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Shield use on the belt. I see two options that fit the class.
Have this give us incoming healing OR mitigations.
Either way I find it appropriate to the LI and the class's function.
I would prefer mitigations, that would boost all mit types.
Every build I have I always put on mitigation essences, with varying amounts of Incoming Healing, Blue has more IH essences then Red, for me, as an example.
Making some of our mits a passive LI thing seems like the way to go.
That was me and you pretty much hit the nail on the head. My guard, whilst being one of my longest serving toons, is only number 4 in the gift list, and after checking this morning , just to get his 1h and 2h up I need 40 empowerment crystals. Now, very few kinnies are currently online having exhausted most of the end game on their characters so easy (CoS) farming for crystals is not really an option, for raiding kins with multiple characters all with BiS gear and a lot of free time, big changes don't seem that big, for the average players , (i.e. the majority of the playerbase), big changes mean much more work, and playing computer games shouldn't be work.Quote:
Originally Posted by Macdui
Guards dont need another source of physical mitigations. Those are already overcapped with good gear, a heavy shield and blueline spec, without any essences. If one doesnt want to use a shield, one shouldnt be mit-capped without actually doing something for it. Obviously rating, not %mitigation that adds up as thats OP as long as everything stacks additive.Quote:
Originally Posted by AS1476
tactical mitigation on belt however might be viable. Or incoming healing. Or anything that increases thread/damage, even tactical damage rating wouldnt be that bad, if shieldskills and yellow shouts are meant to be tactical.
Very pleased to see red line Guardian getting a boost, as someone do my semi-annual bounce back into the game I am for the first time in a long while considering picking my classic Guardian up again rather than sticking to Hunters.
I assume red line is still very much a 2hander line though, yes? I don't especially have an issue with that - and I have some nice looking swords anyhow - but every time (in any game) something like this gets change I get that small traitorous flicker of hope for a sword and board dps spec...
Two handers for DPS, yes. 1h has notably lower damage on bleed tooltips, I don't recall the exact difference but it was big enough for me to completely abandon the idea of a 1h build and delete the LI after seeing it.Quote:
Originally Posted by safer666
(Wardens do have a sword and board DPS line by the way).
They do, and at some point I'm going to make a concerted effort to get my head around it. I love wardens in principle, but they're a little complex for me to fully engage with. I have a few that have gotten to 20, only for me to lose interest once I have to start caring about the 9 mastery buttons.Quote:
Originally Posted by Joedangod
There never was much hope that a Guardian could DPS with SnB , just a fool's hope as I have been told. Yet I felt it was worth asking, just on the off-chance that smashing orcs in the face with a large sheet of metal suddenly started hurting them as much as the pointy end of things.
This is spot on. There is no advantage to have more mitigations when you are overcapped already.Quote:
Originally Posted by Oelle
More incoming healing or threat generation from the belt are two good purposes possible.
My preference would be to have a legacy for threat generation, with the default belt value that goes up with starlits (currently called "Shield use") becoming an incoming healing multiplier.
I did say ALL mitigations, not physical only.
No one is tactical mits capped without essences. And running with a 2H your physical mits are not capped either, without essences.
I would rather have a nice chunk of mits on my belt so I can use mastery or crit or any other type of essences to round out my toon.
I understood what you wrote. And disagreed. If you dont wear a shield, you shouldnt be physmitcapped without essences. Thats why I wrote, they should NOT add physmits, which means not all types of mits to the belt, if they add mits to the belt.Quote:
Originally Posted by AS1476
I agree with SSG that the current bleed system needs to be removed.
I don't believe that most guardian players want bleeds to be the primary mode of damage.
How fun is it to watch your enemy's health bar slowly drop because a tiny box tells you that he's bleeding?
I would much rather do damage Champ style - where most damage is caused by the base damage of the skills.
You could limit guardian's skills to 80% of the damage a champ does.
Even this would be about 8-10X more than what the current guardian skill damage is.
If you removed bleeds at present, guardian DPS would be tiny.
Most skills only generate 1-2k damage if they don't crit (at 50k phys mastery)
Against enemies with 100-170k health, that's almost 100 hits to kill a single enemy.
Also, who would want their only AOE stun (knockdown) removed? And why?
(Hammer down is not an AOE stun)
Every class I can think of has an AOE stun - Champs, hunters, LMs, etc
I know I said before I'd love shield use to become some kind of a small flat damage reduction, but I'm really leaning towards favouring incoming healing, which would actually save me essence slots and probably be easier to balance in the long run.
I'm sore about the changes to brutal charge, and it's hard to defend it when i've seen how ridiculously it can be used, but just having a guaranteed crit I feel is not enough. I'd still rather keep an aoe stun, but preferably limited in that using charge will cause a stun to proc with specific skills, and not others. That way it might be less prone to abuse.
Yes. Guardian doesnt need mitigations as belt bonus. Anyway I dont think incoming healing is good idea either. Gives far too easily stats for a class that is already extremely strong on all stats related to tanking (maxed mits without slotting essences, maxed crit d without essences, extremely high bpe without essences...). It would basically mean need of slotting incheal essences is gone as well, or at top slotting one.
Classes that have AoE stuns:Quote:
Originally Posted by Gandalfy
Beorning (if traited Lumber then AoE stun in bear form after use of Lumber, just like Guards worked with charge, else not, just AoE fear in yellow. Though, technically, a Knockdown is not a Stun, which might mean Beornings dont have a stun. But as knockdown usually is nearly the same as stun and has slightly less CCimmunity, I'll call it a stun)
Burglar (3 Targets, 8 Seconds, <20s CD)
Captains (Terrifying Bellow, 4 Targets, 5 Seconds, 15s CD)
Champion (Several: crafted Horn (longest AoE Stun ingame, but consumable), Horn of Gondor (3s, many targets), Trait Athletic (works just like Guards Charge-Stun)
Guardian (Shield-smash, 7 Targets, 3 Seconds, 5s? CD, Charge-Stun that seems to vanish, Cataclysmic shout (not sure here, never used it))
Hunter (Explosion of Decoy, which really isnt very reliant and takes forever to launch, Cry of the Hunter is just an AoE mezz, not a stun, and an awful skill)
Loremaster (Ents go to war, 5 Targets, 6 Seconds (can be up to 8.5s), 5min CD, Storm-Lore, 5?Targets?, 3-5.5s, 2min CD, plus 2 AoE roots and an AoE Mezz)
Runekeeper (Fulgurite Runestone with quite some Delay. I think its 4s and unlimited Targets and no CD, plus AoE Mezz with vivid imaginary or something like that)
Classes that dont have AoE stuns:
Minstrel (afair, only Concussive Shout as a spammable 5s Single Target Stun (stuns only on crit with a skill with ~60% critchance which gets its CD resetted by every critical ballad))
Warden (I'm just aware of a slowly inducted ST stun that cant even be used infight)
TL;DR: even without Charge-Stun, Guards will remain one of the classes with AoE stun abilities, but there are classes which dont have such.
Will Guard never get a percentage crit trait others get?
For landscape soloing we have to compare ourselves with the champ. They have 5% crit trait and a bunch of legacies to increase skill damage/crit mag, debuffs to apply and AE stuns on 20 CD and emergency horn to use as well as more targets they can effect. Quite a lot to impose control and reduce incoming damage yet kill very quickly. How are we stacking up against this? Haven't gotten on to BR with either Champ or Guard as yet.
Mac
Since they are making tactical runes not affect shield use and warchant anymore then Shield Use rank can be replaced with a Threat Generation Up rating if that's not too complicated to implememt. The functional stats on a class legendary are unique for each claas and I feel incoming healing would essentially mirror the champion rune. There are better things to put in there to reflect the class and it's uses more.Quote:
Originally Posted by siipperi
What stinks about loosing tactically based damage skills for guard is that our outgoing healing (to ourselves) also is affected by tactical mastery. So now classes like minstrel can buff their damage and healing with tactical mastery but guards cant. Doesn't sound like class balance to me.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rognomli
Guards are almost entirely % based in regards to self heals, tactical mastery doesn't really do anything here.Quote:
Originally Posted by TiberiasKirk
sounds like more data gathering for me to do. I see the numbers improved even for % based heals. Outgoing healing is a percentage so it doesn't follow that it wouldn't buff a % based heal, but without data its arguing in a void.Quote:
Originally Posted by Joedangod
or even presenting numbers with no error bars.
has been extensively tested.Quote:
Originally Posted by TiberiasKirk
percentage based heals only increase with incoming healing, not with outgoing healing.
outgoing healing only increases heals which have specific healing values.
Plus, outgoing healing is generally so weak, that its not even worth it for healing classes.
The only thing, outgoing healing should buff for guardians is Catch a breath, the weakest heal of all guards heals (which might change soon). Maybe I miss something... but blue block response heal is percent (0.5% afaik), BotP is 2.5%, PotW is percentage, too (2.5 or 5%, forgot, but as it triggers quite often quite strong, but soon gone), Warriors Heart is percentage and usually an instant full heal.
All those can crit though, doubling their effect.
Specific Suggestions for Improving Red Guardian DPS
I've been trying to think of a way to actually offer this input in a reasonably formatted way and decided that a patch notes style list is probably the best method so I'll list my recommendations below. I will then attempt to detail my reasoning underneath the change list.
- Defender of the Free (Blue) changes:
- Some blue line traits should be rearranged in the tree to address balance issues when buying traits outside specialization
- Smashing Stab: Row 4 -> Row 2
- Guardian's Pledge: Row 2 -> Row 4
- Fighter of Shadow (Yellow) changes:
- Insult to injury should be removed and replaced by a 5 rank Vitality increase.
- Bolster should be replaced by a 5 rank light damage increase.
- Tenderize should be replaced by a 5 rank critical rating bonus.
- Keen Blade (Red) changes:
- Brutal Charge should be replaced by a flat 5% critical chance increase.
- Prey on the Weak should be replaced with a 50% critical magnitude increase.
- Thrill of Battle should be replaced by a 5 rank might increase.
- Raw Power should no longer increase the duration of the Thrust bleed, instead it should offer a 5-10-15-20-25% damage bonus to overwhelm if it hits a target suffering from the Thrust bleed.
- Hammer Down should no longer count as a parry response skill.
- Hammer Down should have its damage output increased by 100%.
- Hammer Down CD should be shortened to ~20s.
- Shorten attack duration on Brutal Assault and To the King.
- Some red line traits should be rearranged in the tree to address balance issues when buying traits outside specialization
- Thrust: Row 2 -> Row 3
- Invigorating Parry: Row 3 -> Row 2
- Legendary Item Changes:
- The LI legacy "Bleed Critical Damage" should be removed.
- Rename the "Reactive Parry Damage" legacy to "Parry Response Skill Damage".
- Catch a Breath Cooldown legacy should be removed.
- Universal Changes:
- Base damage for all skills barring whirling retaliation and the bleeds should be increased by ~50%.
- Catch a Breath should be set to heal 25% morale by default, retaining the 60s cooldown.
- Replace shield use rating with tactical mitigation or incoming healing rating.
Blue Change Summary:
My reasoning here was mostly to block off access to yet another defensive cooldown to Red Guardians. Whilst the lack of shield in redline (bleed damage scales better with 2h) does reduce the value of pledge you can still get exceptionally high avoidance through using it with the legacy. Smashing stab was swapped since this trait doesn't really offer enough to get picked at its current position.
Yellow Change Summary:
The changes I'm proposing here are in no way enough to warrant ever taking a yellow Guardian as tank but I did try to replace some of the more lackluster traits with something that would benefit yellow guardian in general. For starters insult to injury was an odd choice for yellow line since the entire point of yellow line is that you can eventually make your debuffs on a target permanent, as such I saw fit to swap out this trait for something more passive that would universally benefit all Guardian traitlines. Bolster and Tenderize currently don't offer a great deal to yellow guardian; Guardians already have exceptionally good critical defence and cashing out the critical rating on sting usage was a bit annoying as this skill can be pretty central to a Guardians rotation thanks to it's short attack duration. Offering a light damage increase instead seemed a natural way to go as yellow is quite light damage focused. The critical rating is also valuable due to yellow Guardians focus on being an offensive kind of tank.
These proposed changes also benefit the red/blue guardians who cross-spec but don't offer them anything notably powerful.
Red Change Summary:
Whilst I'm not in favour of returning the knockdown due to how much it could be abused I still am not happy with the current form of brutal charge. As such I propose that it be replaced by a 5% critical chance buff to offer a reasonable boost to red guard DPS. The next bit I looked at was Prey on the Weak. In its current form it's essentially useless, by replacing it with a hefty critical magnitude boost we can beef up the red Guardian crit damage to be more in line with other DPS classes. This recommendation goes hand in hand with the later point suggesting that the bleed critical damage legacy be removed. This way bleed damage should remain roughly the same whilst the other damaging skills are increased.
Thrill of Battle is currently worthless, the heal is small and the cooldown is long. Swapping this out for a 5 rank might increase will help improve guard DPS and it's pretty in-line with what other classes receive. Raw power is an odd trait at the moment since the thrust bleed is already pretty long in duration, the duration increase only really benefits the skill in AoE but with all the other changes you've made so far it's clear you want to steer us away from using red guardian as an AoE DPS. As such I propose that this trait be replaced by something that can bolster Overwhelm. Currently overwhelm isn't really much competition for Thrust so increasing the damage output will help it become a harder choice regarding which to use.
Hammer down is a little odd at the moment since it counts as a parry response skill despite not requiring parry responses in order to be used. I think it also benefits from the "Reactive Parry Damage" legacy at the moment. Whilst I've advocated for almost all skills to receive a hefty base damage increase later in this list I'm adding an additional 100% increase to damage to hammer down itself. The 50% classwide buff should mostly counter the nerf from it no longer benefitting from the "Reactive Parry Damage" legacy and the 100% damage increase should allow this skill to operate as the "finisher" skill it seems that it was designed to be. A further cooldown reduction would allow it to become part of the rotation and overall makes the skill more valuable than trying to get the Yellow capstones.
Brutal Assault and To the King take a really long time to go off to the point where I find myself spamming stamp off cooldown just to cut that animation down whenever possible. An attack/animation duration reduction on these skills will go a long way to improving how well a DPS rotation flows.
As far as moving traits in red around I figured it would be prudent to push the thrust bleed further into the traitline to ensure that blue/yellow can't crosspec into red and receive 2/3 bleeds core to the Red Guardian rotation by getting to the second row of the tree. Invigorating parry should serve as a decent replacement here since power can potentially be a problem for red guardian (although admittedly it can usually be addressed by power pots).
LI Change Summary:
The changes here are quite simple. Removing the bleed critical damage legacy should stop them from getting a noticeable DPS increase from the proposed Prey on the Weak replacement. The "Reactive Parry Damage" legacy is a bit of a misnomer right now since it doesn't increase the damage dealt by the Reactive Parry trait but rather increases the damage done by parry response skills. The catch a breath legacy removal is being suggested as catch a breath is a very powerful heal with it and as such it shouldn't have the option of increasing further over the course of a few LI legacy tier increases.
Universal Change Summary:
Setting Catch a Breath heal to 25% should cover the loss of the legacy and leave it at an acceptable amount of healing. It's worth noting that Catch a Breath is a response skill and thus benefits from the warchant CD reduction for block and parry response skills. The base damage increase is an attempt to bolster the generally weak hitting guardian skills so that they are of more relevance to the rotation. Whirling Retaliation is excluded from this as it already benefits from multiple legacies, traits and set bonuses (Strong Bursts) so increasing it further would be unwarranted.
Shield use rating should probably be swapped out for either incoming healing rating on the belt or tactical mitigation. I can see why some people would prefer for tactical mitigation to take this spot but honestly I feel like Guards cover mitigations pretty easily already, incoming healing seems a little less potent but remains useful.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Joedangod
Sounds good, except for a few things.
The rating increases are not great, simply because they have been badly scaled so far.
Dosen´t change the position of Guardian's Pledge, you need an emergency skill in yellow line.
Redirect isn´t one for me because more skills are needed.
Maybe your boost to base damage balances the loss of tactical damage on shield skills.
But I didn´t have time to test how the dmg / threat changed to blue.
In general, you might want to consider whether to set the values of Weapon Dmg / Tactical Dmg and Healing equal. To get around future balancing problems
Honestly the new stat trait amounts are great. It follows that they should be able to do a similar thing for critical rating and the like.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gildintar
Yellow is going to want to dip deep into blue anyway for the tact mit and Bellow, they won't notice the movement much.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gildintar
I can agree with this, one question though, how long of a cd would you suggest if Hammer Down was given the damage you suggest ?Quote:
Keen Blade (Red) changes:
- Brutal Charge should be replaced by a flat 5% critical chance increase.
- Prey on the Weak should be replaced with a 50% critical magnitude increase.
- Thrill of Battle should be replaced by a 5 rank might increase.
- Raw Power should no longer increase the duration of the Thrust bleed, instead it should offer a 5-10-15-20-25% damage bonus to overwhelm if it hits a target suffering from the Thrust bleed.
- Hammer Down should no longer count as a parry response skill.
- Hammer Down should have its damage output increased by 100%.
- Shorten attack duration on Brutal Assault and To the King.
- Some red line traits should be rearranged in the tree to address balance issues when buying traits outside specialization
- Thrust: Row 2 -> Row 3
- Invigorating Parry: Row 3 -> Row 2
The problem with ToB is that Edgecase put a 20 sec cd on it. So no it doesn't function the way it used to, take that down to 5-8 sec cd and maybe it may work well enough while not being op.
You are right. I can only see an improvement in catch breath with outgoing healing and it sadly doesn't improve the power restore either.Quote:
Originally Posted by Oelle
I assumed it did, but not rightly so.
Still getting a small healing increase for free along with a large damage increase is something I do not want to lose.
Having our guardian's belt shield use legacy do something would be better than nothing. Incoming healing on the belt would be best if they insist on tying shield smash damage to physical mastery.
I'd say leave as is. With 202k mastery I was hitting hammer down crits for ~40k on the tavern dummies. Doubling that to 80k is somewhat in line with how hard champions hit with remorseless but in this case the skill would retain the 60s cooldown. Overall it would work as a finisher, they just need to ensure that it doesn't still have the reset effect.Quote:
Originally Posted by Madmanthief
At this point I'd say red Guardians already have more than enough healing for a DPS spec thanks to Warriors Heart and catch a breath. As such I'd prefer the might bonus be implemented to help round out the stats as it's actually quite difficult to stack mastery on a guard compared to classes like RK.Quote:
Originally Posted by Madmanthief
Brutal charge is only available in Red line. Shield Smash is a blue line skill. Most players have 1 or the other, no shield smash if using a 2H, so removing the the knockdown leaves NO aoe stun for a red guard.Quote:
Originally Posted by Oelle
On that list there's only 2 non-AoE DPS class with an AoE stun: Yellow RK and Red champ. All the others are supports, tanks or AoE DPS i.e. they're designed to be fighting groups. Even with these changes Guardians have better self healing than an RK or Champion.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bhorn_EU
I get why people like having an AoE stun but it's not exactly necessary. If you need to take a breather from a group of mobs for a second you could just activate charge and....run away far faster than any mob can chase? Or just trait shield smash in redline, you take a DPS hit but that's kinda fair for the utility and defence it brings.
All in all it's not totally unfair that this is getting dropped from the traitline.
My point is that there is no good reason to remove the Charge stun, and even if there was, why not replace it with something similar?Quote:
Originally Posted by Joedangod
It's a fun skill and makes Guardian more fun to play.
Lots of other classes have AOE stuns, so why not allow Guardian to have them in red line?
Aren't we here to have fun?
On live brutal charge does knock down, not a stun. Big difference and one of reasons it needs to be altered tbh.
They're currently focusing on making red guardian less AoE focused and more ST focused, removing an AoE stun makes sense in this situation. Why bother removing the stun if you're going to give a similar ability?Quote:
Originally Posted by Gandalfy
As far as fun goes: That's subjective. I never liked using the AoE stun because it just felt too gimmicky and didn't really suit the class. Others liked it because it gave them a couple seconds of free DPS where nothing fought back. Nobody is right or wrong from a fun standpoint.
Agreed on this part, it's far too easy to get Guards pledge, considering it's a pretty decent panic skill against multiple mobs.Quote:
Originally Posted by Joedangod
Agreed, but only if Radiate was returned to it's old state. If this happens, it would mean spreading debuffs (and keeping some of them up) would be a lot more difficult.Quote:
Originally Posted by Joedangod
It's Deeper Wounds now, not Raw power :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Joedangod
But yeah, I can see your point on this one. My only issue is what the exact rating on might ratings would be....as those have a history of being obsolete eventually.
Base damage boost that would affect all 3 lines, seems good...but should be def tested first, 50% can make a lot of difference.Quote:
Originally Posted by Joedangod
CAB buff...fine I suppose, though, not a fan of having better self-healing on a sturdy tank class.
Incoming healing, yes. Tactical mit, no. We get enough as it is, and it's possible to go way overcap without any essences.
I think the best correction for the strong self healing would be to nerf warriors heart in redline somehow in a way that doesn't affect yellow/blue rather than tweak CAB. Would be pretty nice if it could lose the healing and function as a DPS buff for red although that might be wishful thinking.Quote:
Originally Posted by Decrepify
Optimize the "Warriors Fortitude" trait to provide much better bonuses at expense of 50-60% reduced healing from itself. For example, increasing melee damage by 25%, critical chance by 10%, crit/dev magnitude by 20% while reducing the heal by 50-60%.Quote:
Originally Posted by Joedangod
Best I can come up with.
Or you just reduce the healing on WH upon entering The Keep Blade. They did the same with Wardens and outgoing healing.Quote:
Originally Posted by Decrepify
Main problem is the fact that it's a legacy involved, the base warriors heart heal would be fine for a DPS, the legacy variant not so much.Quote:
Originally Posted by Giliodor
I guess that we know it's technically possible for a skill to have multiple variants since the stances on Warden/Minstrel replace skills like that. Wonder if they can attach such a thing to a traitline itself.
If you all are so willing to nerf red spec healing to the point where it's virtually non existent, continue on and ask for a nerf to the other 2 specs as well. Otherwise it's looking like the hunter subforums where it's the same old BS of flip flopping what is the top spec.
This is the primary reason why I didn't list a possible warriors heart nerf for red on the change list. I just can't be bothered to defend the suggestion that a DPS traitline should have a similar level of self healing as other DPS traitlines.Quote:
Originally Posted by Madmanthief
(sorry for my bad English)
If the goal is to have a red DPS line which has self healing and DPS like a champion, then make a champion.
Agree to lower self healing and more DPS, but guardian has an identity which make him interesting : knockdown (why not single target knockdown instead of AOE and instead of no knockdown ?), combos with parry reactions, use of dots etc.
OK for the changes made with this build by the developpers (what else could be done ?), but I already have a champion and I do not want play my red guardian as a red champion (or more boring : 2 or 3 buttons for dots and that is all).
The actual build and trait tree on Bullroarer are not perfect, but fine and lot better than the current situation, with the two main problems which are the belt and prey for the weak in the raid tree (but disagree with something like critical magnitude for PoW, red guardian is not a class with big burst but who does regular damages in my opinion). Do not touch to warrior heart, and do not give the same dps as others dps traitlines.
You're right, people seem to really struggle with that concept. You would be opening the gates of hell if you started arguing that guardians should be a viable DPS class when specced in red line, similar to red line champions.Quote:
Originally Posted by Joedangod
That said, I do think that should be the case. Guardian DPS should be similar to that of champions, and their survival abilities should be reduced accordingly.
I do agree with that.Quote:
Originally Posted by Giliodor
Champs should also not be the only AoE kings.
And I do not agree, as a large number of guardians who do not care being as OP in DPS as champions, hunters, rune keepers.
In the release notes it's clearly written :
The line is intended to be a functional soloing build for the guardian that will allow them to play through the game at a much more acceptable pace. It is not explicitly intended to be fully competitive as a raid-DPS line, though we'll see where it actually sits in testing.
That is the goal.
It makes sense, it'a a good thing and the build they are trying to make is not perfect (PoW and belt have a problem as Vastin said) but not incorrect : less self heal and more DPS in a build with less bugs. Survivability and DPS are balanced.
Make guardian's DPS for going into Abyss of Mordath in red line is not the goal, and majority of guardians do not care of that and do not ask for that.
Blue line guardian can cap tactical mitigation with NO essences. From virtues, north mirkwood earring, teal raid shield, teal raid/erebor crafted/bartered armor, and tactical mitigation rings my tactical mitigation is 79000 unbuffed. This is slightly over t2 cap.Quote:
Originally Posted by AS1476
That being said i would prefer in order of preference:
1. something for extra threat on belts
2. mits if its % based
3. inc healing if % based
4. % base increase to any of block parry and/or evade (full or partial)
5. incoming healing numbers rating
6. bpe rating numbers
7. lastly mitigation number rating ( which is totally useless for me)
Thats like saying "I can reach fate values that make me need no fate essences, if I put equipment with fate in all characterslots"Quote:
Originally Posted by Dmunney
Essences are part of the equipment. If you use gear with a large amount on some stat on it, thats exactly the same like using essences of that stat.
Some people prefer not to use fate-equipment, because fate is a quite useless stat. Therefore, they for example may prefer the earrings with critical defense and evade instead of mits and fate. Then, there is a use for further Mits.
As long as everything stacks additive, percentual bonusses to Mits are completely overpowered from belt. The same for avoidances. Unless those bonusses are so tiny that they can be ignored. whatever the belt gets, it has to be some kind of rating, not percentage.
In terms of healing for a red spec guardian, would anyone be opposed to 1 of the traits adding a 3-5% heal to a high damage skill, similar to how renewing strikes works on the champ. This skill would have to have a cd long enough so that it isn't op but also not too long so as to be utterly useless much as ToB was after u18.1.
The trait would have to be far enough down into the red spec so it would be exclusive to it.
I'm opposed to this being added whilst Warriors Heart is still fully available to red. The traitline has more than enough healing right now.Quote:
Originally Posted by Madmanthief
We have one already and its even stronger. Honourable combat.Quote:
Originally Posted by Madmanthief
The self healing available to guards in redline was as OP as the DPS that hunters/RK's/Champions could pull. It is very, very, very difficult for a red guardian to die to a mob on live. It was even harder to die to a mob before the U18.2 nerfs. Worst of all there wasn't actually any skill component related to the survival; if you kept swinging your weapon at a target you were going to keep passively proccing heals and go on living.Quote:
Originally Posted by Grimlir83
Red Guardian is overpowered. It's just a boring kind of overpowered where you simply sit there and outlast your opponent in stale, exceptionally passive gameplay.
We're suggesting Guardians end up with similar numbers to red champion. That doesn't make them like red champion. Red champs focus on building up to big hits on particular skills whilst red guards focus on maintaining bleeds, self buff and responding to parry events.Quote:
Originally Posted by Grimlir83
If something does the same role as another class it doesn't suddenly become the other class. So long as each traitline behaves and plays a different way there is no reason why there shouldn't be multiple traitlines concerned with doing the same singular role.
I concur most whole-heartedly! Please keep the knockdown or perhaps make it a toggle/alt skill where we can select either knockdown OR crit?Quote:
Originally Posted by Pontin_Finnberry
Seriously though, it's about time we Guardians got a lil lovin', we've been nerfed too many times over the years and the bugs have nvr been fixed properly. Solo play has become a struggle at times at cap even with maxxed gear, not all Guardians like tanking 'ya know :)
..... now, let the trolling begin ;)
Sorry but that trait is a joke, and based off of bleeds. I'm talking about a flat heal that activates when used.
The amount of stuns and knockdowns that creeps can do is rediculous.Quote:
Originally Posted by TiberiasKirk
I gave up on the Moors because of being chain stunned all the time on my hunter.
If they are going to take away the Guardian's stun, they should take away all the creeps stuns as well.
Most people play this game for fun.
Taking away the Guardian's redline stun is not an improvement for the class.
It is taking away the most fun skill, and most guardian players won't be happy with that.
And there is no valid reason - most Freeps have an AOE stun and I believe creeps have more stuns on a shorter CD than freeps.
...are you thinking of Cataclysmic Shout there? Brutal Charge doesn't have any animations attached to it...Quote:
Originally Posted by TiberiasKirk
Actually Cataclysmic Shout makes another AoE stun that people could technically grab here. Not much DPS loss involved at all with that one even...heck you would also gain self healing going that deep into yellow.
Still, just take shield smash or cataclysmic shout. Does the same thing but requires you to give a little something up in order to get something powerful.Quote:
Originally Posted by TiberiasKirk
I generally don't use the skill because I don't think it should be there. Therefore I am going to submit feedback that agrees with the initial developer idea to remove Brutal Charge from the Red Guardian. From my perspective it's an excellent change.Quote:
Originally Posted by TiberiasKirk
For the new vitality scaling bubble from the blue line trait Stoic, there is 10% morale increase in bubble strength when going from 5 points into the trait to 6 points. the 6th trait points adds a 10% morale heal on bubble expiration, but this 10% impacts the bubble strength.
For instance, the bubble strength with 5 points into the trait is 53,672. When i add the 6th trait point the bubble goes up to 67,090.
https://gyazo.com/87260591fb8640043ba2d853f1277cdc
https://gyazo.com/a6110694c3150be0d2e44380777b200f
Not sure if this is intended and the tooltip is missing something or the 10% morale on expiration is accidentally being applied to the base bubble.
Did you just think that guardian should be getting all buffs and no nerfs? I mean really, as mentioned earlier; Red Guardian was stupidly overpowered in regards to the fact that it was insanely hard to kill due to the sheer amount of passive healing present. That stuff needed to go and it's gone. The traitline now focuses on ST abilities so removing an AoE knockdown makes sense. They did replace it with a ST stun but you don't seem to acknowledge or accept that. If you still insist on having an AoE stun you are still able to get one by either taking shield smash from blue or cataclysmic shout from yellow.Quote:
Originally Posted by Madmanthief
Red damage was garbage post mordor, why would you need to nerf anything? You could literally do more damage with a 1h and shield using shield skills and have a ton more survivability.Quote:
Originally Posted by Joedangod
lol which iteration of was stupidly overpowered? I think you are just upset your warden is no long playing in god mode.Quote:
I mean really, as mentioned earlier; Red Guardian was stupidly overpowered in regards to the fact that it was insanely hard to kill due to the sheer amount of passive healing present.
So landscape mobs are only going to come at red spec Guardians one at a time?Quote:
That stuff needed to go and it's gone. The traitline now focuses on ST abilities so removing an AoE knockdown makes sense. They did replace it with a ST stun but you don't seem to acknowledge or accept that. If you still insist on having an AoE stun you are still able to get one by either taking shield smash from blue or cataclysmic shout from yellow.
I think your arguments are idiotic and I am not even a fan of brutal charge.
There was fair need to nerf the self healing. Playing red Guardian post u18.2 was really more about outlasting an opponent rather than actively trying to kill them. Most of your skills hit for essentially nothing so instead you just kept on healing whilst pressing random buttons.Quote:
Originally Posted by Zvim666
Always a conspiracy. I haven't really played wardens since the switch over from Codemasters to Turbine servers, the skill delay screws with my gambits and just makes it not-fun all round. The overpowered aspect of red guardian was the fact that the healing took no effort on part of the player to trigger and it was not a small amount of healing. Prior to U18.2 it wasn't uncommon to heal from almost nothing to full via the use of a single AoE damage skill.Quote:
Originally Posted by Zvim666
No? Are you suggesting that you absolutely need AoE knockdowns to fight multiple enemies at a time here? A ST traitline can manage just fine without AoE knockdowns but if you absolutely, totally, must-have an AoE stun....you can trait cataclysmic shout for a rather mild DPS decrease.Quote:
Originally Posted by Zvim666
To be clear your counter-arguments were as follows:Quote:
Originally Posted by Zvim666
- Because Red Guardian DPS was low it should only get buffs regardless of how other factors apply.
- If I think Red Guardian was overpowered in some way it must be because I am a Warden who is crying about not being invincible.
- People need AoE stuns/knockdowns to fight multiple mobs at once.
Devs make those decisions not me. And considering what they have done it would be pretty safe to assume whole knockdown effect isn't what they intent the class to be. Guardian had none of this nonsense for over half the decade.Quote:
Originally Posted by TiberiasKirk
This one? This wasn't even peak self healing at the time. After they nuked Thrill of Battle.Quote:
Originally Posted by Zvim666
https://i.imgur.com/5wHRd4G.jpg
I don't even know why people insist brutal charge knockdown being useful in landscape. Extremely rarely available for landscape due to long CD and just few second stun. Garbage for landscape, breaks mechanics in instances.Quote:
So landscape mobs are only going to come at red spec Guardians one at a time?
I think your arguments are idiotic and I am not even a fan of brutal charge.
Hey all,
I've been following this thread for a while, and I feel that the feedback is starting to get muddied. The discussion has been really interesting so far, but I think it would be better off in the regular Guardians forum. For this particular thread, I think it would be best if we kept the focus on addressing the devs directly.
Anyway, sorry if I sound like a backseat mod. I just feel kind of antsy because I want this update to go as smoothly as it can. I main a Guardian and usually play red line; I've been frustrated with the broken bleeds (etc etc) for so long despite the patience I've been trying to cultivate by playing this class. ;) I'm cautiously optimistic about the new streamlined bleeds. I always liked the bleeds as a concept, but the old stacking system being finicky and "hard to debug" is... reeaally no joke.
We are a long way from 18.2 so not sure what relevance it has. Self-healing in 21.1 doesn't seem that great to me by comparison to the incoming damage, which has increased massively since 18.2. The intent is for red to do enough damage to get through landscape without wanting to kill yourself. What tools class X or Y has when it isn't a competitive DPSer to me is a largely pointless argument to whine about. If it cuts you that deep though, by all means provide the feedback.Quote:
Originally Posted by Joedangod
Well, if it quacks like a duck, it is usually a duck. The only people that whine about Guardians are Wardens or PvMPers and I haven't notice you talk about PvMP.Quote:
Always a conspiracy. I haven't really played wardens since the switch over from Codemasters to Turbine servers, the skill delay screws with my gambits and just makes it not-fun all round. The overpowered aspect of red guardian was the fact that the healing took no effort on part of the player to trigger and it was not a small amount of healing. Prior to U18.2 it wasn't uncommon to heal from almost nothing to full via the use of a single AoE damage skill.
Do I absolutely need it? Does any class absolutely need any utilities? My Minstrel doesn't need fear to kill packs of three mobs, my LM doesn't need roots and mez, can't remember the last time I used a trap on my hunter, don't really need the fear either, rarely use it. Every class can survive without CC, but life is a lot more painful if you need to sit there in melee with mediocre damage while multiple mobs are hitting you.Quote:
No? Are you suggesting that you absolutely need AoE knockdowns to fight multiple enemies at a time here? A ST traitline can manage just fine without AoE knockdowns but if you absolutely, totally, must-have an AoE stun....you can trait cataclysmic shout for a rather mild DPS decrease.
The 10% extra flat mitigation you take vs a medium or 20% on a light pales in comparison to the 100% or 200% extra damage you take being in melee range... assuming mobs even get into melee range vs a ranged class. Burg do blazing single target damage, have CC, have debuffs, have limited healing. So what exactly are you comparing to and more importantly, why?
Why would I want to trait all the way through yellow just for a ####ty AE stun when we in the grand scheme of things, they aren't THAT useful for landscape because you can probably just buttonmash your way through a few mobs. It would require a 62 trait point investment and yellow traits are now extremely mediocre for red spec.
No, this is my counter argument. Guardian only has one end-game spec, Blue. Only one role, tanking. Nothing they have introduced or altered changes the status quo so I am not sure why people care about Brutal Charge.Quote:
To be clear your counter-arguments were as follows:
- Because Red Guardian DPS was low it should only get buffs regardless of how other factors apply.
- If I think Red Guardian was overpowered in some way it must be because I am a Warden who is crying about not being invincible.
- People need AoE stuns/knockdowns to fight multiple mobs at once.
I really couldn't give a stuff, they can take it out for all I care. I just don't get why it suddenly matters to people when nothing has effectively changed. It used to be great for stacking bleeds and PotW, but the bleed boat has sailed west along with the elves.
How many times did you pop Thrill of Danger, 3 times? So you were being hit about 40 times per second and each hit was healing for less than 1.5k per hit, you would need some context as to the fight that generated those kind of numbers, because being in red spec in dps gear that healing wont keep you alive with Northern Mirkwood levels of incoming damage, maybe if you were in tanking gear but who really cares, it doesn't allow you to do anything of significance on your own.Quote:
Originally Posted by siipperi
I can generate all sorts of useless and meaningless numbers.
Knocking down a bunch of mobs isn't useful? I will buy Joe's argument that it isn't necessary, but not being useful to not be hit for a while is a bit of a stretch.Quote:
I don't even know why people insist brutal charge knockdown being useful in landscape. Extremely rarely available for landscape due to long CD and just few second stun. Garbage for landscape, breaks mechanics in instances.
I am not aware of any instance mechanics being abused by red spec guardians with brutal charge.
I have to say Im pretty dissapointed about the aoe stun from Charge being removed. That is the most fun skill of my guardian! As well I use it both offensively and defensively. I havent taken my guard to the moors so I wont comment on that but I do feel that the guaranteed crit is just lacking. I mean...who cares? A guaranteed crit on the lowest DPS toon...big whoop. LOL As well (not that anyone uses this trait) but in redline there's a trait called To The Rescue...if you max the rank on it, it guarantees that Charge's next hit is a crit. So REALLY we arent gaining a guaranteed crit - we are just having our stun removed. Please don't. Or if you absolutely must...please bring in some other unique effect.
Ods
Oct 2013 we were discussing HD and trait trees on BR. Almost half a decade we've had this nonsense. Threat copy +900% broke raid mechanics in every raid they scaled, and most they didn't. At a time they stopped making new ones.Quote:
Originally Posted by siipperi
Do we know the devs are dropping it for raid mechanics reasons? I thought the tree swapping was a "server performance issue". If they need to keep it out of raids and other tree swapping advantages then they should have fixed it properly by dropping buffs when you change tree not the CD hack. It's not like the red guard will get that dps slot is it?
Should champ loose their AE stun? Should they turn in their horns for wood mats?
I don't really care either way, it was nice to floor the fell beast for some fun one night, when I could finally see the darn thing. Recently found it useful when taking on a lot of landscape, for fun. Mostly it was seeing the different animations of the mobs I used it on, for fun.
I hope he forgives me but found this from pre release of HD:
Made me smile :)Quote:
Originally Posted by ChromiteSwiftpaw
Mac
Quote:
Originally Posted by Zvim666
Legacy gear bonus to enable 20 second thrills I believe. It was all the legacy gear bonuses that were breaking the raid mechanics. Captain Oathes resets anyone?
Mac
Context is important when you provide numbers, irrespective if it was being hit 40 times per second on lower level mobs that are no threat or it was less using legacy gear which is irrelevant for 22.2, the status quo is 22.1 and the re-balance is for 22.2 and beyond, anything outside of that context is disingenuous at best, intentionally misleading at worst.Quote:
Originally Posted by Macdui
Mac, I feel so ashamed that I actually had hope that the devs would realize the mistake they made :(Quote:
Originally Posted by Macdui
I quit for 3 months when Helm's Deep hit. Such a depressing time for LOTRO.
Devs need to pay attention to this kind of feedback.Quote:
Originally Posted by Oddessia
It represents the majority of people who actually play Guardian.
Note that most people on this thread who support removal of Charge knockdown are Creeps or people who don't play Guardian and don't care about it being nerfed to uselessness.
Their opinions should be dismissed.
Their suggestions of using yellow or blue lines in order to find stun skills (such as cataclysmic shout) ignore the fact that these lines have almost zero DPS and can't be used for anything other than tanking.
Perhaps there are a tiny number of Guardians who don't use charge. That's fine. They don't need to use all skills available.
That doesn't mean you should remove it from the vast majority of us who use it regularly.
Just don't make changes that will cause people to react by leaving the game altogether.
That's not smart business sense.
Doubt it. I believe that other Guardians are who are in favour of this change (such as myself) realise that the entire trait tree is shifting greatly from the old buggy AOE mayhem to a pretty decent ST tree. We're getting a massive buff in terms of raw damage, simpler, yet more engaging playstyle and with the devs claiming it wasn't just because of balance (prone to debugging), we wholeheartedly accept the removal of the knockdown.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gandalfy
https://i.imgur.com/3zSYgJf.pngQuote:
Originally Posted by Gandalfy
No players opinion should ever be dismissed. You can learn something from anyone, be it ignorance or wisdom.
Completely wrong. Shield-Smash, even on BR with the obsolete Shield-Use, is one of the hardest hitting skills in the entire Guardians kit, and there have been plenty of people making a DPS-orientated red line S&B build. Or you can simply use it on a swap piece, for when you absolutely need CC, though, in landscape, there's ever really a need unless you pull 5+ enemies.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gandalfy
Maybe they don't use it cause it's entire interaction feels bugged?Quote:
Originally Posted by Gandalfy
Nowhere does it state it should affect multiple enemies. And with the BR overhaul, such AOE potential in the new ST build shouldn't even exist.Quote:
Originally Posted by Brutal Charge description
If anyone is gonna quit over a skill rework....hmmmmmm....okay then. Good luck.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gandalfy
Keep in mind, we who are arguing in favour of removal are well aware that current Brutal Charge is also disappointing, much like Thrill of Battle, Deeper Wounds, Hammer-Down, Prey on the Weak are. Here's to hoping they'll also get reworks and buffs, but overall current build is much better than anything before.
When masses of paying Guardians quit the game because their most fun skill is removed,Quote:
Originally Posted by SACLOTRO
SSG will realise that they have made a mistake because they ignored what the players were telling them.
People who play games like this want to be awesome heroes.
Brutal Charge Knockdown does that.
No other skill makes a guardian feel awesome.
All the other skills are comparatively boring, as are the bleeds.
If you take away our one awesome skill, what incentive is left for us to log in?
We may then consider playing some other game where we will have skills that make us feel awesome.
Oh, how would you have liked to play when u18-u18.2 was live... if that didn't kill the Guards, I'm certain that removal of the knock down wouldn't even touch them.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gandalfy
Also, fun is subjective. I like Hammer-Down much more. ¯\_(?)_/¯
What context? Like I said that was old screenshot? Anyway old set bonuses are still relevant when rightly used. And now you heal significantly more with prey on the weak than ever before... So there's that...Quote:
Originally Posted by Zvim666
Just to showcase how OP Prey on the weak in t1 raid (I could do in t2 as well but what ever, faster out this way) and bolstering blocks is in T2CM instances:
https://i.imgur.com/TemSqGY.jpg
Still 20k HPS with just prey on the weak. That's insane. I even peaked higher than that... Not to mentioning how stupid blue line self healing is. Allows guardian to do full room pulls in seregost T2 (or other T2 instances like in picture) and morale not moving (Warriors heart was just used to do more self healing, not because I needed it lol). That screenshot is clear proof self healing is out of control and if guardian had same DPS as on bullroarer at same time it would be broken class. It's good devs have taken route to nerf the self healing in order to buff damage.
No, you are just against guardians who been active on guardian community for years. Most of us with several months of /played on guardian...Quote:
Originally Posted by Gandalfy
Lol. I have 5 months, 2 days, 11h. I'm filthy casualQuote:
Originally Posted by Decrepify
You have no proof that this is the majority of Guardians.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gandalfy
I do not play PvMP. At all.
I was one of the main raiding Guardians on Arkenstone during Throne and established several builds that other raiding Guardians went on to copy.
My opinion should not be dismissed, it should be given an amount of weight proportionate to the validity of the arguments I present it with.
The people who tend to post an opinion on something are those who are upset by the decision made. Those who don't care either way will rarely say anything and those in favour won't say much either unless they feel the need to defend the change or in this case what to defend the idea that Brutal Charge should be dropped for something DPS oriented.
In my opinion the Brutal Charge knockdown doesn't make any sense whatsoever for being in redline. There are several reasons for this:
- The changes coming in these beta builds focus on making redline a ST DPS build, as such they have removed a bunch of the AoE interaction on bleeds.
- Guardian already has two traitlines that are focused on AoE mob management in yellow and blue and both these lines have an AoE stun that is obtainable by someone in red, the yellow AoE stun currently comes at minimal cost to DPS.
- Removing Brutal Charge knockdown helps reduce traitline swapping, something they have generally been trying to crack down on.
- Rather than having an arbitrary knockdown the red guardian would benefit greatly from having more traits to boost DPS since it is still pulling around 33% less DPS than red champions.
- Guardians already have multiple single target stuns in red without cross-speccing (To the King, Hammer Down, Bash, Overwhelm).
- If a brief respite from the fight is required Charge makes the Guardian the fastest moving character in combat anyway. Just run away?
- Cataclysmic Shout is way cooler to use than Brutal Charge ever was. (It makes you roar and explode in a flash of light which stuns everything around you, come on).
Knockdown is funny, sometimes hilarious, for a large number of guardians. How many times did friends where amused by it in instances ?
I understand players who would be a little disappointed.
But
this question is far less important than two others :
- what will there be instead of self healing of Pray of the weak ?
- what bonus will there be on guardian's belt
I think these two questions need to be resolved first, and then red guardian will be more interesting to play (or with less bugs at least). With or without knockdown. And devs will be able to continue their work on another classes, such as captains and beornings (mine is really waiting for such a work !).
Playing a red guardian will be much more impacted by those questions.
I understand that knockdown should be removed because devs want to make the red guardian a single target dps (and not in order to be competitive with champion in raid, it is clearly written in patch notes and this should be understood by some folks here : don't try to make the red guardian another thing that is intended, this is not the subject).
And I understand if it should not be removed because lot of guardians love it.
But why not making it a single target knockdown, if the dev want make the red guardian a single target DPS (moderate DPS and no other thing) ?
Are we really still arguing about Brutal Charge? It's just a skill guys, not even one pivotal or overly representative of the class in general. Sure it made pulling hordes of mobs easier and fun, but I wouldn't mind having it replaced with something DPS related.
I also doubt that such a change to one skill will make people go away. People roll guards to tank, everything else is tertiary. If anything, the fact that DPS is being overhauled should bring back people who might had stopped when Mordor launched because they couldn't kill anything.
P.S I'm not much for role-playing, but I feel that being an aggro machine on the battlefield and drawing the ire of every single enemy you encounter topples anything else in terms of "heroic", especially Brutal Charge
The suggestion to use yellow line to use cataclysmic shout is invalid because this thread is about Red line.
Currently Red line is the only useful line for DPS.
Yellow line DPS is incredibly small due to the small base damage of the skills (which it seems is not being significantly increased)
99% of the game involves the need for guardians to have DPS. (Even the 1% of players who get to tank in the abyss raid probably spend more time doing DPS in dailies)
98% of the game involves the need to kill multiple mobs at the same time.
Guardian DPS is already so low that the game is tedious.
To force us now to kill only one target at a time is going to make it worse.
Why are they turning Guardians into a weak version of burglars, but taking away our AOE and CC skills?
If they gave us a new stealth skill, that would give us some compensation.
Why can't Guardians be similar to champs, but with slightly lower DPS?
I suggest that a message be sent to all VIP guardians and ask them how they feel about losing Charge knockdown skill without getting any skill to replace it.
The feedback ought to give SSG an idea of how many will quit and how much income they will lose by making that mistake.
Whining Free-to-play creeps and wardens should not be listened to because they are not trying to improve the game.
Creeps want knockdown removed because they hate falling down for guardians, and Wardens are jealous of our awesome Knockdown skill.
One of the reasons I play a tanking class in all MMOs. A massive, badass wall of steel that holds back any danger. Can't be more heroic than that.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rognomli
Go to Bullroarer now and test the DPS. Sweeping Cut alone with it's new bleed deals close damage to what you're doing in total on live.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gandalfy
You are not being nerfed, this is an overhaul, aimed at increasing and stabilizing the entire trait tree.
Guardian's world isn't going to end, our DPS will be in a much, much better spot than before, something we wished for all along. In the end, it's your choice to make.
Oh, and depending how well the upcoming builds come along and how they are going to utilise Shield Use ranks, POTW and some traits, I will be resubbing on a regular basis, so they might lose you, but they will gain me.
Can people please start logging into Bullroarer and start testing stuff before yelling on forums?
You've made up your mind on this point before you even tried it in practice.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ChromiteSwiftpaw
Yeah I kind of stopped playing the Guardian. The end game Big Battles... everything ignored my threat and taunts, nothing hit me to get any reactives off. I was behind the curve on the Bleeder spec, we were in Gondor before I tried it. And then I was finally getting some fun back into playing Guardian. Then the bizarre flat damage boost to mounted melee skills came in and found ST damage mounted far exceeded on foot ST damage (or tactical class mounted damage), so had some fun with that.
I have a cap burglar I don't play because it's a ST for damage, a Champ for AE fun and the guard wannabe champ heading for ST misery now? If they are going to knacker my AE on foot are they going to give my mounted guard some AE skills? No.
We've had to take so much abuse to our class with the threat mechanic destruction just the obvious tip.
There is a chink of a smile on my face with the realisation at the queue of official streamers you'll be dressing up for the new hunter build, rotation and add-on setups in the coming months. Yeah take the summer off... :)
Mac
About the base dps boost, on live my 1h sword is 298 dps, on BR it is now 500.9 dps; i take it this is how the the damage has been increased rather than increasing the damage of the skills themselvs.
Here is a list of reasons to keep Brutal Charge Knockdown
1. It is a favorite skill for many guardians
If anyone doesn't believe this, then do a proper survey of people who actually play guardians.
2. It makes the guardian class much more fun to play.
Why? By watching the animation of orcs and uruks fall down on their knees while you beat on them.
It gives you the satisfaction of being able to pay back those creatures for all their evil deeds and for all the times they have killed you.
The more fun a class is, the more people will play it.
3. It buys you time to kill mobs.
If you run into a group of mobs that would kill you in 5 seconds, but instead you can stun them for 5 seconds, you have a much better chance to win the fight.
If you don't have the knockdown skill, you may die.
So, it increases survivability, which is in line with the identity of the guardian.
4. If you take away a powerful skill without an equally powerful replacement skill, people will feel they are being nerfed and will likely leave the game.
This is particularly true for people who primarily play the guardian class, and can't see themselves playing other classes.
If large numbers of guardians quit the game, then their friends (who play other classes) will also leave the game because their friends are gone.
Loss of players = Loss of revenue
Here is a thread started by another player:
https://www.lotro.com/forums/showthr...uardian+charge
Here is another quote from someone on this thread.
"Please keep the knockdown or perhaps make it a toggle/alt skill where we can select either knockdown OR crit?
Seriously though, it's about time we Guardians got a lil lovin', we've been nerfed too many times over the years"
5. Making major changes in a negative direction (taking away useful skills like knockdown) will result in a negative emotional response of the players.
Turbine learned this lesson the hard way in the past, which is one reason why they gave Guardians the brutal charge knockdown skill in the first place.
SSG is new to the scene and has yet to learn this lesson.
6. One of the first business principles is to give the customer what they want.
If they don't get what they want, they will go elsewhere.
Many people in this thread have asked to keep brutal charge, so let them have it.
7. Those who suggest that shield bash is equivalent are ignoring the fact that the brutal charge knockdown can be used with a 2H weapon, which is the default weapon for redline Guardian.
After putting about 500 Scrolls of Empowerment into a 2H sword, I'm not going to give up this valuable skill without a protest.
8. If SSG leaves the Brutal charge knockdown skill as it is, it will cost them nothing.
If they remove it, it will inevitably result in loss of players and loss of revenue.
The improvement to bleeds is most welcome but loss of a great skill like Brutal charge knockdown is not.
I was busy testing other classes during build #1 and didn't get around to the Guardian because he was a lower priority, given blue hasn't been changed. I've had a chance to test the red changes during build #2 so will give my thoughts on the changes.
"The goal of this redesign is to strip out a lot of the underlying complexity of the tree, while retaining its general flavor and giving it a faster, more effective skill rotation."
In general, I like the changes, more specifically I like the intent of the changes. I am not sure where the ideal damage levels are or if they are going to be adjusted down, the damage output for landscape seems strong, probably too strong however with the best gear available but haven't tested it with lower tier gear/essence/relics.
"The line is intended to be a functional soloing build for the guardian that will allow them to play through the game at a much more acceptable pace. It is not explicitly intended to be fully competitive as a raid-DPS line, though we'll see where it actually sits in testing."
While it is strong for landscape I don't think it will translate well for a raid simply because the bleeds don't stack/tier up so all you do is refresh the duration, the non-bleed based abilities are reasonable for landscape but a long way off the dps classes.
"Overall skill damage for the guardian has increased substantially. The blue and yellow lines will see some benefit from this through the base skills, but the red line will see the bulk of this benefit, through their tree specific skills and bleed effects."
The damage is substantially higher.
The three core abilities are now the abilities that afflict the bleeds; Brutal Assault inflicts (Haemorrhaging Wound 3), which is the strongest of the bleeds, a short 5 tick bleed. Sweeping Cut inflicts the second most potent bleed (Slashing Wound 3) and Thrust inflicts the weakest of the three bleeds (Deep Wound 3) which when traited is a 14 tick bleed.
To inflict all three bleeds requires Brutal Assault -> Force Opening -> Retaliate -> Thrust -> Sweeping Cut It doesn't matter if Thrust, Sweeping Cut or Brutal Assault are partial BPEd, the bleeds are still inflicted and once ticking they can't be BPEd so they are a very strong source of damage. Due to landscape fighting the guardian is front-on to mobs all the time, the non-bleed abilities tend to have their damage crippled by BPE and partials. Doing some testing on the target dummy the singe target non-bleed abilities didn't contribute a significant amount of damage, even the traited abilities like hammer down and to the king weren't contributing much in the way of damage, when landscaping there is considerable BPEing/partial from mobs and there aren't any single target abilities that penetrate some of the BPE like some of the champion abilities, ie Brutal Strike and Ferocious Strike.
It isn't the end of the world if the bleeds remain as strong as they are, however, if Guardian goes live similar to how it is now, I will probably ignore most of the single target abilities, rely on the rotation that stacks bleeds and focus on the area of effect abilities.
"The tiering bleed concept has been eliminated due to bugs and performance issues. Additionally, we felt it was not a good concept for landscape play, as it took too long to set up Bleed stacks to be worthwhile."
You used to be able to tier up very quickly with radiate and a bunch of mobs, I understand it was a cumbersome mechanic. In red spec, Thrust plus Deeper Wounds lasts for 14 ticks (28 seconds). Without tiering or stacking it is a very long duration for landscape combat, I don't think landscape combat vs a signature would last half as long as that even with a 1her, which makes the investment in Deeper Wounds somewhat redundant.
"The new version has three separate bleeds associated with Sweeping Cuts, Thrust, and Brutal Strike, and the primary skill rotation revolves around keeping these up as efficiently as possible, while weaving in other skills as feasible. There are still some skills that play off of existing bleeds (such as overpower), or cash them out (such as Honorable Combat), but otherwise the bleed structure is much simpler and the interactions are fewer and much more explicit."
I like the changes overall, I think it is a move in the right direction.
I haven't tested Honourable Combat, I think the maximum health restore you can get is 12%, I have about 83k morale in dps gear, that would put it to around a 10k heal for stripping all the bleeds from Sweeping Cut if memory serves me correct. I don't think Honourable Combat has ever been at the stage where it sounds like a good idea to use it. In the grand scheme of things, if you are in melee with 4 mobs, the 10k isn't going to last very long, you would probably lose the 10k in the time it takes for the global cooldown to refresh.
I am not sure if it is something you plan on changing, but at present Smashing Stab after a Retaliation puts on bleed that inflicts about 300 damage a tick. I assume you want to keep it to the 3 bleeds? Tenderize also creates a bleed but I haven't tested it, I assume that one is similar to Smashing Stab.
"While the red line bleeds are now far stronger, they no longer benefit from the yellow line Radiate talent."
Radiate was the major problem and was holding the Guardian back from getting some decent fixes. I think the Guardian's ability to damage a few mobs at the same time is quite reasonable. However, I am not sure if Sweeping Strike is bugged, it's damage outside of the traited bleed is quite low compared to the other area effect abilities, it used to be one of the better AE abilities.
"Brutal Charge now causes the next skill to crit instead of a knockdown effect (note that it can still be b/p/e'd)."
Isn't this the same effect as the rank 6 To The Rescue effect? Is that being changed? It has been a contentious issues, it seems, I never used it that often and don't really care if the knockdown is removed, however, it situationally was useful when you had to deal with multiple mobs.
"Warrior's Heart bubble is now based on a % of max vitality."
It is a good change, but I feel Stoic is least useful for blue spec given how often and how hard you are being hit, the 20k ish bubble for a non-tank is probably a lot more useful than the 50k ish bubble for a tank.
"Catch a breath LI bonuses now properly affect the skill. % change is now additive, and has been adjusted to reflect this change."
I like the changes to it.
"Shield Use is effectively obsolete for the time being. We're evaluating what to do with it currently as it has never scaled properly with our other systems."
Perhaps it can provide an incoming healing benefit.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Zvim666
It might be for red, but I managed to get my blue guardian on last night and kill about 50 wolves in the dale lands. My shield smash was critiing 25% lower, mostly because I have lots of tactical mastery in my essence slots instead of physical mastery. No time to get essence reclaimation scrolls and switch out the essences with physical master or just might as the test server is already down again. Blue guard damage probably isn't higher but there is more work to do.
that's what I object to the most. I have to rebuild my blue guard for these changes that will probably in the end produce no more damage than before and may still leave him nerfed albeit slightly. For a toon that already was hurting for dps, I don't see the point.
The bubble will be nice, but it means giving up other traits. Probably will give up on some yellow stuff. Catch breath is nice as well. So no more or maybe less damage and more survivability...not sure its a trade I wanted personally but could understand if the community prefers it this way.
its not finished and shows a lack of care. Not an impressive way of doing business with soloers and small groupers like me putting some work into getting those starlit crystals.Quote:
Originally Posted by Zvim666
Then inviting us to test it while it clearly is unfinished. Why bother?
We are in a better place then we was so i'm happy with the change tbh ;)
Some have suggested that the ideal guardian in red would be limited to single targets only and this is the reason to remove the AOE knockdown.
Changing the guardian into a ST only class in red makes no sense for these reasons:
1. Of the hundreds of quests and instances, encountering multiple enemies at the same time is compulsory most of the time.
Being forced to kill only one at a time would be tedious and frustrating.
2. The primary role of the Guardian is to protect others in the fellowship.
How can you protect your light armoured friends from multiple enemies if you can only deal with one at a time?
3. For the past 11 years, Guardians have been an AOE class.
The main Guardian's red line skills are AOE skills and have always been - Sweeping Cut, Vexing Blow and Whirling Retaliation.
Are they planning to remove these in future updates?
4. No one signed up to play Guardian with the vision of becoming a ST only class.
If we wanted to do that we would have chosen burglar, because at least then we would have stealth, evade and amazing CC skills that Guardians are not being given.
5. Going from AOE to ST is a nerf, and players hate their favorite class being nerfed. Players react by simply quitting the game.
In all the quests I've seen, excluding the "Kill a dozen of X and one Y", you rarely have to fight more than 3 unless you yourself make that large of a pull by running in and AOEing. And again, if you were on BR, you'd notice that you can still AOE more than fine with just Sweeping Cut, Whirling Retaliation, War-Chant and if you build that way, Shield-Smash. AOE damage is still there, and present.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gandalfy
https://i.imgur.com/qALMK39.pngQuote:
Originally Posted by Gandalfy
Red line is a not a protection/tanking line. It's a DPS line.
All 3 skills got massive buffs on BR. That shows the opposite, which is something you'd have noticed if you paid attention.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gandalfy
True. But you're now looking at the big picture, not just Brutal Assault. Guardian is an AOE class, tanking prioritized, with more than capable DPS line for soloing or doing smaller/easier instances like FIs or underscaled stuff.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gandalfy
You are still getting good AOE damage. Sweeping Cut (Did I mention it now has a bleed of it's own?), Whirling Retaliation, War-Chant, *Shield-Smash*. All pretty good AOE skills.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gandalfy
If the Knock down removal is something that makes you quit, in light of all the massive buffs and reworks you're getting instead, then it kinda looks like you were just asking for a reason to quit.
Questing speed, especially for lower levels, will be much, much, much faster now that critical hits are no longer needed for bleeds, Radiate not needed to spread them and POTW to survive 2 minute fights in Mordor with a single mob.
They aren't opinion based, they're factual, backed up by masses and masses of accessible DPS parses that were done by the said posters.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gandalfy
GUARDIAN LIVE VS BETA CLASS CHANGE
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https://youtu.be/bHzCM9mVReY
Thank you for the video. Exact proof needed for people to see that AOE potential is not only still there, but massively improved, just as ST DPS is.Quote:
Originally Posted by yorrie
And at what cost? Losing POTW self-healing and Brutal Charge knock down (Brutal Charge wasn't even used in the video). A great step in the right direction.
Edit: What's the music used? Sounds pretty epic and awesome.
The major difference is not getting anything from shield use, however, now shield abilities scale based on the weapon which means you will get the full effect from a striking relic, the enchantment ones have taken a substantial hit. You would need to convert to striking and physical mastery to do a more accurate comparison of the variance.Quote:
Originally Posted by TiberiasKirk
I converted over my R/B spec weapon LI to a striking relic and replaced the belt one with a physical mastery relic. Outside of the shield legacies, those LIs focused on AE attacks, sweeping Cut i think is bugged, the initial damage it inflicts is very low when it used to be quite good. That spec seemed to function okay, the damage is still quite solid, my R/B gear has a few evade essences and I use a few pieces that have BPE stats on it, overall it is very solid defensively and are able to dish out a reasonable amount of damage to multiple targets which is suited well for fighting multiple mobs at the same time, it also reduces the incoming damage sufficiently that the new Catch a Breath is worthwhile, heals for about a third of your morale if you take the legacy.
My R/B spec goes deep enough in blue for Shield Smash/Follow Through and enough into Yellow for War Chant, you still have plenty of points to max out Brutal Assault and Thrust traits, even though you can't spread the bleeds with radiate any longer, I never took thrust or brutal assault in my live R/B shield oriented build, I think they are strong enough now that you want to take them and just drop bleeds and switch targets when they are available.
I still find the shield combos to be better than the non-bleed melee strikes when you use a 1h/shield combo, largely because you have a +12% critical strike chance with the shield abilities and a few of the shield abilities stun mobs, which mitigates some of the damage you take, which helps when fighting multiple mobs.
There is still a significant difference in damage output between 2h and 1h/shield, I think if I was questing and most of the encounters are just 1 or 2 mobs I would prefer going in with the 2her, if you are doing something which involves you going into a camp or dungeon or whatever where you can get 3, 4 or more mobs, I would prefer the 1h setup. I think there is a good trade-off in the beta, in live the 1h/shield combo was probably the best in every scenario.
Stoic is too far down the tree to be of interest for anything other than a blue build and I don't think it would be that great for a tank spec guardian. I am not sure about an offensive B/R combo, Bleed them Dry adds 1 tick to Sweeping Cut and Brutal Assault bleeds, adds 2 ticks to Thrust bleed which you can live without. The main benefit of being red, outside of the extra bleed ticks, is the offensive benefit of Overpower and Heavy Blows. Blue would give you the benefit of Fortification and some passive healing with Bolstering Blocks. There probably isn't a massive difference in terms of offensive damage, particularly if you prefer the 1h/shield combo. Sweeping Cut and Thrust bleeds are easy to replace, Brutal Assault is probably harder to refresh, probably not that hard if you fight a number of mobs and generate a lot of parry responses.Quote:
The bubble will be nice, but it means giving up other traits. Probably will give up on some yellow stuff. Catch breath is nice as well. So no more or maybe less damage and more survivability...not sure its a trade I wanted personally but could understand if the community prefers it this way.
I think the way bleeds worked you always had to go red but the specialisation itself is not as strong as it used to be meaning going blue wouldn't be the trade-off that it currently is live.
Betas, that is what they are there for, to test things they are working on, even if it is not in a finished state. It is critical people feedback and they allow problems not to go live as finished.Quote:
its not finished and shows a lack of care. Not an impressive way of doing business with soloers and small groupers like me putting some work into getting those starlit crystals.
Then inviting us to test it while it clearly is unfinished. Why bother?
For me the Guardian has always been about being tough and able to survive. So it's never been a priority to do much in the way of damage.
Entering Mordor there were quite a few of us going for a shield spec, even if inexplicably I had lost the ability to make on level shields. I stayed in red, some even speced blue. As every fight was much longer for a guard we were getting all sorts of special attacks and stuns that other classes never saw because they killed stuff quicker. Those Uruks in Tali that healed themselves I never saw on champ, mini and hunter. Maybe RKs suffered too being static in red, perhaps a few chose yellow for Mordor ease. But getting down to Shield-smash got us interrupts and stuns to get in behind to get the full potential of staggers and prey on the weak. Stuff that's however briefly stunned doesn't hurt so much. If you're kiteing a load of mobs a smash here and there stops most of the first rank of mobs hitting you, the other ranks are still trying to catch up while you can reapply bleeds and other AE before backing out. But you're still only wearing stuff down and staying one foot ahead of mobs, so finding a few more mobs to spread some bleeds onto is just efficiency. It wasn't that we were powerful, we were just trying to make the best of what had been left to us. We could pull a load of mobs in an area but were we actually clearing quicker than any another class? Don't we all just pull as much as we can efficiently dispatch. One is a bit boring, two or three adds a bit, but a full camp gets the juices flowing and relief from the grind and more tedious content. And it kind of made up for the single button push to lock in aggro on the tank role.
Where have I heard that complaint of a 1 button rotation?
I had the LIs to make the build work straight away so it was easy to switch and see the potential.
Will doing more damage be as fun? Well we will pull as many mobs as we can efficiently dispatch, don't yet know what ballpark figure that is yet. Possibly our AE target max? I guess I won't be pulling the entire Arganaith Uruk camp again. :(
Mac
Keep laughing:Quote:
Originally Posted by TiberiasKirk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnXFQdd__es
Pretty awesome seeing 150k crits on shield smash....another proof of the potential of a S&B build.Quote:
Originally Posted by Marxlne
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marxlne
I'm really happy to see that shield smash is working so well. My guard has a 1-H weapon, so I don't have a problem, but....
You missed the point so I am laughing even harder.
All you did was prove my point which was part of a larger conversation about what Guards with 2H weapons will do with no AOE stun.
On live server a lot of redline guards have 2H weapons so they will have to change to get this performance and have AOE stun.
Nothing you are showing changes that.
The casual player who doesn't have more than 1 legendary weapon is going to get driven away by a total revamp of the Guard which leaves them out in the cold.
Having to change from a tactical build to a physical mastery build is some unwanted work for even guards who have 1H weapons.
Having lower game population isn't good for anyone.
Red line should continue to be a viable way to play for people who have 2H weapons. Thanks to demos like this they will feel double left out now (lower damage AND no AOE stun)
Wow shield smash! Any tests with blue line, Did SM changed somehow? We migh be able to get enough threat with real skills rather than challenge.Quote:
Originally Posted by Marxlne
I wanted to test it while BR was up and running, but getting a decent group for any real instance was pretty difficult. Till update hits live or there are more people who aren't busy parsing entire time on next BR build, we won't know for certain. I really hope so.Quote:
Originally Posted by danee593
That's... probably not good. Even with it being level 105 T1 if shield smash crits for 150k the suggestion I put forth for a 50% crit magnitude increase should probably be ignored. Pledge definitely needs to be moved further down the tree.Quote:
Originally Posted by Marxlne
Has anyone ran any actual test with bleed critical rate and bleed critical damage from the legacy? If not, I'll make parses when BR comes up again.
Vastin, with some bugs and traits left to iron out, I would say you've done an amazing job so far with the Red line Guardian, bolded part is near completion and I'm very thankful for it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Vastin
However, a part that still remains is clarification as to what the yellow line is supposed to be?
AOE damage? Off-tanking? Debuffing? Trait tree is all over the place, in some places too complicated and yet useless (Bolster, Tenderize, Singular Focus), while at the same time having insane panic skill in the Thrill of Danger traits. And right next to it, a decent AOE damage.
Will we see any reworks for yellow in this patch or upcoming builds? Or are we waiting a bit further down the line?
Also, if possible, can we make BR server stay open for at least 4 full days (weekends included)? I think you'd gather many more people onto the server to provide more information.
Quote:
Originally Posted by siipperi
Care to elaborate why it breaks instance mechanics ? its not like its the only aoe stun in the game and u said it yourself it has a long cd.
Furthermore proper groups don't take red line guards into instances anyway unless its an instance that is easy at which point group makeup/an aoe stun on a lengthily cd doesn't make a difference.
from my point of view the stun on brutal charge only makes those of us who play a spec that is generally considered bad have something that can be considered useful in some situations.
Btw as someone who's main focus is landscape its far from garbage, will it suddenly make it unplayable ? no, the same way leaving it as is doesn't make it game breaking.
Had time to kill about 50 wolves out in the dale lands while the test server was up this week.
Killed about equal numbers using a rotation of [Guardian's ward, shield blow, shield swipe, bash and shield smash].
to trigger disorientation
Melee auto attacks occurred in large numbers spread throughout the rotation (about 400 total over the 25 wolves for each case).
Chart below show how DISORIENTATION ACTUALLY INCREASED FULL AVOIDANCE CHANCE instead of decreasing it (calculated by taking avoided auto attacks and then dividing by the total number of auto attacks not including missed attacks which there were very few anyway)
https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.n...EDFF1BE8F2D6D/
The difference between the average is much greater than the margin of error depicted by the min and max values for the two cases. The increase in full avoidance for using disorientation on the test server is statistically significant.
Now looking at partial avoidance, nothing changes. The difference between the average partial avoidance with and without disorientation is well within the margin of error represented by the min and max values that are +/- one standard deviation below and above the average values as seen on the chart below.
https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.n...18BFA58FB256A/
chat logs for the two cases are available for download and represent the raw data used in the analysis below. Files are titled to indicate whether disorientation was traited or not.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/14nz...ew?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1u96...ew?usp=sharing