So... Gladiator stance?

[Qoma]

yes, and how many times during WoDs was it on par with Arms and Fury? Never. Unless you count the fictitious patchwerk fights that didnt exist.

This comparison in dps to Arms or Fury keeps getting brought up in arguments against Gladiator. All this is is tuning. If DK's Frost was doing less damage than DK's Unholy, does that mean Bliz should just cut Frost? Obviously not.

Real arguments are: does having a DPS and a Tank option within the same spec make one or the other too hard for Blizzard to tune; does it create player issues with gearing; do other abilities such as Shield Wall or Recklessness belong or not belong and what challenges does that impose on a developer or gameplay; etc.

[Volardelis]

In all honestly, I hope blizzard changes their mind in wake of the support Gladiator has gotten since that cowardly message within a topic about fistweaving that gladiator is getting removed. I wouldn't care that if they make it a 4th spec that its not available right off the bat with Legion Beta. But removing a playstyle and 'fantasy' that is really needed in terms of dps * because they are too lazy to try and make it work with the prot changes coming in legion.** They brought in glad stance for a reason, which was to allow warriors to dps as a S&B without the pressure of getting forced into tanking to play as a S&B. Sure it was overtuned at the start of WoD and got nerfed, but it did receive some love in 6.2. Shame that they are removing it in legion. Why even bring it in if they were just gonna remove it? Heck, why even buff it in 6.2 if they are gonna remove it in legion? Makes no sense. And unlike fistweaving, gladiator had the all boxes ticked to be counted as a separate spec*** the only thing that made it count as a "subspec" was the fact that it was a talent, which was blizzards idea as it was easier to bring it into WoD instead of making it into a 4th spec right on the fly.

Unfortunely, the WoW dev team are in a state of mind that they can make classes fit 'fantasy's' better by gutting most of their key abilities and features (presences for DKs, seals for pallys for example)

*(considering fury in legion is just gonna be arms with an extra 2 hand weapon)

**(which isn't really that much, still gonna be the same playstyle, just with an extra way to generate rage (which failed in the past mind you))

*** (Proving grounds, counts as a dps, so separate from protection which is counted as a tank. Can't switch stances in combat, like how you can't switch specs in combat. achieved a different result using similar or same toolkit (like feral back before MoP where both tank and dps were bound to it)

[caervek]

Sadly I doubt they are going to change their mind, it's very rare Blizzard will ever do a 180 on something even if they realise they are wrong, that usually forces them to dig in more. The only times I recall them ever doing a U turn because of major flashback are WoD flying (biggest riot in the games history) and RealID names, and the second one was more a case of they discovered it was unlawful in Europe and they couldn't justify only doing it to the US.

One saving grace is that with the big changes coming in Legion the will be a number of ways to spec a Fury/Arms warrior, and with rend optional and HS available it should be possible to make one of them play lie Gladiator. Sadly that doesn't make up for the loss of the S&B fantasy

My current progression style in mythic HFC is to use Gladiator on all the bosses we are either learning or farming, but use Arms on bosses we are close to killing for that extra bit of execute. Because it doesn't really matter if you use Gladiator/Fury for learning bosses and arms sucks on farm bosses.

[Volardelis]

Sadly I doubt they are going to change their mind, it's very rare Blizzard will ever do a 180 on something even if they realise they are wrong, that usually forces them to dig in more. The only times I recall them ever doing a U turn because of major flashback are WoD flying (biggest riot in the games history) and RealID names, and the second one was more a case of they discovered it was unlawful in Europe and they couldn't justify only doing it to the US.

One saving grace is that with the big changes coming in Legion the will be a number of ways to spec a Fury/Arms warrior, and with rend optional and HS available it should be possible to make one of them play lie Gladiator. Sadly that doesn't make up for the loss of the S&B fantasy

My current progression style in mythic HFC is to use Gladiator on all the bosses we are either learning or farming, but use Arms on bosses we are close to killing for that extra bit of execute. Because it doesn't really matter if you use Gladiator/Fury for learning bosses and arms sucks on farm bosses.

I like using gladiator for progression, as you tend to get the same dps on average across the attempts. Unlike arms which only really shines in execute phase, or fury which is RNG with procs

[Jshadowhunter]

I'd go to US forum immedeatly so I could /sign it, but alas, I'm not.

Still don't want Gladiator Stance removed. =( I like sword&shield dps.

[Toppy]

In all honestly, I hope blizzard changes their mind in wake of the support Gladiator has gotten since that cowardly message within a topic about fistweaving that gladiator is getting removed. I wouldn't care that if they make it a 4th spec that its not available right off the bat with Legion Beta. But removing a playstyle and 'fantasy' that is really needed in terms of dps * because they are too lazy to try and make it work with the prot changes coming in legion.** They brought in glad stance for a reason, which was to allow warriors to dps as a S&B without the pressure of getting forced into tanking to play as a S&B. Sure it was overtuned at the start of WoD and got nerfed, but it did receive some love in 6.2. Shame that they are removing it in legion. Why even bring it in if they were just gonna remove it? Heck, why even buff it in 6.2 if they are gonna remove it in legion? Makes no sense. And unlike fistweaving, gladiator had the all boxes ticked to be counted as a separate spec*** the only thing that made it count as a "subspec" was the fact that it was a talent, which was blizzards idea as it was easier to bring it into WoD instead of making it into a 4th spec right on the fly.

Unfortunely, the WoW dev team are in a state of mind that they can make classes fit 'fantasy's' better by gutting most of their key abilities and features (presences for DKs, seals for pallys for example)

*(considering fury in legion is just gonna be arms with an extra 2 hand weapon)

**(which isn't really that much, still gonna be the same playstyle, just with an extra way to generate rage (which failed in the past mind you))

*** (Proving grounds, counts as a dps, so separate from protection which is counted as a tank. Can't switch stances in combat, like how you can't switch specs in combat. achieved a different result using similar or same toolkit (like feral back before MoP where both tank and dps were bound to it)

Take a look at the warrior talents and pvp talents and tell me with a straight face that blizzard is giving a flying fuck about warrior.

Hell, I can think of one very simple way ofgiving us a flavorful gladiator offspec: We use the same artifact as prot. Except instead we focus on the sword, and get different sword models. So you can tell a prot and a glad warrior apart by whether their shield or sword are different. Likewise, our sword talent tree would be a gladiator line of talents. We can only use the sword or shield line, not both at the same time. Likewise, the two artifacts would level independently of each other, so no worry about double dipping into one artifact for two specs.

There good and simple and just requires blizz making sword models, which they should have done in the first damn place.

[Cyclonus-WOW]

I ranted on the wow forum.. thought you guys might appreciate it. Copy pasting it below.
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/to...11?page=16#301

This is a gladstance rant. I've been following it closely since the annoucement.

I was at Blizzcon when Gladiator Stance was announced. I was that guy at beers with everyone else nerding out about the talents that were still a year away.

I went on to start the gladiators resolve blogspot and interact with the dev's on twitter. This ended up building a twitter following, interacting with the glad community and developing a blog following. All while I did terrible things to try to get into the WoD beta. I can't say that process was fun. I created postcards, photoshop contests, put my personal information in 30 different websites and still didn't get beta. I ended up getting a key from a random dude who got one and didn't give a !@#$ on twitter.

If you were following the beta and the info on gladstance then you would have noticed that some of the blizzard twitter personalities actually didn't know what the plan was for gladstance. We had to hear it from lead designers about 20 times before people even believed it was going to be competitive with Arms/Fury and to this day there are GMs and players who simply don't believe it ever was. And I don't blame them.

It was frustrating to have to see someone like Lore on twitter saying gladstance didn't matter because it was just so tanks could do quests and stuff. He didn't know and another dev replied to educate him. That made it especailly painful when he was the guy who offhandedly dismisses gladstance from Legion entirely.

So, at the beginning and at the end we're dealing with a lot of visible lack fo caring. The same theme continued in the middle as well. Glad was always on a easily tuneable knob with the majority of it's damage being flat % bonuses vs caring about gear. They actually stopped saying it was meant to be competitive or get raid spots a few months into WoD and it was around then all the raiders decided to go fury/arms if they wanted to keep their raid spots. Fury and Arms even ended up doing amazing damage in the end ( lets not get into rotation talk ). So by now I feel like I was in this weird abusive relationship where Blizzard just continually shafted Glad. And while they don't owe me anything, I definitely didn't enjoy that. Hence why the blog is over and I haven't touched glad in half a year.

Anyway, I hate to be a negative %^- but the uproar over Heroic Strike didn't get it back to us for an entire expansion, so if this petition does anything for us we probably won't see the change until later down the line.

[Tublerone]

Blizzard not being retarded for once? Sorry, not gonna happen in the near future. I wonder with how much more gutting they will actually get away with.

[caervek]

Blizzard not being retarded for once? Sorry, not gonna happen in the near future.

Agreed sadly, aside from the WoD flying debacle I don't recall them ever doing a U-turn on something just because of player backlash, and even then they're making the same mistake in Legion lol.

[Toppy]

Agreed sadly, aside from the WoD flying debacle I don't recall them ever doing a U-turn on something just because of player backlash, and even then they're making the same mistake in Legion lol.

Titans Grip has been one. Blizzard does respond when the bitching gets big enough. I expect a few more dismissive remarks to warriors soon followed by a few apologies.

Hell, maybe we'll luck out and patach 7.1 has a green fire-esque warrior only questline where warriors can earn Gladiators stance.

[caervek]

Titans Grip has been one.

When did they say they were removing TG then double back? O.o

[Toppy]

When did they say they were removing TG then double back? O.o

Sorry, should a have been clearer.

Legion fury was obviouslly supposed to be SMF. They folded fast and are making it TG

[Murlocbait]

When did they say they were removing TG then double back? O.o

A great deal of evidence seems to indicate that Fury was supposed to go SMF with our Artifact. Given the VERY vocal response from players after seeing the Artifact, it seems like Blizz might've done a 180 on that and made us TG instead. It's also possible, however, that they had already decided to go with TG before Blizzcon but had not had time to implement it yet. So I wouldn't necessarily say Blizz flipped on that one, though it is possible.

Edit: OT, I would not hold my breath for Glad coming back in Legion. Maybe, maybe in 8.0... but even that I don't expect. Damn shame really - maybe if they ever decide to do 4th specs for non-druids, they'll have Glad in their pocket. But otherwise, I think we're boned.

[caervek]

Legion fury was obviouslly supposed to be SMF.

Nah it was always going to be TG, it just looked a bit like SMF on the gnome they showed holding the artifacts because they were scaled wrong for that race.

[Murlocbait]

Nah it was always going to be TG, it just looked a bit like SMF on the gnome they showed holding the artifacts because they were scaled wrong for that race.

That was the Blizz line at Blizzcon, but then the beta data shows the weapons labeled as 1-handers internally and SMF data in the Legion files. Sure SMF will remain for levels up to 100, but the internal label and initial size of the weapons makes it pretty clear that Fury was probably supposed to go 1-handed in Legion, but they changed their mind.

[Qoma]

All of the datamined images on front page MMO-champ are definitely 1her size. Anyway, how this relates to Glad is that Blizzard definitely heard that outcry and changed their tune fast. My concern is that there is a much larger playerbase for Fury than there is for Gladiator, so creating change will also happen a lot faster for them.

[Murlocbait]

All of the datamined images on front page MMO-champ are definitely 1her size. Anyway, how this relates to Glad is that Blizzard definitely heard that outcry and changed their tune fast. My concern is that there is a much larger playerbase for Fury than there is for Gladiator, so creating change will also happen a lot faster for them.

Also a world of difference between a fairly minor graphical change, and iterating upon and balancing a spec or sub-spec. Realistically, Glad is gone for all of Legion, perhaps forever.

[caervek]

That was the Blizz line at Blizzcon, but then the beta data shows the weapons labeled as 1-handers internally and SMF data in the Legion files.

The is SMF data in Legion because it's not going anywhere, Fury will still have TG/SMF as an option, it's just the artifacts are 2H so TG will be the only viable option at L110. In 8.0 when artifacts bite the dust Fury will start using both weapon types again.

And what outcry? For every person saying "zomg they takin our TG, dis sux" the was another player looking forward to SMF being dominant. And it was what, 24h between the reveal of the Fury artifacts and the tweet that they were 2h's, Blizzard can't schedule a meeting in that time never mind make an important decision.

*EDIT*

I think the big reason people assumed they were 1h's wasn't just the scale with the goblin, but that the Arms 2h is on a gnome and Ashkandi/Zin'rokh sized. That made the difference appear much bigger (NB it's cool that the arms artifact is bigger than the TG ones).

[Murlocbait]

I personally don't think it had anything to do with public response; I think it was an internal decision. But I also think the size of the weapon and it being internally labeled as a 1hander pretty clearly indicates that Fury was originally going with 1handed weapons in Legion, and that Blizz decided just before Blizzcon to switch to 2handers.