Feedback:User/Rozen4thewin/Warrior Tanking Skills

One thing that really bugs me about Guild Wars is the complete lack of a threat system. Asking to implement one would be too much work, so the only way for tanks to keep the attention of enemies is to make skills that accomplish this goal. These new or changed skills would allow the warrior to be a great deal more useful in PvE. As of now, the best tanks are the Shadow Form assassins. This is ridiculous. It isn't right for the squishy little dagger-wielder to be better at taking hits than the guy who wears the highest armor in the game. To fix this obscenity, the Warrior class should be given tanking skills in the strength attribute that require foes to direct their attacks on him only. One way to do this is to make a shout that applies to all foes within earshot that disallow foes affected by it to attack/target anything but the Warrior that used the shout. The Warrior class should be given maintained stances. As a Monk can apply Holy Veil on an ally, then remove it whenever he wishes, the Warrior should get a strength attribute stance that he maintains that alters his skills to cater more towards tanking. Such alterations could include switching the strength attribute's inherit effect of armor penetration to damage reduction or causing the next shield bash used by the Warrior to last for [green #] more seconds and not end when it triggers the knockdown. Tanking in World of Warcraft was fun, but I got sick of how gear-based it was. I would like to see something similar to, but by no means equivalent to, tanking in WoW in Guild Wars. Your feedback would be awesome.


 * Shadow Form sins aren't the best tanks for all areas, but they're definitely over-used because people are obsessed with spellproofing their aggro tanks. The warrior's disadvantage for tanking is that too many areas use casters who have armor ignoring spells like smites, life stealing, and domination magic, and the best tanking skillsets for warriors can't protect against these at all. Warriors shouldn't necessarily get their own spell immunity skill(s), but they should definitely get a buff to help them against spells in general, especially spells that would otherwise decimate any non-spellproof tank. I think that modifying the function of "Lieutenant's Insignia" would be a good first step toward this, and converting a few rarely used strength skills like Dolyak Signet to some kind of spell protection function would be enough to at least level the playing field. The stuff you're suggesting about forcing enemies to only target the tank would be way too powerful, I think, though. I like the maintained stance ideas, though. "For x...y..z seconds, your attacks deal 15 less damage, but you gain 1 damage reduction for each rank of strength and spells targetting you take 50% longer to cast." Something like that would be pretty awesome. Maybe spread the effects out across a couple of different skills. Painted Bird 18:01, 14 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Rozen4thewin, I get where you are coming from, and I shared in your frustration when I first started playing my warrior years back, however, I disagree that an aggro table based on a "WoW" style taunting structure would benefit this game. The devs have repeatedly stated that the holy trinity or tank/heal/dps isn't where they wanted GW1 to go, and are going to great lengths to avoid it in GW2.  Does the trinity make things less confusing? Yes.  Easier? Yes. (sometimes) However it also detracts from many of the more interesting aspects of the game such as line of sight, corner blocking, and innovative dual profession builds. I do think, however, that a warrior should not have to run in concentric circles chasing a charr who is chasing a terrified Ogden.
 * Painted Bird, while I doubt you were intending to list all of the shortfalls of the warrior, I think you undersold, or missed entirely, some of the most important drawbacks to being the giant tin can in the room. 1.) Spell immunity, while not required, is invaluable for tanking not only due to damage mitigation but also due to forcing touch range skills and assisting in balling mobs for spikes. (yes this can be accomplished using terrain and LoS etc. simply put though, those skills make the process easier which, in addition to global damage mitigation, makes them preferred.)  2.) As Rozen stated, the aggro table is a large portion of the problem with the current meta in PvE as mob AI is instructed to look at HP, Armor, and the presence/absence of martial weapons while choosing a target, always seeking lowest, lowest, and non-martial respectively.  As warriors, (pre-dervish update pre-permasin) we were the logical choice to grab and try holding aggro due to our superior armor.  This very attribute, however, when combined with many of our profession specific survival skills, Defy Pain, Endure, etc. combined with our near total lack of on demand spammable AoE damage  make us the LEAST likely target for the AI to attack unless we trick it by earshot exclusion which always requires an aware team in addition to hero flagging/micro-management in order to be successful lest bubble-chain conditions arise where overlapping aggro bubbles cause mob AI to go directly to back-line healers.  3.) With the advent of HM, this essentially became even more difficult for we warriors to handle due to faster casting, more plentiful hexes, and conditions such as blind/cracked armor/adrenaline denial and the skills which you mentioned entirely ignoring armor.  While this isn't the correct place to pontificate on how the skill Save Yourselves! can assist with the tanking issue, my long winded discourse was actually intended to zone in on the key issues for warriors in PvE which would allow us to be more successful outside of Dslash spam or MoP 100b builds.
 * I love the idea of a non-spell-immunity damage mitigation skill/rune/insignia but in addition to this, I think the Strength requirement for Sentinel's Insignia should be lowered to 12 thereby preventing such a simple, long lasting spammable and coverable condition as weakness from instantly increasing our damage taken if we only spec 13 points in strength. Toss Cracked armor atop it and we're worse off than the monk.  I don't mind having to use actual play style and terrain to accomplish a task which another profession in PvE can accomplish easily, as long as it does not require 3 skill slots on my bar to achieve what 1 skill slot does for my competition.  In short, I agree with your frustration, but disagree in the best way to handle it.  We have far too many skills that are either useless or have no synergy right now in the warrior trees.  With a good review of the skills we could once again tank, snare, split and go toe to toe with the new Dervs without hoping the player is an idiot so you have a hope of surviving.    Now for some Aspirin.--Andra 12:57, 23 April 2011 (UTC)