Should Gladiator be a 4th spec?

[Bigbazz]

I love Gladiator, It'd be cool to see it have its own talent tree but personally I don't think it is needed. It works beautifully as it is right now and so there is no actual need for change. With that said, more could be done with it if it had it's own tree, these recent changes were clearly an effort to buff Protection tanks while still maintaining Gladiator balance, so there is a compromise situation needed between the two.

Bladestorm, Dragon Roar, Heroic Strike, Execute, Stormbolt etc etc all took a serious damage nerf in order for them to be able to buff Protection tanks.

[Self Inflicted Wounds]

I don't see how someone could say no. Its essentially there, minus the one talent choice it takes up on its own.

"We don't need fourth specs"
-Well we already have one, druids.

"It would be too hard to make a whole separate spec"
-Well all the spells are already there. They could change some spell names or keep it the same as it is now.

"Well what would this add to the game?"
Fourth specs could instead be a replacement for a new class. Instead of making a whole new class with 3 specs, Blizzard could just add a 4th spec to some/all the classes.

[Murlocbait]

If they shift the stance to much then Gladiator ends up doing to much damage is the thing. Right now gladiator damage should be about the same as it was pre-january 12th hotfix. If they buff it, then it'll end up doing to much damage. But if they nerf other abilities then it ends up with prot tanking doing to little damage. That's the issue. That, and the latest hotfix also made the choice of talents even more of a big fat "Who cares, none of them do much" because damage outside of revenge, devastate, shield slam, and deep wounds is so very low.

Well, we can already see they're realizing how the tuning needs to be done. Abilities shouldn't be nerfed directly, it was a stupid mistake and they never should've done it. The easiest adjustment is the damage buff from being in the Stance. They're tuning it down to 5%, with the buffs to abilities to get Prot back up and Glad should remain about the same, but might scale better now. All they need to do is adjust that Glad damage bonus, even if just by small amounts, and they can fine tune it that way.