Gladiator Stance is a GO

Gladiators!

I am happy to announce that through some crafty keyword trapping on twitter, I managed to get myself a WoD Beta Key. I've probably entered 40 contests so I'm pretty happy with myself. This guy on twitter asked if anyone wanted a key, and I happened to be on twitter at 10am on a Sunday morning. I responded immediately, opened up my code redemption page in case he responded with the key out loud, and he sure did. I had the fasted copy/paste that day.

My experiences on Beta as Gladiator have so far been pretty much amazing. Here is why:

1. Gladiator Stance does good damage. We compete extremely well in single target, and right now with current AOE tuning I can say we're slightly behind. The lack of Ravager at level 100 hurts but there has been mention that current AOE Damage tuning is still being worked on.

2. Gladiator Stance is extremely fun to play. We have next to NO downtime in our rotation because we have a filler ability that doesn't cost us anything ( devastate ). We also have Heroic Strike, so I expect we hit more buttons than a lot of our DPS comrades.

3. Some of our concerns have been addressed! While the Blues haven't done a lot of tweeting about us lately, the biggest bug on the Beta was that Heavy Repercussions wasn't actually giving our shield slams that sweet 50% bonus after a shield charge.

4. Unyielding Strikes is actually good! Sudden Death not so much. Right now Execute hits like a wet noodle (we're missing the execute perk), so you won't want to use Sudden Death. But the damage output between US and Heavy Repercussions is pretty close, so you're able to play an even MORE spammy playstyle if you are missing that burn in your wrist =P.

5. Survivability. With Shield Barrier, you can very much help the healer out a ton. There have been a few boss situations where it was just me, the tank, and the healer left, and I was having to do my damndest to stay alive. Barrier will put a bubble on you to allow your Blood Craze healing to catch up. Between this and the levels of Resolve you can get with your defensives ( shield wall and demo shout ), you can do a very nice amount of healing.

Current Issues that still stick out for Glad on Beta:

- We can't shield charge a Boss that we can't walk up to. Think of Ultraxion. The Shield Charge thankfully doesn't just run you off the cliff haha. It just doesn't work. There is a new Boss in UBRS like this. You fight it on a Bridge.

I actually recorded a stream of the Beta I played last night. I tanked a dungeon with a Blue! And then I went and killed Bashiok in PVP. To be fair, both Bashiok and myself are PVE Allstars, so that probably helped :).

Then I also ran the new UBRS as Gladiator! This one is a pretty good example of some bad play at times.. but I had a ton of fun. The only person I was really competing with on the meters was the Tank!
http://www.twitch.tv/cyclonus_wow/b/560678452

* Spoilers * More Tweets, Armor Blades, New Tier, Final Boss! * Spoilers *

Hello Gladiators!

Redesigns are the talk of the week, and will continue to be for months before release. I should probably warn that the entire Glad Stance idea COULD be cut right out of the game, and our hearts. However, this looks to be an exciting experiment, so I will do my damndest to test the hell out of it come Beta ( if I can get in. ).

First, I'd like to draw attention to one of my favorite shows on the internet, FinalBoss.TV. If you're reading my blog you're probably already interested in Endgame content, and Prot Warriors. This happens to be an awesome talk show where they've interviewed a few of the more vocal Prot Warriors from the MMOC message boards. I had actually rallied for another Prot War Ep as the first one was a much different format of show from what I've come to love in the current episodes. Be sure to go show your support @ the Finalboss site too! Here is the Ep!

* Spoilers * Second, Our new Tier was Datamined. Well We think its our new tier, and it looks AMAZING! Thanks to the MMO Champion Team for this! Don't fret if its not quite fitting your new Tauren Model face right now. I'm sure they'll fix that. * Spoilers *

 

Finally, the Glad Stance Related Changes:

The latest patch notes had a few interesting changes. Riposte and Blood Craze:

Blood Craze is a new passive ability for Protection Warriors.
Blood Craze causes Multistrike auto attacks to trigger a Blood Craze, which regenerates 3% of the Warrior's health over 3 seconds. When this effect is refreshed, the remaining duration is added to the new effect.

Riposte has been redesigned.
Riposte now gives the Warrior Parry equal to their Critical Strike bonus from gear. gives the Warrior +100% to Parry chance until they Parry an attack after getting a critical strike with an Auto Attack.

I'm thinking this means we're going to have a metric ton of parry to keep us nice and survivable for some of those niche situations where we'll drop a Mocking Banner and get beat on for a few seconds ( Protectors of the Endless Sun's Bubble ). The Blood Craze change is huge though! We should be healing a ton as we're going to be loving Multistrike already for the extra damage, and extra passive healing is a nice bonus.

Remember they've changed second wind so you will be less able to kite for 5 seconds and climb back to 35%.

This leads me to the last point, and to me, the most exciting:

@Cyclonus_WOW Bonus Armor will actually provide DPS value for tanks. Yes, it's part of the item's budget.
— Celestalon (@Celestalon) April 21, 2014

@Tengenstein A passive, Bladed Armor. Increases Attack Power by 100% of your Bonus Armor. (NOTE: Just *Bonus* Armor, not ALL Armor)
— Celestalon (@Celestalon) April 21, 2014

This is another trade of defensive stats for offensive stats. And I think this sounds great. Not only do we get to continue to look for gear with tank stats on it, straight up Plate DPS gear will also be useful. This sort of versatility in our gearing strategy also means we're going to need to do a ton of testing :). Remember our SPEC ( protection ) is going to be deciding how our gear rolls. So we should also expect that the Tier Set bonuses for the tank gear are going to be useful to us as well. 

- Cyclonus