Dev Diary Feedback: Guardian Advancement Beyond Level 50!

[Ragnvald]

I was so excited this morning when I seen the update, well needless to say I was not very excited after reading it. I had heard from a little thrush about a month ago that grds were getting the shaft, and it seems to have been true.

I dont want DPS either, I just want to not have to fight hunters, champs and healers for aggro all the damn time. ITs not fun.

Now the LM and Hunter diarys got me going!

[atimes]

Have you been reading other forums? EVERY class thinks they got the shaft. To hear each individual forum you'd think the world was ending.

There was some champ going around in his thread telling the champ dev he's "fired" and the champs are complaining that the "squishiest class in the game just got even more squishy". Mins are complaining because they won't even be able to kill the badgers running around in combe and their grind from 50-60 is going to now take FOREVER. LM's are so "underwhelmed" by their changes they are about to turn their ravens and lynx's on themselves and jump into their bear's open mouth just to put themselves out of their misery. Everyone is saying the same thing. "just quit now or just delete all your characters and roll Warden's and RK's because they will be sooo ZOMG overpowered it won't matter for any other class blah blah blah".

Guardian's will be fine.
Champions will be fine.
LM's will be fine.
Mins will be fine.
Hunters will be fine.
Burgs will be fine.
Captains will be fine.

Warden's will be FOTM until they start trying to tank a something with fangs. Then they'll be chewed up and spit out because of their medium armor. RK's will be FOTM until something breaks through the damage and actually lands a counter attack.

My thoughts is after all is said and done Guards will find their sweet spot in tanking bosses due to our bonuses to mitigating devastating crits. Either that or every group will need a crit mitigating traited LM for whatever tank they can find.

[Loftly]

THATS RIGHT.

everyone will be fine!

*edit*
AND ANOTHER THING!
i cant believe people think guards DESERVE to make the most aggro!

if you could wave a stick and have all 10 orcs beating on your group drop everything and move directly to YOU, and stay there until everyone else kills them,
what challenge would that be?

move in, taunt once, heal guard.... why dont we all quit this game and brush our teeth, thats pretty formulaic and repetitive too.

if the class that can take the most damage had the greatest ability to draw aggro... all a raid would need is a guard, a minstrel, and 10 hunters!

*edit*
AND ANOTHER THING!!
i can keep a group alive with things the way they are now... i must be the GREATEST guardian in the thread!!

*edit*
YOU THIN-BEARDS!

[Dett]

Uhhh....so that's it? Hmmm. OK I know it's early and the facts are not all in. Obviously this may be vastly different in the game than it is described in these diaries. But I'll toss out my initial thoughts and try to reseve final judgement after a bit of true play.

It feels kinda Book 12-ish to me. Lots of new changes but nothing I'm excited about frankly. I'm initially concerned that the boss tank build (Fighter of Shadow) is now seperated from the threat build (Defender of the Free)...huh? Did those really need to be torn apart? I prefer the pure tank role and I believe that agro mgmt is the heart of tanking - well that and being able to withstand a WHOLE lot of damage. So you can see why I'm not excited about the DPS build (Keen Blade); it's prolly OK for some but DPS with a Guardian not my cup of tea.

I would have been VERY excited by some single combination of the boss-tanker and threat builds...but now I'm left wondering where I must compromise. And that's really where I stand...wondering why Turbine brings me compromises to choose from. I wanted an "oh my gosh!" moment of excitement and what I appear to have now is a "hmmm...let's see" period of decision. :-| So strike 1 for marketing.

YMMV

[Maegnor]

I agree with a lot of people on the overall feeling of meh-ness as I read that breakdown. I would like to say though, that I haven't tanked Moria bosses yet. If they have a separate tree especially for tanking bosses, I think there must be a reason. I'll most likely be in the boss tanking spec except for PVP time. Crit/devastating hits don't just come from bosses and I don't need a special trait tree to hold aggro.

At any rate, can't wait for MoM!

[Ruthelia]

Have you been reading other forums? EVERY class thinks they got the shaft. To hear each individual forum you'd think the world was ending.

There was some champ going around in his thread telling the champ dev he's "fired" and the champs are complaining that the "squishiest class in the game just got even more squishy". Mins are complaining because they won't even be able to kill the badgers running around in combe and their grind from 50-60 is going to now take FOREVER. LM's are so "underwhelmed" by their changes they are about to turn their ravens and lynx's on themselves and jump into their bear's open mouth just to put themselves out of their misery. Everyone is saying the same thing. "just quit now or just delete all your characters and roll Warden's and RK's because they will be sooo ZOMG overpowered it won't matter for any other class blah blah blah".

Guardian's will be fine.
Champions will be fine.
LM's will be fine.
Mins will be fine.
Hunters will be fine.
Burgs will be fine.
Captains will be fine.

Warden's will be FOTM until they start trying to tank a something with fangs. Then they'll be chewed up and spit out because of their medium armor. RK's will be FOTM until something breaks through the damage and actually lands a counter attack.

My thoughts is after all is said and done Guards will find their sweet spot in tanking bosses due to our bonuses to mitigating devastating crits. Either that or every group will need a crit mitigating traited LM for whatever tank they can find.

Amen! lol, thank god someone's still got their head screwed on right. Well done 'atimes'

[Darzil]

Can't really comment on Guardians and Instances, as I've not done much.

Solo, at level 6-15, I was taking a lot more damage, compared to live, and struggling to get reactionary abilities used.

Solo at level 50, I was taking 40-60% more damage than live, whilst doing the same damage. Taking a couple of whites at once requires use of what used to be called 'emergency abilities'.

Solo at level 59, I was able to take a couple of whites ok, but three blues require some 'emergency abilities'. Four blues requires everything. The main difference here being that I can get decent +block partial mitigation legacies by this stage.

Roughly speaking, solo, my Guardian and a Hunter will lose about the same morale during a fight with two oranges starting at melee range. The hunter will be losing morale at twice the rate, but killing at twice the rate. Starting at range, the hunter is far superior. Of course they can also do this at 2-3 times the rate.

I would therefore, be lying if I were to say that Guardians can't solo. I'd also be lying if I said their survivability wasn't way down on live. If Guardians Ward took them over their Block/Parry caps, then I'd say they had a significant advantage in tanking over Champions, as it doesn't, I can't. The decision comes down to 1-3% BPE and some emergency skills against higher DPS and more interrupts. Solo Champions can handle a lot more.

Darzil

[Overtone]

IMO this is mostly a failure and a disaster. The group tanking set is a complete waste. Making is spec in order keep up with threat generation is total BS and furthermore deprives us of what could have been an interesting alternative spec focused on utility.

Unfortunately, I'm in agreement here. Threat management is only a problem in group because Guards aren't on par with other classes for DPS. Rather than waste an entire trait set on threat, I would have preferred something oriented more around avoidance/dps that is also transferable to Moors play, which is the end game content for my toons.

The changes to Overpower are bleh as well. My Guard will put them to use, better than nothing, but he spends less than half his time in Overpower stance in the Moors. Since he is on the front line, Overpower is the stance for an offensive roll, movement of the line or boss off-tank. To hold a line, defend, or tank a boss, my Guard is always in Parry stance for the most part.

The tanking trait line looks pretty good and my Guard will definitely be using that set when rolling in raids. However, it looks like I too will be relegating my Guard to PvE for the most part and rolling my Hunter in the Moors almost exclusively.

[DHargrave]

Well like i said it should be you either have threat gen or you dont. Very lame to have it be a goal when other classes have what they need and we have to work for it being a tank class on top of it very lousy.

Oh i get a wound that can do a 100 dmg if i can do whack a mole button smashing to get it off woo hoo. Oh look its a runekeeper he can dot for 800 sigh lol

Get rid of overpower and give us dps in general across the board. Overpower should be renamed wantabe champ mode which is basically what is.If you were to give capts a stance called morale boost and it let u chuck heals like a minstrel minus the guitar wouldnt u say the same thing?

Heres what i want until then hes a delving stone runner

Whe a gaurd hits 60 he/she should get an extra 2k morale no skill or trait either just when u hit 60 bam your up 2k morale permanently

Remover overpower its sucks just give us the bleeping dps across the board and be done with it. No class wants to be punished for wanting to dps and thats exactly what it is a punishment.

Threat generation we alone in the game should have it no one else or be given the option for fellowships to control who gets it. Then youll have something you can call it decoy or share the aggro lol you click on a fellowship member and it gives them a certain amount of threat generation. Only useable in fellowships or raids.

Armor buff the gaurds should have an armor buff they can use like warriors heart so they can choose to either use warriors heart or warriors armor buff giving you an extra 500=1000 armor gain temporarily

I doubt any of this will happen but if it does ill play my gaurd full time until then anyone need delving stones lol?

[Artanisul]

Can't really comment on Guardians and Instances, as I've not done much.

Solo, at level 6-15, I was taking a lot more damage, compared to live, and struggling to get reactionary abilities used.

Solo at level 50, I was taking 40-60% more damage than live, whilst doing the same damage. Taking a couple of whites at once requires use of what used to be called 'emergency abilities'.

Solo at level 59, I was able to take a couple of whites ok, but three blues require some 'emergency abilities'. Four blues requires everything. The main difference here being that I can get decent +block partial mitigation legacies by this stage.

Roughly speaking, solo, my Guardian and a Hunter will lose about the same morale during a fight with two oranges starting at melee range. The hunter will be losing morale at twice the rate, but killing at twice the rate. Starting at range, the hunter is far superior. Of course they can also do this at 2-3 times the rate.

I would therefore, be lying if I were to say that Guardians can't solo. I'd also be lying if I said their survivability wasn't way down on live. If Guardians Ward took them over their Block/Parry caps, then I'd say they had a significant advantage in tanking over Champions, as it doesn't, I can't. The decision comes down to 1-3% BPE and some emergency skills against higher DPS and more interrupts. Solo Champions can handle a lot more.

Darzil

If the numbers above were only half what the poster reports, It would make me leery of my Guardian. This is seriously going to hamper how we play the game.
Taking twice the damage we used to, ad doing half again what we used to with the enemy having twice the moral they used to.....that just doesnt add up to fun for this guardian.

[Toonafied]

I guess folks being Negative is the normal, average way people are. Wow, I still can't use to it and I certainly prefer to never get use to it. I think we have heard the same song for each change coming down the pike. It never ends.

Game play will be changing. I wish I had been a beta tester for this project, but I have full confidence that every consideration was taken to keep it balanced. Sure it will need tuning, everything does.

HOWEVER this tank is jazzed about the new world coming. There is so much I don't understand, but I know once we start pounding baddies, we will begin to understand better how all this was put together.

Some of you are trying to call a ballgame from the Goodyear blimp, I think you should wait until you get onto the playing field before you declare defeat for your toon.

A couple of quick questions for clarification:

1. Are the tank "Roles" (Boss, group and DPS) governed primarily by slotted traits? That's the impression I got. I was just wondering how much blend we will be able to get. Primarily the Boss and Group. It would be nice to be able to switch quickly between the two (like a stance). But I get the impression this will be a visit to the Barb.

B. For legacy weapons, will we be able to have several? Like a one-hand and a two-hand that we can level and grow? I get the impression that we will be able to have several, but I could be wrong here.

C. Will there be relevant drops out side of MoM area? Say we engage a couple of lvl 55 EM giants in Angmar, I know we will get XP but will there be drops related to our new stuff here also?

One finial note, one person was complaining that the Rift gear would become obsolete by level 54. Do statements like this make anyone else chuckle besides me? I think I recall my armor always going obsolete while I was leveling, but then again, I could be wrong.

Too bad we can't hang it on the wall. That would be cool. "Oh! My wonderful Rift gear that I spent years getting. I know! I'll head down to the taxidermist and get it stuffed! I have the perfect spot at my little villa for the dear thing." Maybe a small yard footprint.

Anywho, Thanks Turbine and Developers. We know you worked hard and long on this. Look forward to the shakedown cruize!

~t

[Sildamor]

B. For legacy weapons, will we be able to have several? Like a one-hand and a two-hand that we can level and grow? I get the impression that we will be able to have several, but I could be wrong here~t

Up to 6 (weapons + belts) total

[Narendur]

Yay for threatening presence! I agree we always lacked in that ability to group tank! Take that Champs! Now you braggers that like to pull aggro off a Guardian will have to come up with new ways to stroke your ego! ^__^

I love the new Guardian direction, so awesome! Cant wait for launch! Look out Moria! RWOWR!

[zappa]

From what I have seen and read I am thinking that the so called improvements by Turbine are so much fluff. The ingame items they all promote are useless garbage as were most of the quest items in the game. Turbine pats themselves on the back alot and have done some great things with the game but listening to players and making a game that Players like isn't one of their strong points. I am sure that the landscape in Moria is excellent but between Nerfs, ****** looking armors with rediculous stats and masses of ordinary junk to fill limited storage bags I am not expecting anything great FOR PLAYERS in anything from Turbine. The sheer failure of Turbine to address already known issues with their game shows me that they could care less what we think.