stance dancing

read any warrior forums or guides and such and you're likely to see the phrase, "stance dance." the general idea is to change from whatever stance you're currently in to another stance so you can use a stance-specific skill and then quickly change back to your original stance. you dance from stance to stance.

now, we'd heard the term before and knew the general concept, but as part of our continuing education efforts we thought we should read up on it a bit... learn the finer points and such. while we found many a mention of *when* to stance dance (specific boss fights, etc.) in the various warrior guides out there, we were surprised to not find a guide that explained stance dancing in any detail. so, we thought we'd do that here.

first, a disclaimer; we have not played a warrior to 70 (yet) and aren't yet familiar with the various warrior-specific bonuses available from all that shiny, end-game raiding and pvp gear. so, we're going to gloss over that bit and stick to general theory that's not gear-specific.

The Stances

warriors have three stances to choose from when in combat; battle, defensive and berserker. warriors begin their careers with battle stance, which offers no bonuses or penalties in terms of damage in or out. it has a passive 20% threat reduction built-in. at level 10, warriors can learn defensive stance from a quest. defensive stance reduces all incoming damage by 10% and all damage you do by 10%. this stance increases all threat you generate by 30%. at level 30, warriors can learn berserker stance (again, via a quest). this stance increases damage taken by 10%, increases your crit chance by 3% and reduces all threat generated by 20%.

many warrior skills require the use of a particular stance. charge, for example, may only be used in battle stance whereas intercept may only be used in berserker stance. here's a list of some of the more important, stance-specific warrior skills

battle stance: retaliation, charge, mocking blow

defensive stance: shield block, shield wall, taunt, intervene

berserker stance: whirlwind, berserker rage, pummel, intercept, recklessness

gaining access to key skills that are spread across stances when you need them is what stance dancing is all about.

The Dance

changing stances is an instant action and doesn't trigger the GCD (technically, it triggers a GCD that only applies to changing stances; so there's a 1.5 second delay before you can change stances again. all other abilities are on a separate GCD timer). so, with quick fingers or a macro you can change to another stance and use a stance-specific skill all at once. this flexibility comes at a hefty price, however: any time a warrior changes stances, he loses all accumulated rage. due to this rage loss, you don't want to be dancing through stances willy-nilly; a warrior's rage is his life. dance when you must, but always remember the cost.

fortunately, the rage loss from changing stances can be mitigated somewhat by other abilities the warrior has. at level 20, warriors learn the passive skill, stance mastery, which lets them keep up to 10 rage when they change stances. there's also the first-tier protection tree talent, tactical mastery, which let's you keep another 15 rage (with 3 points in it). so, at best a warrior can keep up to 25 rage when changing stances.

now, you want to be changing stances quickly so this means one of two things: hot keys or macros (bound to hot keys, naturally). the stance buttons for warriors are listed as Special Action Button 1 (battle), Special Action Button 2 (defensive) and Special Action Button 3 (berserker) in the key bindings menu. by default, they're not bound to any keys so have to click with the mouse to change stances; not ideal. we bound our stance buttons to R (battle), F (defensive) and V (berserker), which are right next to our movement keys, so they're easy to reach.

on the macro side of things, there are all kinds of possibilities. a spell reflection macro, popular for pvp, usually involves changing from berserker to battle stance, equipping a shield and casting spell reflection, all with a single click/key press. fancier macros change you back to berserker stance and re-equip your 2h weapon with a second click/key press. a charge macro for tanks (starting in battle stance) would have them cast charge (gaining 15 rage), change to defensive stance (no rage loss due to tactical mastery and stance mastery, so still at 15) and then cast bloodrage (for another 10 rage instantly) so they wind up with 25 rage to immediately start sundering and shield blocking with. any stance-specific ability that requires 25 rage or less (assuming you have points in tactical mastery) is fair game for a stance dancing macro.

When and Why

now that we know how to stance dance and what the costs (and how to mitigate them) are, all that's left is to understand when and why to dance. we'll wrap up this post with some common examples:

- as dps in an instance/raid, you accidentally pull agro from the tank on a hard-hitting boss. you need to survive long enough for the tank to regain agro. quick as you can you dance from berserker stance to defensive stance, equip a shield (you *do* always carry a shield, right?) and pop shield wall (a little prayer to the gods of mercy might not hurt, either).

- when tanking a boss that uses fear, if you know it's coming you can quickly dance from defensive stance over to berserker stance, pop berserker rage and then switch back to defensive stance to avoid the fear (not as wise to do this as dps because that means you're gaining threat on the boss while the tank isn't). it's important to note that this dance has to be done fast!. changing from defensive stance to berserker stance results in a net 20% increase in damage you're going to take until you get back into defensive stance. no lollygagging!
also, remember that berserker rage lasts 10 seconds, so you can still use this particular dance even if you don't know exactly when the boss is going to cast fear (e.g., it's an instant-cast fear). just try to pop it a second or two before you think the boss will cast fear.

- when tanking, another class pulls agro and the boss resists your taunt. stance dance from defensive to battle, use mocking blow and dance back to defensive.

- when out grinding (most likely in berserker stance), you accidentally pull more mobs then you'd planned on. dance over to battle stance and pop retaliation and thunder clap.