Class Update - Guardians

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Originally Posted by Grimlir83

That's sophistic. What kind of survavibility could be warrior's heart in a AoM raid (in red) ?

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It's a full health heal, kinda ensures survival in a situation that would kill pretty much any other DPS (barring red Warden I guess). Remove the heal for a brief DPS buff cooldown in red and it could be pretty neat.

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Originally Posted by Grimlir83

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.

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Vastin said it wasn't the explicit intent of these changes to offer a group competitive DPS line. That doesn't even remotely rule out that they are willing to do that (and pretty much have done that), it just means that they weren't initially trying to produce that result. From here what actually marks more sense? Nerfing survival skills slightly to create a fairly balanced competitive group DPSer or nerf DPS and just get a mediocre line that will stick to landscape alone?

It's tiring that people keep insisting on making the nonsensical "But it's a guardian, it shouldn't be able to compete for DPS" argument. Who cares who competes so long as everyone can compete. I'd rather the game let me choose which traitline I could play rather than effectively forcing me to play a class I hate for a role I like.

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Originally Posted by Seodric

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).

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True, which is why I firmly believe that reducing the overall amount of trait points down to ~67-72 would benefit the game greatly. It would put constraints on the amount of defensive abilities/healing abilities/CC abilities that DPS specs have access to.

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Originally Posted by Joedangod

It's tiring that people keep insisting on making the nonsensical "But it's a guardian, it shouldn't be able to compete for DPS" argument. Who cares who competes so long as everyone can compete. I'd rather the game let me choose which traitline I could play rather than effectively forcing me to play a class I hate for a role I like.

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QFT. I've heard this from too many people, and I've asked too many times "Give me one reason why guardians shouldn't have a viable DPS spec?", without getting an answer. And no, "guardians are a tank class" isn't an answer.

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Originally Posted by Giliodor

True, which is why I firmly believe that reducing the overall amount of trait points down to ~67-72 would benefit the game greatly. It would put constraints on the amount of defensive abilities/healing abilities/CC abilities that DPS specs have access to.

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It'd be nice but unfortunately people would push back way too much to ever let it happen. The best we can really hope for is for them to make an extra tier on the trait trees and start moving a few of the core skills of each line to be setbonuses of that line rather than available cross-traits.

You naughty boys leave catch a breath out of the discussion on purpose or you still haven't figured out how strong it is ^^
Ow well , it certainly feels refreshing after having a 2k heal for years : )

PS. Vastin must have fixed the cooldown bug with warchant , big thanks for that ; )

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Originally Posted by BotLike

You naughty boys leave catch a breath out of the discussion on purpose or you still haven't figured out how strong it is ^^
Ow well , it certainly feels refreshing after having a 2k heal for years : )

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It's semi in line with self-motivation and blood arrow, figured nerfing the other available defence abilities was a better call.

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Originally Posted by Joedangod

It's tiring that people keep insisting on making the nonsensical "But it's a guardian, it shouldn't be able to compete for DPS" argument.

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Ans it's tiring that people keep insisting on making the nonsensical "But I Want to play as roles as I want with one classe in raid, even if a very few minority of guardians is interested by that" argument.
LOTRO is not TESO.

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Originally Posted by Joedangod

It's semi in line with self-motivation and blood arrow, figured nerfing the other available defence abilities was a better call.

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Fair enough , although cooldown wise its now stronger than warrior's heart and defo better than thrill , although for the latter i'd exclude multi trash fights and pvmp.

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Originally Posted by Grimlir83

Ans it's tiring that people keep insisting on making the nonsensical "But I Want to play as roles as I want with one classe in raid, even if a very few minority of guardians is interested by that" argument.

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Yes, how very nonsensical it is for people to want to play what they like in raids rather than being roped into playing the few traitlines that work.

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Originally Posted by Grimlir83

Ans it's tiring that people keep insisting on making the nonsensical "But I Want to play as roles as I want with one classe in raid, even if a very few minority of guardians is interested by that" argument.

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So here is why you are right.

I got this right off the class descriptions on the LOTRO website itself:

"Tough and enduring, Guardians use their well practiced shield and weapon against any who seek to harm their allies. By the clang of sword upon shield, or the roar of battle cries, Guardians live to provoke opponents and divert potential damage from their allies. When fighting on their own, these masters of protection and heavy armour are like distance runners—winning through a well paced stamina of defense and offence abilities. When grouped with allies, Guardians focus on defense, defense, defense; no matter the direction of battle, whether victory or defeat, Guardians hold their ground until the last moment."


The only mention of offence is this:
"well paced stamina of defense and offence abilities"

Definition of stamina: the ability to sustain prolonged physical or mental effort.

So stamina of offense capabilities would mean sustained physical effort applied to offense meaning it takes time for a Guard to kill anything.
This is why people naturally think a Guard doesn't and shouldn't have a high dps traitline. It doesn't jive with the class description. Taking away their stamina in exchange for higher dps might seem fair from a class balance perspective, but it destroys the very nature of the class as defined by those who originally envisoned the class. So its rewriting the class description which from a product advertisement standpoint is false advertising.

Blue and yellow line work, and now with build 3 and build 4 red line work. Even if Vastin choose build 3, build 4 with less survivability or an average of the two builds, it will be playable and it's the fundamental purpose : red guard will be more intesting whatever final choice will be made. This won't be a cause of drama. But it's good to take care of another points of view about one class sometimes, and to accept compromises, you see.

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Originally Posted by Grimlir83

Blue and yellow line work, and now with build 3 and build 4 red line work. Even if Vastin choose build 3, build 4 with less survivability or an average of the two builds, it will be playable and it's the fundamental purpose : red guard will be more intesting whatever final choice will be made. This won't be a cause of drama. But it's good to take care of another points of view about one class sometimes, and to accept compromises, you see.

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Of course guardian will be playable. It 2 shots landscape mobs.

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Originally Posted by Grimlir83

Blue and yellow line work, and now with build 3 and build 4 red line work. Even if Vastin choose build 3, build 4 with less survivability or an average of the two builds, it will be playable and it's the fundamental purpose : red guard will be more intesting whatever final choice will be made. This won't be a cause of drama. But it's good to take care of another points of view about one class sometimes, and to accept compromises, you see.

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Yellow line works? Wasnt it riddled with bugs for years and only gets used for crosstraiting? Did those get fixed? Did I miss something?

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Originally Posted by TiberiasKirk

So here is why you are right.

I got this right off the class descriptions on the LOTRO website itself:

"Tough and enduring, Guardians use their well practiced shield and weapon against any who seek to harm their allies. By the clang of sword upon shield, or the roar of battle cries, Guardians live to provoke opponents and divert potential damage from their allies. When fighting on their own, these masters of protection and heavy armour are like distance runners—winning through a well paced stamina of defense and offence abilities. When grouped with allies, Guardians focus on defense, defense, defense; no matter the direction of battle, whether victory or defeat, Guardians hold their ground until the last moment."


The only mention of offence is this:
"well paced stamina of defense and offence abilities"

Definition of stamina: the ability to sustain prolonged physical or mental effort.

So stamina of offense capabilities would mean sustained physical effort applied to offense meaning it takes time for a Guard to kill anything.
This is why people naturally think a Guard doesn't and shouldn't have a high dps traitline. It doesn't jive with the class description. Taking away their stamina in exchange for higher dps might seem fair from a class balance perspective, but it destroys the very nature of the class as defined by those who originally envisoned the class. So its rewriting the class description which from a product advertisement standpoint is false advertising.

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At no point does this imply that red line guardians cannot be viable as a DPS spec. How hard is that to understand? It's so tiresome to have to explain it over and over again.

Link

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Originally Posted by Helm's Deep Dev Diary for guardians

So for all of you returning players, you probably recognize the name of this tree as being the Guardians’ former DPS trait set. While not necessarily focusing on any specific means of damage dealing, this set offered some forms of skill-specific crit chance and increased damage, as well as some general improvements to survivability. My initial hopes were to somehow combine these bonuses with the essence of the Overpower stance (high base and crit damage) to create a fully functional DPS option for the Guardian. I wanted the Guardian to be able to hold his own when it came to damage numbers and not simply be viewed as a wannabe Champion. My first iteration, however, didn’t really accomplish this goal. I found myself left with a bunch of useful traits that did not really meld together into any singular play-style. The Guardian had high base damage, but that was about it. So I took a step back. I needed to find a feature of this class that I could actually turn into a fully formed play-style, where players would be forced to think through their actions, rather than simply hit the first button that lit up. And that’s when it came to me – bleeds. The Guardian has always had access to them, but I feel has never really utilized them as anything more than a secondary feature. It is from there that I decided on the bleed application/cashout mechanic.

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Red Guardian IS already a viable spec in build 3 and 4, thos who went to landscape with a guardian on Bullroarer could see it.

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Originally Posted by Giliodor

At no point does this imply that red line guardians cannot be viable as a DPS spec. How hard is that to understand? It's so tiresome to have to explain it over and over again.

Link

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Its easy to understand, but you clearly can't. People understand from the class description that Guardians don't have comparable DPS relative to a dps class. What some dev wrote that is in contradiction to the class description is just an example of an employee who didn't read the company manual.

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Originally Posted by TiberiasKirk

Its easy to understand, but you clearly can't. People understand from the class description that Guardians don't have comparable DPS relative to a dps class. What some dev wrote that is in contradiction to the class description is just an example of an employee who didn't read the company manual.

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This is simply laughable. It's clear that after Helm's Deep, the design philosphy changed. Here you have a developer who clearly states that he designed red line guardians with the intent to be a viable DPS spec of itself. And there's absolutely nothing, not a thing, wrong with that. There's no argument you can give for why guardians should not be viable as a DPS. It would not negatively affect the game.

You're in a state of pure denial. I literally quoted the developer of the class saying that he inteded guardians to be viable as DPS.

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Originally Posted by TiberiasKirk

Its easy to understand, but you clearly can't. People understand from the class description that Guardians don't have comparable DPS relative to a dps class. What some dev wrote that is in contradiction to the class description is just an example of an employee who didn't read the company manual.

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Can we not have this discussion here? This is a feedback forum/thread, not a "It should be this or that".
If you want that, create a new thread in the Player Suggestions, and keep this thread on point. Where's Cordovan to cull some of these posts so it makes actual sense...

[QUOTE=Giliodor;7840788There's no argument you can give for why guardians should not be viable as a DPS. It would not negatively affect the game.

[/QUOTE]

Well being a main dps and THE main tank class would be not fair compared to other classes. They would need to buff the champ to a top tier tank, the hunter to a top tier CC class (you were correct here), the LM to a top tier DD, the RK to a top tier healer, the beo/warden to...SOMETHING xD, the mini to a top tier DD (I remember times when the mini actually WAS a superp DD and everybody cried) etc...They will NEVER ever be able to achive this so..


IMO they should not nerf Guard skills because the guard will nevertheless be the main tank anyway so why bother...

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Originally Posted by Hildilas

They will NEVER ever be able to achive this so..

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Why not? Beorning is probably the only class that needs a ton of work, the rest mostly just need numerical tweaks. Is there any point not aiming to balance every line?

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Originally Posted by Hildilas

Well being a main dps and THE main tank class would be not fair compared to other classes. They would need to buff the champ to a top tier tank, the hunter to a top tier CC class (you were correct here), the LM to a top tier DD, the RK to a top tier healer, the beo/warden to...SOMETHING xD, the mini to a top tier DD (I remember times when the mini actually WAS a superp DD and everybody cried) etc...They will NEVER ever be able to achive this so..

IMO they should not nerf Guard skills because the guard will nevertheless be the main tank anyway so why bother...

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I'm advocating that there shouldn't be such a thing as "main DPS" or "main tank". Every class with a tank spec can tank, every class can DPS, every class with a healing spec can heal, like you're saying. Why would they never be able to achieve this? It's exactly what these class updates could be used for.

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Originally Posted by Hildilas

Well being a main dps and THE main tank class would be not fair compared to other classes. They would need to buff the champ to a top tier tank, the hunter to a top tier CC class (you were correct here), the LM to a top tier DD, the RK to a top tier healer, the beo/warden to...SOMETHING xD, the mini to a top tier DD (I remember times when the mini actually WAS a superp DD and everybody cried) etc...They will NEVER ever be able to achive this so..


IMO they should not nerf Guard skills because the guard will nevertheless be the main tank anyway so why bother...

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Even with guard dps as high as it is right now, they wouldn't get taken for raids as a dps since they don't do fire damage. I don't have an issue where they are in dps since they can dps in 3/6 mans and on landscape.

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Originally Posted by Giliodor

This is simply laughable. It's clear that after Helm's Deep, the design philosphy changed. Here you have a developer who clearly states that he designed red line guardians with the intent to be a viable DPS spec of itself. And there's absolutely nothing, not a thing, wrong with that. There's no argument you can give for why guardians should not be viable as a DPS. It would not negatively affect the game.

You're in a state of pure denial. I literally quoted the developer of the class saying that he inteded guardians to be viable as DPS.

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This isn't TESO where you can equip a healing staff and become a healer, equip a fire staff and become a caster dps, equip a shield and become a tank.

I have played my guardian as a 2h loldps since forever, sure i would like for my dps to be "viable" in terms of end game raiding, being able to take a dps spot instead of off tank spot but i knew when choosing to play a guard as 2h loldps that i would never be able to compete with proper dps classes but instead traded that extra dps other classes have for greater def capabilities.

I get that you end game raiders who have completed everything on your guard, being bored of taken into raids only as a tank want to be taking a dps spot but lets not forget what a guardian actually is, a tank class.

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Originally Posted by dawaaagh

but lets not forget what a guardian actually is, a tank class.

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Blue/Yellow Guardians are tanks, Red is DPS. You need to stop with the old mentality of class = role, it hasn't existed in-game for years. When an RK specs red they are there to DPS, when they spec Blue they're there to heal. A blue RK is not the same as a red RK and that's something people generally accept. The same thing applies to Guardians and Beornings and Captains and so on and so forth. When we spec a traitline we aim to do the role of that traitline, not the arbitrary role you deem to be the one and only thing that a class should do.

There's absolutely no reason to not have every traitline be competitive for their respective roles. It doesn't diminish player choice and class variety, it expands it.

I read that the update will go on live tomorrow.
About the guardian, I have confidence, it'll be an improvement comparing to the current state, even if another point of view than mine (Joeandgod, Gilliodor, etc ) is chosen.
Two litte things :
- release notes in french are different from english ones, they are not integral but it is not a big problem
- release notes in french talk about the removal of brutal charge's konckdown ("La compétence suivant Charge brutale déclenche désormais un coup critique au lieu d'un effet d'étourdissement"), and not the english ones ; I suppose that it's a previous state of the release notes, that has not been removed... we will see !
In any case, thank you very much Vastin for your work !

Thank you Vastin for all the hard work you've done with the class balance, was awesome seeing you pop in from time-to-time as well.

Though, it wasn't perfect, eh, nothing is. Overall, you did right by us and I'll not complain.....aside from renaming Overwhelm to Salt the Wound....

P.S. Please keep in mind Hammer-Down is still broken as hell cause you can get old bonuses when using a raid set.

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Originally Posted by Decrepify

Thank you Vastin for all the hard work you've done with the class balance, was awesome seeing you pop in from time-to-time as well.

Though, it wasn't perfect, eh, nothing is. Overall, you did right by us and I'll not complain.....aside from renaming Overwhelm to Salt the Wound....

P.S. Please keep in mind Hammer-Down is still broken as hell cause you can get old bonuses when using a raid set.

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I couldn't agree more. And seeing the patch notes for tomorrow , it's the first time i see a really decent list on known issues , which makes me confident most of the remaining issues will be fixed soon : )

#VastinForMinstrel

Maybe I am to pessimistic and wrong (and I wish I am wrong), but as I see it, after update, guardian will be an ok dps calss for 3 mans, maybe for 6 mans, before the dps goes down a bit, as notes imply. On the other hand guardian's aoe tanking will be kinda worse, while most classes will have their max targets+low cd aoe taunts, at least untill they change them too, which we don't know when will happen. So these classes will be chosen over guardian for tanking atm, at least in raid, which is the only real end level content now. I feel that you all focused on the improvement in guardian's dps, and you lost the big picture. I have a fear guard will be overall gimped again after this update. And the fact that they admit the known issues of guardian, is not the same as fixing them, ask beorning players in the last couple of years for that.
As I said I might be pessimistic and wrong. But we will all be here tomorrow and we will see who was right and who was wrong.

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Originally Posted by Zahu

Maybe I am to pessimistic and wrong (and I wish I am wrong), but as I see it, after update, guardian will be an ok dps calss for 3 mans, maybe for 6 mans, before the dps goes down a bit, as notes imply. On the other hand guardian's aoe tanking will be kinda worse, while most classes will have their max targets+low cd aoe taunts, at least untill they change them too, which we don't know when will happen. So these classes will be chosen over guardian for tanking atm, at least in raid, which is the only real end level content now. I feel that you all focused on the improvement in guardian's dps, and you lost the big picture. I have a fear guard will be overall gimped again after this update. And the fact that they admit the known issues of guardian, is not the same as fixing them, ask beorning players in the last couple of years for that.
As I said I might be pessimistic and wrong. But we will all be here tomorrow and we will see who was right and who was wrong.

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why worse aoe tanking? most skills deal more damage and threat. All guards lose is 30s cd on 15 targets, which is converted to 10 targets and higher cd... In most fights, I just use challenge once. Roughly after 10 seconds. Thats enough to the end of the fight. And 10 targets is easily enough.
All that changes is, that a champion that starts full AoE dps half a second after the tank engages dies. And thats not a bad change imo. Nothing wrong with waiting for 3 seconds.

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Originally Posted by Zahu

So these classes will be chosen over guardian for tanking atm.

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Beorning has literally always had better aggro over AoE than Guardian/Warden/Captain, hasn't really helped them take the main tank spot before, unlikely that it will now. Guards will be fine, it's trickier to handle threat now but that isn't necessarily bad.

Vastin,
About the removal of the 125 damage runes. For people who were playing the guardian in redline originally,before the released balance (which has made the dps really good btw ) a few days ago ,all had 125 tact damage runes in, to increase warchants damage,which is lacking in Bullroarer and in in the old patch. Are you able to address this? By increasing warchants damage or just to us the 125 damage runes which made a little difference anyways ?

Hi!

First thanks alot for finally giving guard a good dps buff. IMO Catch a breath needs reduced cooldown-time due to the removal of percentage-heal from crits. Honorable Combat is completely useless now so maybe changing that could compensate for crit-heals also.

Is there an updated guardian red line tree guide somewhere? I am having some trouble understanding how exactly latest changes affect it. For example, is Radiate now useless?

Thanks for the changes, vast improvement in dps but a few issues for me.
Honourable combat is very underwhelming for such a high skill in redline especially as bleeds can no longer stack to 10, even more so with catch a breathe healing for a decent amount and being a basic non spec skill and can benefit from reduce cd legacy, basically makes honourable combat pointless.
Same sort of issue with overwhelm/raw power trait as bleeds no longer stack to 10.
Radiate not spreading bleeds hurts, i understand its a yellow trait and not red, hoping it can somehow affect the new bleed system where its not absolutely pointless and not completely broken op.
Brutal assault damage seems on the low side when compared to other skills like whirling retaliation which deals aoe damage not st like brutal assault.
War chant not benefiting from bleed spreading also hurts, understandable change, possibly make the -5% damage debuff stack depending on number of bleeds on targets ?

Again tnx for the recent changes, much appreciated.

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Originally Posted by Litreb

Hi!

IMO Catch a breath needs reduced cooldown-time due to the removal of percentage-heal from crits.

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The reduce cd legacy helps with this which is nice because it was previously useless.

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Originally Posted by assembled

Is there an updated guardian red line tree guide somewhere? I am having some trouble understanding how exactly latest changes affect it. For example, is Radiate now useless?

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Radiate radiates terrible bleed.

What i can say:
Yesterday we had a red Guardian with us on abyss t2c boss 1(twins).
he was using pvp gear(55k crit,170k mastery and useless 120k phys mit).
he did 80k dps over 4 or 5 min till he died the first time,that was really impressive.

i think a minmaxed geared guard can do 100k+ on that boss and quite insane numbers on boss 2+3 aswell

I just tested on landscape and nothing special but was so pleased to see I could actually kill things and quickly!! WOOT TY!

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Originally Posted by siipperi

Radiate radiates terrible bleed.

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Is this intentional? Didn't see it mentioned in the release notes.

Didn't do Bullroarer but the improvement to soloing was very much needed.

Prior to 22.2 , my sword and board guard with a max number of star lit crystals, was doing regular hits for 1k and crits of 2k in red. OK, you could get more damage with a 2H and her gear is all with tanking stats, but a dual wield champ in my kin was reporting crits of 70k. That's 35 times more damage, which would be untenable even if I had 35 times better mitigation than the champ (which i do not!). Which reminds me, agonisingly low DPS wasn't really being offset by the ability to solo super hard content - our main self heal, Catch a Breath, was broken, hunters could just blast and kite and champs get endless killing spree heals.

The update has transformed Catch a Breath to a 40k heal instead of a 4k heal. Damage seems to have increased by a factor of 2 or 3 - regular hits of 2k and crits of 6k. Red doesn't seem to have increased all that much more than blue, but it started from a higher base.

I have a level 25 guard i was playing for fun in the lone lands. In sword and board red, on-level mobs die in about 3 hits, which given how fast they execute on 1H seems crazy fast. Makes me wonder how many of these balance issues stem from the vast changes in stats from 105 to 115 - the old guard was acceptable up until i entered mordor, then every quest became like a raid and it was touch and go whether i could turn in before my gear broke.

I'm starting to think the <level 65 content is becoming too easy mode on all classes , not just broken hunters. Trivializing the combat doesn't help people learn their class, and doesn't really address the sheer length of the levelling up process new players now face.

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Originally Posted by siipperi

Radiate radiates terrible bleed.

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Well that's not good.

Terrible wound needs to be nerfed down a bit in size and that interaction needs to be removed. Also need to neuter guard self heals a little, warriors heart is excessive right now. Thrill of Danger will probably be fine if it's the only thing red guards have other than catch a breath (although need to make sure no thrill of danger CD reduction sets are reintroduced).

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Originally Posted by Joedangod

Well that's not good.

Terrible wound needs to be nerfed down a bit in size and that interaction needs to be removed. Also need to neuter guard self heals a little, warriors heart is excessive right now. Thrill of Danger will probably be fine if it's the only thing red guards have other than catch a breath (although need to make sure no thrill of danger CD reduction sets are reintroduced).

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In the old Days (Mirkwood to Rohan), CaB was our main heal (15 second CD with legacy) and Warrior's Heart was a panic button with a 5 minute CD. WH is still our biggest self heal per second probably , it feels wrong to be using it so regularly. Plus, as a regular heal, you have to let yourself get alarmingly low before using so as to not waste any of the heal.

CaB should be the major part of our healing and it should be tied to having a shield equipped, to give the player a reason for actually using one. I'm not sure how I feel about being able to generate reactives to use it out of thin air from Force Opening or Shield Blow, or being able to use it while blocking with a 2 hander in yellow.

Red is the reckless, DPS at any cost stance and probably should not come with any morale restore at all (other than CaB, if shield equipped). Power restore is ok, but if the content is hard enough to need healing, swap !

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Originally Posted by Joedangod

Well that's not good.

Terrible wound needs to be nerfed down a bit in size and that interaction needs to be removed. Also need to neuter guard self heals a little, warriors heart is excessive right now. Thrill of Danger will probably be fine if it's the only thing red guards have other than catch a breath (although need to make sure no thrill of danger CD reduction sets are reintroduced).

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Please quit with the nerfs to guard self healing talk

self healing on red guard now is ####...

we used to be able to get alot of heals thru crits on the multitude of bleeds, now that is gone.

honorable combat is worthless,
thrill of danger is worthless,
strength of man although a racial skill is so pathetic I actually trait uppercut instead

the only thing we have is catch a breath and warriors heart and catch a breath is underwhelming to say the least.

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Originally Posted by SACLOTRO

Please quit with the nerfs to guard self healing talk

self healing on red guard now is ####...

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And damage is pretty great. I'd much rather have the damage than the healing so I'm going to keep recommending that the healing be reduced so that it's in line with the other DPS traitlines. If you want something totally different go ahead and make your case but otherwise stop telling me to be silent.

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Originally Posted by SACLOTRO

the only thing we have is catch a breath and warriors heart and catch a breath is underwhelming to say the least.

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https://i.imgur.com/FaoywWV.png

https://media2.giphy.com/media/l41JU...I5ZS/giphy.gif

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Originally Posted by Nemulas

Red is the reckless, DPS at any cost stance and probably should not come with any morale restore at all (other than CaB, if shield equipped). Power restore is ok, but if the content is hard enough to need healing, swap !

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They generally seem to be leaving DPS traitlines with a small-ish % based heal. CaB is fairly in line with self-motivation and blood arrow for example. Thrill of Danger is somewhat tough for a red guard to trait (very hard if they drop honorable combat for a more useful capstone ability) and it's not that great in T2C or vs single targets. Pledge still needs to be moved deeper into blue though.

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Originally Posted by Decrepify

https://i.imgur.com/FaoywWV.png

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That's weak ! With legacy maxed, it looks like this -

https://i.imgur.com/EJPD19H.jpg

Also, it is modified by incoming healing factor. So my 112k Morale Guard restores over 40k with it

First, I want to thank you Vastin for making red guard to be functional again. However, I want to give some feedback on unaddressed questions in the red tree, so hopefully it can be revisited on a later fix to guards.


http://i67.tinypic.com/206htm9.jpg



I did a quick and careless parse on dummy just to show the "true power" of Reactive Parry trait in red tree. Scale or delete please.


http://i68.tinypic.com/opd4bo.jpg

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Originally Posted by Nemulas

That's weak ! With legacy maxed, it looks like this -

https://i.imgur.com/EJPD19H.jpg

Also, it is modified by incoming healing factor. So my 112k Morale Guard restores over 40k with it

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I am happily surprised too for CaB being finally useful, that's 2 imbued legacy replacement scrolls used after changes just for it :D (both tanking and dps belts). Also keep in mind that frecuent War-Chant use reduces the effective cooldown of CaB even more, to around 30s total.

Been testing on live and it seems Guardian in general is overtuned at low levels. It's about as absurd as low level minstrel in terms of trivialising low level content and the base damage of the class should probably be adjusted to not be so high at low levels.

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Originally Posted by Joedangod

They generally seem to be leaving DPS traitlines with a small-ish % based heal. CaB is fairly in line with self-motivation and blood arrow for example. Thrill of Danger is somewhat tough for a red guard to trait (very hard if they drop honorable combat for a more useful capstone ability) and it's not that great in T2C or vs single targets. Pledge still needs to be moved deeper into blue though.

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Hi

Please do NOT move pledge deeper Into blue line. Remember that red line was totally massacred with U16, so guards start from a very low dps/selfheal in red line.

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Originally Posted by Joedangod

Been testing on live and it seems Guardian in general is overtuned at low levels. It's about as absurd as low level minstrel in terms of trivialising low level content and the base damage of the class should probably be adjusted to not be so high at low levels.

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Yup. Am usually one-shotting things on a guardian I took through the newbie intro instance and up to level 9 or so using the newbie 1handers. Soon as you get a 2hander it's almost always a one-shot.

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Originally Posted by Litreb

Hi

Please do NOT move pledge deeper Into blue line. Remember that red line was totally massacred with U16, so guards start from a very low dps/selfheal in red line.

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Remember we didn't have any sustained self healing at first...

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Originally Posted by Litreb

Hi

Please do NOT move pledge deeper Into blue line. Remember that red line was totally massacred with U16, so guards start from a very low dps/selfheal in red line.

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Redline has warriors heart, catch a breath and honorable combat available to it with minimal effort right now so Pledge is a defensive skill too many for a line that has competitive ST DPS. It's doing a lot better than most ST DPS lines in terms of self healing, it'll still be doing better than most even if they move pledge deeper into blue and Warriors Heart was removed from red entirely.

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Originally Posted by Joedangod

Redline has warriors heart, catch a breath and honorable combat available to it with minimal effort right now so Pledge is a defensive skill too many for a line that has competitive ST DPS. It's doing a lot better than most ST DPS lines in terms of self healing, it'll still be doing better than most even if they move pledge deeper into blue and Warriors Heart was removed from red entirely.

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Honourable combat is useless in its current state. WH has a 2 min cd. Remove HC and replace with increased crit or dps.

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Originally Posted by siipperi

Remember we didn't have any sustained self healing at first...

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Dont you think the game has evolved a bit since those days ????

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Originally Posted by Litreb

Dont you think the game has evolved a bit since those days ????

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Yeah. Class has significantly stronger damage than back then also significantly stronger self healing than back then so what's the issue?

I'm sorry but as someone who has been maining a Guard since day 1 with the purpose of tankimg I cannot get behind changes that affect it for the worst in my opinion. The reasons for this are aa follows:

1.I cannot trust you guys with making changes to complex mechanics such as tanking. I hope that you will take the necessary time to make sure the changes applied will work appropriately(fingers crossed) but I just cannot forget Helm's Deep launch when force taunts were broken and tanking guards were left scrambling to understand why such changes to a perfectly functional tanking process were made.

2.The premise of tanking through DPS with increased multipliers on skills is plainly put not as enjoyable as pre Helm's Deep guardian tanking was. I and many others enjoy tanking now as well but its nothing compared to what it was before. If you want to steer the class away from relying on Force Taunts(which we have been asking for a long time) then pre Helm's Deep guardian is the way to go.

3.Nerfing challenge targets alongside a general nerf to AoE targets will hurt tanking a substantially. The community will simply adjust by looking for the next class that tank masses of mobs reliably (warden). In order to make instanced content more reliant on double tanks, changes need to be made on the instance first and only THEN on the classes.

4. I don't like the fact that AoE targets is being removed from the unimbued LI. If you want to make people rely less on unimbued Lis then make it so you cannot switch Lis, in combat(as others have mentioned). Also make Imbued Lis more attractive. Guardian tanking weapon is a complete joke, totally abandoning superior tanking legacies such as Guardians Ward duration for more DPS legacies?

If you are so inclined on nerfing challenge however I have a few changes to propose that would mediate the nerf much better than steering us towards more dps based threat(yikes):

a)Give us back pre Helm's Deep Shield of Fire trait(increased threat from Shield Taunt + increased targets)
b)Make Vexing Blow generate additional threat once again(one of the skills driven to obsoletion in terms of tanking with Helm's Deep)
c)Pre Helm's Deep Litany of Defiance. Once literally the vanguard of Guardian tanking, driven into total obsoletion with Helm's Deep changes. Truly one of the saddest changes made to Guardian tanking.

Oh and one more thing, the current number of targets on AoE skills.is.laughable. You cannot expect us to tank AoE with a nerfed force taunt and 5 targets on many melee skills. Although its left to be seen how it's going to work, I would be surprised if Guardians don't start to struggle with a healer's aggro on any pull including more than 5-6 mobs.

(Original post by a genius, I support it 100% and frankly just want tanking to be fun and respected again)

Unsure if this has been stated elsewhere, but seems a couple pretty important bugs:

@Vastin: Insult to Injury (Yellow Line first trait on the left) appears to be bugged with it's interactions with Terrible Wound. When traited it appears to refresh Terrible Wound and it doing so eliminates Terrible Wound's chance to Crit.

This seems to be why there were people who thought Terrible Wound itself was bugged earlier in the thread, and were incredulous about a Guard having a normal-ish Crit rate (25-30%) on it compared to the 10%-ish that other Guards were experiencing. Parses are significantly different without that bug, obviously. ;)

Radiate also seems to be bugged in that it seems to spread a Terrible Wound that is 1/5th the strength of the original Terrible Wound, and you can then spread that lesser Terrible Wound back to your main target.

EDIT: Kasius/Drizz already had conveyed this on the Guardian forums. He told me to post it a few days ago, but I hadn't gotten around to it. xD

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Originally Posted by canyouaddcolour

This seems to be why there were people who thought Terrible Wound itself was bugged earlier in the thread, and were incredulous about a Guard having a normal-ish Crit rate (25-30%) on it compared to the 10%-ish that other Guards were experiencing. Parses are significantly different without that bug, obviously. ;)

Radiate also seems to be bugged in that it seems to spread a Terrible Wound that is 1/5th the strength of the original Terrible Wound, and you can then spread that lesser Terrible Wound back to your main target.

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I have a fix en-route for the Terrible Wound/Radiate interaction (TW shouldn't be radiating at all).

Not sure if this is related to the crit bug or not. If that doesn't clear up with the radiate change I'll have to take another look at it.

TW and HW are both being reduced a bit, as they are a tad OP, but I'm also buffing Sweeping Cut and I have a fix for Honorable Combat coming in the same set.

-Vastin

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Originally Posted by Vastin

I have a fix en-route for the Terrible Wound/Radiate interaction (TW shouldn't be radiating at all).

Not sure if this is related to the crit bug or not. If that doesn't clear up with the radiate change I'll have to take another look at it.

TW and HW are both being reduced a bit, as they are a tad OP, but I'm also buffing Sweeping Cut and I have a fix for Honorable Combat coming in the same set.

-Vastin

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What about the missing target on Shield-Taunt and Shield-Smash? They're both missing 1. Speaking of Shield-Taunt, it could use more targets on itself, to be honest.
Shield-Taunt doesn't benefit from War-chants demoralizing anthem trait.
Can we also get any actual numbers on how big the nerfs are? 20%? 30%?
Also, Insult to Injury refreshes bleeds. Is that intended to happen? Or a leftover from past.

Thanks for the changes to Guardian.

I'd like to cast my vote in favor of Incoming Healing becoming the new passive bonus on Guardian belts.

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Originally Posted by Vastin

I have a fix en-route for the Terrible Wound/Radiate interaction (TW shouldn't be radiating at all).

Not sure if this is related to the crit bug or not. If that doesn't clear up with the radiate change I'll have to take another look at it.

TW and HW are both being reduced a bit, as they are a tad OP, but I'm also buffing Sweeping Cut and I have a fix for Honorable Combat coming in the same set.

-Vastin

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Just making note that I bypass the 'crit' bug by not traiting Insult to Injury, so it would seem that it is related to that trait. Insult to Injury traited = 10-15% Crit on Terrible Wound (max). Untraited (still 1 rank in Radiate tho, because I have to) 25-35% Crit on Terrible Wound.

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Originally Posted by greatgimli

Thanks for the changes to Guardian.

I'd like to cast my vote in favor of Incoming Healing becoming the new passive bonus on Guardian belts.

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This is the simplest solution to "what to do with Shield Use Rank", IMO. Just give Guards the bonus Champs get from their Rune (Incoming Healing at max rank = 9460).

Incoming healing as passive is bad for guardians. We do not need more free stats. Getting that amount of incoming healing passively just means there is not very much needed that stats to be slotted. Bad move that would be. We should build our stats, not get awarded them free.

Imo way better idea would be to tie it to shield skills critical rating. That way guardian would have access to more critical hits with shield skills while tanking, thus increasing aggro potential.

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Originally Posted by siipperi

Incoming healing as passive is bad for guardians. We do not need more free stats.

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Most tanking classes get free stats.

I don't think anyone asks for 29k inc healing softcap or smth.....

A small ammount would be nice to have.

Something to help with threat would be nice too though.

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Originally Posted by siipperi

Imo way better idea would be to tie it to shield skills critical rating. That way guardian would have access to more critical hits with shield skills while tanking, thus increasing aggro potential.

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Currently, there aren't any problems holding aggro anyway. Especially if you have a swap trait tree for Improved Shield Spikes.

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Originally Posted by Kazabooboo

Most tanking classes get free stats.

I don't think anyone asks for 29k inc healing softcap or smth.....

A small ammount would be nice to have.

Something to help with threat would be nice too though.

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And I don't want guardians being part of that crowd.

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War Chant now does physical damage.

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Emm, what i have to do with my light damage legacy now?
Could you please stop making legacies irrelevant\broken?
Adjust them according to changes before it goes live. LIVE IS NOT BETA. Can we have some quality of life?

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Originally Posted by Siddharta

Emm, what i have to do with my light damage legacy now?
Could you please stop making legacies irrelevant\broken?
Adjust them according to changes before it goes live. LIVE IS NOT BETA. Can we have some quality of life?

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Hopefully Vastin can shed some light as to why this change was made.

Still waiting on max targets issue though...

About war chant : does the legacy of light damage continue to be useful with this physical damage, or does it become useless ?

I have already reported many class-related bugs and they haven't been fixed, so this time I am going to post here:

- Warrior's Heart: Warrior's Fortitude trait cancels itself when it is equipped in addition to a trait of same name from another line. Example: If I equip Blue Line Warrior's Fortitude + Yellow Line Warrior's Fortitude, I get no benefit from either one of them.

- Some skills apply their effects only after the skill enters cooldown. Result: If you're stunned while you activate a certain skill, that skill will enter cooldown without applying its effect. Example: Thrill of Danger morale restore.

- If this is intentional, it was not mentioned in the release notes: Radiate no longer applies to bleeds.

- The Mitigation Buff Proc from "Bolster" is never triggered.

- "Bring On The Pain" isn't applied to partial hits

- Thrill of Danger can be avoided by enemies, even though it doesn't deal damage or steal power from mobs (It only heals your character's morale and power, based on how many mobs are close to you).

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Originally Posted by DiogoVP

- If this is intentional, it was not mentioned in the release notes: Radiate no longer applies to bleeds.

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That one is indeed intentional. Humorously it was never supposed to radiate bleeds in the first place.

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Originally Posted by Joedangod

That one is indeed intentional. Humorously it was never supposed to radiate bleeds in the first place.

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If it is intentional, the tooltip of the trait should be changed.

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Originally Posted by DiogoVP

If it is intentional, the tooltip of the trait should be changed.

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Heh. Looks like the tooltip is both right and wrong right now.

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Originally Posted by Joedangod

Heh. Looks like the tooltip is both right and wrong right now.

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Ya, the tooltip should be specific about it being non damaging debuffs only. :)

Hello,

could be possible to wear shield at my back while I have no thread, instead of all time left handed?

Thx for response.

TIVL

To @Vastin:

With update 22.3, still no use for shield use rank, why? :(

The trait "Reactive parry" does extremely weak damage, please scale or replace with something useful.

Guards have some traits and abilities crit-based, but unless other classes, we don't have a + % crit trait. We only have a clunky and costly trait in yellow (Tenderize) that gives only +2.X % in combat after 5 parries, but is lost if you use Sting. Please give us a plain %crit trait, and/or remove sting cashout of tenderize as you already did with Bolster.

Thrill of Battle trait is useless. It was weak even without the internal cooldown. Red guards don't need more heal sources, replace it with something usefull (maybe crit?)

For a capstone trait, Prey on the Weak is very weak damage, it needs a boost. Increase magnitude, or make it not crit-based, or working on any damage done on a bleeding enemy (any guard bleed).

Terrible wound could get a slight boost, it consistently falls behind slashing and haemorraghic wound in parses (at least for me).


I want to thank you for the revamp of guard red line, very well done. If only this remaining issues are addressed, red guards will be in an excellent spot now and for the future!

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Originally Posted by Vastin

• Shield Use is effectively obsolete for the time being (weapon damage applies instead). We're evaluating what to do with it currently as it has never scaled properly with our other systems.

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Can we please get something done with Shield Use Rank on LI belt ? It's been obsolete for over 18 months :(

And take a look on tenderize (maxranked) still doesn´t stack correctly.
Either it stops now at a stacknumber of 4 instead the 5 it should or the numbers in the background for the calculation are wrong.

Part of the multitude of problems facing red-line Guardians are related to the other bugs in-game. Staff aren't sufficiently testing out alterations or changes to code before implementation.

How many times have you come across a bug that is Glaringly obvious to anyone who has played the game but seems to have been missed or ignored by those responsible for ensuring it is working properly? Things like quests that cant be completed, skills that aren't working properly, missing items, character animation issues, cosmetic display problems, battle animation weirdness (using a sword-based skill but seeing your crossbow smacking the NME, a current bug), you know, things that anyone who has actually tested the changes live would have seen.

For example my guess is that staff depend primarily on feedback from players, players who may be more interested in seeing the new content and who may not be submitting feedback/bug reports when they do come across a bug and aren't trained to spot potential problems. Another scenario is that staff responsible for quality control, if they exist, aren't familiar with certain classes and their skills and effects and/or aren't well versed in the overall actual gameplay. Another scenario - a staffer responsible for altering a red-line Guardians stats/traits for example has never played the game as a Guardian and just assumes everything is okay if sparks and smoke don't immediately fly and the game doesn't crash when the code is implemented because a similar change to a Hunter for example that they MAY be familiar with, worked just fine.

I am a hardcore red-line Guardian (11 red-line Guardian alts), I don't do the tank thing and over the 6 years I have been playing the game I have seen MANY Guardian related bugs pop up that shouldn't have even made it into the game in the first place had the changes been properly checked. What we see are changes being flung at us in a sometimes haphazard fashion and that hurts the games reputation.

Bottom line? Players of the game are NOT Quality Control. Knocking on wood and crossing your fingers when adding new content or changing existing code is NOT Quality Control. Waiting until enough players point out a problem before finally fixing it is NOT Quality Control. "Fixing" an issue that breaks something else is NOT Quality Control. I would happily wait an additional couple of weeks for new content or changes to be released IF THEY WORK.

I am growing weary of being treated as a guinea pig in a lab experiment as I suspect others are as well, which may explain declining membership/VIP's.

Time to get dissapointed with a half baked guardian update and wait another almost 3 level caps for the other half. Because yes ssg, this update has to be huge, it's not just some small tweaks here and there. Blue line is still a bit alright but still needs a ton of utility and defensive buffs but red line and yellow line is really where you should be getting a whole page of changes each. Those 2 are the most messed up lines atm and will need close to total reworks.

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Originally Posted by HolyDuckTape

Time to get dissapointed with a half baked guardian update and wait another almost 3 level caps for the other half. Because yes ssg, this update has to be huge, it's not just some small tweaks here and there. Blue line is still a bit alright but still needs a ton of utility and defensive buffs but red line and yellow line is really where you should be getting a whole page of changes each. Those 2 are the most messed up lines atm and will need close to total reworks.

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Is there notes anywhere with Guard changes, I haven't seen anything?

Classes:
Guardian
Cooldown for Thrill of Battle heal reduced to [20->8s].
Stoic bubble now provides damage reduction during its effect rather than a heal on expiration.
"Bellow" trait reduces Challenge cooldown by 5s per rank. Trait tooltip has been updated to reflect this.
Break Ranks now applies a group-wide buff rather than individual.
The skill is now triggered by Shield-taunt rather than Shield-smash.
This buff can only be triggered once every 60 seconds.
Fortification can now begin rebuilding immediately after being cashed out.

OK When are you guy's gonna release the rest of the patch notes on class rework ? This is no where close to what Guard's need. Juggernaut needs to be -100% All Incoming Damage during it's duration & Pledge should be ~ -30% All Damage types negate.

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Originally Posted by Vastin

• Shield Use is effectively obsolete for the time being (weapon damage applies instead). We're evaluating what to do with it currently as it has never scaled properly with our other systems.

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Still waiting.

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Originally Posted by zaboch

Still waiting.

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2 years later. lmao unreal.

When will guards get an update?

Please update the Guardian.

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Originally Posted by Treadstone87

Please update the Guardian.

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Originally Posted by LordOfTheSquids

Classes:

• Guardian - Shield-wall will no longer block the target from using Stamp.
• Guardian - Fixed erroneous placeholder text for the Bolster characteristic.
• Guardian - Added tooltip notes stating that Warrior's Fortitude traits from separate trees will not stack. This is just a text change reflecting the existing functionality.

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Here you go

Everyone: SSG, we need guard revamp.
SSG: we have guard revamp at home.
guard revamp at home:

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Guardian - Shield-wall will no longer block the target from using Stamp.
Guardian - Fixed erroneous placeholder text for the Bolster characteristic.
Guardian - Added tooltip notes stating that Warrior's Fortitude traits from separate trees will not stack. This is just a text change reflecting the existing functionality.

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Originally Posted by HolyDuckTape

Here you go

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Finally! Now that the tooltip text is up to date, I'm the main tank for my kinship again. Thanks, devs!