It's been a very busy time for me and I haven't played as much as I wanted to, but my runs with Warrior have left me with these early impressions:
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Berserker has a lot to gain from regular shielding at low health. Pairs well with Ring of Tenacity, enough that it didn't feel like a meme to run it. I don't think it represents a huge power spike but a setup that allows you to reap the benefits of lower HP actually exists now, which is cool
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Gladiator on the other hand feels somewhat worse to me. Typically I played Gladiator as an HP tank, so that passive shielding was more like active HP protection and the lack of cooldown on shield regeneration + permanent uptime meant that after any given fight I'd already gain the benefit of the shield, if I even needed it - if not, I'd just try to maintain combo between encounters. That's been turned on its head now and the shield can actually trigger frequently but disappear after combat, which makes the need to combo kill at the end of every fight is pretty crucial now, so building combo for a good kill feels far more pressing than it used to. You also gain nothing for doing so until you drop to half health, so you're not leveraging a big HP pool anymore.
Low health still feels like a risky way to play and while there's far more reward in it for a Berserker now, the Gladiator doesn't feel like it gains anything from this rework and maybe loses a little something - at least, in the way I always used to play Gladiator, it just doesn't exist anymore.
I'd be interested to hear what some other players have thought about the Warrior changes. My TLDR is I'm a lot more inclined to pick Zerk, a lot less inclined to assume Gladiator, and Ring of Tenacity feels way less like a meme now with regular shielding popping up once you're low enough health to make the shield effectively worth more than it says on the box.
I've been doing a LOT of intensive testing myself, and I agree with you on so many points. Your analysis of the playstyle shift is spot-on.
For the Berserker, I think it's in a very good state right now. Its shielding from the passive and the Berserker ability stack perfectly, ensuring not a single point of cooldown goes to waste.
Your points on the Gladiator really resonate with me, I know exactly what you are talking about. I've had similar frustrations with Lethal Defense. My testing shows that the Gladiator is in a bit of a weird state right now because its shielding cooldowns fail to stack in an intuitive way. For example, if the Warrior's passive shield is on its default 100-turn cooldown and you've waited about 90 turns, and then you trigger Lethal Defense +3 (which reduces cooldown by a flat 100%) with a combo kill, it just resets the passive shield's cooldown back to 0. All that passive cooldown progress you had, all those 90 turns, seems to go to waste.
This creates some sort of "shackle" effect. You're either waiting for the passive shield to come off its 100-turn cooldown (and for you to be below 50% HP), or you're using Lethal Defense, which then negates any progress toward that passive shield. It feels like you're constantly fighting against your own defensive mechanics, rather than having them synergize.
Also, another issue is that, even if the shield is off cooldown, you cannot stack shielding unless the shield activates at least once. This also puts some unnecessary risk, which is fine in terms of game difficulty, but it's very counterintuitive.
On a positive note, I did confirm that the Crush ability does trigger Lethal Defense for every enemy killed in its splash radius, which is a great way to get to the -100% cooldown reduction.
I'm not sure whether any of this behavior is intended, or if it's not working properly at the moment, but I want to bring it to Evan's attention. I feel this could use some improvements, especially considering how well the Berserker works now.
This is a great way to put it. There's a lot of tension between Gladiator's mechanics right now, I don't feel like they're pulling in the same direction.