Guild Wars 2

Tactics is the warrior go-to trait line for support and healing. It adds AoE heals to shouts, and AoE regeneration to banners. Both of these benefit from the Healing attribute. Attributes: Boon Duration, Vitality

Defense is the warrior go-to trait for staying alive. It does offer a single heal, in the rank 15 minor trait Adrenal Health, but this heal does not scale with the Healing attribute. Attributes: Toughness, Healing

Why? If Vitality and Healing were switched around, then each trait line would end up with attributes that actually benefit the style of play that the traits encourage. Is it considered too strong to have both Toughness and Vitality on a single trait line? If so, I’d be okay with some them lowering the power of a few of the traits in these lines to maintain balance.

The reason I’d like to see this change is because I feel that support warrior builds are railroaded by these trait lines. I want to support my allies, so I go Tactics. To make my heals heal for more, so I spec into Defense. Now I look at Defense, and decide I have to use a hammer or mace, since that’s what Defense gives you. So just by choosing to play support, I’ve locked in a majority of my build. Granted, those weapons might be the best option for support anyway, but I’d like to see more options open.

If you don’t go into Defense then all you really lose is some hp and some healing power, 300 is not much if you ask me.

Anet will not put toughness and vitality on the same trait line because they are major stats. Each line has 1 major stat and 1 minor, such as Power with Condition Damage, and Precision with Crit Damage. These trait lines are different for each profession, e.g. elementalist gets Toughness with Condition Damage. There are 4 major stats and 5 minor, so over the 5 trait lines you have to have; Power Precision, Toughness and Vitality. Mixed into these you need; Condition Damage, Critical Damage, Boon Duration, Healing Power, Boon Duration. So each class has a different mix + a bonus stat in the 5th Trait line relative to their class, warriors for e.g. have Burst Damage increase. It wouldn’t be fair to put Toughness and Vitality on the same tree, and Boon Duration and Healing on the other, that would make for some crazy builds.

If you did in fact mean move Toughness with Boon Duration and Vitality with Healing you will kick banners to the curb a bit. You would get the extra healing for your shout build, but banner builds would miss out on a lot of extra duration on their regen. One way to fix this would be to put banners on the defense tree with our changed boon duration and leave shouts with swapped healing on tactics. This would also be unbalances as tank builds could take, healing shouts, and regen banners with 2 shouts and 1 banner giving them sustained regen and 2 extra heal skills (3 from use shake it off on 2 conditions trait)

As I stated above, unless your going for absolute maximum heals, 300 healing wont do too much for you unless you want to use mace or hammer. The Tactics line does have some goodies in it though, free invulnerability (endure pain at 25% hp) good to keep you up a little longer while you wait for your shouts. Free stun break / invulnerable to stuns (balanced stance on cc) and extra 200 defense on movement impaired.