Guardians, The forgotten Class

Players who have Guardians as their main character are fairly happy that the LI system is changing, because it means we will finally have something to replace shield use after years of waiting. As a yellow Guard though, it seems like the new system might as well take out our yellow line tree. No light damage legacy, Flash of light still very underwhelming for lvl caped, players, and no aoe legacy. Yellow line is meant for aoe and light dmg, and also debuffs. Most bosses ignore half of our debuff mechanics, our armor debuff, doesn't scale well, who knows if the snare mechanic ever works. It is just super discouraging that one of the primary and oldest classes steeped in lore (based off of Glorfindel) is always treated like an after thought and inconvenience.

Please work on polishing what we have after the update instead of plowing on while leaving broken classes and abandoned systems (mounted combat, big battles, skirmishes, missions, allegiance system, pvp) languishing and forgotten in the past. The game is fantastic, but will die a death of 1,000 cuts. Look at the crazy irrelevant gear in the Ettenmoors for a good snap shot LOTRO.

I didn't check this build before BR went down for an update, but last week I did confirm that the word of power that increases AOE targets did not affect flash of light. It still could only stick to 4 targets at a time which is a lot lower than it should be. Flash of light damage is already really low on live, but yeah without the light damage legacy it's even worse here. Yellow guardian has definitely been lost for a while now, can't remember the last time it got some attention. As a side note though is it actually confirmed by devs that yellow is based on Glorfindel? I've seen that thrown around a few times, but I've never actually seen anybody official say it is. Just curious.

I'm also interested in knowing if red guardian is intended to be a competitive DPS, or if the purpose of the line is mostly just for solo play in the eyes of the devs? That's something that's never really been directly answered, and it would be great to get a response from a blue name lurking around if they could touch on that. It helps to know what kind of feedback should be given for it as it has been affected a decent bit by the new LIs.

As far as I've seen, we don't have any specific breakdown within classes of lines as "for questing" vs. "for raiding". Our prioritized goals, generally speaking:

1) All lines are usable for playing landscape content
2) Every class has at least one line that is raid viable
3) Every line is raid viable

We were able to get to #2 with U30, and right now, we're not sure if we're there with the changes in BR, but we're still tweaking. Once we're able to get past that, that's when we start working on bringing some of the older under-tuned specs in line. We don't have a specific order that we plan on doing them, I imagine it'll be a lot of investigating where they are, how they're setup - the amount of special casing that happens hurts my head - and how much work it'd take to bring them in line. Using that info, we'd probably start with the easiest wins and work our way down to the hardest ones. But like I said, we don't even really have that done yet.

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Originally Posted by Raninia

Using that info, we'd probably start with the easiest wins and work our way down to the hardest ones. But like I said, we don't even really have that done yet.

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A better alternative IMO would be to start with the classes that only have a single viable trait-line in high-end content.

In 30.2 I think that would be

Burglar
Guardian
Hunter
LM
Warden

Anybody's guess what the list will look like after the chaos of 30.3, but I haven't seen indications that any of the above will gain a second raid-viable spec next week.

A further sub-priority would be to concentrate on making all *roles* of a given class raid viable before piling on more of the same (e.g. Red Guardian before Yellow; Blue Warden before Yellow)

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Originally Posted by Raninia

we're not sure if we're there with the changes in BR, but we're still tweaking.

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Hi Raninia.You're definately not there with champs. Thank you for acknowledging this, and please pay close attention to the thread on the BR forum dedicated to the current state of champs. The loss of crit multiplier legacy absolutely needs to be fixed, it's vital for Champ DPS.

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Originally Posted by Raninia

As far as I've seen, we don't have any specific breakdown within classes of lines as "for questing" vs. "for raiding". Our prioritized goals, generally speaking:

1) All lines are usable for playing landscape content
2) Every class has at least one line that is raid viable
3) Every line is raid viable

We were able to get to #2 with U30, and right now, we're not sure if we're there with the changes in BR, but we're still tweaking. Once we're able to get past that, that's when we start working on bringing some of the older under-tuned specs in line. We don't have a specific order that we plan on doing them, I imagine it'll be a lot of investigating where they are, how they're setup - the amount of special casing that happens hurts my head - and how much work it'd take to bring them in line. Using that info, we'd probably start with the easiest wins and work our way down to the hardest ones. But like I said, we don't even really have that done yet.

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Thanks for responding. I do think item #2 is well on its way to being a reality. Also, perhaps I am just speaking for myself, but I find the new LI system at least as intuitive as the old one. And having it in Rivendell is a wonderful tip of the hat to lore. I hope the expansion does well so you can bring more people on board to lighten the work load. I'm not an "expert" but I'd say Guards have 2 lines that are raid worthy (red and blue). Thanks again for responding and in case you don't hear it enough. Good job.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Raninia

As far as I've seen, we don't have any specific breakdown within classes of lines as "for questing" vs. "for raiding". Our prioritized goals, generally speaking:

1) All lines are usable for playing landscape content
2) Every class has at least one line that is raid viable
3) Every line is raid viable

We were able to get to #2 with U30, and right now, we're not sure if we're there with the changes in BR, but we're still tweaking. Once we're able to get past that, that's when we start working on bringing some of the older under-tuned specs in line. We don't have a specific order that we plan on doing them, I imagine it'll be a lot of investigating where they are, how they're setup - the amount of special casing that happens hurts my head - and how much work it'd take to bring them in line. Using that info, we'd probably start with the easiest wins and work our way down to the hardest ones. But like I said, we don't even really have that done yet.

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Thank you for the feedback and for the work you've already done on red guard and blue champ.

Also the above seems to be a really good approach, keep up with the good job!

Guardians look like absolute pushovers next to the current champ now. Champ has much more damage AND better survivability now!! Please add further buffs to guard, especially on the heals. Give red guards a more uniform damage increase i.e. buff all skills equally instead of just targeted skills dmg increase (like you did to champ), increase Heavy Weapons Training (to like 30+ %) and please drastically improve the useless Thrill of Battle heal.

Just look at this (yellow champ lvl 77 on BR - full purple crafted gear) … on a NEMESIS mob in Limlight Gorge! Done in about half a minute too lol--and this is just the single target! The guard doesn't even get close.

https://i.imgur.com/0ddULVH.jpg

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Originally Posted by Hallsae

Guardians look like absolute pushovers next to the current champ now. Champ has much more damage AND better survivability now!! Please add further buffs to guard, especially on the heals. Give red guards a more uniform damage increase i.e. buff all skills equally instead of just targeted skills dmg increase (like you did to champ), increase Heavy Weapons Training (to like 30+ %) and please drastically improve the useless Thrill of Battle heal.

Just look at this (yellow champ lvl 77 on BR - full purple crafted gear) … on a NEMESIS mob in Limlight Gorge! Done in about half a minute too lol--and this is just the single target! The guard doesn't even get close.

https://i.imgur.com/0ddULVH.jpg

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Using a level 77 Mob as a metric/balance is not that helpful. Do you really think the devs are balancing for content that came out years ago? Of course, while classes level it's going to look different.

On live, red guard is not in a horrible spot. For sure, they are behind. The current max for red guard DPS is around 300k all out in a 3-minute parse.

Here's what guard needs:
1) 5% more crit chance. Every class gets a boost to their internal crit, Guard is stuck at 25%. Easy solution: Change 5% parry chance at top of red to 5% crit. If you're red in a group, you're not having agro to parry anyway.
2) Thrill of Danger is a great heal, and will actually get better. The more morale we have, the better it is. In my DPS build on live, I have 600k morale. Thrill almost gets me to full each time, especially with multiple mobs on me. But the Thrill of Battle (top left red) should be fixed. 8s internal CD is awful. Reduce this to 3 maybe? Take the internal CD away completely? It's reliant on response and a crit. 8s are seriously overkilled.
3) A rework of Honourable Combat. The heal is really underwhelming and for a capstone, it sucks. Would be much nicer to have some kind of internal DPS CD. This is a bit of a two-in-one. Honorable Combat is never useful because you lose way too much dps with it. And not having any self-buff damage CD really hurts. There's no opportunity for burst. You have charge as a 10% melee damage buff, that's it. It's our DPS line, removing bleeds is not ideal, especially the only AoE one - pass.
4) We need some kind of group benefit to be useful. Champ: 10% incoming melee damage or -5.5% mitigations. Bear: Bee's/Armour Crush. Warden: Marked/Diminished. Cappy: Mark/Buffs/Banner/OB. Hunter: Incoming Damage with Archer Mark and Pent shot mit debuff. Burg: Mark/Trick. Most DPS classes have some kind of benefit they provide either themselves or the group while DPSing. I'd suggest this is where Guardian's Ward should come in. It's currently not useful at all in the DPS rotation due to it's long animation and meh crit mag, this would make it necessary to use if it debuffed mitigations or added some kind of incoming effect. Maybe incoming crit chance since those aren't as common?
5) Insult to Injury (top left of yellow) is horribly bugged. It's supposed to refresh the DoTs on target. However, half the DoTs don't get reapplied, and if they do the refreshed version cannot crit. So you have better uptime on dots, but what's the point if they don't crit.
6) It'd be a great for Sting to give a parry response on crit in red. The 25% chance from blue is nice, but you can go a long time waiting for Force Opening. It'd also just sucks having to allocate 10 trait points for a 25% chance to actually use your skills.
7) Force Opening should be lowered by War Chant's -5s buff.
8) Passives need to scale. Prey on the Weak and Flash of Light from Red and Yellow is VERY underwhelming. Flash of Light embarrassing was nerfed because of a limited-time pvp event because of lvl 50 gameplay. On live it currently hits for 2k lol. Yellow would be really good if it was scalled propperly.
9) To The King's buff should be reworked. 10% melee damage is nice, but -20% attack duration is very underwhelming and makes almost no difference in the DPS rotation. I'd personally like to see this give a crit bonus, or should buff another skill similar to red cappy. Blade of Elendil gives your next Shadow's Lament a nice buff. Would be nice to see To The King buff either Overwhelm or something else
10) Hammer Down is a very long CD. No other class has a 40s CD on their best DPS skills. Compare this to Hunter's upshot lol. 20s would be way more appropriate and the morale threshold stun is nice, but wouldn't mind seeing that reworked. Or have it where anytime used under 50% is an autocrit.
11) We need an incentive to use Retaliation or Whirling Retaliation beyond AoE vs Single Target. There should be some kind of skill prioritization here. Imo, would be really nice if WR spread either Hemoraging Wound or Thrust/Terrible.
12) Survivability would be fixed if Catch a Breath was fixed with Parry. This has been a forever issue where the parry response version and block response version have weird interactions with war chant lowering of CD.
13) Make Protection and Protection by the Sword useful. Without copying Shield/Blade Bro, Have these give some kind of stats and add a version of it to blue: My advice would be: Protection of Sword keeps it 5% melee buff, but gives just the target -induction/crit/mastery. Yellow version: Give +incoming healing/physical mitigation/tactical mitigation Blue Version: -5% incoming damage/vit/finesse. -- Make these also give the same value to the guardian as their target. Keep the response trigger with them: If your ally blocks/parrys/etc, you should receive the response
14) Make Turn the Tables a more immediate animation. The skill itself is immediate but the animation is terrible. You remained stunned for 1-2s after you break your stun. Just doesn't make sense, and is super punishing -- especially while we have traits and traceries allocated to the skill.
15) Make Cataclysmic Shout similar to Smashing Stab. Have it locked behind a Parry and Block Response? Also, allow the CD to be lowered with war chant or parry/block crits. 2m is horribly long and it's pretty useless in end-game content.
16) Give Smashing Stab as a skill, don't lock it behind a trait wall. It'd be very useful in all lines. Perhaps give it some specialty in other lines? I.e: In blue, it reduced damage of the next incoming hit. In red, it refreshed slashing wound or gave a nice melee buff. In yellow it makes your next skill auto-crit (to balance the yellow vs red DPS).
17) Singular Focus from Yellow Capstone is a decent idea, but scaled horribly. This would need to be a lot better to match other debuffers.
18) Lastly, and a bit unrelated to traits: It'd be nice to see a bleed pulse tracery like Cappy has or get more traits for it like Warden. Doesn't make sense for a bleed class to not get bleed support. Sweeping is 9s CD, 12s duration. Hammer Down: 10s. The only decent duration of bleed is Thrust and that's gets overwritten anyway by Overwelm.
19) Power on guard is a huge issue. Force Opening and Hammer down: 325, Ignore the Pain: 651. The redline trait, Invigorating Parry should be changed. Even with 1 trait into it, 1 crit = 60 power and 4 points = 200 power. After 4 trait points, 1 crit isn't even enough for some of the skills, needs rework 3/6/9/12 would be much better, or just raw value: 500/1000/1500/2000 power instead of %.

bump :(

So Yellow Guardians are receiving a little and much needed TLC. Here are the changes

Guardian - Flash of Light now scales with weapon. Damage will now scale up much more effectively into the higher levels.
Guardian - Flash of Light will now ONLY proc off of your active Take to Heart target. No more exponential AoEs. :P
Guardian - Catch a Breath CD timer should no longer bug out when war-chant is reducing it.

So they are looking at yellow line, but I imagine light damage is still broken for the most part. Adding light damage % back to war-chant would be lovely. War chant duration as a legacy does nothing in yellow line because with mark, it is permanent. So adding light damage to it would actually do something. It was this way when we had imbued LIs. Also, The 15% light damage for LIs does not effect war-chant, nor does the high elf virtue for light damage effect anything for a yellow Guard.

I'd love to see other Guardians give their feed back. They are looking at yellow guards so here is our chance.