Stances are broken garbage from the start, they need to be reworked completely or taken out. WHY do we need a S+B stance to be activable?? We already had that passive through AAs, what happened to it? The game knows we are holding a shield we shouldn't have to tell it. Did You Know to burn optimally we have to switch out of 2h and into Defense stance at some points? This is asinine. Here is a non garbage foundation for stances: Put on a 10h buff say Art of War, on 100% of DW skill checks, proc us with the boost you want to give us. 2h checks do the same thing. If none of these proc then it gives us defensive. Here is another non garbage way to do it: Give us 3 discs with near 90% uptime similar to Steadfast Guardian. DW, 2h, and Defense discs. Defensive can't even be used during Last Stand anyways. EASY. I don't give a about AA dev and spell dev segregation this shouldn't be our problem. Stances should be fun, cool, substantial or good, but they currently aren't any of those things, so what's the point?
DPS, survivability, and aggro in step with the basic nature of weapon setups, consistency across the Tank archetype when we are tanking and the Melee DPS archetype when we are not tanking but instead are substituting for a melee DPSer, elegance, and smooth transition from DPS to tanking roles is the proper outcome IMO. Achieve those things integrated with our previous to TDS existing discipline and abilities and the fun, cool, substantial, and good part takes care of itself. I know plenty of Warriors that (perhaps some reluctantly) accepted that S&B was for tanking all but the most trivial content and were delighted that 2H was doing better DPS than S&B. All they wanted was a slight boost to DW DPS. They certainly didn't want the confusion and complications nor the conditional depending on your setup access to survival or damage boosting stances. They withheld judgement and were optimistic until we saw what it was that we actually got. We've seen it now. A poll posted on The Steel Warrior received so little interest from Warriors that only 41 players responded. When tanking challenging content (group OR raid) as a warrior, would you prefer: Dual wielding 27 65.85% Sword + shield 14 34.15% 2h of some sort 0 A small lobby campaigning vigorously in favor of anything that would excavate an every day tanking and DPS role for DW got us here. I'm afraid it'll take a lot to get us out of the hole they put us in. Work completed, even if its complicated and not good for the game, isn't easily removed. I don't know a single Warrior that likes stances - they might like a nearly 24/7 tanking role for DW but they don't like the surgery to the class way used to help create that role.
Seems it's time for a history refresher. I like these! Longer timeline of what actually "got us here": Even-smaller lobby for "shield appropriate one-handers" for Warriors Shield Specialist implemented. 99.9% of Warriors don't care. Shield lobby raises shield agro concerns with devs More DPS added to SS (without an agro boost) Lulz - 1H out parses crappy-offhand DW. 99% of Warriors don't care. Group Warrior loots a raid sword: Sweet! That guy's group: Your agro still sucks. Shield lobby raises agro concerns again with devs Even-more DPS added to SS (without an agro boost) - round 2 Extra lulz - 1H now consistently outparsing DW/2H Curious lulz - SS ranks added to Knights. Era of doom - content now tuned around shield usage Endurance sustainability simultaneously hits an all-time low Warriors lose their marbles. Mass ranting occurs. Agro concerns raised yet-again with devs. Dual-Wield resurrection lobby appears Dual-Wield lobby: We wouldn't be in this mess if it wasn't for Shield lobby. Shield lobby: Shut it, shields are for tanking. Dual-Wield lobby: Is that why they're the best DPS? Shield lobby: .... I got nothin. Even-more DPS added via ISS (and still no agro boost) Hastened AA's for Bazu/Scowl are a drop in the bucket. Bandaid for endurance issues applied via Respite line Unexpected lulz - ISS description hilariously inaccurate Bonus lulz - Battle leap now fairly sustainable for good DPS. No-longer-lulz - DPS classes start nerf crusade against Warrior DPS ISS nerfed. DPS changed to 'slow' agro proc. Description still wrong. Agro concerns raised YET-AGAIN with devs. Phalanx of One and Merciless Blade implemented. VoA mobs are wrecking balls. Warriors hide behind shields. RoF Beta - Agro concerns are raised OMGSRSLYAGAIN? this time with numbers. Warrior agro discs get a 300-600% agro boost. Phalanx of Fury implemented, more ranks of Phalanx+Merciless Blade Warriors: Hey, this is pretty cool. I can actually tank/DPS with 2H 2H lobby would say "you're welcome" but says nothing because they never existed. Warriors switch concerns to discipline weirdness, agro concerns evaporate Dual-Wield resurrection lobby: Wow, Dual Wield really sucks now... Elidroth suggests change for stances, activated/penalty model Warriors: DEAR SWEET BABY THULE PLEASE NO NOT THAT Elidroth R2 stances proposed, changed ever-so-slightly Warriors: THATS REALLY NOT MUCH BETTER Dual-Wield resurrection lobby: Just.... improve DW DPS? Please? CotF released. NTTB is a gift from angels above. Warriors hold agro with wet noodles Warriors: Man, it's a great time to be a Warrior Dual-Wield resurrection lobby: I miss my DW. What's the update on stances? NTTB nerfed. Mass Warrior rage. Pet AC nerfed. Proficiency system introduced. Warriors: These proficiencies are kind of cool but also weird and annoying. Shield lobby: Whatever. S&B 4 lyfe~ Dual-Wield lobby: I guess it'll never happen Phalanx nerfed.
A poll posted on The Steel Warrior received so little interest from Warriors that only 41 players responded. When tanking challenging content (group OR raid) as a warrior, would you prefer: Dual wielding 27 65.85% Sword + shield 14 34.15% 2h of some sort 0 True it was a even-smaller lobby for "shield appropriate one-handers" for Warriors It was a smaller lobby that pointed out that knights were routinely tanking under S&B and therefore were getting the benefits of shield AC not subject to the softcap and Shield Block while the lack of shield appropriate weapons made shield use much more problematic for Warriors. The proper cure was not to extend those benefits to Warrior offhanders and preserve the DW 24/7 strangle hold on the Warrior class, but to be consistent across the Tank archetype and have the natural functions of a shield dictate it's arena of use - tanking. So which is more galling? The fact that an early design error was identified, its repercussions noted, and that it was properly repaired? Or that a very small lobby took the lead in player efforts while the vast majority of Warriors sat back in their comfort zone and watched? A very small lobby also noted that Warriors enjoyed only about a 146HP advantage over knights after their self buffs and that the Warrior lack of at will/at range aggro abilities affected us when players were no longer willing to wait for 10 seconds for us to build aggro starting in LDoN. Surely if you've read Warrior forums for a decade plus you've seen - Tanking = aggo + survivability A very small lobby also asked for buff and healing potions in PoK and also (half tongue in cheek) lore one shot res sticks. Ditto fast mounts to become more common. Etc., etc., etc. All of which: a. Happened b. Should have happened A very big lobby (certainly bigger than Dual wielding 27) thought SK's should continue to have green pet pulling, a small, dead wrong, but very influential lobby insisted that DW was the natural tanking AND DPS setup (despite knights, 2 of the classes that tank, not even being DWers and DW being a DPS and not a taking setup) All of which: a. Should not have happened One small lobby asked for things to be done FOR Warriors. Many of those things were done for Warriors. Another small lobby tried its hand and asked for some things to be done TO Warriors solely because they wanted to DW on an every day basis - 2H already did better DPS than S&B/S&B already was better when tanking than 2H. And man oh man were things ever done to us. Dual wielding 27 fans wanted to talk majority? I don't think the majority of Warriors like stances much and were reconciled to S&B is for tanking DW and 2H is for DPSing. Not that "majority" means a lot. Sometimes one person can be right and the majority either wrong or silent.
What's most galling was the three years of content released that were tuned for shield use before agro changes were implemented to support it. Second place would be a quirky Proficiency system, which was implemented only in response to DPS imbalances caused by Shield Specialist, which should have been agro changes all along, not four releases of DPS mods.
I don't recall any major aggro issues - it was roughly a 30% loss of our proc aggro which was not our only source of aggro. I do recall some Warriors (who wanted us to remain DW 24/7 prefers and knights, both of whom liked us taking a big DPS hit to make us reluctant to use a shield) claiming that the use of a shield resulting in a 30% loss of DPS and aggro was solely an aggro issue. IF that had been the case THEN there would be no point in creating shield appropriate 1 handers for knights in the first place. They, since they relied on the side effects of spells for aggro, didn't have substantial aggro issues. If a sword designed to be used two at a time rather than one at a time with a shield was adequate for Warriors it could have easily been adequate for knights. Such weapons were not shield appropriate.
I did it with an at the time group geared Ranger tanking HA's. Without an aggro mask, not a big pile of aggro abilities, etc. Hmm. I didn't even have aggro procs. Not my preference and a group geared SK and Warrior I grouped with on other occasions were better at it.
None of your thing there explains or excuses stances at all. Invisible trade offs because reasons? There's already a huge obvious visible trade off when you forego the actual equipping of a shield. Shields are for tanking! 10% of our actual AC is from a shield, and there's Shield Block! Two weapons or giant twohand are for damage? okay, but why stances? Why is how-it-works-when-you-layer-on-AA/socials/stacking/timers/etc not just ... how-it-works, without the bull? Your assertions about "no way" this or "it had to be" that are bull. We're not talking emergent properties of natural laws here, they're game systems with intentionality, built by people. A person, even.
Lol exactly how it was. Don't forget the year or so where only chain taunting worked to keep aggro from pets. Because of the shield changes . We lost 30% of our proc hate plus half of our swing hate .
He made the stances because the upgrades were not going to be given to us without nerfs the first thing on the chopping block was SS. I guess you forget the 3 years of dps stagnation we went through and all dps increases were denied unless they were tiny which is what all the other aa gave us tiny boosts when we needed big boosts.
Sorry, but small observation just perusing this horribly long thing. I notice a lot of complaining about losing 25 % mitigation for deciding not to use a shield, but no praise for getting such a great boost for using one. If you warriors hate having that so much, can SHD have instead? Is a problem I'd love to have.
That's exactly what you wrote above, you just repeated yourself. There's no why there, it's what in formal argument would be called Begging The Question. You say a fix to the problem would not come without nerfs, but why not? Fixes to game systems aren't scarce resources that have to be bargained over, they're just decisions to be made. Decide to fix it -> work on fixing it. There's no necessary intermediary of figuring out who's going to give up their fun to pay for it.
You do know the shield stance gives an extra 20% mitigation above what a shield normally does right ? Starting tomorrow it was 25% above the shield's normal mitigation before the phalanx nerf. From your last comment towards the other poster doesn't seem like it ? And the reasons were visible everywhere you could even start a conversation with elidroth if you feel like it and he will tell you what he was going to do ? If he boosted 2 hand dps our special attacks would of been boosted and with a shield equipped it would of boosted our shield tanking dps even more over top of 2 hand so the problem was un fixable without nerfing SS first.
Well those sound like entirely intractable issues with no other solution! Either that or it's trivially subject to any of a myriad other solutions. One or the other...
I advocated a one or two AA step reduction in SS with the damage not produced be melee as a result restored in the form of a Damage Shield present only if you had a shield equipped. The result of doing this would be a reduction of S&B damage when in S&B but acting as a melee DPSer - hitting but not tanking the mob. And thereby insuring that DW outdamages S&B when both are used to melee DPS. IF the legitimate complaint is that S&B is our best DPS setup such a change would reasonably fix that situation. While preserving Warriorly DPS while tanking properly geared to tank. Surely no one I their right mind felt Warriors were doing too much DPS either tanking or not tanking. We all see parses. Telling me that someone insists on nerfing our defensive abilities as a condition of increasing DPS is not going to impress me. There is where we place in the hierarchy, by how much, and to what degree we can hold aggro or are subject to "aggro is everyone's job". Then there's the how much DPS do we do when performing the above or alternately acting as a substitute melee DPSer. No one, iirc, has told Wizards "you can have x% more DPS if and only if you accwpr tissue paper armor. For us its reasonable aggro AND reasonable survivability AND reasonable DPS. It's definately not an OR situation. Tanking = aggro AND survivability a tank has a reasonable expectation of total class power outside of tanking even when tanking. That takes the form of melee DPS, spells, and disciplines. We can't expect, nor will we get, sufficient melee DPS to make us into a better DPSer than Rogues (for example) - Rogue-like DPS with Warrior-like survivability. We are however entitled to Warriorly DPS in full measure. That measure was once 120%, 100%, 80% with Warriors occupying the 100% bin. Yes it's not that now but willingness to improve our deficient DPS that we've been shortchanged on should not be dependent on nerfing survivability which frankly has become too close between tanks and not tanks. So the thesis is incorrect. The solution based on the thesis is incorrect and it a Rube Goldberg pile of confusing spaghetti. If all you are saying Mak is that this is the way it was, I understand and do not criticize you at all. If you are telling me that you knew how it was going to be ahead of time, nodded your head and said that would be good and did not point out that we did not require nerfs to get upgrades then I'll keep my opinion about that way of thinking to myself. However, to my mind given that you were an advocate for continuing to DW 24/7. asked for a parry benefit for DW during the Paladin/Warrior talk, etc. I'm disposed to believe some Warriors wanted DW as close to 24/7 as possible regardless of the cost to the class. Now that we're paying that cost its Elidroth under the bus - it wasn't us, it was him - what were we to do?
Nope I never brought up the ss problem but others did I didn't know the exact way the stances were going to work until the beta they went live just like anyone else.All I knew is he was working on a solution for the problems we had holding us back.
I meant your Warrior, back in the day. Today is a different ball game. I've got a friend that tanks HA's with a Druid.
No. Nobody wants DW 24/7. Or even 23/7, as you prefer to fall back upon. You've invented that group of people, and used that untruth as your basis for many a regurgitated argument. Those of us who asked about DW were not trying to bring it back into the primary role, but rather to at least see it be useful again. That it was becoming useful to tanking was reasonable when you consider that we should still be capable of tanking while wearing a full suit of armor with a suite of tactics and skills at our disposal. The entire ability to tank (or to fill the role of your precious tank archetype) should not be totally locked up in the concept of using a shield at all times. Even still, dual wield tanking is blatantly inferior to tanking with a shield, and I'm okay with that. The desire for these different stances was to have role and purpose differentiated from each other instead of one stance in particular being ignored or treated as trash. When the first ranks of Shield Specialist arrived and I found out that using a shield wasn't going to be just for Knights, I was excited that my arsenal was expanding, that I would have more useful options available to me. I still carried a variety of weapons around in case mobs were resistant to a particular skill like slashing, and to have access to useful procs. Weapons were tools; with variety, I could be flexible. Adding a shield to that list of tools made me happy, and anything that increased my survivability was also welcome. Over time, I found that incorporating a shield had actually reduced my options. Having a shield equipped had become the best offense as well as the best defense. It felt restrictive and boring. Where was my ability to adapt to the combat situation or make decisions? It wasn't necessary anymore. There wasn't any need to even have the bandolier window visible. That same sense of monotony would be present if I was locked into using DW all the time. I don't want that. I want to use a shield, and to dual wield, and to swing a massive 2hander. I want to change the type of weapon (blunt, piercing, slashing) depending on the situation. This really isn't all about dual wielding, it's about being more involved. I am just as irritated with the increase to unnecessary defensive skill penalties for 2H as I was with how lackluster DW was performing. I don't know why you have this perception that shield users are being persecuted somehow. Nobody asked for any further modification to Defensive Proficiency because it was already in a really good place. I'm sure with your love of shields, you must be using it frequently enough (dare I say 23/7?) to know that a permanent 25% mitigation bonus and 15% Shield Block bonus is table-flipping amazing. Nobody really likes the way Proficiencies are working, and you want to lay blame on Dual Wielders. Smooth. Nobody asked for activated buffs for using weapons; the idea was soundly rejected by all (including Dual Wielders), but implemented anyway. You should rethink your bizarre accusation. And yet, it has actually been good for Warriors to finally get some attention. There is an attempt being made to place role and purpose on the different weapon stances, and also to increase our very lame DPS. Both these things have been long overdue. The problem has been in the implementation. I agree with you that the way we use our various setups should be inherent to simply having it equipped, and that transitioning from one stance/setup to another should be as seamless as using the bandolier. That is what we all wanted, but not what we were given. I have been testing and using what we have been given, because I think that we won't ever see an alternative to the activated Proficiency buff nonsense. If it's too hard to get right, then it will be abandoned as-is. So, I am trying to provide feedback to get adjustments made so that the Proficiencies at least work correctly, a state we still have not yet reached. If we have to use activated buffs, then it should at least be as simple as 1) correct weapons equipped? 2) activate buff, then 3) nothing else! We shouldn't have self-stacking conflicts coming from Flash of Anger or Myrmidon's Skill. I think Elidroth is using the activated buff method to allow for the variable states. As Brohg has mentioned, there are already DPS improving AAs that exist which could accomplish that end and could be used because they are constants. But Elidroth seems to believe that the stances require tradeoffs, so we have variable levels of mitigation and situational defensive skill penalties that can't be made passive. If you want to fix this "Rube Goldberg pile of confusing spaghetti," try providing suggestions or convincing him that the penalties are unjustified. You are wasting your time (and ours) by rehashing ancient arguments that focus on how much you hate Dual Wield, and attempting to lay blame on "dual wield lobbyists."
A poll posted on The Steel Warrior received so little interest from Warriors that only 41 players responded. When tanking challenging content (group OR raid) as a warrior, would you prefer: Dual wielding 27 65.85% Sword + shield 14 34.15% 2h of some sort 0 DW were it to become useful for tanking white con and below, an every day experience and yardtrash clearing setup in current content is a fork deeply infringing on a spoon's job. DW has no business being substantially better than 2H for tanking - they are both melee DPS setups. As a member of the Tank Archetype our use of weapon setups and training should have some common archetype traits with the other tanks in that archetype (consistency). When members of the Tanks archetype are performing a melee DPS role we should mainly be consistent with members of that archetype. It would be nice if DW is for tanking fans would stop wasting our time AND negatively affecting the class by campaigning for wholesale changes or changes intended to restrict our use of our tanking setup to the least amount of content possible. I don't believe that's true of many DW is for tanking fans. Not spending a lot of time in the melee DPS role, and therefore not a lot of time in either 2H or DW, they wanted to roll the dice if that meant relatively lowering S&B DPS to make it less desirable for tanking or increasing DW's tanking capability to make it much more desirable for tanking. I don't think DW should have a tanking role beyond trivial blue experience mobs found in previous to current content (or 2H for that matter - not that DW is for tanking fans want 2H to be as useful for tanking as DW.) However, if DW and 2H are to have a standing in for a melee DPS role for tanks, then tanks need to be able to build aggro while DPSing and survive the initial shock of having the MT die and them becoming the focus of the mob's attentions. All tanks. Fortitude, Flash, and (knight) deflection need to be usable under all weapon setups and all three tanks should get a long refresh self Guardian Angel buff that's over written by DI. It's not a matter of us maintaining aggro discipline and therefore require a Cleric buff to offset our ineptitude. When standing in for a melee DPSer we are often next to tank and managing out aggro just fine. Our transition from DPS to tanking is far more dangerous to say nothing about less common sensical and confusing than it ought to be. Roll the dice change (or even trying to tweak roll the dice change) < archetype consistency, elegance, and right tools (weapon setups, disciplines, spells, and abilities) for the right job. Had I wanted to spend a substantial amount of time using a DPS setup (or a bow doing ranged DPS) I would not have rolled a Tank.
