waves of adds every so often) you might try to line it up, but it woudn't be worth it. We have more than enough GCDs to use on AoE. Better to use it on cooldown for rage.

[Zantos]

Thunderclap applies Deep Wounds, but should not be spammed (depending on number of targets can be used in place of Devastate, will have to look into it more). Glyph of Cleave allows Heroic Strike to hit an additional target (wish it was two though!). Otherwise, its just talents.

What about getting a glyph to increase the damage of thunder clap? Some people say gladiator isn't viable in the first tier due to its lack of aoe and the amount of aoe in the first tier.

[Archimtiros]

What about getting a glyph to increase the damage of thunder clap? Some people say gladiator isn't viable in the first tier due to its lack of aoe and the amount of aoe in the first tier.

I'm some people. And it honestly isn't. It is clear that there is more tuning to come at L100 however, so anything could happen.

With the current action list the glyph is a minor DPS loss.

[Zantos]

I'm some people. And it honestly isn't. It is clear that there is more tuning to come at L100 however, so anything could happen.

With the current action list the glyph is a minor DPS loss.

Im looking to go gladiator main. Is it such a drastic loss to be a gladiator? Isn't there a way I couldn't just tab target burn em down and do just fine?

[Archimtiros]

Im looking to go gladiator main. Is it such a drastic loss to be a gladiator? Isn't there a way I couldn't just tab target burn em down and do just fine?

Depends on what you want and the performance expected of you. Could you do fine? Sure. Is fine optimal? No.

If you are not in a bleeding progression guild, you should be fine. Even if you do care about performance, in the vast majority of raids AoE damage is abundant and doesn't make or break an encounter. More will kill adds faster, but there is usually more than enough and it rarely impacts the encounter. Very few fights in the few expansions have any kind of AoE DPS check.

Still, as I said before, it is very likely we will see more tuning for L100. Things could very well change.

[Bigbazz]

I tested Gladiator a fair bit in the raid testing and you honestly get smashed because of lack of AOE. It was a situation of playing Gladiator and being middle of the pack unable to push any more damage and then switching to fury for the next attempt and topping the damage by 40%. Obviously Fury is being tuned (and has been tuned since then) to fall more in line but you get the idea.

Gladiator AOE is just not strong enough, anyone can see that if you look at 5.4 Arms and how that was balanced to do mad AOE dps (via slam cleave and deep wounds tuning) that it should be fairly easy for them to tune Gladiator dps to do well in AOE. The issue comes down to PVP, Gladiator is already pretty strong in PVP if the forums are to be believed (not tried it much myself outside of duels) and increasing deep wounds damage could cause issues there.

[Zantos]

I tested Gladiator a fair bit in the raid testing and you honestly get smashed because of lack of AOE. It was a situation of playing Gladiator and being middle of the pack unable to push any more damage and then switching to fury for the next attempt and topping the damage by 40%. Obviously Fury is being tuned (and has been tuned since then) to fall more in line but you get the idea.

Gladiator AOE is just not strong enough, anyone can see that if you look at 5.4 Arms and how that was balanced to do mad AOE dps (via slam cleave and deep wounds tuning) that it should be fairly easy for them to tune Gladiator dps to do well in AOE. The issue comes down to PVP, Gladiator is already pretty strong in PVP if the forums are to be believed (not tried it much myself outside of duels) and increasing deep wounds damage could cause issues there.

Well it seems they have every intention of trying to make Gladiator a competitive dps. Would I live without being able to pull off massive aoe in a progression guild working on heroic? What about mythic? I am hoping they stick to their guns and give Gladiator some form of aoe. Yet again, I know there are several dps classes that do not really have access to strong, if any, aoe but are competitive. If its a 40% difference, I won't be able to play gladiator since my guild would want me to do something like fury over gladiator because of its aoe capabilities. I hate every other warrior dps spec.

- - - Updated - - -

Went and did some dungeons on a gladiator at 100. It seems deep wounds is more dps then I thought. I was able to keep rage up fairly well and have a lot of gcd time to actualyl cast thunder clap fairly often. Will have to wait and see what happens in live to see if aoe needs buffing. Im sure they will be watching Gladiators very closely in WoD since they cannot do a whole lot of testing until its live.