MoP = Death of Warrior Stances? Discuss

Just wondering what peoples thoughts on this are, ever expansion stances for a warrior have become less and less important, since WoTLK all but those minmaxing PvErs would stay in one stance depending on their role Tanks needing Battle Stance to Shattering Throw, Arms Warriors going Berserker Stance for Execute (which we still do I think) and Fury Warriors going Battle Stance to rend dance (WoTLK)

This made stances exclusive really only to PvP, constantly having to switch for the given situation. Killing Intercept on Arms warriors and making Recklessness available outside of Berserker Stance allowed us to remove Zerker Stance from our bars entirely.

I haven't been following MoP as closely as I have most up coming expansions but it seems that stances are going to be just like a Death Knights Presences now. I know people say stances were an outdated mechanic but I've always loved stance dancing, it just made any encounter PvP or PvE that required feel more engaging and klutch. I always loved doing it when tanking Nightbane something a lot of Warriors couldn't do (for some reason..)

Only beef I had with stances was the rage penalty which I never found needed. I'm also not sure how i'm going to deal with my keybinds since a lot of my binds are exclusive to the stance I'm currently in.
I'm pretty sure the Warrior PvP community isn't too happy about this and for good reason since Cataclysm's changes drastically lowered the Warriors skill-cap, something that is generally low to begin with since Warriors have among the easiest roles in Arena. Even Spell Reflect losing it's shield requirement saddens me.

I'm happy they are finally dropping stance requirements. Frankly the "skill" of stance dancing for most people was nothing more than going to EJ or some other forum and copying all the macros. At one point one of our warriors gained around 5% dps by macroing every one of his abilities to shift him to zerker stance and overpower to battle.... that's not skill, that's just a ton of macros that all do the same thing.

I'll be glad to finally be able to hamstring and many other abilities in defensive stance.

I'm happy. its not like stance dancing is skilful any more, its not even a decision.

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Originally Posted by Takethecake

I'm happy they are finally dropping stance requirements. Frankly the "skill" of stance dancing for most people was nothing more than going to EJ or some other forum and copying all the macros. At one point one of our warriors gained around 5% dps by macroing every one of his abilities to shift him to zerker stance and overpower to battle.... that's not skill, that's just a ton of macros that all do the same thing.

I'll be glad to finally be able to hamstring and many other abilities in defensive stance.

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Yeah I have to agree that it was all macro based and probably very frustrating for newer warriors. I remember trying to do 2s with my friend who had rerolled Warrior and the fact that he had no macros made me pound my head against the wall.
I'll still miss it though.

I say make stances like presences, they're practically the same. Having restrictions on what abilities you can do in what stance is a further gimp to the class.

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Originally Posted by Dreador

I say make stances like presences, they're practically the same. Having restrictions on what abilities you can do in what stance is a further gimp to the class.

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I agree. The restriction on some moves would be fine, too... Taking the DK as an example, without being in blood presence and blood spec, you can only use Rune Strike after being parried or dodged (I believe?). But at least you can still use all of the abilities at some point.
I may have liked the stance dancing in PvP back when charge and intercept were on separate cooldowns, but that was the only thing that I used it for. Keep the current benefits and downfalls of each of the three stances, possibly making battle stance a little more appeasing like adding a small amount of mastery or crit increase, and use them as DKs use presences. I would prefer that to what warriors currently have.

Battle Stance needs more butter. It's current iteration in Cata is crap. I use it for 3 abilities, the rest goes to zerker.

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Originally Posted by Dreador

I say make stances like presences, they're practically the same. Having restrictions on what abilities you can do in what stance is a further gimp to the class.

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Currently on the beta I don't think any abilities have stance restrictions, for example you can use Execute in Defensive Stance and Revenge in Battle.

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Originally Posted by Pagezero

Currently on the beta I don't think any abilities have stance restrictions, for example you can use Execute in Defensive Stance and Revenge in Battle.

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Works for me. Can't wait for my beta key.

Arms Warriors going Battle Stance for Overpower. Yes I'm fine with it. They only need to make them a bit unique (like DK's presences). Atm they are just meh.

They need to remove berserker stance already! A player is either dps'ing or tanking.

Also if prot cant whirlwind/overpower (still on Revenge cd?)/colossus it wont matter anyway. It's an empty gesture as long as other classes have ability access outside of stance.

Prot doesn't get Whirlwind/Overpower/Colossus Smash. Our abilities aren't limited by stances, they're limited by specs, you spec prot, you get Revenge, Shield Slam, Devastate, and all warriors have access to core abilities like Heroic Strike, Cleave, Shieldwall, recklessness. Def stance is -10% damage taken and +Threat. Battle stance is +10% damage done and Zerker stance is +20% Cleave and Whirlwind(fury/arms only) so for DPS you're gonna want to be in battle stance most of the time, and generally swap to Zerker for whirlwind assuming no rage penalty, or when 10% extra cleave damage is worth losing 10 damage on everything else. tanks aren't really gonna want to leave defstance if they're tanking.

I've always enjoyed the warrior play style. I'm not excited about how generic they look in beta.

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Originally Posted by truculent

I've always enjoyed the warrior play style. I'm not excited about how generic they look in beta.

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This 100 times over. The frenetic play style of the warrior seems diminished. I've played for 7 years as a prot warrior, beta feels boring and Active Mitigation honestly seems like "hit SB every 5 seconds".

I just don't see stance danacing to be a particularily large part of that, especially in PVE where its all stance changes are macroed and its pretty much brainless. Yeah i'm concerned about the slowing down of the prot warrior button mashing, but thats not really got much to do with stance dancing.

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Originally Posted by Tengenstein

I just don't see stance danacing to be a particularily large part of that, especially in PVE where its all stance changes are macroed and its pretty much brainless. Yeah i'm concerned about the slowing down of the prot warrior button mashing, but thats not really got much to do with stance dancing.

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Right now, this is a more important thing to bear in mind than people think. A lot of what warriors are concerned about in the beta is getting lumped into interrelated topics that don’t deal well with specific issues. If you want to see the fruits of that type of thing, take a look at what’s going on with warlocks.

As for stances, the problem is finding a way to make them meaningful without gimping the class unnecessarily in either PvE or PvP. What makes it almost impossible for the developers is the fact that PvE warriors and PvP warriors probably view stances completely differently. In PvE, they’re much of a muchness – you either don’t switch at all (Protection or Fury), or you want to find out how to push your output to the next level and endeavour to find the macro-magic in order to do so (Arms).

Actual “decision making” is at a premium.

But in PvP, it’s not that simple.

Shield or stance requirements are a way of adding depth to the class beyond merely maxing out the amount of damage you either take or dish out. It’s a choice, and the best warriors will traditionally make the best choices available to them. Is this the right time to sacrifice my output and use Shield Wall, or will I survive without doing so and still be able to contribute meaningful damage?

The problem, as Blizzard sees it, is that this is too punitive on beginners because the class has to be balanced around its potential and not its average. It’s not acceptable to have a high-skill cap where beginners are free HK’s, just as it’s not acceptable to have a low-skill cap that keeps new players synthetically competitive.My gripe is that currently on beta (Battle = more rage from damage done, ‘Zerker = more rage from damage taken), the stances themselves don’t really do anything meaningful – even in PvP. It remains too easy to math out which stance will be better for which encounter and warriors will continue doing what’s suggested.

Another avenue of attack could be to make warrior cooldowns, of which we have a few, stance-enhanced rather than stance-reliant. An example of this could, say, Shield Wall. If you choose to equip a shield and get into Defensive Stance, say hello to 50% damage reduction and say goodbye to your damage output. If, however, you choose to stay in Battle Stance and want to keep attacking, Shield Wall will only grant 15% damage reduction at baseline. Want the middle ground of either a shield or Defensive Stance? Your reduction is 25%.I appreciate that overcomplicates things, but the notion is the same for any cooldown. Say you use Spell Reflect without a shield, the reflected spell will only do 50% damage to its target. If you use Recklessness in ‘zerker, you get more critical strike chance but your attacks cost more rage.You get the idea.

The only other way stances can be made meaningful is by having them affect the way you actually play. To this day, I still can’t understand why Unholy Presence lowers the base GCD to a second and ‘zerker stance doesn’t.

Seems like a glaring oversight to me.