Never Surrender (Part what.. Quatro?)

[Solyaris]

With the 2 minute debuff, I accept the skill a little bit more, but the skill itself was never my main concern with my posts. It was directed towards my lackluster excitement regarding the 5-set bonus. Using your same example, you'd have to predict that you're about to get devastated, otherwise hope it doesn't kill you and then use the skill, but now you have to hope that at minimum in the next 5 mins you don't get devastated again.

In all honestly I don't particularly like the whole concept of this setup anyways and I think this stems from my time as a Runekeeper healer. They have a lot of skills that work based on chance and predictability. I've had too many backfires where I can't stand it. As an example, I put "Do Not Fall This Day" on our Guard, cause his health was getting dangerously low, it was at 4%, but then the mob missed a bunch and he rose back to 10%, then right at the skill wore off, he got critted and died, but the skill wore off by then.

So I guess where my bitterness comes from regarding this whole situation is I hate luck in any game, FPS, RTS, MMO, whatever. I want to be in control of my character and be able to control what happens to me or at least have 100% control over my preventions of the unknown. I know I'm going to be facing multiple mobs, I know ahead of time I'm going to use leeches to lessen my burden of taking damage. With this skill it's always going to be a "what if" situation, maybe it works, maybe it doesn't.

Maybe I'm just doomed to never like this skill and the bonus.

I have the same view. I hate that the fact that the healers cant keep up suddenly will force me to not use what I like the most (HoT) and masteries for a surtan duration. I mean, if I die, chances are, its the heals fault, but in the end, Im the one thats punihed. I know the other option is to die, but at least it wouldnt be my fault. If this on the other hand had been an instant buff (like pledge) Im the one saving the situation, not the healers. If anything I would like to see a gambit that would rase your morale to 25% if you go under 5% the next 5 sec. Make it a 5 gambit, instant cast but a long animation (example; the duration and animation last the same amount of time). That would have been a truly never surrender, cause it would have been you that saw it coming, reacted and survived.

[Solyaris]

I wish my conviction CoS and safeguard healed that much.

Edit:I don't see how not having masteries hinders threat gen. You can't keep up conviction(but w/o HoT ticks, why would you?), so our next best threat is PB. Masteries don't really speed up PB spamming...

All numbers was taken with 20% incomming healing in mind (as most wardens have) and +15% healing from javeling legacie.

Some numbers was lower then they should (precervance) some slightly higher (celebration of skill)

[grinko.at]

I think I read in the RK forums that Dnftd lasts till end of combat now..


That aside, there is another question that I want to add to the diacussion without making another thread: Why exactly do Wardens rejoice at the increased avoidance cap as (IMHO) it is more or less nullified with the introduction of Finesse in the very same update?

It was already stated that Raid bosses will have a lot of Finesse, and this Stat only bypasses avoidance, not migitation, so it hurts Wardens far more than Guardians. Lets say the latest raid boss has enough Finesse to bypass 7% of BPE, there goes your added avoidance and you are back at 15% again. Guardians, on the other hand, get bonuses to physical migitation on their raid set, and they have enough recovery options when they get in trouble.
It just irks me that Boss Finesse seems to be designed to penalize Warden tanking.
So again, Wardens are at a disadvantage in raid situations, while becoming stronger in 3-mans and soloing, where they are already good enough. So where comes the thought from that Wardens will finally become a viable alternative to Guardians in raids?


Also, what use does a stun immunity have on a four-length gambit that can only be kept up 33% of the time? It cannot be cast fast enough (with the exception of battle memory perhaps) to counter a inducted stun attack, and it cannot be kept up to protect against random stuns. So what use does it have? Wouldn't a 5-length 16s duration gambit make more sense as the permanent refresh takes away valuable time for other gambits, but makes the Warden actually immune? Or 20s with dispel-on-stun?

And what does Aggression actually do? Is it the aggro recovery after death the Warden needs?

So far, I haven't seen anything that actually improves Raid Warden tanking, with the exception of the revamped NS that still has the mastery penalties..

[ANewMachine]

Champs need to be traited 4 deep in Martial Champion and they need to be running Glory to gain the effects of Exalted Combatant.

Never Surrender: 15 minute cooldown (triggered when activated), cannot be defeated while this is active, if you fall to 5% health or less (healers cannot keep up, taps cannot keep up), you are healed for 75% morale and 50% power and lose access to your mastery abilities and HoT ticks beyond the first for 5 minutes.

The 5-minute cooldown starting in conjunction with the initiation of the skill makes the contributing cooldown to 10 minutes. With a 5-minute negative - if triggered.

The 5-set bonus that many are bemoaning reduces the cooldown on the skill by 5 minutes.

Sorry, but I feel like I'm missing something from this. This seems to have mollified everyone, and it doesn't make sense to me. If you're using it, and it's any use to have used it, then you hit the 5% threshold at some point, and went through the penalties (apparently 2 minutes long now). So unless that happens a 4:59:59 after skill activation, your "contributing cooldown" isn't 10 minutes, it's [15 min - time before trigger]. If you have a 10 min "contributing cooldown," then you didn't need to use the skill because it wasn't triggered. So... still a useless 5-set, IMO, especially compared to any of the others. Fire RKs will get huge boosts to their DPS from their 5-set; Champion tanks get a massive boost in survivability from Exalted Combatant; Guardians get a huge boost to a 5-min CD that can come down to, what, 2 min with traits + legs?... and we get to use a skill that is penny-smart, pound-stupid (if you died *with* all your HoTs and Masteries, odds you'll die again *without* them...) more often.

Not. Pleased.

[horus418]

The changes are almost ok. The penalty to HoTs makes no sense to me though. By Orion's own words, HoTs and evasion are what wardens use to make up for medium armor. So why make him more squishy when it really counts? Keep the mastery penalty if you (Orion), really feel that we must have some penalty, but don't diminish our survivability any more than it already is compared to the heavies.

[LtDiablo]

*Snip*
Not. Pleased.

OK so he explained it better than me lol, but that's basically how I felt.

I thought the same thing regarding CDs matching duration on my RK for awhile, until I got into an actual situation.

The "prevent wounds" type skills looked awesome, with a trait they lasted 30s, and the CD was only 30s. So you could essentially keep the skill up constantly with traits. But then I started raiding with my RK. This is what would happen. I'd put up the protection, the first hit was a wound, boom prevention gone, next three attacks, stacks 2 wounds on the tank. But I'm waiting 30s for the next time to come around now. This is why I don't find 5min reduction to be of any significance, unless you sit there every 5 mins constantly just spamming NS until it's needed, like I did with my RK, which I guess would take the "guess work" out of the equation, but what's the power cost and animation time?

[ANewMachine]

Make it a 5 gambit, instant cast but a long animation (example; the duration and animation last the same amount of time). That would have been a truly never surrender, cause it would have been you that saw it coming, reacted and survived.

Hate to say it, but it'd never be used. Ask an RK how many times he's saved someone with Do Not Fall This Day. I've healed a *lot* and, aside from when I plan it (GS death run for instance) I think I've used DNFTD about 5 times successfully. Add the extra complication of having to foresee it by 6-8 seconds, rather than the very quick application time of DNFTD, and you'll get a nice shiny gambit that nobody ever uses.

[Harperelle]

Lets look at a scenario with and without Never Surrender:

You are fighitng Draigoch the dragon. You have the misfortune to get the full brunt of his fire breath, which crits. You just took a 10k spike of damage.

Without Never Surrender:
-You die and are in combat rezzed
-you wildly try to regain aggro, morale, and power.
-You have dread from defeat
-You lose all your buffs
-You are a liability to the fellowship during this time and will probably die again

With Never Surrender:
-You lose your Never Surrender buff and gain the debuff.
+You keep all your current buffs (including captain, food, scrolls, etc)
+You have 75% morale, 50% power.
-You cannot use masteries.
-You cannot kite with conviction.
-You cannot use self-heals effectively.
+You continue to maintain aggro and change your approach to maximize avoidance, threat, and utility. You change from using Conviction, Restoration, and threat skills to Dance of War, Wall of Steel, and threat skills.
-Interrupts are slower to build
+/-Because you are building gambits more slowly, you are using power more slowly as well.
-You might die (in which case go to the case without never surrender)
+After 2 minutes you are back to normal

Looking at the two scenarios, I prefer the second one. There are drawbacks, but it beats having a wipe from a single mistake and some bad luck.

--Harper

[MorliX]

The difference being that wardens > all those other classes. No I'm serious. Wardens, at any given time, have higher survivability with all of their HoT's/BPE going than the other classes unless they burn their cooldowns. Which is why, historically, wardens have not had any cooldowns. The only exception to this rule was raids, where guardian mitigation was substantially better and where, if things went wrong, we were basically doomed. This lead to wardens getting an increase in BPE, our only defense which scales into raids, and a cooldown skill which can be used when the sh*t hits the fan. Imo, it wouldn't make sense to give us a beast CD like Pledge or Hips, when we aren't really intended to be relying on our CD's int he first place.

Good explanation. I am somewhat more "at peace" with the warden's higher avoidance, given reports on guard mitigations having good effect. i am glad they made NS a more workable "oh crud" skill for you...have been sincere all along that our two classes should be made truly equivalent, but different, "solutions" as main tanks.

[ANewMachine]

[a long list, omitted for readability]

That doesn't justify the penalties, though. If we came back to life with 1hp and no power, it'd be "better" than the option of dying, but not *good*. Obviously that's an exaggeration, but I think it's fair that, especially when compared to the other classes' "oh no" skills (of which most get multiple on a shorter cooldown) ours is pretty weak, especially given the fact that it will *still*, if successful, disable 2 Legendaries and 2 Class traits (if you're 5 Shield/2 something).

[Harperelle]

As a minstrel, my oh no! buttons are:

Lay of the Hammerhand:
+Keeps inductions uninterrupted
+Protects my morale completely
-Eats up my power like crazy

Still as death:
+Lose all aggro while active
-Cannot perform any actions
-DoTs still tick

Triumphant Spirit:
+Big group heal
-Long CD
-Draws massive aggro

They all have some sort penalty associated with them. Never Surrender has a lot to recommend it:
1) Its preventative, not reactive
2) It gives you a free life
3) It gives the biggest morale/power heal in the game

Seems like Never Surrender is as good or better than my Minnie panic buttons. Its even arguably better than last stand (you end up with 75% morale, not 1 morale, lasts 5 min, not 30s)

--Harperella

[ANewMachine]

Yeah... stuff like that is making me wonder whether Pledge, TnG and the like aren't just a bit *over*powered, due to the only real negatives being their cooldowns, and the benefits being huge. You do make a good point, though.

[grinko.at]

Well, the user can still die after burning TnG or pledge, those don't restore any morale and don't make the player invincible. A tactical attack or stun is all it needs. So those aren't really OP because they are not 100% bulletproof.

The current NS is arguably very potent, and should have a penalty (or a 30m CD) but taking away masteries is just frustrating. It makes skill execution so unbearably slow when the group is already in trouble.

[LtDiablo]

With the debuff only being 2 minutes, I will concede and say NS has it's uses. Then again we can sit here all day and examine everyone's Oh Sh*t skills and find pro's and con's with most of them, but also counter arguments for each, just as an example using Harp's mini examples.

Lay of the Hammerhand:
+Keeps inductions uninterrupted - good
+Protects my morale completely - good
-Eats up my power like crazy - LM shoots you power, problem solved

Still as death:
+Lose all aggro while active - good
-Cannot perform any actions - stand up, aggro has already been dumped
-DoTs still tick - again, stand up then heal yourself

Triumphant Spirit:
+Big group heal - good
-Long CD - necessary to keep from being OP
-Draws massive aggro - what a good tank is for

Then you look at NS

With Never Surrender:
-You lose your Never Surrender buff and gain the debuff. - supposed to happen
+You keep all your current buffs (including captain, food, scrolls, etc) - good
+You have 75% morale, 50% power. - yay
-You cannot use masteries. - could be an issue depending on fight or situation, no way to remedy
-You cannot kite with conviction. - see above
-You cannot use self-heals effectively. - see above, but a good healer will make up for this
+You continue to maintain aggro and change your approach to maximize avoidance, threat, and utility. You change from using Conviction, Restoration, and threat skills to Dance of War, Wall of Steel, and threat skills. - good, assuming your group can adapt
-Interrupts are slower to build - moot if they're not need, but again group would have to adapt strategy
+/-Because you are building gambits more slowly, you are using power more slowly as well. - good assuming you don't lose aggro as a result of the slowness
-You might die (in which case go to the case without never surrender) - group was fail to begin with
+After 2 minutes you are back to normal - yay

I guess from my POV it just seems, that even though other classes have debuffs to their oh sh*t skills, there is simple solutions. Ours are more up in the air, the solution could be very simple or you could be in trouble.

But that all being said, I still think our 5-set bonus is weak in comparison.

[Malephor]

stand up, aggro has already been dumped

Thats not how flop worked last time I used it.


However, I agree with the premise. The penalty is way too steep for it to see any use from me(most likely). At least, if we had it now with current content, I couldn't see ever using it. New content might be different.

[LtDiablo]

I think for now I'm just going to return back to my original thought process of "Will wait and see", but I'm still not pleased by that armour.

[Darlgon]

Holy cats.. six pages already? Good to be back in the real warden forums again.

Thanks for two replies Orion. I am repeating them here slightly edited for reference:

Never Surrender: 15 minute cooldown (triggered when activated), cannot be defeated while this is active, if you fall to 5% health or less (healers cannot keep up, taps cannot keep up), you are healed for 75% morale and 50% power and lose access to your mastery abilities and HoT ticks beyond the first for 5 minutes.

The 5-minute cooldown starting in conjunction with the initiation of the skill makes the contributing cooldown to 10 minutes. With a 5-minute negative - if triggered.

The 5-set bonus that many are bemoaning reduces the cooldown on the skill by 5 minutes.

Oops, I lied...I forgot that I dropped the duration on the debuff to 120 seconds.

On Never Surrender.. I hate to say it, but I really don't like Harperelles scenarios. This is the way I would see it being used..

Boss mob under attack.. Warden tanking (Say, has 8K Morale)
Warden gets down to 25 percent health due to healer running out of power (2K morale and boss has burned up 6K Morale)
Warden hits builds Never Surrender and activates it.
Warden looses more Morale down to 5 percent (400 morale, with 7600 burned.)
Warden pops up to 6K Morale and 50 percent power. (Yah, proactive warden, not reactive guardian, skill kick)
Healer gets enough power to heal some so happy days. Oh wait, you just burned through 95% of our morale with him at full power.. Oh well.. here we go.. )
Warden gets 10 K spike damage from Draigoch the dragon (Dang.. that stinks..)
Umm wait.. the warden is standing there with 6K morale and 50% power. Lets keep going.. (See post above, "cannot be defeated while this is active", still within the 5 minute buff period.)
Warden does SM and WoS to up BPE cause you know that dragon is POed he did not kill him twice now.
Warden uses what ever heals/drains he has until either Dragon is dead or he dies due to healer still having problems, (Including Conviction built manually, which, while not ticking HoTs, does do one tick of healing and still drains off aggro from the group)
If Warden is still alive after 2 minutes of first activating, masteries and Hots are now available, happy days.

Ok.. while I was playing this out, I went from this is a useless thing to OMG, that is awesome.. I do have to run through a script with it after death tho.. Anyone see any holes in it?

A few questions tho..
No mention of the "throwing off defeat" in the revision, so you still have dread after death? (The main thing people were using it for.)
Hmm.. no longer need to die to use.. that helps. ("Requires recently revived or dread effects" is also gone from description.)
Is there no Threat transfer mechanic anymore beyond what I would guess was heal aggro from self healing? (No more "Transfers 20% of total threat from Fellowship Members" in the description either.) This and the first point would reduce its usefulness after death.

[Harperelle]

Thats not how flop worked last time I used it.


However, I agree with the premise. The penalty is way too steep for it to see any use from me(most likely). At least, if we had it now with current content, I couldn't see ever using it. New content might be different.

So, you would rather die than live with the debuff?

[Orion]

Stuff on Never Surrender.

You cannot die until the effect fires. If the healing effect fires...you can die again and have the debuff. No death, no loss of threat.

[ANewMachine]

stuff

You're not understanding how the skill works anymore.

It's not a use-after-death skill anymore, at all, so the transfer is gone, yes. When we first asked for an aggro recovery skill, we were told that the solution is just "don't die." So rather than get an Engage-lite, we've now got exactly that: a skill that basically nulls a single death, with penalties.

It works like this: After the heal triggers the first time, you are no longer invulnerable, *AND THEN* the Mastery/HoT debuff applies. So, if the heal never triggers (you go the 5min without taking enough damage to knock you down to <5%) you never see the Mastery/HoT debuff. The invulnerability is only there so that even if you take a hit of 10K, you still get the heal, rather than dying before the heal has a chance to trigger by noticing that you're <5% HP. So you get the heal once, and then you're on your own with 120s of no Masteries and all your HoTs having only the initial tick, with no invulnerability.

So in your scenario, you're right up until just after the heal. If the Dragon then crits for 10K, the Warden is dead, kaput, and you're dealing with a tank death.

[thunderchickn]

If we use NS, get the big heal, then get another huge crit and die are we still under the no masteries penalty?

[Orion]

If we use NS, get the big heal, then get another huge crit and die are we still under the no masteries penalty?

Defeat will clear the debuff.

[LtDiablo]

Orion since your replying now, can I pick your brain for possible 5-set bonuses you had in mind prior to picking the current one? Maybe we could help ya pick a bonus

[Solyaris]

Anything including avoidance or healing would be very much appriciated

[thunderchickn]

Defeat will clear the debuff.

Thank you for the quick reply and this is good news. I am not used to being a part of the crowd that is not happy with the changes even when they are improved upon, but I do appreciate the effort.

I accept the heal pulses penalty, honestly looking at it objectively that was a good idea to keep the skill from being OP. A couple minutes of negated heal pulses probably won't ever be the death of a raid. I appreciate that penalty for what it is, and although it punishes Shield line Wardens (who most will be when tanking I suspect) I understand and it's not the biggest deal since we have healers.

What I really don't like, and possibly never will, is taking away core skills from us. Masteries are oftentimes more valuable than the basic builders. A near instant Shield Mastery, Dance of War, Wall of Steel, the new Shield Tactics... even the shortest Gambits like Precise Blow take twice as long without the mastery up for it. I really hope that this part of the penalty isn't set in stone and that in the next 30 days there is a chance we could see this revisited.

No matter how different other classes are (which I respect and understand this is the reason we have been given the penalty) you would never take away a Champ's ability to AoE for 2 minutes, a Guards ability to use Guardian's Ward, a Minstrel's ability to play Ballads, etc. While each of those classes could still function, it would take core skills away from their gameplay for an extended period. Please don't take away our ability to quickly build Gambits, from range, without a target, and otherwise for 2 minutes. This effectively nullifies the ability to efficiently swap tanks, and to quickly grab aggro. We will not have the tools required of us in raids without masteries (for 2 minutes), that's why everyone slots them!