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  1. #26
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    Quote Originally Posted by Hephburz-2 View Post
    Had you read appropriately what I suggested, you will notice I said that the power cost associated with Shield-Wall would prevent a Guardian from keeping this skill active for longer than 15seconds without a LM and/or Captain providing them with constant power, and even then that would only 'slightly' prolong the duration by a few seconds - the idea would be to have a stacking power drain debuff for the duration of Shield Wall, which prevents you from having this skill up 100% of the time. It is undoubtedly annoying to be stunned in instances and for SW to get removed. Puglakh on release anyone?

    The Abyss set still didn't make the skill wildy impactful. Shield Wall is still extremely underused, and sure, you could simply reduce the redirect value, but it doesn't exactly make this skill 'exciting' does it? It's still a very high risk for an 'uncertain' outcome, because you can still die through Shield Wall, and mostly you are still required to proc some other heal or cooldown alongside it to protect yourself.
    Maybe it is extremely underused for yourself, but not for me. I guess when you play it more often in a raid or instance situation you would understand maybe what I mean, but thats just a matter of experience I guess (no offence!).
    Although the skill could use maybe a little twist in it's use for less experienced people with it, it does not need an extreme complex change to make this work.
    The Abyss set back then actually did make the skill wildly impactful as I even had SW on for most for ~80% of the fight back back at Fingar the Greedy on the same target! So maybe a reduction on the target would work in the first place in combination with a reduction to the current cooldown from 20 seconds up to 10 seconds or so.

    Instead of making a toggle skill useful, I rather have them work on ''Protection'' from yellow for that matter.

    As far as Puglakh goes is that there is an issue with dazes rather then stuns there and no internal cd, turn the tables trait did a lot back then for me!

    Quote Originally Posted by Hephburz-2 View Post

    Blue Guardian, as a tank, boasts only Break Ranks as any type of support-based utility, at present, all other tanks far outstrip a Blue Guardian in what it can bring to the table, which has always been one of the main reasons Guardian was marginalised in 3-6man content, that and yCaptain was undoubtedly stronger for that content size, but with the U35 changes, whilst yCaptain will no longer be, Brawler and Warden definitely will be, which still doesn't fix the issue associated with Blue Guardian and smaller group content.
    This is a problem that will never be completely solved in general. I would simply say that it is wishful thinking that all ''4 tanks'' as you describe would execute a similar amount of buffs as they all have their own strengths and weaknesses. Unfortunately for you the Captain as a tank is going to be in a bad spot, but that mainly also has to do with the design of the other tanks.
    The cold hard truth is that there is always going to be one that is superior. At this moment most 3-man's and 6-mans are being run with Captain. Even though I have tanked SV T3+ on Brawler before, I have barely seen any Brawler's in there in the first place even though they have huge support. Red Captain is in shambles at this moment (soon not anymore). Blue Captain has always been decent, but is not played by many.

    Whilst other classes offer more potent damage buffs, the Guardian on it's own is a rather slower and safer option then Captain/Brawler tank. Since most of the ''endgame'' players rather rush then take it easy it's completely logical that a Guardian is being marginalised in 3-6man content.
    However that does not mean that the content is not doable with a Guardian, thats just a matter whether you can cope with it and also partially on the 3-man/6-man instance design.

    As far as support of the Guardian goes, people forget that a Guardian can freely use Litany of Defiance, which is similar to ''In Harms Way'' of the Captain. Except Guardian's don't need a Last Stand with it and can carry out this buff easily with a combination of CaB, ToD or WH.
    Fortification offers 2% mitigations for the group
    Break Ranks offers an additive damage bonus
    Shield Wall can be used on any target
    Guardian in comparison to any other tanks deals a lot more damage with shield skills in general to a Captain tank (that does F all) or a Brawler that has fairly low damage too. Also you reflect a load (in a raid especially). Up to 40 million damage on Dushtalbuk, where a Brawler and Captain do ~10 million in the last phase if lucky.
    A Guardian can CJ mobs, whereas another tank cannot CJ at all.
    Guardian in general is a tank that manages itself best at handling multiple enemies. Where the Captain and Brawler are falling a bit more short in general.
    I won't even start last about the fact how good the survivibility rate is from the Guardian, but in multiple occassions it has gotten me through 3/6-man content being the last man standing rotating my cd's and actually surviving.

    Yes I agree with you that a Guardian does not have to offer a lot of damage buffs Captain or Brawler, but that does not mean that 3-man/6-man is not possible with a Guardian, In fact for a 3-man/6-man instance Guardian is a really safe option even. However for a lot of kinships rather rush 3-man/6-mans with the idea of being as fast as possible and farming it and for that reason they leave the Guardian out.

    Quote Originally Posted by Hephburz-2 View Post

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

    Yes, you have the set bonus now. Yes, you have the portent now. You will not have these things at 150.
    It's easy to point at the bonuses not being available, because I am well aware that those are not available at 150 either, but you are completely turning around the fact that Redirect from yellow is up ~60% of the time while using War-chant off cd and negating/redirecting 35% of the incoming damage. Since other effects can stack with this it would in fact be way too overpowered. I am well aware of these setbonuses not being available at level 150, but from experienced T5 raiding point of view I can tell you that a Guard doesn't need to have more -% incoming damage buffs at this stage.

    And I already said before if ''Redirect'' is not available to Blue Guardian's anymore then ''yes'' it would be advisable to make some additional incoming damage buffs for Blue, but I hope that does not have to happen. It would save energy and time to put some work in things that actually need a change!

    The suggestion that Freepzy did on Juggernaut is not to bad, but in my opinion not completely necessary either if ''Redirect'' stays.


    Quote Originally Posted by Hephburz-2 View Post
    Raid and instance design for a long time has been going in the direction that boss attacks and skills are unavoidable, Anvil boss 2 was probably the last time Pledge & Juggernaut was effective against an actual Boss. I am also not suggesting you remove the other aspects of Juggernaut, simply, instead of it being 100% block chance, for it to be something that can be valued in all situations, and not just 'sometimes', it is, afterall one of the Guardians main cooldowns.
    What is the definition of effective here? By avoiding all possible attacks? Would be a bit overpowered don't you think?
    If all bosses would work the same and everything could be BPE'd the game would be very simplistic. We are not playing ''Battle for Erebor'' anymore where a Guardian could survive for 30 seconds by just BPEing a boss that does melee attacks only and never actually hitting you as you avoided almost everything. In other words it would almost ''act'' in a similar manner of Last Stand, but longer.
    Instead BPE should be a helpful tool in intercepting a large portion of attacks, the way in my opinion it was designed to be. At this point both skills contribute to intercepting a portion (even a large portion) of damage in the current raid of Hiddenhoard.

    I am not reluctant to change, but Juggernaut and Pledge are not as bad as people think.

    In Hiddenhoard alone all bosses have attacks that can technically be blocked, parried or evaded. On boss 1 all hits can be avoided except from the distributed attack from Threkvegg, the stomp(knockback) or bleeds from the bosses, but the latter beside the point.
    Second boss you can block hits from all mobs, the only 2 hits you cannot block are distributed attacks from Dushtalbuk and tiering his mitigation buff up on the tanks, all other effects besides puddles from sappers and some bleeds can mostly be avoided(keep in mind that pledge is not 100%).
    On Hrimil there are also base attacks you can BPE although less then the other two bosses, the main issue here lies that against tactical attacks BPE is already less potent, unless these are marked as ''tactical'' melee skills. However a Guardian is mostly in the field there and from most mobs you can avoid most damage you receive.
    If you never tanked Hiddenhoard T5 before, I would highly suggest you try it once to see for yourself how much Juggernaut is already doing there.

    Of course other instances have different approaches towards the skill, but I never found it useless, block chance skill works in a lot of cases, just not on all and to be honest thank god it doesn't.
    I do agree however that with our current moralepools BPE is way less impactful then it was back in the day, but that is an issue I would like to see solved or squished in the future.
    Last edited by Geremir; Mar 05 2023 at 02:06 PM.

  2. #27
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    Quote Originally Posted by SSG_Orion View Post
    Your voice is here and carries the same weight as any response. We all play the game differently, and there is no right or wrong way to play your character.



    The goal with a change to Take to Heart would allow for the effect to never overlap and have a better than 100% up time to allow for the continued mobility of the class.
    Fair to say that every big revamp to guardians has meant of all the classes I play it's involved the biggest upheaval and change to the way I play. From the glory days of stance dancing, non damage threat for the likes of DN's Trolls to impose our will with skill on each encounter to it's demise with traits and radiating massive bleeds on every mob on the map, the more the merrier with Prey on the weak. The shoving of threat mech in the bin and +900%copy spam. This heal debuff nonsense from the boss, seriously?
    But it's the more nuanced builds that will bring the biggest impact as we are extracting every ounce out of them that the majority can't see. Now solo, I'm Red but still with the core of heavy Shield (spiked for lack of a 5% crit trait) and reactives. The cadence of solo fights are too short for overly involved bleeds and the shield stun reactives ideal for timing of inductions to interrupt and finishing moves from behind, every skill put into the skill queue with a reason. So much disrespect of the game by those who's skill firing is just on a random timing as skills are over ridden with key spamming and given a platform to stream. And now playing to this pathetic playstyle of colleagues with Thrust changes. How else could they fire it off otherwise?

    I loved the Shield-smash that stunned all the mobs creeping up behind me, comedic effect should not be the driver. That only came from a single target skill elevated to a quirky multi target skill in the panic of trees and ignoring feedback with the dev blinkers directed elsewhere. If inviting mockery, should at the least accept it without complaint though SSG. But Orion missed out on much of this, just clearing up, I guess. GL

    That I'm stance dancing on my Mini now, despite protestations of not wanting to return to them, seems to invite further mockery. It's the big data that drives things now, I only confuse that. Just like the plonkers with a following who's prominence stifles good intel. If only they would remove all the videos with out of date guides and non applicable content and where they have missed the nuances in the rush to publish or have no clue at all!

    There is very much a wrong way to play your character; positively encouraged!
    Last edited by DoRonRon; Mar 05 2023 at 01:33 AM.

  3. #28
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    Delete yellow line, as in minstrel and warden. It would make more sense to turn a line that has almost no role as utility line.

  4. #29
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    Add a "time to make use of" shadow clock to pop up and reactive skills. Just reverse of CD shadow clock.

    As they have ever been something that goes away from our usage (without additional addons set up to track them) and makes a good differential between classes a pain to much for many players.

    Also distinguish between the versions in skills such as Smashing Stab that can have 3 distinct effects and might be more akin to a Gambler spec. We may look up but can't be certain if it popped before or after either of the parry and shield reactives popped (that a time to use would help with).

    Fix the reason for the playstyle not change the class for that playstyle.
    Last edited by DoRonRon; Mar 05 2023 at 07:05 AM.

  5. #30
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    Quote Originally Posted by Rino90 View Post

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

    Although many of the changes related to AOE and light damage look very interesting. It seems to me that if the developers want to keep this talent line, then it is better to make it an AOE damage dealer with light damage and several useful debuffs. But for this, it is necessary to reconsider the effects of debuffs, since the current set is not very in demand.
    My thoughts exactly. Guards in blue line already perform perfectly well as an AOE tank, borrowing skills from yellow line to make them near perfect in that role. If there is a void to fill then it's AOE DPS. Keep blue line as the pre-eminent tanking line in the game, with red and yellow as damage dealers.
    “If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went.”
    - Will Rogers

  6. #31
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    Quote Originally Posted by SSG_Orion View Post
    I must re-iterate - these are the initial thoughts that I am tossing over the fence to all of you after getting a sanity check with the team. Looking for your thoughts and feedback before I start to dive headlong into implementation.
    Sanity check: keep going
    Source: 15 year guardian main, current raider


    Blue line:
    Not much to say here. I do like the idea of finesse on a blue trait to let newer players know not to ignore it as a tanking stat and finesse isn't hard to come by in dps gear. Maybe split the difference?


    Red line:
    I'm a visual person, so how this all fits together goes over my head. I also don't play red line for anything but landscape so I'll leave the nuance to the experts.

    The one thing I'll say is currently it can be hard for me to track which bleeds are which on a target while I'm out soloing, so I can't even imagine trying in a raid setting with your ancient crafts and rends and whatnot. I remember the old bleed consumption system having one distinct icon with a number that tiered up to 10 that was much easier to see. Maybe that shell can be used as a meta wrapper that tracks which of the 4 are ticking (I've no clue how these things work).


    Yellow line:
    I was sort of resigned to the fact that it would get ground up into a non-spec and honestly wouldn't blame you if you did because it does make total sense... but total sense is boring and I love the idea of honing it instead of scrapping it. Tanking is such a fundamental part of the class' identity that yes, they should have two distinct specs to tank in. And thematically I've always thought yellow was the one that its character reference Samwise would use. He's fought many a'shadow, but has he ever defended someone with a heavy shield, let alone tacked spikes on it?

    More tactical damage and hotspot-based TTH is an interesting take. Said hotspot providing debuffs to enemies is a nice counter to captain buffing in small group content and a complement in raids. From where I'm sitting the main issue with its viability is the debuffs themselves -- run speed, attack speed, and miss chance aren't particularly helpful for bosses that are often immune to the lot. I suspect the mastery changes will help make the outgoing damage bit worth a look, but it needs help to counter fortifications and break ranks.

    The named role of "AoE tank" is throwing me a bit. Currently blue guard has an indispensable role in the raid meta because of its crowd-handling abilities and if its line is not undergoing any significant changes -- which I was happy to read -- then adding even more aoe we don't have a need for in yellow makes a poor trade-off for the self-survivability of blue. In practice I think you're more likely to see people try yellow as aoe dps to have more skills to spam, which I'm not necessarily opposed to but I don't think satisfies the core objective of clarifying its role.

    As an aside, I think more aoe starts to steal the aggro thunder of beorning tanks, which already have few enough reasons to be taken over other tanks to begin with. As much as I want a second tanking line option, I don't need my off-spec to outperform another class' entirely.


    Misc. thoughts:
    I went back and looked your first thread on the subject and couldn't quite wrap my head around the verbiage. If the idea was to merge shield-blow/force opening functionality into ward/sting/sweeping cut and shorten the chains, I'm all for it. If it's to lose ward/sting/sweeping and make shield-blow/force opening the daily drivers, I have concerns.

    The parting comment about sword and board red guard I don't think went over well. But I think it's another interesting idea if there are well-defined trade-offs. Maybe 2h has increased melee range and deals more direct damage while 1h extends bleed duration, so the slightly reduced damage delivers functionality with the proposed Rupture capstone (and the extra armour and stats of course).

    But more broadly, having different reasons to choose between 1h and 2h is what interested me most and could add some much needed depth in yellow line as well. Maybe in yellow 1h debuffs more targets (AoE tank) while 2h increases strength of debuff on a single target (single target tank/dps).

    Obviously blue is pretty inextricably linked to shields for blocking and that shouldn't change as its primary spec, but wouldn't it be interesting if we were given a reason to use, say, a light shield from time to time?
    Last edited by Fantomex; Mar 05 2023 at 04:31 AM.


  7. #32
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    Quote Originally Posted by Geremir View Post
    I can't imagine the rage of creeps seeing a blue Guardian having a permanent shield-wall on a healer in the Ettenmoors and not being able to kill it, counting on how many cooldowns a blue guardian even has to stay alive.
    Shield-Wall is fine as it is, if you intend to make a switch or change with it, rather do it with a set-bonus(as you did in Abyss of Mordath) rather then a definite change.
    You always have a choice to use or not use it, so I don't really see the point. If you have the feeling to get shredded or you target someone with bad mitigations of some sort, don't use it.
    Maybe we need disable some pve skills in The Moors to make things more balanced?

  8. #33
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    Guardian is in perfect state right now
    Blue is THE tank.
    Red is more than viable for 3/6m solo, t2 and under raiding.
    Yellow is a blast to play solo and in small grp with griends.
    I dont see why you even bother with those changes.
    There are already lots of classes in need of balance.
    Btw what with ministrel 1 milion parses ?
    Do you rly think to turn the game for 3 -4 classes only guys ?
    Dps - hunter. Tank- guardian, now if you convert yellow line to support he will fulfil that role too. Heal mini (and maybe bear if aoe heavy) also Mini best ranged ST dps. And burg/lm for heavy support.
    Rest of the classes are just cosmetic.
    Again. Stop redirecting time and effords to fix smth which isnt broken.

  9. #34
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    Quote Originally Posted by Fantomex View Post
    Sanity check: keep going
    Source: 15 year guardian main, current raider


    Blue line:
    Not much to say here. I do like the idea of finesse on a blue trait to let newer players know not to ignore it as a tanking stat and finesse isn't hard to come by in dps gear. Maybe split the difference?
    Exactly this! Finesse not hard to come by in DPS therefore unnecessary to make the parry/finesse switch between the lines!

  10. #35
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    Quote Originally Posted by Elmagor View Post
    Maybe we need disable some pve skills in The Moors to make things more balanced?
    Shield-Wall in the moors is fine, if you attempt to CC the Guardian with various longer CC skills, SW cannot be used again for the next 20 seconds. The more changes you make about this skill the more imbalance will occur also for PvP.
    Rather leave the skill as it is and use it at your own risk.

  11. #36
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    Quote Originally Posted by PIZDQK View Post
    Guardian is in perfect state right now
    Blue is THE tank.
    Red is more than viable for 3/6m solo, t2 and under raiding.
    Yellow is a blast to play solo and in small grp with griends.
    I dont see why you even bother with those changes.
    There are already lots of classes in need of balance.
    Btw what with ministrel 1 milion parses ?
    Do you rly think to turn the game for 3 -4 classes only guys ?
    Dps - hunter. Tank- guardian, now if you convert yellow line to support he will fulfil that role too. Heal mini (and maybe bear if aoe heavy) also Mini best ranged ST dps. And burg/lm for heavy support.
    Rest of the classes are just cosmetic.
    Again. Stop redirecting time and effords to fix smth which isnt broken.
    I agree Blue is fine, but red is not really good at the moment. The scaling compared to other classes is low. Currently Guardian is close to the bottom of all DPS classes right now if you parse on the dummy, red Captain maybe worse, but that is getting a big boost soon.

    It can use a few tweaks to have a few things more optimal in blue line, but nothing to major.

    As far as high tiered raidplay goes Minstrel aint the biggest ranged DPS class, a Minstrel has the luck that it has more self-support, anthems, Light-mitigation debuffs from Call to Orome especially when solo compared to other classes, therefore it does more damage on a dummy then a Hunter, but a Hunter with all anthems and debuffs from a Minstrel will do more damage then a Minstrel. In current raids Hunter will benefit more from the Minstrel buffs on top of their own buffs.

    But I agree that there are definitely other classes that need a lot more love currently. I am still quite unsatisfied with the Captain and Warden changes until this point.

    - Captain Tank (pretty bad now), Blue and Red seem better options at this point, although Blue also still misses a lot, did not need that much of a change with what it was.
    - Guardian DPS needs a boost. Personally I don't want to much changes to Blue and Yellow as the setup for tanking right now feels pretty good.
    - Blue Burglar is totally unused at this moment, no idea if its actually still any good
    - Yellow Hunter only useful pre-combat, blue also not really adding up but better DPS line when on the move. Red mainly used, the other lines are just fillers at this moment.
    - Brawler is way to overpowered with the support it gives next to the survivability they have especially in high tiered raids. It's basically huge support and tank in one, definitely needs a nerf.
    - Champion seems pretty fine at this stage. Hopefully the next raids will be more melee friendly however, but that stands lose from the class design, in the current SV champ is really good.
    - Minstrel is actually fine at this stage, really fun to play and red has been a very long time neglected.
    - Runekeeper needs a lot of love, not sure if the changes make that happen. I am concerned about the beta where RK's are doing 250k HPS on a single target??? Also RK lightning and fire still seem quite far behind other DPS classes.
    - Beorning seems in a fine spot at this moment.
    - Warden Tank looks really decent now, Warden DPS however is in shambles. The main role they fulfilled lately in T5 raids was semi-DPS/support and the loss of the -20% induction buff on adroit manoevre is a pain. Also the decrease of Marked and Diminished Target from 12%(double cast even 24% with setbonus) is pretty painful.
    - Loremaster seems fine at this stage. I really hope they are not going to touch the pets as it makes a sole component about the Loremaster.

  12. #37
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    Quote Originally Posted by Geremir View Post
    Shield-Wall in the moors is fine, if you attempt to CC the Guardian with various longer CC skills, SW cannot be used again for the next 20 seconds. The more changes you make about this skill the more imbalance will occur also for PvP.
    Rather leave the skill as it is and use it at your own risk.
    Agree, but how many creeps have longer CC skills? And also, how many creep classes needs to use longer CC skills against them? Sooner or later, SSG create something what force them to block some skills to make balance. Like they block Still As Death for instances

  13. #38
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    Personally, I think Yellow Guard should become a passive utility line (like Warden and Minstrel, and, hopefully soon, Hunter). I just don't see the point of making an "AOE tank" line when that's essentially what Guards in Blue already are (and many dip heavily into Yellow already, as if it were a utility line). Either you take away some of the AOE tanking ability of Blue, which won't go down well with players, and would just result in Yellow being the dominant line and no one using Blue, or you keep Blue's tanking as is, but have to buff Yellow to such an extent to make it competitive with Blue. The end result is people play mostly in Yellow, or still stay mostly in Blue, and the other line languishes like Yellow does today. I just don't think it has enough going for it, even with the proposals, to keep it as its own line. And, quite frankly, that's also wasted dev effort, not just for now, but for future trying to balance two very similar tank lines. Just make it a utility line, move things around, boost here/nerf there, and you'll have fixed a lot of the issues with Guard.

    -Bel
    Belnavar - Captain - 140 - Brandywine | Help sick kids. Support Extra Life 2022: https://www.extra-life.org/participant/belnavar [$1,094.53 raised of $1,000 goal]

  14. #39
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    I don't think the aim of the change is to make Yellow an AOE main tank that would compete directly with blue.

    But instead have yellow be an AOE off tank that provides benefits to the group with its debuffs and decent AOE damage with the cost of its own survivability at least that's what I think.

  15. #40
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    First with respect to yellow line, just make it a passive tree. In order for yellow to be a completely UNIQUE tank from blue would require adding many skills to the game with new animations and overall a massive rework like we havnt seen in this game would be required to make this line anything unique. Same if it was support honestly.

    Now on to the meat of my comments and that is Red Line. I have always been a Red line enjoyer through out all of lotro. Love the old days of stacking high bleeds and salting the wound.
    I know this is an early idea post Orion and most of your ideas are good, so if I dont touch on it here i completely approve. Overall red line actually plays pretty good as it is right now. The problem is that its numbers are very low and its damage distribution is off for what guardian has been historically.
    Guardian has always been a bleed spec, the opposite to captain which is a nuke/burst spec. That said I think guardians niche is MOSTLY but NOT ALL bleed damage, I dont think it should be as heavy on dots as say the warden for example. It should be the next closest melee in terms of bleed damage to a warden however.

    Ok as for your suggestions there are just a few things to I dont agree with.

    1. DO NOT put a bleed cache out mechanic.... I am not sure why this seems attractive to any class at any time and it was the worst mechanic of the original guardian design. Keeping up guardian bleeds is a full time job in the rotation. The bleeds SHOULD all be hitting really hard and make up a majority of the damage profile. In order for a cache out mechanic to work 1 of 2 things need to happen. Either the cache out skill needs to hit harder than the total combined value of all of the bleeds over thier full duration(3 million+ which is insane) OR the bleeds would need to be so weak that you wouldnt mind them being cached out for a little bit of burst damage. Both of these situations is terrible so I think the current idea of rupture will cause you nothing but trouble for years to come or be completely useless.

    My suggestion is to keep is simple. Guardian is a bleed spec with occasional nukes from overpower and to the king. Rupture sound like a bleed ability to me.. So why not just have To The King apply a very short(impossible to keep up 100% of the time but close if you perfect your rotation) but powerful bleed for say 4s that ticks hard every 1s? Fits the theme and puts a carrot to chase for rotation optimization to try to keep this potentially strongest bleed up as much as possible.

    2.Passives that have to do with parring or deal damage when you parry... Please just change these. You cannot control or ever feel the effect of traits like this. As a red guard you will not be parrying very often to begin with even in PVP. I would rather see a 5% crit chance get added or a 5-10% crit chance to bleeds maybe? Every other dps class gets 5-10% crit chance to thier core damage source. Think champ vicious strikes or warden's aggravating wounds traits. Put more control and feel in players hands and dont let reactive parry gimmic become a thing. It will never contribute meaningfully to dps in a good way no matter how strong it is made.

    All of these comments assume that a pretty massive damage bump happens. Please dont try to make red guard a super tanky dps or somthing like that. Please just make it a normal dps with its own unique damage profile with guardian flavor abilities.

  16. #41
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    Finally a class change that I can discuss on since Guardian is my first character and only one that I reached 140 without touching another character during that time.

    I leveled in Blue Line from level 1 until somewhere around 120 maybe. Blue is really good in the sense that it makes you really hard to kill, but the tradeoff is that you do so little damage that leveling can be relaxing, but in the long run turn tedious and boring. I really don't have any complaints or suggestions for that line, it does what it's supposed to do pretty well.

    I switched to Red Line around Gundabad or slightly before and it was hard to adjust because I was used to taking on about 5-10 mobs at once and being able to kill them at my leisure, but now just having 2-3 mobs on me meant I could easily die if I'm not careful enough. The DPS boost with a 2H was really big. I think the Red line can be better if the DPS is increased more while the character is made a bit squishier too. In this way you have to pick your fights really carefully but if you play your cards well, you will be able to destroy mobs really fast.

    I never played the Yellow line so I don't know much about it, I heard people used it for AOE farming while leveling, I don't know much about it and honestly I've found all Yellow lines on all classes, even ones I've never touched to be super boring and useless for me. So I'm OK with what is happening with the Yellow line if it can act as a complementary to the Red or Blue ones.

    But overall, I think there should be some UI changes to the Traits window that indicates that the Yellow line is not supposed to be used as a main one, but a support to the other two.

  17. #42
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    Quote Originally Posted by SSG_Orion View Post
    The Fighter of Shadow

    Our main objective with Fighter of Shadow is to define it's role more clearly. That is to say, not make this a supporting line, rather a line that gives the Guardian a third distinct role. That role is as an AoE Tank.
    I'm a little confused by the "AoE Tank" distinction; shouldn't all tanks be competent at tanking in AoE scenarios? Whenever a tank legitimately struggles in AoE you just...wind up having a miserable time playing that tank. Logically the existence of an AoE Tank also suggests that there should be boss tanks...which also seems like it'd suck to be playing an AoE tank in such scenarios.

    Just don't really understand the mindset here.
    ~ Take the player, not the class ~

  18. #43
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    Quote Originally Posted by Joedangod View Post
    I'm a little confused by the "AoE Tank" distinction; shouldn't all tanks be competent at tanking in AoE scenarios? Whenever a tank legitimately struggles in AoE you just...wind up having a miserable time playing that tank. Logically the existence of an AoE Tank also suggests that there should be boss tanks...which also seems like it'd suck to be playing an AoE tank in such scenarios.

    Just don't really understand the mindset here.
    IMHO AoE tank means tank have enough agro to grab many targets and keep them on tank. Captain, Warden and Guardian have better skill setup to agro many targets. Brawler and Beorning have more problems with that, they fits better with single target tanking

  19. #44
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    Concerning blue line being fine:


    I see a lot of posts here agreeing with the sentiment that blue line is a good state. I disagree completely with this idea.

    One aspect is that a class being strong does not mean it functions well or is fun to play. Yellow burglar lends its entire existance from disable, the line is used almost everywhere because of its strength. The line however is terrible to play.

    The same applies to blue guardian if you look closely at it. Almost all of its fun and half its strength comes from cross traiting to yellow. On its own the class is lame. The thing that makes blue guardian dynamic is war chant (cd reduction), ignore pain, thrill of danger and most of all redirect. All aspects of the yellow line. Blue line itself grants you fortification, smashing stab, juggernaut and break ranks. All of which have clear issues.

    Break ranks triggering from shield taunt makes the shield skills awkward.
    Fortification duration being infinite means that shield skills lose meaning when you are at max stacks.
    Juggernaut straight up setting block to 100% is far too strong.
    Smashing stab is a cool skill, just change the icon based on what stage it is in.

    That is what you are left with if you do not look at yellow line. Blue line really does not work well. It even has traits like shield spikes, which should just be baseline.

    Yellow on the other hand has all traits that make guardian dynamic with the previously mentioned cross traited skills. On top of this it has a cool identity with take to heart. Sadly its damage output has been severly hampered by previous nerfs and its debuffs are not as good, but the way it works is interesting. Most of all it is fun to play.

    Since blue line really does not work without yellow traits could mean it can be a utility line, but I would disagree as the identity of the yellow line far outweights the quality and fun of blue line.

    Ideas for changes:
    Now to more ideas on possible changes that could make guardian a lot more fun and well balanced. I don't play dps classes so I am not going to comment much on red line besides saying it feels the smoothest playing dps line in the game and I would love for it to be better.

    General Skills:

    Engage should have the same or more range than your other melee skills. It currently sits at 4.7m while your melee range is 5.2m. It got left behind with the range update while in the past this skill would actually have more range than your melee skills.

    Guardians ward animation should be sped up considerably.

    Ignore the pain should not be an immediate.

    Blue skills:

    Shield taunt should not be the opener for break ranks.

    Shield wall should be moved down from a 100% absorb to a lower absorb 20-40% to allow for wider use case for the skill. Helping someone in your raid to survive a certain mechanic this amount is plenty without causing too much stress on the guard. Now it is only really useable for lower instances of damage.

    Litany of defiance needs a couple changes to avoid exploits or just changed completely. The effect it applies needs to fall off when the guardian dies to avoid a lot of absorbed damage being voided. On top of this the damage absorb should be nerfed by 50% to 5% per fort stack.

    Guardian's pledge is far too strong as it is now and it fills the same space as juggernaut so I would suggest changing the working of this skill. I would suggest either increasing defenses of the guardian itself (moving the mit doubling from litany here) and/or cashing out the shield the people buff on your raid that gives more protection for a short time so it acts as a raid cooldown. I would also change the animation of it personally.
    In the case of redirect being moved away from blue line this is the perfect candidate to replace a short cd defensive.

    Smashing stab is pretty much an amazing skill. There should be more skills like this in the game.

    Juggernaut I suggest changing 100% block to 100% partial block as 100% block is just far too strong in many cases. Partial block allows for a massive reduction in damage while not avoiding it completely, coupled with the heal on block this skill would still be one of the strongest cds in the game. Also potentially reduce the cooldown and duration to 2min/10s.

    Shield smash needs more reason to be used if you are at full fortification (which can be done through fort too see down below), I suggest increasing the damage shield smash does based on targets hit by shield taunt/sweeping cut/vexing blow by 20% per target hit stacking up to 5 times.

    Blue Traits:

    Relentless assault should retain its finesse.

    Fortification: the whole interactions with this should change to be more interactive. Currently the infinite duration of fortifcation does not allow for a lot of interesting gameplay. I suggest changing fortification to a duration stacking buff. Everytime you use a shield skill fortification is applied to guardian, a step away from a chance to apply (or on crit). There is still the stacking nature but also stacking duration. Every shield skill adds 5 seconds to the duration up to a maximum of 15 seconds. This makes it so a guardian has to actively maintain their fortification to stay tanky. I would also change the total mitigation bonus at max rank to 15% but only if we ever get to the point where tanks get less tanky and the heavy mitigation cap is 20% lower.

    Follow through should get an extra rank and have the damage increases mechanic mentioned earlier applied to it.

    Disorientation should acts as bpe and resist penetration for the guardian as the only really dealing with block and parry tends to be the tank anyway.

    Warrior's fortitude should not be infinite duration.

    Improved shield spikes should be removed as a trait and moved to base line of guardian. It makes no sense for a trait to exist that forces players to have a seperate trait line to apply shield spikes and a main trait line where they do not lose these trait points.

    Break ranks should give the guardian double the amount of damage bonus.

    Red Skills:

    Protection by the sword, make this applicable raid wide (not sure if it already is) and whenever you score a critical hit with to the king heal your protection by the sword target and yourself for [2-5]% of your max health.

    Yellow skills:

    Stagger should always apply in yellow line, not only on crit or positional.

    Protection should you and your ally when either of you BPEs an attack for [2-5]% of max health. Has a cooldown. The range of this skill should be extended from 10m range to 30m.

    War chant should have greatly increased max targets [3 -> 10], to really make this your main line skill. (Only in yellow)

    Thrill of danger should only be available for yellow line. Its healing has to be changed too, currently it heals far too much if many attacks or too little in case of few.

    Redirect damage negation should start at 0% on the skill. Yellow line gives it 10% extra. The trait gives it up to 20% extra. So yellow line ends up with 30% absorb and other lines with 20%. The reflect should not be a % reflect to avoid your damage just being the enemies damage. It should instead reflect light damage that scales on from the guardians stats. This reflect normally is single target, but in yellow line it becomes aoe. If you bpe a hit while redirect is up the reflect damage should be doubled.

    Cataclysmic Shout should be... well.. cataclysmic.

    Yellow traits:

    Blue line has mitigation to be tanky, yellow line should get its tankiness from increased healing capabilities. This does require more max health as your health sort of becomes your resource. I would suggest granting the yellow guardian 30% extra morale if in yellow and while wielding a 2h weapon. A yellow guardian should not be disarmable.

    Take to heart being a hotspot skill is actually a quite cool idea. A lot of skills can be empowered while in this hotspot too.
    Healing for 5% of your morale from attacks done against targets in your hotspot should not be implemented like this. It gives too little control, rather have your healing source come from somewhere else. It currently provides massive heals for your AoE skills, but I would rather have a more fun and controlable interaction for healing.

    Insult to injury should be changed to damage every target inside your hotspot to take damage if they are targetting the guardian.

    Take to heart should only be available if you are wielding a 2h weapon. This does require more importance being placed on your non shield skills as you otherwise don't have enough skills to use. Or shield skills should get a version that is useable by a 2h weapon, instead of the stun type effects they should inflict an effect connected to take to heart.

    While in your hotspot warchant, Cataclysmic Shout, retaliation, (vexing blow, sweeping cut) heal you for X% of damage dealt. This will allow a tank to heal quite well through this for aoe scenarios but it will not be as effective for ST situations.

    Numbed senses is too strong at the moment and I agree it should be reduced to max 2 removals.

    Bolster should be moved from a passive stacking buff to a more active interaction where it stacks based on skill use. Vexing blow might a perfect candidate for this. On use it will instantly give max value for a duration.

    Tenderize, same as bolster. Potentially move this trait to red line by swapping it with reactive parry. Reactive parry will be worked into the new redirect.

    Redirect + vicious rebuttal changes mentioned above.

    Strong bursts increases healing of damage skills on take to heart as well as AoE damage.

    Singular focus should be changed to give a large light mitigation penetration to the guardian's skills. This trait should swap position with Warrior's fortitude.

    Bring on the pain should also restore % power on hit at max rank.

    Warrior's fortitude reduces the heal from warriors heart to be the same as the max health increase and increases incoming healing by 20%. But also allows the warchant cd reduction to work on warrior's heart at 1/2 effectiveness.

    Cataclysmic Shout should be moved to initial skill for yellow line and replaced by a new capstone trait. This capstone trait should turn Cataclysmic Shout into a more defensive skill. It still retains it offensive skill (with max targets increased from 5 -> 15), but afterwards a defensive buff is applied to the guardian. This defensive buff could be half offensively oriented as your healing is also tied to your damage. For example after using cataclysmic shout your max health is increased by 20%, you will take 30% less damage and do 20% more light damage. Warchant reduces the cooldown of this skill at 1/5 effectiveness.

    Incapacitation should also cause warchant to heal outside of the take to heart hotspot.

    Yellow line has the potential to be the coolest tanking line by far. Don't let me down.
    Last edited by Rorrelm; Mar 07 2023 at 12:34 PM.

  20. #45
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    Quote Originally Posted by Elmagor View Post
    IMHO AoE tank means tank have enough agro to grab many targets and keep them on tank. Captain, Warden and Guardian have better skill setup to agro many targets. Brawler and Beorning have more problems with that, they fits better with single target tanking
    Problem is that really sucks (also Beorning struggling with AoE aggro? That thing has an infinite target taunt and multiple AoE taunts...). It's really not fun to be playing a tank that struggles to pick up a group of mobs.
    ~ Take the player, not the class ~

  21. #46
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    Dec 2021
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    154
    Quote Originally Posted by SSG_Orion View Post
    All melee skills become AOE.

    Earned Traits

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

    Flash of Light: Damaging skills executed by the guardian become Light damage.
    With the all melee skills become AOE would this have a way to be turned off in instances where you can't use AOE due to a certain mechanic.

    This would also be quite powerful depending on which abilities it affected and how e.g. Sting would be an short cooldown AOE corruption removal, Bash would basically be a short cooldown cataclysmic shout, Stamp would be an AOE interrupt and Turn the Tables would be an AOE stun/manoeuvre.

    In my opinion even though it is nice it would probably be better to leave most of the abilities as they are with maybe engage, stagger and force opening becoming AOE so that the debuffs can still be easily applied to multiple targets.

    Flash of light making damaging skill become light damage is cool for flavour but losing the current flash of light damage would be a considerable damage nerf.
    This is also a shame as flash of light is fun and used to be a very fun ability when it affected every marked target instead of just the main one.

    Could it instead be changed to just apply the damage when hitting any TtH target like it used to and have the light damage be a tree based passive.

  22. #47
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    Jan 2007
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    186
    Quote Originally Posted by Rorrelm View Post

    Concerning blue line being fine:


    I see a lot of posts here agreeing with the sentiment that blue line is a good state. I disagree completely with this idea.

    One aspect is that a class being strong does not mean it functions well or is fun to play. Yellow burglar lends its entire existance from disable, the line is used almost everywhere because of its strength. The line however is terrible to play.

    The same applies to blue guardian if you look closely at it. Almost all of its fun and half its strength comes from cross traiting to yellow. On its own the class is lame. The thing that makes blue guardian dynamic is war chant (cd reduction), ignore pain, thrill of danger and most of all redirect. All aspects of the yellow line. Blue line itself grants you fortification, smashing stab, juggernaut and break ranks. All of which have clear issues.

    Break ranks triggering from shield taunt makes the shield skills awkward.
    Fortification duration being infinite means that shield skills lose meaning when you are at max stacks.
    Juggernaut straight up setting block to 100% is far too strong.
    Smashing stab is a cool skill, just change the icon based on what stage it is in.

    That is what you are left with if you do not look at yellow line. Blue line really does not work well. It even has traits like shield spikes, which should just be baseline.

    Yellow on the other hand has all traits that make guardian dynamic with the previously mentioned cross traited skills. On top of this it has a cool identity with take to heart. Sadly its damage output has been severly hampered by previous nerfs and its debuffs are not as good, but the way it works is interesting. Most of all it is fun to play.

    Since blue line really does not work without yellow traits could mean it can be a utility line, but I would disagree as the identity of the yellow line far outweights the quality and fun of blue line.

    Ideas for changes:
    Now to more ideas on possible changes that could make guardian a lot more fun and well balanced. I don't play dps classes so I am not going to comment much on red line besides saying it feels the smoothest playing dps line in the game and I would love for it to be better.

    General Skills:

    Engage should have the same or more range than your other melee skills. It currently sits at 4.7m while your melee range is 5.2m. It got left behind with the range update while in the past this skill would actually have more range than your melee skills.

    Guardians ward animation should be sped up considerably.

    Ignore the pain should not be an immediate.

    Blue skills:

    Shield taunt should not be the opener for break ranks.

    Shield wall should be moved down from a 100% absorb to a lower absorb 20-40% to allow for wider use case for the skill. Helping someone in your raid to survive a certain mechanic this amount is plenty without causing too much stress on the guard. Now it is only really useable for lower instances of damage.

    Litany of defiance needs a couple changes to avoid exploits or just changed completely. The effect it applies needs to fall off when the guardian dies to avoid a lot of absorbed damage being voided. On top of this the damage absorb should be nerfed by 50% to 5% per fort stack.

    Guardian's pledge is far too strong as it is now and it fills the same space as juggernaut so I would suggest changing the working of this skill. I would suggest either increasing defenses of the guardian itself (moving the mit doubling from litany here) and/or cashing out the shield the people buff on your raid that gives more protection for a short time so it acts as a raid cooldown. I would also change the animation of it personally.
    In the case of redirect being moved away from blue line this is the perfect candidate to replace a short cd defensive.

    Smashing stab is pretty much an amazing skill. There should be more skills like this in the game.

    Juggernaut I suggest changing 100% block to 100% partial block as 100% block is just far too strong in many cases. Partial block allows for a massive reduction in damage while not avoiding it completely, coupled with the heal on block this skill would still be one of the strongest cds in the game. Also potentially reduce the cooldown and duration to 2min/10s.

    Shield smash needs more reason to be used if you are at full fortification (which can be done through fort too see down below), I suggest increasing the damage shield smash does based on targets hit by shield taunt/sweeping cut/vexing blow by 20% per target hit stacking up to 5 times.

    Blue Traits:

    Relentless assault should retain its finesse.

    Fortification: the whole interactions with this should change to be more interactive. Currently the infinite duration of fortifcation does not allow for a lot of interesting gameplay. I suggest changing fortification to a duration stacking buff. Everytime you use a shield skill fortification is applied to guardian, a step away from a chance to apply (or on crit). There is still the stacking nature but also stacking duration. Every shield skill adds 5 seconds to the duration up to a maximum of 15 seconds. This makes it so a guardian has to actively maintain their fortification to stay tanky. I would also change the total mitigation bonus at max rank to 15% but only if we ever get to the point where tanks get less tanky and the heavy mitigation cap is 20% lower.

    Follow through should get an extra rank and have the damage increases mechanic mentioned earlier applied to it.

    Disorientation should acts as bpe and resist penetration for the guardian as the only really dealing with block and parry tends to be the tank anyway.

    Warrior's fortitude should not be infinite duration.

    Improved shield spikes should be removed as a trait and moved to base line of guardian. It makes no sense for a trait to exist that forces players to have a seperate trait line to apply shield spikes and a main trait line where they do not lose these trait points.

    Break ranks should give the guardian double the amount of damage bonus.

    Red Skills:

    Protection by the sword, make this applicable raid wide (not sure if it already is) and whenever you score a critical hit with to the king heal your protection by the sword target and yourself for [2-5]% of your max health.

    Yellow skills:

    Stagger should always apply in yellow line, not only on crit or positional.

    Protection should you and your ally when either of you BPEs an attack for [2-5]% of max health. Has a cooldown. The range of this skill should be extended from 10m range to 30m.

    War chant should have greatly increased max targets [3 -> 10], to really make this your main line skill. (Only in yellow)

    Thrill of danger should only be available for yellow line. Its healing has to be changed too, currently it heals far too much if many attacks or too little in case of few.

    Redirect damage negation should start at 0% on the skill. Yellow line gives it 10% extra. The trait gives it up to 20% extra. So yellow line ends up with 30% absorb and other lines with 20%. The reflect should not be a % reflect to avoid your damage just being the enemies damage. It should instead reflect light damage that scales on from the guardians stats. This reflect normally is single target, but in yellow line it becomes aoe. If you bpe a hit while redirect is up the reflect damage should be doubled.

    Cataclysmic Shout should be... well.. cataclysmic.

    Yellow traits:

    Blue line has mitigation to be tanky, yellow line should get its tankiness from increased healing capabilities. This does require more max health as your health sort of becomes your resource. I would suggest granting the yellow guardian 30% extra morale if in yellow and while wielding a 2h weapon. A yellow guardian should not be disarmable.

    Take to heart being a hotspot skill is actually a quite cool idea. A lot of skills can be empowered while in this hotspot too.
    Healing for 5% of your morale from attacks done against targets in your hotspot should not be implemented like this. It gives too little control, rather have your healing source come from somewhere else. It currently provides massive heals for your AoE skills, but I would rather have a more fun and controlable interaction for healing.

    Insult to injury should be changed to damage every target inside your hotspot to take damage if they are targetting the guardian.

    Take to heart should only be available if you are wielding a 2h weapon. This does require more importance being placed on your non shield skills as you otherwise don't have enough skills to use. Or shield skills should get a version that is useable by a 2h weapon, instead of the stun type effects they should inflict an effect connected to take to heart.

    While in your hotspot warchant, Cataclysmic Shout, retaliation, (vexing blow, sweeping cut) heal you for X% of damage dealt. This will allow a tank to heal quite well through this for aoe scenarios but it will not be as effective for ST situations.

    Numbed senses is too strong at the moment and I agree it should be reduced to max 2 removals.

    Bolster should be moved from a passive stacking buff to a more active interaction where it stacks based on skill use. Vexing blow might a perfect candidate for this. On use it will instantly give max value for a duration.

    Tenderize, same as bolster. Potentially move this trait to red line by swapping it with reactive parry. Reactive parry will be worked into the new redirect.

    Redirect + vicious rebuttal changes mentioned above.

    Strong bursts increases healing of damage skills on take to heart as well as AoE damage.

    Singular focus should be changed to give a large light mitigation penetration to the guardian's skills. This trait should swap position with Warrior's fortitude.

    Bring on the pain should also restore % power on hit at max rank.

    Warrior's fortitude reduces the heal from warriors heart to be the same as the max health increase and increases incoming healing by 20%. But also allows the warchant cd reduction to work on warrior's heart at 1/2 effectiveness.

    Cataclysmic Shout should be moved to initial skill for yellow line and replaced by a new capstone trait. This capstone trait should turn Cataclysmic Shout into a more defensive skill. It still retains it offensive skill (with max targets increased from 5 -> 15), but afterwards a defensive buff is applied to the guardian. This defensive buff could be half offensively oriented as your healing is also tied to your damage. For example after using cataclysmic shout your max health is increased by 20%, you will take 30% less damage and do 20% more light damage. Warchant reduces the cooldown of this skill at 1/5 effectiveness.

    Incapacitation should also cause warchant to heal outside of the take to heart hotspot.

    Yellow line has the potential to be the coolest tanking line by far. Don't let me down.
    L take across the board.

    You are completely off the mark with blue guard. It is fun because of the response gameplay, managing buffs, and huge shield skill damage. ALL yellow line does is add some flavor. War chant is great sure, thrill of danger is not that exciting to use when actually tanking, and redirect is fun sure but its just some damage resist and some passive damage happens to enemies. You completely oversell yellow line. The fact that yellow line only gives a little spice to the other lines is perfect proof that it should just become passive. There is no need to waste resources on an already low resource game to make one class have TWO tank lines.... I mean come on. If your being at least a tiny bit honest you would know that to make a completely UNIQUE and DIFFERENT tanking line from blue yellow would need a massive overhaul including new skills, animations, and some new form of tanking concept to boot. Not going to happen and if they try guardian as a whole will suffer for another 14 years.

  23. #48
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    Nov 2013
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    73
    [QUOTE=SSG_Orion;8179230]"In the autumn of last year, I posted my initial musings on some alterations that I wanted to make to Guardians. There was a lot of good feedback and discussion, and though, I let the thread lapse, I have been keeping up with things and making some alternative plans based on the feedback I've seen."


    Lots of good feedback and discussion? So what happen to all that good feedback and discussion about Blue Line?. Completely ignored.



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

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

    We have given you our thoughts and feedback on your original thread with lots of good information about what is needed for blue line. To mention a few:

    1) We need a better way to handle incoming damage from bosses, specially at higher tiers so we can compete w/ the likes of Captain, Brawlers and maybe even Wardens now. Avoidance based tanks (blue guards) particularly suffer from these encounters and are much harder to keep alive therefore groups will naturally pick the other tanks for this job specially at higher tiers. We will be marginalize again like in the recent past. What happened to that discussion and feedback?
    2) We can't b/p/e tactical damage, bleeds, poison, acid, lightening, fire, shadow and big boss hits. And to add insult to injury you want to nerf our "ignore the pain" which was one way that we had to handle some of these dots (not puddles). Why?
    3) We have little to no utility in this line which was one of the bigger complaints from the guardian community along with a needed way to handle boss damage. You were given plenty of good ideas. What happen to that discussion and feedback?
    4)"Shield Wall" and "Litany of Defense" are suicide buttons as you were told by the community and using "Warriors Heart" to mitigate the side effects of these 2 skills as some on this thread suggested is plainly ridiculous. Think about that, to use either of those emergency skills, you have to use a 2nd emergency skill to save you from effects of the 1st one. What happen to that discussion and feedback?
    5) We also mentioned the need for more Finesse and now you want to take it away and put a parry % rating instead (you should leave the finesse and just add the parry rating). Completely opposite of the discussion and feedback you received !!! What happened to that discussion and feedback?
    6) There was talk about certain useless traits and trait bonuses ("Disorientation", "Adaptability" and "Shield spikes" for example) needing to be replaced or fixed. In the case of "shield spikes" I would rather just see a crit. rating increase across the board for all skills not just shield skills and all trait lines. What happened to that discussion and feedback?
    7) Certain traits costing to many points. What happened to that discussion and feedback?
    8) We also mentioned slow and clunky shield animations across all trait lines. What happened to that discussion and feedback?
    9) Separating "Break ranks" from "Shield Taunt". Making "Break Ranks" a separate skill. I would also include increasing the effectiveness of "Shield Taunt" which is pretty useless. Its effectiveness has not been addressed. What happened to that discussion and feedback?
    10) And my personal favorites are in my post, "The Tank that Loses to Gain" which I explained in your 1st thread in the autumn of last year. I don't want to go into all the details here but you can look it up if you are really interested to find out (kind of doubt it since you seem to have completely disregarded our feedback). What happen to that discussion and feedback? (My post can be found in Orions original post, "Let's start talking about Guardians...." thread).
    10) And other things mentioned by myself and others in your original thread. [/SIZE][/SIZE]

    [/COLOR][/B]

    And your whole response to all previous suggestion has been and I quote:

    "On the surface, the blue trait line and the blue guardian is in pretty good shape. There are only a few minor changes that I think we want to make; and by minor, I mean really minor. " And "Aside from that, there isn't much that we really think needs to happen."

    This is why we are frustrated and feel you guys just don't listen. You and your team have completely disregarded all our input based on your responses.

    /B]
    [/COLOR]


    General Note

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

    The Defender of the Free

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

    Purchased Traits

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

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



    P.S. Apart from these things I mentioned above. I believe each line should inherently have it's own utility cause it seems like you might be leaving all the utility in yellow line. The problem w/ that is what if we want to go blue/red or red/blue? We will be forced to use the yellow line for the utility therefore making it more difficult to trait deeper into any one line because now we have to split our point between 3 trait lines. Honestly I believe the yellow line should just go the way of brawler and mini. Why do we need two tanking lines? Or better yet it should go the way of the cappy, 3 separate, useful and distinct lines.
    Last edited by Technician46; Mar 09 2023 at 12:44 AM.

  24. #49
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    Jun 2011
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    66
    Quote Originally Posted by Skohgar View Post
    I don't think the aim of the change is to make Yellow an AOE main tank that would compete directly with blue.

    But instead have yellow be an AOE off tank that provides benefits to the group with its debuffs and decent AOE damage with the cost of its own survivability at least that's what I think.
    I don’t see where the role of an off tank could be in demand now. In addition, how to implement it when all items in the game have a clear division into roles? If you're wearing tanky gear, where do you get the damage from? If you have gained damage stats, how will you survive?
    Hypothetically, if the yellow line is positioned as tanky and you, wearing tanky items, also give decent damage due to, for example, scaled damage from light that does not depend on your stats, then what happens if you change into a damage dealer?
    I wrote about this above, but again, in our game there is practically no possibility to create hybrid builds. This is not the time of Shadows of Angmar, Moria or Mirkwood, when tank guards and two-handed guards reached the same cap of strength, agility and vitality, and therefore had approximately the same percentage ratings of crit, parry and dodge. Now it simply does not work, and I am afraid that the efforts thrown by the developers in this direction will most likely not be justified.
    Last edited by Rino90; Mar 08 2023 at 07:19 PM.

  25. #50
    Join Date
    Dec 2021
    Posts
    154
    Quote Originally Posted by Rino90 View Post
    I don’t see where the role of an off tank could be in demand now. In addition, how to implement it when all items in the game have a clear division into roles? If you're wearing tanky gear, where do you get the damage from? If you have gained damage stats, how will you survive?
    Hypothetically, if the yellow line is positioned as tanky and you, wearing tanky items, also give decent damage due to, for example, scaled damage from light that does not depend on your stats, then what happens if you change into a damage dealer?
    I wrote about this above, but again, in our game there is practically no possibility to create hybrid builds. This is not the time of Shadows of Angmar, Moria or Mirkwood, when tank guards and two-handed guards reached the same cap of strength, agility and vitality, and therefore had approximately the same percentage ratings of crit, parry and dodge. Now it simply does not work, and I am afraid that the efforts thrown by the developers in this direction will most likely not be justified.
    I do understand that it would be hard to balance damage from a gearing perspective but there are definitely some ways it can be done without making the ability to fully focus on damage too powerful.

    E.g. TtH could have an effect where for every enemy that is affected and agroed on to you you will receive a damage buff. This would improve your damage in AOE situations a lot and not be effective if you tried to use it with dps gear as you would need agro and die due to having weaker defences.
    Also the damage should not be really powerful to the point of an actual dps tree.

    The use of an off tank with decent damage and debuffs really depends on the fight and the value these debuffs bring but they shouldn't be too powerful as you don't want every group running a yellow guard.

    But what I'm talking about may not even be the aim, just my interpretation of it.

 

 
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