[6.0 Guide] Gladiator - More Furious than Fury

[Archimtiros]

You think Gladiator is still viable? The encounters in Blackrock Foundry create a lot of room for padding the meters which skew warcraft logs but I am doing really well with Gladiator.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/pLMbNjgxd7WKcznk

Anyone still play it?

I'm not sure what you consider padding while linking Blast Furnace. There really isn't a whole lot of padding in Blackrock Foundry at all, truth be told. Almost all damage is effective.

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Ya, I'm not using execute at all. I need to look at the math to see if its even viable, but from what I've read its risky to use, as you have a greater chance to reduce your damage output.

Viable, yes, but the rotation is tricker and it really isn't much of a gain. You are gaining slight damage but losing out on Enrage procs (and rage to go with it), S&B resets and US stacks. It takes very good timing to use it optimally.

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TBH I think the only thing Glad is terrible at is padding meters because we can't get ravager lol.

Quick question, I see no executes in your log, are you just ignoring it and sticking with HS/Deva in that phase?

Most Arms/Fury Warriors don't use Ravager anymore either, again I'm confused as to what exactly yall consider padding. AoE =! Pad.

[Warriorsarri]

You say there's not much padding in BRF, but then you look at people like this.

[Racthoh]

You say there's not much padding in BRF, but then you look at people like this.

this is hilarious, he just went in like hey guys nobody touch these pack beasts pls.

[Archimtiros]

You say there's not much padding in BRF, but then you look at people like this.

That's not padding though and you know it. That's his guild allowing him to solo the adds. Scumbag? Sure, but still not padding, the damage is effective. We need a different word for it.

[Cyclonus-WOW]

The word would be Greedy.

A ton of classes gain from being able to hit those adds/spread dots to them etc. He's effectively nerfing his raids output on the main target by soloing the adds. Sure some classes aren't going to increase their ST output, i'm sure they did that for fun.

[Kumqatninja]

I saw that the other day and I thought I had it toggled to mythic at first. I was so confused, I have to tank the adds on mythic and there is no way I could solo every wave like that. Then when I realized it was heroic, my thought was just "really?".

That's not padding though and you know it. That's his guild allowing him to solo the adds. Scumbag? Sure, but still not padding, the damage is effective. We need a different word for it.

If you watch the replay of that fight it looks like he keeps the waves alive longer so that he has multiple waves up at once to deep wounds/bladestorm/ravager. Either that or he just doesn't do enough damage to actually kill them. Props to him for staying alive with that many adds up. I know if I tried that, I'd kill them too fast.

[caervek]

I believe most Glad's are ignoring Executes as it is barely an increase not to mention if there is more than 1 target then it is completely a decrease to execute instead of heroic strike.

Ya, I'm not using execute at all. I need to look at the math to see if its even viable, but from what I've read its risky to use, as you have a greater chance to reduce your damage output.

Cool, I don't use it at all because its a <1k dps increase in sims and I cba with managing the extra ability for that, figured I was being "an bad" though, glad to know others feel the same

Most Arms/Fury Warriors don't use Ravager anymore either, again I'm confused as to what exactly yall consider padding. AoE =! Pad.

Stuff like ravager on beastlord/trains (or speccing bladestorm for them).

Basically when I say padding I mean aoeing simply for the sake of number boosting, I.E a situation where the trash adds are going to go down anyway simply from cleaves, and speccing your AoE talents over your ST talents means your DPS will look sick but the actual boss is going to be up longer as a result.

[Sethanor]

Basically when I say padding I mean aoeing simply for the sake of number boosting, I.E a situation where the trash adds are going to go down anyway simply from cleaves, and speccing your AoE talents over your ST talents means your DPS will look sick but the actual boss is going to be up longer as a result.

i guess mages going fire on every fight when you have warriors in the raid could be considered padding :P

[Shiroh]

Well, padding by definition is doing pointless stuff. Cleaving on Paragons would be considered padding because 2 targets will heal up when 1 dies, so all the cleave damage is pointless. AOEing the adds on Beastlord alone is NOT padding because the adds have to die. You can call it Rank-whoring or whatever, but don't change definitions as you go :P

[caervek]

Well, padding by definition is doing pointless stuff. Cleaving on Paragons would be considered padding because 2 targets will heal up when 1 dies, so all the cleave damage is pointless. AOEing the adds on Beastlord alone is NOT padding because the adds have to die.

Unless a group lacks the ST damage to actually kill the boss then the adds should be getting mowed down by regular cleave/splash damage, anyone AoEing them is padding out their meter by nuking the wrong target with the wrong ability. The same goes for the small adds on Operator.

[Archimtiros]

The word would be Greedy.

A ton of classes gain from being able to hit those adds/spread dots to them etc. He's effectively nerfing his raids output on the main target by soloing the adds. Sure some classes aren't going to increase their ST output, i'm sure they did that for fun.

Well I don't know about this.

When the adds are going to die quickly to AoE anyways, the effective Single Target gain is nil regardless of who kills them or how they die, as long as they die. Realistically speaking if he is the only one killing the adds, they are probably up longer than they would have been had everyone went ham on them. The only way your idea would work is if the adds were purposefully left alive and only those who gained ST through any source of AoE were allowed to hit them. This is already accomplished due to spears though, so I really doubt the gain would be anything close to dramatic.

That said it is definitely greedy.

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Well, padding by definition is doing pointless stuff. Cleaving on Paragons would be considered padding because 2 targets will heal up when 1 dies, so all the cleave damage is pointless. AOEing the adds on Beastlord alone is NOT padding because the adds have to die. You can call it Rank-whoring or whatever, but don't change definitions as you go :P

Well that isn't really the definition of padding. Padding is doing damage that is inconsequential to the execution of the fight.

Everything else you said is correct. Just a minor distinction. You could argue though that AoE is "pointless" when they are going to die eventually anyways, which is a completely subjective matter. I agree with your point though!

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Unless a group lacks the ST damage to actually kill the boss then the adds should be getting mowed down by regular cleave/splash damage, anyone AoEing them is padding out their meter by nuking the wrong target with the wrong ability. The same goes for the small adds on Operator.

That isn't true at all because the adds do pose a threat and need to die for the proper conduction of the fight. Are they a huge threat? Not really. Do they need to die in 3s or less? No, but still they must die.

Completely incidental cleave is not as strong as people think. Very few classes actually have incidental cleave inside their single target rotation, and those that do generally wouldn't be capable of taking down AoE packs by themselves in any reasonable amount of time while actively maintaining their single target rotation.

That is why you play to classes strengths. BB/Avatar is not a dramatic ST dps increase for Warriors but Bladestorm is a dramatic AoE DPS increase. Conversely, going Arcane over Fire is a huge Single Target DPS increase (assuming you aren't tricking Ignite, which is an advanced tactic for fire that puts their ST DPS pretty close to Arcane in some situations) for Mages, so you should generally put them on ST before AoE.

It's all about managing things smartly, not drawing a hard line that nobody can cross.

[Razorrect]

Do you think Gladiator is here to stay? I mean, the way they just nerfed it to the ground, I am just left wondering if they will just take gladiator out of the game at some point. I was killing Oregorger Mythic with my guild today, and when I went to look at the logs to see my percentile, I was stunned that the sample size was so insanely low. 44 gladiators had done Oregorger mythic. Just sad!

[Archimtiros]

Do you think Gladiator is here to stay? I mean, the way they just nerfed it to the ground, I am just left wondering if they will just take gladiator out of the game at some point. I was killing Oregorger Mythic with my guild today, and when I went to look at the logs to see my percentile, I was stunned that the sample size was so insanely low. 44 gladiators had done Oregorger mythic. Just sad!

It'll stay in, it's just underdog. I'm not going to argue whether or not it should be lower than Fury/Arms, but it's not much different from triple dps spec classes when one or two are sub optimal. Nothing about Gladiator is broken (read: game breaking) though, so no reason to remove it.

I think next expansion we'll see it improved upon though. I'd really like to see it just made baseline, after the WoD "trial period" is over. Prot doesn't ever use Battle Stance anyways, so might as well just roll it right in.

[Razorrect]

If anything, I hope they fix our numbers soon, patch it up a little, and indeed, I hope they keep working on it!

You just can't love every spec of a class, and for me, Fury is just not fun, sadly, the trend is that Fury just becomes better and better, while Arms (and now glad)
fall even further behind.

[Archimtiros]

If anything, I hope they fix our numbers soon, patch it up a little, and indeed, I hope they keep working on it!

You just can't love every spec of a class, and for me, Fury is just not fun, sadly, the trend is that Fury just becomes better and better, while Arms (and now glad)
fall even further behind.

Arms isn't that far behind Fury, feel free to play it if you want to. Sarri went through all of progression as Arms and their guild finished rank 9 world, so don't think you have to play Fury to be competitive.

Is Fury generally better than Arms? Yes. You just need to be a better player to make Arms keep up, but if you master it, Arms can do some absolutely sickening damage with Executes.

As for Glad... similar story. It's behind Fury sure, but that doesn't mean you can't play it effectively and still excel.

[WarBringerPT]

So I lvled up my warrior, when I dinged 100 I knew I had to try glad spec.
So I'm atm with 648 ilvl, with 2 shitty trinkets (lobster trinket from nagrand rare and frostwolf rep).
Thinking of making/buying crafted trinkets, but do glad warr uses dps trinkets or tank trinkets? Thinking of buying/making both trinkets and upgrading the to 4/4 (not gonna be on brf norm for a while). That darkmoon trinket has that bonus armor...

[caervek]

Tanking trinkets, get the DMF armour one, fully upgraded it will last to heroic blast furnace or further. Try LFR or follower missions for a second trink.

You can by all means use STR based trinkets but they will always be worse than an armour trinket of the same or slightly lower level.

[Razorrect]

I really hope Blizz takes a look at glad numbers next patch. I want my fury spec out!

The recent "glad stance increases mastery by 30%" though... I don't think that's gonna cut it. At ALL!

[Ealyssa]

The recent "glad stance increases mastery by 30%" though... I don't think that's gonna cut it. At ALL!

IMO this change is only to make glad gear toward mastery. To bring closer mitigation and dps gearing.
Only the first step of finally fixing this over nerfed dps talent. Maybe bumping it to +8-10% in addition.

4.2 is only one day old. At least we now know that blizzard is looking at it. Hope they look it enough to be viable again.

[Kumqatninja]

BA ring proc is defensive in nature only, 25% damage reduction+split damage taken. Typical oversight by the Devs on Gladiator. No surprise.