Warrior Q&A: Mostly okay, a few concerns...

Despite being a large critic of Ghostcrawler I'll admit that I was mostly satisfied with the Q&A. You've at least acknowledged quite a few warrior concerns, though I wish there were more certainty as to when we could see a fix. Some of these issues (rage being one) were acknowledged quite some time ago and I've personally seen a lot of good suggestions toward fixes. While I'll admit we're in a decent spot, the class certainly isn't unplayable, it would be nice to have an idea of when our "quality of life" will improve.

Now onto my concerns with the Q&A:

Why weren't weapon specs addressed? Years ago, weapon speed was normalized due to the fact that rare weapons could result in considerably more damage than epics. We have a similar situation now, the best weapon in the game, with the most appropriate stats for warriors, is beaten by several lesser weapons with non ideal stats... again I've personally seen quite a few suggestions on this and shouldn't need to rehash them, but at the very least could you address the top question we have right now?

Q u o t e:
Q: What is the overall purpose of stances and how are stances intended to be used?

A: The purpose of stances is for warriors to have to make decisions in combat. How badly do I want to Intercept now? Should I pay the cost of Spell Reflect? Ideally, we want warriors to switch stances in combat -- not every few seconds, but a few times over the course of a battle. Now we realize it’s going to be harder to enforce this in raid fights unless you have a battle with a lot of movement or other unusual circumstances.

We get a fair number of suggestions from players trying to basically slip the stance concept out of the warrior class: make it not take rage, or let them do more abilities per stance so they don’t need to switch stances so often. That’s not really what the warrior is all about though. You should care what stance you’re in and it should be a decision to change stance. Note that if you pay too high a price to change stances, that counts as there not being a decision though.

The problem is that in most cases the "decision" is success or failure. We don't switch stances because we feel like it or it might provided a slight advantage. We most often switch stances as a requirement to succeed. The biggest penalty is that we can't use all abilities in all stances... fine, we're not DKs... but why do I have to lose rage at all, would it really be imbalanced to retain my rage? Am I being penalized for being forced to switch stances? Why does switching stances reset the swing timer? Not only do we lose rage, which I quite honestly don't even see as necessary but you're going to interrupt our ability to recover rage? DKs can switch presences all day long without ever interrupting their swing timer and they don't even need to swing to do their job.

Q u o t e:
Community Team: Warrior shouts have added some unique utility to the class in the past, but now they tend to be used very sparingly.

Q: What is the reasoning behind their short duration and do we have plans to improve the duration similar to the buffs other classes already provide?

A: The shouts are supposed to be buttons that warriors push in combat. They aren’t intended to be pre-fight buffs like Arcane Intellect or Prayer of Fortitude. We had a discussion about this recently and decided with glyphs and talents that the duration isn’t a problem. If you lack Booming Voice and the minor Battle Shout glyph, it might be more annoying.

Ok, I'm cool with that. You want us to shout during combat, I can see the "rp logic" but can you at least increase the range so everyone in the raid can get my commanding shout? There are several encounters in Ulduar where if I position myself dead center of the raid as a whole, not everyone will get the shout. Does it absolutey have to cost rage? Comparing to DKs again, not only does horn of winter cost nothing, but it rewards runic power? I think it's pretty reasonable to ask that you remove the rage requirement, increase the range significantly, maybe by buffing the talent, and maybe put a "must be in combat" requirement on it... Though I will say that if shouts (including battle) are supposed to happen during battle it seems pretty unfair that battle shout is completely trumped by might.

In reference to itemization and gearing:
We totally understand that creating additional items just for us (well ret and dk as well) doesn't seem like the best solution. How many Flasks of the North will there be in 3.2? Just one. But it serves 3 purposes. Is it not possible to do the same with gear and enchants, or even the flask of endless rage?