Legion killed Gladiator Stance

[Jastall]

WoD killed Glad Stance. It was the best Warrior spec early in the expansion, and then Blizzard murdered it so that it competed with Survival as the very worst.

Truth be told not too many people actually liked it that much, least as far as I remember. It was a very spammy spec, and the fantasy of being a damage-dealing warrior doesn't mesh with the 1h + shield combo. Plus I think Blizzard just didn't like the idea that tanks were a talent change away from being viable DPS, given that talent swapping was super easy in WoD. Cheapens the idea of a DPS spec or somesuch.

I don't mourn it that much to be honest, it always felt half baked to me.

[Hoeth]

I want my Blood DK DPS spec back first!

[Deleted]

Gladiator stance was ridiculously spammy, I'm sort of glad I didn't have to play it for more than a reset or two.

[Nefarious Tea]

Gladiator stance was killed long before Legion. It was terrible after those first few weeks of Highmaul. They also said they didn't like the design of Gladiator and won't be going back to it any time soon.

Yea I don't know where OP got this notion from. They removed Gladiator like two weeks into HM when it was not just the top DPS spec for warriors but one of the top DPS in general. While still being essentially a tank. There's no way Blizzard was going to let that stay.

[Alidfe]

Gladiator stance was removed because it was impossible to balance

Not impossible. Blizzard just never really bothered trying.

[Not A Cat]

} will forever miss glad stance and will keep praying for its return

[Karadros]

...and the fantasy of being a damage-dealing warrior doesn't mesh with the 1h + shield combo.

Yeah, because what part of beating in a mob's face with a huge hunk of metal translates as damage dealing, eh.

Man, I miss Glad spec.

[Super Kami Dende]

If Warriors can have a single talent that switches them between a DPS prot warrior and a Tank prot warrior, I want Guardian and Feral merged.

Actually, both of those are entirely reasonable. Bring it on, Blizz!

*cough* Feral Affinity *cough*

[Jastall]

Not impossible. Blizzard just never really bothered trying.

It's kind of hard to balance a DPS spec that can instantly switch to tank-level toughness without having the Gladiator talent just nerf your defensive capabilities into the dirt or stop you from using Defensive Stance and tank abilities, at which point you're not really Prot anymore. Blizzard has enough trouble balancing class uniqueness vs class toughness as it is, see Rogues vs all the other melees.

Plus it seems like people miss the idea of 1h+ shield DPS more than anything else. Gladiator's actual gameplay was kind of garbage even by WoD standard which is saying something.

[Halwyn]

That already makes them overpowered compared to most DPS, which do not have tank-level survivability. Hence 'impossible to balance.'

Current version of Affliction says 'hi'. If a pure dps has such idiotic amounts of survivablitiy, why a warrior with a shield can't?

There is a plenty of ways to tweak Gladiators, and it's laughably easy, because you can just put a "not usable in Gladiator Stance" (Ignore pain, for instance). More tweaks? Added/altered functionality when the Warrior is in Glad Stance, Demo Shout affecting damage dealt to everyone, no just the casting warrior. Bam, Gladiators have a raid cooldown which isn't a Rallying Cry, but fulfills the same function, Shield Wall increasing the potency (read:damage dealing potential) of shield-related abilities, etc.

The best thing about Gladiator is it being realistic. Fitting the goddamn 'class fantasy' of the Warrior (not that Valhalla crap), they're soliders. Who fight. Who might as well want to live through the battle and fight again. And that's what you have a shield for. Might as well hit someone in a face with it while you're at it.

[Charble]

Gladiator's actual gameplay was kind of garbage even by WoD standard which is saying something.

Garbage? Did you play the spec compared to other Warrior DPS specs? Fury and Arms were mindless, 2-3 button rotations. Gladiator had you maximizing damage windows in a similar way to MoP Fury, but not quite as elegant. It was one of the only rotations that wasn't left in tatters and reduced to absurd simplicity after WoD's launch.

I mained Prot Warrior and used it on a few occasions, and it was pretty sweet. I want a non-brainless tank spec back before I ask for Gladiator again, though.

[Jastall]

Garbage? Did you play the spec compared to other Warrior DPS specs? Fury and Arms were mindless, 2-3 button rotations. Gladiator had you maximizing damage windows in a similar way to MoP Fury, but not quite as elegant. It was one of the only rotations that wasn't left in tatters and reduced to absurd simplicity after WoD's launch.

I mained Prot Warrior and used it on a few occasions, and it was pretty sweet. I want a non-brainless tank spec back before I ask for Gladiator again, though.

I can't agree. The number of button in a rotation doesn't matter to me, how it feels does. Legion Fury doesn't pres a lot of buttons, but they work together really well so I love it. MM in WoD was widely liked and it was a fairly simple spec. MoP Destro is often said to be the spec's best iteration yet was hardly rocket science to play.

Gladiator was almost pure HS spam in between Shield Charge windows. I can't say that appealed to me at all.

[Bigbazz]

They'd have the defenses of tanks no matter what, since they're tank spec first and foremost. They'd need the DPS of DPS, since otherwise they're unviable.

That already makes them overpowered compared to most DPS, which do not have tank-level survivability. Hence 'impossible to balance.'

It would need to be it's own spec, which also runs into problems because it'd just be Prot spec (sharing almost the entire toolkit) with another name and meant to DPS.

You didn't really ever look into Gladiator did you? They didn't have any more defense than a standard dps warrior, the whole point was that you gave up your defenses to focus on DPS and once combat had started you were stuck in Gladiator stance. It was a pure dps spec, Blizzard could have easily balanced it.. It needed some burst dps capability in PVE and for Last Stand to turn into Rallying Cry, then it would have been desirable for raids.

That doesn't mean better than Arms/Fury, just not useless. People thinking it was impossible to balance because of survival clearly have no idea how the spec actually worked. It wasn't even that it was always particularly bad on damage, it had decent sustained damage but it had no burst and no rallying cry, while also not having DBTS to cheese mechanics.



Numbers don't look hopeless when you look at the overall damage meters from a sustained point of view, but it was still behind Arms/Fury.. However like I said, if it had come packaged with Rallying Cry and some form of burst dps (a necessity for progression). This could have been fixed with a few tweaks to the spec, the argument about survival that people are making is completely dumb though, since it had no advantage over the other specs.

[mizeri]

well i want DK blood DPS spec back too then.

[therealstegblob]

It's obvious that Gladiator was intended as an experiment into "sword and board dps warrior" fantasy. You gave up practically all ability to tank in return for increased DPS.

After that didn't pan out, they went with a kind of "let's change it so it's just a tool for soloing content in prot specc" and then just removed it.

[Sammonoske]

Rose tinted glasses. I didn't care for it because I was a full time tank and the talent offered nothing in terms of tanking. To be honest, Gladiator was a waste of space in raids.

[Ishayu]

*cough* Feral Affinity *cough*

That's not really the same thing at all.

[Super Kami Dende]

That's not really the same thing at all.

A sub-par DPS talent for a Tank Spec? It sounds nearly Identical.

[Bigbazz]

This is nerfed Gladiator Stance. The one no one used because it was unviable. Gladiator Stance increased your damage by 5%, and took you out of defensive stance - A whopping total of 10% damage increase.

It was a dead spec long before it was removed, because having a Gladiator Warrior was choosing not to have an Arms or Fury warrior, both of which were much better choices.

I'm not sure what you quoting my post and stating the obvious has achieved here, or how it's aimed at me. But I'll address it all the same, don't forget that Gladiator's popularity in early Highmaul largely came as a result of Arms/Fury being so vastly undertuned and weak initially. If Arms/Fury were putting out their later numbers and Gladiator had not been nerfed, Gladiator would have still been the 3rd choice due to the points I raised.

Case in point being that Paragon used a pre-buff Fury Warrior for Imperator, despite Gladiator being greatly ahead at the time.Why? Because Fury had great burst AOE dps potential and Rallying Cry. The same was true in Blackrock Foundry, Arms and Fury were not greatly ahead of Gladiator on sustained by any stretch..



See this week 1 Blackrock Foundry Heroic vid, as can be quite easily seen Gladiator still putting out very competitive numbers. The only reason it isn't desired here is because it had no burst potential, no rallying cry. And when all of the top players and raid leaders can see this clearly (the glad brings nothing beyond sustained dps) it gets left behind because the now buffed and competitive Arms/Fury do bring the tools, then everyone else copies what the top guys do and gladiator fades into obscurity.

Gladiator Stance increased your damage by 5%, and took you out of defensive stance - A whopping total of 10% damage increase.

It changed shield block into shield charge and increased mastery by (I think) 50%. When you post obviously incorrect things like this you're either clueless and speaking from ignorance or triggered and speaking from emotion, either way doesn't work out very well in a discussion.

Edit : There we go

Rose tinted glasses. I didn't care for it because I was a full time tank and the talent offered nothing in terms of tanking. To be honest, Gladiator was a waste of space in raids.

It increased the damage reduction of Defensive Stance by 5%, was quite a popular choice for pure tanks, other talents were Anger Management (offensive abilities only) and Ravager. From my memory both Gladiator and Ravager got a lot of use for tanking, situationally depending.

[Charble]

It increased the damage reduction of Defensive Stance by 5%, was quite a popular choice for pure tanks, other talents were Anger Management (offensive abilities only) and Ravager. From my memory both Gladiator and Ravager got a lot of use for tanking, situationally depending.

Yup, mained a Warrior in t17; Gladiator 5% damage reduction was the best talent on most fights. Enemies with a ton of adds you would use Ravager or if you needed the increased rage gen from parries. Anger Management was very niche, something that took a lot of testing and experience. I believe I used it on Mythic Blast Furnace because the timing of CDs lined up nicely.

Anger Management was going to be the best talent until they fixed the reduced rage talent for Heroic Strike, because Anger Management saw you spending 30 rage and not 25/20/15/10/5, and the result was something like 30 sec CD Demoralizing Shout. It got fixed quickly.