A serious discussion about Warrior - Gripes, Issues, Game Philosophy

I wanted to be brief but I simply cannot, I need to bring three MASSIVE issues I've encountered throughout my run with the game so far as a lvl 55 Titan warrior:

Armor is useless, Life is fragile, Attacks are Too Slow:

- Stacking armor feels like a waste of time. As I clawed through Act 3 before reaching to Cruel I realized investing nodes and 100s of armor every upgrade or so felt very inconsequential and enemies kept chunking me with normal strikes despite my constant chase for higher numbers. I thought it was just cope until i saw a video by Kripparrian about armor calculation and multiple accounts from other players (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mw-uD-vz_5s) and it all became very clear. The main issue with armor is that curve of higher damage affecting armor effectiveness feels TOO INTENSE!

- Not much else I need to say, there is a singular node that increases Life. I understand their philosophy might be to leave substantial life increases delegated to having Str but there's no way to interact with the already sparse life pool in a way that virtually increases it except for increasing Leech efficiencies (which is item dependent as far as I understand). Armor fails miserably to protect you as previously stated, and as the game progresses further one shots bypass armor anyways so the lack of health nodes feel even worse specially for someone who's mainly on the front.

- THIS SPECIFIC POINT IS VERY IMPORTANT TO ME AND IS SPECIFIC TO THE WARRIOR EXPERIENCE: EVERY SINGLE SKILL FEELS NEEDLESSLY SLOW AND CLUNKY!!!
I cannot express how absolutely horrible all of the warrior (technically the maces) moves feels compared of other classes. Most of them are plagued by needlessly drawnout animations due to the Added Skill Use Time which is IRREDUCIBLE. This compound the fact that armor is flimsy and dont actually save you from massive damage and you cant realistically have a respectable pool of health, causing the warrior to be stuck in an animation and being mulched by even the white mobs. Not only that but this also impact conceptually interesting skills like Vulcanic Fissure or Earthshatter or Earthquake due to the fact they take so damn long to set up.
In contrast, monks are able to bump their attacks and skill speed to ridiculous speeds, dash in and out of combat, set up skill interactions and combos far faster. All other classes sport the same ease and also have range to boot which allow them to avoid hits entirely.

And to bring to light a major gripe of mine to the mix: Why every single skill except Armor Breaker interacts HORRIBLY with Dual Wielding? -30% Attack or Speed with both weapons yet in many (if not all) of these skills you dont get double hit from the two weapons. Please do look at this:


I am currently running Giant's Blood (D2 barb respect) and I even have a hammer with +4 to all melee skill in my first set.

I got a really mediocre hammer bought off the vendor just now and put it using it as a 2 hander.

Yet the singular 2h with 4 less levels on every skill beats the 2 2h weapon set by 50 to 100s of DPS... This makes no sense. Rolling Thunder don't get double hits, neither does Leapslam, nor Perfect Strike, nor Sunder. I went out of my way and TRIPLED MY WEAPON STR REQUIREMENT to wield 2h on each hand just to deal less damage with every single skill I have. The only skill that actually DOES have double hits and account for that in the DPS is the normal attack, therefore I am simply locked out into using my basic strike as my main source of raw damage, meanwhile every other class can reach insane DPS on all their nice flashy skills and have extremely engaging gameplay. I have nothing left but to swing...

And to top it all off, not only every warrior skill takes ages to cast and consequently all the nice interactions become dangerous or non-viable, the warrior has a singular meta skill available only at level 52... and its a totem that has it's own attack value which would then force me to spend my already diluted skill points pool into clusters JUST to try and make a combo easier on me (OH BTW VULCANIC FISSURES MADE BY THE TOTEM DOESN'T INTERACT WITH YOUR SLAMS SO YEAH, COOL HUH)


I could yap away on how infuriated I am in finding out the build I dreamed to see alive suffers to so many problems - from unbalanced defensive mechanics to clunky animation speed locks and lack of meta/cast-on-x/combo facilitating setups. - But I feel now what I need more than anything is validation: AM I CRAZY? Am I the only one? Every single streamer and warrior player I talked to either followed a totem/shield block build (actually powerful options) or encountered the same issues I've presented here, in one way or the other. As someone said: "As a warrior, I need to invest far more to do far less. Monk feels like what I wanted the warrior to be"

If I could evoke any form of suggestion on what I'd love to see changed, it would be:
- Less intense armor ineffectiveness when it comes to larger hits.
- Add more way to increase life pool (even if its through damage reduction, damage conversion, etc)
- Remove the restriction on skill's Added Skill Use Time, let player's nodes and support skill interact with them even if at a reduced rate?
- Add at least something more for Dual Wielding (there is literally only ONE CLUSTER AVAILABLE, no other node anywhere else afaik) - More nodes, or more skills that interact well with them instead of completely making it useless (or just give the skills double hits when dualwielding)
- Add more meta skills for attacks! Faster attack after roll? Long-animation assault that casts the supported skill at the end as a combo finisher? Anything would feel better than having just a totem at lvl 52!
- LET US USE SOME MELEE STRIKES WHILE MOVING! Path of Exile 2' strongest quality when it comes to the melee combat is making you feel like an actual action game and I cannot express how bad it feels to be locked out into many animations without having a single option to reposition myself. 50% Movespeed reduction while attacking or having a short range sidestep without invulnerability frames, whatever the developers would come up, anything would make a lot of mace (and subsequently all other martial weapons) skill feels SO SO SO much better, and make me want to use them instead of falling back into some boring totem build that avoid getting into danger's way to begin with. If you played the last two Monster Hunter games (and Wilds too) you probably know well what Im babbling about! SwordnShield, Dualblades, Longsword, Switchaxe, Hammer, Greatsword, all of them have some form of repositioning while attack or charging attacks!

Thank you so much if you went out of your way to read all of this, and sorry for any absurd grammatical error, I'm ESL!