Class Update - Guardians

Hey Guardians! This is the thread detailing the upcoming class changes being posted to Bullroarer for you to play with and comment on.

These changes are not final! There will be an upcoming pass based on feedback, balance issues, and bug reports.

As Cordovan requested, please keep it civil, and stick mostly to your own thoughts and opinions on the update. It's far easier for us to go through the feedback if it doesn't devolve into people challenging each other's opinions.

-Vastin

Guardian

• Guardian Keen Blade (red line) has been heavily re-designed! The reasons for this redesign were three-fold:
  
  • The prior implementation was very complex and buggy, and proved resistant to debugging.
  • The prior implementation was too server process intensive due to the way bleeds were being handled.
  • The DPS of the red line guardian was far too low to make it particularly functional for soloing or as a team DPS member.
  
  
• The goal of this redesign is to strip out a lot of the underlying complexity of the tree, while retaining its general flavor and giving it a faster, more effective skill rotation.
• The line is intended to be a functional soloing build for the guardian that will allow them to play through the game at a much more acceptable pace. It is not explicitly intended to be fully competitive as a raid-DPS line, though we'll see where it actually sits in testing.
• The summary of the overall redesign includes:
  
  • Overall skill damage for the guardian has increased substantially. The blue and yellow lines will see some benefit from this through the base skills, but the red line will see the bulk of this benefit, through their tree specific skills and bleed effects.
  • The tiering bleed concept has been eliminated due to bugs and performance issues. Additionally, we felt it was not a good concept for landscape play, as it took too long to set up Bleed stacks to be worthwhile.
  • The new version has three separate bleeds associated with Sweeping Cuts, Thrust, and Brutal Strike, and the primary skill rotation revolves around keeping these up as efficiently as possible, while weaving in other skills as feasible. There are still some skills that play off of existing bleeds (such as overpower), or cash them out (such as Honorable Combat), but otherwise the bleed structure is much simpler and the interactions are fewer and much more explicit.
  • While the red line bleeds are now stronger, they no longer benefit from the yellow line Radiate talent.
  • Guardian bleeds are no longer applied or renewed by crits.
  • Several talent names were changed to reflect adjustments to their functionality necessitated by the redesign of the bleed skills.
  • Several other skills that had accumulated too many modifiers were streamlined a bit, such as Hammer Down and To the King.
  
  
• Some changes to the way damage is assigned to skills and effects is being made. These changes are largely not visible, as they are low-level changes behind the scenes, but these adjustments will make it easier for us to make changes to the classes in the future, and should make future design updates happen more quickly.
• Shield Smash and Warchant are no longer tactical skills and draw their damage from the primary weapon.
• Brutal Charge should now cause the next skill to crit rather than knockdown (note that it can still be b/p/e'd).
• Warrior's Heart bubble is now based on a % of max vitality.
• Catch a breath LI bonuses now properly affect the skill. % change is now additive, and has been adjusted to reflect this change.
• 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.

We are excited to be able to bring you this class work on Bullroarer, and look forward to reading your feedback. In order to get the most from your feedback, we would very much like you to do the following in this thread:

• Make sure your feedback is focused on the class work seen in the Release Notes and the writing above, or focused on your specific feedback regarding the class in cases when you feel it necessary to discuss things beyond what is in the notes.
• DO NOT REPLY TO OTHER POSTS IN THIS THREAD TO PROVIDE YOUR OPINION ON THEIR POST. We want to be able to use this thread to foster a productive discussion between you and the development team, and that means we are less interested in your opinion about someone else's opinion. If you are responding to another poster in this thread, it should not be to provide your opinion about their post. If you are providing feedback that is not in-line with another person's post, you can simply provide that information independently. Posts about someone else's feedback that are opinion-based in nature WILL be deleted from this targeted feedback thread. If you must have this discussion, please do so in a new thread on the Bullroarer forums, and not in this thread.
• Please be civil. Insulting, harassing, abusive, or profanity/filtered profanity-laden posts will be deleted. We welcome critical feedback as it relates specifically to the work being done, but this thread is not the place to provide your opinion on the development team itself, or your view on the historic work that has been done or not done in regard to class balance. In order to get the most use out of this thread, you can expect me to be a bit more heavy-handed on moderation than I typically am.
• Recognize that this class balance work is not a comprehensive and final adjustment to classes, but is rather the first in a series of changes aimed at improving LOTRO's classes throughout the game. We are happy to read about what further work you would like to see, but want to make sure you understand that this is not the final step in this process.

There is some chance that we will not respond immediately to your comments today, as we would like to gather some feedback initially in a relatively "neutral" way prior to providing responses. Thank you for your help in making sure we get this right, both now and in the future, and thank you for the time you spend on Bullroarer in the coming days to try out these changes in-game.

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Originally Posted by Vastin

[COLOR="#0099ff"]Hey Guardians! This is the thread detailing the upcoming class changes being posted to Bullroarer for you to play with and comment on.

These changes are not final! There will be an upcoming pass based on feedback, balance issues, and bug reports.

As Cordovan requested, please keep it civil, and stick mostly to your own thoughts and opinions on the update. It's far easier for us to go through the feedback if it doesn't devolve into people challenging each other's opinions.

[*]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.[/LIST]

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How is this class balancing when other classes have two legendary items with main line legacies powered by starlit crystals and now Guards only have one.

All the starlits I put on my belt are now useless so its like crippling a class compared to burgs that have DPS on weapon and incoming healing on the tools (for example), we have dps on the weapon and nothing on the belt. You couldn't have at least converted shield use to incoming healing?

And changing shield smash and war chant from tactical to damage based on weapon? What weapon is associated with war chant????

Before I could stack tactical mastery to both buff my damage and healing but with no tactical skill affecting my DPS, tactical mastery is pretty much useless. Will have to change essences to physical mastery. I know this without having to do any testing. In fact testing will be difficult since my gear is not designed for the changes. I will need essence reclaimation scrolls and new essences to even see what the new system is really like.

This change alone means I need to change most of the essences on my Guard. Horrible changes as its not class balance but total class and build redesign.

Extensive testing is on the way. Will provide details here.

I'll hold off on commenting on the Red line redesign until I see it in action.

Shield Smash and Warchant are no longer tactical skills and draw their damage from the primary weapon.
This is pretty nice I suppose.
Brutal Charge should now cause the next skill to crit rather than knockdown (note that it can still be b/p/e'd).
Not sure how I feel about this one. Red will never be something you would willingly run in a raid scenario, so this kinda hurts solo survivability. Then again, since the Red line is being redesigned, maybe crits will matter more?
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.
Incoming healing would probably be a safe suggestion. Can we get a confirmation if at least something will replace it before going live?

Not sure if anyone is aware, but the rune slotted on the belt IA item provides a MASSIVE DPS increase to gaurdian's Shield skills, possibly due to Tactical Damage Rune providing a boost to the shield use rank.

A few things I notice. First, Guards have a very impressive-looking legacy that increases the critical damage of bleeds, but it was never useful because we were constantly refreshing bleeds and they can't crit when they refresh. Since we're not going to be able to do that, the bleeds should crit now, and the legacy will pump our numbers up? Okay, but consider that most of our damage in AOE situations was those bleeds bouncing off each other, I'm guessing our single target damage will see a big increase but our AOE damage won't go up that much or it will go down.

By the way, why can't Guardians get their bleeds up fast enough for the tiers to be useful? A few years ago a dev borked the class and, among other things, nerfed the trait in yellow line that gives a chance of refreshing bleeds and debuffs (30% to 15%). Never got fixed. Thanks, I guess. And Brutal Charge was already causing the skill to crit, without the knockdown it's basically useless, you can keep those points and spend them somewhere else.

I don't really understand why shield use needs to be changed, it makes perfect sense for shield skills and war-chant to be sort of tactical skills because they're threat builders, it's messy but functional (like threat was, and believe me most tanks loved that), but you need to change it, I just really, really hope this doesn't get even messier.

But last, and my major concern, is that I see no mention of Prey on the Weak. POTW is, fundamentally, what's allowed me to solo on my Guardian since Helm's Deep. It provides a chance to heal for a percentage of morale when you tier up a bleed. At times, in AOE situations, it can heal for over 20,000 morale on a Sweeping Cut. That was the trade-off with a Champion, you sacrificed damage but gained self-heals. Now I'm imagining Guardians doing more damage, but still significantly less than a Champion, with no source of consistent self-healing and no knockdown (Champions still have multiple stuns they can use). Unless damage is being buffed very close to a Champion's, I don't see how this won't make Guardians unable to solo content like the Northern Mirkwood questlines. Maybe I'm being too pessimistic.

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Originally Posted by Vastin

Shield Smash and Warchant are no longer tactical skills and draw their damage from the primary weapon.

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What about guardians who bought tactical damage runes to increase their threat generation with shield smash and warchant? Will they be reimbursed?

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Originally Posted by Thorondir

What about guardians who bought tactical damage runes to increase their threat generation with shield smash and warchant? Will they be reimbursed?

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Yes. Taken from the main patch notes:

We recognize that this will impact some players' current IA layouts. To manage this, those existing Tactical bonus relics will be removed from your IA items and relic inventories, and be replaced by barter tokens that can be exchanged at a Gorgoroth raid vendor for an equivalent relic (either DPS or HPS), so that you can rebalance your IA build around the new restrictions.

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Originally Posted by Drarin

Catch a breath LI bonuses now properly affect the skill. % change is now additive, and has been adjusted to reflect this change.
This still won't make Catch a Breath particularly useful as a healing skill at high levels. If I'm reading this right, the actual heal isn't increasing, just the legacy modifier? So it'll still be a +29.4% increase? That's still only an upper limit of around 3682 restored, which is about 2.4-2.8% of the average end game guardian morale pool.

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Pretty sure catch a breath is % heal now, thats why mention of additive to already existing % on legacy. So it scales same regarding your level.

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Originally Posted by commdorvis

By the way, why can't Guardians get their bleeds up fast enough for the tiers to be useful? A few years ago a dev borked the class and, among other things, nerfed the trait in yellow line that gives a chance of refreshing bleeds and debuffs (30% to 15%). Never got fixed. Thanks, I guess. And Brutal Charge was already causing the skill to crit, without the knockdown it's basically useless, you can keep those points and spend them somewhere else.



But last, and my major concern, is that I see no mention of Prey on the Weak. POTW is, fundamentally, what's allowed me to solo on my Guardian since Helm's Deep. It provides a chance to heal for a percentage of morale when you tier up a bleed. At times, in AOE situations, it can heal for over 20,000 morale on a Sweeping Cut. That was the trade-off with a Champion, you sacrificed damage but gained self-heals. Now I'm imagining Guardians doing more damage, but still significantly less than a Champion, with no source of consistent self-healing and no knockdown (Champions still have multiple stuns they can use). Unless damage is being buffed very close to a Champion's, I don't see how this won't make Guardians unable to solo content like the Northern Mirkwood questlines. Maybe I'm being too pessimistic.

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There is no bleed tiering anymore.

Red line should see about 2.5-3x stronger st dps. To compensate this: continious god mode survivability is obviously removed. You still have 3-4 extremely potent healing skills (well 5 if someone traits thrill of danger). But all these have substabtial cooldowns so you cant go on eternity.

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Originally Posted by siipperi

Pretty sure catch a breath is % heal now, thats why mention of additive to already existing % on legacy. So it scales same regarding your level.

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In live? Nope.

Since the phrasing is "% change is now additive, and has been adjusted to reflect this change", I took that to mean that the % the legacy increases wasn't properly being applied before hand, but now should additively apply (such that the skill now heals 129.4% of its value apart from 100%)

Then again, I could be wrong. I'll amend my comment after seeing it on Bullroarer.

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Originally Posted by Vastin

....Brutal Strike....

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Sorry for nitpicking....what?

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Originally Posted by zipfile

Sorry for nitpicking....what?

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You know, the classic attack Brutal Strike. You can use it and Poke to increase your bleed tier :)

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Originally Posted by Drarin

You know, the classic attack Brutal Strike. You can use it and Poke to increase your bleed tier :)

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If you mean the attack skill where your character slowly raises his weapon and hits an enemy down on the head like an old man uses a cane to hit his dumb grandchild, that's Brutal Assault.

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Originally Posted by zipfile

If you mean the attack skill where your character slowly raises his weapon and hits an enemy down on the head like an old man uses a cane to hit his dumb grandchild, that's Brutal Assault.

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This ^

I don't remember last time I used the skill. Sting + stagger gets off quicker and does more damage.

I can't give any authoritative point of view, since I don't have BR installed and reading the patch notes makes me never want to. But it looks like my favorite class has taken a beating yet again. Yeah, single target damage will probably go up. But when 2 of 3 bleed-applying skills are single-target only, and those bleeds can't be copied?

Looks like guardian red-line is now a mindless, 3-skill-rotation champion lite.

The current system of bleeds has its flaws, yes, but any guard who knew what the heck they were doing could have t5 bleeds in under a second on stuff, and t10 in short order. One of the things I love about the class is that you do better the more mobs you pull ... up to a point. Knowing that point and testing it was half the fun.

As far as the war-chant/shield smash no longer doing tactical damage, what will be replacing the now utterly useless +Light Damage LI legacy?

Edit: Possible suggestions - if you must do this, make the bleeds dependent on aoe skills. Also - as others have said, what is happening to Prey on the Weak?

Guardian has rich rotation and refreshing brutal assault is by far the most important aspect of it, even too much. I would suggest 20% nerf to brutal assault bleed (heamorrhage), 10% nerf to other 2 general bleeds and buff initial skill damage by additional 15%. To make class less reliant on bleeds.

I misunderstood the Catch a Breath legacy change, so I'll just say: That's great. I used to rely on CaB a great deal to keep my morale stable, but it's been irrelevant as anything but a power restore and animation interrupt for a long time now. If POTW is gone but CaB is buffed, it adds a more consistent element in maintaining the morale pool. If you could also make War-chant affect its cooldown (the bug has been noted many, many times) that would be amazing.

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Originally Posted by Vastin

Guardian

• Brutal Charge should now cause the next skill to crit rather than knockdown (note that it can still be b/p/e'd).

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I thought the knockdown was very useful when solo questing on my guardian, I'd knock them down and deal some damage, In my opinion the knockdown is more useful then an extra critical hit.

So played around a bit. It looks like the Grand Abyssal Striking runes still show +125 (not sure if this is accurate anymore, since the tactical ones were dropped to +91), but it seems that even with the +125.4 base damage modifier (that is, from +0 to +125.4 on the same weapon), my Shield Smash damage only increase by about 1,000. This seems rather low, but with the overall shift in how the damage runes are working, not sure if its intended?

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Originally Posted by Vastin

[*]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.

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I'm glad to see this was a consideration.

https://i.imgur.com/iOBMNGP.png
Heavy Weapons Training reduced from 10% at max rank to 5%.
Why was this nerfed?

https://i.imgur.com/zojKcEw.png
Damage seems to have nearly doubled.
Same case as with Brutal Assault.
Protection by the Sword parry responses do no affect Brutal Assaults cooldown refresh when traiting Tireless Blows.

https://i.imgur.com/uSS1mBo.png
To The King damage has gone up by almost 2.5x.
No change to the Blind Rage buff

https://i.imgur.com/yfR8DBj.png
Haemorrhage's chance to bleed doubled, no bleed damage increase.

https://i.imgur.com/Sd63ipm.png
Raw Power removed, replaced with Deeper Wounds, increases the number of damaging ticks/duration of Thrusts bleed.
Considering this skill is spammed in the rotation, trait doesn't seem that useful.

Warriors Heart when used with Warriors Fortitude from Red Line crashed my game multiple times. ?????

https://i.imgur.com/NSWaAai.png
Hammer Down reworked greatly, now stuns enemies under 50% morale for 3 seconds. Damage nearly 3x from live.

https://i.imgur.com/GHYD0Be.png
Overwhelm reworked, now adds a debuff that increases attack duration of enemies if you have the thrust bleed on them.
Too weak, not useful. What will happen to bleed removal damage legacy now?

https://i.imgur.com/Xj0txNK.png
Overpower removed, replaced with a similar talent called Valorous Strenght.
By comparison, damage was increased by 5%, removed parry bonuses. So, better DPS, worse solo.
Side note: Heavy Blows didn't receive any buffs. Removal of bonus to bleeds from the trait.

Reactive Parry unchanged.

https://i.imgur.com/KsSKDKn.png
Reworked Honourable Combat. Now grants 3% heal to morale and power for every enemy that's affected by Slashing Wound (this is the new bleed tied to Sweeping Cut). Maximum of 4 targets, so 12% morale and power heal.
I like it.

Now, for the most interesting part.
https://i.imgur.com/E75Kl5X.png

Prey on the Weak. My, oh my...how far have you fallen.
No more healing, I welcome that.
No more damage, I don't like that.
Power restore is....well....why? There are no power issues in the Red line as it is, and furthermore, we already have Invigourating Parry trait.
Prey on the Weak applied a heal to Zipfile restoring 116 points to Power. < that's about 2.5% of my max power
LMAO! Come on, rework this again. It's a joke as a final talent.

https://i.imgur.com/4VgqeSj.png
Bleed Them Dry reworked. Now increases the duration of your bleeds, adding 4 seconds to Slashing Bleed (Sweeping Cut) and Deep Wound (Thrust).
This is equal to 2 extra damaging ticks

It seems like weapon DPS in general increased, so that's probably why you're seeing a lot of skill hit about 2x as hard. Think my mainhand was something like 880 DPS and my 2h about 1240ish DPS.

guardians bleeds are just too strong right now. would be better if increased base damage and lowered the bleed damage cause its too high for a tanking class with survivability like guardian.

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Originally Posted by Deadly_Myths

guardians bleeds are just too strong right now.

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Meh. Compared to some others, they're fine. Base damage is still low, bleeds can be resisted/removed.

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Originally Posted by Deadly_Myths

guardians bleeds are just too strong right now. would be better if increased base damage and lowered the bleed damage cause its too high for a tanking class with survivability like guardian.

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This is the DPS line of guardian. It's meant to DPS.

Also with the removal of the heal on prey there's a significant reduction of survivability in redline. I'm almost hesitant to welcome these changes because of that, but assuming the traits are changed to make sense (like all of the issues zip pointed out) and that I can actually do decent DPS, it's a trade I'm willing to make.

Just looking at these changes I don't really understand what SSG is trying to do with the Red Guardian. I get that they want it to be bleed-based, which I think most red guards are 100% on board with, but the traits just lack any real synergy or punch. Things like bonus pulses to bleeds are not useful when the bleeds are constantly being reapplied and don't stack. If using sweeping cuts (edit: or any other skill with a bleed) didn't overwrite its own bleed and instead applied another copy that would make sense, but right now anything that gives extra pulses will just be dead on arrival.

Rather than PoTW restoring morale or power, maybe a increase to physical and tactical mitigations, critical defense, and resistances for a short time, so that rather than healing, your defenses are increased making it harder for the mobs to pick you apart.

Right, a power restore from the top set bonus is laughable, especially when Guardians have pretty manageable power as it is. Having the Guardian do, say, 10% more damage to any target with a bleed on it would make more sense, you'd still be 'preying on the weak' (or wounded). If you want to be really ambitious you could have any target with a bleed on it take 10% more damage from any source, like the Champion's Devastating Strike, or do some sort of mitigation debuff. Just saying, you want to remove current POTW as a stop-gap, okay, but it should still offer something useful.

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Originally Posted by commdorvis

Right, a power restore from the top set bonus is laughable, especially when Guardians have pretty manageable power as it is. Having the Guardian do, say, 10% more damage to any target with a bleed on it would make more sense, you'd still be 'preying on the weak' (or wounded). If you want to be really ambitious you could have any target with a bleed on it take 10% more damage from any source, like the Champion's Devastating Strike, or do some sort of mitigation debuff. Just saying, you want to remove current POTW as a stop-gap, okay, but it should still offer something useful.

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I actually think this is a good idea for prey on the weak, and fits the theme better. Perhaps making targets take 5% more damage per bleed from the guardian, for a total of 15% with all three(?) bleeds up?

It would be an excellent capstone and really enforce the bleed playstyle.

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Originally Posted by Vastin

The new version has three separate bleeds associated with Sweeping Cuts, Thrust, and Brutal Strike, and the primary skill rotation revolves around keeping these up as efficiently as possible, while weaving in other skills as feasible. There are still some skills

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Not going to lie, sounds lot like how Guard bleeds used to work before bleed stacks existed. In the old days, in the long long ago before helms deep.

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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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Incoming healing would be nice. Or perhaps, if might say, if I can be so bold, if this isn't an overstep, some kind of small flat damage reduction.

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Originally Posted by zipfile

Meh. Compared to some others, they're fine. Base damage is still low, bleeds can be resisted/removed.

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Brutal assault should have highest bleed on this game. I have 29k tooltip on it.

A big problem with how the bleeds currently work is that they do not stack with other guardians, this means playing with two red guardians is useless. Do not make the same mistake when the warden Dots got bugged and make them guard dots stack with other guards otherwise you take away half the damage from one guard if there are more than one.

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Originally Posted by Rorrelm

A big problem with how the bleeds currently work is that they do not stack with other guardians, this means playing with two red guardians is useless. Do not make the same mistake when the warden Dots got bugged and make them guard dots stack with other guards otherwise you take away half the damage from one guard if there are more than one.

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This will definitely be addressed. Guardian bleeds are intended to operate separately from each other.

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Originally Posted by zipfile

Prey on the Weak. My, oh my...how far have you fallen.
No more healing, I welcome that.
No more damage, I don't like that.
Power restore is....well....why? There are no power issues in the Red line as it is, and furthermore, we already have Invigourating Parry trait.

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Agreed that the current version of PotW is a bit underwhelming at the moment. I'll be re-examining it.

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Originally Posted by Vastin

Agreed that the current version of PotW is a bit underwhelming at the moment. I'll be re-examining it.

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I have a bug to report.

New Hammer Down is broken if you use the raid set.

Basically, stun threshold doesn't increase, however, you get the old/removed bonuses (if it defeats an enemy, you get 5% melee damage and cooldown is refreshed)

Honestly, could we make this a normal behaving mechanic though? Stun is meh at best, and having Hammer Down as a finisher is a lot more satisfying.

Guardians: A Review of the Changes

All in all, I have to say I like the changes. The class certainly feels a lot more streamlined and the removal of the radiate interaction makes everything a lot clearer to new players. It's not a competitive DPS by any means but it's certainly a good start on the path to making it work in groups. Still, there are a few issues with this update that I'd like to go over.

Self Healing and General Survival Capability

With the Prey on the Weak and other changes implemented red Guardians currently have the following notable defense skills available to them:

• Honorable Combat.
• Catch a Breath.
• Warriors Heart.
• Skills from other trees that don't require much investment to grab:
  
  • Guardians Pledge.
  • *Bring on the Pain.

*Does require a hefty point investment in yellow but it's pretty much worth going down that tree once you finish speccing red anyway.

Honorable Combat is the smallest heal of the selection offering a 3-12% morale/power heal on a 45 seconds cooldown. I like this as the primary heal for guards as it forces them to cash out their DPS potential in order to recoup their health. It is however, a little bit weak and I'd strongly advocate tweaking a few of the values. For starters it currently can only affect up to 4 targets whilst sweeping cut (the skill that applies the bleed Honourable Combat consumes) hits up to 6 targets, bumping HC up so that it can also hit 6 targets for a max heal of 18% seems like a fair improvement to me. I would also say that the cooldown for honorable combat is a bit too long. Currently a 45s cd on a up-to-12% heal seems a little excessive and as such I would recommend it being reduced to the region of 20s or so that it can operate as the go-to heal rather than a weak panic button.

Next up is Catch a Breath. The change here is rather welcome, the skill was pretty useless before only restoring about 1k morale on characters who were frequently 100k+. Still, I'm not sure I like having the cooldown reduction and heal potency legacy with this due to the fact that it's going to scale poorly in the future as the catch a breath heal gets even larger, as such I would suggest removing the legacy entirely and setting the morale restore to be ~25% by default with the 60s cooldown.

Now we come to warriors heart. This skill is available to all traitlines and with the legacy that pretty much everyone always has offers an 83% morale heal. It's an excellent panic button and pretty much rounds out the defenses for red Guardians here.

The last two possible defensive abilities are going to be a lot rarer. Guardians Pledge can be pretty excellent but I'm not sure I would run it by default, still I think it should probably be dropped further down into blue line to block red Guardians from chasing it. Perhaps swap it with Smashing Stab?

Bring on the pain can be very powerful in some instances due to some parts of trash not dealing a whole lot of damage and thus allowing you to recoup almost all your health from a single activation. That being said I don't think we run into that kind of thing much these days and since traiting the morale restore on Bring on the Pain prevents you from ever traiting Strong Bursts I think this ability is fine as it is and needs no changes/movement.


Now, part of the revamp to red Guardians removed the Prey on the Weak healing. Whilst this was certainly a necessary change the placeholder you left behind is quite lacking. I don't think guardians need any more survival abilities so as a replacement I would prefer to see something that buffs damage or offers group support in some way.

Red Guardian DPS

Kudos to you devs here, it's a dramatic improvement and now the class finally focuses on single target DPS like the trait tree suggests. The new bleed setup is certainly interesting to manage although so far my testing has frequently devolved into cycling thrust as much as possible in order to refresh brutal assault so that I could keep that primary bleed active. All in all I think that the damage output on the bleeds is fine; whilst the Brutal bleed does seem pretty large you're never going to be able to stack it on more than one target so it ends up being a pretty reasonable amount of single target DPS rather than something overpowered.

Still, the main issue I'm seeing during parses is the low base damage on most of the skills. The 3 bleed types are contributing slightly over 50% of the DPS on all my parses and just leaving the basic melee skills in the dust. You can see for yourself below:

https://i.imgur.com/5GS7RO0.png

It honestly doesn't feel like what I'm doing outside of refreshing the bleeds matters much due to the low base damage on most of those skills. There's also a big issue with attack duration amongst guard skills with most of the AoE skills taking ages to go off only to hit like a wet noodle. In general I think Guardians need a lot more damage given to their base attacks here. A lot of skills have tooltip values under 10k which come off pretty bad when you take enemy mitigations into account. It's also worth noting that guardians have no way to go through fire mitigations and as such are at a large disadvantage when it comes to competing with Hunters and RK's. There's also an issue with long cooldown skills like hammer down not actually dealing much damage, would love to see that increased by a reasonable margin.

Parse above came out at 27.6k DPS over 3 minutes with a 180k Mastery build. Will see about improving the gear for further parses.

Red Traits

There are a few traits that are somewhat useless in most scenarios now. The worst offenders are listed below:

• Thrill of Battle: There just isn't any use for this. It's a small heal with a long cooldown, it won't save anyone and it's not worth investing 1 point never mind 5.
• Invigorating Parry: Whilst red Guardian does actually consume power at a reasonable rate this trait isn't useful, the power usage on a guard is covered easily by power pot usage or catch a breath.
• Deeper Wounds: The duration increase on the Deep Wound pulses just comes off as excessive and doesn't really fit the ST DPS ideal of red guard since it's only really useful in AoE (stack it on multiple targets at once).
• To the Rescue: Not a lot of value in this one, charge already lets you catch up with most things so you probably don't need that extra speed. The set bonus traits were also reworked to give you the crit by default so that aspect doesn't mean much.

Summary

I like what you've done so far and I'm certainly curious to see where you take this next.

On a somewhat related note is there any chance we could have 2h passive stats upgraded to be more in line with the stats gained from offhand weapons? Currently you lose out on a whole load of stats if you roll with a 2h LI and it causes a notable disparity between some classes.

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Originally Posted by Joedangod

On a somewhat related note is there any chance we could have 2h passive stats upgraded to be more in line with the stats gained from offhand weapons? Currently you lose out on a whole load of stats if you roll with a 2h LI and it causes a notable disparity between some classes.

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Yes this needs to happen.

I like sword and board, I LIKE 40K crit shield smash and stun on lots of mobs, my LI's are focused round this. Have the hundreds and hundreds of scrolls and crystals (not hundreds, but you know what I mean) now been rendered useless for effective solo play? Also please for the love of dorf bowling please please please, don't remove the knock down from brutal charge.

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Originally Posted by zipfile

I have a bug to report.

New Hammer Down is broken if you use the raid set.

Basically, stun threshold doesn't increase, however, you get the old/removed bonuses (if it defeats an enemy, you get 5% melee damage and cooldown is refreshed)

Honestly, could we make this a normal behaving mechanic though? Stun is meh at best, and having Hammer Down as a finisher is a lot more satisfying.

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Yeah, interactions with older raid sets and the like are definitely going to be some of the touchier points bug-wise, so do keep an eye out for those.

We tried to chase down such loose ends, but we will inevitably have missed several like this.

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Originally Posted by Bhorn_EU

I like sword and board, I LIKE 40K crit shield smash and stun on lots of mobs, my LI's are focused round this. Have the hundreds and hundreds of scrolls and crystals (not hundreds, but you know what I mean) now been rendered useless for effective solo play? Also please for the love of dorf bowling please please please, don't remove the knock down from brutal charge.

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It was bugged, broken and overpowered. It had to go and I more than welcome the change.

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Originally Posted by Vastin

Yeah, interactions with older raid sets and the like are definitely going to be some of the touchier points bug-wise, so do keep an eye out for those.

We tried to chase down such loose ends, but we will inevitably have missed several like this.

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Wouldn't it be better to keep it like that? Lock it behind (difficult) group content as a set and it's fine. I don't belive anyone can really say that it's breaking the game or somehow makes Guards amazingly good.

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Originally Posted by Vastin

Yeah, interactions with older raid sets and the like are definitely going to be some of the touchier points bug-wise, so do keep an eye out for those.

We tried to chase down such loose ends, but we will inevitably have missed several like this.

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Reverting Hammer Down back to what it was but adding an armour/inc damage bebuff to it when used at 25% of mobs health would be better than a stun, this would give guardian some added fellowship support and also you wouldnt need to fix the raid set.

Bump the base damage of all skills effected by Shield use rank and change it to inc healing, this benifits both tanking and dps builds and will make up for the light damage legacy not working any more. Change light damage legacy to shield skill crit chance (rating) + shield damage crit multiplier.

For PoTW how about:
1) increase critical chance by 1% against mobs with bleeds on them, or is this too messy keeping count of the number of bleeds you have on the target and your trying to get away from this?
2) return 2% of damage delt as morale and power to the guardian and his Protected target (Protection by the Sword).

Also more general for all classes but with legacy changes please add legacy replacement scolls to T2 Challenge chests or just the skirmish camp

bleeds are too strong atm, the dps boost is needed and welcome, but more dps should be shifted and spread out to the initial skill damages of other skills.

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Originally Posted by Saruman_Of_Numbers

bleeds are too strong atm, the dps boost is needed and welcome, but more dps should be shifted and spread out to the initial skill damages of other skills.

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As a reference point I've been comparing Haemorrhaging wound with Essay of Fire. Whilst the tooltip value of Haemorrhaging wound is notably higher than that of Essay of Fire it tends to only have a ~75% uptime vs Essay's 100% due to reset luck. It also doesn't have quite the same range of crits as essay seems to do. The end result is that you only pull around 7-8k or so DPS from the bleed with 200k mastery. Meanwhile Essay pulls in the region of ~10k DPS.

The other skills certainly need a buff to get away from the ~5k hits but I don't think the bleeds need a nerf.

Its nice seeing guardians getting some love. However I honestly hope the bleed ticks don't go live as they are presented currently. Way to strong imo

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Originally Posted by iambadbert

Its nice seeing guardians getting some love. However I honestly hope the bleed ticks don't go live as they are presented currently. Way to strong imo

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They have redesigned bleeds to be more effective as before they were far to low, If they take away bleed damage then the damage of the skills them selves must be increased substantially. Thus bringing us back to worthless bleeds. At that point they may as well remove bleeds and completely re work the class. At this point the damage is nice but again not as high as other classes . What exactly are you wanting? are you looking at the entire DPS or just one aspect? The damage right now is low in comparison but is fine as they don't want redline to out damage other main damage roll classes

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Originally Posted by Joedangod

As a reference point I've been comparing Haemorrhaging wound with Essay of Fire. Whilst the tooltip value of Haemorrhaging wound is notably higher than that of Essay of Fire it tends to only have a ~75% uptime vs Essay's 100% due to reset luck. It also doesn't have quite the same range of crits as essay seems to do. The end result is that you only pull around 7-8k or so DPS from the bleed with 200k mastery. Meanwhile Essay pulls in the region of ~10k DPS.

The other skills certainly need a buff to get away from the ~5k hits but I don't think the bleeds need a nerf.

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I have had parses where I probably have good 90-95% of up time, just dropping once or twice the haemorhaging on such parses, for like under 10s so its certainly possible to keep it pretty much permanently on even without good crit luck with polished rotation and so on. One already did 33 or 34k dps as red guardian.

But as I said before nerffing haermorrhaging by 20% and other bleeds 10% while buffing initial damages 15% would be relatively close to whats needed. It would still have about 20k tooltip with proper gear which seems fine tbh.

Your rotation is lacking atm, retalition is bad, so should use whirling one and in generally should get way more brutal assaults used in that time tbh.

I'm at work right now, and can't poke Bullroarer, but is any of this helping buff the viability of Yellow line? Just asking, thanks

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Originally Posted by siipperi

One already did 33 or 34k dps as red guardian.

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Can you provide screenshots/video/any evidence of this claim?

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Originally Posted by siipperi

I have had parses where I probably have good 90-95% of up time, just dropping once or twice the haemorhaging on such parses, for like under 10s so its certainly possible to keep it pretty much permanently on even without good crit luck with polished rotation and so on. One already did 33 or 34k dps as red guardian.

But as I said before nerffing haermorrhaging by 20% and other bleeds 10% while buffing initial damages 15% would be relatively close to whats needed. It would still have about 20k tooltip with proper gear which seems fine tbh.

Your rotation is lacking atm, retalition is bad, so should use whirling one and in generally should get way more brutal assaults used in that time tbh.

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Hes talking about 7-8 k damage on bleeds only. Your 30k dps is entire damage. Hes also comparing bleeds dps to other dot type dpsing stating its lower then others even still. Bleeds are fine. Increase base damage of abilities. the overall damage of Guardians is still low

Quote Originally Posted by siipperi View Post
One already did 33 or 34k dps as red guardian.

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Originally Posted by zipfile

Can you provide screenshots/video/any evidence of this claim?

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He cant its hes total damage not bleed only. Again people are only looking at one aspect not the entirety of the class damage if your going to nerf bleeds then you better increase base damage to make up for it. Otherwise we are back at being left out.

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Originally Posted by Seschat

I'm at work right now, and can't poke Bullroarer, but is any of this helping buff the viability of Yellow line? Just asking, thanks

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My apologies, but no, the yellow line did not see any significant rework in this pass. As it was the poor Burglar and Beorning are going to have to wait a bit longer before seeing their own revamps, as we simply ran into limits of manpower and time, so each class's updates generally focused on one or two lines. In the case of the Guardian it was mostly the Red line, as we felt the class really needed an upgrade to its primary DPS line in order to have a more satisfying solo and small-group experience.

Nevertheless, you will certainly see some changes to the balance of your core skills as those apply to any Guardian build. You'll probably see your base DPS increase modestly?

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Originally Posted by Vastin

My apologies, but no, the yellow line did not see any significant rework in this pass. As it was the poor Burglar and Beorning are going to have to wait a bit longer before seeing their own revamps, as we simply ran into limits of manpower and time, so each class's updates generally focused on one or two lines. In the case of the Guardian it was mostly the Red line, as we felt the class really needed an upgrade to its primary DPS line in order to have a more satisfying solo and small-group experience.

Nevertheless, you will certainly see some changes to the balance of your core skills, of course, as those apply to any Guardian build. As such you'll probably see your base DPS increase modestly?

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Vastin, please look over Sweeping Cuts base damage, as it didn't seem to increase much (very little).
On average, with 190k mastery, it's first hit varies between 4k-6k, with second hit 3k-5k.

On live, numbers are just slightly smaller.

Edit: What will happen to the bleed cashout/Overwhelm cashout legacy now?

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Originally Posted by zipfile

Vastin, please look over Sweeping Cuts base damage, as it didn't seem to increase much (very little).
On average, with 190k mastery, it's first hit varies between 4k-6k, with second hit 3k-5k.

On live, numbers are just slightly smaller.

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I had same problem initially but bleed really compensates it I feel. Had good 70k aoe dps on EnG training dummies if I remember right with bleed being extremely potent, so I would say its rather balanced.

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Originally Posted by Pontin_Finnberry

I thought the knockdown was very useful when solo questing on my guardian, I'd knock them down and deal some damage, In my opinion the knockdown is more useful then an extra critical hit.

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yes, it saves the guard when you have 10 on you and you can knock down a few to take some of the pressure off and maybe take out some mobs before they all resume beating on you.....

LEAVE THE BRUTAL CHARGE KNOCKDOWN ALONE

Checked Haemorrhaging bleed at 200k mastery vs Essay of Fire at 200k Mastery (admittedly my RK is rusty, that fact doesn't actually influence my ability to press a skill off cooldown though):

https://i.imgur.com/Yl3yGNP.jpg

Essay of fire does notably more DPS and is far easier to keep up 100% of the time. All around it seems like haemorrhaging bleed is balanced vs other comparable classes.

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Originally Posted by zipfile

It was bugged, broken and overpowered. It had to go and I more than welcome the change.

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In what way was it bugged? I have played that way since my guard was first created back in the heady days of 2009/10. As a skill that required considerable cross traiting into blue and use of scrolls and crystals to be a decent dps skill I do not feel it was overpowered at all. If you do welcome the change from a literally years old skill; will you reimburse me for the expense of scrapping a maxxed LI?

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Originally Posted by Bhorn_EU

In what way was it bugged? I have played that way since my guard was first created back in the heady days of 2009/10. As a skill that required considerable cross traiting into blue and use of scrolls and crystals to be a decent dps skill I do not feel it was overpowered at all. If you do welcome the change from a literally years old skill; will you reimburse me for the expense of scrapping a maxxed LI?

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Shield use passive never properly functioned, devs said so themselves. Though, my point was focusing on Brutal Charge having a knockdown. That was bugged, broken and overpowered, having the ability to instantly knock down multiple enemies in a 20m radius when used with war-chant, or up to 14 enemies with shield smash + max targets on a swap LI.

Also, I have 4 maxed out LIs on my main Guardian, countless scrolls and other upgrades went into it, and I am not crying for a refund. I'll rather sit patiently and help out the devs with current feed as best as I can.

Taking on two 170k morale landscape isn't working very well. At this point the DPS increase isn't palpable enough to offset both the lack of a Knockdown AND the removal of self-healing from Prey on the Weak.

Honourable Combat's healing, even with four inputs, is insufficient on a 45 second cooldown. The cooldown must be greatly reduced; I'm thinking closer to 10 seconds. Even then, our incoming healing would be nothing near what guardians see in Red line on Live

We have no legacies whatsoever that raise our Critical Magnitude and our Red line Valorous Strength/Heavy Blows gives us a total of 20%, period. Removing our Stun/Knockdown isn't compensated by a guaranteed Critical Hit.

The Legendary Belt stat replacement for Shield Use would best be served as a boost to Incoming Healing, as per Champion Runes.


P.S. I'm an elf. Stop changing my eyebrows.

After experimenting with the changes I feel that I need to strongly discourage the path that prey on the weak is taking. Not only is it useless now, it feels entirely different engaging with landscape content. The loss of the healing, while it was too good, kills the feel of the traitline for me. I feel that prey on the weak should be left in a similar state to what it is now, as with the radiate changes and the loss of applying bleeds on crit this is already a significant (but justified) loss of survivability.

Prey on the weak needed to be reduced in power, for sure, but the removal of radiate and crit bleeds have already done that. Please restore some semblance of its former functionality. This has made landscape content a (albeit faster) chore.

Honourable Combat, 45 second cooldown, assuming all four healing sources possible -- ~10k morale healed (average)

Catch a Breath, 43 second cooldown (legacy), 25k + morale healed (average)

The former is a Capstone for the Red Line, the latter is a level 30 skill.

I trust my point is made.

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Originally Posted by Crissaegrim

Honourable Combat, 45 second cooldown, assuming all four healing sources possible -- ~10k morale healed (average)

Catch a Breath, 43 second cooldown (legacy), 25k + morale healed (average)

The former is a Capstone for the Red Line, the latter is a level 30 skill.

I trust my point is made.

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Legacy has to go or CAB needs a nerf. Simple to fix.

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Originally Posted by Crissaegrim

Taking on two 170k morale landscape isn't working very well. At this point the DPS increase isn't palpable enough to offset both the lack of a Knockdown AND the removal of self-healing from Prey on the Weak.

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Slight reminder to include more information such as your mastery/morale to help isolate the problem.

Please think back a bit Joedangod, and you may remember that Thrill of battle was working just fine until edgecase got a hold of the class and royally borked it before he got canned.

The trait needs to function the way it used to, minus the copies from radiate, before u18.1 when it got messed up.

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Originally Posted by siipperi

But as I said before nerffing haermorrhaging by 20% and other bleeds 10% while buffing initial damages 15% would be relatively close to whats needed. It would still have about 20k tooltip with proper gear which seems fine tbh.

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As a matter of curiosity I decided to check what would happen if you applied those numbers to the parse below:

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Originally Posted by Joedangod

https://i.imgur.com/5GS7RO0.png

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*The result would be an overall DPS nerf of around 2.4%, something that isn't really necessary considering the current status. **With the aid of my trusty calculator I also checked the result of simply applying a flat 15% buff to melee skill damage and the result came out to be a ~5% DPS increase which is still less than I'd like to see here as red Guardians has certainly become a reasonably fragile ST DPS and thus should be able to output a bit more than 3/4's the DPS of a current red champion. I'm actually not a fan of a single across the board damage buff for skills since there is quite a bit of variation in how much of a damage boost each skill should have. For example Brutal assault is at best being fired off once every 10s yet the initial hit barely exceeds 12k. A similar problem occurs with hammer down hitting for a measly 20k on average (180k mastery) despite its long cooldown, really this skill should be much closer to 40k hits. Sweeping cut also stands out as having remarkably low damage hits (4k average in parse which should really be closer to 8k). Whirling retaliation on the other hand is pretty close to where it should be hitting (there just needs to be a buff to retaliation so that it is more in line with its AoE counterpart).

I'll run some more tests when I next have the time and try to really nail down what feels weak.

Code:

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*Initial Calculation to determine effect of 20% nerf to haemorrhaging bleed, 10% nerf to other bleeds and 15% buff to all skills:
(1156000*0.8)+(853600*0.9)+(717200*0.9)+(350100*1.15)+(297500*1.15)+(279900*1.15)+(201600*1.15)+(174500*1.15)+(143600*1.15)+(140000*1.15)+(102000*1.15)+(59641*1.15)+(33278*1.15) + 502800

Final DPS change calculated via 4890756.85/5012000.

**Calculation to determine effect of 15% buff to all skills alone:
(1156000)+(853600)+(717200)+(350100*1.15)+(297500*1.15)+(279900*1.15)+(201600*1.15)+(174500*1.15)+(143600*1.15)+(140000*1.15)+(102000*1.15)+(59641*1.15)+(33278*1.15) + 502800


Final DPS change calculated via 5279036.85/5012000.

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Originally Posted by Crissaegrim

Honourable Combat, 45 second cooldown, assuming all four healing sources possible -- ~10k morale healed (average)

Catch a Breath, 43 second cooldown (legacy), 25k + morale healed (average)

The former is a Capstone for the Red Line, the latter is a level 30 skill.

I trust my point is made.

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Wariors heart, full morale heal, thrill of danger, heals some and so on. Its extremely dishonest to leave the best healing skills out of the argument. Anyway potw heals on st/duo enemies were extremely rng and unreliable in comparison to current damage/heal potential.

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Originally Posted by Joedangod

As a matter of curiosity I decided to check what would happen if you applied those numbers to the parse below:



*The result would be an overall DPS nerf of around 2.4%, something that isn't really necessary considering the current status. **With the aid of my trusty calculator I also checked the result of simply applying a flat 15% buff to melee skill damage and the result came out to be a ~5% DPS increase which is still less than I'd like to see here as red Guardians has certainly become a reasonably fragile ST DPS and thus should be able to output a bit more than 3/4's the DPS of a current red champion. I'm actually not a fan of a single across the board damage buff for skills since there is quite a bit of variation in how much of a damage boost each skill should have. For example Brutal assault is at best being fired off once every 10s yet the initial hit barely exceeds 12k. A similar problem occurs with hammer down hitting for a measly 20k on average (180k mastery) despite its long cooldown, really this skill should be much closer to 40k hits. Sweeping cut also stands out as having remarkably low damage hits (4k average in parse which should really be closer to 8k). Whirling retaliation on the other hand is pretty close to where it should be hitting (there just needs to be a buff to retaliation so that it is more in line with its AoE counterpart).

I'll run some more tests when I next have the time and try to really nail down what feels weak.

Code:

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*Initial Calculation to determine effect of 20% nerf to haemorrhaging bleed, 10% nerf to other bleeds and 15% buff to all skills:
(1156000*0.8)+(853600*0.9)+(717200*0.9)+(350100*1.15)+(297500*1.15)+(279900*1.15)+(201600*1.15)+(174500*1.15)+(143600*1.15)+(140000*1.15)+(102000*1.15)+(59641*1.15)+(33278*1.15) + 502800

Final DPS change calculated via 4890756.85/5012000.

**Calculation to determine effect of 15% buff to all skills alone:
(1156000)+(853600)+(717200)+(350100*1.15)+(297500*1.15)+(279900*1.15)+(201600*1.15)+(174500*1.15)+(143600*1.15)+(140000*1.15)+(102000*1.15)+(59641*1.15)+(33278*1.15) + 502800


Final DPS change calculated via 5279036.85/5012000.

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So on top of my head numbers were extremely accurate. Good.

Has anyone tried tinkering with bleed crits and seeing if they've been fixed? I think this is a major thing that should be looked into.

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Originally Posted by Madmanthief

Please think back a bit Joedangod, and you may remember that Thrill of battle was working just fine until edgecase got a hold of the class and royally borked it before he got canned.

The trait needs to function the way it used to, minus the copies from radiate, before u18.1 when it got messed up.

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Pre-broken ToB had nothing to do with Radiate, Bleeds nor Insult to Injury.
If you've critted on a parry response, you got a heal, based on % of your max morale.

I'd still rather see it reworked into a damaging trait than this.

Has anyone tested how the class changes apply to Blue line threat generation ? Is it possible to maintain aggro against good champs without force taunts atm in BR ?

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Originally Posted by zipfile

Shield use passive never properly functioned, devs said so themselves. Though, my point was focusing on Brutal Charge having a knockdown. That was bugged, broken and overpowered, having the ability to instantly knock down multiple enemies in a 20m radius when used with war-chant, or up to 14 enemies with shield smash + max targets on a swap LI.

Also, I have 4 maxed out LIs on my main Guardian, countless scrolls and other upgrades went into it, and I am not crying for a refund. I'll rather sit patiently and help out the devs with current feed as best as I can.

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Thank you for the clarification of what you call a bug regarding brutal charge. You are lucky to have the time and patience to grind out 4 maxxed Li's for 1 character, I, and I'm sure many many other players do not, this one change to the shield use will effectively mean I have to start both LI's again from scratch, belt and 2H to have anything other than very slow dps for landscape content.

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Originally Posted by Marxlne

Has anyone tested how the class changes apply to Blue line threat generation ? Is it possible to maintain aggro against good champs without force taunts atm in BR ?

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that probably will never be the case especially now they've removed the tactical component from smash and chant. you will need to spam challenge more than ever now. i wish they'd bring back threat over time mechanics back and revert litany to what it was during moria days.

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Originally Posted by Bhorn_EU

Thank you for the clarification of what you call a bug regarding brutal charge. You are lucky to have the time and patience to grind out 4 maxxed Li's for 1 character, I, and I'm sure many many other players do not, this one change to the shield use will effectively mean I have to start both LI's again from scratch, belt and 2H to have anything other than very slow dps for landscape content.

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You don't have to start anything from scratch. Get imbued legacy replacement scrolls from Minas Tirith Pelennor/ToDT vendors (super EZ to get coins now) and just swap out some legacies. You do not lose all the unlocked tiers, though you lose any XP advacement for the legacy. But then again, XP runes drop like crazy in COS....it honestly shouldn't be that big of an issue.

Once again, let's see what Vastin makes of Shield Use ranks in the upcoming build(s)...

As a Guardian main, I have to say that I would almost rather have all the current bugs than have the healing component removed from Prey on the Weak. The main thing that makes it so powerful currently on live is the interaction with Radiate and bleed tiering up. With the new separate bleeds, there must be some way to keep the healing but not have it as insane as it is on live. Simply having PotW add more damage in some way is not enough. What made Guardian red line unique (since the trait revamps) was having a dps line that also provided consistent sustain. I don't want red line to become just straight dps. We have plenty of classes for that already. I would prefer to sacrifice a little dps in order to be tanky when I run red line. That's why I play Guard and not Champ.

Just my two cents, but there's nothing I appose quite so strongly as removing the healing from PotW. It must be possible to change red line without throwing away what made it unique.

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Originally Posted by toalevika

As a Guardian main, I have to say that I would almost rather have all the current bugs than have the healing component removed from Prey on the Weak. The main thing that makes it so powerful currently on live is the interaction with Radiate and bleed tiering up. With the new separate bleeds, there must be some way to keep the healing but not have it as insane as it is on live. Simply having PotW add more damage in some way is not enough. What made Guardian red line unique (since the trait revamps) was having a dps line that also provided consistent sustain. I don't want red line to become just straight dps. We have plenty of classes for that already. I would prefer to sacrifice a little dps in order to be tanky when I run red line. That's why I play Guard and not Champ.

Just my two cents, but there's nothing I appose quite so strongly as removing the healing from PotW. It must be possible to change red line without throwing away what made it unique.

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I do like the idea, But there are 3 class traits, red blue yellow. It would be nice to see red pure damage yellow dmg \ tank and blue tank. I dont wana see how it is now with a small increase in damage. We still do need a huge increase in damage. Where the damage in redline is now they can still increase our self healing and we still wont be overpowered as our damage in comparison to other classes is still low.

So yellow line would be more dmg and still good healing

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Originally Posted by toalevika

As a Guardian main, I have to say that I would almost rather have all the current bugs than have the healing component removed from Prey on the Weak. The main thing that makes it so powerful currently on live is the interaction with Radiate and bleed tiering up. With the new separate bleeds, there must be some way to keep the healing but not have it as insane as it is on live. Simply having PotW add more damage in some way is not enough. What made Guardian red line unique (since the trait revamps) was having a dps line that also provided consistent sustain. I don't want red line to become just straight dps. We have plenty of classes for that already. I would prefer to sacrifice a little dps in order to be tanky when I run red line. That's why I play Guard and not Champ.

Just my two cents, but there's nothing I appose quite so strongly as removing the healing from PotW. It must be possible to change red line without throwing away what made it unique.

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It was buggy and in the right scenario, completely broken. Not to mention the attempts to fix it and how they all fell flat. I welcome the change, and while POTW heals will be well remembered for some hilarious moments, the thought of actually doing damage on landscape and having a proper rotation, not to mention how much easier it will be leveling the Guardian for new players....all in all, good riddance to heals.

Bugs

Not a comprehensive list but a few have popped up lately.

• The trait brutal charge does not result in the next skill critting.
• Hammer down is currently being considered a parry response skill, as such it benefits from CD reductions via warchant and can proc the brutal assault reset.
• Hammer Down still resets on kill.
• Bleeds don't stack between guards.

On the bright side bleeds seem to working as intended, crit rate and all.

Current Thoughts

Damage is still a little bit low as things currently stand. With the (deserved) self heal nerfs red Guardians somewhat need to rely on their ability to quickly DPS mobs down. Unfortunately this DPS isn't quite there. Overall I'd say Guardians need a roughly 25% DPS increase over their current position in order to bring them just below their closest counterpart; red champion. I'm just not entirely sure how such a buff could be implemented.

There are a few obvious places to improve damage:

• Hammer Down could do with being doubled, for a skill with a minute long cooldown it doesn't hit particularly hard.
• Sweeping Cut has very low damage with the base skill barely dealing 10k damage with both strikes combined vs the tavern dummies.
• Brutal assault, Hammer Down and whirling retaliation also have very long animations that slow down gameplay, these could all be shortened.
• Force opening is in dire need of a massive damage boost. The tooltip barely exceeds 10k even with 202k mastery.
• Critical magnitude could do with an increase, prey on the weak for example could be set to offer a 30-50% increase in crit magnitude. Offers a bit more variety than flat skill damage buffs.

In general the single target skills could use an increase in damage so that the bleeds don't account for too much of the DPS. As mentioned in an earlier post scaling 2h passive stats would go a long way to improving the Guardian mastery situation.

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Originally Posted by toalevika

As a Guardian main, I have to say that I would almost rather have all the current bugs than have the healing component removed from Prey on the Weak. The main thing that makes it so powerful currently on live is the interaction with Radiate and bleed tiering up. With the new separate bleeds, there must be some way to keep the healing but not have it as insane as it is on live. Simply having PotW add more damage in some way is not enough. What made Guardian red line unique (since the trait revamps) was having a dps line that also provided consistent sustain. I don't want red line to become just straight dps. We have plenty of classes for that already. I would prefer to sacrifice a little dps in order to be tanky when I run red line. That's why I play Guard and not Champ.

Just my two cents, but there's nothing I appose quite so strongly as removing the healing from PotW. It must be possible to change red line without throwing away what made it unique.

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Guard still has extremely potent healing skills. On average fight you should be able to heal about 160-180% of your morale. So almost heal to full 2x. But fights do not last that long anyway for such need. If tou want self healing go blue line, you can produce insane amount of self healing in that line.

We're obviously finding it very hard to not respond to each other's opinions here . . .

The red line guardian on Bullroarer is just not the red line I fell in love with years ago. I appreciate the damage increases, and love that I might be able to actually do some fellowship content as a red guard, but removing the sustained healing from Prey on the Weak has killed the feel of the specialization for me. The survivability of the line is what I enjoy, not just being another middling DPS in the fellowship. The sustain on PotW needs a reduction, it does not need to be removed. I would like it if it was put back in its current form (applying a bleed to a bleeding enemy heals you) for a while to let us test it with the loss of the interaction with radiate and the loss of applying bleeds on critical strikes. With the loss of those two factors, it should already be MUCH weaker, and nowhere near the silliness that it was.

Pre U18.1 before Headcase, I mean Edgecase got a hold of it, radiate was magnifying the heal so that the 2.5% of max morale was being multiplied by the number of parry responses if you had multiple mobs around you. Was it OP, Yes, I'm not denying that. I don't believe however that it should be gimped to satisfy a certain subset of the player base.

The only way I would support removing the heal from ToB is if a separate skill was reworked to have a heal that is based on getting hit, but could only occur once every 5-8 seconds or so, so that it's not grossly op.

But as it stands, it looks like certain people in this thread care only for what they want and are not willing to compromise on anything.

As I didnt test myself, I'll just chime in and tell you, that one guaranteed critical hit is totally irrelevant and boring.
For burglars, a guaranteed critical with aim leads to an impressive bleed if used with their bleedskill or a huge burst with SurpriseStrike or CDG.
For Guardians however, one crit is nothing. Losing the aoe knockdown however is quite hard.
The guaranteed crit was available even before, so what does this change?

If the knockdown has to go, which I may understand, then maybe give us something interesting in return. Like 10 seconds guaranteed critical hits with all skills after use of charge. Or 5% lifeleech as long as charge is up. Or immunity to CC as long as charge is up. Anything is better than one crit that could have randomly happened anyway.

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Originally Posted by Madmanthief

Pre U18.1 before Headcase, I mean Edgecase got a hold of it, radiate was magnifying the heal so that the 2.5% of max morale was being multiplied by the number of parry responses if you had multiple mobs around you.

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Radiate, again, had nothing to do with ToB. ToB has nothing to do with Bleeds. Radiate has nothing to do with Parry response. It was just a heal on parry response crit, and if you critted with a whirling retaliation between multiple mobs, every single crit would give you a heal.

2.5% per crit. You crit on 5 targets, you get healed by 12.5%.
Radiate, ITI, any Bleeds or any other mechanic had nothing to do with it.

And yet here you are on a crusade to remove heals.

I have no videos to prove anything to you so I can't verify anything I claim, I can only know how good my Guardian was doing before that update, and how abysmal it was after it got borked.

You seem to have it in your head that you and only you know what's best, keep thinking that if you wish, I'm done with your constant arrogance.

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Originally Posted by Madmanthief

And yet here you are on a crusade to remove heals.

I have no videos to prove anything to you so I can't verify anything I claim, I can only know how good my Guardian was doing before that update, and how abysmal it was after it got borked.

You seem to have it in your head that you and only you know what's best, keep thinking that if you wish, I'm done with your constant arrogance.

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I guess explaining how a trait properly works and arguing is now disguised as arrogance.
Best of luck then.

Edit: Weren't you the same guy that called people and devs pathetic in multiple posts?

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Originally Posted by Madmanthief

And yet here you are on a crusade to remove heals.

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For obvious balance reasons you can either have a DPS line or you can have an unkillable self-sustaining tank line. Can't do both. Guardian has two fairly unkillable self-sustaining tank lines, might as well let red be DPS, no?

If they wanted to nerf the Guardian's self-heals, Prey on the Weak was the way to go (though if they had, red-line Guardians wouldn't have been able to survive much before dying because their dps is so bad). It operates randomly and leads to some strange situations. Thrill of Battle was fine because it at least depended on using certain skills that define the Guardian, the response skills, and it was never the source of most healing. You could chain parry response skills in a strategic fashion to maximize their healing potential. With POTW a lot of it is just using Sweeping Cut.

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Originally Posted by Drarin

Yes. Taken from the main patch notes:

We recognize that this will impact some players' current IA layouts. To manage this, those existing Tactical bonus relics will be removed from your IA items and relic inventories, and be replaced by barter tokens that can be exchanged at a Gorgoroth raid vendor for an equivalent relic (either DPS or HPS), so that you can rebalance your IA build around the new restrictions.

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NOOOOOOOOOO ... you have lost 3500 ash

Hopefully Vastin replaces potw power heal with damage focused capstone trait. Thats whats needed. Self heals are plenty, damage can take little increase but self heals arguably still overpowered compared to the damage. Maybe little physical mitigation debuff as capstone for some skill.

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Originally Posted by siipperi

Hopefully Vastin replaces potw power heal with damage focused capstone trait. Thats whats needed. Self heals are plenty, damage can take little increase but self heals arguably still overpowered compared to the damage. Maybe little physical mitigation debuff as capstone for some skill.

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Each different currently active bleed reduces physical mitigation by a flat amount in rating?

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Originally Posted by zipfile

Each different currently active bleed reduces physical mitigation by a flat amount in rating?

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Would suggest steering away from mitigation debuffs and the like. Guardian still has some pretty strong self healing so probably shouldn't offer much in the way of group DPS support.

Overall I think a 30-50% crit magnitude buff from Prey would be good. Whilst it sounds excessive it's still far less than other classes work with and it could go a long way towards helping the low average damage per attack that guards suffer. Could also do with a 5% crit chance buff replacing Brutal Charge to further improve that area.

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Originally Posted by zipfile

Each different currently active bleed reduces physical mitigation by a flat amount in rating?

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I would prefer flat % if that would happen, no matter of mechanic how we would apply such thing. Rating has history of scale poorly over long duration of time or be op/underpowered depending on the level. % is always % even if its small amount of it. Also rating seems way more demanding thing to implement from dev side.

Sure like 2% each bleed or such would be interesting mechanic but if they would do something revolving around mitigation reduction I would think they prefer more simple approach.

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Originally Posted by siipperi

I would prefer flat % if that would happen, no matter of mechanic how we would apply such thing. Rating has history of scale poorly over long duration of time or be op/underpowered depending on the level. % is always % even if its small amount of it. Also rating seems way more demanding thing to implement from dev side.

Sure like 2% each bleed or such would be interesting mechanic but if they would do something revolving around mitigation reduction I would think they prefer more simple approach.

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Yeah, good points about the ratings. Though, thinking a bit more, it could give more power to a Guardian as a DPS in 3/6 mans (if you're that desperate or you kin wants to do a fun run)...

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Originally Posted by Joedangod

Would suggest steering away from mitigation debuffs and the like. Guardian still has some pretty strong self healing so probably shouldn't offer much in the way of group DPS support.

Overall I think a 30-50% crit magnitude buff from Prey would be good. Whilst it sounds excessive it's still far less than other classes work with and it could go a long way towards helping the low average damage per attack that guards suffer. Could also do with a 5% crit chance buff replacing Brutal Charge to further improve that area.

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Pretty interesting. Though, it would require crit rating to be useful, and while leveling, there aren't many ways of getting high crit rating. Changing Thrill of Battle to add %crit could help remedy that...

I agree with those who have said "Leave knockdown alone"

There is no reason to remove it.

It is the last fun skill that a guardian has.

If you feel you must remove it, please give us an AEO stun skill in its place. (like champs and hunters have)


To make redline guardian DPS viable for soloing in Mordor, remember that the morale of the mobs is from about 60k up to 170k,
so taking 3 minutes to kill each individual mob is tedious. (plus the respawn time in some areas is very fast)

Also bear in mind that until you hit L112 (when you get access to the first available LoE gear bartered for ash),
it is very difficult to equip more phys mastery as well as LoE and finesse.
So people posting DPS data who have hit Level 115, and have massive phys masteries are NOT giving a realistic picture of what it's like to solo in Mordor at Level 105-112.
My own guardian is at L 107 and has a phys mastery of only 50k.
I could increase it, but at the cost of much finesse, morale or LoE.


Having said all this you are on the right track:
1. Increase damage of base skills dramatically.
I haven't played on Bullroarer but from the stats already posted, I can see they need Much more boosting yet.

2. Eliminate a 10 tier bleed system, and replace with much simpler, faster system.

Congratulations to SSG for boosting the Red Guardian.
I have been asking for this for a long time, and it fell deaf on Turbine's ears.

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Originally Posted by Gandalfy

I agree with those who have said "Leave knockdown alone"

There is no reason to remove it.

It is the last fun skill that a guardian has.

If you feel you must remove it, please give us an AEO stun skill in its place. (like champs and hunters have)


To make redline guardian DPS viable for soloing in Mordor, remember that the morale of the mobs is from about 60k up to 170k,
so taking 3 minutes to kill each individual mob is tedious. (plus the respawn time in some areas is very fast)

Also bear in mind that until you hit L112 (when you get access to the first available LoE gear bartered for ash),
it is very difficult to equip more phys mastery as well as LoE and finesse.
So people posting DPS data who have hit Level 115, and have massive phys masteries are NOT giving a realistic picture of what it's like to solo in Mordor at Level 105-112.
My own guardian is at L 107 and has a phys mastery of only 50k.
I could increase it, but at the cost of much finesse, morale or LoE.


Having said all this you are on the right track:
1. Increase damage of base skills dramatically.
I haven't played on Bullroarer but from the stats already posted, I can see they need Much more boosting yet.

2. Eliminate a 10 tier bleed system, and replace with much simpler, faster system.

Congratulations to SSG for boosting the Red Guardian.
I have been asking for this for a long time, and it fell deaf on Turbine's ears.

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You have bash, keep a shield on a swap.
Investing into blue, you can get shield-smash.
Finally, hammer-down now stuns the target if it's under 50% morale.

So coins are easy to get for raiders to get plenty of legacy replacement scrolls...

So the guy with only 2 LIs and one being a double hander is more than likely to have never been given a raid slot (unless his raid leader was an EdgeCase disciple), he may have an alt who has the currency ofc. But the fact of his complaint tells me he doesn't yet have this access to imbued legacy replacement scrolls that the raiders have.

Ok raiders have earned their coin but I'd argue the majority of players will not have these accomplishment achieved. Yet, and not being class specific, still be in the same boat in that they ideally have to re-jig their LIs or fall further behind the curve.

Perhaps it's in their minds to require a certain amount of players to need to use the store and so pay for the changes. For me I have 28 imbued LIs over 7 characters and not a lot of coin. I'm sure a few scrolls will be in the update going live but different characters and classes are going to "need" different numbers dependant of the current state of their LIs and specific requirements.

For myself I have future proofed the class changes by making alt build LIs that won't need so much of a re-jig and the resources to make more from scratch if needed. I have kept LIs with up to now duff legacies that, it would seem, are now coming into their own. Other's won't be so OCD about it and be dumped on by SSG's changes.

I'm yet to try the guard on BR, been putting it off as it's likely to effect my game play more than my other classes since HD made the bleeder possible and replaced the fun I once derived from tanking.

Mac

Please dont scale tanking skills dps/threat with melee weapon dps.

Guards lost many nice legacies (guardians ward duration, melee targets, warriors heart duration) with imbuement and as long as shieldskills scale with the belt item, keeping those nice legacies and just not imbueing was totally viable.

Sure, I'll always have an imbued sword with me for cases where my guard wants to deal damage... but I'd prefer, if my imbued weapon didnt triple my tanking dps compared to my unimbued one.