guardian bleeds u19.3 first impressions

After 10 mins of random instance fighting, my impressions are:

- bleeds don't dissapear (good)
- bleeds are critting (good)

- bleeds tier up slowly than before (new bug?)

- prey on the weak heals proc rate has been nerfed down the floor (no mention on patch notes) --> while I'm ok with nerfing the self heal, I think it's badly implemented, the hit is VERY BIG, no more big pulls, not even t1. I wonder if this is WAI or a new bug, but PotW heals should proc some more.


Even with bleeds critting now, I fail to see see any increase on ST DPS and just a slight increase on AoE DPS. Feels wrong. The big heal nerf should have been accompained with a big damage boost. Now we are worse than before update, with roughly same DPS but without the self heal. I wonder if SSG messed up more with radiate and Insult to Injury without telling, this feels just so wrong.

EDIT: critical hits with normal skills now only tier up bleed 1 position, should be 2 positions, one from red spec and another from heavy blows class trait (that's how it was before update). With bleeds skills (sweeping, thrust, brutal assault) they used to tier up bleeds 3 positions, now only 2.

Aoe dmg is much weaker than before .....

Since u18, every single time Turbine/SSG touch the guard, they break it even more. This is not about "rebalancing" a class line anymore, it's about plainly breaking it. I'm no programmer to pretend to know how hard it can be to fix red guard, but seeing the continual results from this "fixes" I would be ashamed if I were a dev. The saddest part is that red guards don't even needed this bleed thing fiasco before u18, they were mostly fine with (AoE) DPS, they just needed some reduction in healing and some ST DPS love.

It would be good to hear from SSG what they think about the job they are doing with the guard class. At this point, they should recognize their mistakes and listen to the comunity or they will "bleed" the guard comunity even more.

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Originally Posted by Fermongu

Since u18, every single time Turbine/SSG touch the guard, they break it even more.

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It's become a farce.

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Originally Posted by Fermongu

- prey on the weak heals proc rate has been nerfed down the floor (no mention on patch notes) --> while I'm ok with nerfing the self heal, I think it's badly implemented, the hit is VERY BIG, no more big pulls, not even t1. I wonder if this is WAI or a new bug, but PotW heals should proc some more.

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Doesn't seem too painful, soloing t1 just takes some more careful pulling to do (as it should). Would've been nice if the patch had boosted single target DPS a little though.

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Originally Posted by Joedangod

Doesn't seem too painful, soloing t1 just takes some more careful pulling to do (as it should). Would've been nice if the patch had boosted single target DPS a little though.

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Problem is that it's not working properly. PoTW seems to work like it's calculating amount of procs it produces like it's always T1 bleed on the target. That's unacceptable for the class that is relying everything on self healing capability with the lowest ST damage in the game. ATM guardian self healing if not traiting botp is on abysmal level.

This is a perfect example of something that should have been tested on Bullroarer but was not. Why are you so desperate to push poorly implemented changes to live without the proper testing?

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Originally Posted by siipperi

ATM guardian self healing if not traiting botp is on abysmal level.

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But then if you do trait BoTP you remain essentially invincible. Reducing Prey on the Weak heals just adds a slight requirement to be more tactical in terms of what panic skills you use.

The heal nerf was a step in the right direction, it probably should've come with either a full bleed fix or just a straight up dps buff though. And yeah, should've been a beta build for it.

Right now this update has got me shaking my head. What I thought was supposed to finally be a buff, feels like another nerf.

1) Prey on the Weak now has WAY less than a 1% PROC chance, to the point that it has been completely eliminated.

2) The bleed damage is very slow to tier up.

3) This one is the most confusing, and no one on my server has been able to clarify it for me. Before the update, my bleeds would tick for about 3,000 every two seconds at T10. Now my bleeds tick for about 2,200 - 2,500 every two seconds at T10. So unless I am doing something wrong, my DoT has greatly been reduced. I don't have the bleed crit legacy slotted (yet), but that doesn't explain the bleed DoT reduction even with crits.

Right now this feels like another step backwards for the class. I soloed some Roving Threats today, and it was definitely a bit tougher for me than usual. Hopefully this is a bug, and will be hotfixed.

I have to agree. I was looking forward to the changes, and while it's nice to see bleeds stay up once they're applied, everything else stated here rings true as well.

Prey on the Weak isn't firing. In comparison to the previous rates, it's pretty much nonexistent. If I had to guess, it's due to what seems to be broken Heavy Blows, which used to tier up bleeds on critical hits, and now does not seem to be doing so, which should be triggering Prey on the Weak's heal.

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Originally Posted by Fermongu

Since u18, every single time Turbine/SSG touch the guard, they break it even more. This is not about "rebalancing" a class line anymore, it's about plainly breaking it. I'm no programmer to pretend to know how hard it can be to fix red guard, but seeing the continual results from this "fixes" I would be ashamed if I were a dev. The saddest part is that red guards don't even needed this bleed thing fiasco before u18, they were mostly fine with (AoE) DPS, they just needed some reduction in healing and some ST DPS love.

It would be good to hear from SSG what they think about the job they are doing with the guard class. At this point, they should recognize their mistakes and listen to the comunity or they will "bleed" the guard comunity even more.

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I agree 100% with everything you said.

I apologise for stepping in here without having tested the actual mess on live , but i do trust the feedback i read on the forums today and i have to say ,
this is both hilarious and depressing.
I actually haven't traited red since the very first ''hotfix'' ( trololol ) when i realised everything with regards to bleeds is broken , with the exception of 2-3 days during north ithilien launch.
I have no intention of doing so in the future either , i have no idea how my guardian is going to go through dagorlad or even mordor.
Most likely , i will dumb the class all together and turn it into a mule.
It's not that landscape content is hard or anything ( on the contrary ) but as a player that really pays attention into class mechanics , playing this mess is simply unacceptable.

Over the years , i've seen many cases where devs in lotro seemed clueless about class mechanics , but if they really nerfed POTW and bleed scale speed on purpose i believe we are hopeless.

Funny part is , what can you do about it ? Ask for a fix ??????????? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAA , i doubt there will be any bleeds left at all after next "hotfix".

WP Tombstone Games.

I mean this just HAS to be a bug. I just can't believe the devs intended this.

Prey on the Weak is a friggin SET BONUS that deals additional damage based on the number of bleeds and provides a chance to "restore some of your morale". It says so right on the tooltip. How is it after this update, I do less bleed damage than before and Prey on the Weak no longer heals??? Reduced survivability with reduced dps??? Especially after being the LOWEST dps class in the game by far. Balance means either increased dps / lower survivability....or higher survivability / lower dps. Balance does not mean taking a class that has been punished update after update and hitting it again with nerfs to heals and dps.

The guardian community was so happy hearing about this update, but boy did we get trolled. This bug needs to get hotfixed ASAP and Prey on the Weak needs to function like it did before.

So a class that's already CRIPPLED by bugs and barely playable, and has been that way for almost a year and a half, is broken further by an update that has basically no mention of the class?

Lotro gets better and better :)

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Originally Posted by Roenan

Prey on the Weak isn't firing. In comparison to the previous rates, it's pretty much nonexistent. If I had to guess, it's due to what seems to be broken Heavy Blows, which used to tier up bleeds on critical hits, and now does not seem to be doing so, which should be triggering Prey on the Weak's heal.

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War chant crits still seem to tier up the bleeds but they won't apply an initial bleed. Can't really recall if that was how it always worked or not.

There might have been a bug involved with war chant to begin with to be honest, I leveled a guard in yellow line and on a few (very rare) occasions I seemed to be applying guardian bleeds despite quite deliberately not traiting anything to do that.

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Originally Posted by Joedangod

War chant crits still seem to tier up the bleeds but they won't apply an initial bleed. Can't really recall if that was how it always worked or not.

There might have been a bug involved with war chant to begin with to be honest, I leveled a guard in yellow line and on a few (very rare) occasions I seemed to be applying guardian bleeds despite quite deliberately not traiting anything to do that.

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I vaguely remember bleeds being applied with Fray the Edge so War-Chant probably was able to as well. The good ol' days of guardians working are so long ago though...

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Originally Posted by ChromiteSwiftpaw

I vaguely remember bleeds being applied with Fray the Edge so War-Chant probably was able to as well. The good ol' days of guardians working are so long ago though...

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If we are speaking of 95 level? Nah, we were broke then as well, bleeds producing huge variate of inconsistend damage like it does now.

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Originally Posted by siipperi

If we are speaking of 95 level? Nah, we were broke then as well, bleeds producing huge variate of inconsistend damage like it does now.

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No, this was in the 100 range. I used to use Fray to pull some things in from distance so I could get a larger group of mobs to heal off of when doing Dol Amroth/Minas Tirith dailies and sometimes Fray would crit and pop a bleed. Yeah, I always thought it was weird but I distinctly remember seeing that bleed at Tier 1 on an incoming mob.

Yes, fray used to crit and apply a bleed. Not sure if it will now. In Wraith of Water I would often run red on final boss and use fray from a distance on the boss to attempt to apply bleeds. Brutal Charge + Fray was a good single target stun in the moors that would sometimes apply bleeds.

Yeah I know I've had fray crit a bleed cos it would break the stun that I had wanted to apply. I'm kind of wondering how the hell sweeping cut still works! Shame it's not open source, would love to see this code history.

Wish they would revert back to pre +EdgeCase changes. Only then carefully apply some reasonable adjustments and forget about fixing the mess they have made.

Mac

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Originally Posted by Macdui

Yeah I know I've had fray crit a bleed cos it would break the stun that I had wanted to apply. I'm kind of wondering how the hell sweeping cut still works! Shame it's not open source, would love to see this code history.

Wish they would revert back to pre +EdgeCase changes. Only then carefully apply some reasonable adjustments and forget about fixing the mess they have made.

Mac

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One has to wonder at the brilliance of +EdgeCase--he comes in, ruins the Guardian, then mysteriously disappears, and those left behind spend months, and likely will spend years, undoing his sabotages. Deleting a rogue line of code only for another to occur in its place. Two years from now, when you think it's all been fixed, Guardians find that the Stagger debuff has been making enemies attack faster this whole time. A true agent of chaos. He knew he'd need a backup plan, so he installed a failsafe in the code. This is where it gets interesting...

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Originally Posted by Joedangod

But then if you do trait BoTP you remain essentially invincible. Reducing Prey on the Weak heals just adds a slight requirement to be more tactical in terms of what panic skills you use.

The heal nerf was a step in the right direction, it probably should've come with either a full bleed fix or just a straight up dps buff though. And yeah, should've been a beta build for it.

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BOTP is being elevated to Herculean proportions. If you are a dps build and have about 25k morale, BOTP will give you about 625 base morale each time you are hit for 10 seconds, it isn't really going to make you invincible against anything other than paper cuts. It is nice when you have a ton of morale though.

I agree in general that we didn't rely heavily on our panic abilities much with the way POTW used to work, depending on the difficulty of the content. However, that is a poor yardstick to use to justify keeping POtW in a gimped form because I don't rely on panic abilities on any dps build for other classes in general and if you want to compare damage output vs self-healing vs survivability in non-tanking roles, the guardian would overall be bottom of the list in an overall analysis in non-tank spec for the classes that can tank specifically.

The only justification for keeping this as it is if Warden HOTs didn't stack/were nerfed into the ground as well. Not that I want to see that, but it is ridiculous for them to be as OP as they are while the Guardian keeps getting the nerfs.

If the guardian is to have basically trivial levels of self-healing that is functionally impotent, then the damage output should have been radically increased.

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Originally Posted by Vimrich

The only justification for keeping this as it is if Warden HOTs didn't stack/were nerfed into the ground as well.

If the guardian is to have basically trivial levels of self-healing that is functionally impotent, then the damage output should have been radically increased.

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Warden HoT's were nerfed into the ground for redline, it's the blue line that currently needs a bit of DPS reduction.

I maintain the stance that damage output should never reach the point where guard is even mildly competitive DPS for instances, it is the tank class, it has 2 trait lines that tank very well. If third traitlines are supposed to be competitive in groups then guardian is one of the last classes requiring buffs to make that possible.

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Originally Posted by Joedangod

Warden HoT's were nerfed into the ground for redline, it's the blue line that currently needs a bit of DPS reduction.

I maintain the stance that damage output should never reach the point where guard is even mildly competitive DPS for instances, it is the tank class, it has 2 trait lines that tank very well. If third traitlines are supposed to be competitive in groups then guardian is one of the last classes requiring buffs to make that possible.

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They are about on the same level now as before due to usage of agility instead of mastery on the gear and ili rise.

I don't think Warden Redline -50% healing is nerfed to the ground. Like slipperi said, with Agility being the main essence used I think their self heals should be just fine. There are plenty of videos of Wardens doing incredible things post that update...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jh3KrTfvP9E
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AR-eZco6-C0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYSqulkNXTo

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Originally Posted by Joedangod

Warden HoT's were nerfed into the ground for redline, it's the blue line that currently needs a bit of DPS reduction.

I maintain the stance that damage output should never reach the point where guard is even mildly competitive DPS for instances, it is the tank class, it has 2 trait lines that tank very well. If third traitlines are supposed to be competitive in groups then guardian is one of the last classes requiring buffs to make that possible.

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What is the point of having a red spec for Guardians though? To do landscape stuff? You can do landscape stuff wielding a frying pan.

I think if you can't do competitive single target dps in red spec or competitive ae dps in yellow spec, then the specs are largely pointless, because your only viable spec is a tank spec. This makes the guardian obsolete in any role that isn't tanking and tanking is a niche role. There are a lot more dps positions typically available. Guardian isn't even the best tank or the most desired off-tank, the Captain is far more desirable as a meat shield.

I don't really care because I don't do anything with my Guardian other than main tank now, so it doesn't really bother me, my dps gear is neglected and I have zero motivation to bother updating it because there is no point to when the difference is between mediocre and mediocre plus a bit more for a substantial cost to upgrade essences. It is kind of ironic that I can pull half a zone in blue spec and kill everything surprisingly quickly and safely, but you get hammered in red spec now and your single target damage isn't that great.

So what is the point? If you can't get a tank role then the devs want all the guardians to log off? That isn't a great selling point for their game.

I was expecting to see the self-healing be largely made redundant because they didn't need the healing, because their dps was more on par with other dps specs.

It should be irrelevant what a guardian can do in blue spec, if you are not in blue spec. The different trees are meant to have different roles. If a guardian can join a group in a dps role, he should be competitive in that role. I sigh when I see guardians join my pug runs because I know they are dead weight given I will be tanking, they shouldn't have to sit out because some people feel the class should be useless when not performing one niche role. If it is humanly possible, I will drag guardians along in dps roles. But the system shouldn't be this idiotic.

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Originally Posted by Joedangod

Warden HoT's were nerfed into the ground for redline, it's the blue line that currently needs a bit of DPS reduction.

I maintain the stance that damage output should never reach the point where guard is even mildly competitive DPS for instances, it is the tank class, it has 2 trait lines that tank very well. If third traitlines are supposed to be competitive in groups then guardian is one of the last classes requiring buffs to make that possible.

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As Red Warden (currently level 91);
1. My morale is really low, battle memory and use 2 Resolutions for burst healing.
2. As I'm rounding up monsters tap every mob with EoB.
3. Need more morale from tabs, through in a Fierce Resolve.
4. Still need more morale, throw in a Restoration and Conviction.
When combined with Defiant Challenge with only 10s downtime, god mode.
5. Still taking too much damage? Throw in some avoidance gambits.

There's no need for me to drop into Blue when soloing instances at the moment because of Defiant Challenge, access to all gambit heals and taps, and parry heals.

Please, please keep talking as you are doing yourself no favours.

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Originally Posted by Zonflux

As Red Warden (currently level 91);
1. My morale is really low, battle memory and use 2 Resolutions for burst healing.
2. As I'm rounding up monsters tap every mob with EoB.
3. Need more morale from tabs, through in a Fierce Resolve.
4. Still need more morale, throw in a Restoration and Conviction.
When combined with Defiant Challenge with only 10s downtime, god mode.
5. Still taking too much damage? Throw in some avoidance gambits.

There's no need for me to drop into Blue when soloing instances at the moment because of Defiant Challenge, access to all gambit heals and taps, and parry heals.

Please, please keep talking as you are doing yourself no favours.

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In my personal opinion, class balance (which is the primary concern of this thread in relation to the guardian) concerns classes played at the cap level. In the current state of the game, all questing / landscape content can easily be completed by any class, meaning balance is unimportant for this level. I therefore do not think this input about the strength of wardens and their heals is particularly valuable.

This is not to say that I don't believe the red warden has access to too much survivability given the DPS it can output, however!

Worth noting that warden DoTs were nerfed massively with u18 so that for level 92+ they scale poorly in comparison to before, when you reach cap you will find that your DPS output does not increase at the rate it did whilst leveling and a side effect that redline warden is not anywhere near the level of RK/Hunter.

The heal nerf basically ensured that wardens cannot solo properly scaled T2 instances in redline, the lousy mobs of Rohan are not quite at that level. An equivalent blue line damage nerf would help resolve the other side of that making these instances once again almost impossible to solo (although warden would likely need some work to help them compensate threat wise, nothing major).

(sorry for my bad english)
I had written a message about the guardian in PVMP shortly before the update 19.3
Whas has been done on the guardian with the update 19.3 is unfair, guardian in red line is now weaker (the patch notes sais the contrary). With no effort from SSG after three nerfs (18, 19.2, 19.3), for the update 20 for example, it would be very problematic.

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Originally Posted by siipperi

They are about on the same level now as before due to usage of agility instead of mastery on the gear and ili rise.

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Yeah, but at the same time the other classes got a large bump with U18+ that wardens hardly benefited from. The result is that wardens became quite a bit weaker in comparison to other classes at 105 than they were at 100. Hence why wardens are no longer the classes doing the crazy parses, pretty much just hunters/RK's now.

After watching Zonflux's U19.3 video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DP3LmqAocWs), I've come up with a theory as to why Prey on the Weak heals are procing so rarely. When Zon was fighting in Helegrod Spider Wing (towards the end of the video), he was only getting PotW heals when he used Sweeping Cut and not from Vexing Blow, Whirling Retaliation, War-chant, or Guardian's Ward. The difference is that SC tiers up bleeds automatically, but VB/WR/WC/GW only tier up bleeds when they crit (Keen Blade base trait + Heavy Blows set bonus). This makes perfect sense that Heavy Blows would be causing problems, since that was specifically one of the changes they listed in the U19.3 notes. In other words, they were fiddling with Heavy Blows to fix the "bleed falling off on resist" bug, but ended up introducing this bug. It's possible something else is also up (Zon mentioned Insult to Injury and Radiate), but at present I don't see as much evidence for other causes.

Hopefully a SSG dev reads this thread and is able to fix the bugs plaguing the Guardian...and then yes, please give us a preview on BR so we can test things before they go live! Without this critical testing, more players will be driven away from the class and potentially the game itself.

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Originally Posted by Lifthil

After watching Zonflux's U19.3 video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DP3LmqAocWs), I've come up with a theory as to why Prey on the Weak heals are procing so rarely. When Zon was fighting in Helegrod Spider Wing (towards the end of the video), he was only getting PotW heals when he used Sweeping Cut and not from Vexing Blow, Whirling Retaliation, War-chant, or Guardian's Ward. The difference is that SC tiers up bleeds automatically, but VB/WR/WC/GW only tier up bleeds when they crit (Keen Blade base trait + Heavy Blows set bonus). This makes perfect sense that Heavy Blows would be causing problems, since that was specifically one of the changes they listed in the U19.3 notes. In other words, they were fiddling with Heavy Blows to fix the "bleed falling off on resist" bug, but ended up introducing this bug. It's possible something else is also up (Zon mentioned Insult to Injury and Radiate), but at present I don't see as much evidence for other causes.

Hopefully a SSG dev reads this thread and is able to fix the bugs plaguing the Guardian...and then yes, please give us a preview on BR so we can test things before they go live! Without this critical testing, more players will be driven away from the class and potentially the game itself.

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I was just brainstorming ideas. I liked your post so much that I'm forwarding it to the devs.

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Originally Posted by Joedangod

Yeah, but at the same time the other classes got a large bump with U18+ that wardens hardly benefited from. The result is that wardens became quite a bit weaker in comparison to other classes at 105 than they were at 100. Hence why wardens are no longer the classes doing the crazy parses, pretty much just hunters/RK's now.

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You mean they are just very OP at this moment in red and not god like? :rolleyes:

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Originally Posted by Zonflux

I was just brainstorming ideas. I liked your post so much that I'm forwarding it to the devs.

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Thing to remember here is that spamming devs with random messages is not very productive. Best is to report bugs in game with /bug and fill the form and QA will handle the rest.

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Originally Posted by siipperi

Best is to report bugs in game with /bug and fill the form and QA will handle the rest.

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Recent guardian "fixes" have convinced me that there is no QA at SSG right now and all bug reports go straight to /dev/null (pun intended)

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Originally Posted by Marxlne

Recent guardian "fixes" have convinced me that there is no QA at SSG right now and all bug reports go straight to /dev/null (pun intended)

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from notes:
•Guardian bleeds for higher tiers can crit.
•Guardian's Heavy Strike bleed stacks will no longer fall off enemies when the applied bleed is resisted, and will instead simply not increase. The stack will instead fall off on timeout or removal.

If this is presented to QA as being the only changes then QA will only be required to check that these two are working as specified. They wouldn't be required to make any other check and sign off the changes ready for LIVE.

Others here are more adept at checking that both items are indeed working, I suspect they are.

But ofc as we all know whenever they try to modify the Guard code it never quite works out. My guess is they aren't drilling down to the code that needs changing and making changes elsewhere that inevitably has additional knock-on effects. Each time they go into the code it just gets messier and messier. Threat got so complex (miss-understood) by HD, they threw it out.

There has to be some kind of change in strategy at SSG. Our last EP was of the opinion that we moaned about the game because of our own rl issues rather than our gaming experiences (it's on YouTube). It's my opinion she was the worst EP for the players since KP. I moan when they screw up. I moan more if they screw up a good rl day.

We need a change in priorities, we always get the "it's on the radar" and "when we can fit it in" line. Do they not know they drive people away when their changes effect our gameplay so drastically. I've just had the longest period away from the game in the nearly 10 years of playing, 5 months, as a result of the last Guard "fix". Seeing the patch notes had me hoping I would be playing the Guardian again.

What is so annoying is we have no acknowledgement of any problem days later. While a missing horse has priority over everything!

We had the same last time, until +EdgeCase came on to "discuss" and everyone fawned over him thinking we were getting somewhere at last. Well that didn't last.

But it's not just Guards. Everyone will have their favourite class and build and if you side-line or significantly modify that spec you only piss off that player.

It has to be the most important priority SSG have to make class changes with the best of care and fully test and show on Bullroarer before release. How dumb do you have to be to not see this?

Mac

I think that some of their problems trying to balance red guardian stem from the fact that they don't seem to have designed it as an aoe dps traitline at all. Only 1 trait in the entire tree involves AoE, the dev diary for guardian changes during helms deep even states that yellow was meant to be the AoE line "The Fighter of Shadow... provided a bit more access to AoE attacks, an area where the other two lines are a bit weak."*. Most of the skills in redline seem to be buffing melee damage in some form, not bleed damage and every skill granted by the red traitline is single target.

I assume that radiate bleed spreads was just a massive accident and the devs at the time ended up rolling with it instead of blocking the spread and focusing on making guards more ST oriented in redline.

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Originally Posted by Joedangod

I think that some of their problems trying to balance red guardian stem from the fact that they don't seem to have designed it as an aoe dps traitline at all. Only 1 trait in the entire tree involves AoE, the dev diary for guardian changes during helms deep even states that yellow was meant to be the AoE line "The Fighter of Shadow... provided a bit more access to AoE attacks, an area where the other two lines are a bit weak."*. Most of the skills in redline seem to be buffing melee damage in some form, not bleed damage and every skill granted by the red traitline is single target.

I assume that radiate bleed spreads was just a massive accident and the devs at the time ended up rolling with it instead of blocking the spread and focusing on making guards more ST oriented in redline.

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All those dev diaries were published a good while before the desperate scramble during beta to appease the player testers and get a playable class. A lot of stuff got implemented in the panic and there was no thought to any balance.

Before Gondor I wandered the world in a blue build, I'd never bothered trying to do damage, I had other classes for that. Then the forums talked of this awesome Red/Yellow Bleeder build so eventually had a look. My immediate thought was someone seriously screwed up here, this was no Guardian and it would be fixed in a hotfix in no time. Problem is you get used to it, you can't take it away after so long. I used to play landscape content on horseback, on a war-band I'd mindlessly circle around till the horse ran out of power then dismount and remount to continue the fight.

The bleed tiering up and radiating so quickly should have been noticed and addressed at the time not years later. But we always asked if they actually played the game and they always said yes they did!

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Originally Posted by Macdui

All those dev diaries were published a good while before the desperate scramble during beta to appease the player testers and get a playable class. A lot of stuff got implemented in the panic and there was no thought to any balance.

Before Gondor I wandered the world in a blue build, I'd never bothered trying to do damage, I had other classes for that. Then the forums talked of this awesome Red/Yellow Bleeder build so eventually had a look. My immediate thought was someone seriously screwed up here, this was no Guardian and it would be fixed in a hotfix in no time. Problem is you get used to it, you can't take it away after so long. I used to play landscape content on horseback, on a war-band I'd mindlessly circle around till the horse ran out of power then dismount and remount to continue the fight.

The bleed tiering up and radiating so quickly should have been noticed and addressed at the time not years later. But we always asked if they actually played the game and they always said yes they did!

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The traitline isn't designed for such a mechanic though. Essentially what red guardians are asking for is impossible to give via bug fixes since the issues aren't technically bugs. Redline would need to be revamped to solve this issue, with them either resetting it to be the ST DPS they originally had planned or whether they instead just alter most of the ST traits in redline to be designed with the aoe mechanics in mind.

Either way, the current state of red guard has no meaningful bug fix.

Bleeds applying on crits seems to be from the traitline passive, heavy blows is simply supposed to make you go up 2 bleeds on crit (which doesn't happen).*

I then tried to see if heavy blows applied, it was only giving me 1 tier of bleeds on crit.**

I then decided to see what was wrong with Prey on the Weak, turns out the damage part at the top is working as intended but the heal aspect is not. It's not proccing on critical hit tiers.***

http://i.imgur.com/JzvQw1B.png

* Tested by placing no points in red and just hitting a friend in a spar, crits did tier up the bleeds.
** Tested by placing enough points in red to get the trait and just hitting the same friend in a spar, crits did give a single bleed tier.
*** Tested by placing all points into red and hitting a person who is now reconsidering our friendship, discovered only traited sweeping cut, thrust and brutal assault could proc PotW.

Just came here to check, if it was me or U19.3 made the guardian entirely unplayable in red line now. I guess it's not me then... *sigh

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Joolonu

Just came here to check, if it was me or U19.3 made the guardian entirely unplayable in red line now. I guess it's not me then... *sigh

---

It's not unplayable, it's just... not fun at all. It's a complete and total slog due to the dps drop.

I read the new hotfix patch notes, but I'm unsure if it means guards are just like before u19.3, or bleed crit improved but not fully fixed?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Fermongu

I read the new hotfix patch notes, but I'm unsire if it means guards are just like before u19.3, or bleed crit improved but no fully fixed?

---

I believe it's essentially rolling back to old update with heals and no ability to crit bleeds. I guess it's better solution for now until they do something revolutionary to broken bleed mechanism.

It sounds to me like the update that caused bleeds being resisted to no longer remove the bleed completely will still be there, so I will expect an increase to dps from 19.2, and probably an increase from 19.3. Healing should be back to what it was in 19.2. Overall, half a step in the right direction. Of course, we will see what it looks like when live.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by mattspencer

It sounds to me like the update that caused bleeds being resisted to no longer remove the bleed completely will still be there, so I will expect an increase to dps from 19.2, and probably an increase from 19.3. Healing should be back to what it was in 19.2. Overall, half a step in the right direction. Of course, we will see what it looks like when live.

---

Ow dear...
It really sounds like a rollback , i hope at least resist fix is still there...
There's no mention about this by Cordovan.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by mattspencer

It sounds to me like the update that caused bleeds being resisted to no longer remove the bleed completely will still be there, so I will expect an increase to dps from 19.2, and probably an increase from 19.3. Healing should be back to what it was in 19.2. Overall, half a step in the right direction. Of course, we will see what it looks like when live.

---

Yes. The prior fix to the guardian bleeds was most certainly borked, and a new fix is already in testing to roll out probably in the next release.

Longer term... Yes, design-wise the combination of Radiate and the Red line bleeds was apparently not anticipated and resulted in a rather OP Red-line build with a dabbling of yellow that ended up out-classing the yellow line in its own arena. I can't speak to the exact intent as I wasn't here for that, but even a glance at the tree arrangement suggests that it was a design error.

It is likely that in the future the red-line will see some significant tweaks to its game-play, shifting it back away from AoE/self-heal, and more towards a full out DPS/leveling line, while we try to get Yellow back into the primacy for AoE off-tanking. I don't have any details to offer on those as I'm currently working on other matters, but in terms of intent, expect the builds to move in those general directions.

But in the short term, we're mostly just trying to triage the red-line bugs to stop the bleeding. So to speak. :p

-Vastin

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Vastin

Yes. The prior fix to the guardian bleeds was most certainly borked, and a new fix is already in testing to roll out probably in the next release.

Longer term... Yes, design-wise the combination of Radiate and the Red line bleeds was apparently not anticipated and resulted in a rather OP Red-line build with a dabbling of yellow that ended up out-classing the yellow line in its own arena. I can't speak to the exact intent as I wasn't here for that, but even a glance at the tree arrangement suggests that it was a design error.

It is likely that in the future the red-line will see some significant tweaks to its game-play, shifting it back away from AoE/self-heal, and more towards a full out DPS/leveling line, while we try to get Yellow back into the primacy for AoE off-tanking. I don't have any details to offer on those as I'm currently working on other matters, but in terms of intent, expect the builds to move in those general directions.

But in the short term, we're mostly just trying to triage the red-line bugs to stop the bleeding. So to speak. :p

-Vastin

---

New name on the forums! Please introduce yourself :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by DiogoVP

New name on the forums! Please introduce yourself :)

---

He's not new, just coming back.

https://www.lotro.com/forums/showthr...39#post7689839

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Vastin

Hey folks. Figured this looked like a good place to pop in and announce myself.

Tis Vastin, developer of ages long past - back at work on the guts of LOTRO. This time I'll be puttering about in Systems as opposed to Content development, which was my prior haunt.

Just as a heads up, we are certainly looking at tweaking the essence system further as we move into Mordor, and have been actively discussing what shape that will take internally.

I suspect you'll see a more evenhanded contribution from items and essences going forwards. I can't outline exactly where that line will be as we're still debating the particular ourselves, and I'm perfectly happy to let you discover those particulars in game - but probably less overall slots than you see in the current generation of gear, while remaining a major aspect of gearing out your character fully.

To sum it up, we like the customization and the ability to hand out rewards more often that the essence system allows us, but the difficult logistics and lack of unique value and coolness of the actual gear drops has certainly been noted, and we'll be working to improve that, both in terms of the equipment designs and some of the underpinning systems.

I'm looking forwards to exploring Middle Earth with you all once again!

-Vastin

---

And, his previous account's profile from which you can see his older posts:

https://www.lotro.com/forums/member.php?204728-Vastin

Nice to see a systems dev in the class forums (although I would like to direct you to the Beorning side for a little bit). :P

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Vastin

But in the short term, we're mostly just trying to triage the red-line bugs to stop the bleeding. So to speak. :p

---

Think you need to tackle it from the yellow line side, the majority of Guardian bugs are there. Although admittedly I don't have any idea how you're gonna be able to balance red/yellow short term, I wish you luck. :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Vastin

Yes. The prior fix to the guardian bleeds was most certainly borked, and a new fix is already in testing to roll out probably in the next release.

Longer term... Yes, design-wise the combination of Radiate and the Red line bleeds was apparently not anticipated and resulted in a rather OP Red-line build with a dabbling of yellow that ended up out-classing the yellow line in its own arena. I can't speak to the exact intent as I wasn't here for that, but even a glance at the tree arrangement suggests that it was a design error.

It is likely that in the future the red-line will see some significant tweaks to its game-play, shifting it back away from AoE/self-heal, and more towards a full out DPS/leveling line, while we try to get Yellow back into the primacy for AoE off-tanking. I don't have any details to offer on those as I'm currently working on other matters, but in terms of intent, expect the builds to move in those general directions.

But in the short term, we're mostly just trying to triage the red-line bugs to stop the bleeding. So to speak. :p

-Vastin

---

Thanks Vastin, I think this was the type of communication many of us wanted from SSG. I appreciate it very much.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Vastin

But in the short term, we're mostly just trying to triage the red-line bugs to stop the bleeding. So to speak. :p

-Vastin

---

Thanks for speaking towards the issues, Vastin. We're looking forward to seeing solid changes for the better in the near term.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Vastin

Yes. The prior fix to the guardian bleeds was most certainly borked, and a new fix is already in testing to roll out probably in the next release.

Longer term... Yes, design-wise the combination of Radiate and the Red line bleeds was apparently not anticipated and resulted in a rather OP Red-line build with a dabbling of yellow that ended up out-classing the yellow line in its own arena. I can't speak to the exact intent as I wasn't here for that, but even a glance at the tree arrangement suggests that it was a design error.

It is likely that in the future the red-line will see some significant tweaks to its game-play, shifting it back away from AoE/self-heal, and more towards a full out DPS/leveling line, while we try to get Yellow back into the primacy for AoE off-tanking. I don't have any details to offer on those as I'm currently working on other matters, but in terms of intent, expect the builds to move in those general directions.

But in the short term, we're mostly just trying to triage the red-line bugs to stop the bleeding. So to speak. :p

-Vastin

---

Thanks for stepping into the class forums and letting us know what is going on.

1 thing though :
The red line needs a complete revamp in order to become a full out dps/levelling line , not associated with healing.
I am not sure if it worths the fuss or not.
Unless you take Prey on the Weak and swap it with singular focus (final trait) from yellow.
Obviously singular focus badly needs a boost , since the armour debuff is currently a joke and it would fit better in red anyway.
Also , something must be done about thrill of battle heal in red.... I mean it got completely destroyed by edgecase.
Put it into yellow if you have to , just make it useful.20 second internal cd ( or w/e it is ) is way way too long and it only seems to proc once even when hitting many targets...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Vastin

Yes. The prior fix to the guardian bleeds was most certainly borked, and a new fix is already in testing to roll out probably in the next release.

Longer term... Yes, design-wise the combination of Radiate and the Red line bleeds was apparently not anticipated and resulted in a rather OP Red-line build with a dabbling of yellow that ended up out-classing the yellow line in its own arena. I can't speak to the exact intent as I wasn't here for that, but even a glance at the tree arrangement suggests that it was a design error.

It is likely that in the future the red-line will see some significant tweaks to its game-play, shifting it back away from AoE/self-heal, and more towards a full out DPS/leveling line, while we try to get Yellow back into the primacy for AoE off-tanking. I don't have any details to offer on those as I'm currently working on other matters, but in terms of intent, expect the builds to move in those general directions.

But in the short term, we're mostly just trying to triage the red-line bugs to stop the bleeding. So to speak. :p

-Vastin

---

Thanks for the heads up Vastin.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Vastin

Yes. The prior fix to the guardian bleeds was most certainly borked, and a new fix is already in testing to roll out probably in the next release.

Longer term... Yes, design-wise the combination of Radiate and the Red line bleeds was apparently not anticipated and resulted in a rather OP Red-line build with a dabbling of yellow that ended up out-classing the yellow line in its own arena. I can't speak to the exact intent as I wasn't here for that, but even a glance at the tree arrangement suggests that it was a design error.

It is likely that in the future the red-line will see some significant tweaks to its game-play, shifting it back away from AoE/self-heal, and more towards a full out DPS/leveling line, while we try to get Yellow back into the primacy for AoE off-tanking. I don't have any details to offer on those as I'm currently working on other matters, but in terms of intent, expect the builds to move in those general directions.

But in the short term, we're mostly just trying to triage the red-line bugs to stop the bleeding. So to speak. :p

-Vastin

---

First, let me say thank you for responding and giving us some insight as to what the future may hold.

Second, I have to be honest that I am worried about what you may be saying above about Red-line. " Yes, design-wise the combination of Radiate and the Red line bleeds was apparently not anticipated and resulted in a rather OP Red-line build with a dabbling of yellow that ended up out-classing the yellow line in its own arena. " I hope you are referring to red-line being able to possibly aoe tank better than yellow line. In that respect, I can somewhat agree. I hope this is seen as yellow line being weak and needing fixing rather than red-line being "OP" and needing to be nerfed. I hope you aren't referring to red-line being "OP" in the sense of dps. Red-line has never been great at dps, it has been cross-traited with yellow to become great at survival. Any great red-line aoe dps parse will pale in comparison to an average aoe parse from a Warden or Champion. Most AOE fights would be so short that a Lore Master's rather bursty AOE dps will beat a Guardians. Anything done by Guards in red-line that may be considered OP has been done much quicker by Wardens.

In other words, please don't nerf Guard Red-line DPS, but change it from AOE to ST if you must.

About that, a fairly easy and straightforward way to do just that would be to lower the number of targets Sweeping Cut, Vexing Blow, and Whirling Retaliation can hit. They currently are at 7, 5, and 5 respectively with an imbued weapon. If you took them down to 4, 2, and 2 targets, and increased their damage, that would solve half of the AOE problem. The other half of the solution would be to put in either a passive trait bonus, or a regular trait very deep in yellow (as in bottom row) to increase aoe targets by 3 (or more).

If it is the self healing in red-line that you are worried about, reduce the magnitude of Prey on the Weak healing to about 25% to 50% of what it is currently. Please counter this with increased DPS in some form, as it is only our self healing combined with DPS that make red-line fun to play. If you lower one, please increase the other.

Thank you again for your reply and information of what may come.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Vastin

Yes. The prior fix to the guardian bleeds was most certainly borked, and a new fix is already in testing to roll out probably in the next release.

Longer term... Yes, design-wise the combination of Radiate and the Red line bleeds was apparently not anticipated and resulted in a rather OP Red-line build with a dabbling of yellow that ended up out-classing the yellow line in its own arena. I can't speak to the exact intent as I wasn't here for that, but even a glance at the tree arrangement suggests that it was a design error.

It is likely that in the future the red-line will see some significant tweaks to its game-play, shifting it back away from AoE/self-heal, and more towards a full out DPS/leveling line, while we try to get Yellow back into the primacy for AoE off-tanking. I don't have any details to offer on those as I'm currently working on other matters, but in terms of intent, expect the builds to move in those general directions.

But in the short term, we're mostly just trying to triage the red-line bugs to stop the bleeding. So to speak. :p

-Vastin

---

Firstly, thank you for coming here and communicating with the players, it is encouraging to see.

If I can offer some advice, please release any changes to Bullroarer so guardians can give it a test run, you may not necessarily agree with points of view of where damage or healing should be at, however, I think we can prevent code going live that isn't functioning as the devs intend it to.

I am not sure how any dev couldn't have anticipated the consequences of Radiate and red-line bleeds, a simple solution is to place radiate as a yellow set trait instead of a tree trait, it means you wouldn't get the extent of bleed spreading that exists currently. However, I like radiate, it helps to generate agro for my blue spec tank and I would hate to see it be moved.

At the end of the day, you still have the issues of what extent of red-line dps, self-healing, yellow-line ae dps you want and how that impacts the pace of game play and enjoyability of game play.

What I also think that the devs need to communicate is for the intent of the trees. Is red-line meant to be competitive for single target dps as other dps classes, and is yellow-line meant to be competitive for ae dps as other classes capable of ae dps. If not, what is the point? Tanking is a very niche role. Blue works, works quite well. Yellow tanking is very situational, in most cases blue is far superior.

I have different classes I play to dps, to heal and guardian is my go-to tank, however, there are a lot of players that just focus on one character, or invest significantly in one character. It is quite expensive and time consuming to gear up and keep up with ilvl changes, there needs to be a purpose for the investment imo. I have neglected my guardian dps gear because if I am not a competitive dpser for T2 groups/raids, then my L100 gear can breeze through any other content and if I don't have the incentive to upgrade then what else is the player doing?

I think SSG needs a clear message as what the objectives are and where they wish to head, the tweaking of values is kind of meaningless unless you are actively working towards that intended goal.

You can understand how we thought this guy was new; actual admission that someone messed up the last few fixes and that trait trees had unintended repercussions. Honesty, good grief!

I was here during the HD changes. At one point the Guardian wasn't available to play on Bullroarer because it was broken. You had a release date set in stone and various developers desperate to get the class changes done in time. Doing trait trees and threat changes alongside a big content releases was the problem. They were acting on any suggestion to fix stuff and balance was forgotten about, the dev dairies were a fiction. And once done, no budget to address all the issues and everything side-lined to the mantra of content release content release content release. As players playing multiple classes the balance issues were obvious and yet we're told you all play the game but seemingly couldn't see the problems or weren't interested in addressing them.

So 3 years on how do you proceed? Even minor class changes can effect someone's gameplay. I've seen many give up playing because changes have so effected the gameplay of their favourite character.

Any class change, however seemingly minor should be on Bullroarer and if it's alongside a content release then it must not be tied to that content release, leave it off live until it's ready.

For the long term Guardian goals you seem to be referring to the original dev diary, should we expect other classes to go the same way, should I be worried for my alts?

If we are to loose the Red/Yellow OP build, that still could not get a bona fide DPS spot in a fellow are we ever going to get an effective non-tanking role in a fellow? I see you refer to a levelling red build...

I see several classes using set bonus combos to make particular key skills very powerful, should you have a max level use on some of these sets or continue the lazy copying of old set bonuses for new gear? Maybe more care over set bonuses could be taken, they can be so weak to be of no use but when too strong that they are equipped long after level then it can't be good.

Do you have any comment on the Threat mechanics that ties threat to damage for a tanking build and because that wouldn't work relies on OP threat copy to actually work?

Do you have the budget?

Mac

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Vastin

Yes. The prior fix to the guardian bleeds was most certainly borked, and a new fix is already in testing to roll out probably in the next release.

Longer term... Yes, design-wise the combination of Radiate and the Red line bleeds was apparently not anticipated and resulted in a rather OP Red-line build with a dabbling of yellow that ended up out-classing the yellow line in its own arena. I can't speak to the exact intent as I wasn't here for that, but even a glance at the tree arrangement suggests that it was a design error.

It is likely that in the future the red-line will see some significant tweaks to its game-play, shifting it back away from AoE/self-heal, and more towards a full out DPS/leveling line, while we try to get Yellow back into the primacy for AoE off-tanking. I don't have any details to offer on those as I'm currently working on other matters, but in terms of intent, expect the builds to move in those general directions.

But in the short term, we're mostly just trying to triage the red-line bugs to stop the bleeding. So to speak. :p

-Vastin

---

While I agree that it was quite op, it was undeniably very fun to play and it gave the class its unique character. Now the dev that made the "fix' completely destroyed this and you are now assuring us that you will make sure red line gets turned into a mediocre "leveling line" that's not good for anything else. What is the point of a game if it's not having fun? I'm sorry but you guys turn everything into boring, bland, grindy ####, uproot everything and take the fun out of everything. Also, talking about hunter changes.

Literally every great guard I know stopped playing the class after you nerfed it. Not talking about people who were great because of the class was op, talking about people who were able to make the most of a really cool, unique and powerful class. I hope you at least see the distinction. Or actually I don't even care... I find myself not having logged into LOTRO for over a month. The baseline of the game changed. It's now a grindfest from which you meticulously removed any highlights to make sure only braindead people would play it, all just to allow you to design fully p2w systems. I get it, this is what modern MMOs are like. But you guys forget you have to have at least some compelling elements to your game or it becomes something that's not worth it.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not talking about you personally. I'm talking to you because you seem to be pretty much the last person left worth talking to.

I'm guessing the latest fix, for today's hot fix, is just a roll back to the previously broken code. But this last change was deemed simple enough not to put on Bullroarer and again this "fix" goes the same way, not on Bullroarer. I can only wonder what will happen if we don't get to test again!

The battle with making red line ST is that some of the traits weren't really thought out for ST. Heavy Blows and the passive redline trait to tier bleeds on crits just mean you can easily tier bleeds via the several AoE skills at the guardians disposal. If those traits don't change then the cashing out of bleeds should probably be the main source of DPS rather than the bleeds themselves. You'd still be capable of AoE damage but you would have to focus one target at a time rather than just aoeing wildly until everything falls.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by NeebPlayer

While I agree that it was quite op, it was undeniably very fun to play and it gave the class its unique character. Now the dev that made the "fix' completely destroyed this and you are now assuring us that you will make sure red line gets turned into a mediocre "leveling line" that's not good for anything else. What is the point of a game if it's not having fun? I'm sorry but you guys turn everything into boring, bland, grindy ####, uproot everything and take the fun out of everything. Also, talking about hunter changes.

Literally every great guard I know stopped playing the class after you nerfed it. Not talking about people who were great because of the class was op, talking about people who were able to make the most of a really cool, unique and powerful class. I hope you at least see the distinction. Or actually I don't even care... I find myself not having logged into LOTRO for over a month. The baseline of the game changed. It's now a grindfest from which you meticulously removed any highlights to make sure only braindead people would play it, all just to allow you to design fully p2w systems. I get it, this is what modern MMOs are like. But you guys forget you have to have at least some compelling elements to your game or it becomes something that's not worth it.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not talking about you personally. I'm talking to you because you seem to be pretty much the last person left worth talking to.

---

Red line guardian even if correctly working is definition of brokenly OP, you can do 10k self healing blindfolded and hands tied behind your back. Class is way better off by removing all proc self heals and giving them dps where guardians feel like they can do little of it in style of other mediocre non dps classes.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by siipperi

Red line guardian even if correctly working is definition of brokenly OP, you can do 10k self healing blindfolded and hands tied behind your back. Class is way better off by removing all proc self heals and giving them dps where guardians feel like they can do little of it in style of other mediocre non dps classes.

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Yeah sure, i agree with you.
Lets remove healing warden gambits in redline aswell. Selfmotivation for RK, WL for LM in redline. BA for hunter in everyline, no heal skill for cappy in redline, no heal for red mini too.
Lets remove all guardian procs healing in redline aswell. We done. Fixed ? Not really :confused: :D

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ChromiteSwiftpaw

He's not new, just coming back.

https://www.lotro.com/forums/showthr...39#post7689839


And, his previous account's profile from which you can see his older posts:

https://www.lotro.com/forums/member.php?204728-Vastin

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Thanks for that!

I like the way he talked about the guards (even though I don't agree with everything), but he is very good at demonstrating what he thinks and why he thinks that and I always thought that this leads to constructive discussions. I am very happy that SSG is increasing the team's size. =)
Is FriendlyHat in the same department of systems development?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by NeebPlayer

While I agree that it was quite op, it was undeniably very fun to play and it gave the class its unique character.

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For me, my Warden was more survivable and my Champion did higher AoE damage, and neither of those classes required me to be hit regularly to maximize damage. So I actually don't agree that Guardian was OP previously, but I most definitely agree that it was fun -- and that fun factor was lost when the bleeds were nerfed.

I'm not seeing the problem with Red+Yellow doing more AoE dmg than Yellow+?. Yellow is a tanking line -- why should it do more dmg then a Red DPS line? Currently, Beorning, Burglar, Captain, Hunter, and Red Champion are ST physical classes, and Champion and Guard are the only AoE physical classes. I don't see the advantage or changing Red Guardian to ST leaving the Champion as the ONLY AoE physical class. Not every player will prefer a ST class -- and halving the options for an AoE class doesn't seem like a good thing. This is particularly true for the players that prefer solo/small groups -- the AoE Red Guardian was a fun class for that playstyle. Now only the Champion fills that role, and the reduced choice for players doesn't strike me as an advantage.

If redline guard will move away from self heal and into a more dps line then we need added survivability. The self heals were a welcome addition to me considering my armor felt like it was made of paper after the trait lines were introduced. Give us back Guardian's Pledge in DPS. Bring me back to the days of my Isengard dps build. I was respectable compared to Champions and still tough as nails like a Guard!

Normal service has been resumed with the hot fix, looks like back to May/June 2016 Guardian.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by siipperi

Red line guardian even if correctly working is definition of brokenly OP, you can do 10k self healing blindfolded and hands tied behind your back. Class is way better off by removing all proc self heals and giving them dps where guardians feel like they can do little of it in style of other mediocre non dps classes.

---

How do you get 10k HPS? Highest HPS I got is 1.5k HPS in big pulls in Helegrod Spider t1, and that was unrealistical, just for testing. In more normal scenarios of a few mobs, I get 200-500 HPS. For some comparison, my red capy self heals are in the same range 300-400 HPS. I'm ok with nerf to self healing so we can't solo a raid, but we need then big DPS increase to be viable as that role in fellowships. In that line, I dislike we will lose AoE DPS, why leave only champs as only viable AoE melee DPS while having several classes for ST DPS? Let bleeds spread (increase again radiate and Insult!) and let red guards be decent as AoE DPS, just like they were.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Elgrind

Lets remove all guardian procs healing in redline aswell. We done. Fixed ? Not really :confused: :D

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Lets be honest here, not like guardian lacks self heals even without prey on the weak. Problem is that they have such low dps, with higher dps self healing like that is not needed, well it's not needed even now anywhere but pvp, to make prey on the weak balanced it should have few second internal cooldown to prevent it to be used on aoe targets and healing multiple times per hit. But even if they end up removing potw guardians still have 45s honourable combat, 2min full morale heal (+morale for some time) and 2 other not very relevant heals, which thrill of battle could be lowered to 5s internal cooldown.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Fermongu

How do you get 10k HPS? Highest HPS I got is 1.5k HPS in big pulls in Helegrod Spider t1, and that was unrealistical, just for testing. In more normal scenarios of a few mobs, I get 200-500 HPS. For some comparison, my red capy self heals are in the same range 300-400 HPS. I'm ok with nerf to self healing so we can't solo a raid, but we need then big DPS increase to be viable as that role in fellowships. In that line, I dislike we will lose AoE DPS, why leave only champs as only viable AoE melee DPS while having several classes for ST DPS? Let bleeds spread (increase again radiate and Insult!) and let red guards be decent as AoE DPS, just like they were.

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Have enough morale and utilize set- and trait bonuses.

I think you may refer to BotP? I never used that, I was thinking only of PotW healing... Maybe another way of nerfing guards self healing can be removing BotP heals entirely? Or make them yellow set bonus instead of trait.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Fermongu

I think you may refer to BotP? I never used that, I was thinking only of PotW healing... Maybe another way of nerfing guards self healing can be removing BotP heals entirely? Or make them yellow set bonus instead of trait.

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Even prey on the weak can heal close to 5k

still broken
bleeds random t10 bleed 1254 pm 65k finess 21k critratin 16.3k firestarter northithilien or is this op ?
allmost full red line

Quote:

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Originally Posted by kerbelettos

still broken
bleeds random t10 bleed 1254 pm 65k finess 21k critratin 16.3k firestarter northithilien or is this op ?
allmost full red line

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They told us they rolled back the bleed fix so that prey would work again. The intent was to be less broken, or at least as broken as last year. My read on it is that the original coders have left a mess and they're thinking of a re-write. You say almost full red line, however since HD we've had an increase to trait points for all classes and many builds have become far more powerful cross traiting. I certainly had builds in mind for a couple of characters before the last points were added into the game especially where capstones were so lack lustra. The only surprise is that a Red + Yellow build was powerful on day one, other classes had to wait a bit.


The insane levels of self healing that is possible comes from doubling up set bonus gear and finding a mass of mobs, which is down to Turbine/SSG. I don't want to equip low level gear or non-imbued LIs to make my character work.

Mac

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Originally Posted by kerbelettos

still broken
bleeds random t10 bleed 1254 pm 65k finess 21k critratin 16.3k firestarter northithilien or is this op ?
allmost full red line

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I spent thirty minutes on my guardian today, and quickly tested out the dps / bleeds on North Ithilien Firestarters. I glanced at the combat log, and my T10 Bleeds showed as 1,100 - 1,450ish with crits at around 2,700ish. Crit frequency is a lot less now as well. Will look at the dps numbers more closely tomorrow, but it definitely took a long time to get that Firestarter morale bar down. My base Physical Mastery is about 72,000 and crit at 25% (Redline w a bit of yellow).

I know this is a bandaid hotfix for now, but just mentioning what I saw. Damage seemed higher before the hotfix unfortunately.

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Originally Posted by Turco

I know this is a bandaid hotfix for now...

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It was removal of the last bandaid that ruptured the wound of the previous bandaid.

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Originally Posted by Turco

I spent thirty minutes on my guardian today, and quickly tested out the dps / bleeds on North Ithilien Firestarters. I glanced at the combat log, and my T10 Bleeds showed as 1,100 - 1,450ish with crits at around 2,700ish. Crit frequency is a lot less now as well. Will look at the dps numbers more closely tomorrow, but it definitely took a long time to get that Firestarter morale bar down. My base Physical Mastery is about 72,000 and crit at 25% (Redline w a bit of yellow).

I know this is a bandaid hotfix for now, but just mentioning what I saw. Damage seemed higher before the hotfix unfortunately.

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If this is true, then indeed blue/yellow parses higher than red right now lol.

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Originally Posted by Findun

If this is true, then indeed blue/yellow parses higher than red right now lol.

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Hi @Findun, I ran my own tests of which I will let you and the community be the judge after watching.

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Originally Posted by Zonflux

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8olNzDd17eU

I decided to do various fair and equal comparisons of Blue versus Red in this stream, all live stream. The results whether it is U19.3 or post U19.3 rollback may or may not surprise you depending on whether you have been watching my videos. Personally I'd say that this video stream is definitely worth a watch. Please let me know your thoughts from my comparisons.

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Sorry, Zon, was too traumatized to watch after https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8olNzDd17eU#t=06m59s

After logging in yesterday, it looks like bleeds are tiering up the way they did before 19.3. Also bleeds may not be criting the way they were, but they also aren't falling off. And self heals are back, so, improvement. Most of us don't have t2 ToDT raid armor, but the 25% bleed dmg buff would significantly increase dps.

It is probably close to a coin flip between the BB Gold Jewellery ( 10% ) bleed set vs essence jewellery. Shorter fights would benefit essence gear more, longer fights the bleed set would be beneficial, especially if kiting is involved. I have both and probably will stick with essence gear. T2 Raid 25% bleed would be a huge benefit.

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Originally Posted by mattspencer

It is probably close to a coin flip between the BB Gold Jewellery ( 10% ) bleed set vs essence jewellery. Shorter fights would benefit essence gear more, longer fights the bleed set would be beneficial, especially if kiting is involved. I have both and probably will stick with essence gear. T2 Raid 25% bleed would be a huge benefit.

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Talking of raid set bonus, this all started because someone decided to put a radiate buff bonus on some raid gear so they had to nerf radiate to accommodate, and truly screwed it up. With another set giving bleed buffs (hmm lets nerf bleeds too?) it's two sets that don't actually improve the build you're likely raiding in and if ever there was a primary objective in any MMO raid it's to gear up the tank first not dangle the carrot of key off spec gear that wont overall improve the raid group.

I wish blue names had to have the class and level of their own characters listed in a footer/signature, that would be telling.

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Originally Posted by Macdui

Talking of raid set bonus, this all started because someone decided to put a radiate buff bonus on some raid gear so they had to nerf radiate to accommodate, and truly screwed it up. With another set giving bleed buffs (hmm lets nerf bleeds too?) it's two sets that don't actually improve the build you're likely raiding in and if ever there was a primary objective in any MMO raid it's to gear up the tank first not dangle the carrot of key off spec gear that wont overall improve the raid group.

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Well...I mean technically it started when they didn't patch radiate spreading bleeds back in Helms Deep.

Well to fix the stuff that got released in HD that didn't match the plan they would have needed Blizzard's budget...