Warchief vs Protector

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dudiobugtron wrote:

raw dps is only part of the story. There are per-hit effects, which benefit more from faster attack speed, and there are also many status effects which depend on the per-hit damage.

So protector's bonus is better for things like life-gain-on-hit, and Warchief's better for things like bleeding.
With voidheart being so prevalent, Ancestral Warchief is probably the best choice for single targets. Especially because the bleeding and poison double-dip from the conc effect gem.

Does everyone just enjoy forgetting that poison stacks now? I'll repeat: only _heavy-hitting_ bleed builds prefer warchief. The fact that bleed earthquake is a popular melee meta now is irrelevant to that statement. For faster melee skills using voidheart, multiple stacks of poison will be more impactful than a bigger single bleed stack, unless your goal is to slap a boss and run away so they bleed out with only one poison stack on them.

(I give special consideration also to Atziri and Malachai in these discussions, since you should be killing trash instantly *anyway*, and those two are really good at being stationary and therefore not taking the bonus bleed damage, only the base bleed)

Or, *shrug*, maybe I'm underestimating the bleed scaling from % physical damage increases. Bows get to apply projectile bonuses to poison but melee characters don't get to apply melee bonuses, so maybe bleed really does win out?

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HikaruYami wrote:

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dudiobugtron wrote:

raw dps is only part of the story. There are per-hit effects, which benefit more from faster attack speed, and there are also many status effects which depend on the per-hit damage.

So protector's bonus is better for things like life-gain-on-hit, and Warchief's better for things like bleeding.
With voidheart being so prevalent, Ancestral Warchief is probably the best choice for single targets. Especially because the bleeding and poison double-dip from the conc effect gem.

Does everyone just enjoy forgetting that poison stacks now? I'll repeat: only _heavy-hitting_ bleed builds prefer warchief. The fact that bleed earthquake is a popular melee meta now is irrelevant to that statement. For faster melee skills using voidheart, multiple stacks of poison will be more impactful than a bigger single bleed stack, unless your goal is to slap a boss and run away so they bleed out with only one poison stack on them.

(I give special consideration also to Atziri and Malachai in these discussions, since you should be killing trash instantly *anyway*, and those two are really good at being stationary and therefore not taking the bonus bleed damage, only the base bleed)

Or, *shrug*, maybe I'm underestimating the bleed scaling from % physical damage increases. Bows get to apply projectile bonuses to poison but melee characters don't get to apply melee bonuses, so maybe bleed really does win out?

If you're using either one in a build, you likely also use them to deal dps. In which case warchief easily wins out due to being able to use double dipping stuff like conc. effect. so your overall dps is higher.

There is no discussion simply because one look should help you see that for most situations, Warchief is better than Protector.

Yes, a lot of people who play the build showcase their DPS tooltips with Protector rather than Warchief. That is basically like showcasing your Earthquake build DPS using Heavy Strike over Earthquake. Protector has a higher tooltip, but if you try both you will very soon realise that Warchief is far superior, especially if you use Voidheart (as you should).

Also, where did you get the part with the Protector totem having more range? If you thought that is the case because its attack range scales with your base Weapon Range, do remember that Warchief's attack range is tied into its inherent AoE, and scales off of it. If you have a lot of increased AoE modifiers, not only does Warchief attack mobs that are further away, but it also enables you to stand further back, making it safer. That also happens to make Warchief superior when you have low base melee range, such as when you're using Claws/Facebreakers, whereas Protector only attacks "far" when using things such as 2H Axes and Rapiers, and you can never scale the range that you can stand away from it and still have it attack.

In all honesty, as others have said, Protector is only useful to give yourself a nice Attack Speed boost on builds that scale off of Attack Speed but not Melee damage, such as Frost Blades/Lightning Strike/Mjolner Molten Strike etc... Warchief is the superior totem for any truly Melee build, and it is also the only one of the two worth using as a main damage dealing skill.

Also note that Warchief is a better buff for the duration of other status effects too. (as long as the damage scales with melee phys). Shock, ignite, chill and freeze all last longer if you use Warchief's buff, and Stun is more likely to proc using Warchief's buff as well.

Old thread.

Did anyone notice after the change in 3.0 that Warchief does nothing to boost bleed damage, according to my character sheet anyway. So I am seeing no benefit to the Warchief over the Protector for any kind of build.