Those of you who played GW1 might be somewhat bothered by how Stances function in GW2. Thematically it makes very little sense that a Warrior could be in multiple stances at once. Mechanically speaking, Stances are very, very boring. It basically boils down to “press button for this effect.” In GW1 it was only possible to have one stance active at a time. This forced the player to decide when to best use your Stances and when to cancel one for another depending on the situation.
Unfortunately, adding this dynamic into GW2 wouldn’t be easy. I brought this topic up…gee probably a year ago now…and it’s still a bit of a bugbear for me. Since then, I’ve refined my ideas a bit more and just wanted to get them out in the open.
1. Stances should have lower cooldowns to counteract only being able to have one active at a time.
How much of a reduction would depend on the stance. I can’t say I have any idea what would be best, it would require some testing to find the sweet spot. Some may also need shorter active time as well. This also ties into my next point.
2. Some stances would require new functionality.
For example, Balanced Stance would need to become unstrippable. The reasoning behind this is that Dolyak Signet would become the obvious favorite because it wouldn’t be canceled by other stances. This would also give the stance an important role in both PvP and WvW. Some may consider this to mean that it has no counter, but keep in mind that the Warrior won’t be able to pair it with a stance like Endure Pain or Berserker Stance to avoid damage while stomping. Even Guardian has plenty of ways to not take damage while stomping AND have stability.
Another stance I would personally like to see changed would be Endure Pain. While it wouldn’t be necessary to change it I would like to see it function more like GW1’s Defy Pain where it gives you extra health and reduces incoming damage, rather than just making it reduce all physical damage to 0. The tradeoff would be a slightly longer duration. This would also hopefully make EP have some sort of synergy with Rousing Resilience, a trait that is currently almost never used.
3. Stance-based traits would need to be sightly changed.
This would HAVE to happen to avoid traits like Defy Pain and Last Stand from screwing you over by overriding the stance you actually WANT on. The solution for Defy Pain is pretty easy, just make it have its own effect called “Defy Pain” rather than activating Endure Pain, the effect can stay the same to keep it unique. This does have the downside of not benefiting from the Vigor and duration increase from Last Stand however. Speaking of Last Stand, instead of it triggering Balanced Stance, it just gives you the same boons it currently does when it triggers.
As many of my suggestions, I know that there’s little chance of them actually happening. That being said, I feel like changes such as these would add just a bit more skill to the class and would make it not only rewarding to use, but would also make players fighting the warrior less frustrated. Even when fighting other Warriors I know it can be annoying to deal with someone who just pops all of their stances and runs for the hills.