Guild Wars 2

I only play PvE but I was trying to use some defensive traits and I decided to just drop them and go for as much damage as possible, and it’s just better. The defensive traits didn’t make enough of a difference in survivability.

Anyone else feel this way?

yes, i feel 10 times this way in sPvP !!!

Defense is Warrior’s best trait line and invaluable in PvP and WvW.

The Defense line is absolutely great for defense, although more geared towards pvp, with massive condi mitigation (Cleansing Ire) and some burst mitigation (Defy Pain).

The Tactics line is indeed not really for tanking, but more for support. It has awesome offensive support (Phalanx Strength and Empower Allies) and more PvP-suited defensive support (Quick Breathing and Vigorous Shouts).

In summary: Defense is not that good for PvE, but mandatory for PvP. Tactics is awesome for offensive support in a dungeon environment. Strength, Arms and Discipline are the go-to lines for selfish DPS.

cull the weak, thick skin and rousing resilience are the only useless traits in the defense line from what i see. they just don’t really do a whole lot. the rest seems fine however.

Traits or utilities which increase everyone’s survivability while not making the person sacrafice too much of his own offense are the way to go in PvE. Guardians shine at this. Aegis, protection, reflects, blinds, condition removal, stability… just to name a few. Warriors really don’t.

If there was content that required a tank, warriors could take that role with the proper setup, though. They’d need a proper party. Something like this:

-dodges
-Toughness, Vitality gear
-Healing Signet
-Adrenal Health
-Endure Pain + the trait
-Shield Stance
-good weakness uptime
-healing Elementalist: perma regen + Soothing Mist
-healing guardian: high or perma Protection /Aegis uptime with Altruistic Healing on top of that
-many party condition removals
-perma vigor
-costant use of blinds
-smart CC where the longest stuns don’t get eaten by Defiance

A warrior like that sounds ridiculously tanky, able to eat huge burst because of the HP pool and Toughness, crazy Hp/sec regeneration if you add everything up and damage immunity with Shield Stance and Endure Pain.

We are yet to see any encounter where anything that tanky was actually needed.

And that’s how I’d imagine Raids in GW2. Add a DPS race on top of that so you can’t have ten players going cleric builds. But, that is neither here nor there.