I did a run with a full Con, Picture of Health and Warfare Warrior. By the final boss of act 1, she had roughly 700-800 flat health, 300 armor and 100 magical armor.
I didn't consider Warfare being boosted by Picture of Health, mostly because I never felt like I needed extra defense. It sounds like points in Warfare+Picture of Health adds up to a noticeable health increase, good catch. If a player wants to go tanky this sounds like a better option than vitality, if one is okay investing the talent.
I would argue that the buffs in warfare and aerothurgy are some of the more valuable ones, or are at least equally valuable.
The reason I say this is because of how CC works at the moment. The more damage you do to the relevant armor the faster you can cc lock an enemy, making his health value meaningless.
Okay, let's imagine that once armour is gone, we'll CC lock and our opponent is as good as dead.
Let's assume we have an enemy made of pure armor, and we do 100 average damage per attack, easily achievable by end of act 1.
Warfare will buff our attack to 103+1 damage, 104.
Dual Wield would do 103+0.5. Slightly less than warfare. If our user got lucky with a 200% crit damage weapon, it'll be equal.
One handed would do 104, and 2% accuracy, much better (unless accuracy was already perfect, and it usually isn't).
Ranged does 103 and 2% accuracy, much better.
Two-Handed does 103, 106 if using Rage, possibly much better, or
slightly worse.
Hunstman does 104, and at greater range. Same damage, but better.
Most of these abilities will deplete the armor FASTER, or at least as-fast or very close.
And now, let's get back to reality.
In reality, we don't always have extra CC to spare against all enemies all the time.
In reality our opponents will have far more health than armours.
If we pick a skill other than Warfare we can usually deplete the armour as fast or faster. But we will STILL have our damage boost after it wears off, for the majority of the required damage.
Thoughts?
What if they added requirements on gear to be worn? Respective defenses for armor and respective hand requirements for weapons. That would give us more incentive to invest points in defense beyond 1 point. If they did this they would have to buff the return on investment though it it would be a harsh tax for the "tankier" member of the group.
It would artificially force us to pick sub-par abilities to get new gear (or have no affect for the abilities that are already good), but I think it would be unfun and limit player choice. I'd be fine with a level or stat requirement, I suppose. I'm not unhappy with gear as-is.
More points to learn/use Skills makes sense. However, It will be a bit pointless if we can still learn the skills by equipping gear to get the required skill rank, if nothing else is changed.
