Bring back "stance dance" to Shadowlands, Blizzard – please

[dzd]

"Stance Dancing" consisted of making macros and ignoring stances.

People act like it's this amazingly complex thing, but it's not. You can literally macro everything and remove stances from your bar and be no worse off. If you didn't do this back in the day and think manually shifting makes you some WoW god, I mean, have fun I guess, but you were putting in a significant amount of unnecessary work that the actual good players never did.

Why are you constantly brining up macros? It doesn't matter at all how you change your stance, the only important thing is being in the right stance when needed while minimizing resource lost. Is it fun gameplay? Maybe not, but don't argue about things you don't even understand.

[Holdodlig]

Incorrect. It doesn't matter if you use macro or not, but I'd agree that using the skill should switch your stance if possible, thus making macro unnecessary for everyone.

Kinda silly if you can't have different gameplay for different classes.

It's the same thing with less downsides and simplified conditions.

I probably give too much credit to macro because you also needed specifics weapons for specific abilities.

But I still disagree with spells being gated behind stances. I think the stances should have an impact on your current spells. For example, using recklessness in fury should give a passive rage gain, while in arms you could have a bloodbath effect or bonus leech in defensive stance.

This is a design I would rather choose for multiples reasons :
-The current WoW design is made so you keep the same weapon the whole fight. There's no more weapon switch so the old school stance design became in my opinion pointless.
-I don't think gating spells behind stances made the game more skilled. You don't really make choices when you have your abilities blocked behind a stance. You have to go in that stance and that's it. It just become an extra button or two to push without any impact, except maybe a few damage loss during your auto attack. And it adds additionnals risks that can't be rewarded with the current mentality of the playerbase.
-In this way you have your core class gameplay, the current spells you have and your toolkit, but you can choose to adapt it to the situation. And having to adapt is in my opinion a better way to improve the quality of the gameplay because you'll have to take decisions. One of the main current class design flaws these days come from the fact most of the classes have a passive cleave / aoe effect in their main single target rotation.
-You also wouldn't have the action bar management (which is, I know kind of a detail, but still when I was a beginner it was an important one to manage)

[Nicholaes92]

But how would it work with the game as it is? It's either:

1) Switching stances isn't on the global cooldown, in which case the only additional mechanic is that you macro all of your abilities and have a cramped toolbar with multiple versions of your abilities.

or

2) Switching stances is on the global cooldown, whereupon you're basically grinding Warrior combat to a halt as you're going to have a ton of global cooldowns where you have to press a button to not actually do anything.

Which of these scenarios actually creates better gameplay for Warriors?

There are a ton of people saying this

press a button to not actually do anything

Does damage mitigation count as nothing to you people?

[dzd]

Which of these scenarios actually creates better gameplay for Warriors?

Why not give a third option like it used to be? Stances on their own CD

[Jastall]

There are a ton of people saying this



Does damage mitigation count as nothing to you people?

Damage mitigation and doing less damage and locking out some abilities. Defensive stance isn't like Shield Wall or Enraged Regeneration, unless we're talking about the Mists version. Such a large tradeoff just feels bad otherwise.

[jellmoo]

There are a ton of people saying this

Does damage mitigation count as nothing to you people?

Doing a bit less damage with a bit more mitigation? Doing a bit more damage but taking more damage in return? Does it really feel like a meaningful thing to you?

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Why not give a third option like it used to be? Stances on their own CD

Which doesn't actually change anything as they would still be used in a macro.

[dzd]

-The current WoW design is made so you keep the same weapon the whole fight. There's no more weapon switch so the old school stance design became in my opinion pointless.

Sure, but mby they should add weapon switching back in? I don't like the idea but haven't put too much thought on it, because I don't think it will ever happen. Maybe it could be something they should look into and if they made it fun it could be something.

-I don't think gating spells behind stances made the game more skilled. You don't really make choices when you have your abilities blocked behind a stance. You have to go in that stance and that's it. It just become an extra button or two to push without any impact, except maybe a few damage loss during your auto attack. And it adds additionnals risks that can't be rewarded with the current mentality of the playerbase.

The core idea is that you have to be in right stance or in other words, you get punished for being in the wrong stance when you want to use a skill. Obvious examples would be if you get feared and you are not in zerker or in arena you get stunned behind the pillar in zerker. In PvE you mostly lose rage when you make mistake, so that's probably why people find it annoying. The stances used to be more important in PvP.

One of the main current class design flaws these days come from the fact most of the classes have a passive cleave / aoe effect in their main single target rotation.

This is really not part of the topic but this is one of the things I have been hating for a long time. I wanna be in control what my abilities do. If I wanna do ST damage I should be able to do ST only damage without losing 90% of my damage.

[Nicholaes92]

Doing a bit less damage with a bit more mitigation? Doing a bit more damage but taking more damage in return? Does it really feel like a meaningful thing to you?

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Which doesn't actually change anything as they would still be used in a macro.

I know this might sounds super crazy to you, but yes that is a massive thing especially in competitive arenas. Going into a d stance before being swapped to will 100% be the difference between a win and a loss in arenas. I’m speaking in terms of when this was a thing.

[Jazzhands]

In pvp no it was not. You didn’t just use stances for abilities. Like I said, understanding when you’re being hardswapped to and preemptively going into d stance is an example of how to use stances. Another example is knowing when you will be fear in vanilla and going into zerker stance.

It’s just a different way to play the game where instead of just reacting to what just happened you have to know what’s going to happen before it does. This is what made good warriors shine and bad warriors dirt.

Funny you mention this. I loved fake casting fear on my warlock to get all these "good" warriors to preemptively waste zerker rage. Trying to be preemptive is trying to make guesses, and guesses can be wrong and lead to getting outplayed. Same with D-stance, if you preemptively go into D stance because you're starting to get focused, any decent player will just swap focus when they see the incredibly obvious animation/weapon swap, because you're suddenly not a danger or even a worthwhile target until that 2h/zerker stance come back. Good players will now how to deal with people who like to be preemptive, because it's a glaring weakness that's easy to bait and deal with.

And once again, you act like stance dancing is this mysterious thing, but it really isn't. X situation = X stance. It takes slightly more time to learn the situations maybe, but it's no more difficult to execute than any other class without stances. over all though, you sat in battle stance to use the charge/Zerker stance macro, then you went ham unless you needed a D-stance/sword+board macro. That's about it. It's not like every battle was this crazy long drawn out thing where you had to stance swap every 4 seconds and perfectly counter every move your opponent did. It was more useful and a bit more relied upon in pvp, but this is Vanilla, nothing in it is really complex.

[jellmoo]

I know this might sounds super crazy to you, but yes that is a massive thing especially in competitive arenas. Going into a d stance before being swapped to will 100% be the difference between a win and a loss in arenas. I’m speaking in terms of when this was a thing.

But I'm not. I'm speaking about the game as it exists today. With the current layout of specs, classes and abilities, it's not a particularly meaningful use of a gcd.

[gutnbrg]

the funny part was where u said 2 rogues attacked u and u went sword and board and lived...

[Nicholaes92]

Funny you mention this. I loved fake casting fear on my warlock to get all these "good" warriors to preemptively waste zerker rage. Trying to be preemptive is trying to make guesses, and guesses can be wrong and lead to getting outplayed. Same with D-stance, if you preemptively go into D stance because you're starting to get focused, any decent player will just swap focus when they see the incredibly obvious animation/weapon swap, because you're suddenly not a danger or even a worthwhile target until that 2h/zerker stance come back. Good players will now how to deal with people who like to be preemptive, because it's a glaring weakness that's easy to bait and deal with.

And once again, you act like stance dancing is this mysterious thing, but it really isn't. X situation = X stance. It takes slightly more time to learn the situations maybe, but it's no more difficult to execute than any other class without stances. over all though, you sat in battle stance to use the charge/Zerker stance macro, then you went ham unless you needed a D-stance/sword+board macro. That's about it. It's not like every battle was this crazy long drawn out thing where you had to stance swap every 4 seconds and perfectly counter every move your opponent did. It was more useful and a bit more relied upon in pvp, but this is Vanilla, nothing in it is really complex.

I’m 100% not suggesting that it’s an extremely complicated thing at all. I’m saying it makes better gameplay. Just like what you said, there’s always an answer and good players will do those mind games where it’s constantly figuring each other out. The type of gameplay now has NONE of that. It’s all just reacting to what JUST happened to you. It’s scripted almost.

With things in the game like stance dancing it’s creates styles of gameplay. Right now everyone has the same style as there is almost no room for any of this.

And again I’m not acting like stance dancing is this ‘only good players can do this’ I’m saying things like stance dancing ‘separates the good from the bad’. If all warriors just had a ‘get out of fear’ button that requires no setup then it’s pretty obvious when you need to use it, and there’s no other solution.

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But I'm not. I'm speaking about the game as it exists today. With the current layout of specs, classes and abilities, it's not a particularly meaningful use of a gcd.

Of course it is, in terms of pvp, of COURSE that damage mitigation is a massive thing. I’m not speaking pve because pve warriors barely ever stance danced.

[Jazzhands]

Why are you constantly brining up macros? It doesn't matter at all how you change your stance, the only important thing is being in the right stance when needed while minimizing resource lost. Is it fun gameplay? Maybe not, but don't argue about things you don't even understand.

Being in the right stance at the right time... Yeah...

How often did fury warriors swap out of zerker stance in PVE? Preeeeety much never, unless something went wrong and they had to sword/board/taunt, which was all done with a macro, and rarely actually saved the day anyways. How often did Prot warriors? Only to catch fears when you were out of wards or totems, which was done with a macro. Essentially, you react to situations with pre-built macros. People keep saying you have to preemptively swap stances, but you almost never actually do, you simply react to things that happen or are happening and you know due to timers, and you use macros that basically let you ignore the extra stance inputs and just be like any other class.

PVP adds a slight bit to it, I admit that, but 90% of warrior PVP can be broken down into: Stay in battle stance to use charge/zerker stance macro, go ham in Zerker stance. HP get low? D-stance/sword board macro. Much challenge in all this swapping. Battle stance is essentially useless outside of Charge, which just leaves you with damage or defense stance, which really cuts down on the mystique of when to use each stance.

Maybe I'm forgetting some utilities that exist within the stances, but there was almost never any reason to use battle over zerker after you Charge in, and D-stance was something you used on reaction to sticky situations.

[dzd]

Funny you mention this. I loved fake casting fear on my warlock to get all these "good" warriors to preemptively waste zerker rage.

Maybe they had to go defensive so they popped rage and switched stance so they couldn't be feared? Sounds pretty decent play often. If your objective is to only break fear you are obviously gonna wait for the fear to actually hit so you get the DR.

Trying to be preemptive is trying to make guesses, and guesses can be wrong and lead to getting outplayed.

How exactly is this a bad thing?

Same with D-stance, if you preemptively go into D stance because you're starting to get focused, any decent player will just swap focus when they see the incredibly obvious animation/weapon swap, because you're suddenly not a danger or even a worthwhile target until that 2h/zerker stance come back. Good players will now how to deal with people who like to be preemptive, because it's a glaring weakness that's easy to bait and deal with.

Where was the bait? If he didn't switch defensive he should die, so didn't he play well? Or maybe there was actually no way he would have died so he made a mistake by not staying offensive, in which case the question is the same: why is it bad thing that you can make a mistake?

And once again, you act like stance dancing is this mysterious thing, but it really isn't. X situation = X stance. It takes slightly more time to learn the situations maybe, but it's no more difficult to execute than any other class without stances.[/QUOTE]
You finally realized the point. I just don't understand why you think it's a negative thing that you have to actually play the game.

[Arkthugal]

Proving you know/knew nothing about how to play a warrior with each and every post. This is why it needs to come back. I would love to see warriors juggling around making it look like their cat is walking on the keyboard

Some people do not wish to get carpal tunnel in the process of playing their class.

[Nicholaes92]

Some people do not wish to get carpal tunnel in the process of playing their class.

Lol what does this even mean, you do understand gcds are a thing right

[Jazzhands]

Maybe they had to go defensive so they popped rage and switched stance so they couldn't be feared? Sounds pretty decent play often. If your objective is to only break fear you are obviously gonna wait for the fear to actually hit so you get the DR.

How exactly is this a bad thing?

Where was the bait? If he didn't switch defensive he should die, so didn't he play well? Or maybe there was actually no way he would have died so he made a mistake by not staying offensive, in which case the question is the same: why is it bad thing that you can make a mistake?

And once again, you act like stance dancing is this mysterious thing, but it really isn't. X situation = X stance. It takes slightly more time to learn the situations maybe, but it's no more difficult to execute than any other class without stances.

You finally realized the point. I just don't understand why you think it's a negative thing that you have to actually play the game.[/QUOTE]
It's not bad that you can make mistakes, you can make a mistake when reacting, I'm saying one style is more prone to mistakes happening, and therefore is a more risky playstyle, and you gain next to nothing from it.

You also seem to have misunderstood what I mean. Taking slightly longer to learn doesn't make something difficult. There are easy things to learn that take plenty of time. The class is mechanically as easy to execute as any other class, doesn't matter if you spend an extra week or so learning situations compared to some other classes. Stances are almost a non-factor, and when they are, it's basically the same as hitting a defensive button for other classes, because macros.

[Arkthugal]

Lol what does this even mean, you do understand gcds are a thing right

Some people don't want GCDs on a button that does nothing.

[dzd]

How often did fury warriors swap out of zerker stance in PVE? Preeeeety much never, unless something went wrong and they had to sword/board/taunt, which was all done with a macro, and rarely actually saved the day anyways. How often did Prot warriors? Only to catch fears when you were out of wards or totems, which was done with a macro. Essentially, you react to situations with pre-built macros. People keep saying you have to preemptively swap stances, but you almost never actually do, you simply react to things that happen or are happening and you know due to timers, and you use macros that basically let you ignore the extra stance inputs and just be like any other class.

My point is that if using the skills activated the right stance people wouldn't need macros to do so. If you are talking about classic I don't think warrior is that great as a class, but DW tanking meta is quite interesting, but obviously wouldn't work in a new game.

[Jazzhands]

My point is that if using the skills activated the right stance people wouldn't need macros to do so. If you are talking about classic I don't think warrior is that great as a class, but DW tanking meta is quite interesting, but obviously wouldn't work in a new game.

People use macros to do so though. The fact that macros exist make Stance Dancing a joke because you don't even need extra inputs, you just press a button to use the skill and the macro swaps for you. It's basically the same as other classes at that point, but very very niche situations exist that hardly matter so everyone thinks Stance Dancing properly makes you a god or something.

As far as warriors in Classic not being that great, they are single the defacto Tank and the strongest DPS class. They literally dominate both roles they can do. That makes them the literal best. They're also incredibly strong in PVP, one of the best.