Fiddling with the new stances since implemented it looks like DW isn't really a viable stance at the moment. It is far inferior to S+B in defense and 2H in dps. I played in different content from VoA to CotF and didn't find a situation where I would choose DW over either of the other stances. Have to say I am very disappointed. What every one else seeing?
Stances are another burden on our hotbars that give 0 feedback or pleasure to the player, just like many of us suspected would happen months ago.
DW isn't viable right now because it isn't even working as intended. It causes you to take extra damage, rather than receive a mitigation bonus. It gives an unnoticeable bonus to parry, but penalizes dodge. It doesn't feel like it does better damage than S+B, let alone enough to be worth dealing with the broken defensive penalties. I posted this info in a bug thread after the patch that introduced the new AAs:
I think the stances suck you can't Put DP back up when you have a non damage primary + shield combo up for those annoying DS mobs.
The stances are overly cumbersome. I noticed this while soloing(+merc) quests. The disc restrictions (2H stripping last stand, 2H buff making FOA useless) and unnecessarily long reuse times are the culprit. Hopefully they can make the 2H buff interact with last stand like it does with FOA.... make last stand useless when 2H buff is going, but still allow them both to be up at the same time. I see absolutely no reason why the buff can't have a < 5s reuse time. I can see how having an instant reuse could lead to exploits, but even a 1s reuse time would remove every possible exploit I can think of. Regardless, the 30s reuse is silly. I also think people getting over DW being useless is blinding everyone to the fact the 2H buff, while great undisced/buffed vs guild hall dummies, is underwhelming on actual raid burns.
A permanent 25% defensive (DI shift) is huge. Can't make a judgment on how you should spend $40 though (you get a year's worth of content and some nice gear boosts).
Returning after a two month break, I see already Warrior has some new toys to play with. My question is does Def Proficiency stack with our typical Def abilities? Basically are you guys just throwing it on top of everything else we normally have up? Bracing , NTTB, Steadfast , etc? Bout to log in and play around with it, just curious i suppose ....
Defensive Proficiency works fine with Bracing , NTTB, Steadfast , etc... as long as you're using S&B. However, it drops as soon as you hit your Last Stand disc. You'll have to put it back up as soon as your LS disc drops.
So turn attack off and equip a weapon for 3 seconds. It's not hard. Yes, I agree it would be nice to be able to hit it with a non-weapon in primary but to say they suck is a little over the top. Personally I'm loving defensive.
The recent boosts with stances included is some of the best stuff we have received since flash of anger.
Except we're still back to square one with dual wield being useless ... Glad i haven't logged in in months
I'm still 1000% fine with dual wield being useless. I still think Stance buttons are an unnecessary complication of passive abilities crossed with an an unnecessary complication of the Bandolier. While I appreciate growing in power, the implementation of Stances is exactly the boondoggle I anticipated. I'm annoyed every time I encounter the system in the buff bar or my hot buttons.
That is just being narrow minded. Just as me saying I would be %1000 fine with 2H stance being useless because in my long standing group make up letting me use my 2H %0.005 of the time. That doesn't mean that there are players out there who would use it %40-80 of the time. I would use DW about %10-15 of the time. That doesn't equate to letting SOE brush off their mistake with a /shrug.
Actually this is their way of trying to get people to step away from their computers and enjoy life... And its working.
I'm going to go against the grain here and say that I think the 2 useful warrior stances (2H, Defensive) add a very enjoyable dimension to an otherwise extremely one dimensional class. In fact, personally, I'd like to see the concept expanded to other classes (start with SK's in my opinion, with an aggro enhancing stance, and/or a dps enhancing stance). I've been playing off and on since early 2000, and the trend has always been away from specialization towards "every class can do every thing"...every long time player misses the time when their particular class was "the best at" something--pulling, crowd control, healing, tanking, exploring, dps, whatever. I understand the reasons for these trends, but the real thing that has happened due to the normalization of everything from gear to class skills to AA's is making game play extremely one dimensional, and ultimately boring. I love the fact that I have to make choices again (albeit limited ones currently)--should I stick with Defensive and save my disc timers in case the 4 tanks in front of me go down, or go with 2H stance and use the offensive versions of my discs, risking having key defensives/aggro discs timed out if things go bad in the MT line. Give this flexibility back to the players as a whole...let SK's have a "Tormentor" stance that greatly increases aggro at the expense of dps, or pallies have a "Savior" stance that trades tanking ability for healing ability, or Zerkers have a "Totem of Stone" stance that trades dps for tanking ability....give shaman "Spirit of Nature" (increased short term buff capability), vs "Spirit of Destruction" (nice dot/nuke increase, heavy loss in healing/avoidance). Give players choices to make--and make them hard choices, that can save the day, or lose it.
The Warrior class has been a real roller coaster over the last couple years. I'm glad we can at least hold agro these days because pretty much every other area of class design has become a colossal mess. The proficiencies are a perfect example of this. My motivations for rallying the community on this issue were to make DW viable again and to get some more flexibility with regard to our weapon choices (i.e. viable tanking or DPS'ing with whichever weapon type we preferred) Instead, not only did we get the opposite - akin to Battleblade's "pidegeonhole" model (Tanking=S&B only, 2H=dps only, DW=100%useless) that every other member of the Warrior community lobbied vigorously against, but the change came with some particularly nasty drawbacks. I would say I feel cheated... but the moment Elidroth proposed the activated/buff system, everyone knew it was going to be a disaster, raised all of our red flags and it still happened. Can we get a re-do before proficiencies become the next Shield Specialist?
Disagree completely (as my post obviously indicates)--warriors in my guild love the stances, and while we all agree the dual wield stance currently is useless, on the whole they are a great start at a very interesting design.
