More Guardian Thoughts

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...I don't even know where to begin...of all the things that were said over the years, all the info that was presented and shown...we get...this.

The Defender of the Free

Purchased Traits

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

No.

The first step in doing this, is giving The Keen Blade an specialization perk. My current thought on this specialization is, to lean into the heavy nature of the guardian, while also using the changes to mastery. Along those lines the current thought is this: All outgoing healing is reduced significantly, and the physical mastery increases based off of your armour value. The trade-off here would allow for a measure of consistency in the combat hits of the red line guardian.

Better than nothing, I suppose. And its unique, so I'll give it that. If its comparable to classes that get critical rating from their main stat, sure, as Guardians struggle to get same ratings without severe drop in some other departments (or go the other way, remove critical rating from main stats, give everyone an equal field in that regard)

Our secondary objectives, are to make the red line guardian sustained damage more consistent, make burst damage more reliable, remove reliance on combat response events, and have a capstone that is beneficial to the fellowship.

Guardian already is consistent. Short cooldowns with bleeds ensure consistency. I would like an explanation for this part cause, in all my years, I've never heard of this class having "inconsistent" damage, nor have I experienced it.
I must be missing something....

Reactive Parry: Adjust the damage upward to give value to the trait.

...this is a DPS spec...
...you are not supposed to get hit...
...having a perk that requires you to parry a hit....
...is this enough ellipses?

Broad Strokes: moves up in the line but remains unchanged.

This is such a pointless change....Guardian at low levels is already two-three hitting landscape mobs, how is this even needed? Guess it gives you access to a bleed earlier....woooooo....?

Relentless Assault: Swapping positions from the blue line, this now increases finesse and increases the tick count on all guardian bleeds.

Aside from swapping positions as I've already mentioned, Orion can please look into the bleed base durations and the respective cooldowns on skills that apply those bleeds?
You'll notice something really cool....I'll spoil it for you and say "100% uptime".
Extra duration on Guardian bleeds is utterly pointless as you are already cycling the rotation every 10 seconds.
Any extra DOT tick counts do not serve a purpose when you know how to play.

Heavy Weapons: Flat mod on two-handed weapon damage by 2%/tier

So for the people that like running 1 S&B can save up 5 points I guess?
Don't change the trait, it's fine as it is.

Thrill of Battle : Damaging Attacks in combat increase your Critical Chance by 1%/tier, Caps at 5 stacks, Critically striking resets the benefit

Okay...that's fine. But I'd up it to 1.5% per tier instead (1.5/3/4.5/6/7.5%) as you'll be constantly resetting this due to Guardians low cooldowns. With a bit more powerful trait, you'll average out a higher critical chance which, combined with Warriors Blade, might bring it in line with 5% other classes get.

Thrust: While specialized in Keen Blade no longer requires a combat response

Base damage needs to go up considerably then, as it's currently benefiting from Parry Response tracery. Overall, alright.

Tireless Blows: 10% chance, on criticals, to reset Brutal Assault/tier

On any critical (excluding Bleed crits)?
Sure, better than just being tied to parry chain skills. I'll support this.

Invigourating Parry becomes Invigourating Critical: Restore 1% to your power on a critical strike

I imagine this is 1% per tier, correct? Uh...meh?
Okay, I'll admit, Guardian has extreme power issues in BR currently, especially in PVP, so it might not seem the worst.
However, I propose something stronger:

• Invigourating Combat:
  
  • Critical hits restore 1/3/5/7% power and 0.5/1/1.5/2% max morale. This effect has an internal cooldown of 3 seconds

Remove Warriors Heart healing in Red, as a DPS spec doesn't need it on top of other skills you have access to. Replacing with something that allows you to survive certain hits like puddles or un-cleansable effects seems better.
(Yes, I'll touch on Honourable Combat later on, relax)

To the Rescue: Tier 6 no longer functions on every skill - this shifts to just melee skills gain the crit chance.

I think this means that the 100% critical chance on the next attack only affects melee skills now, correct?
Okay...neat. Same for knock-down too?

Honourable Combat is Replaced with Rupture: To the King gains, remove all current bleeds for damage based on the number of deeds present, increases incoming damage on the affected target by 3% for 5 seconds/bleed removed.

...wh....wha.....why?

Okay, I like the idea, I'll say that. I think its neat.
However, why is this tied to To The King?
You will also not have all bleeds up on a target for the first TTK usage, so you'll have to stagger out TTK till you get 4 Bleeds, then TTK, which will undoubtedly harm your own damage.
Oh and it's also a nightmare for soloing...
I propose this:

• Honourable Combat:
  
  • Separate/independant skill, same animation as Honourable Combat
  • Remove all bleeds from the target, granting Guardian increased damage per bleed removed and increased damage taken on target
  • Guardian gains 7.5% damage per bleed removed for 20 seconds
  • Target takes 2.5% increased damage taken per bleed removed for 20 seconds
  • Skill has a 80 second cooldown.

Guardian lacks DPS offensive cooldowns, and as you've mentioned, you wanted to give Guardians some group utility. This is my proposal, as it would fit the goals perfectly.
I'll also mention things that need changes regarding Red below here:

• Reactive Parry
  
  • Change one: Critical hits with Sting grant Parry response (remove that stupid essence)
    
    • Allows to Guardian to effortless flow into Parry chains as you are already using Sting on cooldown, allowing for a very fluid rotation.
  • Change two: Force Opening causes the target to take 5% increased Critical damage for 10 seconds.
    
    • Some potent group utility, as Guardian doesn't even use this skill at all. Tying a good debuff to it could be a good choice.
• Protection By The Sword:
  
  • Fix the bloody bug with it already, it doesn't refresh in combat. This has been a thing since Fall of Khazad-dum update when Guardian got changes. Do this at the minimum
  • Changes:
    
    • Damage buff is no longer a pulse, but an aura with a 30m range.
    • Parry transfer range increase to 30m
    • Affects all damage types, not just melee
      
      • 10m range is far too short to be effective in 90% of encounters in this game.
• Bleed Them Dry:
  
  • Add a bleed damage increase to this, simply having an extra DOT tick is underwhelming
• Prey On The Weak
  
  • I...I don't know anymore. This is such a horrible capstone trait on so many levels that it's sad.
  • Damage is horrible
  • Damage is conditional
  • Proposed change:
    
    • Guardian deals additional flat damage to targets that are suffering from Terrible Wound.
    • Damage value scales with mastery and can critically hit.
    • Damage magnitude is around half value of Sting damage.
    • Internal cooldown of 4 seconds so it doesn't top the damage charts.
• Hammer Down - increase base damage and reduce cooldown to 20 seconds, remove the stun. Damage is a bit underwhelming at higher levels and cooldown is too long. Stun is a meaningless component. (change all the set bonuses to deal bonus damage instead)

As for Yellow....just make it a passive tree, don't fumble over some grand designs. The whole idea of "AOE focused tank tree" just makes people question the purpose of Blue, which...is already an AOE tanking tree.