This week I will elaborate on the Toughness vs health pool debate, as far as Warriors are concerned, and help you decide which stat to focus on. Then we’ll look at utilities in PvE, and melee survivability in World vs World. As promised, more builds ready to use at the end of this week’s column. Enjoy !
Health Pool Vs Toughness
While the debate is often very one-sided, an explanation of the differences between health pool and Toughness might be helpful.
What is toughness? To explain it in just one sentence, the more toughness you have, the less damage you take; and the less toughness you have, the more damage you take–all of it exponential. As a Warrior, you have a pretty high base armor, making Toughness a good stat to improve. Toughness is only efficient against direct damage, and therefore has no effect on conditions. There are two ways to greatly improve your toughness: amulets (Soldier, Valkyrie and Cleric are the amulets that grant Toughness for Warriors) and our defense tree (the maximum being 300 toughness), but you can also find some with runes and jewels. I’d say to aim for up to 3100 armor. While it’s not mandatory, this is a good baseline. To give you a quick understanding, 2200 armor is weak, 2500 armor is ok, 2800 armor is very tanky, and at 3100, you are playing a tin can.
What about health pool? This stat is self-explanatory. Having a large health pool is good to stay longer in a fight and gives you more time before being killed by conditions. It is usually dangerous to be under around 16K health because high burst professions can kill someone under 16K in one successful combo (dagger Thieves, scepter dagger Elementalists, etc). You have the chance to have a very high base healthpool (18372) so you are pretty much 100% safe from senseless deaths. It is also very easy to reach a higher health pool with amulets: Berserker gives 2840 health and Soldier 5690. Those are the two amulets you will use most of the time that give you a larger health pool. Because Warrior is not necessarily sensitive to condition damage since you can counter them through utilities, traits and runes, a larger health pool is not the best way to prevent conditions from killing you.
To conclude, I’ll say as expected that toughness is by far superior to health, and health should never replace toughness. While it is good to improve health, many other stats are so much more efficient to grab (even offensive stats). Health is supposed to be the last stat you have to care about as a Warrior (even condition damage has more usefulness in certain builds). As always, we can be happy to be the only profession that combines the highest base health pool and the highest armor.
A quick note about Knight Amulet:
I know this Amulet grabs people’s attention because when you first take a look at it, you see “damage, crit and survivability and a free cup of coffee”. This is the fast food version of this combination of stats. As expected after reading the toughness paragraph, this amulet terribly lacks toughness and by no means is superior to Berserker’s amulet in most scenarios (if you compare both, you trade 5160 health for 15% critical damage and 229 power) . I’ll never suggest this amulet for Warriors over another. Feel free to take a look at my oldest entries to find ways to keep a good ratio between power, toughness (survivability) and critical chance.
Choosing Utilities for Leveling
Before going further, the above choices are made with the expectation that you’re using Mending as your healing skill. While you can find usefulness in other heals, Mending will always be the most convenient way to go. It offers a good amount of healing combined with condition removal (that you generally only need time to time in PvE). If you are playing a signet build with Signet of Stamina then you can go with the Healing Signet.
Shouts: Three viable options here with Fear Me, For Great Justice and On My Mark. Fear Me is supposed to be a defensive skill, as a last-chance tool. For Great Justice is just an awesome damage buff with three permanent stacks of might. On My Mark will generally be hard to play with because of other choices but is still amazing.
Banners: While banners are very efficient in endgame PvE and WvWvW, they are not convenient for leveling, you will have to lug those banners all the time.
Stances: Three viable options here again with Balanced Stance, Endure Pain and Berserker Stance. Balanced Stance is good when you know you will face enemies with CCs, but you don’t have to bother too much with this if you are a beginner. Endure Pain is another last chance tool to use in dying scenarios. Berserker’s Stance is useful if you equipped a set of weapons that are adrenaline-hungry and at the same time you wanted to take advantage of Berserker’s Power and Heightened Focus.
Physical: Two choices here with Bull’s Charge and Stomp. Bull’s Charge is very good to engage fights in PvE and travel faster on the map, while Stomp is another kind of last chance tool. Make sure you pick Kick if you’re some kind of roleplayer.
Signets: All signets are good if you traited Deep Strike in the Arms tree (at low level, then banners and shouts become better). The one you don’t want to grab is the Dolyak Signet. You will want to keep the signets unused with or without the trait because their passive is generally stronger than their active in a PvE environment (unless you wanted to purge some conditions with the Signet of Stamina).
Going into Melee against a WvW Enemy Raid
When you have 40 people or more waiting for the next hero to come into melee, you may feel like you need to give your best friend a letter addressed to your wife. Don’t worry–there are ways to go in and out enemy raids and not only will you not necessarily die but you will bring a very strong fighting dynamic to your raid.
To ensure smooth operation, make sure you have condition removals, movement skills, stability and CC. Taking a sword or a greatsword with you pretty much ensures a good amount of movement skills (Bull’s charge works too). Bring easy condition removals with Signet of Stamina, Mending, ruined Shouts or traited Warhorn. Gain Stability with Balanced Stance or the Last Stand trait in the Defense tree. And finally, bring CC with any kind of weapon or utility, since Warriors have an enormous amount of CC (AoE CC if possible).
There–you’re good to go.
More Builds Ready to Use
