Do you think Stance of the Gladiator will successfully allow prot to be viable dps?

[Bookofblade]

UPDATE: Seeing as its been about 6-7 months from the start of this thread I suggest anyone looking to get in on the discussion read the last couple pages of the thread. A lot has changed from when this began and I will add in a quote from later in the thread to give a quick up on how its looking as of 5/28/14

Pretty sure you won't be able to stance dance once you go Gladiator?

Gladiator Stance
Instant 1.5 sec cooldown
Requires Warrior
A dauntless combat stance.

Increases physical damage dealt by 20%, and replaces your Shield Block with Shield Charge.

You cannot change into or out of this stance during combat.


Buff
Gladiator Stance
An offensive stance that trades all defensive prowess for increase damage dealing.

Physical damage dealt increased by 20%.
Your Shield Block is replaced with Shield Charge.


Spell Link

*Original Post*
Personally after seeing the twitter post from Celestalon that the aim of Stance of the Gladiator is to make prot a dps and that vengeance is being changed to only effect active mitigation tank dps will be balanced without vengeance that this is something that could actually happen

When i saw this talent on the blizzcon floor i was excited but unsure how it could work without giving massive increases to account for not having vengeance however now seeing that tank dps should be predictable you could establish a reasonable value to increase it by to make it on par with other dps thus allowing this to be a possibility.

Just excited over the prospect of being able to finally play my warrior how I originally intended when i first made him in vanilla, what do you guys think?

[Lethey Alexandros]

You know...I started out in vanilla wanting to DPS on my warrior with a sword and shield. If this works that way and makes it viable then hell frickin yeah! Ill look like a scrub and DPS with a sword and shield an y day!

[Wazooty]

I see no reason why blizz shouldn't apply this to all tanking specs, etc. The flavor/rotation should be the deciding factor for a spec, not necessarily the specs role.

[Swaggah]

Aslong as it's not optimal under any circumstance, because it's not a very interesting spec overall

[Bookofblade]

well I hope it wouldn't force people who prefer arms or fury into prot but would sure be a riot for those of us who love prot

[Skarssen]

Aslong as it's not optimal under any circumstance, because it's not a very interesting spec overall

Interesting is pretty subjective, but I don't doubt that many players would love to play a sword and shield damage dealing spec.

I would really like for all the tank specs to have the ability to swap to a more damage-dealing capability as needed, sacrificing damage reduction/avoidance in the process. Many DKs were outraged when they took away blood DPS, and having that role back would be tremendous. Having a "fistweaver" option for tanks, where they can swap to a damage dealing focus when needed would be great, but it would be more of a "we sort of need 3 tanks for this fight but only when the adds are out, so the prot warrior can go SotG in the meantime."

[Bookofblade]

Interesting is pretty subjective, but I don't doubt that many players would love to play a sword and shield damage dealing spec.

I would really like for all the tank specs to have the ability to swap to a more damage-dealing capability as needed, sacrificing damage reduction/avoidance in the process. Many DKs were outraged when they took away blood DPS, and having that role back would be tremendous. Having a "fistweaver" option for tanks, where they can swap to a damage dealing focus when needed would be great, but it would be more of a "we sort of need 3 tanks for this fight but only when the adds are out, so the prot warrior can go SotG in the meantime."

Well they would need to totally change how SotG works as of the last time weve seen it (come on beta) It compleetly replaces defensive stance and according to Celestalon makes them no longer a tank in any way.

without the bonus threat from def stance no way they would ever be able to hold aggro

[Barnabas]

Really gimmicky level 100 talent. I guess it's a "for fun" talent unless they make it so strong dps take it?

[Archimtiros]

No and it isn't intended to.
I know everyone wants to play exactly how they want and for a small minority playing "prot-dps" in raids would be fun but that isn't going to happen. That would simply require them to attempt to balance yet another spec.
The intent behind the talent is to let you have an option. Out questing, brawlers guild, scenarios, pvp perhaps. This is the content SotG is designed for.
Very rarely it may see use in raids. Zerg fights or times when you need two tanks because of mechanic but threat/dam reduc is not an issue.
I don't even play prot but I personally love the talent because it gives us more options and changes the way you can play. I like the implication.
Don't think for a second it will be competitive with Fury or even Arms in a raid though.

[Bookofblade]

The quote from @Celestalon~Chadd Nervig, Technical Game Designer on World of Warcraft. is "Turns Prot into a DPS spec, no longer a tank."

to me that doesnt sound like an offtank thing and to me it would be strange to have a level 100 talent that could only be useful in a questing / dailies scenario. tho possible i assume.

but keep it up I like the different ideas and opinions

[Aeula]

If prot DPS is viable i'm quitting my paladin for my warrior, for sure, always loved how prot played but couldn't tank for shit.

[Raugnaut]

Using numbers tossed out around blizzcon (Tanks dps aim is 75% of a dps' dps, the lvl 100 talents), Current stat numbers, ect, I would say that, if implemented as it was (20% additional damage, critical strike chance=critical block chance, assuming no mastery numbers chance), it would be not only viable, but possibily optimal.

For starters, lets say that blizz manages to get most dps, and, in this case, arms and fury, doing 100k dps. Based on the 75% number, prot warriors would be doing 75% dps as a tank.

Now, first, lets apply the 20% damage buff. This would make a prot warrior using glad stance doing 90k dps, 10k, or 10%, below 100k. Now, this is away from the 5% delta, but it isn't too bad. However, we aren't done with the numbers yet.

Glad stance ALSO increases critical strike chance by whatever amount of critical block chance there is. ATM, it takes 600 crit rating to get 1% crit strike, but ONLY 273 mastery rating to get 1% extra critical block chance. (under half!!!). Add in the 17.60% baseline crit block chance, and this means that its possible to get over DOUBLE the amount of crit chance as a glad warrior then the other 2 dps specs (I think the average crit chance on warriors atm is around 43%? With 5% baseline crit, +17.6% baseline crit block, this would mean that glad warriors get 22.6% baseline crit chance, plus potentally 83% crit block chance (if you took all crit and magically turned it into mastery. 43% crit chance-5% baseline crit * 2.1 (600 crit rating/273 mastery rating)), you would be crit capped all-around!

This also does NOT account for crit/mastery pieces, as well as whatever change blizz makes to mastery to make it help tank damage (There was some tweets saying they were planning to have mastery add tank damage capability).

So, in the gear we have NOW, a glad warrior could easily be crit capped. Since Shield Slam AND Devastate crits proc enrage, this means that over 75% of the globals used by a prot warrior would proc enrage.

Finally, Glad Warriors use Shield Barrier as a rage dump. The amount of damage absorbed by shield barrier is added as damage to shield slam. Atm, in my current gear, Shield Slam hits for 90k- shield barrier absorbs 90k at 60 rage, no vengeance. Given that Shield Slam will be used, on average, once every 4.5 seconds, and given that, if we had glad stance, ALL hits would be a critical strike, not only would I have enough rage to use at least a 60k shield barrier (40 rage) every 4.5 seconds, that 150k shield slam would crit every time, for a whopping 300k.
Vengeance, while not increasing damage done by attacks directly, WOULD increase the absorbtion amount of shield barrier, thus increasing shield slams damage.
Excess rage beyond the 60/4.5 seconds needed for shield barrier shield slam could be spent on heroic strike.
Finally, the glad warrior would have 100% uptime on the enrage buff, for 10% damage boost.

Granted, most of these numbers are imaginary numbers, stats on gear is changing next expansion significantly, prot warrior rotation may be changing, ect, we have no idea how it will work out in WoD. However, if Glad Stance was implemented right NOW, it would be very optimal. Heck, it would even be capable of tanking some fights. The only 2 tanking things tied into defensive stance is the 500% increased threat modifier, and the 25% reduced damage taken. While there would be the question of threat on the off tank, the 40% extra baseline threat from being prot, and the 200% extra threat modifier from taunt would allow Glad Warriors to keep threat off of all dps, thus allowing for even MORE damage through vengeance.

[Deleted]

Um, no? The stance still has 500% threat modifier, so there goes your prot dps

[Archimtiros]

Um, no? The stance still has 500% threat modifier, so there goes your prot dps

It does not. Nor does it have the Crit suppression or reduced damage taken.

Raugnaut; I wouldn't pay attention to the numbers to much right now, you and I both know things are going to change a lot between now and then, including the +% damage buffs.
There is no way they would make Prot better than pure DPS specs, just imagine the outrage that would occur.

[Raugnaut]

It does not. Nor does it have the Crit suppression or reduced damage taken.

Raugnaut; I wouldn't pay attention to the numbers to much right now, you and I both know things are going to change a lot between now and then, including the +% damage buffs.
There is no way they would make Prot better than pure DPS specs, just imagine the outrage that would occur.

Yea. I'm anticipating the talent being removed entirely (The rage for health portion is just SO OP for PvE, and risky for PvP), and, if it remains, then as a glyph, and replaced with a retaliation-esque talent.

If it DOES remain, well, I anticipate it being on-par with fury/arms, with it scaling extremely well with gear, but not with weapon dps.

Of course, there is also its AoE potential. With only Thunderclap, cleave, and revenge, it'll be behind both arms and fury, even with the extra prot deep wounds damage.

But yea, its mostly speculation based off current numbers. Pre-beta is pre-beta, anything and everything can be removed.

[Deztru]

Not really, it replaces defensive stance and I bet they're not going to allow a tank to just switch talents and be dps again.

As if you choose the talent you can't tank anymore, I never really got why something like this would be implemented as it just feels useless for protection.

[Xtacle]

Im just not a fan of any tanking spec putting up dps numbers. It's just my nostalgia hitting me right now I suppose but I liked the tanking model better before Cataclysm.

[Deleted]

We should link the tweets to get into some context:

https://twitter.com/Celestalon/statu...49647975976960

"Turns Prot into a DPS spec, no longer a tank. Has some significant design implications, so is definitely an experiment." and

https://twitter.com/Celestalon/statu...80958848847872

"Sidenote: We recognize that it basically means true tanks only have 2 talents to pick. We're making adjustments to solve that."

So, facts:

1) It's intended to be a DPS spec, not a tank.
2) It may not pass beta.

If you ask me, it will probably not pass beta, because either the spec it's simply worse than both fury/arms and can't compete, or it's simply best without question, unless they manage to rip us off of every additional survival passives/CDs/skills/stam prot warriors have not tied to the stance.

[Bookofblade]

well any talent out there may not pass beta, but the tone sounds like its something they are actively perusing

[Skorpionss]

I hope it stays and is competitive with fury... I've been wanting a sword&board dps for a while now... I don't understand why people wouldn't want the option... how does it hurt them if they don't want to play it? all they have to do is choose another one of the tier100 talents instead of this one...