Henry Kissinger once said, “The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been.” This is the primary task of the defensive warrior. He/she is a leader, a coach – someone who moves to inspire and motivate others to persevere over the toughest of obstacles. To be the leader is not an easy task. In Part 3 of the Warrior Overview players will be introduced to various roles, the defensive souls and play-styles, in addition to suggested talent specializations and rotations.
Disclaimer:
What readers can expect from this guide is to increase their understanding of the defensive warrior souls. What readers should not expect from this guide is a step-by-step, foolproof strategy for becoming a beast among men/women.
The discussion of various roles, souls and talents in this guide is intended to be as objective as possible, using generalizations about roles and their primary goal to illustrate which souls are better suited to a particular role. Furthermore this guide does not contend that the talent specializations contained within are the “best” of their kind. They are merely provided as a starting point so that players may learn how to craft their own talent specializations.
While souls which are classified as offensive may work well in some defensive roles (most notably Support and PVP), this guide focuses solely on the defensive souls.
Defining Roles:
The pure or PVE (Player Versus Environment) defensive warrior is a steel plated tank – a protective shield for his/her allies. Unlike the offensive warrior, who exchanges survivability for optimal damage, the defensive warrior sacrifices overall damage to provide a maximum amount of survivability. There are three exceptions to this rule.
The first exception is a warrior in the defensive Support role. The Support role is a combination of two or more roles in their lesser forms. For example, a warrior in the Support role might take talents which allow him/her to tank in addition to taking talents which buff the entire party with increased attack power. However, as a result of spreading talent points across multiple roles, the Support warrior has less survivability and buff potential than a warrior which has specialized solely into one of these areas. This does not make the Support warrior any less valuable to a group. As the role suggests, he/she can “support” a group in areas which may be lacking, allowing the group to move past more challenging content.
The second exception to the rule is the PVP (Player Versus Player) role. Defensive PVP warriors typically aim to maximize survival, damage and crowd control. Much like the support role, PVP warriors tend to dabble in a little bit of a lot of things meaning that many abilities are less powerful than their pure specialization forms. However, an effective balance of defense, damage, and crowd control makes the warrior a force to be reckoned with in a PVP setting.
The third exception to the rule is Leveling. While not all warriors choose to level in a leveling-friendly specialization, many find that taking talents which increase damage makes the process smoother and quicker.
Of the four defensive roles, PVE tends to be most common, although many players experience all of the roles at various times over the course of play.
The Right Soul for the Role:
The defensive souls available to the warrior calling are: Paladin, Reaver, Void Knight, and Warlord. When considering a defensive specialization, it is best to ignore claims that one soul performs better than another (unless there is substantial evidence to support the claim). This guide recommends players specialize in the soul that best suits the type of role and play-style they’re seeking to fulfill.
When choosing a defensive soul it’s important to ask oneself, “What am I trying to achieve?” More AOE threat? Then more than likely the warrior will want to take the Reaver soul. More Spell mitigation? Void Knight. More Physical mitigation? Paladin. The ability to buff a raid group? Warlord. Unlike the offensive souls, talents in the defensive trees overlap to a great extent, making it viable to mix and match any soul with another. In fact, in most cases, it is better to distribute talent points evenly in all three trees rather than fill out one 51 point tree. This is because all of the tank souls specialize in a very specific aspect of survival and threat (Sufficient threat or agro, as it is commonly referred to, means that the warrior is the only party member being targeted for attacks.
As a tank, it’s the defensive warrior’s job to ensure proper agro is maintained so that party members do not die.), and more often than not, some of each is required to successfully escort a party. Deep specialization can make a tank very weak against certain types of mobs and thus, require constant reactivation of various encounter specific specializations over the course of a dungeon. However, many tanks enjoy encounter specific specializations and do not hesitate to use 51 point talent trees and all of their soul slots for the various defensive specializations. The choice to use a general all-purpose build or multiple encounter specific builds is a matter of personal preference and play-style.
For this reason, this guide provides a Single Target Physical Damage mitigation specialization, a Single Target Spell Damage mitigation specialization, an AOE specialization, and an All-Purpose specialization.
Please note that while Paladin is not listed in the chart above as being Support friendly, this does not mean the soul is not useful in a Support role. The same is true for Warlord. While Warlord is not listed as being PVE friendly, this does not mean there aren’t talents in the tree which would prove useful to the end-game content. Soul and role classifications were given based on the soul’s overall capability to perform as the primary soul of the role. So, yes, while there are a couple of talents in Warlord that increase survivability which might make it useful as a secondary or third soul of the PVE role, there are not enough to warrant it being classified as a primary PVE soul. Soul and role classifications are explained in further detail below.
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