From A Seasoned Warrior Player, Here Are Some Thoughts & Complaints About the Class

Warriors may perform reasonably well in solo self-found or hardcore environments, but in an economy-driven league they are objectively weak.

For context, I have played Warrior continuously since the launch of Path of Exile 2. I play the class every patch, I specialize in pushing Warrior characters to extreme endgame power, and I run a YouTube channel dedicated to the class.

One uncomfortable reality is that even within the current Warrior player base, most players are not using slam skills at all. The strongest and most popular Warrior builds revolve around Shield Wall or Whirling Assault, the latter being a quarterstaff skill rather than a traditional Warrior slam or mace ability. That alone should raise a red flag. When a class systematically avoids its supposed core skills, it usually means those mechanics are not competitive.

Outside of Titan, other Warrior Ascendancies suffer from lack of low base area of effect on slam skills. A modest increase of roughly 0.3 to 0.5 meters to slam areas would already go a long way toward balancing this without breaking class identity. Right now, the base values are simply too small to compete.

This becomes especially apparent when comparing Warriors to Druids. Wing Blast, which functions similarly to Boneshatter, appears to start with an impact radius in the range of five to six meters, while Boneshatter feels closer to one to three meters. Even allowing for estimation error, the difference is immediately noticeable in actual gameplay. Furious Slam shows a similar disparity, with a radius that far exceeds most Warrior slams. The question is simple: why do non-Warrior equivalents of slam-style skills start with dramatically better coverage?

Speed remains a fundamental problem. Even with Titan Ascendancy bonuses, Warriors feel slow unless they heavily invest into attack speed or skill speed through passive nodes and itemization. That investment comes at a real cost. Every point spent on speed is a point not spent on defenses or raw damage. Other classes are not forced into this trade-off to nearly the same extent.

This interacts badly with the game’s reward structure. In an economy-driven league, item rarity is not optional. For Warriors, stacking rarity often means sacrificing survivability or damage, not because Warrior defenses are weak, but because offense becomes so slow that gameplay turns punishing or outright unplayable. Faster classes compensate for low defenses by clearing quickly and avoiding danger through speed. Warriors cannot do this because the class is explicitly designed not to “zoom.”

Ironically, Warriors are extremely tanky. The recent change allowing armour to apply to elemental and chaos damage is a genuinely good addition and a clear reason why Warriors excel in solo self-found and hardcore modes. Survivability is not the issue. The issue is that tankiness alone does not generate currency, and the game’s reward systems overwhelmingly favor speed. Warriors often spend significantly more time per map than other classes while earning less as a result.

Giant’s Blood exemplifies many of these problems. The keystone is overly punishing while no longer offering proportional rewards. Dual wielding already applies a roughly thirty percent damage penalty per weapon for attacks, yet Giant’s Blood further punishes players by imposing extreme attribute requirements. The result is a keystone that demands heavy investment while delivering diminishing returns.

This ties directly into the new anti-burst mechanic, which disproportionately harms Warriors. Warriors are designed around slow, heavy hits. That is the entire fantasy and mechanical identity of slam builds. With anti-burst mechanics in place, Warriors are effectively forced to fight even more slowly, while damage-over-time builds, such as poison-based Pathfinders, bypass the restriction entirely by killing enemies through rapid ticking damage. If slow, high-impact damage is suppressed while fast damage-over-time remains effective, the core purpose of slam skills becomes questionable.

Warriors are supposed to hit hard. When those hits are flattened by anti-burst systems, slam skills lose their reason to exist.

On the skill design side, Warrior abilities feel stagnant and underdeveloped. Slam and mace skills are rarely used creatively, while other classes see their core skills integrated into multiple archetypes. Warrior slams are visually and mechanically anticlimactic. Concepts such as Slam on Critical Strike, Slam on Ailment, or Slam on Block are obvious extensions of existing systems. A Leap Slam meta-gem that triggers socketed slam skills on landing is another straightforward idea. These are not exotic mechanics; they are logical evolutions that appear to be missing.

At this point, it feels like one of three things is happening. Either the game is still unfinished and Warrior systems have not yet been properly supported. Or Warriors currently lack game modes and reward systems that allow them to function in an economy-driven environment. Or the class was simply left behind after an initial, flawed design pass.

I want Warriors to be strong. I want them to feel rewarding. Right now, they feel like a class designed for a slower, more deliberate game that no longer exists, placed into systems that actively work against their core identity.

Seems like a MELEE problem, which I also faced in my play as Melee Spear play (That is not spearfield)

Almost all spear skills are pathetically slow and frankly, Quarterstaves have better mobility than spears. And More AOE too.

"

Exilion99#5481 wrote:

Seems like a MELEE problem, which I also faced in my play as Melee Spear play (That is not spearfield)

Almost all spear skills are pathetically slow and frankly, Quarterstaves have better mobility than spears. And More AOE too.

Seems like both slam and spear skills need work then. I'd be much happier if they gave us more AOE, that way we can actually focus on making the slams good actively with other nodes.

"

Raezan#2745 wrote:

"

Exilion99#5481 wrote:

Seems like a MELEE problem, which I also faced in my play as Melee Spear play (That is not spearfield)

Almost all spear skills are pathetically slow and frankly, Quarterstaves have better mobility than spears. And More AOE too.

Seems like both slam and spear skills need work then. I'd be much happier if they gave us more AOE, that way we can actually focus on making the slams good actively with other nodes.

Check out the different between a very similar skill QS Killing Palm vs Sp Cull The Weak.

Sp ver have high mana cost, lower speed, lower damage, doesn't continue dashing for extra target, doesn't have "cannot be evaded"

It pretty sucks playing with controller, especially for a mapping only skill.

I've check poedb and turns out QS skill have more buffs and improvements.

I got 97 titan this season. I play slam only. Biggest issues, which are million times said already, are

1) No life. Hp is overly premium. This could be ok thru armor applies ele most of the time but not against physical dot abyssal monsters. Close quarters combat is fairly in a disadvantageous position here.

2) Skill\mov speed, personally not a big issue in itself. But if there is chill/temporal chains, or passive slow auras during Breach that becomes major problem. I am not even talking survivability here. If you are geared well warrior can survive most of the time. The problem is it takes all the fun away. Feels extremely sluggish and clear starts feeling like a fucking chore. Not to mention the mov speed penalty coming from the armor.

So it is no surprise only around 5-7% of the player base has been warrior in every single SC trade season

"

Taqu3#7456 wrote:

I got 97 titan this season. I play slam only. Biggest issues, which are million times said already, are

1) No life. Hp is overly premium. This could be ok thru armor applies ele most of the time but not against physical dot abyssal monsters. Close quarters combat is fairly in a disadvantageous position here.

2) Skill\mov speed, personally not a big issue in itself. But if there is chill/temporal chains, or passive slow auras during Breach that becomes major problem. I am not even talking survivability here. If you are geared well warrior can survive most of the time. The problem is it takes all the fun away. Feels extremely sluggish and clear starts feeling like a fucking chore. Not to mention the mov speed penalty coming from the armor.

So it is no surprise only around 5-7% of the player base has been warrior in every single SC trade season

same brother, i only use slams and try to make the best out of it but yeah still feels bad.