Guild Wars 2

So, I took 30 in Defense and Tactics, have tons of decent Tough and +Vital gear, run all the defensive/survival oriented skills and have maceshield and I don’t feel much more sturdy in PvE than someone who didn’t just build to be fragile speedster.

In fact I die more than someone who just took Greatsword and built for crits because they drop enemies before they can do damage. It’s just disproportionately better to build for offense than for defense as things are currently.

Which doesn’t seem right to me. There should be a pay off to maxing Defense/Tactics and playing defensively, otherwise why let people put points in them at all? Why not just have everyone be a Greatsword berserker?

I’m not asking to be utterly unkillable but I should be able to take substantially more damage than the next guy. If I want a low-medium damage and high defenses juggernaut that should be as valid a Warrior play style as high damage and low-medium defenses berserker. We should have more viable build options rather than the single one we seem to have right now.
This is just my opinion however. YMMV.

I find defense spec warriors extremely strong. At least in PvP/WvW. As the game progresses and people understand other classes and how to double tap out of hundred blades you will see longer SPvP fights that requires coordination to kill. Killing one 1v1 would be harder and teams will start giving up easy damage for survability and out playing the enemy in a long term fight. Killing with coordination that requires a stun into a quick burst or some form of team play.

Right now in SPvP and WvW warriors NEED to have 30 defense for Defy Pain and Last Stand or else they just melt too fast. I’ve ran a warrior with 32K HP in WvW and run into tons of people and just dance around them without worrying about death.

I’m not sure what the context is for your complaint. If it’s PvP, I can’t comment intelligently as I’ve put that off for the time being. If you’re talking about dungeons… good lord do I disagree. If you’re not playing tank as melee, you’re either failing or you’re actually playing ranged 90% of the time and just pretending that you’re still melee.

It seems like the warrior melee niche in dungeons is single-target lockdown – in other words, single-target avoidance tank.

“No it’s cool guys, I totally run with full berserker/GS and do tons of damage. Oh I just run out and use my rifle whenever things get too hot.”

Translation: I play ranged and occasionally go into melee just to make my life more difficult for no reason.

Spec’ing just for Toughness/Vitality is never enough. You also need to have a proper active combat playstyle regardless of spec (dodge rolling is required, blocking is required, general moving/breaking line of sight/retreating/using other players as body shields is required, etc.)

Once you add all of this together with a strong defensive spec warrior, you’ll see why it’s not weak at all.

poot.5487:

Translation: I play ranged and occasionally go into melee just to make my life more difficult for no reason.

You do realize that if you are at full health/ranged and someone else is taking a beating, that the best this to do is take a few of those hits yourself, right?

If you want to be tough in PvE, get 30 points into tactics for healing shouts or banners with regen, gear for healing, power and toughness, 20 points in defense should be enough, you will never die. Vitality actually isn’t a good stat if you want to be a “tank”.

Artaz.3819:

poot.5487:

Translation: I play ranged and occasionally go into melee just to make my life more difficult for no reason.

You do realize that if you are at full health/ranged and someone else is taking a beating, that the best this to do is take a few of those hits yourself, right?

The next time a ranged player does that for me will be the first. I’ve never needed to realize it because I want to actually play Melee Damage. Someone else being targeted while I’m still alive is basically never an issue.

“You also need to have a proper active combat playstyle regardless of spec (dodge rolling is required, blocking is required, general moving/breaking line of sight/retreating/using other players as body shields is required, etc.)

Once you add all of this together with a strong defensive spec warrior, you’ll see why it’s not weak at all."

OK, see, that’s being what’s called a ‘fragile speedster’, the melee counterpart to the glass cannon. If I wanted to play like that, I would have put all my points into like Arms and Discipline I guess and run around with a Greatsword.

You’re basically confirming what I said; that building defensively doesn’t pay off and it’s down to killing them before they kill you.

Which is fine if you want to play that way, but not if you want to be a heavily armored juggernaut/mighty glacier. The fact that’s not a viable option is what I find lacking.

Again, YMMV

I run a defensive spec as well, my guildmate is full damage. Although they seem to die a bit more than me, the difference in damage is double. I always assume that healing shouts + boons + being able to do more damage over time balances out… I am 4/6 exotic cleric armor, 2 rare cleric. (I run pirate runes for the time being + jewelry for MF)

i tried speccing myself defensesively like you but i encountered the same problem, i found hard blocking in dungeon because i cant see the animation while the boss is being target by the whole team its a mess of light and graphic effect.
Also i think the boss prefer to attack player with the highest maximun healt, regardless of theyr current healt, because a i found myself being focused a lot despite of my low damage

“OK, see, that’s being what’s called a ‘fragile speedster’, the melee counterpart to the glass cannon. If I wanted to play like that, I would have put all my points into like Arms and Discipline I guess and run around with a Greatsword.

You’re basically confirming what I said; that building defensively doesn’t pay off and it’s down to killing them before they kill you.

Which is fine if you want to play that way, but not if you want to be a heavily armored juggernaut/mighty glacier. The fact that’s not a viable option is what I find lacking.”

I’m sorry – but if you actually want to stand there and let your opponents hit you then I’m afraid GW2 doesn’t support that style of play. A defensive build is invaluable in reducing effect of the lesser hits and incidental damage that wear people down, but nobody can, or should, just stand there and take the big hitting attacks. Those are exactly what your blocking, interrupting and dodge abilities are for. If you want to be defensive, you have to use ALL of your defences.

“I’m sorry – but if you actually want to stand there and let your opponents hit you then I’m afraid GW2 doesn’t support that style of play. A defensive build is invaluable in reducing effect of the lesser hits and incidental damage that wear people down, but nobody can, or should, just stand there and take the big hitting attacks. Those are exactly what your blocking, interrupting and dodge abilities are for. If you want to be defensive, you have to use ALL of your defences.”

Then there is absolutely no reason to build defensively. If you have two people, Person A and Person B, one speced for damage and one built defensively, and both have to dodge and run, what is the point in putting those points towards defense?

You’re basically sacrificing damage for nothing if doing so doesn’t give you some kind of defensive gameplay advantage. If Person A is doing twice the damage of Person B, B should be twice as durable. That’s just common sense. If a big hit is going to drop both of them, then B isn’t twice as durable.

As things stand, there’s no difference in gameplay between someone who built defensively and someone who didn’t, other than their damage is considerably worse; they’re not gaining a proportional amount of sturdiness as a trade off. I expect guys in heavy armor to be able to take the hits; that’s kind of the point of having armor after all.

It kind of defeats the purpose of getting rid of the trinity and them telling people they wont be forced into roles if they’re just going to force everyone into being a glass cannon or fragile speedster. And, at least in the case of Warriors, it really defeats the purpose of letting people spend trait points and gear for anything other than damage.

I think what Tremayne is getting at, is that you are going to be able to take a lot more damage from all the smaller attacks that go on in a fight, but when you have an ogre (just an example, pick any over sized creature in the game) winding up their weapon to smash your heavy plate wearing butt 4 feet into the ground so you look like someone from a cartoon half stuck into the floor…. even the most sturdy warrior is going to think “hey, maybe I should dodge this”

While I will be first in line to say that some things in combat need to be fine tuned (all games fine tune for ever, as they should) one of the main things about combat in this game is that it is meant to be very active, so dodging is a requirement regardless of build.

Defensive/Support warrior is still great. You just need to realize that you help your team by buffing your allies and debuffing the enemies, not by sitting there and facetanking all the damage.

For starters, you should be worrying more about your team than yourself if you went full toughness+vit in both spec and gear. Replace the shield with a warhorn, and use the quick breathing trait.

The game also encourages versatility. I’d take some or all points out of defense and move them somewhere offensive. Adrenal Health is great for PvE, but the other traits are more PvP orientated. Swap the mace for a sword with condition damage+power+vitality or something, the toughness on your gear should be all the toughness you need(it suffers from diminishing returns.) Obviously, you should be the one pulling enemies, and trying to hold aggro as long as you can.

The fragile speedster is definitely the superior setup, though it bears repeating that the ranged fragile speedster is hands-down superior to the melee version of the same.

Still, I think you can go another way if you want. The thing to remember is that GW2 heavily emphasizes total mitigation over partial mitigation. Blocking, dodging, and shutting down enemy attacks are all vastly superior to soaking up hits through vit/tough/healing. An effective warrior tank is going to possess blocks, parries, and cc on her weapon sets, and possibly a source of Vigor. Her utility skills are going to emphasize condition removal and possibly gap-closers or more cc.

Dodges may not “feel” good to you, but they are total mitigation, and thus they are incredibly important. Remember that plate tanks in other MMORPGs dodge, too. It’s just that it’s easy to pretend they don’t since it’s passive, and (usually) functionally identical to parry and miss.

You should be speccing into trait lines not primarily for their passive stat increases, but instead for their rule-bending benefits. By all means, put points into Defense and Tactics if your goal is to get the cooldown-reducing traits for shield, warhorn, and/or mace, and shield reflect, and adrenal health, etc. etc. But don’t pump points if you can’t conceive of a use for the next minor or major slot.

There are traits in the other three lines that can be extremely useful for a tanking setup, depending on what weapons you choose. Strength has a trait that restores endurance when you use a burst skill. Discipline’s weapon-swapping cooldown reduction, when they finally get it working correctly, can be even more useful for a tank than for a damage-dealer. Arms, well, that’s to boost your damage no matter what, but there are definitely damage-boosting traits that are much more geared towards control builds, such as the increased critical chance against stunned mobs.

I will say that since warrior weapon skills veer heavily towards hard cc, their ability to tank champion mobs is not up to snuff. Ranged Fragile Speedster seems to be the be-all, end-all for those guys, regardless of whether they’re playing pure Damage, Control or Support while kiting.

Paragonkid.4602:

So, I took 30 in Defense and Tactics, have tons of decent Tough and +Vital gear, run all the defensive/survival oriented skills and have maceshield and I don’t feel much more sturdy in PvE than someone who didn’t just build to be fragile speedster.

Waaaaait a minute. What about healing power? Healing traits? Are you speccing into those or just go pure defense?

Also every defense needs an offense, in the form of counter attacks, stun locks, other hard CC, or conditions. You can’t literally just soak in dmg and not dish any out. And you sure as heck cant soak in dmg without being able to heal off anything that whacks you. In other words, straight toughness/vitality isnt going to help you at all. You need things to complement that style.

I find boons/conditions a great complement to a defensive style. Heck take sword shield. Its the perfect combination between offense and defense. Alternatively look at mace+sword. That gives you TWO parries, bleed dmg, vulnerability stacks, and access to skull crack. Idk exactly how you’re speccing your warrior so I can’t help that much. But this isnt a game where you pump up stats and all of the sudden you’re a tank. You need an offense, a way to easily heal off dmg, a way to apply boons, etc etc.

The Necro is a good example of this. They are hard to kill because

1) Health like crazy

2) healing power like crazy

3) condition dmg like woah

This combination lets you take hits, heal off hits, and deal out steady dps that will eventually wear your foes out.

Norek.2736:

I think what Tremayne is getting at, is that you are going to be able to take a lot more damage from all the smaller attacks that go on in a fight, but when you have an ogre (just an example, pick any over sized creature in the game) winding up their weapon to smash your heavy plate wearing butt 4 feet into the ground so you look like someone from a cartoon half stuck into the floor…. even the most sturdy warrior is going to think “hey, maybe I should dodge this”

While I will be first in line to say that some things in combat need to be fine tuned (all games fine tune for ever, as they should) one of the main things about combat in this game is that it is meant to be very active, so dodging is a requirement regardless of build.

Norek gets it. The original poster doesn’t. Refusing to dodge in GW2 will get you about as far as someone playing a warrior in WoW who refuses to use any of the abilities on his action bar “because auto attack was all I needed in Everquest”.