Class Update - Guardians

[Seschat]

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

[zipfile]

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

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

[srit]

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

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

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

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

[srit]

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

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

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

[Vastin]

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

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

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

[zipfile]

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

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

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

On live, numbers are just slightly smaller.

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

[siipperi]

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

On live, numbers are just slightly smaller.

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

[SACLOTRO]

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

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

LEAVE THE BRUTAL CHARGE KNOCKDOWN ALONE

[Joedangod]

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



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

[Bhorn_EU]

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

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

[zipfile]

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

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

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

[Crissaegrim]

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

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

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

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


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

[HerpThatDerp]

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

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

[Crissaegrim]

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

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

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

I trust my point is made.

[zipfile]

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

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

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

I trust my point is made.

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

[Joedangod]

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

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

[Madmanthief]

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

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

[Joedangod]

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

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

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

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

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

Final DPS change calculated via 4890756.85/5012000.

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


Final DPS change calculated via 5279036.85/5012000.

[siipperi]

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

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

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

I trust my point is made.

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

[siipperi]

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



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

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

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

Final DPS change calculated via 4890756.85/5012000.

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


Final DPS change calculated via 5279036.85/5012000.

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

[zipfile]

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

[zipfile]

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

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

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

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

[Marxlne]

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

[Bhorn_EU]

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

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

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

[Findun]

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

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