The Tank that loses to Gain
Hi Orion,
I just wanted to start with a couple of quotes from PrinceAladdin (another poster):
“I believe the guardian is teetering on the edge of irrelevance with the mantle being passed to the Brawler and Captain. The BPE-centric focus makes Guardian a decent adds tank, but the immense Damage Reduction skills of other tanks ensure they supplant the guardian in most instances. The Guardian, for example, has significant challenges sustaining against Boss 2 of HoA on higher tiers during the final phase because BPE is irrelevant for that portion of the fight.
I don't see a scenario where Brawler and Captain don't take over the main tank roles in the future. This has been a consistent problem with the Guardian for several years, where the Guardian becomes irrelevant in certain raid cycles because it is inferior to other tanks in regards to (1) mitigating boss-sourced damage and (2) buffing the group. Sure, Guardians are pretty sturdy, but Captains can put out ~150k HPS, they can Rez allies, they can shield fellows for massive damage reduction without harming themselves (i.e. shield of the dunedain vs shield wall), they can bolster everyone's morale pools, they can bolster everyone's survivability with banners/to-arms, etc. Brawlers rival Guardians in terms of sturdiness, they can stand nearly invincible for periods of time, they can Oathies every few seconds, and they have nearly equivalent taunts to the guardian minus engage. Guardians are better at threat generation, but …. does not quite make up for the sheer utility of the other tanks, who are still sturdy enough to do everything the Guardian does.”
“I am thankful to hear you will be putting some time into smoothing out the guardian. However, please allow me to caution you that it is critical you do not overlook correcting notable deficiencies in the blue line (compared to Cap Tank and Brawler Tank - please see my post above) in favor of updating the red and yellow lines. “
then I’ll follow by what I consider to be general problem w/ the Guardian in each line and move to some specifics:
Blue line:
? Need Damage Reduction:
? As Avoidance tanks (guard) we are taking significantly more damage than Damage Reduction tanks during boss fight specially in higher tier. Avoidance tanks are much harder to keep alive specially against bosses because they simply bypass b/p/e with their BIG hits and their tactical damage which guard don't have anything to counter that except their tactical mitigation which lessen when using particular skills (Fortification Cash Out). Not only do other tanks have b/p/e like guards but they have the added benefit of bigger damage reduction skills that guardians lack. We’re simply having a harder time surviving higher tier instances!!! To make matter worse, a lower morale pool than other tanks, “Fortification Cash Out”, “Share the Damage” system and dumb traits like Adaptability add to the problem(see below). And if that wasn't bad enough we have to either forego some blue line traits entirely or weaken them in order to have enough trait point to reach “Redirect” deep down in yellow line.. Which basically means that guards with lesser trait point HAVE NO DAMAGE REDUCTION EXCEPT 20% WARRIORS HEART.
? Need more Utility:
? Even if we were on equal footing w/ the likes of Captains and specially the Brawlers in damage reduction department, guards would still be falling into irrelevance as PrinceAladdin mentioned. Not only do we have very small damage reduction, but we bring almost NO UTILITY to the table. If it wasn’t for our aggro abilities, we would hardly be getting any work as tanks and much less as dps. The Captain and Brawler are not only able to survive better but are simply more useful to the group.
? Remove “Fortification Cash Out” system. (Litany of Defense and Break Ranks)
? As the title says, “The Tank that loses to gain”, we give the raid a benefit at the cost of survivability. We lose 10% of our mitigations when other tanks maintain 70% - 85% mits while benefitting the raid. I’m not sure if Warden can reach even higher mits. Just remove this system/thinking entirely from the guardians toolbox. Why do we have to lose survivability to bring benefits to the group. (See Simplification, Lag, and Other issues)
? Remove “Share the Damage” system. (Shield Wall and Litany of Defense)
? Here is another detrimental system to the guard. Anytime we help the group, we take extra damage. We call these the suicide buttons (Shield Wall and Litany of Defense). The truth is we hardly ever use these skills just because if we do, we die or pay dearly and strain our healers. Please just remove this system its of no use to us.
? Need Morale Boost: Hear me out please.
? The guards need a morale boost for several reasons but how much depends on the Devs next move:
? If we receive significant damage reduction boost/skills then I would recommend another 10% to 15% so we can accommodate things like Finesse, Crit Defense, Tactical Mitigation, Crit Rating essences, etc.….
? If they leave the Guardians as is, then I would recommend a minimum of 25% morale boost to help us survive the big boss damage and accommodate things like Finesse, Crit Defense, Tactical Mitigation, Crit Rating essences, etc.….
? Let say the average morale on a lvl 140 guardian is about 1,500,000
? 10% x 1,500,000 = 1,650,000 not even close to what captains can do
? 15% x 1,500,000 = 1,725,000 still less than Captains and other tanks I’ve seen
? 25% x 1,500,000 = 1,875,000 at or very near the average Captain. I’ve seen Captains w/ over 2million. NO JOKE. Plus, they have much bigger damage reduction skills then guardians.
• Remember this increase is not for the sake of stacking Vitality Essences like so many guards are having to doing just to survive but to add other needed essences and most importantly withstand boss damage and allow some breathing room for our healer.
? Need more Finesse/Crit Rating/Physical mastery:
? Apart from the need of these stats I recommended adding these stats as % not flat rates to our “Class Trait Set Bonuses”, you know the left most column on our Trait Tree. When added as part of a “Class Trait” instead of “Class Trait Set Bonus” you force us to use class trait that we may not necessarily want and limit the class trait point we would otherwise use for better traits. By adding them to our Class Trait Set Bonus you allow us the versatility to pick and choose traits we would like instead of being forced into having a certain trait that has a stat that we desperately need like Finesse. This will also help determine how much morale we should receive.
? Speed up Animation skills:
? This is self-explanatory. I do want to emphasize that this is particularly true of our shield skills animations even though the skills themselves are fast. These slow animations affect all other lines.
? Remove that “Lose to Win” motto/system from Guardians.
? “Fortification Cash out”, “Share the Damage“, “Adaptability” (which allows you increase your b/p rating but as soon as you use a b/p response skill you lose what you'd gained) are just plain dumb and of no real benefit. If you want to keep your mits up, if you don’t want to take extra damage or commit suicide, or if you don’t want to lose the extra b/p rating you will just lose the use of skills attached to them. This is plainly not a good idea. Just remove these systems/ideas from the guardian’s toolbox. Not only are they of no benefit but worse they are a detriment to us as I’ve explained above. And please don’t tell me that without these the guardian would be boring/plain…….. I’ll take plain and boring over death, or worse, not being invited to higher tier raids because these systems are detrimental to our survival.
Red line:
? Increase Damage:
? Pretty straight forward.
? I feel we should be able to at least compete at tier 3 level raids and in the moors. (See moors)
? Increase Crit Rating and Magnitude.
• Increase these rating through our “Class Set Trait Bonuses”
? Increase Bleed Damage
• The problem I see w/ our bleeds apart from needing an increase is you have to continually spam them if you want to keep them up, either increase duration or just make them independent of each other (ex: Terrible Wound iirc).
? Add Utility:
? Increase Survivability Slightly: Hear me out
? Survivability for landscape or instance/raid in red line is not to much of a problem. The problem is in the Ettenmoors.
• As you all know our dps is lacking and to maximize damage we must slot physical mastery and crit rating essences foregoing Vitality, physical/tactical mitigations, and crit defense causing us to be squishier. If we increase our defenses, then our dps suffers making the guard even more useless in the moors. We don’t even provide any decent utility to the group as captain and brawlers do.
• So, for the sake of the Guardians and his QoL in the moors we need a big dps boost, slight survivability check and more utility.
? Speed up Animations specially shield skills animations.
? Simplification, Lag and other Issues:
? I think that by adding more and new raid wide utilities, +(pick a %) lightening, shadow, frost, fire, etc to skills as oppose to just straight out physical and tactical damage, and other similar skills that tier up/down forcing constant recalculations of stats to the caster and group is creating much more in-game lag.
? Simplification I believe is part of the solution: Simplification of things like damage types, tiering DoTs, tiering skills and unification of B/P/E into "Avoidance" as another poster suggested (great idea btw), would in my opinion reduce lag.
? BLUE LINE SPECIFICS:
? Places you can add damage reduction to:
? Juggernaut (remove the 100% block component and add damage reduction instead), Shield wall, Litany of Defense, or Redirect. If added to these skills, then you can remove the 20% damage reduction from Warriors Heart. (NO SHARE THE DAMAGE. PLEASE)
? Make Bolster, Tenderize and Warchant accessible to low level guardians.
? Get rid of useless or fix traits/skills like:
? Adaptability
? Disorientation
? Break Ranks: disassociate from Shield Taunt
? RED LINE SPECIFICS:
? Make our dps less dependent on parry responses. When in red line we are not tanking and therefore don’t generate many parry or block (sword & shield) responses because mobs are not attacking us. When we don’t generate a parry/block responses, we can’t start our chain attack skills including our bleeds. Lack of parry responses also affect other redline traits, just take a look to see how many parry responses are required for many of our redline traits to work. What saves us atm is “Force Opening”.
? “Reactive Parry” Trait Set Bonus: very weak. Needs rework it or replace it altogether
? “Prey on the Weak” is indeed weak. Needs damage increase or rework
? “Honourable Combat” being nearly a capstone trait its just really bad. Needs a rework or replace w/ something a lot better.
? “Hammer Down” also pretty sad damage. I’m not sure if its just because guard damage isn’t that great to begin with or if it’s just a sad skill. Increase its damage and make it multiple targets.
? In conclusion, there are many other things that can be talked about and improved, for example: “Protection by the Sword” instead of being a +5% pulsating melee damage increase why not a 15 or 20% non-pulsating, non-stacking on all damage types. I know you made it to stack with other guardian PbtS but the truth is nobody want guard dps around specially in higher end stuff so it doesn’t get stacked. But like PriceAladdin said, more importantly we hope that you don’t forget about our Blue line
Best changes I can think of that won't make us completely busted
General:
Increase duration of parry/block response by 1-3 seconds
Make Turn the Tables animation way faster; however it no longer does damage or stun, or require someone to be nearby.
Red Line:
+5% crit chance
Make Hammer Down bypass all BPE and miss chance.
Reduce Hammer Down cooldown to 30 seconds.
Reduce Overwhelm cooldown to 5-8 seconds.
Increase morale received from Vitality 4.8 -> 5.0-5.2
Switch Relentless Assault trait from Blue Line with Thrill of Battle in Red Line.
Buff Relentless Assault Sting parry/block response chance from 25% to 33%
Make To the King knock down instead of conj/fellowship maneuver. (Certain fights in the past Guards have had to stop using To the King entirely because they started them at inopportune moments)
Give Stagger increased positional damage.
While using Redirect in Red Line(or any) make it open 3rd response to use To the King and/or Shield Smash.
If possible in PvMP, make parry chance ignore a portion of Monster Players finesse. (For example in my combat analysis, in 28 minutes recording, 105 million damage taken, I have exactly 2 Parry's, and 8 Partial Parry's. Those were all against NPC's. In most fights you get exactly 0. This makes Parry completely useless, and subsequently makes Skilled Deflection, and Tenderize useless as well.)
Switch and convert Singular Focus with Honourable Combat. Buff Singular Focus to remove % based mitigation(s).
With max tier of To The Rescue trait, have Brutal Charge become immediate.
Give Terrible Wound -15% to -50% inc healing for its duration.
Yellow Line:
In the first row of traits add a stat buff that gives one of the following: Crit, Mastery, Finesse, Vitality, Crit Defence, or Mitigations
