So I started this thread over on the beta forums about how Warrior Stances are this ridiculous outdated concept(And they are in light of the Death Knights). I don't think it's out of the question to request a change to at the very least the penalties that Defensive Stance and Berserker Stance have. However when I see that there has been no response from the developers on the issue it irritates me. The thread in question is one of the longest on the forums, and also one of the most active ones, I made it well over a month ago.
My main complaint about the stances when I made this thread were the penalties.
I even like having different abilities usable in each stance(Though if they're pushing Battle Stance as THE stance for Arms, they need to make some drastic changes).
The fact that our stance buffs look pathetic when compared to Death Knight's presence buffs is an entirely different issue all together, which is also why it's understandable that you have all these Warriors in that thread and on those boards requesting buffs to each stance in addition to the removal of the penalties. I'm sure on some level Blizzard knew this would be the case when they released Presences for Death Knights.
I like to think I have a fairly good understanding of why Blizzard at times just completely ignore certain topics, my thoughts on why they won't respond to this particular complaint are along the lines of:
"They have no intention of changing it and they would like to look at other avenues to adjust(Not buff/nerf) Warriors, so there's no point in telling Warriors this, as it would only create additional anger on their boards."
There's no real polite way to say "We want you doing 10% less damage in this stance, taking 10% more damage in this stance, and this stance to doing nothing." It's different from for example, the Divine Spirit thread on the Priest forums where they can say "We won't make Divine Spirit trainable, because we want a Disc Priest to be invited to raids." There's actual sense behind a statement like that, and it's simple to explain. Stance Penalties probably have a lot deeper and or/more complex reasons, or at least I hope they do, because I thought I understood them when they were introduced 3(4?) years ago. Apparently this isn't the case.
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I guess I don't really understand the issue.
Let's say we re-phrase the various stances to have the same relative effects:
1) When in Battle Stance the warrior takes 10% less damage and does 10% more damage.
2) When in Defensive Stance the warrior takes 20% less damage.
3) When in Berserker Stance the warrior does 10% more damage and crits 3% more often.
Now, the first-pass analysis of this would suggest that this is just the same as the current behavior, only expressed positively. Blizzard would presumably re-adjust the numbers to balance things out the same either way.
And that's true, on the damage output side. It's pretty easy to see how you could adjust stuff to produce 10% less DPS over-all, so that this change produces the same effect.
Unfortunately, it gets very very messy on the damage input side, however. How do you balance that? Taking 20% less damage would be a huge huge impact for warrior tanks compared to other tanks.
Can it still be balanced?
Yes, yes it can. But you're not going to like how:
The way to balance taking 10% less damage is to have 10% less hit points.
Pretty icky, huh? Do you really want that?
Because if you don't, what you're asking for isn't simple at all. It requires radically changing what the various stances do, and their relative strengths.
Might it be a good thing? Sure. But I'm not surprised that Blizzard has chosen not to get involved in that line of reasoning, because it's the road to Big, Big Changes.
(Note: I'm Hypatia over on TankSpot. ;> You probably figured it out from my writing, though.)
See you're talking about the potential buffs. At the very least, I was mainly referring to the penalties. I feel the penalties are an outdated concept. I'm not sure how to go about buffing each respective stance, and I've never once pretended to have an idea about how to go about doing that without grossly overpowering Warriors, or thinking about the domino effect it would have on the rest of our abilities. I do think if Blizzard wants to push Arms as the "Battle Stance Spec" they need to address Battle Stance on some level, how they go about doing that, I'm not sure.
Does a Warrior have far more HP in PvP gear relative to other classes in the game? Does the Warrior deserve to have a penalty that all but nullifies a PvP stat that is supposed to improve survivability in resilience? In PvE on the DPS Gear side of things, yes, there is a good deal of stamina on the gear. Although again, that's mainly because Plate itemization generally wastes large portions of the item budget on stamina. Sunwell gear showed that if a greater portion of an item's budget was spent on DPS stats vs stamina PvE DPS Warriors would have stamina levels similar to the rest of the raid, making the 10% damage taken a larger liability. Even with plate gear wasting item budget on stamina, Warriors, especially DPS Warriors drop from 100->0% faster then other classes, they take more damage over a PvE encounter, waste healing, etc. Ask a raiding Warrior if they enjoy taking an extra 10% damage from an already high 1800 Fire Bloom every 3 seconds, of if Brutallus' Burn is fun for their healer to heal through those last few seconds.
Compared to the other plate classes in the game, why does the Warrior take 10% more damage, do Warriors have drastically superior survivability in comparison to a Paladin or a Death Knight? At level 70 I'd say Zerker Stance drops your average PvP Warrior's effective health from 12000 to 10800, at 80 with 21000, Zerker Stance drops that down to about 18900, this isn't including it nullifying resilience's dot/crit reduction. Again Paladins/DKs run around with the SAME HP levels, why are Warriors made to suffer?
My point simply in the original post is that the penalties that the Warrior was given were made under some very old concepts. Plate class, actually does damage, has superior survivability. We're in Wrath of the Lich King, and 2 other classes wear plate, do damage, and have very nice survivability. Does the Warrior really need to suffer with 10% more damage taken?
I'll take it a step further and say that when a Warrior switches into "I need to survive mode" he drops far more offensive capability then either the Paladin or DK have to(In the latest Beta build). With the DK and Paladin, it's a balancing act, with the Warrior, if you have them in def stance with a shield on, you've automatically stopped the Warrior's offensive pressure. It's like getting a Shadow Priest to drop out of Shadow Form to heal, this puts the Shadow Priest and his team at a severe disadvantage you've almost guaranteed yourself a win.
Blizzard will stand fast on leaving stances the way they are. asking that warriors stances be similar or comparable to DK presences is asking for a less diverse array of classes in their eyes. in a small way i agree. too many classes are shaping out to be the same. or one class ends up being everything another class is, and more. shaman and druids are a good example.
It may just be me, but I never saw the 10% increase in damage incurred for berserker stance a show stopper, or even that big a deal throughout my raiding career. There were times when it was annoying, and yes, I did notice that my mistakes were usually more costly and less survivable than say, my rogue counterparts. I guess my argument is that the vast majority of raid damage where an additional 10% damage would result in death is avoidable through positioning or by playing smart. Warriors are not hybrid classes and it was always my opinion that they are tanks first and foremost, thus it makes sense to me that warriors who want to break the mold should have to put up with a few defects here and there. Those who manage them well are the ones who rise above the pack and get invited back to raids. Removing the penalties caters to the lowest common denominator.
As far as class balancing for Wrath goes, I have no comment. I haven’t played the beta, and I tend to take news regarding the upcoming expansion with a grain of salt.
Hmm. After thinking things over more, I see your point. I still think it's understandable that Blizzard doesn't want to open up that can of worms, though. (We may not have hit the "tuning pass" yet, but I suspect they feel like they're beyond the point where they feel it's okay to make world-shattering changes.)
I read your post on the beta forums. I aggree.
I can't help but think if they returned Tactical mastery back to the arms tree, we wouldn't notice the stance debuffs as much.
Having to switch stances to get an overpower or a disarm off and having our rage reduced to 10 blows chucks. Then you add in +10% damage all other class get against us because zerk stance is the way dps... it just makes you think blizzard designers have never played a warrior since launch. Most other class have the same effective resilance/armor and heath as warriors do, plus some kind of magic damage dampener. I don't see why the need a +10% buff against us.
The best comment I read is when GC said are Shouts where great raid buffs, in comparison to pally and druid buffs. WTF?
I still have hope, but I'd love to see a Blue response to your post.
Hi Emeraude,
I've been a fan of most of your posts both on the Beta forum as well as the live wow forums. Mostly because I find myself having the same opinions on a lot of the stuff you have to say about the class.
About stance penalties, I agree completely with how unfair the "downsides" of defensive and berserker stance are. This is because with the new prot systems in place the damage reduction is largely unwanted. If Damage = Threat then why are we being penalised for lower damage in our tanking stance? As for Berserker....the 3% crit is nowhere close to being balanced with 10% damage.
About rage loss and the ability to use every spell in every stance...I'm going to have to disagree. Part of the warrior flavour is choosing when to change stance. I'd hate to have to lose that choice. Another reason is that without any penalty we could be running around with 100 rage a LOT as more often than not we're just waiting on cooldowns of our abilities.
Hello Oobodah. :)
As I said in my original post, my main gripe with stances were the penalties.
Going about buffing them, or changing rage loss isn't something I'd put much thought into just yet. Buffing them would have a large domino effect on the rest of the class and it's abilities. Removing the penalties in my own opinion, would even the playing ground with Warriors against the other classes in the game.
I think i'm in love
Hi, I´m form Venezuela and I play WoW, Warrior FTW Babe... I readed your post about stances and I Totally agree.
I hope the devs listen to you for warrior´s sake.
Yep, the penalties as they are now either need to go or at least get tweaked to match the bonuses of DK presences.
Comparible post on the Forums. Just bringing to your attention.
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=10043235395&sid=1&pageNo=1
It makes no difference though as you are balanced around those penalties.
They don't look at prot warrior DPS/DTPS over in beserker stance, they look at it in Prot Stance. Your penalties are no different.
As for it radically changing things j.prevost, it doesn't, it just means you balance warrior initial damage intake against taking 25% more damage than you want the tank to take. Its not hard to balance really.
Agree with j.prevost.
The solution is to buff a warrior's base HP, not to remove the penalties.
At the moment that 10% bonus damage really doesn't matter unless you're soloing, in which case it means eating 10% more often.
The fact is that the warrior base class is already much more powerful than a base paladin or death knight, which is why our talents suck balls for the most part and yet we still own arenas.
Can you post again about stances since GC seems to be readin the warrior beta forum more?
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