Some Guardian Thoughts

[CasualActual]

I don't care about the skill fly out window and I ignore them mostly on all classes. I do like your idea to combine and reduce the number of skills. Consider giving break ranks a boost to make it competitive with brawler tank buffs. Also, damage reductions like Brawler I think could help the guard. I would like to see all tanks be pretty similar in tanking abilities so that players and raid leaders have more choice about what tank they want to bring. What are your goals for the guard revamp? What mandatory changes must be made to the class?

[Pontin_Finnberry]

I am thinking that the DPS line for the Guardian would shift to sword and shield play over two-handed sword. What are Gurdian's thoughts on this?

As I level another guardian slowly through older content currently level 75 I've always went with Sword and Shield when playing in DPS trait-line, so I would welcome this change very much, changing rotation to more shield base would be fine too if it went that direction.

[Gorikon]

Reworking the response lines:

I'm against reworking existing skills like Sting or Guardian's ward. Like others mentioned, their effects are often needed at certain moments, so when the base version got locked by their response counterpart, that would be a major annoyance. And if you introduce new generic skills, what's the advantage versus the traditional skills?

Also, I see the "flyout window" as a reminder what skills can be played. I still do have all relevant skills on my skill bar and hit the appropriate keys when the skills open up.

Shift of DPS line to sword and shield play over two-handed:

Not sure how you want to accomplish this. We only have four skills where you hit your foe with your shield. One of them (Shield Smash) is blue line only, and the only AoE at the same time. To create a shield centric DD line, you'd need a new set of shield skills, new animations, and so on.

Also, I have a full blown 2H axe for red line. If DD line gets changed to sword & board, refund please.

[Setenzia]

Fellowship/Raid Guardian is a Tank not DPS - nothing more, nothing less who's main purpose is to grab and keep mob aggro with single target and (measly) AoE taunts skill to generate threat (currently).

DPS and Guardian is one of the greatest oxymorons in LoTRO and should remain as is - Sword & Board and Zwi Hander.

Current pure yellow line is useless. I would change yellow line to how Brawler and now Mini Yellow trait tree operates.

Removal of "skill fly-out windows" - if this reduces lag then do it. Otherwise what is the point aside from Orion does not like it? Might as well take a look at eliminating the skill fly-out windows in the other classes too while you are at it.

My 2-bits

Increase threat generation from taunts and dps (weapon & shield).

Consider a rating increase for Phys/Tac mitigation similar to how Bolster works.

Rework Yellow trait tree to be similar to Brawler/Minstral.

[CasualActual]

Guard has the best corruption removal in the game now. Will their CR be as good post revamp?

[bohbashum]

As a relatively new guardian (valar boosted to be raider) I'll chime in quickly.

• Red dps skills don't flow well at all.
• Animations are a pain for 2h. spamming sting between everything is weird.
• Red turns the fun reactive gameplay of the guardian tank into a proactive awkward maximise rotation gameplay.
• The red guardian has no purpose over other melee dps classes. Warden, Champ, Burg, Captain And now brawler all bring more stuff instead of just damage.
• Yellow is already a support line honestly...
• Lots of odd traits feel pointless, confusing, or too much chained together that you don't want to off-spec into. Hard to even justify blue-red in any length because you need lots of points to make the %s even do anything.
• Why the reliance on bleeds for damage is beyond me. It makes itemisation awkward. Removing all the bleeds gives a unique benefit of having a slot allowance for another LI Word of Mastery

I can't image the impossible task you have to make red/yellow guardian relevant next to the other slew of melee dps without stepping on toes.

But it feels like now is the time to look at debuffs. If guardian had viable debuffs it could have a fill role for Support+Dps like a middle between burg and captain. Maybe turning some of these Self-Preservation skills into a boon to allies.
For example, when in red...:
- Warriors heart buffs party heals and increases moral 10%
- Protection by the sword gives stun immunity
Just ways to make the red guardian attractive to fill a slot in a team without feeling like a downgrade.

[ItaOperor]

My gut reaction to this is a simple 'No'

I do agree with the idea of removing the skill flyout window, I don't use it and it's of no use to me - however if other players like it it's no issue for it to stay.

I disagree with the idea that players get overwhelmed with too many skills - as you level you get the new skills peice by peice and with the deed completions you learn what they do and when to use them. It would only be overwhelming if you valar without playing the class before and then you'd only have yourself to blame. Having some complexity helps the game stand out from the market - reducing down to 5-10 skills shouldn't be the answer.

I also disagree with combining skills as you lose the ability to choose what skill to use when - for example if I want to be careful which enemies I hit retaliation is better than whirling retaliaton and vice versa. If I'm facing an enemy with 2-3 levels of corruption or multiple enemies with corruptions I want to be able to use sting at will and not cycle through 3-4 other skills first.

I also like the idea of going sword and board only as I'm a shield lover but having a 2H option does open the class up for other playstyles. So while I personally like the idea I do think this would also be a non-starter for the playerbase in general.

Overall I'd need a lot more info on what specific skill changes and combination of skills you'd make before full judgement but my initial reaction is a negative one. I just don't see these changes as an improvement at the moment.

[Cerridwen]

How?I'm glad you asked. Skills that require a specific response effect like Retaliation, Shield-swipe, and Whirling Retaliation are really meant to chain together off of the combat event occuring from a previous skill. Regardless of when they are earned they are an improvement over the other initial skills you earn as a Guardian, Sting and Guardian's Ward. So, moving forward, I am considering replacing the skills Sting, Guardian's Ward, and Sweeping Cut when the correct combat reponse is achieved.

But Why?Clutter and quality of life, imho. At early levels this might not seem that important but as we level and earn more skills our bar becomes ever more cluttered with skills that can only be used under certain circumstances. Additionally, I think that the disruption in the tradition skill bar by initializing the skill flyout causes an unnecessary break in the traditional APS for players because it requires an awkward key combination or drifting mouseclick to execute. I don't think that anything is lost by combining the skills in this manner.

What?What happens to the traditional skills? They would either a) be removed and only appear instead of Sting)Improved), Guardian's Ward, and Sweeping Cut, or b) be replaced by new response shifting skills for parry, aoe parry, and block responses.

So, something similar to FFXIV's Pugilist/Monk Meditation/Steel Peak skill? For those not familiar with it, Steel Peak is the combat skill and it can't be placed in the quickslots (it does appear in the skills list), while Meditation is the skill that allows for the use of Steel Peak and it is placed in the quickslots. While out-of-combat, you press Meditation to open all five Chakra, and when all five are open Meditation changes to Steel Peak (or another skill if you're high enough level and have done the job quest). Ignoring the Chakra part of that, it sounds similar in that you place Sting in your quickslots and the skill changes to Retaliation whenever it's available for use. If that's the case, it doesn't sound too bad even though I also have no issue with how the skills are now.

As for the flyout, I assume you mean that quickslot that pops up; I don't think I have much of an opinion one way or the other because I can either use it or ignore it (you can hide it behind your chat window if it bothers you). I probably use it most on my Hunter for whatever skill that is (brain no worky), but I can just as easily click that skill in its normal location on the quickslots. It may just be a matter of my cursor is already positioned near where that thing pops up so it's easy to just click it, but that's obviously just my personal experience (duh). I will say that the pop-up might be a good thing to keep for accessibility for some folks, someone with vision problems may have difficulties seeing skill icon changes or whatever compared to something popping up on the screen, so keep that in mind.

[NotDarkbane]

Whilst not totally against these ideas (though the red line as sword&shield... without explaining how you'll recompense our legendaries, I'd say no to), I don't feel they really bring much to the table either. Guardian isn't a terribly complex class, and whilst some simplification is always welcome, I feel there are other classes that could benefit more.

Of the classes I have over 100, here are my skillbar counts (ignoring pets, mounts etc) and how many I use on a day-to-day basis (as opposed to only occasionaly - note there are almost no skills I won't use on occasion) in ascending order of play complexity of the class:

Champion (red)
26[15]

Guardian (red, occasionally blue, but numbers are for red)
23[17]

Hunter (red)
28*[17]
*counting stances as one

Runekeeper (red, occasionally blue, but numbers are for red)
32[18]

Loremaster (red)
34*[19]
*counting pet summon skills as one, and not counting skills of pets at all

And in terms of complex, warden rules that roost (I have to keep a card with skill combos on it for reference as I only remember a few - playing it more would help there of course, and the fact that the builder skills aren't colour coded to the combo icons doesn't help). But I suspect there are those who love that complexity, I just find it a bit too much work.

As to the skill flyout window, no I don't use it to activate skils, but I do use it as a visual indicator, so it does serve a purpose of sorts (if not the intended one perhaps).

So, I appreciate the thoughts, I appreciate you showing us the ideas and starting a conversation, I am, however, not convinced this is needed that much (at least for this class).

[Maigilion]

I am thinking that the DPS line for the Guardian would shift to sword and shield play over two-handed sword. What are Gurdian's thoughts on this?

Whilst I can't really comment on the replacement of skills whilst doing a combo (other than saying, if its done like in FFXIV, its a neat idea), I do have to say that I like the idea of a sword 'n board dps guardian very much..
I remember having a discussion just recently with a friend of mine, lamenting the lack of 1h and shield dps classes in nearly every MMO.
I like the playstyle, but I just don't want to tank.. So, if you can implement a DPS 1h/shield guardian, I'm all for it!
Question is however, how would you go about that? And would that mean losing the ability to use 2h weapons alltogether then?

[8skyfaller]

As has been previously pointed out, these skills are not one-to-one replacements. Guardian's Ward confers defensive buffs that none of the block-response skills offer. Improved Sting provides corruption removal that Retaliation does not. Occluding some skills during a block/parry response event will decrease choices. And a string of parry/block events will deny access to tactical options.

As an alternative, consider shortening response skill chains: Merge Shield-Taunt with Shield-Swipe to free up a slot. Merge Whirling Retaliation with Retaliation (rebalancing power use and damage, natch); Overwhelm with Thrust; that's another two slots saved.

I think that having greyed out response skills taking up space on the action bar is a marginal qualify-of-life issue, because they provide several benefits that pay their rent: 1) fixed placement is agreeable to muscle memory, and 2) their placement makes it much easier to know when a response event fires by watching the skills light up than scanning for miniscule buff icons or ephemeral particle effects. Polymorphic skill buttons are neat, but static icons/placement has cognitive advantages.

[Technician46]

Hi Orion,

It seem to me from this 2nd post about guardians that your main concerns for the guardian are skill bloat, what you are calling "skill flyout window", shield & sword vs 2 handed sword and dps (from your "Let's start talking about Guardians" thread). Out of all the issues with the class you chose these. I'm sorry and I don't mean to be rude or mean or anything like that but to be honest this doesn't give me much comfort or hope. There are much bigger problems with the class then these trivial things AND YOUR 1ST CONCERN SHOULD BE OUR TANKING LINE THEN OUR DPS LINE. In my opinion the order of priority should be:

1) Blue line - tanking line (THIS IS WHAT WE DO AS OF 1ST PRIORITY)
2) Red line - dps
3) Yellow line- and what to do w/ it or how to integrated in w/ blue and red line.
4) skill flow, trait and skill point optimization - how smoothly skills interact and flow w/ each line? Are some class traits useless? Do some trait cost to many point? How are lower level guardian functioning w/o all the skills and trait/point accessible to them (no damage reduction skills or other skilled, etc...)? Does the tank line feel slow and clunky? Does the dps line rely to heavily on parry responses when we (the guard) are not tanking and and mobs are facing away from us? Does the guard have enough crit and magnitude rating in both the tank and dps line to be something other then just be a meatshield? Does it feel like they are contributing to the group and not just taking damage but actually dishing some out? Is the guard on par w/ or better then other tank as far as damage reduction and utility? Are the animations to slow? Are the skills to slow, etc, etc, etc, ........ I know you slightly address optimization as part of this post.

Apart from skill bloat, skill flyout window, shield & sword vs 2 handed, your next priority seems to be our dps, which definitely needs attention. But even if you did increase and fix our dps line, I can almost guarantee its not going to get us into a t4 and up raid unless you drastically increase our damage. All that to say that we are not going to get a spot in a raid above t3 as a dps and that your 1st priority for this class should be our tanking line. Fix that 1st then work on dps and then the other things.

Sorry don't mean to sound mean or rude but it seem like you COMPLETELY MISSED OUR COMMUNICATION from your 1st post ("Let's start talkin about Guardian" post).

Skill bloat - guard do not have to much skill bloat. And concerning new players, its not like they get all the skills at once. They get them as they go and start getting comfortable w/ them as they practice and level. This is only a problem when people Valar their toons and are not familiar w/ their class.

Skill flyout window - like another poster suggested, hide it behind another object. As far as awkward mouse moment/clicking, move those skills to your UI w/ all your other skills and arrange them in the most intuitive way for yourself.

Shield & Sword vs 2 handed - why change it? Its fine the way it is. Nobody has complained about it have they ? If it does get changed consider all the work we have put into it and all the changes you are going to have to make in the Red line in order to compensate for the extra damage.

[gildhur]

To be clearer, the skills would only change if the response occurred. It might not be Sting, Guardian's Ward, and sweeping cut that change but new "generic skills" for Parry Response, AoE Parry Response, and Block Response. I'm noodling. The chain would remain intact or expand.

You're going to...add new response skills that would get replaced in order to...consolidate skills?

[Stormwaltz]

I am not some uber player who facerolls raids and has a perfectly optimized build.

But, as someone who's played a Guardian for the last ~3 years and has casually strolled to 48, I will say this:

I do not agree with your basic thesis that the Guardian is "too complicated." (There is a caveat below*.)

I went to 40 with a Champ and then dropped the character because the gameplay bored me. There was not enough to do.

I didn't have to pay attention. I just pushed the exact same sequence of buttons, over and over and over and... (Apologies to Champ players, maybe it gets better past that point?)

The reason I play Guardian is because the basic rotation is more complicated. I like that each combat is a bit different, depending on what opportunities arise. I like paying attention to the audio/visual cues, tracking block-response chains versus parry-response chains, having the ability to cue those myself if RNG is being particularly unkind, and - when there is no chain running - having the ability to use Sting and Guardian's Ward to stay in the fight and top off the buffs associated with them.

I don't find the Guardian complicated. I literally play the Guardian drunk, solo, at 3AM. The Guardian makes me pay attention and react to cues in a timely fashion, building up from quick scrapes to big gouges, swapping from one chain to another to keep the hits going.

* Caveat: I have played MMORPGs for a long time (1998), so I'm hardly the complete n00b you may be worried about. (But I must ask: is a complete newcomer to MMORPGs truly likely to start with a 15 year-old, relatively obscure game?)

Making things "simpler," particularly in a non-action-combat game, risks making things monotonous. In the last year I've tried FFXIV and SOLO, but couldn't last more than 20 hours in each because the basic gameplay in both was "1-2-1-2-3" for endless hours, with no variation. Yes, they were easy to get into. But they were not "sticky" - there wasn't enough to do.

If my Guardian were "simpler" there's a risk I'd find her as boring to play as I ultimate found the Champ and FFXIV... and then I'd stop playing her.

In seeking "simple," don't land on "dull."

(Oh: I have never used or paid much attention to the "skill flyout" bar - I have the chain skills on my hotbars and cue them with 1-0 on the keyboard.)

[Steelfist]

Don't think he is talking about dumbing down the Guardian Skills, but just cutting or combining some skills would be nice. Making shields more useful in redline is a great idea too, as a weapon. I always loved the guardian for their heavy shield, it is their trademark. I remember when many of the guardian's skills generated threat, even in redline, the cut those out and that workout just fine. I have faith in Orion to make it better, just give him a chance.

[SSG_Orion]

Hi Orion,

It seem to me from this 2nd post about guardians that your main concerns for the guardian are skill bloat, what you are calling "skill flyout window", shield & sword vs 2 handed sword and dps (from your "Let's start talking about Guardians" thread).

Heavens no, these are just musings?

Out of all the issues with the class you chose these. I'm sorry and I don't mean to be rude or mean or anything like that but to be honest this doesn't give me much comfort or hope.

I think, maybe, you're reading too deeply into these first little musings that you really need to, I don't think you're being rude.

There are much bigger problems with the class then these trivial things AND YOUR 1ST CONCERN SHOULD BE OUR TANKING LINE THEN OUR DPS LINE. In my opinion the order of priority should be:

1) Blue line - tanking line (THIS IS WHAT WE DO AS OF 1ST PRIORITY)
2) Red line - dps

Yes. Again, just some very earl thoughts. It's a long road to get to the point where the overall direction of a class is headed. Just was dropping a couple of minor tidbits.

3) Yellow line- and what to do w/ it or how to integrated in w/ blue and red line.

This is, actually, going to be the most difficult of the changes.

4) skill flow, trait and skill point optimization

A lot of the Red flow is pretty good. Some of the blue flow suffers from clunk anims and lengthy contribution of time committed to the anims. Those will likely be cleaned up.

Does the tank line feel slow and clunky? Are the animations to slow? Are the skills to slow, etc, etc, etc, ........ I know you slightly address optimization as part of this post

Yes, to me, in many cases it feels slow. Anims are stiff at times and take too much time to execute, some of the skills are too slow, and some are too quick. Are there skill optimizations that can be made? Of course. This is a very, very early peek into my brain.

Does the dps line rely to heavily on parry responses when we (the guard) are not tanking and and mobs are facing away from us?

Clearly.

Does the guard have enough crit/physical mastery rating in tank line to be something other then just a meatshield and feel that they've contributed, is the guard on par w/ or better then other tank as far as damage reduction and utility? .

This is a bigger issue than just guardians and we are discussing solutions to mitigation since we have painted ourselves into a little corner with regard to mits. This is a long ways off but we are dicussing internally. As far as additional contributions to the fellow/raid play - definitely on my radar.

Apart from skill bloat, skill flyout window, shield & sword vs 2 handed, your next priority seems to be our dps, which definitely needs attention but even if you did increase and fix our dps line I can almost guarantee its not going to get us into a t4 and up raid unless you drastically increase our damage. All that to say that we are not going to get a spot in a raid above t3 as a dps and that your 1st priority for this class should be our tanking line. Fix that 1st then work on dps and then the other things.

Yes, that is correct. One of our internal goals is to ensure that, if a class, has a secondary DPS like they can compete with the traditional DPS classes for spots. This does not mean that they will meet or surpass, but compete.

Sorry don't mean to sound mean or rude but it seem like you COMPLETELY MISSED OUR COMMUNICATION from your 1st post ("Let's start talkin about Guardian" post).

Again, a very, very insight into my line of thinking. Skill bloat is an issue in all classes. This is not to say that we're going to be stripping skills out willy-nilly, just that we are cognizant of the issue and looking to take a broader approach at addressing the numerous skills avaialble to all classes.

Skill bloat - guard do not have to much skill bloat. And concerning new players, its not like they get all the skills at once. They get them as they go and start getting comfortable w/ them as they practice and level. This is only a problem when people Valar their toons and are not familiar w/ their class.

I think that there is still room for improvement.

Shield & Sword vs 2 handed - why change it? Its fine the way it is. Nobody has complained about it have they ? If it does get changed consider all the work we have put into it and all the changes you are going to have to make in the Red line in order to compensate for the extra damage.

Options, in my opinion, are always good. It's a thought. Not one that I am moving forward on - one that I was interested in getting opinions on.

[SSG_Orion]

You're going to...add new response skills that would get replaced in order to...consolidate skills?

Skills that would occupy 1 slot and change with the progression of the chain to which they are associated.

Parry Response --> Retaliate --> Overwhelm --> To The King

Yes, this does have some issues with the branching nature of the skills - but that is something that would need to be addressed.

Again, just some initial thoughts.

[Hartten]

I want to thank you SSG_Orion for the previous two post above mine, this is the type of communication and more importantly information I and maybe other players like to hear.

My mains are not Guardians, but I have two and play one fairly regularly. I agree with Technician 46's bullet-point for the changes for guardians.

Taunt for group play, bring them back to their main purpose. My opinion is Red line Guardians is for landscape, and I like the ability to choose different styles of combat for different mobs. I like the warden, so I like complex classes. I like to use my mind not turn it off.

Since I think it is shield bash is linked to a LI, I would like to see it moved up on the chain, usually a mob is dead before I would need that skill.

Otherwise I like the class basically as it is, in fact I like it before the trait trees but I am real old fashion.

Now if the problem is just for raids and not landscape, then I suggest adding more taunt for blue line, so that line can add more, and change the yellow line to a raid style DPS Guardian.

[Gilean-EU]

Regarding the yellow line, to me it seems the trend you started with Brawler and now added to Minstrel, is a good one. Meaning, that in principle, blue line is the group play line, red line is DPS/solo line, and yellow line is an utility line, something you cannot spec into but pick some useful traits for either blue or red line. I would see this trend continue with guardian, and maybe with all classes at some point.

About guardian's red line: I understand why people say that blue line is most important, because that is for group play. Guardian is the tank of this game. But when playing solo, no-one likes to play class A and do a quest that says "Kill 20 orcs" when you know that class B does that said quest much much faster than you. Meaning, that in my opinion the comparison should be like against that kind of meter, not only DPS. And in perfect world, it should take more or less the same amount of time for ALL classes to complete that "Kill 20 orcs" quest. But all classes do that differently. Even if guardian cannot output just as much DPS as champion for example, guardian should survive better so he should be able to take on more orcs at once compared to champion, and in the end complete that quest about the same time.

As for 2-handed vs 1h+shield: There was time when I swapped constantly between 2-handed weapon and 1-handed + shield, but I think that was back in the days of Moria. Even then I thought it was a bit too much trying to keep up with two legendary weapons as other classes had only one. At some point as I wasn't doing group content anymore, I could safely ditch my shield and have been swinging my 2-hander ever since. Now for me there are 2 classes who use 1h+shield (warden, minstrel), 7 classes who use 2-hander (or something like that) (guardian, lore-master, hunter, captain, beorning, runekeeper, brawler) and 2 classes who dual-wield (champion, burglar) so maybe it would be interesting to switch back to sword & board style with guardian. But the main thing is that if doing that quest "kill 20 orcs" would take longer with shield+1hander, I probably wouldn't bother. Even if you could "gather up" more orcs to fight at once, the problem for all melee classes is the same: you can gather only melee orcs, all ranged ones will stay where they are and shoot at you.

[robarmitt]

I am thinking that the DPS line for the Guardian would shift to sword and shield play over two-handed sword. What are Gurdian's thoughts on this?

Just want to throw my hat in the ring and say I would love viable Sword & Board DPS tree, although keeping the option of wilding a 2h for landscape would be good.

[Weilan]

I started playing LOTRO in February 2021 as an alternative to Vanilla WoW. I tried to play the game ever since 2011 and the F2P transition, but I was a kid in high school and couldn't afford to buy the content and my attention span was too short to grind it. Now that I had the money to buy the expansions, I did and finally started playing.

I'm still level 115 on my first character - a Human Guardian. I originally picked the Blue Line and leveled up as Sword & Shield, because I wanted a good tank, because I believed it would help me as I played solo, it turned out that if I played Red Line sooner, I might've been at level 115 a lot sooner.

Regarding having the Red Line work with Sword & Shield as opposed to 2H weapon, well when I tried out the Red Line, I kept using my Sword & Shield, since investing in a new Legendary Item is too expensive and too much of a bother to be even worth it and I would say that currently, Red Line combined with Sword & Shield has increased DPS, but the Guardian becomes much more squishier and easier for him to die and it just isn't worth it unless you are focusing on a single target, because having more than 3 enemies surround you, it most likely means sure death.

Personally I don't mind any changes done to the class, because I don't see how it can improve things or make them worse. Granted, Guardian is the only class in the game that I have somewhat of an idea how it works, so these changes that are proposed by Orion, in my humble opinion, seem so insignificant that even implementing them as-is, it will not change anything for me.

Personally, I think SSG should focus all their efforts on fixing the issues with the poor client performance where the client freezes and drops frames per second to zero for a second or two before it loads the new content, or the overall poor FPS in some areas when brand new games from 2020-2022 maxed out feel less demanding and perform better. I know LOTRO uses Asheron's Call engine and how outdated that engine is, but WoW uses WarCraft 3's engine, so it is possible to modernize the engine to at least make better use of modern hardware and provide butter smooth performance.

The other issue that I wish SSG would give all their focus to is the poor server performance, or otherwise called lag. For me it has gotten significantly worse since I reached Gondor and Mordor, it is almost unbearable. If I use my War Steed to travel faster, if my character gets stuck on a rock, it looks like I've gone further, but then I either stop in place and can't move or rubberband back to that rock, or if I dismount, I rubberband back to that rock. These are not the only examples of lag, sometimes the whole game would freeze in lag.

As a supporter of the game, who bought every expansion in the game:

- Expansion Trove
- Minas Morgul
- War of the Three Peaks
(I got Fate of Gundabad and the 1-50 content for free from giveaways)
- purchased VIP for several months
- purchased LOTRO Points from the store

(I'm sure there are much bigger and much more generous supporters of LOTRO than me just in this thread)

I think SSG needs to start paying attention to what their players (and supporters) are complaining about. Nobody has complained about or asked for Minstrel or Guardian to be changed, personally, I could not care any less if they were changed or not, but right now there are much bigger problems with the game - the poor client performance and the poor server performance, and I am pretty damn sure that those need to be addressed before anything else is done to the game, be it expansions or mini-expansions or class revamps. Just please fix the client and the servers and when you do that, you will get everyone's support for everything else.

I like LOTRO a lot and all the Middle Earth material out there, but this lag and poor performance are really starting to kill my desire to play the game anymore. There are people who quit the game for this very reason and aren't buying new content or playing the game anymore because of this and these issues not being fixed for so long. I really wish SSG would put those class revamps on the backburner for now and focus on fixing the issues at hand.

That's all I have to say on the topic of Revamping Guardians as a Guardian player myself and I wish the game improves really soon for the sake of everyone - both players and SSG staff.

[Stry_7483]

I've been playing guardian for a few years and I wanted to chime in on the sword and shield/two handed question, since I somewhat agree on Orion's other points.

Please leave that option for players! Two handed guardians feel completely different from champions, and I love that. If anything, increase the utiliy of the yellow tree (which is the most peculiar and interesting of the trait trees) so that two handed guardians can have a spot as a utility/debuff off-tank in raids, or a dps boost together with red line traits.

[randomguy259]

I think it's great you're reaching out for feedback. The guardian has been one of my favourite classes for years and it'll be nice for it to get some attention.

The broadest appeal for the Guardian for me is the reactivity. Skills are largely instant and based off reacting to combat, providing a very action-game feel in a very clicky MMO. As long as this isn't lost, I don't mind some changes.

The idea of overwriting base skills with a response skill is interesting, but shouldn't be a complete solution. Part of the joy of current b/p responses is we have CHOICE about which and when to fire them off. E.g. I get a parry response but save the bleed until I block and stun with shield smash. Reducing the skill count this way may remove choice and it just becomes button mashing with no brain.

It needs really careful thought, and if response skills do become overwrites, we need other skills to build in. The burglar is a good comparison here where crit skills pop up in sequence, but there's plenty of other utility to keep it interesting. Guardians have less utility by there nature so simplification is risky.

[Kaeneth]

I like the idea of being able to DPS on Guardian with a sword and shield. Fits the theme of the class well, and some of the shield skills are a lot of fun to use. I think there'd definitely be some people upset if 2H got totally removed, so I don't think that would be a good idea, but if sword and shield somehow became a competitive option beside it for DPS I think that would be really cool. When leveling on red guardian I often used sword and shield on landscape just for fun because things died quickly regardless and I like the shield skills.

[fealegwe2]

I think it's great you're reaching out for feedback. The guardian has been one of my favourite classes for years and it'll be nice for it to get some attention.

The broadest appeal for the Guardian for me is the reactivity. Skills are largely instant and based off reacting to combat, providing a very action-game feel in a very clicky MMO. As long as this isn't lost, I don't mind some changes.

The idea of overwriting base skills with a response skill is interesting, but shouldn't be a complete solution. Part of the joy of current b/p responses is we have CHOICE about which and when to fire them off. E.g. I get a parry response but save the bleed until I block and stun with shield smash. Reducing the skill count this way may remove choice and it just becomes button mashing with no brain.

It needs really careful thought, and if response skills do become overwrites, we need other skills to build in. The burglar is a good comparison here where crit skills pop up in sequence, but there's plenty of other utility to keep it interesting. Guardians have less utility by there nature so simplification is risky.

It Definitly does need thought. But reading the comments in this thread i am sure glad i am not a dev trying to improve the Guardian. No wonder the devs have a hard time because you have guys who say that an LM uses a 2 Hander ... Sword and Board should be good DPS ( i suppose if that happens it would carry over to a raid and then guardian becomes the God mode Tank *sigh* )

i would like the Guardian to stay semi-thinking man's class and not get dumbed down to be newbie friendly. we don't want people who don't know what corruption removal is vala a guard and in a week joining pug raids and then wonder why content is difficult and cry on the forums that bosses are hitting too hard

i have not played guardian since the yello line was nerfed to ####. it would debuff and kill a big group of mobs quicker than a warden but alas those were the good ol days..AND that was using a 2 Hander that could Block

i agree. CHOICE will keep people interested in the game. the yello line needs some work anyway regardless if it gets the brawler treatment. Flash of light is now useless and it stays useless even if it was in a utility tree

i hope this thread does not confuse you too much, Orion, and thanks for reaching out to get a feel what we the community want for our class.