Class Update - Guardians

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Vastin

Guardian AoE Target numbers are generally being reduced to compensate for greatly increased overall DPS, and Challenge in particular is being reduced substantially, with a considerably longer cooldown and reduced targets. I suspect this will initially be unpopular for MT guardians, but I want to make sure that in large, complex encounters, the dynamics of managing pulls are not reduced to a single tank simply pulling and holding all threat for as long as they can be kept alive. My goal is for raid groups in particular (and occasionally 6-mans) be required to field multiple tanks/off-tanks and share aggro management responsibilities to keep the team safe.

Also, as the base DPS of the guardian is going up quite substantially relative to the main DPS classes, Guardians should find it easier to keep ahead of the DPS threat curve once they have grabbed threat. That's the theory anyway. If it doesn't work in practice, I'll certainly be revisiting these changes. The idea is not to make threat management impossible - just to keep it interesting and dynamic, and to encourage some tank-juggling even in circumstances when the mobs are not explicitly using threat-dump mechanics.

-Vastin

---

Seriously? What's the max number of targets we can hit with a damage skill, 8 from traited shield smash, isn't it? Have you have actually played a guard into the heavily mobbed camps in Mordor with the 1 minute respawn timers. Oh and don't forget the ever lovely stun/disarm/disarm/stun/disarm from more than one Uruk anywhere after Rohan. Please reconsider the AOE targets, the single most important factor above all else is it MUST be fun to play, if it's not, you could end up with no-one running your instances cos all the guards have gone.

For the many, not the few.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Decrepify

What's happening to POTW, Deeper Wounds, Thrill of Battle, Hammer-Down and Honourable Combat? Are they getting buffs/reworks?

---

Good questions.

Hammer down got a bigger base damage buff, nothing exciting there, just hard hitting.

PotW now procs additional damage whenever you crit against a target with Slashing Wounds - it seems to contribute well to AoE builds. May revisit it again in the future, but I think it's going to stay on that for the time being.

Still looking at the others.

-Vastin

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Vastin

Good questions.

Hammer down got a bigger base damage buff, nothing exciting there, just hard hitting.

PotW now procs additional damage whenever you crit against a target with Slashing Wounds - it seems to contribute well to AoE builds. May revisit it again in the future, but I think it's going to stay on that for the time being.

Still looking at the others.

-Vastin

---

Alright, thank you for the swift response. Can you tell us how this additional damage scales? Mastery? Level(Please, no)? Is it reduced by mits?
Or do you not wish to spoil the thrill of testing for us? :P

Either way, thank you for all the work, I imagine it's coming in the next build?
Edit: Do you still keep the old bonus from power restore? Maybe have each bleed add an additional effect, rewarding for keeping all 3 of them active?
In that case, only bleed left is Deep Wound. If you do go this path, then maybe Deeper Wounds will have a purpose to be traited...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Giliodor

A mechanic like that for PotW seems a bit unfair for one of the few classes in the game that doesn't have a +5% critical chance trait. Perhaps you could bake some extra crit chance into the spec somewhere? Guardians are at a fairly big disadvantage without.

---

Replacing Thrill of Battle with +5% extra crit chance.
Two birds, one stone.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Vastin

Good questions.

Hammer down got a bigger base damage buff, nothing exciting there, just hard hitting.

PotW now procs additional damage whenever you crit against a target with Slashing Wounds - it seems to contribute well to AoE builds. May revisit it again in the future, but I think it's going to stay on that for the time being.

Still looking at the others.

-Vastin

---

A mechanic like that for PotW seems a bit unfair for one of the few classes in the game that doesn't have a +5% critical chance trait. Perhaps you could bake some extra crit chance into the spec somewhere? Guardians are at a fairly big disadvantage without.

Are there any thoughts on tweaking yellow at all? It seems to be designed to be the Guardian AoE tanking-through-damage and debuffs line, it'll probably struggle even more if it continues to lose available targets. Conceptually it's definitely one of the coolest traitlines in the game so it would be a shame to see it drop further into irrelevance.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Vastin

Guardian AoE Target numbers are generally being reduced to compensate for greatly increased overall DPS, and Challenge in particular is being reduced substantially, with a considerably longer cooldown and reduced targets. I suspect this will initially be unpopular for MT guardians, but I want to make sure that in large, complex encounters, the dynamics of managing pulls are not reduced to a single tank simply pulling and holding all threat for as long as they can be kept alive. My goal is for raid groups in particular (and occasionally 6-mans) be required to field multiple tanks/off-tanks and share aggro management responsibilities to keep the team safe.

Also, as the base DPS of the guardian is going up quite substantially relative to the main DPS classes, Guardians should find it easier to keep ahead of the DPS threat curve once they have grabbed threat. That's the theory anyway. If it doesn't work in practice, I'll certainly be revisiting these changes. The idea is not to make threat management impossible - just to keep it interesting and dynamic, and to encourage some tank-juggling even in circumstances when the mobs are not explicitly using threat-dump mechanics.

-Vastin

---

I hope you as dev team talk about tank threat skills across the board. I do not know whats challenge targets going to be after changes (probably under 10), or what CD is going to be (probably 45s). However you need to remember guardian is not the only tank in the game.

AoE taunt skills:
Warden: 10 targets, 20s CD
Captain: 6 targets, 15s CD
Beorning: unlimited targets (I assume ~10 is max here, skill doesnt tell), 16s CD. and channeled AoE taunt (everything on range), 30s CD

So if you nerf guardian AoE taunt, you need to realize other classes will suddenly become superior tanks to hold aggro. And before you say you are going to tank with better damage on skills. Not really, you simply can't compete vs hunter doing 100-200k DPS bursts on targets. It's impossible. SSG has designed whole tanking around 9x multiplier on force taunt skills, this results only way to tank is to use this aggro copy lead. Without aggro copy 3x multiplier for normal skills is not enough to compensate this. As guard you might hit ~30-40k criticals with shield smash (takes good 5s to build it) in tank build at top, which would be <200k threat. Meanwhile one hunter critical hit is 200k on same target.



Im not against changes if they are made properly, but it really requires increase to skill threat multipliers in damage line and reduce taunt multipliers. I dont mind if its still "copy x lead" but lead multiplier needs to be brought down. I hope you can do some kind of meeting on whole threat building and tanking fundamentals. A lot/all of guards would like to see actual skills matter more and taunts matter less.´

And thing you need to remember unimbued guardians belt has +5 challenge targets. So it will become even more meta. Some of us already swap for it for some pulls. But certainly after this.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by siipperi

Beorning: unlimited targets (I assume ~10 is max here, skill doesnt tell), 16s CD. and channeled AoE taunt (everything on range), 30s CD

---

Roar is unlimited. The maul channel actually has a fairly low target limit, don't recall exactly what it is.

Like others I think there's to be cautious with those changes and their consequences on tanking, but the concept of managing aggro with threat generation instead of spamming force taunts looks very interesting for me. Now we will have to see exactly the consequences of all these things on Bullroarer.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Decrepify

Maybe have each bleed add an additional effect, rewarding for keeping all 3 of them active?.

---

I'm afraid I'm actively trying to avoid this sort of mechanic. When too many skills/effects try to interact at once, that's when the bugs start to pile up and become intractable.

I'm fine with strong skill interactions - but I'm trying to mostly keep them to one-to-one relationships to avoid precisely the kind of buggy nested mess that guardian bleeds used to be. ;)

-Vastin

Thank you Vastin , this is all really exciting. I agree with Siip , this needs to affect all tank classes.
A nerf on force taunts is needed for sure , but it's gonna have a huge impact on the tanking players.
I am not sure challenge is the first candidate for a nerf. The single target force taunts are far more overpowered for boss aggro.

I believe you should start with threat mechanics in general , the threat multipliers are bloated imo.
A system where you force taunt a mob on 90% and stays stuck on your forever can never be good right ?
I understand there is no time for that though.

I am hoping for a nerf on single target force taunts first and then touch challenge. Especially not the cooldown. Targets could use a nerf , but not less than 10 targets... ( -5 than on live )

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Vastin

I'm afraid I'm actively trying to avoid this sort of mechanic. When too many skills/effects try to interact at once, that's when the bugs start to pile up and become intractable.

I'm fine with strong skill interactions - but I'm trying to mostly keep them to one-to-one relationships to avoid precisely the kind of buggy nested mess that guardian bleeds used to be. ;)

-Vastin

---

A fair point. Thank you for the update, it's very much appreciated!
If there are any specific tests or parses you want seen, please let us know in advance! I'll be spending as much time on BR as possible to document and test the changes.
Edit: Provide an update on other traits and skills I've listed previously, please! It matters a lot in future planning for us players. Also, if it's not a bother, can you rename the legacy "Reactive Parry Damage" to "Parry Responses Damage"? It's hugely misleading, as Reactive Parry is a (useless) talent in the tree, while parry responses are quite good.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Vastin

I'm looking at bumping the overpower debuff to -10% attack speed - keeping the duration short however. It may not be the sexiest debuff in the dps charts and parses, but its technically very valuable in group situations, esp against bosses. Other than that I'm just bumping the dps on Overwhelm so that it's a solid striker in the rotation.

-Vastin

---

To me this seems worthless, we already have -15% on stagger and if we are dps for a group will always be attacking from behind so this buff will always be up (do these even stack together?), This debuff is also not effected by Insult or Radiate, an inc damage debuff would be better here, be it armour/mits/crit def maybe even inc healing as i dont think we have any way to access this debuff.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by BotLike

Thank you Vastin , this is all really exciting. I agree with Siip , this needs to affect all tank classes.
A nerf on force taunts is needed for sure , but it's gonna have a huge impact on the tanking players.
I am not sure challenge is the first candidate for a nerf. The single target force taunts are far more overpowered for boss aggro.

I believe you should start with threat mechanics in general , the threat multipliers are bloated imo.
A system where you force taunt a mob on 90% and stays stuck on your forever can never be good right ?
I understand there is no time for that though.

I am hoping for a nerf on single target force taunts first and then touch challenge. Especially not the cooldown. Targets could use a nerf , but not less than 10 targets... ( -5 than on live )

---

Fray the edge should have 1s base taunt duration. +5 from legacy. 6s duration seems more than generous on 10s CD skill. Or 15/20s cooldown and same duration as now.

Also I want to make sure everyone gets you mean taunt multipliers, not damage threat multipliers being too strong.


But yeah as some have said, nerfs to AoE taunts needs to be one go pass to all classes if guardian gets one. beorning is ok to leave as it's now before major revamp, since it simply can't produce any kind of threat on its own and it's such joke of a tank even if it has unlimited aggro targets, nobody takes them serious lol.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by -Spunkie-

we already have -15% on stagger and if we are dps for a group will always be attacking from behind so this buff will always be up (do these even stack together?), This debuff is also not effected by Insult or Radiate, an inc damage debuff would be better here, be it armour/mits/crit def maybe even inc healing as i dont think we have any way to access this debuff.

---

Ah, I did totally forget about the Stagger debuff, and its true I wouldn't want them both stacking. <sigh>

Back to the drawing board. Ok, I'll retool it in some manner. :P

EDIT: Ok the hell with it. Overwhelm now just upgrades Deep Wound into Terrible Wound (which is a separate stack from deep wound). Needless to say, Terrible Wound does fairly horrific damage. I may tweak it at some point to have a -heal% component or something amusing like that, but I'm out of time to play with it for now.

-Vastin

Re: Tank AoE Taunt, yes we've discussed this as a general change to tanks, so wardens and captains will hopefully see some similar changes shortly, though I don't know if they'll all go in simultaneously, as time grows short for this particular pass.

Beornings will not be touched in this pass due to time constraints, but their threat mechanics will certainly be addressed when I get to them, which SHOULD be soon.

-Vastin

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Vastin

Guardian AoE Target numbers are generally being reduced to compensate for greatly increased overall DPS, and Challenge in particular is being reduced substantially, with a considerably longer cooldown and reduced targets. I suspect this will initially be unpopular for MT guardians, but I want to make sure that in large, complex encounters, the dynamics of managing pulls are not reduced to a single tank simply pulling and holding all threat for as long as they can be kept alive. My goal is for raid groups in particular (and occasionally 6-mans) be required to field multiple tanks/off-tanks and share aggro management responsibilities to keep the team safe.

---

Why? Haven't you done enough to Guardian's AOE ability? Did you know that prior to imbuement, we had 10 targets on melee AOE skills? Is that being further reduced from 5 to 3 or 2 with imbued weapons? Turbine already let the cat out of the bag by changing threat mechanics. We don't have Litany of Defiance. Groups don't wait for you to build aggro. Tactical threat mechanics were fun, but I'll tell you what's not: having threat be based entirely on skill damage. You can keep your damage buffs. I never wanted to do damage while I'm tanking. But I get it, you don't want there to be any tactical element to the class.

Also, depending on how hard you nerf us (and to reiterate, our AOE ability has already been nerfed several times since Helm's Deep came out), other tanks will become plainly superior. Wardens can hit 10 targets with their taunt and have multiple gambits that hit 10 targets (which is more than Guardians). A Champion will have 10-13 targets on many skills. Why should you need two tanks, a support, and a healer in a 6man? And most raids already benefit from having two tanks, including Abyss. First, second, and third boss on T2 are run with two tanks. On most trash pulls a captain tank assists me with trolls, Watcher, or Kingsguard whatever it is. Do you want Warden tanks to engage the 10-target horde and Guardians to off-tank? Why are you changing the fundamental role we have had for years? I'm going to wait to see the changes, but if the idea is to have Guardians with 3 melee targets and 7 Challenge targets, I'm out. That's not the class I've been playing since Helm's Deep came out. That wasn't the class I played before Helm's Deep either, you'd need to STOP removing what tactical threat elements exist and reintroduce tactical and threat-over-time elements that existed before. I like tanking big groups of mobs and you've already intruded on my ability to do that enough. I like hitting them in the face with Shield-smash and watching their smug faces get stunned. If I can't do that, well I guess being a main tank was fun while it lasted.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Vastin

Re: Tank AoE Taunt, yes we've discussed this as a general change to tanks, so wardens and captains will hopefully see some similar changes shortly, though I don't know if they'll all go in simultaneously, as time grows short for this particular pass.

Beornings will not be touched in this pass due to time constraints, but their threat mechanics will certainly be addressed when I get to them, which SHOULD be soon.

-Vastin

---

Wouldn´t it be easier to remove the aggro transmission from the challenge and Fray the edge?
To keep the targets the same and increase the targets of Shield Spott?
In addition, an increase in damage and damage threat multipliers?
Like in the old days ?


A formula such as
Guard threat = DD threat
1x Base Dmg + 3x threat = 1x DD Dmg
100% mastery + 3x threat = 400% mastery

Reduce the aggro transmission from Engage to 1.3x

That would have the effect of not just having moral builds.
And you also always have to fight for the Aggro at Single Boss

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Joedangod

There's an unimbued Legacy increasing Guardian AoE targets that will probably need to go if you're switching us over to a fewer target, more active threat generating rotation.

---

Yes. I'm currently in the process of converting this to essentially match the AoE Damage legacy found on Imbued weapons.

I considered simply reducing it, but target bonuses are considerably harder to balance around - and as some of you may have guessed, we're gradually trying to phase out dependence on non-imbued LIs, by equalizing the bonuses of the two versions when the opportunities to do so arise.

Maintaining both the imbued/non-imbued LI systems is quite time consuming, and the data structure behind the older LI's is EXTREMELY cumbersome and difficult to work with. Thus we're trying to gradually move to a position were we'll eventually be able to shift everyone over to the 'imbued' version and effectively phase out the old system without causing anyone too much anguish.

-Vastin

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Vastin

Guardian AoE Target numbers are generally being reduced to compensate for greatly increased overall DPS, and Challenge in particular is being reduced substantially, with a considerably longer cooldown and reduced targets. I suspect this will initially be unpopular for MT guardians, but I want to make sure that in large, complex encounters, the dynamics of managing pulls are not reduced to a single tank simply pulling and holding all threat for as long as they can be kept alive. My goal is for raid groups in particular (and occasionally 6-mans) be required to field multiple tanks/off-tanks and share aggro management responsibilities to keep the team safe.

-Vastin

---

I'm gonna be blunt on this - you're going to brake Guardian class if you go live with this.

As others very good guardians already have stated you have to start reworking tank lines by this order:
1) Rework threat mechanic from bottom so that Guards could hold aggro without force taunts. At the moment it's impossible.
2) Reduce force taunt threat multiplier, at the moment it's around 8x-9x
3) Remove +5 Challenge targets legacy from unimbued LI belt or at least make LI swapping impossible in-combat (i personally don't understand why it's still possible)
3) After above changes are made then you could start tweaking force taunts targets and cooldowns (starting with single target taunts (Fray The Edge and Engage) not Challenge). Challenge should be the last taunt you touch. And yes if you reduce challenge targets all other tanks AoE taunts should be reduced as well. AoE tanking is at the moment primary reason why Guardians are sought after.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Vastin

Ah, I did totally forget about the Stagger debuff, and its true I wouldn't want them both stacking. <sigh>

Back to the drawing board. Ok, I'll retool it in some manner. :P

EDIT: Ok the hell with it. Overwhelm now just upgrades Deep Wound into Terrible Wound (which is a separate stack from deep wound). Needless to say, Terrible Wound does fairly horrific damage. I may tweak it at some point to have a -heal% component or something amusing like that, but I'm out of time to play with it for now.

-Vastin

---

Oh nice, so we might be able to have 4 bleeds on at a time, this should definatley increase single target dps (which seemed low to me) :D, if Deeper Wound can increase the pulses on this new bleed would be nice so we can maintain the bleeds most of the time.

On the Challenge side of things, remove the targets from Challenge the Darkness not from the skill itself (from the skill would hurt yellow guards too much) and buff the trait with something to make up for the loss. increase cooldown to 3mins.

possible buffs for Challenge the Darkness

• shield smash reduces the cooldown of challenge by 2seconds for each target hit
• challange reduces targets resistance rating (could also change the guardians resistance li to increase this number)
• +5% B/P/E for 10 seconds

EDIT

With this talk of threat/taunt changes was comparing live to beta and while we have gained dps on our melee skills (almost double) we have lost damage on our shield skills (20k shield smash down to 15k), most likely caused by the loss of the second relic (and shield use rank not working?) I think shield skills would need a 20-25% dps increase to bring them back up to what they are on live, without this I think holding threat from skills alone might be difficult.

Not really liking this one! hate bleeds not spreading! overwhelm is rubbish too sorry,
single target is ok for guardian but i really do prefer the live guardian atm, as bad as it is! trying to take AOE from us is a bad move
i feel the problems are within traits RADIATE and INSULT TO INJURY you could have adjusted them and left everything else
if not i would like to see war chant with bleed spread in red with longer cd ?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Vastin

I am looking at putting the knockdown back on Brutal Charge
-Vastin

---

Thank you for listening to us, Vastin,
I have discussed this with Guardians on my server and all of them were sad that you had been planning to remove this skill.
None of them had contributed to this thread because they didn't believe that anything they said could change the dev's mind anyway.
I'm so glad that you listen to us players for feedback.
By putting back the knockdown skill, you will be winning a whole lot of fans, starting with myself.

As some have already said, regarding AOE targets, the number should be increased to match that of wardens and champs, rather than decreased.

Personally, I don't think you should start changing threat mechanics (which is blue line) but save a reworking of blue line for a later date after red line is perfected.
The increase of DPS in red line isn't going to help generate threat because we don't tank in red line.
Unless you increase the DPS of the base skills substantially, blue line threat won't be affected.

Personally, I think Guardians had the most interesting set of skills for threat generation when L75 was cap.
We had a greater variety of threat generation skills to choose from and this required strategy to know which one to use in each situation.
My favorite skill was Challenge the Darkness, which put the Guardian at the top of the threat hierarchy, and drew aggro from a large radius (I think 15m)

When tanking, the guardian's primary role is to hold aggro.
If we lose the ability to do this, the class will be broken.

I collected some thoughts... Now I guess the design philosophy of the Guardian is that it’s single target DPS, single (or duo) target tanking when the class has excelled at mass target tanking since Moria and mass target DPS from Helm’s Deep to imbuement. Two of our three traitlines are tank specs, aggro management is what we do. The phrasing of “Guardian AoE Target numbers are generally being reduced” suggests our other AOE skills, like Vexing Blow and Shield-smash, are also being reduced. It is simply unfair, and frankly absurd, to put Guardian AOE in the worst position it has been in since before Moria. Even if you were to also nerf other classes’ AOE taunt so they hit as many targets as Guardians (by the way, if yellow Champions ever become relevant in endgame content again that’s going to be stupid), Guardians would be in the worst situation to deal with AOE tanking. Wardens and Champions would be superior with their AOE abilities and group utility, such as mitigation debuffs and outgoing damage debuffs. Captains would blow them out of the water in most circumstances with equivalent defenses, in-combat rez, target marks, and group heals. If you were looking for a raid tank, why would you take a Guardian over a Captain when they can handle equivalent amounts of adds? The only benefit Guardians have is Shield-Wall, a pretty good corruption removal, their mass tanking ability, and 10% mitigation bonus, which looks less useful as other classes gain similar buffs and higher morale pools, which Captains already have. But I admit transitioning us to single target tanking is consistent with the theme of the Guardian.

Currently on live with an imbued LI and 89 trait points we have :-

Whirling Retaliation 5 targets
Vexing blow 5 targets
Sweeping Cut 7 targets
War Chant 3 targets
Shield Smash 8 Targets
Challenge 10 targets

This is a red line sword and board build. This is NOT massive AOE by any stretch of the imagination. If you really want to make tanking more interesting, reduce the number of challenge targets, but please please leave the damage skills alone, the only thing you will do by reducing damage targets is make landscape more tedious and time consuming.
Points to note, reduce challenge targets in red line, as the skill is rarely, if ever, used; add them as a passive in blue and / or yellow. If you run with a 2H in red, then you lose the 8 targets from SS so are even further hobbled.

Red Guardian is a single target focused DPS spec. The current number of targets are somewhat unnecessary for its purpose so there's no real loss there.

Reducing the number of AoE targets only really risks upsetting Blue/Yellow as these are the lines concerned with handling multiple enemies at once. As such it would be appreciated if these two lines could retain 5 targets on AoE skills at the very least with maybe one or two reaching 8. Any fewer and most pulls in old FI content would end up being exceptionally annoying to manage.