Should Gladiator's Resolve Just Be a Fourth Warrior Spec?

Gladiator's Resolve is probably the most impactful talent of any class or spec in the game. As a quick explanation - the talent is available only to Protection Warriors at level 100. It has one very minor aspect - increasing Block chance, I think, while in Defensive Stance, but the far bigger thing is that it transforms Battle Stance into Gladiator Stance.

Gladiator Stance transforms some of the Protection abilities, reorienting them toward damage-dealing and away from tanking. The stated intention of this talent is to allow Prot Warriors to DPS, and to do so competitively.

Gladiator's Resolve allows Warrior Prot to be both a tank and DPS spec, and indeed, tank players may in fact choose the talent for the simplicity of the block bonus. Blizzard is attempting to avoid the pitfalls of the old Feral Druid spec, which used to encompass both what we would call Feral today and also Guardian druids, by disabling the ability to change stances while in combat. You can't go into a fight as DPS and then switch to Defensive Stance if the tank drops.

Still, there are a few oddities that result from this talent.

The first is that tank gear becomes DPS gear for one lucky spec. Admittedly, there's far less "tank" gear than there used to be, with the removal of dodge and parry ratings. Still, rings, trinkets, cloaks, and necklaces (and shields) can have the Bonus Armor stat, which is generally slated to be the ideal stat for all tanks (encouraging tanks to have a full set of tank accessories.) In order to keep Bonus Armor and Mastery competitive with the other secondary stats, which of course also have an offensive benefit, both of those stats will increase your Attack Power, with Bonus Armor adding the AP as a flat amount and Mastery increasing it by a percentage. While I don't know how well this offensive benefit will be, it seems perfectly possible that Gladiator Warriors will look for, or at least take, Bonus Armor pieces that theoretically should be just for tanks.

Another oddity is that much of the ability set that Gladiators have is clearly built around getting hit. They do a decent job of compensating for this - Shield Block becomes Shield Charge, for example. But the quasi-spec feels somewhat jury-rigged.

Possibly the most frustrating oddity of the talent is that it doesn't come until level 100. If you're really just interested in DPSing, this means you won't have the benefit of leveling up as a Gladiator Warrior. Essentially all Gladiators are going to have to learn the new rhythms of their spec at 100. Veteran tanks might have an easier time of it, but tanking is of course quite different than DPSing. Certainly it's easier to transition from tanking to DPSing, but it's still quite odd.

Now, to be clear, I applaud Blizzard's efforts here. I think it's fantastic that after ten years we're finally going to get a sword-and-board DPS style. Really at this point the only DPS spec that can use a shield is Elemental, where the shield really just functions as a glorified off-hand frill.

Also, as someone who is sad to see Arms collapse into horrifyingly simplistic gameplay, it's nice to know there's another option if Fury doesn't really fit my style.

However, as we see this evolve, I suspect it may come to a point where Gladiators need to have their own, fourth spec. The only precedent for this is of course the Druid, and in that case, Feral was effectively two specs already, and had been since vanilla. Yet if Blizzard is serious about Gladiators being a real DPS spec, and not a novelty like Dark Apotheosis (which I believe was removed in Warlords, hopefully signaling that they don't want Warlocks stepping on the toes of a future Demon Hunter class!) they might have to bite the bullet and give Warriors a fourth spec.