Defense is awful and no one is talking about it

[Girth.9731]

Defense has been hit so many times its basically been nerfed into unviability by Anet. Most of its traits are undertuned (i.e. Adrenal Health) or totally outdated (i.e. Armored Attack). As much as I do love playing Strength SB builds, it would be nice if Defense were viable too. The passive healing play style is dead. The heals from Adrenal Health and Healing Signet are very undertuned by today's standards, ensuring that you'll be wittled down slowly. Even in WvW, there's been experimentation with dropping Defense for Strength and its had some success from what I've seen.

 

Please Anet, I want my Defense back.

[Blocki.4931]

Defense is pretty much mandatory, what are you talking about?

[Girth.9731]

> @"Blocki.4931" said:

> Defense is pretty much mandatory, what are you talking about?

 

Actually, not at all. Not these days. If you play any ranked PvP, go on some duel servers, or even check metabattle, you'll find that Defense SB and Core are basically dead. Strength SB is the last competitive build that Warrior has now.

 

Defense only remains viable in WvW zerg fights thanks to the extra stances you get, but some Warriors are starting to drop it there too.

[cryorion.9532]

Defense traitline is not awful at all. It is more valuable and useful in situations where there are too many attacks/aoes to predict things (aka zerg fights, big scale fights and even small scale fights).

 

There are some invaluable traits, e.g. reflects on blocks, Defy Pain, Last Stand.

Cleansing Ire would be really good if it cleared condition for each adrenaline bar spent, without need to successfully hit anything. But as we have Shake it Off which was buffed greatly, I don't think changing Cleansing Ire is necessary.

Rousing resilience is amazing with Berserker's Outrage skill and it synergizes well with Eternal Champion trait. Improve Berserker and bang, it will be great with Defense.

 

The most useless traits in Defense traitline are Cull the Weak, Sundering Mace and Armored Attack. Those should get some love to be more competetive with other traits.

[otto.5684]

Defense is an okay line. Also, defense SB is still good.

[BlackTruth.6813]

You actually CAN go by without defense but here is the catch.. if you don't use defense against good players in sPvP, you will get bursted VERY OFTEN.

 

I think the tree is fine. Getting a stance every 60 seconds is kinda too much to be honest, 90 seconds is good enough. But more combinations allowing defense tree to be with other trait lines should be encouraged (baseline fast hands), then we can decide on whether defense is absolute garbage or not.

[Blocki.4931]

Reflect on block and passive stances are too good in most builds. Obv not in PvE where that stuff is irrelevant. It's still very much meta, though I guess in 15v15 or smallscale fights in general it's not as necessary.

[gimo.3281]

if you're 100% zerks aka full glassy, you will need DEFENSE.

[Fat Disgrace.4275]

How I see it, unless you're dueling another warrior or something like a rev/thief you could get away with not taking defence but In open world wvw, you kinda need to use other utialtys instead of stances (currently run bulls charge/shake it off/break enchantments) to actually hurt some builds who stack up a ton of boons, at least you got passive enduerpain still.

[Ferus.3165]

it's okish in wvw still, garbage in pvp and not needed in pve. There is a built for warrior that works right now in pvp so don't expect anything for defense traitline.