The most important question missed

[RigidCannibal]

What with the cinematic, does that mean we'll see 1-hand Strength polearms for tanks?

[Deleted]

Dont think so, now that you have to loot weapons again demonhunters probably dont get warglaives anymore except trough transmog

[vVBlackwolfVv]

I was asking myself the same thing, why there are no one-handed spears?, i dont see too much complicated, they can even expand on the flail type of weapon, or other chain weapons.

[Steampunkette]

So the one handed polearm thing actually has two big components to it that have only recently been fixed...

The first is the Draw Animation. When your character has a shield, they reach for their back and their hip. For a long while this was more or less hard-coded into the draw animation itself. It wasn't until late MoP that the character skeleton got an adaptive draw ability. Back in vanilla and BC there were one-handed weapons that sheathed across the back but if you used one on a tank, they'd draw from their hip and the sword would teleport.

The adaptive draw was carried over to the new model skeleton, by the way, which is why your given hand determines where you reach and your character's torso remains perfectly still while they reach across or around their body.

The second big issue is the attack animations. One handed axe/mace/sword attacks don't work with spears, for the most part. Most one handed swings in the game's animation library are slices and sweeps rather than stabs. But in creating a method for polearm users like Survival Hunters to use the Aegis of Aggramar they created a new set of one-handed spear and shield attacks. They adapted those animations to the Vrykul initiates who wanted to be a part of the Val'kyr under Eyir.

So now it's -possible- within the engine to not make clip-tastic teleporting one-handed slashing spears. And I'm hoping we get to see that if not in BfA then in 9.0. Maybe the ol' Gladiator spec can make a comeback.

[madokbro]

Gief Polearm + Shield Warrior DPS spec.

[Shibito]

ive seen taurens with flails and shields more of that pls

[Nerovar]

Gief Polearm + Shield Warrior DPS spec.

Gladiator warrior with polearm + shield. Oh boy.

[Theoris]

Oh man, I wish. I've wanted a phalanx look for a long time now. There was a brief time where a account-bound heirloom polearm (Spear of Rethu, I believe it was) was one handed, so I got a visual of what it looked like.
It was still the same old auto attack animation (of course), but the shield and the polearm both sheated on my back looked awesome.