First off, for those unaware, Stance Dance is referring to Warriors switching between combat stances (Battle Stance (more rage generated), Defensive Stance (less damage taken), and Berserker Stance (increased damage output)). Back in the days, the Warrior had these three stances at their disposal that they could use regardless of their specialization.
While mainly used in PvP environments, the idea was that the Warrior would switch between stances to adapt to their situation. For example if their opponent used a cooldown the Warrior would want to switch into defensive stance to mitigate the damage, or if the enemy is CC’d they’d switch to berserker stance to deal more damage while the target is vulnerable.
This made the Warrior class very adaptive, responsive, and rewarding to play. Instead of just mashing abilities as they come off cooldown you’d benefit greatly from constantly reading your environment and predicting the outcome by adapting using the combat stances.
With the process of “unpruning” classes to give them back more tools, wouldn’t it make sense to also add the stances back in?
It’s also necessary given the return of certain abilities. I wrote this feedback on the Alpha forums.
The re-adding of Shield Block and Shield Slam as baseline abilities is something that looks good on paper and in reality, is cumbersome.
They both require macros for weapon swap to work, to be current the player needs a shield and a one-hander of equal ilvl to their main weapon and unless something changes it’s impossible to swap weapons in M+ which utterly negate these abilities in 25% of the end-game content in SL. The utility of Challenging Shout is also severely limited due to all of these factors. All of the returning abilities also add a lot of clutter to the hot bars as they need seven slots and a weapon swap macro is needed as well for a total of eight. That’s a lot.
My suggestion would be to see the return of stances in a limited fashion.
Battle Stance: Normal ability use (Arms).
Defensive Stance: Reduce the damage that the player takes and deals by 10% and gives them a one-handed weapon and shield of the same ilvl as their main-hand with the same secondary stats. Their main attack ability is replaced by Shield Slam, Charge by Intervene and Shield Block becomes available for use. The weapon and shield can be transmogrified and replaced with a one-handed weapon and shield with the secondary stats that the player wants.
Berserker Stance: Normal ability use (Fury).
Going into the various stances costs no Rage, having no cooldown and never activates the CGD.
By doing it this way players are discouraged from turtling in Defensive Stance and continuing damage as there are clear drawbacks to sitting in it. There’s also a survival benefit by using it so it’s curse/kiss. By having the MH transform into a one-hander and shield there’s no need to farm one out for the slot which makes it feel optional rather than mandatory. That they can be transmogrified gives the player some agency in how they’re going to look and with no Rage-loss or GCD activation Shield Block can be used in a pinch as well as can Intervene. And importantly it frees up hot bar slots.
I like the idea of getting a shield when u switch to def stance, with that it should also increase ur armor by xx amount, it also removes the macro’s to equip 1h and shield, which was fine by me but what i disliked was the HP you lost by switching from 2h to 1h and shield all the time, also losing rage by switching stances was annoying.
Reflect should also change in def stance somehow then.
I’m not particularly for or against stances, but issues like Spell Reflect requiring a Shield, therefore activating slower due to lag was very annoying and I would not want something like that back.
Also stances towards the end became pretty meaningless, with the Def stance Talent at least being somewhat useful and meaningful.
Stances would also increase the skillcap, possibly hurting less skilled players in PvP. Ie getting feared in BattleStance(or sapped) as Berserker Rage only usable in Berserker Stance for example. Whether this is good or bad is up for some discussion I guess.
Overall I’m not sure about the whole “unpruning”. Like, okay, turtling with Shield could come back, but is it necessary? What’s being replaced by this? Will it mean when using 2h you become a glass cannon to compensate?