“Warriors by nature have a lot of survivability, and we need them to make a choice between heavy control and heavy damage.”
my sides are in outer space, i’m done with this game
Although I do not share the whole of the sentiment, I tend to agree that this claim is rather laughable.
No, warriors do not have a lot of survivability by nature (at least no more than other professions at level 80). In fact, until several recent changes they were an extremely weak class when it comes to surviving. If warriors seem like good survivors, it is because the manner in which they can be built to be survivable is accessible to a wide number of players (i.e. it does not require a great deal of keyboard gymnastics). If a warrior is built to be a heavy damage-dealer then, as is the vision of the developers, it will melt in the face of a zerg (or even more than one opponent player on average assuming all are equally skilled, whatever that means) just as easily as any other DPS-focused build, regardless of profession. Let me explain:
The nature of the “survival” game in GW2 is not based upon armor level, at least not to the extent it was in, say, GW1, and this along with a high HP pool is the only “natural” advantage a warrior might have. This is partly because increasing armor rating has vastly diminishing returns. Once you hit around 3500 armor (or perhaps less), adding additional armor becomes almost a moot point; you would be better off attempting to out-damage your foes or find some way of avoiding damage altogether, and this is precisely what many other professions can do that warriors cannot. Even if a warrior has nearly 30,000 HP, this number is ineffectual as a deterrent if the armor rating is mediocre, and entails a great deal of sacrifice in terms of offensive options. Reaching the 3500 armor mark is not something that many attempt anyway, since they would rather allocate their points for damage output. Besides, as many will note there are better ways of mitigating damage, namely the protection buff (to which the warrior does not “naturally” have access). I shall not even touch on “invulnerability”.
So what does increase one’s odds of survival? Several factors come into play here. First, and most obvious, is mobility: the ability to simply avoid getting hit. Mobility takes several forms in GW2, including leap, dash, teleportation, and basic evasion. The effectiveness of this lattermost option is only amplified by the vigor boon to which, again, the warrior’s access is quite poor. As such, warriors tend not to be very “dodgy” unless they do such things as equip Signet of Endurance, but then this is forcing a niche skill, and I took the project to be able to give players a variety of options. As such, in terms of mobility warriors rely upon leaps and dashes to get in and out of combat. Of these options, however, there is only one skill to my knowledge (Whirling Blade on the greatsword) that provides any kind of evasion, so the best warriors get with mobility is a way to (not always reliably) close gaps when entering combat and run away slightly faster when leaving combat. This is not really a viable way of avoiding damage.
