Guild Wars 2

I wanted to create a tanky warrior using a mace and shield, which stat is better to focus on for tankiness

Depends entirely on what kind of stuff you want to tank.

Vitality fairs better in the short term, helping you stay alive after a lot of quick damage, but does little to keep you alive in the long term since you still have to heal the same amount of damage.
Toughness helps more long term since its damage reduction effectively makes your healing better, though obviously it’s worthless against conditions.

I’m still pretty new to this game, I just want to have survivability when I get caught in a bad situation. I feel the warrior class really suits me, I’d just like to be a bit tougher without being the standard rifle/bow and greatsword build.
I figure it’s understood that the best defense is killing everything before you take damage, but that’s not the character I want to play.

Toughness on every Warrior build you could possibly make.

Max both or max the one of them that has healing power as minor trait…if u r thinking holy trinity tank where u just hope to survive with ur armor and health, u r playing a wrong game..u still have to dodge block with ur shield and utilize ur defencive utility skills well to be tanky

Hmmm. I find toughness helps a lot for myself(thief) but i actually use valk gear mostly (power/vit/crit damage) since our h kitten o low to begin with. Toughness and good condition removers should keep you of trouble. Bigger problem I find is, this game, especially dungeon bosses and champs have signature moves that will one hot the hardiest players. It focuses a lot on dodges and evades. No class can yank these guys really. The big guys ate easy to spot the signs for the move coming but ki find some f the smaller human models, are hard to see so warriors/melee thieves go down a lot it seems. You put 5 guys on a boss with melee and with all the flashes and effects, any sign dissapeard and one guy is going to go down. This is why warriors are kind of a dps ole class. Dodge and hit hard. Maybe you’d do we’ll with a valk setup? Gives airy le more room for error but yiu can still hit hard and full yiur crit chance with some buffs. Get some fury going.

Really the two synergize better than either is individually. It’s typically a bad idea to min/max either/or, it’s generally better to have some of both. That’s really the best advice I can give.

Personally, I say always vitality if you had to choose, simply because conditions ignore toughness, and certain bleed/burning classes can absolutely destroy toughness stacking warriors. If it were up to me, however, I’d probably just use some PTV + zerker accessories/zerker traits. Mix and match is awesome.

I have 1400+ hours logged on my warrior and from my experience toughness is the better choice when paired with good condition removal. We have more than enough vitality to handle conditions. When making a build I pick my weapons and slot skills first, then trait to maximize those skills and then play around with different gear to find the balance I’m looking for. If you are looking to tank I suggest using weapons in your defense line (mace/shield hammer) in your build cause of the amount of CC they provide. I find axe/mace+sword/shield and hammer+sword/shield work rather well, always carry a range weapon, never know when you need to kite something at range. As for gear, you can’t get any better than PVT (soldier) gear for tanking. Lyssa and Soldier runes offer some good condition removal depending on your build.

I’d like to rely on mace and shield. And I dont want to just stand there and take damage, I dont know why anyone would insinuate thats my strategy to win fights. Have dodge, weakness, daze, stun, parry, knockdown, and block. I love the versatility the mace shield build offers. Plant a banner of defense and fight with deep attrition.
Maybe switching to warhorn, love the mobility, conditon removal, weakness and vigor.
At least as far as mace shield goes I just want to be a pain in the kitten on the field.

I like to mix toughness and vitality. They’re both useful and one doesn’t outstrip the other. Mixing them gives you both more health and better armor.