The problem with warrior

I hope GGG gives warrior an easier more viable route to mapping in the coming updates. The problem with warrior is everything is a problem. Mind you I haven't beat the game on HC yet but I did manage to get my warrior to 70 last night. I did 3 tier 1 maps and re rolled. Blue mobs with certain affixs are a problem, rare mobs and bosses not so much because dealing damage isn't the problem its surviving damage. Armor is OK but not great because you cant stack health. why is there no %health nodes in the passive tree? You can't stack dex because you need strength especially if you plan to run giants blood + shield which seems to be the only route to not stack ES to survive. Since you're not stacking dex missing autos is an continuous problem, even with 99% chance to hit. This feels AWFUL when each swing takes 1s+, and not only does it feel awful to miss it can get you in a heap of trouble if your planning on hitting and exploding the pack in front of you. The only other melee class is monk and it has none of these problems. It can stack ES, you stack avoidance with evasion, you deal a ton of inherent elemental dmg and you stack dex so missing swings almost isn't a thing. It just feels like warrior gets the short end of the stick on every single thing, including having to be right next to something to hit it. Its fun and rewarding to play right but the downsides suck, enough for me to make a post about it. Thanks for reading

tl;dr, ggg hates melee and warriors need more mechanisms to survive

In my experience, now having a blast with Earthshatter Warbringer level 92 (SSF btw), I think what makes the Warrior feel frustrating is there is no single mechanic that will make your Warrior tanky.

You have to hit a certain threshold in MULTIPLE defensive layers to get to a point where, at least on basic maps without extra damage - you feel relatively safe.

I'm at that point now when I no longer get heart attacks every minute from watching my health take wild dips from regular mob attacks.

To do endgame mapping you need ideally:

- 3K HP
- 75/75/75 resistances, ideally 78/78/78 (you want to invest in increasing Maximum Resistances)
- 40+% Chaos Resistance
- 60+% Block
- ideally, a good amount of Stun Buildup to stunlock enemies
- (edit) forgot 150-200 Life Regen per Sec to counter degen effects!!


Another unintuitive aspect of the game imho, being above level makes a huge difference and it is by design anyway since eg in endgame at level 90+ you are running XV maps that are ilevel 79.

In many other MMOs and RPGs beating monsters at same level or even underlevel gives you more XP but in POE it is not at all to your benefit.

And unfortunately yet a big aspect of feeling strong with your Warrior is the stun mechanics.

Another aspect is Resistances: in older ARPGs like Diablo II you would only need to put a ring of Poison Resistance if you are in certain areas, you would put a COLD ring in other areas... but in POE 2 you get substantial elemental damage from MANY sources, and also within the same map so you're never allowed to feel tanky until you hit those tresholds like I said.

A lot of the damage is also still overtuned. My level 92 Warrior can still get one shot just because of a crit hit from a rare mob with Extra Cold Damage, say.

For good or for worse GGG is really stuck with the "impactful" mentality from early days of POE1. If monsters have Speed bonus, it's not 10%, no it's gotta be 30%. If they have Crit Bonus, it's not +100% no it's 400% and so on.