Let's start talking about Guardians...

[SSG_Orion]

This is not a post that pretends that there are Guardian changes imminent. It's a discussion to draw forth thoughts on our sturdiest of sturdy combatants and where some believe that there is room for improvement, skills, effects, and traits that are underwhelming, and a wishlist of what you might like to see moving forward.

[Oelle]

guardians have quite high avoidance and several cooldowns that raise avoidance very high.
It would be nice, if avoidance was useful, if not everything strong enemies do, ignores it.
Thats not only guardian-specific and hits wardens even more... but its one of the things, that would be nice for guards.

(i've not played my guard for some years... didn't really play at all... so I cant talk about current relevant stuff)

[19Euan96]

Hi again Orion,

I’ve said this in the other class threads but I think as power levels have risen drastically over the last year or so (new LI + 130->140 creep) there are a number of older changes the are not as powerful anymore but we’re fun class flavour. I’m this case I’m talking about the yellow guardian and the radiate + flash of light changes. When radiate spread your flash marked target and you could do a fun aoe burst it was very satisfying. But yellow guard and flash of light were an iconic pairing and it doesn’t play like that anymore.

For red guard, I assume the changes a few years back to the way bleeds worked were just to help the server, similar to the recent lore master changes, so that is acceptable. I liked hammer down reset itself, and I don’t think it does that anymore. I could be wrong, I’m not able to check right now. I don’t know how competitive the bleed damage is anymore.

For blue guardian, I know there’s a lot of people who say it needs major changes but I actually really enjoy its gameplay loop, although it is quite simple. The things I dislike is break ranks being tied to shield taunt so it has the same problem blood arrows has as I mentioned in my hunter post in that it does multiple things but out of your control. You might need to do an aoe taunt and challenge etc is on cd, but then you break ranks and you lost your fortifications and everything is now attacking you. I would just prefer it if you had a different way of using break ranks that wasn’t tied shield taunt.

Also the bubble you get from stoic I think could be a lot bigger, it’s decently chunky right now but warriors heart is on a long cd so it’s maybe could be massive. The shield spike stuff also feels essential? Like changing away from commom damage to beleiraind etc is kind of essential and I worry that normal players, especially new ones would have no clue about it. These are just musings

[DoRonRon]

Mindless morale stacking ruined what joy you could get after threat mechanics were binned with trait trees. Spamming taunts broke all the old raid mechanics.
Bypass of defences made it worse.

Not sure I'd even want to build LIs to tank ever again. Would any of us know how to build them until a revamp was proved to be workable considering the huge investment required each new "range"? Took 5 years to get Shield-smash working...

None survive a Guard re-vamp though, so be warned.

[Vuldyn]

Hi Orion,

Thanks for reaching out for player feedback.

I would say that Guardian's main tank role is actually in a really good place right now balance-wise and I think the meta skills are powerful enough to feel impactful when used, but not so powerful to be broken. The gameplay loop is satisfying, with the building and spending of fortification being a larger investment than most other class resources. Threat generation is great, the best of the tanks, which I believe is appropriate, yet again not so good that you aren't in trouble if used incorrectly. Overall, Blue Guard has a lot of tool in the toolkit that are relevant and help them be a very enjoyable class to play at end game.

A skill that may need to be looked at as the meta has shifted with instance design is Turn the Tables. This is a very powerful stun-break, and if traited it becomes even more so, however the need to hit your enemy is quite debilitating at times. This may be a nothing problem, but in many recent instances, not being able to break a stun, even when you have saved your stun break, can mean instant death, which is not satisfying. The other change I would request is a unification in the animation speed (of every skill and class in the game) specifically of Ignore the Pain. The disparity between Men and Dwarves in particular is immense.

There are also some redundant or useless skills/traits in the current meta, which may warrant a pass over.
1. Vexing Blow is the main culprit, now so useless it doesn't even make an appearance on my skill bar in Blue-Line. A skill that was intended to be useful for tanking has dropped off immensely, to the point of uselessness. Perhaps a relevant debuff could be added to the skill to encourage it's use.
2. Stagger is in a similar boat, but this is mainly due to current boss design. Even when used from behind, Stagger has little to no impact on any enemy it targets, though I understand it is more useful in a PvMP setting, so may be worth leaving alone.
3. Disorientation is a useless trait, as in the current meta no-one is relying on a poor proc chance to reduce BPE enough such that low finesse is viable on a dps class.

Red Guardian is also in a very nice place, it is a satisfying landscape experience, and with practice actually puts out decent dps if you put your mind to it. I would not buff nor nerf the dps capability of guardians. It's worth noting that Protection by the Sword stacks with itself, which can make for some fun meme builds, though I imagine is not intended.

Yellow Guardian is also fine, though mostly useful as a debuff class in PvMP. Otherwise yellow-line traits are just used to supplement Red and Blue Guardians, and provide great supplementary abilities to both lines.

Overall, I would say that Guardian is one of the classes that least needs a once-over. It's a class that lives and dies by the current instance meta, but as it stands, it is a very satisfying core tank role to play, and is viable on landscape to not be painful to complete solo content with.

[Kotal]

thank you orion for starting this thread. opening up to feedback like this might be the best start to fix a lot of the issues that this class (and others) had for years now.

what i'm gonna say might have been said already, but i'm gonna try to list as much as i can that could be looked at.


starting off: bpe. as said in this thread already, it is a key point for guardian (and warden) tanking, yet a lot of current content negates these stats entirely, and additionally the stat curves on these stats are obscenely high, so investing into them atm is incredibly difficult and very unrewarding, unless all content you do is landscape or trash pulls. in addition, if you were to invest into bpe on your LIs, you would have to fit 9 word of power traceries into 5 slots, and then you couldn't even use these for the currently more effective defensive traceries like damage reductions or max morale.
i don't know the perfect solution, but (in addition to stop making high tier content pretty much fully ignore avoidance) my personal favourite would be to just fuse block, parry and evade into 1 single stat (avoidance, i suppose), and then take a look at the stat curve. that would make it worth considering it again when gearing a tank.


2nd big point: aggro. currently this game is very conflicting in regards to that. many skills and traits point towards that dealing damage on a tank is the way to go, and using skills that generate extra threat (shield taunt, war chant etc.). but there is a major issue attempting that on any higher tier: even with the increased threat modifier in the best offensive gear, no tank can generate enough aggro to keep mobs off a competent dps player. and if you use tanking gear (which tanks are meant to use, surprisingly), the threat generated drops down a lot further (due to loss of physical mastery, critical rating, and, most notably, finesse - a skill that doesn't even hit in the first place can't generate any threat, right?). because of that, most force taunts simply copy threat from the highest overall. this sounds great, until you realise that this means you can simply afk on a tank and wait for the right moment, press a force taunt and you will keep aggro for the rest of the fight (unless there is a mechanic that resets threat). this makes keeping aggro on multiple targets on most tanks very janky, and requires special setup in most situations.


now for guardian specific:


guardian as a class is doing well atm. there is not much to change about that imo (other than the fact that the skill ignore the pain has an incredibly long animation on all races other than man). but there are a number of traits in all 3 lines that could use quite a lot of work.


blue:

shield taunt - as mentioned before, this skill purely for generating threat is nearly useless. it doesn't hit many targets, requires a lot of finesse to hit at high tiers, and the threat it generates is less than a champion generates with a single blade wall. plus if you want to use this skill to trigger break ranks, it may be resisted and will not trigger the effect at all, which is a huge detriment, since finesse on tank gear is not sufficient to have it at a reasonable level.

adaptability - great idea, however the fact that it gets removed when using response skills just incentivises not using skills at all.

improved shield spikes - in a normal trait line it is a waste of trait points. it is only ever used in a separate line that is solely for that trait.

disorientation - an awkward way to combat the finesse problem on tanks, since it requires finesse to apply. has no use for the rest of the group, since dps and support classes will have plenty of finesse on their gear.


red:

before anything else: this line needs something when speccing into it. any other line has some extra effects on specification, and this one simply doesn't. a simple +5% (melee) crit chance would already do it.

force opening - your only way to get a guaranteed parry response (not counting the current raid set - also please make that one just a normal thing for the class, with it red finally plays like a normal dps line and not a game of gamble). it's a slow and weak skill with no extra effect, and is on a 10s CD. this skill just needs something, anything, to be useful again.

thrill of battle - good original idea, however it is useless in pretty much any scenario. heal is too low to justify the CD, and even if it didn't have the CD, it would be mostly unused.

protection by the sword - this trat line's only group utility. and it is very weak and janky. this skill should much rather be a constant aura than a pulsing effect around the target. and its current effect doesn't really have anything to do with "protection".

invigourating parry - even less useful than thrill of battle. power is pretty much a binary thing in this game. either you regenerate enough for your needs, or you run out. random procs for a low % will not change much, and the trait points are always spent better in other places

prey on the weak - the damage it deals is simply pathetic. yes it's free damage, but it is far too low to justify it being a cap stone trait.

honourable combat - another mostly useless trait. not usable in any tanking context, and a major dps loss for a rather weak heal. not worthy of being a cap stone trait either


yellow:

before anything else: this line is weird. and it has a major identity crisis. it throws away the tankiness of blue for additional aggro generation (which i already mentioned before is pointless these days), awkward debuffs (perma slowing works in pvmp to annoy players, but it's pretty useless in pve since most important targets are immune to slows anyway), and some decent self heals (the only good part about this line).
personal favourite: give it the brawler treatment, make it a supplement line only, since that is what it is mostly used for anyway.

as said before, most traits are just supplements to the other 2 lines. and the traits used here are so great that you are pretty much forced to take them in any serious specs.

the 2 cap stones are the worst, tho.

singular focus - armour debuff way to weak to justify a CD on it. other classes have regular skills with 100% uptime and a significantly higher magnitude, meanwhile this is a cap stone trait that makes the debuff a random proc.

cataclysmic shout - the saddest skill in the game. how can a skill with an animation as awesome as this be so incredibly bad??? it deals virtually no damage, stuns for a short duration, has a low radius of 7m, and has a CD of 2(!!) minutes. this skill just needs something extra, or a massive reduction in CD. (similar skills on other classes are not cap stone traits and have CDs of 30s).

[gildhur]

Clarify whether War-chant adds threat or not. The tooltip doesn't say it does, but the red aggro symbol pops over everything it hits.

Investigate why mobs within ~40m get aggro'd by non-AOE skills when Take to Heart is active.

[Fermongu]

Blue line:

- Disorientation is useless, an actual good group buff could be great instead.

- Break ranks could be its own skill separated from shield-taunt.


Red line:

- It doesn't have any specialization bonus, like all other class traitlines. Put something DPSy here.

- Damage from second traitline perk "reactive parry" is abysmal. Scale it correctly or replace with something DPSy.

- Bleeds could get a boost (and DPS overall).

- Capstone perk "prey on the weak" is effectively very weak.

- Thrill of battle and Honourable combat are useless as heals. The former has very high internal CD, the latter is not worth of being a capstone skill.


Yellow line:

- Meme traitline, without a defined purpose or a very niche one (tanking with a 2-hander on easy-medium instances).

- If you want to tank with it, is not tanky enough; if you want to use it for DPS, with the tank aggro multiplier you will steal aggro from the actual tank, leading to messy fights.

- In general, few and very weak debuffs for a debuff oriented traitline.

- Underwhelming capstones.

- As already said, better give this traitline the brawler treatment as suplement of traits for red an blue.

[Ryvick]

My suggestions here would be the same for ALL classes traitlines.

DROP YELLOW as a trait line and turn it into a Utility only line, taking the less desired traits from Blue and Red and placing them in the Yellow tree. Take the skills out of Yellow and place them in Red and Blue where best they fit. Focusing on Blue as Tanking and/or Healing and Red as DPS where ever applicable.

This would make designing valid trait lines easier for DEVS who have been continually complaining they can only balance ONE role for players. It would make game balance easier overall and it would finally get the traits NOONE ever traits out of the trees and place them into a tree where you can take it or leave it.

[Skohgar]

Currently there isn't a decent role that the yellow guard fills:

Blue preforms better as a main tank as it has greater defenses

Red preforms better as dps at least in single target and even if yellow was multi target dps it would gain to much agro

The best use I find for yellow is maybe as a second tank in fights with lots of adds or a main tank in some 6 mans

So maybe you could make it into a tank that fairs better against multiple enemies where it could gain some of its defensive buffs from hitting multiple mobs and do more damage to them.

Eg one of the capstones Cataclysmic Shout could return a defensive buff or shield depending on the number of targets hit maybe with a cap of 10

Also some of the traits feel a bit redundant at least when used by yellow:

Eg Insult to Injury is a trait that has a chance to reset debuffs but later on you get a trait called Mark of Permanance that makes non damaging debuffs permanant if the target is marked by Take to Heart which will be most targets you fight so the trait is really only use full if you are red line for resetting bleed durations.

Warrior Fortitude also seems to be the least useful in yellow line as it gives evade which I could be wrong but I feel that guardian has a lot more use for block and parry as that is how most of its skills work so maybe give it some tac mits as that is something the yellow guard has harder time getting compared to blue

Singular Focus is the other capstone trait that has a small chance for parry skills to put a debuff that cant be refreshed by any other skill that reduces the enemies armour by a small amount which especially for one of the last traits is very underwhelming-maybe it could be changed to guarantee the take to heart heal or double the effect of applied debuffs or at least just increase the current effect

[Gorikon]

+1 for Break Ranks being its own skill. Attaching it to a skill of our shield rotation means either you cannot do said rotation, or you activate it accidentally and mess up your Foritfications. Suggestion: Copy the skill icon and the animation from the Champion skill "Born for Combat". (Skill icon: Two crossed swords. Animation: Shockwave emanating from the character.)

+1 for making yellow line a support line - totally makes sense, since it is a wild mixture of offensive buffs, defensive buffs, debuffs, and damage. But probalby tricky to pull of, since this means a lot of rebalancing.

Red line DPS could use a slight buff. It is totally fine for landscape, but far away from a "real" DPS class. But maybe start with all the scaling issues and low performing skills in red line that already have been mentioned in this thread - adjusting these would already bosst DPS.

[DoRonRon]

Been a while but is the forced taunt still doing the threat "copy" at +900% still? That hack to make the revised threat mechanic "work" was appalling.

Also the root of threat being the tank's damage but with the need to build defensively that base damage is then low, an incongruous choice.

Then there's the forced taunts spam that circumvents all the tank swap mechanics throughout the game up to Orthanc.

Not a class specific issue, the environment they function in was spoilt. And destroyed much of the instances Orion and colleagues built. Not seen any groups enter the Seer Room and flip leavers in years.

[Khluzainn]

My only comments are for RED LINE.

5% crit chance instead of somthing useless like invigorating parry or the parry retaliate.

Increase bleed damage big time. Guard bleeds do half or even 1/3 the damage of other classes dots. Classes like burg/LM/RK/Hunter and honestly even champ deep strikes bleeds are really stong. Some of these classes arnt even dot based and thier dots truck. Add 20% bleed damage or somthing to red line select bonus or somthing...

Finally Prey on the weak.... This currenlty is "extra damage on crits" IMO this is just terrible and has never scaled properly since its inception. To be honest just change this to give bleeds 10% crit chance and 25% bleed crit mag or somthing. Or just regular 25% crit mag on a bleeding target? This would do exactly what the current trait does but it will actually scale on its own.

[PrinceAladdin]

Heya, thanks for the platform to submit some of my thoughts.

I believe the guardian is teetering on the edge of irrelevance with the mantle being passed to the Brawler and Captain. The BPE-centric focus makes Guardian a decent adds tank, but the immense Damage Reduction skills of other tanks ensure they supplant the guardian in most instances. The Guardian, for example, has significant challenges sustaining against Boss 2 of HoA on higher tiers during the final phase because BPE is irrelevant for that portion of the fight.

I don't see a scenario where Brawler and Captain don't take over the main tank roles in the future. This has been a consistent problem with the Guardian for several years, where the Guardian becomes irrelevant in certain raid cycles because it is inferior to other tanks in regards to (1) mitigating boss-sourced damage and (2) buffing the group. Sure, Guardians are pretty sturdy, but Captains can put out ~150k HPS, they can Rez allies, they can shield fellows for massive damage reduction without harming themselves (i.e. shield of the dunedain vs shield wall), they can bolster everyone's morale pools, they can bolster everyone's survivability with banners/to-arms, etc. Brawlers rival Guardians in terms of sturdiness, they can stand nearly invincible for periods of time, they can Oathies every few seconds, and they have nearly equivalent taunts to the guardian minus engage. Guardians are better at threat generation, but with the way Force Taunts work, that is only a marginal benefit nowadays. The key point is: The slightly increased sturdiness of a Guardian does not quite make up for the sheer utility of the other tanks, who are still sturdy enough to do everything the Guardian does.

Since I have returned to the game with the release of Gundabad, my Captain has outclassed my Guardian in every scenario to the point where it is only worth bringing Guardian if Captain is locked. Assault on Dhurstrok? Captain. Den of Puglak? Captain. Houses of Rest? Captain by a mile. Thrang? Captain. I am sure this would also be the case for my Brawler if I could bring myself to playing such a grossly lore-breaking class more consistently. Guardian can do these instances for sure, but it is definitely less optimal and more of a struggle.

With that said, I don't think many changes need to be made, just a few to prevent a fall to irrelevance. For example, while Pledge is useful for adds-tanking, making Boss-facing encounters actually BPE'able would make help Pledge not be totally useless, unlike the Captain and Brawlers CD's which are always useful since they are straight mitigation/damage-reduction. Alternatively, you could make Pledge a damage-reduction CD.

So yes, I do think the Blue Guardian needs some boosts to stay relevant since tanking is their only role. Some approaches would be making them sturdier by adjusting some of the BPE-based cooldowns that end up being useless half the time, or giving them some ability to buff the group without hampering their mitigations akin to what Captains and Brawlers have.

Happy to field any questions. Thank you for your time!

[Ethirielll]

Core skills
Turn the Tables: This being a melee skill is a bit annoying, making it like other cc breaks would be nice QoL.

Blue line


Shield Wall: This is quite rarely used, I use it in both pve and pvp but mostly pvp, i'd like to be able to use it while moving, lower cd (~5-10s) and reduce amount redirected to 50% to give blue line a more active role in pvp raids. (Similar to the guard skill in Return of Reckoning.)
Improved Shield Spikes: This is a (good) pre fight trait, it could just be merged with an existing trait.
Disorientation: Maybe this was useful once but it's not anymore, maybe change the debuff to something else idk.
Warrior's Fortitude: The incoming healing from this buff hasn't scaled in a very long time, currently just giving 1,1k rating.
Break ranks: This buff being tied to shield-taunt is kind of annoying but not a big deal.

Overall: It's quite solid, the bpe aspects are let down by poor ratings on bpe essences, raid design and generic vitality essence stacking.


Red Line

Speccing into red gives nothing compared to other specs, some crit % would be nice or anything tbh.
Getting critical rating from might would also be nice, similar to a few other might classes.

Reactive parry: The damage from this has scaled poorly, and overall is quite useless, i'd prefer the Tenderize trait from yellow here, increasing crit rating per parry which also procs from parries through protection by the sword.
Protection by the sword: 5% melee damage is pretty meh, and as said above, tenderize doesn't proc from parries through this.
Prey on the weak: The damage from this has been scaled quite poorly, i'd prefer some group benefit such as +1% incoming damage per guardian bleed, or +1% incoming critical chance. (A stacking limit would be needed)
Thrill of battle: Pretty poor.
Brutal assault: Could use small damage bump.
Honourable combat: Don't think i've ever traited this since it was introduced.
Terrible wound: Seems bugged and either didn't scale correctly or isn't being effected by bleed damage tracery.
Force Opening: Cooldown is too long.
Warriors heart: Lower the heal amount while in red line and give it some sort of large damage buff.

Overall: It's solid st damage, especially with this caps red set, but there's no real reason you'd want to take one.

Yellow line

Yellow is a mess and should probably just be deleted and made into a spare third line, some of the traits mixed into existing lines, and the rest as a "spare" line like brawlers yellow.
Afaik Insult to injury is still bugged, dots refreshed by this don't crit.

[MasterSilver]

So for Guardians, aside from buggs that players have mentioned, I think the point that most big boss hits cannot be block, parried, or evaded (bpe) really takes away from classes that rely on bpe. Red line can't keep up in anyway with other classes. We need the Best in slot gear in order to do decent dps. One option is to just speed up our animations and make that part of red line. In order to get 400k dps, you need to be really good at animation canceling. For yellow line, if you doubled everything, doubled light damage, halfed the CD of Cataclysmic shout (and doubled radius), doubled debuffs (really make it 25% mastery) or changed the war-chant debuff from mastery to a strait minus 10% damage, and allowed aoe targets to effect how many mobs can be effected by flash of light. Perhaps people might use this line.

The point is yellow line claims to be a tank line, an aoe line, and a debuff line. It is impossible to be a guard, champ, and LM at the same time. Theoretically, With DPS gear yellow line should do like 80% of red line damage to single targets, but more damage to groups. Theoretically while tanking in yellow line, the tank should be able to do the job with 10% lower mits and only need to throw on a shield for main bosses. But yellow line doesn't do any of those things well. DPS is very low when trying to do aoe. Debuffs are very underwhelming. And the only time I go yellow line to tank is the first boss for Den of Pugh. And the thing is if you did all the suggested changes yellow line would not be overpowered. Adding light damage (200% at max level) back to the war chant legacy would be how to fix the dps issue. Cataclysmic Shout having a 1 min cd, matches brutal charge cd (which has a stun). Having aoe targets effect number of flash of light also makes sense. These changes wouldn't make yellow line perfect but certainly a great place to start.

[cwswim03]

Make redirect -35% incoming damage instead of negates 35% of damage.

Having both pledge and juggernaut is redundant. Change Pledge to a -incoming damage buff or a +mits buff.

Every big hit since Remm can't be Bpe'd anyway. Acidic, The burning spear thing from Gorgar, fangs of the frost heart, maul. Guards need another -incoming damage thing to compete with the other two tanks.

Change stagger to +5% incoming damage in blue or something.

[gildhur]

Yellow line

Yellow is a mess and should probably just be deleted and made into a spare third line, some of the traits mixed into existing lines, and the rest as a "spare" line like brawlers yellow.

Please don't do this. Yellow Guard is one of the most fun solo classes in the game. It needs tweaks, not overhaul.

[Seschat]

I'm the weird Yellow Line player. I shout a lot, I glow in the dark, and no, I don't raid.

I just on-level soloed Limlight Gorge. It was a little slow and tedious, but I managed (Until I got swarmed by three of the higher-end huorns, but that's a player inattention issue). Yellow is the AoE & Debuffing role, and our debuffs need buffing. Had I weakened those huorns damage sufficiently, I might have survived. Had my slows worked on them, I could have kited them enough to heal up. I could be a great off-tank, keeping the adds off the group while the main tank kept the boss busy, but I'm just that little bit lacking.

And I am absolutely in agreement with every tank player in this, the Warden, and the Captain threads: make BPE worthwhile again!

[Gamlieldar]

This is not a post that pretends that there are Guardian changes imminent. It's a discussion to draw forth thoughts on our sturdiest of sturdy combatants and where some believe that there is room for improvement, skills, effects, and traits that are underwhelming, and a wishlist of what you might like to see moving forward.

Let me first start by saying "Thank you x1000000" for even starting this thread! The Guardian has been my favorite class (tanking being my favorite role, so I'm biased) since 2011. I've tanked on other classes such as the captain, champion (yes), and beorning. Brawler is still at level 101, so I'm not gonna officially say I've tanked a dungeon with the class. Not touching warden tanking due to suffering from DSL syndrome. Bottom line: I've had a feel for (almost) every class.

When it comes to the guardian, this class is the OG tank, and unfortunately, it is falling behind in relevancy with the advent of brawlers. If Brawler tanks in their current inception were tanks back when Fall of Khazad Dum was the latest max level raid, guardians would NOT have a chance at all in T3+, because add management was extremely low. How so? Two words: GROUP. UTILITY. Let's do a side-by-side comparison of utility provided by both classes (Captains can't even compare - a double rez + 150k HPS from Blue mark is nigh irreplaceable).
______________________________ ______________________________ ______________________________ ____________________________

#1: One For All: This ability is available to ALL Brawlers, but when it comes to a desired composition for raids, a Blue Brawler has more to offer in group support than a red brawler because of Gut Punch and The Best Defense. I just played a blue guard with a red brawler, and let me tell you, it is QUITE FUNNY to use Litany of Defiance while One for All is Up, and to see my fortifications build up during Litany to exceed 100% Physical and Tactical Mitigation. However, this situation would only happen in, at most, 10 second intervals every 1.5 seconds, assuming using litany doesn't mean my guard commits suicide. But I digress.

In mentioning One For All, 10% mitigations with 50% uptime is applied raidwide, provided the correct tracery is equipped. What do Guardian's have to provide? 2% mitigations with 100% uptime assuming 5 stacks of fortification are up.

RECOMMENDATION #1: Either allow One for All to grant a static +5% mits to all fellowship/raid members, or Bump guardian's max fort mitigation buff to 5%. Both could be done, but I'd rather see the latter happen as to open up the possibility of a mitigation focused 2-tank composition of guard/brawler.

______________________________ ______________________________ ______________________________ _______________________

#2: Gut Punch/The Best Defense/Strike as One: A Blue Brawler has access to two abilities that can grant the raid up to 50% physical/tactical mastery for 20 seconds every 2 minutes (depending on how well the player times the cooldowns). Top this with +20% incoming damage on a single target every 70 seconds, and the Brawler has surpassed all tanks as the ultimate damage support tank, which is what SSG was going for. And this is where we run into problems with the Guardian: While other classes with okayish tank specs already have their core identity established in something else (Beornings as healers/maybe DPS, Champs and Wardens as definite DPS), the Guardian, whose identity has been to GUARD/DEFEND/PROTECT people, is now in a state of having no solidly desirable role besides being the niche add tank in situations where there is heavy add management (B2 and B3 in Hiddenhoard). Again, if Fall of Khazad Dum/Remmorchant was current content, guards would stand no chance of having a spot in T3+ raid content, because there are better options. Heck, if adds weren't so extremely insane with Dushtalbuk, his warlord phase in T3+ would call for none other than a Brawler/Cappy tank combo.

Guardian's Break Ranks has advantage over Strike as One/Best Defense because its radius of effect is 10m greater than than Strike/Best, and the group is able to get 40% mastery every 1 minute. This COULD stack well with Brawlers CDs, but Guardians are "squishier" than Captains/Brawlers because of their limited morale and their BPE not being relevant in endgame raids. On top of this, Break Ranks occurring depends on three factors:

#1: Shield Taunt being available for use. Between Sting proccing block reactive chains on chance and shield blow granting a free reactive chain, this is less problematic, but requires cautious use of shield taunt.
#2: Max Stacks of Fortifications: If a Guardian wanted to line up Break Ranks with a Blue Brawler/Red Cappy, they must first have enough lucky streaks to get their fortifications to max rank. So the Blue Brawler/Red Cappy need to wait about 10-30 seconds (depending on luck of the draw) before blowing their big cooldowns. Not ideal at all.
#3: Shield Taunt must hit at LEAST one target. In multi-target situations, given a decent amount of finesse, this is not a big deal. But as others have said, if guards were facing off against a single target, even at 30-35% finesse, there is a small (but still existent) chance that Shield Taunt can resist the one target it needs to hit in order to proc Break Ranks. If Shield Taunt resists, Break Ranks will not occur.

RECOMMENDATION #1: Allow Break Ranks to be its own ability with a 1 minute cooldown, and have an 80m range (like most captain abilities AND Litany of Defiance). It can be freely cast regardless of current fortification level and still grant the group +40% phys/tact mastery, BUT there is a bonus if there's a certain number of fortifications cashed out while Break Ranks is used: +1% raidwide critical chance, +2% critical magnitude per stack of fortifications consumed. This component serves as DPS/healer support for the guardian's group/raid, and it also gives the guardian extra crit chance to build his/her fortifications up.

RECOMMENDATION #2: Smashing Stab - Using it also grants the target +20-40% incoming damage for 5-10 seconds or some short duration, meant to briefly complement the DPS cooldowns of a Brawler. Given that this ability is on a 30 second cooldown, its cooldown is reduced by war-chant, and it is primarily used for generating FMs to interrupt things otherwise uninterruptable (Frost Drake's stacking frost breath in Hrimil T3+, Ghashfra Defiler's Burning Venom induction in Thrang seasonal, etc.), allowing Smashing Stab to grant this type of debuff will be of some benefit to the guardian in situations where the FM isn't needed.

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Just these recommendations alone would allow the Guardian to better match up to the utility that a brawler provides while making the guardian's utility still unique to its own class/identity/cashing out playstyle. Defensively though, the guardian has room for improvement in making some of its abilities have pure damage reduction/reflection in the event that BPE isn't going to work out.

RECOMMENDATION #1: Allow Guardian's Pledge to grant the Guardian -25% incoming damage for the duration. This helps with smoothing out overall damage beyond damage that can be BPEd on CHANCE.

RECOMMENDATION #2: Allow Juggernaut to provide 95-100% damage absorption and reflect 95-100% of damage received. On a 3 minute cooldown, it essentially serves as a last stand, but with a deadly twist to it.

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Next, here's some miscellaneous items that aren't related to Guardian's utility vs. Brawlers/Cappies, but things I'd like to see implemented to smooth out the Guardian's defensive gameplay/theme.

RECOMMENDATION #1: In the first row of the Guardian Blue Line, we have "Defensive Expertise." At max ranks, this gives us +5% block chance. It would be highly preferred if the parry chance from red line's "Deflection" merged with this trait, but MORE IMPORTANTLY, it would be even better if max rank of Defensive Expertise allowed Shield Blow to grant BOTH a block and a parry response. This would allow us to more reliable have access to the parry chain, thereby having more freedom in accessing Redirect.

RECOMMENDATION #2: Shield Wall - this ability sees some usage in 3 mans and 6 mans, at times. However, its animation time is cumbersome to the extent that it doesn't serve as a reliable emergency cooldown when somebody is in peril. It also cannot be used on people outside of your immediate fellowship, so it's a mediocre raid cooldown. First, make this ability raidwide. Second, allow this ability to give the selected target a non-stackable -95% incoming damage (or set incoming damage to 5%) for 10 seconds after toggling (you can call this effect Defender's Bond), serving as a quasi-SOD where significantly less damage is transferred to the guardian. The original effect can remain freely at the guardian's risk, but the -95% incoming damage can only occur every time Shield Wall is toggled on. Thirdly, to make this reliable, give Shield Wall the "Stun Removal" visual treatment where the visual remains but no longer briefly locks the player out of doing other abilities until the animation is finished.

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Finally, here's some miscellaneous general feedback about the guardian trait lines that I'd like to have considered.

RECOMMENDATION #1: Some classes have the old power management traits in their trait lines that are out of touch with the current binary nature of power: You either have enough Fate or you don't. In Blue Line, Guardian's have tireless defender, while in red line, they have Invigourating Parry. Replace these power restoring effects with something more useful, and have the original power effects be integrated into Guardian passives or abilities. Might I recommend:

Tireless Defender: Striking with Guardian's Ward grants all fellowship and raid members -1%/-3%/-5% incoming damage for 30 seconds.

Invigourating Parry is renamed to Empowering Blademaster: Critical Strikes with Parry Reactive skills grant you and your allies within 80m 1%/2%/3%/4% Incoming Healing, Outgoing Healing, and Outgoing Damage buff for 30 seconds, or maybe +1%/2%/3%/4% Devastate Magnitude buff raidwide that stacks up to 3 times.

RECOMMENDATION #2: Given the layout of yellow line that seems like a mostly non-enjoyed and non-viable specialization, I am in favor of giving it the brawler treatment, but also giving the guardian line a big lookover to make each trait have some significant value so that way there is more worthwhile choices in lieu of yellow traits costing 1 point while main spec is blue/red. I may create a separate forum for this.
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I am hoping my feedback and others is taken seriously. Personally, I'd enjoy seeing all classes have viable tank specs that have a place in T3+ raiding, but given the strength/capacity of the SSG team, that would take a lot of time. Guardian's should get the priority in being looked closely at, because our primary strength/core identity is tanking. Again, Champs/Wardens/Beornings don't have their core identity in tanking, but in healing/DPS, so at least they have a spot in raids where preferable (although melee DPS is in a tight spot with Hiddenhoard. Hopefully this doesn't become the case in future raid content). Thank you for listening Orion! :-D

-Gam

Edit 1: Fixed some grammatical/sentence errors.

[SSG_Orion]

As we start looking at the classes in more depth, there will definitely be room for discussion and improvement. A lot of what is being said here will be looked at.

I can tell you, that my main goal is to provide a valid DPS line and a valid utility line in addition to the existing tanking role for the Guardian.

This, like eveerything else, will take some time.

[PartherFar]

Please don't do this. Yellow Guard is one of the most fun solo classes in the game. It needs tweaks, not overhaul.

Agreed do not make the yellow line into a utility line.

[Eeshen]

Wow, lots of great ideas and suggestions here.

As a MUCH lower priority than those listed, I would love to see a reduced cast time on Bash and Shield Bash. Many times I want to use those as interrupts, but the cast times are too slow to be effective.

Also, is it true my skills cast slower as a Dwarf Guardian versus a Man Guardian?? If so, is this intentional ?




THANK YOU so much for considering our ideas, SSG !

[PrinceAladdin]

As we start looking at the classes in more depth, there will definitely be room for discussion and improvement. A lot of what is being said here will be looked at.

I can tell you, that my main goal is to provide a valid DPS line and a valid utility line in addition to the existing tanking role for the Guardian.

This, like eveerything else, will take some time.

I am thankful to hear you will be putting some time into smoothing out the guardian. However, please allow me to caution you that it is critical you do not overlook correcting notable deficiencies in the blue line (compared to Cap Tank and Brawler Tank - please see my post above) in favor of updating the red and yellow lines. The percentage of players that dabble in red/yellow is small. An update to those lines is mostly pointless; just for fun at best. If you redirect your time to Guardian, I suggest you streamline aspects of the blue line as proposed by numerous players in this thread, particularly with respect to equity between tanking classes, as Guardian has fallen a little behind. The blue line is the reason 99% of players roll a Guardian, so I believe your main goal should be to correct issues there rather than to "provide a valid DPS line and a valid utility line".

As an addendum: My personal thoughts are that the Guardian should be a tank first, and only a tank. Having a viable DPS line is neat for landscape and smaller instances, but for the sake of lore, please don't make it competitive with Champs/DPS classes. No one asked for that - I hope that's not what you were planning . Guardians should excel in all tanking roles, whether that be single-target, boss-tanking, multi-target, adds-tanking, etc. The issue at present is that they are only good at adds-tanking but not much better than the other classes at it. And even then, guardians bring no additional buff/debuff value to that role which is why we tend to get replaced. Nevertheless, I am in favor of buffs for guardians rather than nerfs for other classes. Obviously, that's just my personal preference but it makes the most sense to me. I don't envy your extremely difficult job of balancing classes, but I do appreciate the effort you put in to try to balance logic and lore with fun.

Thank you!

[Normok]

I hope I'm not too late to add to the discussion.

It's been a long time since I've seriously played blue or red line so most of my suggestions are for yellow and general skills.

For a while I have been playing yellow guardian with 1 hand and shield. Not the most optimal choice but I have a lot of fun with it and that's what gaming should be about right?
Since I've been playing yellow for a few years now I'm heavily in favor of keeping it as a main line, but not entirely opposed to having it as a utility line depending oh how it's done .

One thing I would like to see changes to are some of the animation speeds. Guardian has a few quick skill but some are so slow (mainly shield skills and take to heart) and I can see other classes pull off 2-3 skill in the time I do 1! The increase animation could help with the DPS issue guardians have as well .

A few more things I'd like to see, some of which have been mentioned above.
-I feel like the guardian has some pretty weak trait tree passives compared to some of the other classes and could use a buff.

-Range skill is weak and can't be used while moving.
Compared this to the brawler who has " throw object" which does about 5 times the damage on a shorter cool down and can be used while moving. Also why does ranged auto attack miss everything
that isn't 10 or more levels below us when we are moving?

-Reactive parry is weak. It could be buffed or maybe keep the damage but add block damage as well or in a separate trait. Shield spikes could increase the damage.

-Protection is useless while solo make it an aura or give the ability to be a self buff.

-More stats from might would be nice. Like crit or possibly to a lesser extent some mitigations. ( Mitigations is probably overpowered though)

- As mentioned above many of the cap stone skills need a buff, reduced cool down or both!

Some of these suggestions are not that important or for very niche situations and game play styles, but any suggestion can be useful and I hope more people chime in with their opinions and recommendations!