The History of Warrior Stances (Vanilla WoW to Mists)

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hirumaredx

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Published on December 12, 2013 4:59:17 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQjBauKBJhE

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World of WarCraft (2004)

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Warrior Stances

Before Mists, the 3 warrior stances locked you out of certain abilities and only the best of warriors would stance dance to use specific skills because each time you changed stances you lost all your rage.

There are 3 stances, Battle, Berserk, and Defensive.

In vanilla, Battle stance gave you some rage when you did damage and some when you were hit. In wrath, it was changed to increase Armor pen by 10%. In cata it increased damage and decreased damage taken by 5%. In Mist, it was changed to give rage on each hit.

Berserk stance in its first form increased melee haste by 10% and increased the damage you took by 20%. A few patches into vanilla it was changed to increase crit by 3% and increase damage taken by 10%. In wrath they reduced the extra damage taken to 5% and in Cata the removed the extra damage effect and changed it to increase damage by 10%. In the mist beta this skill went through a few changes, first it was changed to simply increase the damage of cleave and Whirlwind by 20%. Then it was changed to only give rage when taking damage. Then finally they settled on it giving some rage when attacking and some from taking damage.

Defensive stance in its first form reduced damage done and taken by 10%. in wrath it was given a 45% threat boost and changed to only reduce your damage done by 5%. In cata they finally realized that reducing your damage was stupid so they removed the damage penalty and just gave it a 200% threat boost in addition to reducing damage by 10%. In patch 4.3 when all tanking classes got a threat buff, they baked warriors threat buff into defensive stance increasing threat by 500%. In mist it was changed to reduce damage taken to 15% then again in patch 5.3 changed to a ridiculous amount of 25% reduced damage at all times.

Now what the stances actually did was of little concerned to warriors of why they actually used them. Mainly they switch stances to use a certain ability. In vanilla it was common practice to go in battle stance and charge in, because back then charge was only usable out of combat, switch to berserk to use all the useful dps talents, and switch back to battle stance if going against a rouge or druid to over power spam.

Each time you change stances you lost all your rage, but it was necessary to accomplish what you wanted. If you wanted to disarm in pvp, you had to switch to defensive stance. If you wanted to shield wall, you had to switch to defensive stance and equip a shield, same for spell reflection and intervene.

To charge you need to be out of combat and in battle stance, to intercept you needed to be in berserk stance and have rage.

Before cataclysm pummel was only useable in berserk stance so a common practice to juke out a warrior was to wait for them to change to battle stance to cast freely. Prot warriors had this skill for a while that allowed them to use both charge and intercept in defensive stance and in combat making them extremely Mobile in both pvp and pve compared to other melee classes.

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