In the autumn of last year, I posted my initial musings on some alterations that I wanted to make to Guardians. There was a lot of good feedback and discussion, and though, I let the thread lapse, I have been keeping up with things and making some alternative plans based on the feedback I've seen.

As we start to wind down on our first quarter, and turn our eyes toward the second quarter, I wanted to start the discussion about the currently line of thinking and some of the impetus driving the desired changes.

Before you read any further: these are the initial thoughts put before you to get some initial feedback. I have run this by the team internally and we wanted to start to get your feedback before we dive headlong into this development.

General Note

If the trait or earned trait is not mentioned there is likely to be no change to the trait.

The Defender of the Free

On the surface, the blue trait line and the blue guardian is in pretty good shape. There are only a few minor changes that I think we want to make; and by minor, I mean really minor.

Purchased Traits

Relentless Assault becomes Skilled Deflection: which would change out the finesse increases, and replace them with a flat bonus to your parry.

Aside from that, there isn't much that we really think needs to happen.

The Keen Blade

Our main objective in adjusting the red line, is to get the damage output to a spot where it competes against other high DPS characters. Of course, we need to be careful to allow the guardian to keep all of their top line tanking - so there will be a trade-off.

The first step in doing this, is giving The Keen Blade an specialization perk. My current thought on this specialization is, to lean into the heavy nature of the guardian, while also using the changes to mastery. Along those lines the current thought is this: All outgoing healing is reduced significantly, and the physical mastery increases based off of your armour value. The trade-off here would allow for a measure of consistency in the combat hits of the red line guardian.

Our secondary objectives, are to make the red line guardian sustained damage more consistent, make burst damage more reliable, remove reliance on combat response events, and have a capstone that is beneficial to the fellowship.

Earned Traits

Reactive Parry: Adjust the damage upward to give value to the trait.

Bleed Them Dry: Moves to 15 points deep in the line

Protection by the Sword: moves to 20 deep in the line

Prey on the Weak: Moves to 25 deep in the line

Brutal Charge: Moves to the capstone slow of granted traits and affects only melee-based skills

Purchased Traits

Broad Strokes: moves up in the line but remains unchanged.

Relentless Assault: Swapping positions from the blue line, this now increases finesse and increases the tick count on all guardian bleeds.

Heavy Weapons: Flat mod on two-handed weapon damage by 2%/tier

Thrill of Battle : Damaging Attacks in combat increase your Critical Chance by 1%/tier, Caps at 5 stacks, Critically striking resets the benefit

Thrust: While specialized in Keen Blade no longer requires a combat response

Tireless Blows: 10% chance, on criticals, to reset Brutal Assault/tier

Invigourating Parry becomes Invigourating Critical: Restore 1% to your power on a critical strike

To the Rescue: Tier 6 no longer functions on every skill - this shifts to just melee skills gain the crit chance.

Honourable Combat is Replaced with Rupture: To the King gains, remove all current bleeds for damage based on the number of deeds present, increases incoming damage on the affected target by 3% for 5 seconds/bleed removed.

The Fighter of Shadow

Our main objective with Fighter of Shadow is to define it's role more clearly. That is to say, not make this a supporting line, rather a line that gives the Guardian a third distinct role. That role is as an AoE Tank.

Our secondary objective, is to reduce the non-performant and abusive behavior that the line has without compromising the overall appeal of the line.

Specialization Perk

Attacks against targets affected by Take to Heart, have a 50% chance to restore 5% of your max morale. Cannot occur more than once every 5s.
All melee skills become AOE.

Earned Traits

Take to Heart: Usable outside of combat, loses toggle status and becomes a visualized hotspot with a duration, maximum size, and maximum targets to affect.

Flash of Light: Damaging skills executed by the guardian become Light damage.

Disabling Strikes, Manifested Ire, Incapacitation, Mark of Permanence: Only applies to targets within the Take to Heart effect.

Purchased Traits

Radiate: Increases the range of Take to Heart by 1m Increases affected Targets by 1

Insult to Injury: No change, as of yet, but we have our eye on you.

Numbed Senses: Adds 1 second to the cooldown of Ignore the Pain, + 1 Increases to Debuff Removal

I must re-iterate - these are the initial thoughts that I am tossing over the fence to all of you after getting a sanity check with the team. Looking for your thoughts and feedback before I start to dive headlong into implementation.