This is really something we need back into the game. Off tanking being real role of real off tanking (not just 2ndary tanking).Quote:
Originally Posted by Wolf2x
Printable View
This is really something we need back into the game. Off tanking being real role of real off tanking (not just 2ndary tanking).Quote:
Originally Posted by Wolf2x
Not only am I aware of your concerns, I will admit to having intentionally caused them in this particular case. ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by Decrepify
As I noted, I didn't expect this to be the most popular of the changes I was making, because it does indeed make tanking larger encounters more difficult. It may be impossible to solo tank certain pulls in the game now. Frankly, I very much hope that is the case.
That kind of tension and risk creates more roles for other classes and builds, such as off tanks, CC builds, or even hardened DPS builds that can handle some incoming damage while they burn down a couple mobs on the side.
That's the goal at any rate. If it doesn't play out well I'll certainly revisit the issue.
- Vastin
Thank you for being brave enough to steer in this direction. And thank you for being open about the thought process behind the changes. Getting to the end state will not be a matter of a few simple adjustments. It is reassuring that someone will be keeping an eye on how things work out and make adjustments if needed along the way. To me (and I'm sure others) many of these changes feel like a return to classic LOTRO group mechanics.Quote:
Originally Posted by Vastin
To get back to classic LOTRO group mechanics will require changes to both the games design (being done with the classes starting now) and the way the players operate those classes. Right now too much group content is handled with the over-simplistic recipe of:
- Tank spams force taunts.
- Healer spams AOE heals
- DPS set on AOE
- blend
The players will have to modify this strategy. And I think this will be good for the game. Tank forums will again be offering advise about cycling through targets. Healers will again be talking about healing too soon and how AOE heals draw aggro. DPS class forums will again be talking about not using your big hits right away, stay on the assist target holding aggro on the tank is 1/2 the tanks job and 1/2 the DPSers job. Everyone will have the secondary job of protecting the healer. All these things about the early days of LOTRO group mechanics made the instances more fun.
It will take some work from both the devs and players to get there. I'm very encouraged to see the desired end goal. Thanks for sharing it with us!
With these changes, the group game doesn´t get better ...
Tanks can´t hold enough targets, champs who kill themselves even more and are later completely excluded from raids because aoe is not possible and his melee single target dmg is too bad.
For this you will need 2 CC classes for each Add group.
And if only the smallest thing goes awry, there's a wipe by Add groups that were designed to be blown away from the start.
It was sufficiently said in the beta to Abyss that the Add groups need better mechanics.
At that time you did not want to hear now the bad guard gets nerved because everything is so easy .....
Apart from that, the tanking doesn´t get better, you simply can not hold so many targets anymore .... The complete system has to be redesigned.
And many players want the pre HD tank system back, simply because it was not just about dmg or right timing of one skill.
With HD, emergency skills and selfheals have been given away to everyone.
Totally covered healing skills and rezzes.
In order to bring even more challenging content, dmg spikes were introduced that some tank classes can´t stand.
And now, as the first thing, the guard gets nerved. Because he still has so many Trait lines, which are RAID-capable .....
Frankly its unwise to implement this change to one tank class without implementing the changes to every tanking class at the same time with the same desired goals in mind which is apparently not the case of the dev reworking champion blue line. Champion blue line hits 8-13 targets with just about every skill. Captains have a 6 target 15 second cooldown taunt. Warden aoe taunt doesn't have the long cooldown. Hardened dps don't exist, they end up dead quickly or do too poor dps that they aren't a dps anymore that is just the way it is.Quote:
Originally Posted by Vastin
Yes there needs to be changes to taunt tanking, but those changes need to be thought out fully and tested fully before being put into the game unlike now where they are an afterthought to your work on redline. You fully admitted you have no clue that your damage to keep threat theory is even plausible earlier in this thread yet you want to just throw it to live. Your desired goals will fail since nothing has been tested properly and adjusted. Throwing them in and then promising you'll look at them is poor development. How long will it take you to correct the problem? Months? I'll bet a lot of cash it wont be days like it should be.
The kind of tension you're going to create is a bunch of guardian main players who are pissed off at you and more than a few who will just stop playing because this careless method keeps repeating with developers and designers.
In other words, he thinks we are smart enough to deal with it and adjust. Its actually a complement and a challenge all wrapped into one.Quote:
Originally Posted by Vastin
Since Challenge is such an important skill in gaining aggro for Guardians, by nerfing it you will make us unable to do our job as tanks.Quote:
Originally Posted by Vastin
Unless you give us another similar skill to complement the new weakened challenge, you will have guardians complaining until it's fixed.
Guardians will be excluded from raids because they will be seen as a broken class that can't hold aggro.
Guardians will be practically useless in 3 and 6 mans where there are lots of adds.
The improved DPS in red line is most welcome and sorely needed, but nerfing challenge, which is a tanking skill, should not be done.
We don't yet know the extent of our nerfs so it remains to be seen if we'll have a Guardian and Captain tank, Warden and Captain tank, Champion and Captain tank, or Captain and Captain tank, because based on their defensive buffs think you need a captain and raiders will gravitate to whatever works best. I don't know what "hardened dps" refers to, but no, a DPSing Champion will be flattened in most pulls if they get aggro and even if they don't, there's nothing hard about it, and mechanics are generally hostile to them and all melee. With these changes a shield-equipped Guardian could do "some" dps and maybe off-tanking and avoid death.... don't know, but that's been my secret wish for a long time.
But I wonder if SSG has people who are experts in their classes get together and do complete runs of Abyss with proposed changes. To me it looks like this old engineer meme: https://i.imgur.com/MuGGR4l.jpg
I am still trying not to respond to people directly.
Wouldn't Overwhelm be a better candidate for either a mitigation bypass or an armour rend? Currently Red Guardian and Red Champion will be the only dps specializations in the game with no access to either of those options in the base class or tree itself (champs get a modest physical mit debuff from the horn legacy if they carry it and Red guards would have to invest down to the final row of Yellow for Singular Focus). Even a 10% physical mitigation bypass with a short duration would be good for a solid 25% increase in damage on most mobs while not being as prone to massive increases in effectiveness when a guard does have access to other classes' mitigation debuffs.
this!Quote:
Originally Posted by siipperi
Quote:
Maintaining both the imbued/non-imbued LI systems is quite time consuming, and the data structure behind the older LI's is EXTREMELY cumbersome and difficult to work with. Thus we're trying to gradually move to a position were we'll eventually be able to shift everyone over to the 'imbued' version and effectively phase out the old system without causing anyone too much anguish.
-Vastin
Vastin, can you clarify this statement please.
I'm trying not to jump to conclusions, but are you saying that there are plans to dump the old LI system and have LI's that will level with us from the time that we get them ?
Making guard aggro more difficult would definitely make it more fun to tank on guard considering it's essentially impossible to lose aggro on guard if you have any idea of how threat copy works. It would be nice seeing there be a more noticeable difference in between guards who are able to generate threat well and those who merely use challenge and go afk.
In order for tanking to be challenging and interesting again the whole underlying mechanic needs to be reworked. Even if challenge is reduced to affect 5 targets but no change is made to actual threat generation, you will still have the same pattern of fighting only with fewer mobs. Go in hit War chant, hit a few shield skills until the appropriate time for challenge and that's it. No true change made.Quote:
Originally Posted by dselden
But anyways, I'm really looking forward to see how these changes will affect tanking. I also won't reinforce the notion that people will quit their class. We have adjusted to far worse things as a community.
Thanks again for all your effort, irrespective how it pans out. I appreciate the work being done and hope we end up with better classes for everyone.Quote:
Originally Posted by Vastin
I think it was the right call.Quote:
- Put knockdown back on Brutal Charge.
Is that temporary or will it stay generic?Quote:
- Prey on the Weak now procs addt'l damage when any skill crits against a target with Slashing Wound. (Unfortunately these show up in parses as some kind of totally generic damage?)
PTR is down, will have to check out the numbers when it's up again.Quote:
- Greatly increased general Guardian instant skill damage (varies by skill)
Interesting change, I tried Overpower plus all the traits and legacies during build #2 and didn't like the numbers so just cut it out completely, I will have to see if it's worth using with the changes. A lot depends on the balance between strike damage vs bleed damage.Quote:
- Overpower converts Deep Wound to Terrible Wound (higher intensity bleed, stacks with deep wound)
I think only Thrust had a long duration bleed, have to also consider that bleeds, without Bleed them Dry the Broad Strokes and Haemorrhage bleeds are quite short. I think it is good to have short, punchy bleeds for Guardian, as the abilities when used again only refresh the bleed, so long bleeds don't really add much to shorter fights or what are shorter rotations.Quote:
- Modestly decreased base bleed damage and LI Bleed bonus.
- Added bleed damage bonus to deeper wounds - affects Deep Wound and Terrible Wound.
- Reduced base bleed duration of some bleeds slightly.
I don't think this is a big deal for organised raids, as these raids are generally disciplined, will have a second tank, will have CC that actually have CC abilities on their bars (you would be surprised the number of LM and Burgs that don't know how to use their abilities). I think there will be fewer guards who will be willing to tank if agro management is much harder or intended for more than one tank.Quote:
- Reduced AoE Targets on Challenge, and increased its cooldown.
- Non imbued AoE Target legacy updated to match imbued AoE DPS legacy (grants additional dmg rather than targets).
- Increased number of base targets on several Guardian AoE Skills.
When I see people asking for hour after hour for a tank or healer on world chat, I go and help them out... it can be scary out there in pug-land. You do find some very capable people at times, but there are a lot of people who aren't very good at this game.
I just feel the focus is towards a portion of the community that is a significant minority and I don't think any mechanical changes you make will make raid content more than a bump on the road for raid kins. I know most of the feedback comes from raiders, I just don't live in a raider bubble so I think it would be negligent if my feedback didn't express what I think will be the outcome of changes.
I think the minstrel changes in particular will create a shortfall of lower end healers and I think making it more challenging for guardians to hold agro against psychotic pug groups will create a shortfall of tanks, that will leave a lot of lower end dps that will be unable to do some of the content like FI raids, etc. The raiding guilds will be fine, irrespective of what changes you make.
Self produced aggro is probably going to be a bit smaller for raid guardians who use abyss tactical relics but we couldn't really produce our own threat with non threat skills + stealing aggro from other players anyway so nothing really changing there.
I just hope they consider looking at big chunks of the classes at some point at one go. Look at tanking classes, look at healers, etc and determine what should be amount of aggro produced by normal skills to how much threat is done by copying aggro from other players.
At the moment formula is pretty much -> do initial aggro with warchant (and similar skills on other classes). Use fray the edge on RAT's target. Few AoE skills in -> taunt with challenge. That is simply the formula. Taunting too early -> can't hold aggro or regain it before cooldown on challenge is off. Taunting on right time -> doesn't lose aggro no matter what you do after (use skills or not).
So they really need to look into multiplier or forced taunts. 8-9x it currently has on guardian is clearly too big. In ideal world with them not wanting to steer away from taunt focused tanking they should explore possibilities of lowering it while compensating that with increasing threat multiplier of normal skills and even seeing taking few old school real tanking skills and give them a bit higher multiplier than rest of the skills.
Imo taunts should have just ~1.xx multiplier on threat, while normal skills would have like 4-5x threat multiplier and selected few "real aggro skills" would have 6-8x multiplier.
In such situation skills like warchant that hits only like 4k (more with unreliable crit) in tank build would produce 24-32k threat as non critical skill. On critical, 10-12k, 60-90k+ threat. I hope they this under the microscope at some point. While most games have steered towards taunt heavy gameplay it doesn't mean that we should have totally irrelevant rotational threat skills as tanks. Those should matter way more than forced taunt.
Sure have that lost battle of copy aggro from leading aggro maker but at least reduce magnitude of that to levels that you can't just taunt over and over again till you hit 80-85% mark on the fight and can go afk and character does not lose the aggro.
I agree with what you said , but after thinking this through , i am still really worried about the cooldown boost on challenge.Quote:
Originally Posted by siipperi
This is obviously mostly about trash pulls since no raid fight in abyss should be any different.
I don't know what the new Challenge numbers are , but it's fair to say we are expecting something like 8-10 targets while blue traited and 45-60 seconds cooldown , so i am discussing based on that guess , any more nerfs on the targets and any more boost on cooldown than the above would be madness.
Thing is , we are too used to 30 seconds challenge to imagine what happens without it.
Basically since the mordor stat scaling and because of the lack of champs , challenge doesn't build decent AoE threat on initial pulling no matter how well you time it.
You delay it as much as you can , and what you gain is minimal initial RK aoe , maybe some hunter aoe and some minstrel heal aggro. That's it , am i missing something ?
But since the cooldown on live is 30 seconds , the above is enough to keep the mobs glued until the next challenge locks them for good.
I honestly believe that will change.
Now 2 easy mode workarounds would be :
1)Taking 1 champ and going with horn like pre-mordor. Problem is i am 100% certain the number of taunt targets won't be enough any more on pulls like devoted / watcher etc. And let's face it , there is no way you can hold aggro off him without challenge. Losing aggro on around 3+ targets is a fast RIP , heavy armour or not.
Also , champ is way too messy for CC. At best , you can throw the CC first , then guardian pulls the mobs further back , then a quick horn so all the damage is done outside CC range. Still messy , until the mobs are pulled , they can throw ranged or aoe attacks or go for a healer or spread out and miss the horn etc.It basically needs training all over again.
2)No champ and focus more on CC and only leave the number of challenge targets unmessed. My question is , how the heck are you going to maintain aggro with larger cd on challenge on NON focused and NON messed targets?
I honestly don't see it happening anymore , no matter how much you delay , not all mobs will have the same aggro numbers , and they are going to run off you before the next challenge is back.
A 'tougher' workaround is what Vastin has envisioned , using 2 tanks.
The thing that he probably hasn't considered , is that AoE taunts land on more or less random targets when stacked. It won't be easy to share the load. The most smooth approach , is 1 tank does the single target raid assist target job while the other does the AoE. Guess which job guardian will do ^^
And know comes the final workaround which in my eyes is the most likely to happen.
Drop the guardian alltogether , use warden with captain bubble and change nothing when it comes to trash pull tactics.
I'll be surprised if i am wrong on this one.
That's why all tank classes should have their aggro skills tweeked TOGETHER , or just rework the aggro mechanics -_-
PS1. Without tactical runes shield smash loses any decent threat assistance that it currently provides on live. The stun it does is basically more valuable than the damage.
PS2. Since we might need the stun mentioned above to delay challenge , perhaps slightly higher finesse builds would be nice to consider.
Here's where CC starts :eek:Quote:
Originally Posted by BotLike
2nd tank comes in. Considering tanking mechanics are still same, you can do just similar how we used to do in Throne sometimes, first guardian builds aggro on huge trash pulls, and 2nd guardian takes over with fresh cooldowns and significantly stronger aggro. When other guard is running out of cooldowns, swap aggro. Or you can do it with captain. No problems. Anyway, I see no reason why groups wouldn't use more champs in future. They are already extremely good on 2-3 boss trash pulls and only really bad ones on maggot pulls, you just have to have DNF on them lol. And CC as said above. Many groups under utilize CC atm. For example we do maggot pulls by CCing all enraged nurnoth in about 5 seconds, after that there's just 3 targets to fight against, smooth as butter.Quote:
Originally Posted by BotLike
Edit, what im worried about is that wardens will be capable of solo tanking such pulls. They are quite squishy, so it might be hard to pull off (esp if raid wasn't on farm mode) but still something devs need to address if they go forward with this change like I have said before. Meme-Bears are ok to have their taunts, nobody cares about them.
Since we are talking about trash pulls here , i wouldn't call them squishy. Avoidances are still very good for trash pulls , so if a warden gets a pre-combat captain bubble for a few sec uptime and then time a defiant challenge ( similar as guard times challenge ) they got enough time for ~3 key avoidance gambit and they automatically achieve god mode. Sure , their morale taps are so-so nowadays but the mits will be boosted ( basically heavy armour with no taunt ).Quote:
Originally Posted by siipperi
It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Fact remains that if the above turns out to be true , most groups will choose 1 good tanking warden over 2 other tanks anyday. Just aoe everything with limited CC as it is today lolol.
Obviously , it won't be that simple since someone will have to tank the boss fight eventually , but with the ranged force taunt addition on warden , i don't see why the optimal group wouldn't be 1 warden + 1 yellow cappy ( that cappy will do trash on red or even yellow ). It's simply a matter of speed since as you've said raid is now on farm mode and warden/cappy tanks offer the most utility.
Considering how much minstrel heal is nerfed though , it won't stay farm mode for long , if people can still be bothered running a months old so-so raid for no new loot in the middle of summer -_- All that while expecting on a new level cap in about 3 months...
Let's see what we get on live )
I bet nothing will change in Abyss trash pulls, still 1 GRD + maybe 1 yellow captain to help with aggro management. Even with 45-60s challenge cooldown (i think it will be 45s, same as before HD).Quote:
Originally Posted by BotLike
Adding a bit of CC before using 'Challenge' to make modifier work should solve the problem.
Btw i think most of trash pulls in Abyss can be done without a tank at all, it just requires more class usage\teamplay and imagination to choose the right strategy.
But when i join a PUG and i see how 100% of DPS dies because of reflect, i understand that it looks impossible for some people. And then they come to forums and tell that -100% skill induction\1 button rotation\0s cooldowns is ok :eek:
Damn, game is hard :D
The weird bit is how well Beorning is coming out of all of this despite not receiving any changes. There's now a reasonable argument for them being the primary raid healers post Minstrel nerfs and Beornings have the strongest aggro capability of all tanks thanks to 3x AoE forced taunts with some of the shortest CD's.Quote:
Originally Posted by BotLike
I'm gonna laugh if it becomes a flavour-of-the-month class after this.
Seeing happy Beorning is priceless ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by Joedangod
Vastin, how are these damage changes going to affect shield-taunt? Has its aggro value also been increased?
1 min CD on challenge is too long. Make compromise of 45s, the time it used to be back years ago if you didn't trait challenge trait.
Have talk with warden dev. How's it balanced they have 20s cooldown taunt on 10 targets. Or captain with 8 targets on 15s CD. If one class gets nerf on taunt they all need or you just create situation where other 2 classes are significantly better trash tanks than guardian.
I'm not sure I quite understand how the "Sets Chance for your Block Response skills to increase your Mitigation to 100%" part of the new Bolster is supposed to work. At rank 5, when using block response skills, I don't seem to see any new buffs or any changes to mitigations outside of Fortification stacks. Over a 3 minute fight in which Shield-Swipe, Bash, Shield-Taunt, and Shield Smash was used, no effects in accordance to this change were observed.
Is this bugged, or is there something I'm missing here?
DPS target dummy says, 'Thou didst maintain a DPS of 31,166.666 over the last three minutes of our momentous conflict!'
Didn't have a CA running at the time, needed dinner. I'll remake the parse later in the evening.
Quick check on skills and a few bugs/issues, will need to have a proper go at dps to see how it is but quick check seems nice. I see as well you have updated the raid armour set to work with this new hammer down, still not a big fan of the stun on it but we'll see how things go. Tool tip on hammer down is not updated to reflect the stun is usable from 66% with the armour equiped.
Bolster - second part of this never seems to proc: Sets chance for your block response skills to increase mitigations to 100%
Follow Through - trait says 8 targets but shield smash only goes up to 7
Smashing Stab - Bleed applies after a parry but does not apply after a block and parry has been used
Overwhelm - tooltip needs updating
Captain is 6, but agreed with your point. 45s would be a better challenge CD while DC should get moved to 30s or so since wardens have 2 forcetaunts on beta instead of 3. Would probably need a force taunt duration buff if you nerfed the cooldown on improved threatening shout.Quote:
Originally Posted by siipperi
I think it means that using a shield skill has a 100% chance of increasing fortification.Quote:
Originally Posted by Drarin
That tooltip is seriously bugged.Quote:
Originally Posted by -Spunkie-
That appears to be caused by some odd workarounds I had to do behind the scenes to get Bolster working the way I needed it to. I need to override that tooltip to make that second part go away - it's actually meaningless.
-Vastin
Working as intended. Bleed is not supposed to apply after all responses, instead damage and FM.Quote:
Originally Posted by -Spunkie-
Agreed. Please change it to Salt the Wound, as it's essentially that. Also, nostalgia.Quote:
Originally Posted by -Spunkie-
Thanks for the clarification Vastin.Quote:
Originally Posted by Vastin
Vastin, I know you read these, but can you please rename Overwhelm to Salt the Wound now? For nostalgia's sake (and it works pretty much same as old STW did!)Quote:
Originally Posted by Vastin
ah ok thanks for clarifying, can you have a look at tenderize as well this looks bugged, everytime you use sting with this traited it puts tenderize on cooldown it doesnt wait for the 5 stacks, so you can never get to it if your using sting. Also too bad this applies a stack of slashing wound was hoping I found another bleed we could get ticking along with the rest :pQuote:
Originally Posted by Vastin
It actually seems that each of the blue-line specific AoE skills affect 1 less target than they do on live (and in shield smash's case, trait)Quote:
Originally Posted by -Spunkie-
Litany of Defence and Shield Taunt seem to now only affect 4 targets instead of 5.
Could we get some clarity on which skills exactly the follow change should apply:
"Increased number of base targets on several Guardian AoE Skills."
The only skill I've seen so far with its base targets increased in Honourable Combat. All other skills seem to have the same, or fewer, base targets.
Yeah just comparing both clients now seems alot of tooltips need to be adjustedQuote:
Originally Posted by Drarin
anyone have any parses to compare from before the bleed nerf and damage increase overall? I'm looking at hitting the target dummies seems like a possible over all damage nerf?
I see Shield use rank is still there and didn't see anything in the notes about it, are you still working on it or haven't decided on what to replace it with yet? (increasing rank doesn't effect shield skill damage)
By and large I'm happy with these changes, but the increase in base damage is too far. I would love for this to go live but it will be a problem. With a proper mastery build Shield-smash will crit in the range of 80-150k depending on mitigations and everything, but I have seen hits exceeding 100k with low mastery. This would nullify most concerns about AOE threat, but would probably be over-potent in DPS builds and in PVP. I'd suggest lowering this (you could probably cut the crit multiplier in half and we'd still be in good shape, this skill does so much damage because when it crits it gets multiplied more than any other skill, but even if you do nerf it it should still be higher than other skills because Shield-smash is the most fun I've ever had on a Guardian) and increasing Shield-taunt to 7 targets. As for Red-line, I can't provide numbers because I don't have a real DPS build, but it looks very strong to me.
I just noticed Stamp does weapon damage. It's actually going to be a contributor to DPS...
Uhm....with a fully developed, completely glass cannon my DPS was about 31.1k. I don't think anyone eith any sense can call Guardians overpowered in red line. Also, I'd love to see a 100k shield smash hit with low mastery, please provide evidence.Quote:
Originally Posted by commdorvis
On dummy maybe or irrelevant T1 level 105 mob.Quote:
Originally Posted by Decrepify
Even if that's the hit its doing how often? was it a lucky crit ? whats the occurrence ? classes hit that hard on a regular bases. what is your DPS over a 5 min fight?Quote:
Originally Posted by commdorvis
It depends on what you're testing on, but with no buffs active, no +damage rune, and 123k mastery I hit for 77,276: https://imgur.com/a/2GNGDVA
Under other conditions a Guardian hitting with Shield-smash for 120k+ wouldn't be unusual.
I was getting 50-60k crits on seregost t2 low mastery tank build.
I think shield smash damage is on a great spot , it needs time to build , it can get B/P/E or partial and we really need the aggro boost.
Please increase the target count back to 8+....It's currently 7 , i am assuming this is a bug.
As for challenge , i can live with the target count nerf , propably the right call , but the cooldown feels terrible to me after playing...
Smashing stab dot is ..... weak , but i can't say i care much.
Thank you so much for the stamp boost , one of the best changes along with catch and breath and stoic bubble , much love : )
Shield use rank ? Fat incoming healing rating inc plz ?
PS. There are a few problems but Guardians are lucky to have you Vastin , other classes won't like this class balance the same... Most likely hate it.
Actually it would. Very well would. Build you are using, just by looking at your morale, is either a landscape build or moorbs build. 2 parts of the game where balance is a weird thing to deal with.Quote:
Originally Posted by commdorvis
Still, only way to hit 100k+ in your build is debuffs and oathies, and you wont get that in landscape. Also, moors mits/dmg reductions.
Guards hit harder now, but nowhere near hard to rival others.
Tested a bit today on BR, I had an issue where my bleeds on the target were disappearing. I think it was happening whenever 1 bleed dropped off , all of them would vanish. Also the damage for different skills is kind of wacky, Guard's ward, sting, stagger and sweeping cut (and maybe more) seem to do nowhere near as much damage as most of the other skills. It actually seems like some of them do the same dmg or worse than on live.
Attempted to run a few parses with the latest updates. Really felt like I was being perpetually screwed over by RNG since I kept having Terrible Wound sit at < 10% crit rate. Still, DPS is drastically improved since last build and I found myself reaching 44k at a peak with most parses sitting at 41.5k:
https://i.imgur.com/fpOeicw.png
Fortunately another player was online to show me just how pitiful I am with red guard due to their 48k parse as stolen below:
How they managed that one I don't know.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rheiya
Still, there are a few remaining problems. Brutal Assault/To the King/Hammer Down/Overwhelm/Guardians Ward/Sweeping Cut have really long animations, depressingly long. With the relatively short timer on the bleeds you kinda feel like you're in a rush to get the next one up and hitting any of those skills really slows down your gameplay. Anything that could be done to speed those up would be much appreciated.
Another issue would be sweeping cut and force opening. Even with all the damage buffs handed out these two skills hit for virtually nothing in comparison to everything else. It's annoying that they end up being pretty important skills that only get pressed for their secondary effects.
Honourable Combat is still only healing a total of 3 percent of max morale and power even when it consumes Slashing Wound from 5 targets.
I could never get more than 2 heals from it even though Slashing Wound was on multiple targets. I could see more than 2 honourable combats consuming slashing wound, though.Quote:
Originally Posted by Arveduie
So is it a total of 3% morale healed combined and anything after that is lost?
Or is it supposed to be 3% of morale healed for each one consumed? (Because that ain't happening that I can see..)
(sorry for my bad english)
I have tried the build 4 of the red guardian (two hand sword, but not glass cannon... no tries with shield). On dummies, on NPC in seregost 105 t2 and Mordor's instances craft. DPS against single target on Bullroarer is twice the DPS on single target on live, and the red guardian can't pull (without dying) an equal number on NPC than in live. This goal has been reached in my opinion.
The new system of bleeds and the use of overwhelm related to bleeds is more interesting, but bleeds should last more even if they are slight less powerful : agree with Joedangod, we rush in order to use these 3 skills as many times as possible. Agree with the problem of the sweeping cut's damages as well.
Consequently all that isn't perfect, but it's a lot better than the current state of the red guardian : well done Vastin !
And the problem of the belt's legacy still exists ;)
imo the damage is really high, some skills were critting for 70-80k, damage really needs a nerf.
Shield-smash behaves odd on some instance mobs. On bosses it can't crit and on trash I had 60-90% crit chance with no critical rating on my gear (stock ~3-4% chance). I don't know if this is related to targets immunity stage or what. Combat analysis also showcased higher crit chance than actual crit chance is so maybe there is some oddity with the skill since CA doesn't behave like that with live versio of it. never seen this kind of behavior on other skills with the plugin. Just observed that in 2 different instances with good 500-600 attacks.
Guard DPS is legit strong now.
Terrible Wound critical chance is bugged, only crits ~13.5% of the time with 23.7% crit chance. 311 hits.
please keep the 1min cooldown on challenge. we've been asking for this change for years now on guardian forums, because we oldschool tanks were fed up about the fact that spamming challenge was all you needed to do in order to tank. now back to oldschool actual building up threat, but most importantly we'll be able to tell bad, good and really good guards now ... thumbs up!
now change litany to old moria days and guardian is back on track where it always belonged to again.
Who's we and what exactly were you asking for ?Quote:
Originally Posted by Findun
Challenge cooldown offers nothing in terms of old school , it's just nuisance.
The aggro system is still the same , it's problematic to say the least and a leftover from when Turbine policy was to faceroll the game to the ground. I'll take the old threat system any day , give it to me now , give me anything that remotely resembles it , i'll take it , but we got nothing like that.
I'm fine with the targets nerf but not with the cd , it's almost too long atm.
I see your point on telling good/bad guardian and it's somewhat true , although good CC will carry the guardian in most cases.
So not sure if it matters much , there's a chance even good guardians take advantage of CC to turn a trash pull into aoe zerg safely without spending extra time/effort or changing anything when it comes to dpsers initial nuke efforts.
I honestly can't understand why single target taunts didn't get a cd or duration nerf instead of challenge. I don't.......
Challenge Targets would have been enough /sigh.
I agree about litany so much though... Shame it wasn't touched at all , i can only think of very limited fights where i actually used it.
Someone could claim that it might be useful now with nerfed challenge , but i honestly don't see it coming , since if any problems show up with 'new' challenge , they will happen only in the beginning of a trash pull ( not raid boss ) when you most likely won't have enough fortification anyway. T_T
Normal Aggro seems to be better than on live but 1 min CD on challenge is just bad. 45s is good compromise. It means it can't be spammed, yet it comes off CD at least once during fight, while 1 min means you basically need to wait for next fight to use it again.
Litany is extremely good when used right. It's situational skill. Not rotational. Saved group from wipe more times than I can count with it.Quote:
Originally Posted by BotLike
I just made a test:
If one skills both of the Warrior's Fortitude Skill (from blue and yellow), warrior's heart don't apply any of the mitigation or inc- heal buffs at all. I would have expected at least the buffs from the main skill tree! skill just only one either from blue or from yellow apply the correct buffs.
http://falkennest.org/armory/test/u2...riorsheart.jpg
I am going to say it again, if this change goes to live it will brake Guardian class for most players to the point where Wardens and Captains (fark, maybe even good Beorns) are going to be preferred tanks for any instances because they have much more utilization. Especially if SSG plans to make any Fingar-style bosses in the future where Guard's CD-s are useless.Quote:
Originally Posted by Findun
Nothing about this Challenge nerf changes actual threat building. Fact is Guards don't generate enough aggro to maintain it without force taunts.
If you want to start revamping blue line Guards, start it by changing how the aggro is built.
Shield-Smash number of targets seems to be bugged:
http://falkennest.org/armory/test/u2...hieldsmash.jpg
Advice, trait relentless assault. It's must have if you plan to trait redirect.Quote:
Originally Posted by CaerArianrhod
I'm really liking the new red line guardian. Strong DPS, fun rotation. Still miles behind hunters in terms of DPS, of course, but I guess wishing that they'd nerf the survivability even further in order to buff the DPS a bit more is too much.
https://i.imgur.com/q86kOxC.png
And, again, Terrible Wound crit chance is bugged.
https://i.imgur.com/qS2mvxF.png
Hint: that was not my point. Read again please: "i just made a test" I just really spend some points down the trees, maybe not as good as i would do it on live.Quote:
Originally Posted by siipperi
This isn't a new bug. It has happened and was known for years now.Quote:
Originally Posted by CaerArianrhod
Still no fix though....
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...nShot00117.jpgQuote:
Originally Posted by Giliodor
Guardian dps is pretty high now. Might need a nerf on CDs like Warrior's Heart and Thrill of Danger while in red line. Also, please buff red line champs. Guardians do more dps than a primary dps class on beta right now.
Did manage to login to Bullroarer to kill more wolves and still nothing new on our guardian belt.
Damage in blue line with shield smash is definitely higher than live as hits are roughly double damage what I get on live.
Didn't see a single crit with shield smash on landscape, but I only killed about 10 wolves before I had to log for work (still there)
I suspect that I'll have to tweak overall guardian DPS down slightly before long. The efficiency of the new bleed is a bit higher than I was expecting - but hey, enjoy the limelight for a little while.Quote:
Originally Posted by dselden
-Vastin
Fair enough , i was surprised terrible wound was that strong as well , i also felt you had something else in mind.Quote:
Originally Posted by Vastin
But ow dear , all that also means you are going live next week -_- RIP Minstrels.
Can you take over rest of the classes too ? : D
56k DPS is incredibly high for a guardian, I believe. Before adjusting the DPS, I think you should get an indication of what the average DPS is like. There's nothing wrong with guardians doing good DPS if their survivability is toned down, and Geventh is probably an exceptional guardian. Don't jump to conclusions.Quote:
Originally Posted by Vastin
Nerf the survivability, not the damage.
I would lean towards this. Maybe making thrill of danger a yellow line only skill would be a good idea, so that it would leave red line warrior's heart (ideally on a longer cooldown) but not really any other massive cooldowns.Quote:
Originally Posted by Giliodor
The % of the bleeds in the total damages is a bit powerful, and causes the problem of rushing to use three skills. With bleeds slighty lowered (slighty hein, not a massive decrease) and keep the base damages (with increase of sweeping cut if possible), guardians will use more varied skills in order to make DPS. For example, nerf the bleed caused by overwhelming : more powerful than bleeds caused by Thrust, but less powerful than in build 4. And do not touch other aspects like War chant.
Terrible Wound could stand to lose a bit of potency but we could still really use an animation reduction on a bunch of skills. The rotation just feels really sluggish and off-putting around most of the bleed applicators and parry response skills.Quote:
Originally Posted by Vastin
There's also something weird going on with crit rates in general. Terrible Wound was generally sitting in the 10% crit rate region whilst Hemorrhaging Wound and Slashing Wound tended to be closer to 40%. Hammer Down also seemed to be averaging a 60% crit rate throughout all the parses I did combined. Really not sure how that 56k parse came about, must've been some truly absurd luck on crits.
Not only Terrible Wound that is strong, highest hit from guardian also 140k on that dummy. Highest hit i saw from my red champ was 98k Remorseless strike, a skill that already has an absolutely enormous crit mutiplier (hits nearly nothing when non-critted).
I agree though, red guardian should infact be able to do strong dps, aslong as it can't have alot of selfheals/survivability. Taking into consideration the capability of cross-traiting into other lines for survivability...
Shield Use Rank is still there on LI belts, but ranking it up now doesn't do anything for shield skills.
While the future of this passive is being evaluated... Can we keep it how it works on live, for now? So ranking it up would still benefit shield skills.
Can the emo champions go away, don't cry yourselves to sleep, they aren't letting Guardians out-dps any dps classes.
While you change the shield-dmg etc. to the primary weapon dps, why not change shield-use-rating to tactical mitigation, incoming healing or +5% max morale? So you wil avoid a lost stat.Quote:
Originally Posted by Vastin
Red Guardian dps seems fine,the new bleed is a bit to high tho.
With slighty nervs to this bleed and a bit more experience in terms of rotation i think quite many guardians will be able to get ~55k on that dummy.
maybe give guardians a -50% heal debuff in the red traitline?i really dont see a fullheal from warriors heart necessary as a red guard.
I think the damage is too high on longer rotations, specially when you factor how much warrior's heart and the new catch a breath can heal you for, I have way better self healing in red than I do on my minstrel, funnily enough, minstrel has probably the worst (self-healing outside of blue) for any class capable of self-healing in a damage spec which is pretty odd.
I don't know how much time you have left, but I would recommend get rid of Honourable Combat (because it is terrible) and replace it with Berserk, a toggle that can't be turned off while in combat. When in Berserk stance you can't self-heal or block, but you have higher damage output (a bit less than current). When outside of Berserk stance, you can cut the damage back a bit more.
That way if I am running around killing loner landscape mobs and I don't really need the survivability, I can opt to go Berserk to speed that process up a bit, but if I have to go somewhere I will face multiple opponents with frequent pulls then I can take a more cautious approach with a bit less damage.
Ultimately, once the maximum potential dps is a fair bit lower than dps classes and Guardians wont be filling dps roles, it really doesn't matter what they actually do, but I think it would make it more enjoyable to have a bit more risk v reward or consequence for choices rather than give no options/flexibility and just adjust everything based on the lowest common denominator.
All-in-all, I think you have done a great job on red spec changes.
I am not fond of the longer cooldown on Challenge
Bullroarer is down atm:
I assume Warden's Defiant Challenge is still a 10 target force taunt (5s) on a 20s cooldown?
I assume Captain's Improved Threatening Shout is still a 6 target force taunt (5 sec) on a 15 second cooldown?
I assume Beorning's Thunderous Roar is still a 5s force taunt (5s) on a 16s cooldown? Not even sure what the max targets is on this, if any.
1 minute cooldown is way too long. 30s cooldown was fine for it's longer period of force taunting. The period of the force taunt really isn't the clutch, I can keep mobs on me as a captain tanking with the shorter force taunt duration, albeit fewer mobs at a time. Once mobs lose about 25% morale, one force taunt and they are pretty much on you until they are dead. Unless you are altering the agro mechanics, you will basically be forcing organised raids to ditch Guardians entirely and switch to a Captain/Beorning combo instead.
I already preferred tanking with my Captain since Mordor due to higher morale, better mitigation and more flexibility when it comes to tactical fights. You would need to cripple the other classes area force taunts for this change for the Guardian to have the intended impact. Guardian wont remain the preferred trash tanking class with this change to Challenge.
Unlikely. That 56k parse is massively above average in terms of crit rate so the average high level parse is going to be closer to 45k than 55k once terrible wound gets the appropriate nerf and the crit rate issues across all skills gets sorted (pretty much everything except Terrible Wound averaged a 35%+ crit rate on a class that caps crit chance at 25%).Quote:
Originally Posted by Kasius
i disagree a bit:Quote:
Originally Posted by Joedangod
yes the crit chance was very high.
on the other Hand:
- there are still skills who got a Buggy crit chains(like max 10% instead of 25%).
-br was up with those changes for not even 24 hours.I am quite sure with more time and more practice you can achieve more average and more Peak dps.
-that parse is without the bb set.+10% bleed dmg would do quite a big dps boost since a lot of guard dps comes from the different bleeds.
This is true, and it illustrates the danger of uploading your highest parses, rather than your average parses. Terrible Wound is currently bugged so that it only has a ~10% crit chance. In Geventh's parse, it crit way more often than that (judging by the average bleed tick). Likewise for a bunch of other skills. That isn't to say it's not impressive, I think it's very impressive. I just don't think that even he is going to consistently do much more than 50k, which is perfectly fine.Quote:
Originally Posted by Joedangod
Just be sure to further reduce the survivability, to compensate for the rise in DPS.
That was one skill, in fact it was the biggest skill in terms of DPS and it deserves a nerf anyway. As I said in the post above; crit rate on pretty much every other skill is way above average.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kasius
So to summarise what you ignored: terrible wound needs a nerf and a fix for crit chance and every other skill needs a similar bug fixed so everything is going to go down in damage. You're putting way too much faith in one exceedingly lucky 56k parse here, did you actually try red guard yourself?
Actually it wouldn't. You lose too much mastery and crit for it to be viable. It best, it would even out, seeing even base skill damage is quite high.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kasius
I mean, 30.7% crit rate is a bit high for a guard parse, but nothing that far out of the ordinary. A champ parse with around 35% crit in yellow did about 55k. Another parse in the same general area:Quote:
Originally Posted by Joedangod
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...nShot00116.jpg
And pray tell, what was the average parse on said Guardian?Quote:
Originally Posted by dselden
35% is what you might expect when taking into account the +10% critical chance on Strike Skills and +5% critical chance after critting with Wild Attack. 29.7% for a class with 25% crit chance is incredibly high considering how many attacks are made.Quote:
Originally Posted by dselden
Assuming champion crit chance is ~32% (it's theoretically 0.40*(51+36)/491 + 0.30*(1-(51+36)/491) = 31.77% in the parse you mentioned, without taking Wild Attack into account), and Guardian crit chance is 25%, we get the following probability distribution:
Edited to account for Terrible Wound
https://i.imgur.com/XX38bsE.png
Which shows that the guardian got considerably luckier than the champion.
I'd have to ask, but was above 50k on average once he'd ironed out rotation, I believe.Quote:
Originally Posted by Joedangod
One of the bleeds is bugged and it's crit rate is substantially lower than it should be, getting a crit rate that high seem a bit dodgy, actually, seems a lot dodgy.Quote:
Originally Posted by Giliodor
I'm sure he could reproduce it with a dev watching. ;)
You are correct, I forgot about that. Accounting for that, it would look like this:Quote:
Originally Posted by Zvim666
https://i.imgur.com/XX38bsE.png
Which, indeed, shows that the guardian was even luckier than I originally thought.
On average he was 53-56k. At 2 minutes he was peaking over 60k on occasion, so it’s not really a case of an outlier parse even though the crit was high.Quote:
Originally Posted by Giliodor
Clearly, though, the specific parse linked was a definite outlier, unless there's a crit chance modifier that I'm unaware of. That's all I'm saying. We could analise other parses similarly, but they haven't been posted.Quote:
Originally Posted by dselden
All I'm arguing is that guardian DPS does not need to be nerfed, because these abnormally high parses are, frankly, abnormal. If necessary, nerf survivability to compensate for increase in DPS. I think if guardian DPS on average lands around ~50k, that would be a fine mark.
Haven't been on bullroarer myself and don't really know how the new training dummies are acting, but on live dummies I'm getting a lot more parry responses than on regular mobs (in red).
So there might be a dps difference between the dummies and actual mobs because of less parries (and thus acces to parry response skills).
Since I haven't been on BR and thus don't know how many parry responses guards are getting on these new dummies I can't judge.
Just something to considder even though there are workarounds.
i did tried red guard myself ang got 50k average,but sadly there was not that much time to test.Quote:
Originally Posted by Joedangod
I am quite sure with more experience,a better Rotation and bb set(yes you can cap crit+mastery with bb set) would do quite something.
While vastin already said the terrible wound will most likly get a small nerv and with the bugfixes dmg would go up in compensation.I dont ask for more nerv,i am actually super fine with Guardians doing 55k dps.
would be cool to see selfheal a bit reduced then.
oh and red champions doing at least same st dps :)
We should remember the release notes :
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
The goal isn't to have a few number of guardians competitive with other DPS in AoM, but to have a decent DPS for the great number.
Consequently, it would not be a drama if the new build would be an average between build 3 and build 4.
I think it could be done by fixing the % of crits, AND nerf their magnitude : the legacy +57% magnitude of critical bleeds could be lowered to 35% (as legacy of bleeds), 29% or event removed.
Edit : I had tried on build 4 with and without the magnitude of critical bleeds (on dummies, but more on mobs in landscape and instances), there's a noticeable difference in DPS.
I'd rather just nerf red line survivability. Dps as it is now is strong solo, but wouldn't be optimal in a raid due to having no fire type damage and offering no real debuffs or anything which seems about right to me.Quote:
Originally Posted by Grimlir83
Apparently he was getting a normal crit rate on terrible wound as well, so not sure if it's due to a bug or LIs or what.Quote:
Originally Posted by Joedangod
I suspect that I'll have to tweak overall guardian DPS down slightly before long. The efficiency of the new bleed is a bit higher than I was expecting - but hey, enjoy the limelight for a little while.
-Vastin
The discussion should be about how doing that, and not talking about things not directly connected with that (such as survivability)
I disagree. The reason why dps shouldn't be as high as it is atm is because of guardian's high survivability. If the survivability got nerfed in red line, then the dps could be the same as it is currently.Quote:
Originally Posted by Grimlir83
High DPS is it's own form of survivability. I'd rather retain the high DPS than retain warriors heart in red. The old red guardian level of invincibility needs to go for good.Quote:
Originally Posted by Grimlir83
That's sophistic. What kind of survavibility could be warrior's heart in a AoM raid (in red) ?
Folks should understand that the main problem with the red guardian is NOT to have similar DPS than hunter for example. It's to be viable in solo DPS for the lanscape (and with warrior's heart there's no invicibility at all if you pull too much NPCs in beta 4). The purpose is not to work for a little minority even among the raiders, and in this point of view a little less DPS than in build 4 is not a problem. This point of view in order to rework the red guardian has been retained, so trying to put it in another direction is out of subject.
Well, pretty sure we're talking about survivability when you cross-trait (Bring on the Pain ranks on Thrill of Danger in yellow for example), which makes survivability silly in moors/landscape with red grd. Having this much dps and crazy survivabilty at the same time is overkill (same with red warden having access to lots of heals etc in red, blood arrow heal for hunter etc, which also should be nerfed, since dps is now so high).
I would support the idea of having red grd dps high, thus nerfing survivability capabilities rather.