More Guardian Thoughts

In the autumn of last year, I posted my initial musings on some alterations that I wanted to make to Guardians. There was a lot of good feedback and discussion, and though, I let the thread lapse, I have been keeping up with things and making some alternative plans based on the feedback I've seen.

As we start to wind down on our first quarter, and turn our eyes toward the second quarter, I wanted to start the discussion about the currently line of thinking and some of the impetus driving the desired changes.

Before you read any further: these are the initial thoughts put before you to get some initial feedback. I have run this by the team internally and we wanted to start to get your feedback before we dive headlong into this development.

General Note

If the trait or earned trait is not mentioned there is likely to be no change to the trait.

The Defender of the Free

On the surface, the blue trait line and the blue guardian is in pretty good shape. There are only a few minor changes that I think we want to make; and by minor, I mean really minor.

Purchased Traits

Relentless Assault becomes Skilled Deflection: which would change out the finesse increases, and replace them with a flat bonus to your parry.

Aside from that, there isn't much that we really think needs to happen.

The Keen Blade

Our main objective in adjusting the red line, is to get the damage output to a spot where it competes against other high DPS characters. Of course, we need to be careful to allow the guardian to keep all of their top line tanking - so there will be a trade-off.

The first step in doing this, is giving The Keen Blade an specialization perk. My current thought on this specialization is, to lean into the heavy nature of the guardian, while also using the changes to mastery. Along those lines the current thought is this: All outgoing healing is reduced significantly, and the physical mastery increases based off of your armour value. The trade-off here would allow for a measure of consistency in the combat hits of the red line guardian.

Our secondary objectives, are to make the red line guardian sustained damage more consistent, make burst damage more reliable, remove reliance on combat response events, and have a capstone that is beneficial to the fellowship.

Earned Traits

Reactive Parry: Adjust the damage upward to give value to the trait.

Bleed Them Dry: Moves to 15 points deep in the line

Protection by the Sword: moves to 20 deep in the line

Prey on the Weak: Moves to 25 deep in the line

Brutal Charge: Moves to the capstone slow of granted traits and affects only melee-based skills

Purchased Traits

Broad Strokes: moves up in the line but remains unchanged.

Relentless Assault: Swapping positions from the blue line, this now increases finesse and increases the tick count on all guardian bleeds.

Heavy Weapons: Flat mod on two-handed weapon damage by 2%/tier

Thrill of Battle : Damaging Attacks in combat increase your Critical Chance by 1%/tier, Caps at 5 stacks, Critically striking resets the benefit

Thrust: While specialized in Keen Blade no longer requires a combat response

Tireless Blows: 10% chance, on criticals, to reset Brutal Assault/tier

Invigourating Parry becomes Invigourating Critical: Restore 1% to your power on a critical strike

To the Rescue: Tier 6 no longer functions on every skill - this shifts to just melee skills gain the crit chance.

Honourable Combat is Replaced with Rupture: To the King gains, remove all current bleeds for damage based on the number of deeds present, increases incoming damage on the affected target by 3% for 5 seconds/bleed removed.

The Fighter of Shadow

Our main objective with Fighter of Shadow is to define it's role more clearly. That is to say, not make this a supporting line, rather a line that gives the Guardian a third distinct role. That role is as an AoE Tank.

Our secondary objective, is to reduce the non-performant and abusive behavior that the line has without compromising the overall appeal of the line.

Specialization Perk

Attacks against targets affected by Take to Heart, have a 50% chance to restore 5% of your max morale. Cannot occur more than once every 5s.
All melee skills become AOE.

Earned Traits

Take to Heart: Usable outside of combat, loses toggle status and becomes a visualized hotspot with a duration, maximum size, and maximum targets to affect.

Flash of Light: Damaging skills executed by the guardian become Light damage.

Disabling Strikes, Manifested Ire, Incapacitation, Mark of Permanence: Only applies to targets within the Take to Heart effect.

Purchased Traits

Radiate: Increases the range of Take to Heart by 1m Increases affected Targets by 1

Insult to Injury: No change, as of yet, but we have our eye on you.

Numbed Senses: Adds 1 second to the cooldown of Ignore the Pain, + 1 Increases to Debuff Removal

I must re-iterate - these are the initial thoughts that I am tossing over the fence to all of you after getting a sanity check with the team. Looking for your thoughts and feedback before I start to dive headlong into implementation.

It is surprising that you decided to remove the yellow lines from the minstrel and warden, but there is no guard.

I would really like to see a skill finally appear in the blue line, which 100% opens the parry response chain of skills (like Force Opening)

Since in most peoples eyes Blue guard already fills the role of AOE tank would it make more sense to give yellow guard a more distinct role from blue by focusing on its debuff/support aspect?

I know its harder to balance support type classes as they are either necessary or barley used.

1.Firstly core gameplay should stay roughly the same.

2.Survivability should stay the same

3.AOE damage should stay the same or be slightly increased in the way suggested above which could help to spread debuffs

4.Slightly buff the debuffs in an offensive way
e.g A extra debuff is applied if all debuffs on one target e.g. if 3 or more debuffs are on one target they will take have a 10% crit vulnerability until they they no longer have those debuffs(no affected by other traits except cata double effect maybe))
or instead reduce the damage of the enemies crits idk
or a more interesting one where direct critical hits to the enemy from anyone will deal 50% damage to targets around the enemy

5.Cataclysmic shout increases guard debuff effects by *1.75 for 15? Seconds also let is spread the light mark so they become permanent after the 15 seconds

6.Add a toggle type ability that will alter how some of your abilities work like Captain

6.1 This could make protection synergize with your debuffs e.g. for enemy affected by take to heart and at least 1 extra guard debuff the protection target will gain a 1% up to 10%? less damage taken buff/Mitigation(is 10% to much or to little and does it stack on other defences or is it overridden by more powerful ones)

If this is not toggled it would instead be a 0.5 to 5%? to all fellowship maybe more again depending on balance

6.2 This could make Redirect and Thrill of Danger affect you protection target only. (Since power shouldn't be a problem for tanks maybe make the power restore do something else to the protection target)

6.3 Healing that would have gone to you from take to heart will be transferred as shielding to the take to heart target lasting 5 seconds

This would make yellow a pure off/support tank which will be able to soak up adds as it currently can and use them to buff the main tank and debuff the adds

It would not be better at tanking AOE than a Blue guard except for debuffs and damage but instead provide more value when doing so especially if the adds don't do require as much defences (Break ranks still better? idk)

It could also off tank the boss if adds are the main tank target as the war chant buffs can be applied for a decent range and therefore be used to buff your protection target

It would be practically the same as current when main tanking anything

The use would heavily depend on the raid fights but it will still be usable up to t2 in most fights at least as it currently can be.

But in all its not taking anything away from yellow so at least you can still play the same spec basically untouched if you don't want to support another

The main problem with this idea is that it still kind of is an AOE based tank even if its not better at tanking AOE necessarily but Its hard to see a rework where AOE isn't a factor as that's how yellow currently works
Problem 2 is idk how powerful/useful these debuffs/buffs would be compared to a standard tank obviously they could be buffed or nerfed to help
Problem 3 is these are rough unrefined ideas which I made in 10 mins so probably going to be problems like there are in many of my posts before

Also if you were to make yellow a support line, which I would not like at least since I play it but I know I'm in the minority, wouldn't this cause blue to become even more powerful depending on what's offered e.g they can get war chant, redirect etc for a lot less points and since blue is already in a good position and taken in most of the raids I'm in I feel this isn't necessary?

Hello Orion! It's great that you again decided to reach out to the community to discuss the upcoming changes to the Guardian!

First, a general suggestion - bring back the different fighting stances. They will allow you to change the properties of existing skills in order to customize them for different lines. "Guardian's Ward", "Challenge", "Fray the Edge", "Engage" could have different effects depending on the role chosen by the guardian.

Blue line
The current mechanic of "Shield-taunt", due to its role in the past as a tactical skill that causes additional threat, is not a good fit for a raid buff trigger. Give "Break Ranks" a separate non-tactical skill and remove "Shield-taunt" or change it to a debuff or... a taunt.

Red line
In general, these are interesting changes. I think the correct solution would be to add physical mastery scaling from armor (I thought it would be more likely to be scaled from vitality, in much the same way as a champion receives a crit rating from might). The new crit chance talents are also the right move.

But there are questions about the new talent "Rupture" and the redesigned "Relentless Assault". The guardian is currently applying four bleed effects in a roughly 10 second rotation, and the duration of the bleeds falls right into that gap. In this connection, it is not entirely clear why we need another talent for the duration of dots if we are not able to stack the same effects?

Even more questions arise when looking at "Rupture". "To The King" has a 5 second cooldown and deals the highest DPS of any Guardian skills. Using it every 5 seconds will make the duration and damage of bleeds have no effect at all, and the debuff will be maintained permanently even if only one bleed is removed.

I think it's better to detach the "Rupture" effect from existing skills, and add a new skill, say with a cooldown of 20 seconds, which will allow you to maintain a debuff when removing four bleeds.

But the best solution, in my opinion, would be not to remove dots, but rather improve them after using a new skill (for example, reducing the delay between ticks, increasing their damage, or adding additional interaction with other guardian skills, such as causing bonus damage when attacking targets with bleeding). The mechanic of constantly maintaining all bleeds for passive dps will remain (as well as the important role of bleeds for the red line), and guardians will be able to temporarily increase their burst damage, especially while skills like "Oathbreaker's Shame" are active.

If "Thrust" no longer requires a parry, does this mean that "To The King" can only be used after "Overwhelm"? It has a longer cooldown than "To The King" which will negatively affect the rotation.

Yellow line
I would like to hear a more detailed comment about what the role of an AOE tank should be like? It seems to me that the blue guard just fits this concept. His saves perform better when tanking a large number of weak mobs, while bosses often ignore blocks and parries. Blue guard has a talent to reduce AOE taunt cooldown, and taunting is the core of the tanking mechanic at the moment. From the proposed changes, it is not clear what in the yellow line will be able to compensate for the lack of 10% mitigations, damage buff for the raid and an extra save from the end of the blue line? Healing 5% of health every 5 seconds and not too useful debuffs definitely won't make up for the difference. It is impossible to compensate for the lack of survivability due to more damage. The distribution of characteristics on items does not allow you to create hybrid builds, and the need for such builds is doubtful.

Although many of the changes related to AOE and light damage look very interesting. It seems to me that if the developers want to keep this talent line, then it is better to make it an AOE damage dealer with light damage and several useful debuffs. But for this, it is necessary to reconsider the effects of debuffs, since the current set is not very in demand.

Thanks for taking a look at the Guardian, some changes are sorely needed. As you mention, red line is the most desperate and many of us would love to be competitive in raids from a DPS perspective. I disagree that Blue line needs only minor changes. The only reason you're taking a guardian over other classes in raid content is because it can pick up swathes of mobs and survive. If future raids don't have the feature of many mobs, the captain and brawler will always be chosen instead. Admittedly, I haven't been following the upcoming Warden changes, so I can't comment on its efficacy compared to Guardian with U 35. The captain, as I understand it, is getting even more incoming damage tools, making it even more desirable as a main tank. This is gravy, but the Guardian will fall behind. One more point is that Guardian is always the second choice in 3-man and 6-man content when you need a tank. This is because if its selfish nature when it comes to tanking. While 3 and 6-man content can be done with a Guardian at higher tiers, it's infinitely easier to bring a cappy. That being said, the cappy changes, and I'm particularly excited about blue-line, may change this dynamic and make it more desirable to bring a Guardian tank. I've outlined below, the reasons why I think blue needs significant changes.

Blue Guardian

Blue Guardians are the original tanking class of LOTRO, the stout protectors of the weak. However, while much has changed since their inception, they still fall short of fulfilling this role. As protectors of the weak, you’d expect them to do more than simply hold the attention of a mob. You expect them to have at least a little utility that enables them to help their fellows. Currently, the tools at a Guardian’s disposal (when it comes to affecting the field of battle) involve the following:

1) Shield Wall - a fun toggle skill that has little use in fights, where damage is scaled to the point that shielding anyone with mitigations set to zero is tantamount to suicide.
2) Fortifications - These work well, including the mechanic to build them and cash them out for certain skills. However, they are lacking.
3) Litany of Defiance - This skill has great potential but is rarely used as it puts the Guardian at risk.

And that’s it! The paltry number of tools the Guardian has to fulfill its role as the stalwart protector of the Free Peoples of Middle-earth. In comparison, the yellow Captain has numerous tools at its disposal to help defend its fellows:

1) To Arms.
2) In Harm’s Way.
3) Incoming healing banner.
4) 3% mits from herald.
5) Good HPS for its group, equating to 50% of a main healer.
6) Revealing mark that provides substantial heals to the whole raid.
7) A permanent 5% damage buff to its group.
8) A permanent 10% morale buff and minor stat gain for the whole raid.
9) An in-combat rez.
10) On Guard (a menial buff to the whole fellowship).
11) Make Haste.
(I realize that this is due to change with U 35, but even with the changes, the captain will have more group-friendly tools than the guardian)

It’s clear that the Guardian falls short in this regard. The Brawler suffers the same fate but has an impressive armory that enables it to significantly improve the offensive capabilities of its fellows. I won’t go into detail but it’s safe to say that Gut Punch is significantly more potent and less punishing to access than Break Ranks.

A quick summary that I think accurately and concisely illustrates the Guardian’s strengths and weaknesses, is as follows:

• The Guardian is the strongest tank when it comes to grabbing, building, and holding agro of multiple mobs, except for the number of targets it can pull.
• The Guardian is the weakest tank when it comes to buffing the group, both defensively and offensively.
• The Guardian, in its current state, is not a powerful main tank compared to its competitors, resigned to defending its allies by taking the brunt of large groups of mobs and relying heavily on its group for support. This results in
Guardians being mostly undesirable when it comes to smaller group content (6-mans and 3-mans).
• The Guardian has 2 small defensive skills that are fluid and work very well (redirect and Catch a Breath). These shouldn’t be touched!
• The Guardian has 4 main defensive cooldowns (Juggernaut, Pledge, Thrill of Danger, and Warriors Heart). Warriors heart with Stalwart trait is a fantastic skill and shouldn’t be touched. Pledge and Juggernaut are great for tanking
groups of adds but the Guardian is left with very little when it comes to tanking a boss that completely bypasses this. Thrill of Danger works well but suffers the same fate as Pledge and Juggernaut.
• The Guardian’s Fortifications, utilization of Warchant to reduce CDs in a minor way, skill flow, Smashing Stab, and ability to interrupt is working very well and doesn’t need any attention.
• The Guardian is a selfish tank. Very successful at looking after itself but not providing much to the group.

Suggested changes:

1) Give Juggernaut a bit more flexibility. It’s a strong skill that has the potential to make or break a Guardian’s success. My suggestion is to reduce Juggernaut to a 75% block chance. And give it a second version: 15% physical mit
buff along with 75% reduced incoming tactical damage. Also, reduce the CD to 90 s or 120 s. The skill is only effective if it can be used often enough to make a difference. Any variation of this would be welcomed. This skill is
accessible by using a blue version of the red line’s ‘Force Opening’. Upon using the blue version of ‘Force Opening’, you have access to the 75% block rating or the reduced incoming damage. This gives the Guardian more credibility
as a main tank on non-BPE bosses. Let’s not forget that the Guardian should be the best main tank in the game.
2) Give Guardian’s Pledge a 1.5 min CD (including tracery) but make it share a CD with Thrill of Danger. Guardian’s Pledge should also have a tactical damage reduction buff (35%) in addition to its current BPE. The Guardian will then
need to seriously consider their situation and decide which skill should be used. Shield Smash should reduce the CDs of these skills by 5-8 s. This gives the Guardian something to work towards while tanking.
Changes 1-2 have addressed the Guardian’s capability to be a main tank, and not just act a meat-shield for multiple trash mobs. A combination of the new Juggernaut, the current CaB, current Redirect, and current Warriors Heart
will make it a more suitable candidate. The suggested changes to Pledge and Thrill of Danger will be more punishing to flustered Guardians that make the wrong decision when tanking multiple trash mobs but also make it a more
suitable main tank. But to address the severe weakness that the Guardian has when it comes to group buffs/support, more is needed.
3) Shield Wall is fun, keep it (fix the fact it gets broken if stunned). But it’s never used in high tier fellow/raids where it’s too punishing and will require the use of Warriors Heart to save the Guardian. To make this skill feasible in
higher-tier raiding, it needs to have a reward associated with using it, especially in such high damaging scenarios that we see these days. I’d suggest tweaking this toggle skill as follows:

- Increase range to 50 m.
- Fix the random cancelling of this toggle after being stunned (sometimes it gets removed, and sometimes it doesn’t).
- Reduce the CD of this toggle to 3 s or don’t allow it to break on stun. Currently, it’s too punishing in fights where stuns are so frequent.
- Allow the SW target to have their mits applied to the damage taken as opposed to stripping them. This will reduce the likelihood that the player gets one-shot and doesn’t just have to rely on big morale.
- Target with SW can receive fortification stacks like the Guardian (up to tier 5, 10%).
- A burst heal can be triggered by the Guardian (a skill called roar of defiance or something like that). This heal can be accessed by 2 different traits in Blue, and you can only use one trait in each build.
- Trait 1: A skill can be accessed that provides a raid-wide group heal (to everyone in a 25 m radius around the SW target) that if cashed out at tier 1 forts, gives a 5% heal; 10% heal at tier 2; 15% heal at tier 3; 20% heal at tier
4, 25% heal at tier 5. In all cases, a HoT follows that gives 2% every 2 secs for 10 secs.
- Trait 2: A skill is accessed that provides a heal to the Guardian and its SW target. It provides a heal that heals for 10% at tier 1 forts; 20% at tier 2; 30% at tier 3; 40% at tier 4; and 50% at tier 5. In all cases, a HoT follows
that gives 2% every 2 secs for 10 secs.
- If the Guardian drops below 30% morale, SW is removed and the heal is triggered regardless of fortification stacks.
- Of course, the use of this skill should come at a cost, setting the fortifications back to zero and applying the current CD before they can be reapplied.
- Give the use of this skill a 60 s CD (can reduce the cd with Warchant like redirect and CaB).
- This would be a suitable change to Guardian because it brings them closer to the level of healing that a captain tank can provide (although still not as high).

4) Fortification buff on raid should be put up to 5% instead of 2% when at tier 5.
5) Litany of Defiance is too weak to be used reliably. Change it out so that the cash out mits are doubled on all fellowship members (+20% mits to all fellowship members, and the guardian takes 30% less damage as opposed to
increasing the guardians mits).
6) Warchant is a great skill. But the damage reduction it provides to its targets is pitiful. Either change this to 5% incoming damage (make this damage real, not just a fraction of 5%) or the damage reduction effect needs to be
increased. I think a 5% incoming damage debuff on the target will be more appealing and help bring the Guardian closer damage buffs that other tanks provide.
7) Blue Guardian version of Charge/Sprint can be made raid-wide (but giving raid members a fraction of the Guardian’s sprint).
8) Give the Guardian more taunt targets for Warchant and Challenge. If you throw 20+ mobs into a fight and expect the tank to pick them up, they need to have the tools to do so. Look at Captain heals, Champ taunts, Bear taunts
etc.
9) The blue guardian needs a blue-line version of ‘Force Opening’ from red-line. Giving the guardian reliable access to parry responses. Too often have I needed to open up redirect but been unlucky and unable to do so. Give this skill
a 30 s CD if you must, but there needs to be a way to access it without having to be tanking lots of mobs and popping Pledge, or just blindly spamming Sting. This will go a long way to making the Guardian a better main tank.
10) Remove Adaptability, you shouldn’t be rewarded for not using skills.

Currently, the Guardian does not have much to play around with when it comes to fortifications. This system can be made much more dynamic. Currently, a Guardian will only expend the fortifications to pop Shield Taunt for damage burst scenarios and then take 10 s to build them back up again, rinse and repeat. The suggested changes will give the Guardian 3 cooldowns to play around with when expending fortifications: Litany of Defiance – 90 s CD (an updated version that makes it more useable), Break Ranks (45 s CD), and the mentioned SW addition for a burst heal (60 s CD). This will make the fortification system much more dynamic and require the Guardian to think about how they want to cash out those fortifications. Meaning they will need to spend more time building forts, be more diligent at monitoring them, and be smarter about how they use them.

Now the Guardian has a few more tools at its disposal to be a Stalwart Defender. Instead of having 3 menial tools (that rarely get used except for fortifications) mentioned at the start of this piece. It now has the following:

1) Improved SW.
2) AOE burst heal.
3) More powerful fortifications.
4) More reasonable Litany of Defiance.
5) Reliable access to parry responses.

The Blue Guardian is fun to play and can be made much more dynamic with these changes. Please consider them carefully and thanks for reading!

Red Guardian

Red Guardian is extremely fun to play but you’re hitting like a wet flannel compared to other classes. One of the following needs to change to make them viable in PvE content (I’ll talk about PvP in a bit):

1) Provide more buffs to the group so that their DPS shortage is countered by reasonable buffs to other DPS classes.
2) Increase the DPS of the red Guardian itself.
I suggest giving the Red Guardian access to 2 stances (like hunter strength and precision stances etc.). One stance where they are a DPS/support, and the other where they are a selfish pure DPS.

The rotation and skill setup on a red guardian does not need to be changed. However, I would love to see the following if developers consider giving Red Guardian a DPS support stance:

1) A passive associated with being in the stance; reducing damage by 5% (red guardian damage is already poor and so a further reduction simply helps to highlight the purpose of this stance being for support and not as a main
DPS), giving 150k finesse (scaled appropriately), +5% crit chance (aimed at assisting the Guardian with building combative buffs, mentioned in 4) below).
2) To The King applies its current buffs to the fellowship (not raid), not just to the Guardian (perhaps consider changing this to all damage types, not just melee, so that it can be applied to ranged and tactical classes too). Also give
this a 30 m radius.
3) Sting provides a stacking 0.5% incoming damage on the target that caps out at 10% and expires after 10 s if not reapplied (the 0.5% incoming damage is only applied and tiered up if Sting critically hits).
4) The Red Guardian applies a buff to Fellowship members (not raid) that increases the Fellowship members’ crit chance by 0.5% (tier 1), 1% (tier 2), 1.5% (tier 3), 2% (tier 4), 3% (tier 5). This is tiered up in a similar way to the
blue line Fortifications, upon critical hit with a select few skills. For example, Overwhelm, To The King, and Retaliation. This buff can be called Combative.
5) The Red Guardian can have an additional skill, like Shield Taunt in Blue for Break Ranks. In Red, this skill is Hammer Down, and is used to cash out the Combative buffs for a guaranteed crit on the next skill for all fellows (like red
captain Master of War). The Guardian should be unable to increase combative buff for the same duration as fortifications in blue and should suffer a 15% damage decrease for 10 s.

To make Guardians more suitable as sole DPS in PvE content and more threatening in PvP, as opposed to being a mere annoyance, I suggest the following changes for the Guardian’s Main DPS Stance:

1. A passive associated with the stance; increases damage by 30% (red guardian damage is poor and so testing on BR will be needed to see how much this damage needs to be improved), +5% crit chance, +150k physical mastery.
2. No access to any of the mentioned buffs in the DPS support stance.
3. Hammer Down now cashes out all existing Guardian bleeds on the target for a significant damage bonus to the skill (bear in mind that keeping up Guardian bleeds is a full-time endeavor and so the cash out damage bonus to
Hammer Down should be significant).
4. As mentioned, red Guardian gameplay is already very fun, but could do with a significant damage boost to make them competitive in moors and as an option in higher tier PvE raids. No other changes are needed. Although I would
love to see other suggestions the developer team may have!
If the desire for adding a support DPS role to Guardian is not there, then you can scrap my first points. But the Main DPS Stance needs a significant buff. Let users play around with your changes in BR and make sure red Guardian
is up to par with main DPS classes.

Yellow Guardian

I assume the intention is to give the Brawler/Minstrel treatment to most classes. If you do it to Guardian, do it to yellow line. I'd personally like to see this line become a utility line like the Brawler has. But this may be an unpopular opinion!

It's true that blue line is on a good spot , but can you please change disorientation trait into something useful ? I am not asking for anything OP here , just a meaningful trait that makes a difference.
As it currently stands , it's completely useless. Finesse does its' job a lot better without wasting trait points.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Freepsy

And that’s it! The paltry number of tools the Guardian has to fulfill its role as the stalwart protector of the Free Peoples of Middle-earth. In comparison, the yellow Captain has numerous tools at its disposal to help defend its fellows:

1) To Arms.
2) In Harm’s Way.
3) Incoming healing banner.
4) 3% mits from herald.
5) Good HPS for its group, equating to 50% of a main healer.
6) Revealing mark that provides substantial heals to the whole raid.
7) A permanent 5% damage buff to its group.
8) A permanent 10% morale buff and minor stat gain for the whole raid.
9) An in-combat rez.
10) On Guard (a menial buff to the whole fellowship).
11) Make Haste.
(I realize that this is due to change with U 35, but even with the changes, the captain will have more group-friendly tools than the guardian)

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I know this isn't the crux of the point of this thread but I have to correct you on some of these with the U35 changes on the horizon;

1) To Arms yes, but a significantly weaker version then live, with the fellowship values almost x0.33.
3) Inc healing banner with a 15s reduced duration.
4) Heralds will have 2% mits not 3%, synonymous with Guard Fortification.
5&6) Group healing has been massively nerfed across the board, Inspire and Gallant display will no longer heal, and Revealing Mark heal is halved - Noble Mark is probably going to be the likely choice going forward.
7&8) These are true of all Captain lines however, and not just tank-specific.
10) Further nerfed by U35.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Freepsy

Let’s not forget that the Guardian should be the best main tank in the game.

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No. It should not be.

Since you're going to be tinkering with them anyway, can you finally put a note on War-chant that says it adds threat? Currently it doesn't say it does, but it definitely adds threat and puts the red marker over mob heads.

And while you're at it, figure out how it pulls mobs from WELL out of aggro range occasionally.

Blue staying as is sounds fine to me.


I like the direction of Red, interested to see how it'll feel to play.
Can you please clarify "Brutal Charge: Moves to the capstone slow of granted traits and affects only melee-based skills" - Obviously it moves to the capstone and only affects melee skills, which I think is totally fine. I'm struggling with the wording on "slow of granted traits".


For Yellow line I like the idea of keeping it; here are my initial thoughts.

Is it intended to have functionality or capability for a higher dps tank similar to warden? Or strictly defensive?

Does the zone from Take to Heart apply things while in the circle only? If things are moved in afterward, or moved out early would the debuffs still apply? Or just at the lower value when not affected by mark of perm/manifested ire/incap? - My thinking is thus: I don't know if the survivability of yellow guard is high enough for many mechanics that arent direct hits from the boss to be considered for main tanking a raid. With an internal CD on the heal of 5s and no extra mitigation is this going to be tanky enough? If its only capable of doing 3/6 mans or lower tier content what is the value over the safety of Blue here? Is Blue lacking in AoE tanking ability? I've run two different trait lines in the past for more aoe/add focused encounters vs a boss build. The main concern for me is if it's intended to be an off tank to pick up adds and whatnot that would likely mean having to move around a good bit to collect them all at which time you're pretty exposed if most of the survivability comes from only being in the new TtH zone.

An issue I've encountered in the past with yellow guard is the build cost to give it a real go. Say it has a few niche fights where it excels, is that enough to warrant a extra LI to accommodate your build requirements, assuming you optimize belt for Blue & Yellow - If it's intended to have any DPS capability. Only 2 traceries for yellow with arguable usefulness, I assume there would be a couple extra here TtH duration, range etc.? It sounds like it would require a higher cost for being less survivable. Is it a situation where you CAN do 2H but really you'll just wanna do sword/shield anyway? To really stand out and be worth playing I would think it'd need solid aoe dps, but that might just be a nightmare in PvMP.

What tanks need to do more than anything is survive. Having a tank die is arguably the worst thing you can have happen in group content. This becomes more impactful the smaller the group size. I believe this to be the reason for picking whatever the beefiest tank class is during content, whether its Y capt or B guard. Chank isn't well rounded enough (and a little clunky) to have been useful or worth building, warden hasn't been survivable enough to have as main tank but has the highest dps, Bear lacks DCD's/sustained tankiness otherwise its very close IMO. I haven't had any experience with B brawler in raids to make a comment on that. Yellow guard has felt like warden for a long time, but rather than self buffs, its enemy debuffs. Just based on whats written I imagine they need a bit more survivability to make it a viable alternative to Blue, since most of Blues defense is in their earned traits.

What content/capability is Yellow aiming to hit that would be/do better than Blue?


This may be a worse option than what you've proposed, I'm just throwing it out since it came to mind but what if Yellow was a supporting line that did drastically affect Blue/Red. Having it be the Aoe role, giving Blue a different build for aoe fights, or red the same with the "all skills are aoe as a capstone. You could have light damage be the other capstone. Red aoe feels a little clunky and having yellow make it more impactful could be nice, adding similar for Blue. Alot of yellow purchased traits are already support/aoe related and the earned are almost all just modifiers to the debuffs. I would then counter this with what's the difference from Champ. You could still have a debuff focus still though this may be too strong in some content, otherwise I don't have much of an answer.
I like the idea of aoe dps tank but I would think it lacks the function to do either well without being too good. And LotRO not really having tank dps for aggro or otherwise I find this a hard niche to justify the more I explore it. Unless of course we lack context to where tanking is heading in the future.

There are two changes (maybe three) I'd like to see for Blue Guardian; but otherwise I totally agree that it is in a very good spot.



The first, is Shield Wall, there needs to be a higher element of risk vs reward by using this skill, currently it's extremely underused and in most situations where you would 'need' to use it, it is almost considered a death sentence to the guardian except if they also use warriors heart at the same time. Proposal;

Firstly I agree with some of the other comments;
- You need to increase the range of the skill.
- You need to prevent the skill from on/off deactivating when the Guardian is stunned, if Shield Wall is on, it should stay ON.

My suggestions;
- The person being Shield Walled should get some kind of 'buff', which would encourage usage, for example a high +% damage buff, it is not likely you will ever be able to keep Shield Wall up 100% of the time, and the idea should be the Guardian protecting an ally so that they can, 'dispatch the threat'; something like a +15% or +20% damage buff for the ally - unfortunately it doesn't make sense to give them a defensive based buff whilst shield wall is active because all damage is redirected and goes through the Guardians mitigations, so it needs to be an offensive based buff.
- Secondly, the Guardian needs to be able to 'reasonably' sustain themselves whilst this skill is active, this could be done in one of two ways. Whilst Shield Wall is active, provide a HoT effect to the Guardian, healing 2% max morale every 5seconds (essentially a Guardians own personal revealing mark), OR, alternatively give them a max morale increase of 20% when Shield Wall is toggled on, to clarify, this should NOT also heal the Guardian for 20%, it is simply a max morale modifier, which feeds into the risk vs reward scenario. Yes the Guardians personal morale will go up, but it won't be given to them and will have to be healed up.
- Due to the nature of this skill you would have to increase the cooldown to around a minute to prevent abuse.
- The skill should automatically be switched off if the Guardian drops below 50% of it's morale.
- Power cost of having this skill active for an extended period of time should also be a limiting factor. Either it should scale up in power cost the longer it is active, or it should remove the Guardians own power-regen, or alternatively a stacking power drain over time that gets stronger the longer it is active. Essentially, a Guardian would run out of power after SW being active for more than 15s without another class supplying constant power.

This would massively boost Guardian effectiveness in 3-6man content which is often where they struggle to be invited.



Secondly, two of the Guardians main cooldown skills are almost essentially useless in most single-boss fight scenarios, and any fights that involve tactical skill plays; Juggernaut and Pledge, most boss attacks and abilities (more or less 'all' from recent content) cannot be avoided, and of course, you cannot b/p/e a tactical skill play. Guardians need a better way to deal with these situations, so, again propsal;

Here you can do one of either two things;
- Change one of Pledge or Juggernaut to be a -% incoming damage buff or damage negation, my preference would be to change Juggernaut as it has the longer cooldown which means less abuse, and Pledge is also more historical to the Guardians toolkit, OR - allow Shield Smash to give the guardian a -% incoming damage buff or damage negation for 5-8seconds, which will A) prevent abuse B) require more thought into the skill play.

The above deals with the two main issues facing Blue Guardian right now.



The third 'possible' change for blue, that could be interesting for Guardian is the following; a return to Guardian stances, bear in mind these thoughts are rushed;

Block Based Stance
- The Guardian gains +5% block chance, +10% partial block chance +25% partial block mitigation.
- This stance 'enables' the traditional stacking of Fortification, and enables the +2% mitigation aura when at max stacks.
- This stance will enable Litany of Defiance which will still cash out your fortification stacks, doubling the mits on the Guardian as it does now, redirecting 50% of ally damage.

Parry Based Stance
- The Guardian gains +5% parry chance +10% partial parry chance +25% partial parry mitigation.
- This stance 'enables' a new stacking method of Fortification providing +2% damage per stack up to +10%, instead of stacking up on block responses, it stacks up on parry responses and skill plays, it enables a +3% damage aura when at max stacks.
- This stance will change Litany of Defiance, it will cash out your fortification stacks, doubling the damage buff on the Guardian, redirecting 15% of ally damage and giving a +5% incoming damage debuff to all enemy targets hit for 15s.




My only suggestion for Yellow line is to follow suit with what some other people have suggested, make the line passive, Blue Guard is already an exceptional AoE tank as it is, and you really don't need to two lines that perform more or less the exact same function, unless you intend to make Yellow Line more of a support/debuff dps-tank line. Yellow Guardian is also not going to be desirable on bosses due to the overall weakness of not having certain blue line buffs (armour, crit defence, fortification etc.).

First of all i just want to give my opinion on most of the changes i will start with red just because it is split from the two tanking lines.

The Keen Blade

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The first step in doing this, is giving The Keen Blade an specialization perk. My current thought on this specialization is, to lean into the heavy nature of the guardian, while also using the changes to mastery. Along those lines the current thought is this: All outgoing healing is reduced significantly, and the physical mastery increases based off of your armour value. The trade-off here would allow for a measure of consistency in the combat hits of the red line guardian.

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Reducing healing sounds great but the mastery on armour is just weird and instead imo there should be a normalization of stat derivations across the board.

Earned Traits

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Reactive Parry: Adjust the damage upward to give value to the trait.

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This is mostly useless since you won't parry much in pve content for pvp its still fine but shouldn't be a top priority imo.

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Protection by the Sword: moves to 20 deep in the line

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Kinda related to the previous statement this skill is just in a bad spot the range is too low and not getting all the positives from the tanks parry makes this mostly useless. A change that could work is triggering reactive parry for tank parrys aswell (and if tenderize stays also stacking that)

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Prey on the Weak: Moves to 25 deep in the line

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Since there is nothing mentioned here except a move pls increase the damage its just bad aswell.

Purchased Traits

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Relentless Assault: Swapping positions from the blue line, this now increases finesse and increases the tick count on all guardian bleeds.

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The finesse is not needed that much on red but still is on blue the replacement in blue line is also not too great since parry is just not great for boss encounters which is the blue guards new "niche" i guess with yellow being an aoe tank? More to that later.

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Thrill of Battle : Damaging Attacks in combat increase your Critical Chance by 1%/tier, Caps at 5 stacks, Critically striking resets the benefit

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Will this add 25% fully traited and stacked or 5%? if its 25% then its cool if its only 5% just make it a flat 5% like every other class has.

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Thrust: While specialized in Keen Blade no longer requires a combat response

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How will this work exactly? Does it still open up ttk or will it just be ignored in parry chains? If it is the first thing its fine else it will screw guards rotation. More to that also a bit later.

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Invigourating Parry becomes Invigourating Critical: Restore 1% to your power on a critical strike

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Thats just not enough judging by the power cost from beta 2.

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Honourable Combat is Replaced with Rupture: To the King gains, remove all current bleeds for damage based on the number of deeds present, increases incoming damage on the affected target by 3% for 5 seconds/bleed removed.

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I like the general idea of replacing the cap stone with a cash out which is damage oriented, but neither do i like tying all the group support to it nor the skill used for it. Ttk already has a lot of value with the self buff it provides to the guard and second thing is it is used very regularly currently. Regularly means every 7-7.5 seconds on live servers. With my thoughts on thrust not opening it this would already result in a delay since overwhelm has 10 seconds cd. And the other thing is you would apply your bleeds and just instantly clear them which is just not the point of a bleed.
My thought for a cash out would be to just make rupture a skill which deals damage based on remaining bleed ticks and then creates the group support. Now values i havent thought about too much a minute cd and just keeping you 3% per bleed inc damage for lets say 15 seconds. These numbers are just what came to mind very fast and not thought through.
Basing the damage of the remaining bleed ticks would be nice to create a burst when you know the bleed would be useless either way since the target would die/ get untagetable for example. And in general ttk is not a good fit for this as said before you just use it too often.
Another form of support could be to add a mitigation debuff to force opening either armour rating or just % for both mits.

And now last words for red a problem that will occur at the end of the 140 cap. With both the class essence and the red set gone there is again not reliable way to open up the parry chain. This is probably okay if thrust still opens up ttk else its not and just plays bad. To prevent this maye lower the cd of force opening. Same goes for power managment in red it only works on beta 2 because guardians ward restores power which you wouldn't use without the red set.

The Fighter of Shadow and
The Defender of the Free

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Relentless Assault becomes Skilled Deflection: which would change out the finesse increases, and replace them with a flat bonus to your parry.

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Already said it for red but i will say it again blue guard needs the finesse and also the effect of the skill pls don't replace it with parry.

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Aside from that, there isn't much that we really think needs to happen.

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I think this is quite of an understatement going into update 35. With the damage calculation break ranks will get quite a heavy nerf, i know it probably didn't work as intended on life but still, which will basically remove all of the guards offensive support. Pls scale it up a bit its one of the only offensive support abilities in the game with a defense trade off and its after the patch not even that good. Also what other people have written maybe sperate it from shield taunt and just make it a skill, this is not a priority tho.

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Our main objective with Fighter of Shadow is to define it's role more clearly. That is to say, not make this a supporting line, rather a line that gives the Guardian a third distinct role. That role is as an AoE Tank.

Our secondary objective, is to reduce the non-performant and abusive behavior that the line has without compromising the overall appeal of the line.

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I feel like a tank line thats made especially for aoe tanking is just not needed. Blue guard does that aswell and without this blue guard isn't even a top pick anymore because that is the only strength of a guard currently which might change with the warden update (still speculation since it's not finished).
I think it could work if is different enough from blue, but i feel like looking at current balancing just having one tank line on the class and a utility line would be easier not necessarily better.
I will still give my thoughts on the yellow ideas and afterwards some ideas how to do both these ideas and the utility line thing maybe.

Specialization Perk

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Attacks against targets affected by Take to Heart, have a 50% chance to restore 5% of your max morale. Cannot occur more than once every 5s.
All melee skills become AOE.

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Both of these are fine.

Earned Traits

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Take to Heart: Usable outside of combat, loses toggle status and becomes a visualized hotspot with a duration, maximum size, and maximum targets to affect.

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This is an idea i really like and think could work pretty well in terms of sustainability against a large amount of mobs.

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Flash of Light: Damaging skills executed by the guardian become Light damage.

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This is just a nerf in terms of damage and in that regard also aggro. The support for light damage ist quite bad. If you want numbers on that i can provide them sepperately, I just feel like it's cool from the class fantasy but bad in terms of gameplay.

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Disabling Strikes, Manifested Ire, Incapacitation, Mark of Permanence: Only applies to targets within the Take to Heart effect.

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Also a change that is okay but the debuffs need reworks aswell.

Purchased Traits

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Radiate: Increases the range of Take to Heart by 1m Increases affected Targets by 1

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Sounds good, as said before i like the idea of take to heart.

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Numbed Senses: Adds 1 second to the cooldown of Ignore the Pain, + 1 Increases to Debuff Removal

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Even tho its a small nerf i don't mind this it is a good trade off and makes sence

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I must re-iterate - these are the initial thoughts that I am tossing over the fence to all of you after getting a sanity check with the team. Looking for your thoughts and feedback before I start to dive headlong into implementation.

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And now my thoughts.
One idea that came to my mind is having the effects listed here be merged into blue line and have two stances for st and aoe which swaps arround some skill for example only having access to take to heart and the debuffs + aoe skills in the aoe line and maybe warriors heart and redirect only for st. This also isn't thought through enough to give you a full layout for it. The yellow line could just become the supportive line like it is on brawler with stull like the current relentless assault and other tools you might want to be universal.
The other is if you manage to make yellow a destinct line which you would like to have in certain situations without butchering blue that is also fine for me since i enjoyed all 3 specs throughout my time in the game. But balance is very important in this case and could be harder than option 1.

Thats it from me for now thanks for reading it.

i dont play guardian too much, but it's in a overall good spot, but only if you have a healer, but in 3man instances, i find they struggle, specially if you dont have a healer, or a poor healer, compared to ycappy who, currently have a good self heal/fellowship heal i find they are the preferred choice, so maybe a bit more self heals would be nice

i saw someone mention fortifications and heals via that, and i agree, that would be a good idea to have a HoT with the potency based on how many stacks of fortification you have, so at 5 stacks, you can survive without too much external heals, they are "easy" enough to get back, but that depends on wheter or not you can face the adds/boss you're tanking, in a kiting situation, guardians rely on alot of others, and why cant the block from behind? it seems only evade works, which also is a downside, since most kiting is done by guardians

Litany of defence should also work like captains in harms way, where it first passes through the fellowships inc dmg % and mits, and then your own, instead of you taking the full brunt of the dmg with only taking your own into account, it really is a suicide to use that skill when the fellowship takes alot of damage, for example, in SV t3+ when people get a purple eye and drop a puddle, the captain can use in harms way and not take too much damage, a guardian who uses LoD will take alot more damage than what is "needed" which, imo, makes it a useless cooldown

i also noted that someone mentioned to alter juggernaut, that is a bad idea all together, it should instead work like a captains last stand, basicly make you unkillable and able to block tactical damage as well as melee and ranged, another pro towards captains.

removing the finesse from blue line is not a good idea, the parry responce is nice and all, but it is however not as usefull in the "tanking" role, specially seeing as guardians are mostly a "add tank" where you use war-chant first which can be resisted, but more usefull in unlocking certain cooldowns, another thing that can be removed, having access to a cooldown should not be dependant on rng, and if the fight is mostly tactical damage, it is even worse

I like the idead to increase the dmg output of the red guardian and to keep the yellow guardian - actually the yellow guardian is my favourite specc for questing.

But I would make an recommandation for the yellow line:
You could add 2 stances for the yellow line, which the player can switch between. One stance for tanking in yellow line, the other stance for the yellow line as aoe dps-specc.

The tank stance could include for example the ability to block with 2 hand weapons and the increased threat. (Or/and some defensive bonuses)
The dps stance for yellow line could loose the bonus threat and block ability with 2-hand weapons, but instead increase the number of targets you can hit with aoe-attacks. Problably more damage stats or more dmg by flash of light, or the ability to procc "Flash of Light" on each hit target, which has (the copy of) the debuff "Take to heart" instead of only on the target, which has the original "Take to heart" debuff active.

Firstly: thank you for not removing the yellow line guardian as you have with other classes!

Secondly: from my perspective (which probably doesn't matter, see below): making most attacks Light Damage fits me much better given I use the Light Damage tracery. But that could be very selfish, who knows? Either way, for me personally, I like that suggestion.

Moving on:

I realise my voice hear will carry little weight because I don't do group content, but I "main" a yellow guardian and have for years.

As a solo player, I am more on the move in landscape and instances, making Take-to-Heart mob-specific more ideal. Having to grab a group then force it into my AoE is pretty stressful mech for a landscape situation.

Instead of replacing take to heart and making it AoE, could an additional skill be created instead? We already have quite a bit going on with AoE damage - especially with being able to pilfer bleed DoTs from the red line.

((EDIT))

How this could work, in its simplest form

• When the AoE is on Cooldown, the Toggle is inactive.
• The AoE Skill is inactive until the toggle is turned off (either manually or when the targeted mob is defeated)

That way, both cannot be used simultaneously, causing overpowered stacking.

((/EDIT))

I'm more likely to stop using TtH, despite its advantages, if it's changed to an AoE fixed circle, when very often a need to move is required to avoid damage because I'm my own healer.

I'm not an expert and I'm not a gaming techy, but thanks for listening.

FJ

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Originally Posted by Rino90

First, a general suggestion - bring back the different fighting stances. They will allow you to change the properties of existing skills in order to customize them for different lines. "Guardian's Ward", "Challenge", "Fray the Edge", "Engage" could have different effects depending on the role chosen by the guardian.

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Stances are not something that we really want to re-introduce.

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Originally Posted by Rino90

Red line
In general, these are interesting changes. I think the correct solution would be to add physical mastery scaling from armor (I thought it would be more likely to be scaled from vitality, in much the same way as a champion receives a crit rating from might). The new crit chance talents are also the right move.

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A contribution from armor may not happen, it is a rather abstract way to suggest that a well-armoured guardian uses everything at their disposal to convey they martial prowess. If it doesn't prove to be a solid enough contribution, then there will be another way to enhance the stat.

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Originally Posted by Rino90

But there are questions about the new talent "Rupture" and the redesigned "Relentless Assault". The guardian is currently applying four bleed effects in a roughly 10 second rotation, and the duration of the bleeds falls right into that gap. In this connection, it is not entirely clear why we need another talent for the duration of dots if we are not able to stack the same effects?

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Of course, consideration will need to be made to the rotation and the potential changes that would be made. The red line really needs more consistency; that is the driving thought behind the removal of any chain for Thrust. This will likely mean a cooldown change for thrust. Add to that, the reliance on bleeds for damage output, you are not wrong that a duration/pulse change indicates that there might be some other changes that would influence or augment. Again, the goal for red ine is to increase the consistency of damage output. I also do not want to undermine the existing play style in this line.

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Originally Posted by Rino90

Even more questions arise when looking at "Rupture". "To The King" has a 5 second cooldown and deals the highest DPS of any Guardian skills. Using it every 5 seconds will make the duration and damage of bleeds have no effect at all, and the debuff will be maintained permanently even if only one bleed is removed.

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I am only considering putting this on To the King.

The idea with putting it on TtK was to allow the conjunction to pack extra damage based on having the debuff attached to that action.

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Originally Posted by Rino90

I think it's better to detach the "Rupture" effect from existing skills, and add a new skill, say with a cooldown of 20 seconds, which will allow you to maintain a debuff when removing four bleeds.

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My initial inclination is to put the additive nature of Rupture onto Hammer Down. I feel like it fits more there, the more I think on it. I'll need to noodle on it, and work with you all to get it into the right place.

But the best solution, in my opinion, would be not to remove dots, but rather improve them after using a new skill (for example, reducing the delay between ticks, increasing their damage, or adding additional interaction with other guardian skills, such as causing bonus damage when attacking targets with bleeding). The mechanic of constantly maintaining all bleeds for passive dps will remain (as well as the important role of bleeds for the red line), and guardians will be able to temporarily increase their burst damage, especially while skills like "Oathbreaker's Shame" are active.

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Originally Posted by Rino90

If "Thrust" no longer requires a parry, does this mean that "To The King" can only be used after "Overwhelm"? It has a longer cooldown than "To The King" which will negatively affect the rotation.

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No.

If you are not specialized in Keen Blade, Thrust will still require the initial combat responses. Only when you are in Keen Blade will Thrust lose the necessity to execute a combat reponse event.

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Originally Posted by Rino90

Yellow line
I would like to hear a more detailed comment about what the role of an AOE tank should be like? It seems to me that the blue guard just fits this concept. His saves perform better when tanking a large number of weak mobs, while bosses often ignore blocks and parries. Blue guard has a talent to reduce AOE taunt cooldown, and taunting is the core of the tanking mechanic at the moment. From the proposed changes, it is not clear what in the yellow line will be able to compensate for the lack of 10% mitigations, damage buff for the raid and an extra save from the end of the blue line? Healing 5% of health every 5 seconds and not too useful debuffs definitely won't make up for the difference. It is impossible to compensate for the lack of survivability due to more damage. The distribution of characteristics on items does not allow you to create hybrid builds, and the need for such builds is doubtful.

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Agreed, this is harder to really explain as I am not intending to remove the efficacy of Blue Line to handle AoE tanking. I think that I could have communicated better how the changes to Take to Heart would work.

First, Take to Heart would no longer be a toggle based skill. It will have a cooldown. You'll drop the effect and mobs moving into the effect will take on the debuffs. Rather than passing the debuffs to more and more targets the area of effect of Take to Heart will handle that workload. The earned traits will modify the efficacy of Take to Heart.

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Originally Posted by Rino90

Although many of the changes related to AOE and light damage look very interesting. It seems to me that if the developers want to keep this talent line, then it is better to make it an AOE damage dealer with light damage and several useful debuffs. But for this, it is necessary to reconsider the effects of debuffs, since the current set is not very in demand.

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This is something that is going to need to be looked at, indeed.

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Originally Posted by SSG_Orion

In the autumn of last year, I posted my initial musings on some alterations that I wanted to make to Guardians. There was a lot of good feedback and discussion, and though, I let the thread lapse, I have been keeping up with things and making some alternative plans based on the feedback I've seen.

As we start to wind down on our first quarter, and turn our eyes toward the second quarter, I wanted to start the discussion about the currently line of thinking and some of the impetus driving the desired changes.

Before you read any further: these are the initial thoughts put before you to get some initial feedback. I have run this by the team internally and we wanted to start to get your feedback before we dive headlong into this development.

General Note

If the trait or earned trait is not mentioned there is likely to be no change to the trait.

The Defender of the Free

On the surface, the blue trait line and the blue guardian is in pretty good shape. There are only a few minor changes that I think we want to make; and by minor, I mean really minor.

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Agreed, I may certainly hope you don't change to much about the blue line. The only skill up for grabs might be either Shield-Taunt or Vexing Blow (in all lines, the radius on that skill is pretty dull imo). Also the Radius of Shield-Smash seems a little buggy still from time to time even though you guys done a ''sort of fix'' to this one some patches ago.
Keep in mind that the strength from the ''Blue Line'' also comes from additional buffs from Yellow. Although ''Ignore the Pain'' might be too strong, cooldowns like Thrill of Danger, Redirect and War-Chant should still be available to trait for ''Blue Guardians'' or you are defenitely weakening them.

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Originally Posted by SSG_Orion

Purchased Traits

Relentless Assault becomes Skilled Deflection: which would change out the finesse increases, and replace them with a flat bonus to your parry.

Aside from that, there isn't much that we really think needs to happen.

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Relentless Assault becomes Skilled Deflection: I partially agree that a bit extra parry % rating would be nice here, however most of the latest fights have not been very friendly to BPE rating in the first place. There are a lot of boss mechanics that cannot be avoided in the first place. Secondly a Guardian is dependent on a good portion of finesse, if you plan to remove it from this skill I would like to see this finesse returned on something else instead in that same blue line(on ''Tireless Defender'' might be an option). In comparison to Captains, Guardians need to have enough finesse to not resist or miss on important tanking skills(esp. on higher tiered instances) when taunts are not available at that particular time.

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Originally Posted by SSG_Orion

The Keen Blade

Our main objective in adjusting the red line, is to get the damage output to a spot where it competes against other high DPS characters. Of course, we need to be careful to allow the guardian to keep all of their top line tanking - so there will be a trade-off.

The first step in doing this, is giving The Keen Blade an specialization perk. My current thought on this specialization is, to lean into the heavy nature of the guardian, while also using the changes to mastery. Along those lines the current thought is this: All outgoing healing is reduced significantly, and the physical mastery increases based off of your armour value. The trade-off here would allow for a measure of consistency in the combat hits of the red line guardian.

Our secondary objectives, are to make the red line guardian sustained damage more consistent, make burst damage more reliable, remove reliance on combat response events, and have a capstone that is beneficial to the fellowship.

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Red Line should definitely get an upgrade. Currently Guardian's do not receive additional bonuses from Might, whereas Champions, Beornings and other ''Heavy/Might'' classes all receive extra critical rating for each point of might to at least a 1:1 ratio. Since Guardian does not have that thats the first thing that needs a change here. It's harder to put up with the same stats as a Champion or another additional might class that is DPS.

Secondly the Guardian should have sustainable damage, but the main portion of it should be based on your burst damage. I really liked the old Hammer Down there that allowed you to gain a portion of more damage over time here. Currently the cooldown on Hammer Down is way too long if you compare it to big skills from other classes here. Overwhelm which got an even bigger tooltip then Hammer Down, does for some reason have a really short cd. With all new set bonuses you have more access to it. The concept of the 4 bleeds the Guardian have is very good though, but also the damage output of those bleeds is for some of them really underscaled (just like current day Captain).

Same applies to a few skills in red line, Vexing Blow is a skill that is simply awful, in general most AoE skills are quite underdeveloped or behind on what they are supposed to be. Most Red Guardians are not even running ''AoE - Words of Power'' anymore on their weapons, since Sweeping Cut(decent part is the bleed, animation is awful), Also the radius or the way Whirling Retallation is working is something that needs to be worked out)

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Originally Posted by SSG_Orion

Earned Traits

Reactive Parry: Adjust the damage upward to give value to the trait.

Bleed Them Dry: Moves to 15 points deep in the line

Protection by the Sword: moves to 20 deep in the line

Prey on the Weak: Moves to 25 deep in the line

Brutal Charge: Moves to the capstone slow of granted traits and affects only melee-based skills

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Reactive parry damage is really really low, should or could use a little adjustment there. Even with the tracery it does not add up much.

Do you intend to stack ''Prey on the Weak'' with ''Relentless Assault'' ticks?

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Originally Posted by SSG_Orion

Purchased Traits

Broad Strokes: moves up in the line but remains unchanged.

Relentless Assault: Swapping positions from the blue line, this now increases finesse and increases the tick count on all guardian bleeds.

Heavy Weapons: Flat mod on two-handed weapon damage by 2%/tier

Thrill of Battle : Damaging Attacks in combat increase your Critical Chance by 1%/tier, Caps at 5 stacks, Critically striking resets the benefit

Thrust: While specialized in Keen Blade no longer requires a combat response

Tireless Blows: 10% chance, on criticals, to reset Brutal Assault/tier

Invigourating Parry becomes Invigourating Critical: Restore 1% to your power on a critical strike

To the Rescue: Tier 6 no longer functions on every skill - this shifts to just melee skills gain the crit chance.

Honourable Combat is Replaced with Rupture: To the King gains, remove all current bleeds for damage based on the number of deeds present, increases incoming damage on the affected target by 3% for 5 seconds/bleed removed.

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Relentless Assault: the Finesse at least in red line is uncessary. Since most skills on Guardian are reliant on ''Parry Responses'' I do not know why you intend to put Parry Chance on Blue Line and Finesse on red line. I rather have this reversed. I would not in any case trait any sort of BPE rating in the current form/status on the game. Finesse however is important as a ''Blue Tank'' Do you intend to make the tick count of Relentless Assault stack with Prey on the Weak? That would give us more increases on Guardian Bleeds in general right?

Heavy Weapons: Good extra flat increase if this is counted by the mastery changes to get 10% raw extra damage.

Thrill of Battle :Sounds much better. The heal we had was really underwhelming and unnecesssary!

Thrust: Excellent change, no more need for a parry response, I would do the same with Overwhelm in this manner. You can still let the bleeds overwrite and increase by reapplying a ''Overwhelm'' after a used ''Thrust''

Tireless Blows : is fine as long as the Guardian has enough skills to choose from. If you intend to make more skills immediately available rather then getting them after a parry response and also increasing the bleed timers (judging on what you said about Relentless Assault and Prey on the Weak stacking), then 10% is fine for resetting an extra brutal assault.

Invigourating Parry: Will not be traited if you keep it the way it is. This skill is not really doing anything, 1% power restore is simply too low, even 5% can be to low if other skills cost more then this 1% already. Might have to rethink this.

To the Rescue: Seems fine, nothing changes to much here.

Honourable Combat is Replaced with Rupture: I really like this idea, but in order to make this properly work or do the designated burst damage, make sure this skill is worthwhile. Not a too long cd on this skill, but rather shorten the cooldown on Hammer Down and move this up to the cooldown of Hammer Down instead (approx 1m, not more). Make sure that if you intend to do this there is a modifier for cashing out all the bleeds from (Sweeping Cut, Brutal Assault, Thrust and the Upgraded Thrust Bleed from Overwhelm). If you make it too underwhelming people will not consider this capstone, however I really like the idea you have in mind to do extra burst damage for bleeds you have currently on the target.

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Originally Posted by SSG_Orion

The Fighter of Shadow

Our main objective with Fighter of Shadow is to define it's role more clearly. That is to say, not make this a supporting line, rather a line that gives the Guardian a third distinct role. That role is as an AoE Tank.

Our secondary objective, is to reduce the non-performant and abusive behavior that the line has without compromising the overall appeal of the line.

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This is a cool idea, but what does this mean for the so called ''AoE'' in blue line?
Currently the reason Guardian's trait blue is because of Fortification Buff or Break Ranks in blue line. Also having reduced cooldown and increased range on your taunts is something not easily to be forgotten from the blue line. Do you intend to make blue line a single target line?
What about ''Shield-Smash'' targets?, would that all of a sudden go to ''Yellow'' then? If Yellow enforces you to play it because ''Blue'' Line is a line for just a ''few'' or a ''single'' target(s), I rather do not see this coming.
On the other hand if ''Yellow'' does not offer Fortification or some additional tactical and physical mitigation buffs in that line (to add up for the missing 10%), I do not see the ''Yellow Line'' being used a lot either.
I have to admit after seeing the changes to Warden and Minstrel I expected the yellow line also to be more supportive to what it is right now, or to what you intend to do. I still can't quite believe that the yellow line you have in mind will go in some way at the cost of the things you have available in blue, but please prove me wrong.

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Originally Posted by SSG_Orion

Specialization Perk

Attacks against targets affected by Take to Heart, have a 50% chance to restore 5% of your max morale. Cannot occur more than once every 5s.
All melee skills become AOE.

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No disrespect, but this is simply too weak and underwhelming. It is good for the Ettenmoors, but in current PvE people will not prefer too choose this over a ''Blue Line'' Guardian with 10% more mits from fortification. Either compensate something into the ''Yellow Line'' or you are going to do hard work for nothing.

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Originally Posted by SSG_Orion

Earned Traits

Take to Heart: Usable outside of combat, loses toggle status and becomes a visualized hotspot with a duration, maximum size, and maximum targets to affect.

Flash of Light: Damaging skills executed by the guardian become Light damage.

Disabling Strikes, Manifested Ire, Incapacitation, Mark of Permanence: Only applies to targets within the Take to Heart effect.

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Take to Heart: The issue with Take to Heart is that on skills like stagger and several others it affects attack duration, but since bosses or certain mobs in raids are barely affected by this, it needs a little change. Take to Heart as a toggle skill however is not a bad idea as the 50% permanent slow was simply too strong. I really hope however if you implement this that ''Take to Heart'' would affect decent debuffs on multiple adds.

Flash of Light: Shield Skills are also going to do Light Damage? Or is that still dependent on whether you use Shield-Spikes of some sort? I don't mind the change, but is this actually changing anything in general?

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Originally Posted by SSG_Orion

Purchased Traits

Radiate: Increases the range of Take to Heart by 1m Increases affected Targets by 1

Insult to Injury: No change, as of yet, but we have our eye on you.

Numbed Senses: Adds 1 second to the cooldown of Ignore the Pain, + 1 Increases to Debuff Removal

I must re-iterate - these are the initial thoughts that I am tossing over the fence to all of you after getting a sanity check with the team. Looking for your thoughts and feedback before I start to dive headlong into implementation.

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Radiate: Change seems fine you have in mind, although 1m quite small, I guess multiple tiers then right?

Insult to Injury: I find it a shame you intend to remove this skill. For red-line guardians this is a big miss, because if you intend to apply enough attacks in red-line you can keep refreshing the DoT from the Overwhelm skill (If you used Thrust before it already). This way you can keep refreshing this bleed if you keep using enough skills (and a bit of luck of course), maybe you have the ability to rotate this back into the red traitline somehow.

Numbed Senses: Seems fine to me, removing so many effects at once never made sense. On the other hand you don't want a tank that has the biggest chance of getting effects on them to be stuck with a 15 seconds cooldown timer on such as this, so I like the thing you proposed, you intend to make multiple tiers on this?

In general there are a few traits in yellow line that need serious attention:
Strong Bursts: The 6 tiers of Area of Effect Damage don't make much sense even for red line, AoE damage for Guardian's is pretty poor and it would be cool if you manage to spread some of your bleeds to additional targets (like Grave Wound on Captain), AoE damage does also not make much sense for this trait anymore if you intend to make yellow and ''AoE'' tanking line.

Cataclysmic Shout: Horrible skill at this moment, hope you got something good in store for this.

Singular Focus: The armour rating from this skill is neglectable, would need an eye.

For yellow in general there are some things you need to keep and some things you need to change. If you are really going to constructively change this line, this will also affect blue lines guardians. Keep in mind that ''Thrill of Danger'', ''Redirect'' and ''War-Chant'' are the most pivotal skills from the yellow line that are currently being used by the ''Blue-Guardian'' I hope we will still be able to get those if we have enough traitpoints.

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Originally Posted by Rino90

Yellow line
I would like to hear a more detailed comment about what the role of an AOE tank should be like? It seems to me that the blue guard just fits this concept. His saves perform better when tanking a large number of weak mobs, while bosses often ignore blocks and parries. Blue guard has a talent to reduce AOE taunt cooldown, and taunting is the core of the tanking mechanic at the moment. From the proposed changes, it is not clear what in the yellow line will be able to compensate for the lack of 10% mitigations, damage buff for the raid and an extra save from the end of the blue line? Healing 5% of health every 5 seconds and not too useful debuffs definitely won't make up for the difference. It is impossible to compensate for the lack of survivability due to more damage. The distribution of characteristics on items does not allow you to create hybrid builds, and the need for such builds is doubtful.

Although many of the changes related to AOE and light damage look very interesting. It seems to me that if the developers want to keep this talent line, then it is better to make it an AOE damage dealer with light damage and several useful debuffs. But for this, it is necessary to reconsider the effects of debuffs, since the current set is not very in demand.

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You couldn't have said it better! AoE Tank/AoE Damage still up for grabs I guess!

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Originally Posted by Bondamar

Can you please clarify "Brutal Charge: Moves to the capstone slow of granted traits and affects only melee-based skills" - Obviously it moves to the capstone and only affects melee skills, which I think is totally fine. I'm struggling with the wording on "slow of granted traits".

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I had a typo - slow needs to be removed.

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Originally Posted by Bondamar

Does the zone from Take to Heart apply things while in the circle only?

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Yes. That would be the intent.

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Originally Posted by Bondamar

If things are moved in afterward, or moved out early would the debuffs still apply? Or just at the lower value when not affected by mark of perm/manifested ire/incap?

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While within the area, the targets are affected by the debuffs, moving out will provide a short tail to the debuffs but ultimately remove them.

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Originally Posted by Bondamar

My thinking is thus: I don't know if the survivability of yellow guard is high enough for many mechanics that arent direct hits from the boss to be considered for main tanking a raid. With an internal CD on the heal of 5s and no extra mitigation is this going to be tanky enough?

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This is all true. There would likely need to be other considerations for them to be main raid tanks. Or, they would be more consistently utilized as off-tanks. There will need to be careful consideration on this - the lack of fort stacks...

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Originally Posted by Bondamar

If its only capable of doing 3/6 mans or lower tier content what is the value over the safety of Blue here? Is Blue lacking in AoE tanking ability? I've run two different trait lines in the past for more aoe/add focused encounters vs a boss build. The main concern for me is if it's intended to be an off tank to pick up adds and whatnot that would likely mean having to move around a good bit to collect them all at which time you're pretty exposed if most of the survivability comes from only being in the new TtH zone.

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A lot of this will depend on the cooldown of the new TtH zone.

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Originally Posted by Bondamar

An issue I've encountered in the past with yellow guard is the build cost to give it a real go. Say it has a few niche fights where it excels, is that enough to warrant a extra LI to accommodate your build requirements, assuming you optimize belt for Blue & Yellow - If it's intended to have any DPS capability. Only 2 traceries for yellow with arguable usefulness, I assume there would be a couple extra here TtH duration, range etc.? It sounds like it would require a higher cost for being less survivable. Is it a situation where you CAN do 2H but really you'll just wanna do sword/shield anyway? To really stand out and be worth playing I would think it'd need solid aoe dps, but that might just be a nightmare in PvMP.

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Right now, the ability for the debuffs spread through TtH are less than ideal. I cannot stress enough how much we want to remove some of the non-performant aspects of this line.

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Originally Posted by Bondamar

What tanks need to do more than anything is survive. Having a tank die is arguably the worst thing you can have happen in group content. This becomes more impactful the smaller the group size. I believe this to be the reason for picking whatever the beefiest tank class is during content, whether its Y capt or B guard. Chank isn't well rounded enough (and a little clunky) to have been useful or worth building, warden hasn't been survivable enough to have as main tank but has the highest dps, Bear lacks DCD's/sustained tankiness otherwise its very close IMO. I haven't had any experience with B brawler in raids to make a comment on that. Yellow guard has felt like warden for a long time, but rather than self buffs, its enemy debuffs. Just based on whats written I imagine they need a bit more survivability to make it a viable alternative to Blue, since most of Blues defense is in their earned traits.

What content/capability is Yellow aiming to hit that would be/do better than Blue?

This may be a worse option than what you've proposed, I'm just throwing it out since it came to mind but what if Yellow was a supporting line that did drastically affect Blue/Red. Having it be the Aoe role, giving Blue a different build for aoe fights, or red the same with the "all skills are aoe as a capstone. You could have light damage be the other capstone. Red aoe feels a little clunky and having yellow make it more impactful could be nice, adding similar for Blue. Alot of yellow purchased traits are already support/aoe related and the earned are almost all just modifiers to the debuffs. I would then counter this with what's the difference from Champ. You could still have a debuff focus still though this may be too strong in some content, otherwise I don't have much of an answer.
I like the idea of aoe dps tank but I would think it lacks the function to do either well without being too good. And LotRO not really having tank dps for aggro or otherwise I find this a hard niche to justify the more I explore it. Unless of course we lack context to where tanking is heading in the future.

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My take on the survivability of the yellow line focuses on Light and healing, and siphoning off of targets. Take what you will from that comment.

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Originally Posted by Hephburz-2

The first, is Shield Wall, there needs to be a higher element of risk vs reward by using this skill, currently it's extremely underused and in most situations where you would 'need' to use it, it is almost considered a death sentence to the guardian except if they also use warriors heart at the same time. Proposal;

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Nothing worse than the tank getting decimated through a Shield Wall. I do want to look at it.

[QUOTE=FibroJediI realise my voice hear will carry little weight because I don't do group content, but I "main" a yellow guardian and have for years.[/quote]

Your voice is here and carries the same weight as any response. We all play the game differently, and there is no right or wrong way to play your character.

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Originally Posted by FibroJediAs a solo player, I am more on the move in landscape and instances, making Take-to-Heart mob-specific more ideal. Having to grab a group then force it into my AoE is pretty stressful mech for a landscape situation.

Instead of [I

replacing[/I] take to heart and making it AoE, could an additional skill be created instead? We already have quite a bit going on with AoE damage - especially with being able to pilfer bleed DoTs from the red line.

((EDIT))

How this could work, in its simplest form

• When the AoE is on Cooldown, the Toggle is inactive.
• The AoE Skill is inactive until the toggle is turned off (either manually or when the targeted mob is defeated)

That way, both cannot be used simultaneously, causing overpowered stacking.

((/EDIT))

I'm more likely to stop using TtH, despite its advantages, if it's changed to an AoE fixed circle, when very often a need to move is required to avoid damage because I'm my own healer.

I'm not an expert and I'm not a gaming techy, but thanks for listening.

FJ

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The goal with a change to Take to Heart would allow for the effect to never overlap and have a better than 100% up time to allow for the continued mobility of the class.

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Originally Posted by Hephburz-2

There are two changes (maybe three) I'd like to see for Blue Guardian; but otherwise I totally agree that it is in a very good spot.

The first, is Shield Wall, there needs to be a higher element of risk vs reward by using this skill, currently it's extremely underused and in most situations where you would 'need' to use it, it is almost considered a death sentence to the guardian except if they also use warriors heart at the same time. Proposal;

Firstly I agree with some of the other comments;
- You need to increase the range of the skill.
- You need to prevent the skill from on/off deactivating when the Guardian is stunned, if Shield Wall is on, it should stay ON.

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I can't imagine the rage of creeps seeing a blue Guardian having a permanent shield-wall on a healer in the Ettenmoors and not being able to kill it, counting on how many cooldowns a blue guardian even has to stay alive.
Shield-Wall is fine as it is, if you intend to make a switch or change with it, rather do it with a set-bonus(as you did in Abyss of Mordath) rather then a definite change.
You always have a choice to use or not use it, so I don't really see the point. If you have the feeling to get shredded or you target someone with bad mitigations of some sort, don't use it.

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Originally Posted by Hephburz-2

My suggestions;
- The person being Shield Walled should get some kind of 'buff', which would encourage usage, for example a high +% damage buff, it is not likely you will ever be able to keep Shield Wall up 100% of the time, and the idea should be the Guardian protecting an ally so that they can, 'dispatch the threat'; something like a +15% or +20% damage buff for the ally - unfortunately it doesn't make sense to give them a defensive based buff whilst shield wall is active because all damage is redirected and goes through the Guardians mitigations, so it needs to be an offensive based buff.
- Secondly, the Guardian needs to be able to 'reasonably' sustain themselves whilst this skill is active, this could be done in one of two ways. Whilst Shield Wall is active, provide a HoT effect to the Guardian, healing 2% max morale every 5seconds (essentially a Guardians own personal revealing mark), OR, alternatively give them a max morale increase of 20% when Shield Wall is toggled on, to clarify, this should NOT also heal the Guardian for 20%, it is simply a max morale modifier, which feeds into the risk vs reward scenario. Yes the Guardians personal morale will go up, but it won't be given to them and will have to be healed up.
- Due to the nature of this skill you would have to increase the cooldown to around a minute to prevent abuse.
- The skill should automatically be switched off if the Guardian drops below 50% of it's morale.
- Power cost of having this skill active for an extended period of time should also be a limiting factor. Either it should scale up in power cost the longer it is active, or it should remove the Guardians own power-regen, or alternatively a stacking power drain over time that gets stronger the longer it is active. Essentially, a Guardian would run out of power after SW being active for more than 15s without another class supplying constant power.

This would massively boost Guardian effectiveness in 3-6man content which is often where they struggle to be invited.

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The reason a Guardian is not being picked is not the fact that Guardian is ''bad'' or anything, it is rather a 10% extra morale buff from a Captain and the absurd resist rating (in Sarch Vorn at least). Even so with the changes for DPS Red Captain a Guardian or Brawler Tank will be more then viable again soon enough.
The complexity of the suggestions you are doing when a Guardian has more selfheals then a Captain or any other Tank these days(except for the Warden soon) does not make up for the need of this implemented change. It is simply good as it is and does not need further change, however the power component might be a valuable factor towards the skill.

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Originally Posted by Hephburz-2

Secondly, two of the Guardians main cooldown skills are almost essentially useless in most single-boss fight scenarios, and any fights that involve tactical skill plays; Juggernaut and Pledge, most boss attacks and abilities (more or less 'all' from recent content) cannot be avoided, and of course, you cannot b/p/e a tactical skill play. Guardians need a better way to deal with these situations, so, again propsal;

Here you can do one of either two things;
- Change one of Pledge or Juggernaut to be a -% incoming damage buff or damage negation, my preference would be to change Juggernaut as it has the longer cooldown which means less abuse, and Pledge is also more historical to the Guardians toolkit, OR - allow Shield Smash to give the guardian a -% incoming damage buff or damage negation for 5-8seconds, which will A) prevent abuse B) require more thought into the skill play.

The above deals with the two main issues facing Blue Guardian right now.

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Considering the set-bonuses(catch a breath) and portents we are getting a Guardian does not have need of more -% incoming damage buffs. The amount of cooldowns of Guardian as it is, is great. Redirect also compensates for the negation of 35% damage, why on earth would we need more? If they intend to get Redirect away from Blue (which I don't hope), then maybe yes, but otherwise absolutely unnecessary.
Even though BPE is not as useful as it was, it still can be used in certain occassions. Also keep in mind that Juggernaut makes you immune to any sort of CC and reflects a portion of your damage (therefore generating aggro). The fact that these skills are less potent against raidbosses have more to do with raid design rather then being bad skills.

Shield-Smash only needs a change on the radius part at this point.

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Originally Posted by Hephburz-2

The third 'possible' change for blue, that could be interesting for Guardian is the following; a return to Guardian stances, bear in mind these thoughts are rushed;

Block Based Stance
- The Guardian gains +5% block chance, +10% partial block chance +25% partial block mitigation.
- This stance 'enables' the traditional stacking of Fortification, and enables the +2% mitigation aura when at max stacks.
- This stance will enable Litany of Defiance which will still cash out your fortification stacks, doubling the mits on the Guardian as it does now, redirecting 50% of ally damage.

Parry Based Stance
- The Guardian gains +5% parry chance +10% partial parry chance +25% partial parry mitigation.
- This stance 'enables' a new stacking method of Fortification providing +2% damage per stack up to +10%, instead of stacking up on block responses, it stacks up on parry responses and skill plays, it enables a +3% damage aura when at max stacks.
- This stance will change Litany of Defiance, it will cash out your fortification stacks, doubling the damage buff on the Guardian, redirecting 15% of ally damage and giving a +5% incoming damage debuff to all enemy targets hit for 15s.

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I doubt they intend to get stances back. On older forums they already inclined they have no intention of doing that.

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Originally Posted by Hephburz-2

My only suggestion for Yellow line is to follow suit with what some other people have suggested, make the line passive, Blue Guard is already an exceptional AoE tank as it is, and you really don't need to two lines that perform more or less the exact same function, unless you intend to make Yellow Line more of a support/debuff dps-tank line. Yellow Guardian is also not going to be desirable on bosses due to the overall weakness of not having certain blue line buffs (armour, crit defence, fortification etc.).

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The way I see it they(depending on just the change on take to heart) they have not figured out yet to make an AoE tanking or AoE DPS line.
In all honesty I also rather see ''Blue-Line'' Guard complimented and Yellow giving additional AoE/survival bonuses to either ''Blue and Red'' line. At this point it seems they are holding stuck to this whole ''Take to Heart'' idea, which they not seem to be able to implement in the other two lines yet.

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Originally Posted by SSG_Orion

The Fighter of Shadow

Our main objective with Fighter of Shadow is to define it's role more clearly. That is to say, not make this a supporting line, rather a line that gives the Guardian a third distinct role. That role is as an AoE Tank.

Our secondary objective, is to reduce the non-performant and abusive behavior that the line has without compromising the overall appeal of the line.

Specialization Perk

Attacks against targets affected by Take to Heart, have a 50% chance to restore 5% of your max morale. Cannot occur more than once every 5s.
All melee skills become AOE.

Earned Traits

Take to Heart: Usable outside of combat, loses toggle status and becomes a visualized hotspot with a duration, maximum size, and maximum targets to affect.

Flash of Light: Damaging skills executed by the guardian become Light damage.

Disabling Strikes, Manifested Ire, Incapacitation, Mark of Permanence: Only applies to targets within the Take to Heart effect.

Purchased Traits

Radiate: Increases the range of Take to Heart by 1m Increases affected Targets by 1

Insult to Injury: No change, as of yet, but we have our eye on you.

Numbed Senses: Adds 1 second to the cooldown of Ignore the Pain, + 1 Increases to Debuff Removal

I must re-iterate - these are the initial thoughts that I am tossing over the fence to all of you after getting a sanity check with the team. Looking for your thoughts and feedback before I start to dive headlong into implementation.

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Upon reflection, I think I might've been too rash when dismissing these initial thoughts about Yellow Line, and if I'm being entirely honest it sounds like this line could be massively interesting to play. I love the idea of your skills being AoE as well as your skills (I assume all skills?) dealing light damage - these two changes alone are hugely awe inspiring to begin with.

Take to Heart change sounds very good on the surface, the debuffs associated with yellow line will naturally need to be updated to be more realistic/useful in real terms, but a ground placed effect sounds highly promising. Some quick suggestions;

- Enemies inside TtH should take be inflicted with a small DoT.
- You should receive a small HoT whilst being in TtH.
- Being in TtH should reduce your incoming damage or give you a damage negation of some kind - this would automatically resolve almost all issues about Yellow Guardian tankiness.
- **Alternatively if the above option is 'to passive', you could follow a similar example to fortification, but instead of mits, you would gain -% inc damage or damage negation. You have a chance to build this new kind of fortification stack when you use X skills on targets within the TtH radius (see below for details).

Yellow Line debuffs for targets inside TtH;

- Reduction in enemy mits and/or armour value.
- Increased incoming damage.
- Reduced outgoing damage.


**I did make a suggestion for Blue line, but the suggestion would actually be extremely apt here in Yellow Line, if you don't like the idea of a 'stance', you could simply make these all traits in Yellow line;

Parry Based Stance, or rather simply call the stance 'Fighter of Shadow' :)
- The Guardian gains +5% parry chance +10% partial parry chance +25% partial parry mitigation.
- This stance 'enables' a new stacking method of Fortification providing -3% incoming damage up to a max of -15%, instead of stacking up on block responses, it stacks up on parry responses and skill plays, it enables a +3% damage aura when at max stacks.
- This stance will change Cataclysmic Shout, it will cash out your fortification stacks, doubling the -% incoming damage buff on the Guard for 10s, however it will redirect 15% of ally damage to you for 10s (this aspect can definitely be thrown away, was just a suggestion), but will give a +5-10% incoming damage debuff to all enemy targets hit for 15s (if they are afflicted by TtH it could give them a 10% incoming damage debuff, and if they are not afflicted by TtH it could be a 5% incoming damage debuff).


Regardless, a change and/or buff to both Cataclysmic Shout + Singular focus would be needed, both are currently underwhelming.

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Originally Posted by Geremir

I can't imagine the rage of creeps seeing a blue Guardian having a permanent shield-wall on a healer in the Ettenmoors and not being able to kill it, counting on how many cooldowns a blue guardian even has to stay alive.
Shield-Wall is fine as it is, if you intend to make a switch or change with it, rather do it with a set-bonus(as you did in Abyss of Mordath) rather then a definite change.
You always have a choice to use or not use it, so I don't really see the point. If you have the feeling to get shredded or you target someone with bad mitigations of some sort, don't use it.

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Had you read appropriately what I suggested, you will notice I said that the power cost associated with Shield-Wall would prevent a Guardian from keeping this skill active for longer than 15seconds without a LM and/or Captain providing them with constant power, and even then that would only 'slightly' prolong the duration by a few seconds - the idea would be to have a stacking power drain debuff for the duration of Shield Wall, which prevents you from having this skill up 100% of the time. It is undoubtedly annoying to be stunned in instances and for SW to get removed. Puglakh on release anyone?

The Abyss set still didn't make the skill wildy impactful. Shield Wall is still extremely underused, and sure, you could simply reduce the redirect value, but it doesn't exactly make this skill 'exciting' does it? It's still a very high risk for an 'uncertain' outcome, because you can still die through Shield Wall, and mostly you are still required to proc some other heal or cooldown alongside it to protect yourself.

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Originally Posted by Geremir

The reason a Guardian is not being picked is not the fact that Guardian is ''bad'' or anything, it is rather a 10% extra morale buff from a Captain and the absurd resist rating (in Sarch Vorn at least). Even so with the changes for DPS Red Captain a Guardian or Brawler Tank will be more then viable again soon enough.
The complexity of the suggestions you are doing when a Guardian has more selfheals then a Captain or any other Tank these days(except for the Warden soon) does not make up for the need of this implemented change. It is simply good as it is and does not need further change, however the power component might be a valuable factor towards the skill.

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Blue Guardian, as a tank, boasts only Break Ranks as any type of support-based utility, at present, all other tanks far outstrip a Blue Guardian in what it can bring to the table, which has always been one of the main reasons Guardian was marginalised in 3-6man content, that and yCaptain was undoubtedly stronger for that content size, but with the U35 changes, whilst yCaptain will no longer be, Brawler and Warden definitely will be, which still doesn't fix the issue associated with Blue Guardian and smaller group content.

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Originally Posted by Geremir

Considering the set-bonuses(catch a breath) and portents we are getting a Guardian does not have need of more -% incoming damage buffs.

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Ok. No. A class should not be balanced around a Raid set bonus or time limited items that firstly, not everybody has, and secondly, are only going to be relevant until the next level cap, when they will no longer be useable until "newer" versions "eventually" show up. This was the same ideology that befell Captain when they decided to make SotD ally only, because Captain was extremely strong, due to the Remmo set bonus that should never have existed in the first place. You are now advocating against Guardian changes because of a set bonus that exists, this is not how things should be done. Raid set bonuses should offer small bonuses to skills, they should not massively impact the identity of the class or influence design changes, because set bonuses are not guaranteed nor static.

Yes, you have the set bonus now. Yes, you have the portent now. You will not have these things at 150.

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Originally Posted by Geremir

Even though BPE is not as useful as it was, it still can be used in certain occassions. Also keep in mind that Juggernaut makes you immune to any sort of CC and reflects a portion of your damage (therefore generating aggro). The fact that these skills are less potent against raidbosses have more to do with raid design rather then being bad skills.

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Raid and instance design for a long time has been going in the direction that boss attacks and skills are unavoidable, Anvil boss 2 was probably the last time Pledge & Juggernaut was effective against an actual Boss. I am also not suggesting you remove the other aspects of Juggernaut, simply, instead of it being 100% block chance, for it to be something that can be valued in all situations, and not just 'sometimes', it is, afterall one of the Guardians main cooldowns.

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Originally Posted by SSG_Orion

Stances are not something that we really want to re-introduce.




Agreed, this is harder to really explain as I am not intending to remove the efficacy of Blue Line to handle AoE tanking. I think that I could have communicated better how the changes to Take to Heart would work.

First, Take to Heart would no longer be a toggle based skill. It will have a cooldown. You'll drop the effect and mobs moving into the effect will take on the debuffs. Rather than passing the debuffs to more and more targets the area of effect of Take to Heart will handle that workload. The earned traits will modify the efficacy of Take to Heart.

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How would this interact with the current debuffs? e.g. would applying stagger debuffs to one target affect the TtH area as a whole and transfer the debuffs or would spreading no longer be a thing as radiate is changed?
This isn't a massive problem as stagger and the mark itself were the only things that were needed to be spread by radiate as warchant is easy to apply anyway.
Or the fundamentals of how debuffs are applied could be changed entirely idk.

This could make yellow more interesting and the application of debuffs and marks faster depending on how it works however but also less mobile depending on the fight so I assume the debuffs would be improved/new ones made to compensate which tbh they already need to be.

This could also allow Insult to Injury to now also have a use for actual yellow guardians as if you do need to move from the circle the debuffs will be extendable via this trait.
It would still probably be niche and not the most reliable but better than current. (also it could reset debuffs on all targets but since this has to be balanced for all trees probably not an option)

Above you also said that "Disabling Strikes, Manifested Ire, Incapacitation, Mark of Permanence: Only applies to targets within the Take to Heart effect."

However currently Incapacitation is just the Disabling Strikes *2 when the enemy is affected by TtH so Disabling Strikes applying only to Take to Heart targets would currently make no sense unless it was changed or made into a total new traits since its just a weaker version and generally redundant version of Incapacitation in most situations.

Manifested Ire only applies to Take to Heart targets also wouldn't be very good as a target within TtH would most likely be attacking you so the effect would never occur.
Also currently the effect is weaker than the stagger and engage slow and cannot become permanent with its only real use being a nuisance in PVMP as far as I know so it would probably just be better to remove this and replace it with a new useful set trait.

Correct me if I'm wrong here but currently the 5s second Take to Heart lock out applies to all enemies even if you did no receive take to heart healing from them.
This means getting the TtH heal while using an AOE ability can return lots of health eg a 12 target war chant can give 60% health but if you use a single target ability and you get the proc you will receive basically no health so could it be changed to be a 5 second lock out on each enemy instead of on TtH itself because this can be quite annoying if the proc occurs on a Guardians Ward.
This would make the healing a little better and more consistent.

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Originally Posted by Skohgar

How would this interact with the current debuffs? e.g. would applying stagger debuffs to one target affect the TtH area as a whole and transfer the debuffs or would spreading no longer be a thing as radiate is changed?

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Stagger debuffs would apply to TtH targets - the spread would no longer be a thing.

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Originally Posted by Skohgar

This isn't a massive problem as stagger and the mark itself were the only things that were needed to be spread by radiate as warchant is easy to apply anyway. Or the fundamentals of how debuffs are applied could be changed entirely idk.

This could make yellow more interesting and the application of debuffs and marks faster depending on how it works however but also less mobile depending on the fight so I assume the debuffs would be improved/new ones made to compensate which tbh they already need to be.

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Marks would no longer, really be a thing marks would be replaced by "affected by Take to Heart" - which, honestly, might need a name change.

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Originally Posted by Skohgar

This could also allow Insult to Injury to now also have a use for actual yellow guardians as if you do need to move from the circle the debuffs will be extendable via this trait. It would still probably be niche and not the most reliable but better than current. (also it could reset debuffs on all targets but since this has to be balanced for all trees probably not an option)

Above you also said that "Disabling Strikes, Manifested Ire, Incapacitation, Mark of Permanence: Only applies to targets within the Take to Heart effect."

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Mark of Permanence is really going to need to be looked at - it's just...not really...

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Originally Posted by Skohgar

However currently Incapacitation is just the Disabling Strikes *2 when the enemy is affected by TtH so Disabling Strikes applying only to Take to Heart targets would currently make no sense unless it was changed or made into a total new traits since its just a weaker version and generally redundant version of Incapacitation in most situations.

Manifested Ire only applies to Take to Heart targets also wouldn't be very good as a target within TtH would most likely be attacking you so the effect would never occur.
Also currently the effect is weaker than the stagger and engage slow and cannot become permanent with its only real use being a nuisance in PVMP as far as I know so it would probably just be better to remove this and replace it with a new useful set trait.

Correct me if I'm wrong here but currently the 5s second Take to Heart lock out applies to all enemies even if you did no receive take to heart healing from them.
This means getting the TtH heal while using an AOE ability can return lots of health eg a 12 target war chant can give 60% health but if you use a single target ability and you get the proc you will receive basically no health so could it be changed to be a 5 second lock out on each enemy instead of on TtH itself because this can be quite annoying if the proc occurs on a Guardians Ward.
This would make the healing a little better and more consistent.

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The lock outs would ikely need to be looked at, if I make it work the way that I want it to, in my head.