I think Warrior Needs a Protection Trait in Defense

[Logos.3042]

Warrior doesnt have much sustain outside of shouts, and even then that has it's own issues.

I'd like to see protection added to the Defense line somehow.  Could be paired with shield's trait; swap protection on block instead of might.  And maybe swap out Rousing Reslience's toughness gain for Protection.  

Regardless of how, I'd really like to see some mitigation for defense, since it is really pretty poor overall. 

[Grand Marshal.4098]

5 hours ago, Logos.3042 said:

Warrior doesnt have much sustain outside of shouts, and even then that has it's own issues.

I'd like to see protection added to the Defense line somehow.  Could be paired with shield's trait; swap protection on block instead of might.  And maybe swap out Rousing Reslience's toughness gain for Protection.  

Regardless of how, I'd really like to see some mitigation for defense, since it is really pretty poor overall. 

Frankly, it's the master tier line and the minors in defense that are the real issue. 

The rest can be fixed too, but I think that the master line is so bad at giving you an option. Either a bad toughness scaling (have tried it), a bad weapons trait or a 5 min cd skill.

Here we need a total rebuild. Then we can do stuff like a better stance GM, blind ignoring in Cleansing Ire so the cleanse connects if not scaling it to adrenaline lost instead of burst tier used (to not make everyone qq that warr cannot be blinded), remove the healing from RR and give it superspeed on stunbreak for 3 sec. 

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

Protection would go into Defy Pain's slot so that we can not have a 300s CD trait.

Defy Pain: when stuck in combat gain protection and resolution for 4s. 15s CD.

Endure Pain: Now grants protection and resolution for 4s. Gain 834 barrier each interval. 4s duration, 1s intervals. Stunbreak 30s CD.

[Vancho.8750]

I still wish the adrenaline gain from being hit to be minor instead of being on cleansing ire, Rousing Reslience is great as is 1000 toughness is exactly 33% damage reduction like protection and it is unremovable. We have talk this over and over, the line needs protection barrier and resolution and Adrenal health to be the main mechanic of the traitline, actually they should baseline some stuff like adrenal health since core warrior doesn't have any baseline stuff like other professions (caught guardian, thief, necro). Imagine if thief worked like warrior it had to go and get a traitline to be able to get the dual wield attacks or the backstabs or guardian needed several trailines so their virtuous did something.

[Infinity.2876]

Dogged March needs to add protection

 

Armored attack needs to be power to toughness instead of toughness to power

 

Shield master should trigger a stance on block so it could be used with other top line traits

 

cull the weak should be better(I'm not sure how because I can't figure out what to replace it with)

[anbujackson.9564]

Everytime I duo fractals with my friend and we end up with mai trin as daily, I immediately reroll to necro for deathmagic. I tried warrior multiple times, even with defense. You are just feeding and bring no useful utility like pulls and projectile hate.

Defense doesnt just need protection, it also needs reasonable defense against conditions. That meme way to get resolution isnt worth mentioning.

On necro I run death magic mid, up, mid with like two minions skills. That way i have:

- 400 to 600 toughness permanently

- perma protection

- endless condi transfer

- in general a reduction to condi damage

So yeah, defense surely could need some love. Get rid of passive procs which you cant control please. The auto stances are awful.

[anbujackson.9564]

31 minutes ago, anbujackson.9564 said:

Everytime I duo fractals with my friend and we end up with mai trin as daily, I immediately reroll to necro for deathmagic. I tried warrior multiple times, even with defense. You are just feeding and bring no useful utility like pulls and projectile hate.

Defense doesnt just need protection, it also needs reasonable defense against conditions. That meme way to get resolution isnt worth mentioning.

On necro I run death magic mid, up, mid with like two minions skills. That way i have:

- 400 to 600 toughness permanently

- perma protection

- endless condi transfer

- in general a reduction to condi damage

So yeah, defense surely could need some love. Get rid of passive procs which you cant control please. The auto stances are awful.

P.S.: other notable mentions from my duo fractal times (and where i log to nec nowadays, especially to survive and pull my weight😞

- sirens reef: impossible to survive as war, so much damage and stuns and the amount of conditions is insane.

- volcanic: your primal sword f1 and longbow f1 dont work against the shaman shield to reduce stacks for some reason. You get smashed by the elementals also.

- underwater: there is no way to do reasonable condi dmg as war. Random conditions instability will kill you hard

- deepstone: just because of the end boss (fun fact: I actually use fear me here, one of the worst utility skills)

- sometimes snowblind because of the lack of utility

- sunqua: just no

Edited May 15, 2022 by anbujackson.9564

[CalmTheStorm.2364]

30 minutes ago, anbujackson.9564 said:

Everytime I duo fractals with my friend and we end up with mai trin as daily, I immediately reroll to necro for deathmagic. I tried warrior multiple times, even with defense. You are just feeding and bring no useful utility like pulls and projectile hate.

Defense doesnt just need protection, it also needs reasonable defense against conditions. That meme way to get resolution isnt worth mentioning.

On necro I run death magic mid, up, mid with like two minions skills. That way i have:

- 400 to 600 toughness permanently

- perma protection

- endless condi transfer

- in general a reduction to condi damage

So yeah, defense surely could need some love. Get rid of passive procs which you cant control please. The auto stances are awful.

This. 100% this.

 

Defense is just so pathetic when you compare it to a good trait line like Necro's Death Magic or Ranger's wilderness survival.

 

Warrior could be pretty good if it only had capable trait lines like other professions have.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

3 hours ago, anbujackson.9564 said:

Everytime I duo fractals with my friend and we end up with mai trin as daily, I immediately reroll to necro for deathmagic. I tried warrior multiple times, even with defense. You are just feeding and bring no useful utility like pulls and projectile hate.

Defense doesnt just need protection, it also needs reasonable defense against conditions. That meme way to get resolution isnt worth mentioning.

On necro I run death magic mid, up, mid with like two minions skills. That way i have:

- 400 to 600 toughness permanently

- perma protection

- endless condi transfer

- in general a reduction to condi damage

So yeah, defense surely could need some love. Get rid of passive procs which you cant control please. The auto stances are awful.

For Mai I swap my heal to Defiant Stance and a utility to EP. I hold agro in the red circles to make her stay in the blue one. Then Mace/mace to break her bar. Beyond that Decap spam on her and Horric. That one is more of a problem when some pug mate wants to kite to the far end of the area.

That said, Death on Necro is stacked for a class that had a second health bar with 50% damage reduction built into it.

[felix.2386]

nop, doesnt need protection. need evade and better range option, as EoD destroyed rifle and longbow, because everybody moves so fast to melee now.

nobody want passive gameplay as warrior is already slow enough.

simply buff sustain has done nothing to warrior but doom, if you played war since the beginning and know the history of warrior changes

Edited May 16, 2022 by felix.2386

[Opopanax.1803]

1 hour ago, felix.2386 said:

nop, doesnt need protection. need evade and better range option, as EoD destroyed rifle and longbow, because everybody moves so fast to melee now.

nobody want passive gameplay as warrior is already slow enough.

simply buff sustain has done nothing to warrior but doom, if you played war since the beginning and know the history of warrior changes

THey will never give Warrior more evades than Full Counter since it simply isnt the playstyle.  At least adding protection to defense would mean traiting into a more tanky style, which is very appropo for a shield/defense warrior trait line.  

[anbujackson.9564]

3 hours ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

For Mai I swap my heal to Defiant Stance and a utility to EP. I hold agro in the red circles to make her stay in the blue one. Then Mace/mace to break her bar. Beyond that Decap spam on her and Horric. That one is more of a problem when some pug mate wants to kite to the far end of the area.

That said, Death on Necro is stacked for a class that had a second health bar with 50% damage reduction built into it.

The problem with mai is the phase at 25%. Those elite enemies in t4 are no joke. Add sugar rush to the elite assassin and sniper, more incoming damage instabilities and you get rekt. The phases before are not the issue. Playing condi btw since power is no option. 

Lets see when they give a preview of the patch. 

[felix.2386]

1 hour ago, Opopanax.1803 said:

THey will never give Warrior more evades than Full Counter since it simply isnt the playstyle.  At least adding protection to defense would mean traiting into a more tanky style, which is very appropo for a shield/defense warrior trait line.  

wow 3 elite specs in and still isn't the playstyle? hahaha

warrior is not viable because it does 0 damage, making it more unkillable passively will solve nothing, it is already pretty sustainable if built for. no amount of sustain will make a 0 damage build viable unless it's literally unkillable. more evade will allow warrior to take more offensive traits and actually start doing something

Edited May 16, 2022 by felix.2386

[Myror.7521]

@felix.2386 idk man warr could actually be build up to perma evade but still evades is not just defence and i must say thats what i miss on warr just good defence. I mean why did a necro get a way to stack thougness with allready a sec lifebar? But a warrior is all about just evade or oneshot? (Yes thats how i feel about it). Dont get me wrong its defence in comp with fullcounter Endurepain and unnerfed Version of defence traitlines is allready somehow good. But yea actually warr feels like hard underwhelming in just every game Mode and i somewhat have a feeling that the inc Juni Patch will make that even worse but we will see xd.

[Dadnir.5038]

10 hours ago, anbujackson.9564 said:

Everytime I duo fractals with my friend and we end up with mai trin as daily, I immediately reroll to necro for deathmagic. I tried warrior multiple times, even with defense. You are just feeding and bring no useful utility like pulls and projectile hate.

Defense doesnt just need protection, it also needs reasonable defense against conditions. That meme way to get resolution isnt worth mentioning.

On necro I run death magic mid, up, mid with like two minions skills. That way i have:

- 400 to 600 toughness permanently

- perma protection

- endless condi transfer

- in general a reduction to condi damage

So yeah, defense surely could need some love. Get rid of passive procs which you cant control please. The auto stances are awful.

Let's just keep in mind that:

- The warrior naturally have a higher armor value than the necromancer (To match a warrior with a shield armor value, the necromancer already need more than 15 stack of death carapace)

- The warrior have a signet that grant him toughness (to match the armor value of a warrior with a shield and dolyak signet, the necromancer need more than 25 stacks of death carapace)

- The defense traitline offer 2 damage reduction mod (respectively 5% and 10%) and the possibility to temporarily gain 1000 extra toughness.

- Currently the warrior also have banner of defense which can bring it's armor value well above what the necromancer can get with full stack of death carapace.

- After the summer patch, the warrior might lose banner of defense's toughness bonus for a good protection and resolution uptime (for a whole group).

 

Thus, I believe that getting protection in the defense traitline might not really be as much a concern than getting rid of these unsightly 300s ICD traits.

Just to be clear, In PvE and WvW, Warrior peak at 2602 armor value without armor equiped (temporarily 3602) while the necromancer peak at 2520. In sPvP, Warrior peak at 2558 armor value without amulet equiped (temporarily 3558) while the necromancer peak at 2188 (this amount of armor value that the necromancer have with full stacks of death carapace is close to what the warrior have without any investment which mean that in sPvP a necromancer with full death carapace isn't any resilient than a dual wielding glass warrior).

So what set warrior and necromancer apart are:

- Passive condition management where the necromancer is well above the warrior.

- Access to dodge, block, invuln and evade skills where the warrior is well above the necromancer.

- Access to barrier where the necromancer is above the warrior.

- Access to protection for the necromancer which is above in damage reduction than the warrior's modifier in defense.

- Armor value as the warrior can easily outdo a necromancer there based on the gamemode.

- Passive/aggressive sustain as the warrior generally need to be less aggressive than the necromancer to sustain himself.

... etc.

All in all, the 2 professions have very different defensive and sustain option which make comparing them extremly tricky and, above anything, make the comparison of their defensive traitlines probably irrelevant.

 

[Hotride.2187]

3 hours ago, felix.2386 said:

warrior is not viable because it does 0 damage, making it more unkillable passively will solve nothing, it is already pretty sustainable if built for

I dunno, its not so simple. IMO when you build for sustain you also kill your dmg to an extent.

E.g. core shouts has insane sustain, but the moment something has protection or decent evades, your dmg evaporates. It really misses the boonrip from spb.

Spb has sustain, but its due to reactive gameplay. You can't go in and pressure (allowing you to do the dmg that spb can do), since to sustain well enough you must evade and play defensively. Technically with a support you can go ham with the dmg, but so can other builds and do far better than you can.

I've not played power berserker in competitive, but I've fought it and its just glass compared to other options (telegraphed glass). Condi berserker is every other condi build but worse dmg and sustain.

And bladesworn is core shouts with some ranged dmg and even more sustain.

Its like your dmg is balanced around your target not having any dmg mitigation. Your dmg goes in when the target runs out of dmg mitigation. And so you must bunker until that point. Its really sad (and in wvw roaming some builds have perma mitigation uptime).

Edited May 16, 2022 by Hotride.2187

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

7 hours ago, anbujackson.9564 said:

The problem with mai is the phase at 25%. Those elite enemies in t4 are no joke. Add sugar rush to the elite assassin and sniper, more incoming damage instabilities and you get rekt. The phases before are not the issue. Playing condi btw since power is no option. 

Lets see when they give a preview of the patch. 

/Shrug I always do power in FotM. Mai Trin is difficult when the pug scatters around rather than focusing.

[felix.2386]

7 hours ago, Pati.2438 said:

@felix.2386 idk man warr could actually be build up to perma evade but still evades is not just defence and i must say thats what i miss on warr just good defence. I mean why did a necro get a way to stack thougness with allready a sec lifebar? But a warrior is all about just evade or oneshot? (Yes thats how i feel about it). Dont get me wrong its defence in comp with fullcounter Endurepain and unnerfed Version of defence traitlines is allready somehow good. But yea actually warr feels like hard underwhelming in just every game Mode and i somewhat have a feeling that the inc Juni Patch will make that even worse but we will see xd.

 

what kind of necro you talking about, harbinger has no second lifebar, and core necro does not build toughness.

get fact straight.

 

also toughness is basically useless without wurm and spec walk, it's these two that make necro sustainable

and enable necro to take an arm-like trait line and do massive crits.

without spec walk and wurm, necro is just a damage sponge that dies.

you play a necro without wurm and you get deleted so fast in the high end

that's why MM necro is just basically a low tier build that wrecks noob in bot tier like every warrior build.

that's why toughness is basically useless compared to other options. vitality and toughness are the least strong defensive option.

have you wondered why power spellbreaker takes immob on daze instead of 3 second of protection every 8 seconds? because protection/toughness is useless if spellbreaker can't do damage and immob allows it to actually do damage.

Edited May 16, 2022 by felix.2386

[felix.2386]

4 hours ago, Hotride.2187 said:

I dunno, its not so simple. IMO when you build for sustain you also kill your dmg to an extent.

 

you literally just repeated what i've said.

if warrior actually does real damage that matters, warrior wouldn't even need to build this much sustain to begin with.

warrior's only way to matter is to stack sustain over sustain, because it does 1 damage and takes a long time to start matter.

simple logic really, warrior does 1 damage, and needs 5 seconds of continuous attacking to deal 5 damage, while class X does 5 damage and only need 1 second, and have 4 seconds of kitting.

if you played other classes, that's how it works, 

that's why warrior is even worse now as we are in burst meta.

 

Edited May 16, 2022 by felix.2386

[CaffeeCup.5742]

I've been playing ranked pvp, usually 3 matches a day, currently playing either Bladesworn or power Berserker, but I'm only gold ranked so this is just based off my limited, low-level observation.
I'm in agreement with Felix, warrior's lack of survivability from getting sudden 2 or 3 player ganked is the real problem.  It's easily underestimated, the value of a true 'escape' or 'invulnerable' ability, but it's the only mechanic that really allows for yolo builds, something very hard to make work on warrior.

In terms of offense, it's the reliance on hard cc combined with the required 'build up' that really kills its burst potential, you can't simply 'surprise burst pressure' someone.  I see this in noob willbenders as well, unable to apply proper cc before a burst, unable to do damage in a match, but willbenders can simply reset, run around and wait out their cooldowns, or roam around for a surprise +1 burst.

I think this is also where Bladesworn becomes the 'easy mode' warrior because, besides its self sustain, Bladesworn's main damage actually connects (and why I have fun playing it in PvP).  GSaber 3 and 4, and DT Boost are great, reliable, sustained damage application, plus, unlike typical adrenaline, once a Bladesworn is at max flow, you pretty much never run out of flow anymore, your DT is constantly ready off cooldown for anytime the need arises, allows for a more adaptive playstyle for me.

Edited May 16, 2022 by CaffeeCup.5742

[Myror.7521]

Oke first of All core necro is able to get thougness its simply one of its core mechanics traits lel. Also idk man necro is Bad cause it lacks of mobility/stability and blocks/invuln and yes im talking about core necro/ reaper/scourge (scourge after all only got barrier but well). Harbringer how ever something Else. Yes it dont get a second life Bar  but it got insane mobility, hard damage, and pretty decent ccs. 

 

Now compare all this to warrior. All this class get is just heal. I mean the heal over all most on Bladesworn is inasne sonetimes you gott heal for over 500k per Match on zerker amulet. How ever warrior lacks in litterly eveything Else. It might have somewhat good amount of ccs but gues what 99% deal 0,1 damage and rest of weap skills are also pretty kitten low.  Only way to play warrior at least ok is Bladesworn but as said before that spec is shout heal carry. If they going to nerf it once then gues what yay another death waerior spec gg ezy. 

[Verdict is Vengence.6912]

1 hour ago, CaffeeCup.5742 said:

In terms of offense, it's the reliance on hard cc combined with the required 'build up' that really kills its burst potential, you can't simply 'surprise burst pressure' someone

This is why I always thought adrenaline should go back to how it was at launch with no decay. Warrrior was awful back then but that surprise burst made people scramble and gave warrior some breathing room.

Back then, anet wanted adrenaline to be more "realistic". Those times are done. We can go back to adrenaline not decaying.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

20 minutes ago, Verdict is Vengence.6912 said:

This is why I always thought adrenaline should go back to how it was at launch with no decay. Warrrior was awful back then but that surprise burst made people scramble and gave warrior some breathing room.

Back then, anet wanted adrenaline to be more "realistic". Those times are done. We can go back to adrenaline not decaying.

Quibble, it did decay, but it did not start until several seconds later than now, and at a much slower rate. This gave the warrior time to engage in another fight while still having a full or mostly full adrenaline bar.

[anbujackson.9564]

7 hours ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

Let's just keep in mind that:

- The warrior naturally have a higher armor value than the necromancer (To match a warrior with a shield armor value, the necromancer already need more than 15 stack of death carapace)

- The warrior have a signet that grant him toughness (to match the armor value of a warrior with a shield and dolyak signet, the necromancer need more than 25 stacks of death carapace)

- The defense traitline offer 2 damage reduction mod (respectively 5% and 10%) and the possibility to temporarily gain 1000 extra toughness.

- Currently the warrior also have banner of defense which can bring it's armor value well above what the necromancer can get with full stack of death carapace.

- After the summer patch, the warrior might lose banner of defense's toughness bonus for a good protection and resolution uptime (for a whole group).

 

 

While I see the points you are making, i Still want to point some stuff out:

- a necro doesnt need to take extra utility or an extra weapon (shield), its all in the traitline

- Nobody plays toughness signet and/or defense banner, you only have 3 utility skills

- your damage reduction traits are strike damage only (not sure about thick skin right now though)

- thick skin is tied to your health and you loose it below 75% and when do you need it the most, below or above?

- hardended armor is tied to resolution, a boon of which you have like no real access too on demand (on block or when stuck by a crit on a 15sec icd for 5s, thats like super unreliable)

 

Anyway maybe we need more focus on adrenaline. Rework the traits in a way that you get benefits the higher your adrenaline is (damage reduction, swiftness when having 1 adrenaline bar, resolution when reaching 2 and so on. That probably wont work though because of bladesworn) but you also want to use bursts to get even stronger traited effects (adrenaline health and then refilling your adrenaline to get your boons again).

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

3 minutes ago, anbujackson.9564 said:

While I see the points you are making, i Still want to point some stuff out:

- a necro doesnt need to take extra utility or an extra weapon (shield), its all in the traitline

- Nobody plays toughness signet and/or defense banner, you only have 3 utility skills

- your damage reduction traits are strike damage only (not sure about thick skin right now though)

- thick skin is tied to your health and you loose it below 75% and when do you need it the most, below or above?

- hardended armor is tied to resolution, a boon of which you have like no real access too on demand (on block or when stuck by a crit on a 15sec icd for 5s, thats like super unreliable)

 

Anyway maybe we need more focus on adrenaline. Rework the traits in a way that you get benefits the higher your adrenaline is (damage reduction, swiftness when having 1 adrenaline bar, resolution when reaching 2 and so on. That probably wont work though because of bladesworn) but you also want to use bursts to get even stronger traited effects (adrenaline health and then refilling your adrenaline to get your boons again).

We had passive bonuses based on adrenaline level at launch. They nerfed that and made them all on hit based on the adrenaline used.