Guild Wars 2

Trade?

Seriosly, I think I understand why the two, new heals ended up the way they are. Defiant Stance should encourage Warriors to run more tanky builds. It is annoying to have the highest defense in a group when playing Necromancer and attract more unwanted attention for it. Berserker Warriors have high dps, great combat mobility, and mob control. A reward for tanking has been overdue.

Necromancer’s Signet of Vampirism is probably designed more with PvE in mind, too. I hope that the extra group healing will lessen the distaste for bringing a Necro into an instanced event.

Anchoku.8142:

designed more with PvE in mind

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Actually, Defiant Stance rewards the warriors for building more glassy, since not only does it give them another way to just not take damage, but its healing is higher the less defense you have.

@Gnat – I know how strange that PvE statement looks but I could not see any other use for such a small heal that only improves with face-tanking. Using Defiant Stance and then dodging would be a waste.

@Drarnor – I was thinking more the opposite: A high toughness build would benefit the most and the heal would improve with higher healing ability although added vitality would take longer to refill. I am going to have to try a cleric’s build on my War and see how it does.

Defiant Stance heals you directly based on how much damage you (would) take, so the builds with less toughness heal for more with it.

That is correct but Defiant Stance will not be up 100% of the time. The rest of the time the War would be squishy. In any case, if a zerker would have taken 5k damage and gets 5k heal, and a soldier would have taken 4k damage so only gets 4k heal, what is the difference? The zerker has higher dps but could drop health faster when not using the stance. There is no passive heal unactivated. I am trying to wrap my head around alternating between CC skills and face-tanking when the opponent starts to use a big attack. Getting caught by surprise by a major attack would be twice as bad because the enemy’s big attack would be on CD forcing me to either waste the stance on a small heal, face-tank when low on health, or retreat and wait for another chance to face a big hit.

I do not see glass builds having an advantage. I wonder how many players will hit the heal under pressure and dodge-roll. A missed opportunuty to take (un)damage could easily be fatal. In fact, if a PvE boss were to switch to another target just when I pop the stance, I would only get the smaller heal so I would benefit more from holding aggro.

However, in PvP, the stance could be a death sentence when my oponent sees me use it and backs off for a breather. It could be useful in WvW under heavy zerg fire but I just cannot tell at this time.