Let's talk Guardian!

[Leviosa]

So I've been talking to friends, and discussing with my fellow guardians ways that the class can be improved/changed to better fit the angle that Turbine is going at with the class. I, myself, would rather see bleed proc heals removed, and bleed damage increased, as opposed to the whole "Heal on crit to win". Perhaps Guards could have base damage and crit multiplier raised even higher? NOTE: Removing bleed proc heals would significantly change the outcome of most fights, and would actually allow room for balance and skill. However, I could see the base damage only being increased by about ~10%? Bleed damage could actually go up about 150% compared to what it is right now. Bleeds crit for around 500-700 without the Epic Battles set, and around 550-750 with the set. With how high creep morale is, this is actually very minor, and almost irrelevant. Criting for around 1.5-2.3k would seem more appropriate, no?

To anyone who read this and thought "Hey! He wants his class to be even more OP than it is!", I feel for you. Any Guard can tell you that the class is built off of RNG, and is completely luck based. It's frustrating relying on crits just to stay in a fight. Not to mention, Guards in DPS spec have no usefulness in moors raids, and an increase in damage would give them a viable option when raiding.

I've said this once, and I'll say it a million times if I have to, but I'd really love to see the 75 cap guardian make a comeback. Alas, we never will.

--Third Marshal Kaize--

[propxus]

This^
I feel like RNGesus is looking over me some days and just going "not today little elf". Then sometimes he's like "go wreck that 3 man creep group with a defiler, I got you"

[Constrictions]

I think we need to be careful that we're not thinking about red trait-tree's in a way that's going to eventually turn every class that specs it into a glasscannon.
There need to be some limitations and advantages about each class that remain part of them no matter what role they take. Tank classes simply shouldn't have the option to wear loin-cloth and throw planet-sized dragon-balls at people. Their DPS-lines should still reflect the fact that they are a tank class.

Not that this has neccesarily happened here, but still important to note. Wouldn't this be better off in the Guardian forum?

[Leviosa]

It would've probably been better in the Guard forum, I agree. (Even though this is talking about Moors Guard in specific) Should've put it there, but it's here now, so I guess we'll just keep it up.

I agree that not every class should be glasscannon and should deal massive amounts of damage, but I feel as though healing on crits is not the way to go either. In fact, if they removed heals and gave us +10% Mitigation (as a passive) I would be down for that. Removing the RNG reliability is the main point I'm trying to make. Healing on crit in raid fights is NOT helpful, and it doesn't benefit anyone other than the guardian himself.

Maybe they could give us a passive that allows each tier of bleeds to apply a -1% inc healing debuff?


--Third Marshal Kaize--

[ThatDumbManatee]

I agree to you both to a certain extent. Guardians are a tank class, and should resemble that in their dps line. I /personally/ think that natural mitigation traits should be placed in the tank trees to invest in while dps traited, as well as having defensive maneuvers in Red Line. However, it is still a dps line, and should have reasonable bleeds if the dps is based around skills making bleeds. Reducing the heals produced by the bleeds and adding damage to the bleeds (Say 2k on full aud warg/def, 1.8k spider/ba, 1.6k reaver/wl ((AS AN AVERAGE)))

All I have to say about it.

[Cenifh]

To anyone who read this and thought "Hey! He wants his class to be even more OP than it is!", I feel for you. Any Guard can tell you that the class is built off of RNG, and is completely luck based.

--Third Marshal Kaize--

If u have never played a yellow RK after U12 u have no room to complain xD

[Leviosa]

If u have never played a yellow RK after U12 u have no room to complain xD

Lol, I believe it man. I played my friend's, and hated every minute of it. WTB a bleed that can crit for 4k though!

[Kaern48]

I hate how guard 1v1s and small group depends almost entirely on luck with the RNG. It's ruined pvp for me on my guard. But I don't see very many ways to fix it without an overhaul to the class. The only possibility I can think of is greatly reducing the heal and greatly increasing the proc chance, this would take some of the luck out of play with a more consistent RNG. Before u13 the proc chance was much higher and it didn't feel as luck based. Of course guards were very overpowered then, but its a start. As long as heals are tied into random procs the class isn't going to get very much better. Bring back the pre-HD guard.

[harman097]

I hate how guard 1v1s and small group depends almost entirely on luck with the RNG. It's ruined pvp for me on my guard. But I don't see very many ways to fix it without an overhaul to the class. The only possibility I can think of is greatly reducing the heal and greatly increasing the proc chance, this would take some of the luck out of play with a more consistent RNG. Before u13 the proc chance was much higher and it didn't feel as luck based. Of course guards were very overpowered then, but its a start. As long as heals are tied into random procs the class isn't going to get very much better. Bring back the pre-HD guard.

I agree wholeheartedly that there is wayyyyyy too much RNG to the new guard, to the point that it is frustrating. As I stated in another thread:

...The amount of random chance associated with this class right now is insane. Proc heals, Proc dmg, Crits granting bleed stacks, BA Bleed chance, Crit stuns, Overwhelm Cashout bleed removal chance, bb 3 set parry proc chance, blue line parry proc chance on sting, parry responses in general, whirling retal disarm chance, frontal-nonset-stagger crit...

but I don't think bringing back pre-HD guard is a good choice. The class is a lot more fun now than it was. Pre-HD guard was sooooo boring, straightforward, and predictable.

I don't think it'd be taht hard to change. Just spitballing here, but what about something like:

Lower bleed amount. Bleed tiers up 1 with non-crit skill, 2 via crit (1 per bleed regardless), for quicker, more reliable bleed tier stacking.
Significantly lower proc heal amount, increase proc to 100%.
Remove Overwhelm stun chance - give it 100% stun on cashout of bleed 5 or less.

(although Im probly ignoring potential ramifications of changes like this)

[Humbabumba]

I dont want to sound rude but removing heals on guard while guard getting hit few K hit by BA-s isnt to ogreat idea. Thats auda 13, maxed orc/wellcr, tact mits, crit defence above 50% . Creeps hit hard, have 70k+ morale, guard heals allow to stand the ground.. for little time, not forever, we arent wardens.

Adding dps thats not RNG dependat but rather skill and choice: signed, any class, any day, alaways.

Laetly i have runned alot in yellow, debuffing evrything +30% oro +50% atack dura run speed and all thge rest, it seems have tilted the balance of big fights few times. I dont kill em directly, correct, but iam not letting creeps to kill freeps, seems fit for guard.

Must say that i havent played since januaro or so, only few days now again. Yellow is fun

[Cenifh]

I dont want to sound rude but removing heals on guard while guard getting hit few K hit by BA-s isnt to ogreat idea. Thats auda 13, maxed orc/wellcr, tact mits, crit defence above 50% . Creeps hit hard, have 70k+ morale, guard heals allow to stand the ground.. for little time, not forever, we arent wardens.

Adding dps thats not RNG dependat but rather skill and choice: signed, any class, any day, alaways.

Laetly i have runned alot in yellow, debuffing evrything +30% oro +50% atack dura run speed and all thge rest, it seems have tilted the balance of big fights few times. I dont kill em directly, correct, but iam not letting creeps to kill freeps, seems fit for guard.

Must say that i havent played since januaro or so, only few days now again. Yellow is fun

Guardians are broken at the moment, the extra points from central gondor made it the most op class in the moors in terms of survivality while still doing a lot of dps. A guardian on redline with points on blue and yellow can take any 1v2/3/4/5 and sprint away after getting 2 or 3 kills.

[avengingbananaslug]

I dont want to sound rude but removing heals on guard while guard getting hit few K hit by BA-s isnt to ogreat idea. Thats auda 13, maxed orc/wellcr, tact mits, crit defence above 50% . Creeps hit hard, have 70k+ morale, guard heals allow to stand the ground.. for little time, not forever, we arent wardens.

Adding dps thats not RNG dependat but rather skill and choice: signed, any class, any day, alaways.

Laetly i have runned alot in yellow, debuffing evrything +30% oro +50% atack dura run speed and all thge rest, it seems have tilted the balance of big fights few times. I dont kill em directly, correct, but iam not letting creeps to kill freeps, seems fit for guard.

Must say that i havent played since januaro or so, only few days now again. Yellow is fun

Guards can easily survive longer than wardens. Not quite as much DPS but bleeds are still pretty nuts in relation to their survivability and bleed cashout routinely hits my warg for 8-10k.

[Thaelon]

I dont want to sound rude but removing heals on guard while guard getting hit few K hit by BA-s isnt to ogreat idea. Thats auda 13, maxed orc/wellcr, tact mits, crit defence above 50% . Creeps hit hard, have 70k+ morale, guard heals allow to stand the ground.. for little time, not forever, we arent wardens.

Adding dps thats not RNG dependat but rather skill and choice: signed, any class, any day, alaways.

Laetly i have runned alot in yellow, debuffing evrything +30% oro +50% atack dura run speed and all thge rest, it seems have tilted the balance of big fights few times. I dont kill em directly, correct, but iam not letting creeps to kill freeps, seems fit for guard.

Must say that i havent played since januaro or so, only few days now again. Yellow is fun

Guardians are by far the best soloing class in the game bar none, they have no counter on creepside that they can't reliably beat. I don't mind so much that they are so broken from a soloing perspective as the game is balanced around group/raidvgroup/raid, but when you allow the class to be basically untouchable in a 6v6 while still putting out amazing damage and utility creates a class that rivals spider in terms of group effectiveness. No guard has room to complain about any situation they are in, most times they are on the most suitable class for that situation.

[Humbabumba]

Its about who you are facing. In Snowy, headbutting Zigai and his friends, isnt too great idea
Yeah, guard is strong but still, can be defeated by small group of black arrows spamming store chainstunn with vital target.

[Spilo]

Guardians are by far the best soloing class in the game bar none, they have no counter on creepside that they can't reliably beat. I don't mind so much that they are so broken from a soloing perspective as the game is balanced around group/raidvgroup/raid, but when you allow the class to be basically untouchable in a 6v6 while still putting out amazing damage and utility creates a class that rivals spider in terms of group effectiveness. No guard has room to complain about any situation they are in, most times they are on the most suitable class for that situation.

Exactly. And any class would get wrecked by a few Black Arrows who know what they are doing. Only a Guardian would be able to Pop Sprint, Warrior's Heart, Thrill of Danger (twice possibly because it's on an asinine cooldown of sixty seconds), and get a kill or two. Wardens get all the publicity due to easily reaching 3k levels of DPS with great survivability, but Guardian's survivability is overall better, and 2k+levels of DPS are easily achievable with Guardians (ab)using Bleed cashout.

[Humbabumba]

Well, basic idea of poster wasnt just selfheals, or is class op or not. Strong it is and i agree to that. What is balanced and what isnt, wasnt my pont.
I dont even try to pretend that i have balanced view on the subject, i know i dont.

The basic idea i replayed to, was about RNG.
Dps rng, bleed cashout rng, crit rng. Rng rng rng.

And my main point is, skill and choice over rng; i am for it every day, all the day, all classes.

[Thaelon]

Exactly. And any class would get wrecked by a few Black Arrows who know what they are doing. Only a Guardian would be able to Pop Sprint, Warrior's Heart, Thrill of Danger (twice possibly because it's on an asinine cooldown of sixty seconds), and get a kill or two. Wardens get all the publicity due to easily reaching 3k levels of DPS with great survivability, but Guardian's survivability is overall better, and 2k+levels of DPS are easily achievable with Guardians (ab)using Bleed cashout.

Even a guardian should not get a kill or two against 3 Bas(that know what they are doing), no class should.

[Spilo]

Even a guardian should not get a kill or two against 3 Bas(that know what they are doing), no class should.

Making the assumption that the BAs do not know what they are doing (which is often the case) against a Guardian who does.

[Hayley]

So I've been talking to friends, and discussing with my fellow guardians ways that the class can be improved/changed to better fit the angle that Turbine is going at with the class. I, myself, would rather see bleed proc heals removed, and bleed damage increased, as opposed to the whole "Heal on crit to win". Perhaps Guards could have base damage and crit multiplier raised even higher? NOTE: Removing bleed proc heals would significantly change the outcome of most fights, and would actually allow room for balance and skill. However, I could see the base damage only being increased by about ~10%? Bleed damage could actually go up about 150% compared to what it is right now. Bleeds crit for around 500-700 without the Epic Battles set, and around 550-750 with the set. With how high creep morale is, this is actually very minor, and almost irrelevant. Criting for around 1.5-2.3k would seem more appropriate, no?

To anyone who read this and thought "Hey! He wants his class to be even more OP than it is!", I feel for you. Any Guard can tell you that the class is built off of RNG, and is completely luck based. It's frustrating relying on crits just to stay in a fight. Not to mention, Guards in DPS spec have no usefulness in moors raids, and an increase in damage would give them a viable option when raiding.

I've said this once, and I'll say it a million times if I have to, but I'd really love to see the 75 cap guardian make a comeback. Alas, we never will.

--Third Marshal Kaize--

I loved Guardian class, but it became trash, no sights from the kind of class it was, so I'm happy about dropping it about time, every new guardian I actually met makes me sad... How would these fotm lovers managed on guardians when joining moors was a challenge for us? I remember we were the lesser freep played class at Moors...

[Ellegos]

"I loved Guardian class, but it became trash" could not agree to this more.

I hope someone from dev team can read this thread and feel for people who have being playing guardian for years. I just came back to game 3 weeks ago. Did my grinding and got best gears (at least close to best) got all legacies corrected after making some mistakes and changing legacies. Only to find out it is still not even close to average enough for PvMP.

Let me tell you what happens to guard in PvMP as of my experience. I respect your experiences but I hope you can also understand and respect my experience .

1. Red Line: On very fine gears and complete audacity set I could get all 10 bleeds tick for 1800 per 2 secs. That's like 1 ranged bleed of warden and creeps got morale like of 80-85k. Survival is completely luck based as pointed out before. Mitigations down to 60% but got nothing in return. In raid or 6 man, no one wants to include guardian. I get straight answer that log your RK (r6), guard(r10) is useless.

2. Blue Line: There is only one way to play this line in PvMP. Put a shield wall on healer and put it on follow. LIKE A STUPID PET!! Then LM keeps anti-stun on guard and thats it. Just do a periodic check if you are logged out of inactivity or raid has been wiped.

3. Yellow Line. Could be useful in raids (still not good enough), but raid will ask you do be shield wall instead for healer. This line is not good for solo. Even if some one can allow you to play Yellow in raid, it hardly is usefull as dps is so small and debufs equally weak.

So, I request developers to please consider improving a class a bit more.
Mitigations have been taken away. So please give us some teeth. Increase the bleeds damage. Remove the super long animations of skills. For example Ignore the pain and Turn the Tables have such big animation even though skills are immediate.
Same is the problem with brutal assault. People just don't use it because of its animation even though it is good skill. P/B/E should give small amount of morale (0.5%).
I leave improvements to you guys. You are expert but please let me enjoy my class and toon on which I have spent so much time only to find out it was all in vain.

[Zonflux]

"I loved Guardian class, but it became trash" could not agree to this more.

I hope someone from dev team can read this thread and feel for people who have being playing guardian for years. I just came back to game 3 weeks ago. Did my grinding and got best gears (at least close to best) got all legacies corrected after making some mistakes and changing legacies. Only to find out it is still not even close to average enough for PvMP.

Let me tell you what happens to guard in PvMP as of my experience. I respect your experiences but I hope you can also understand and respect my experience .

1. Red Line: On very fine gears and complete audacity set I could get all 10 bleeds tick for 1800 per 2 secs. That's like 1 ranged bleed of warden and creeps got morale like of 80-85k. Survival is completely luck based as pointed out before. Mitigations down to 60% but got nothing in return. In raid or 6 man, no one wants to include guardian. I get straight answer that log your RK (r6), guard(r10) is useless.

2. Blue Line: There is only one way to play this line in PvMP. Put a shield wall on healer and put it on follow. LIKE A STUPID PET!! Then LM keeps anti-stun on guard and thats it. Just do a periodic check if you are logged out of inactivity or raid has been wiped.

3. Yellow Line. Could be useful in raids (still not good enough), but raid will ask you do be shield wall instead for healer. This line is not good for solo. Even if some one can allow you to play Yellow in raid, it hardly is usefull as dps is so small and debufs equally weak.

So, I request developers to please consider improving a class a bit more.
Mitigations have been taken away. So please give us some teeth. Increase the bleeds damage. Remove the super long animations of skills. For example Ignore the pain and Turn the Tables have such big animation even though skills are immediate.
Same is the problem with brutal assault. People just don't use it because of its animation even though it is good skill. P/B/E should give small amount of morale (0.5%).
I leave improvements to you guys. You are expert but please let me enjoy my class and toon on which I have spent so much time only to find out it was all in vain.

This thread is a very old thread. If we were to talk about Guardian from thread creation up to prior to Update 16.2 then I would say Guardians were actually in a very good spot in PvMP, a bit OP even.

Fast-forward to post Update 16.2 and all of the action is pretty much in the new Osgoliath map so all back 'n forth shuffles. Both Yorrie and myself have opted for builds with more Morale while keeping Raw Power and Demoralizing Anthem (War-chant targets) maxed. The idea here is run in with and shield 'n sword and AoE like crazy, fall back as needed and continually cast War-chant to refresh bleeds and keep at tier 10. Whenever you get the chance swap to 2H and use Overwhelm to cashout bleeds then War-chant or AoE to copy tier 10 bleeds back onto target (since it's a shuffle always another creep close by). War-chant also has a chance to refresh your Parry chain so you can follow-up immediately with another Overwhelm.

http://www.lotrottp.lotrostatus.com/l.php?c=37j

To recap, lots of Morale build with most of your damage coming from bleeds, War-chant and bleed cashouts.

Yorrie went for more Morale build than me at 40,475 and 33,802 mastery whereas I went 35,712 Morale and 48,503 mastery.
Now the mastery rating numbers are quite low but also remember that audacity adds +25% damage.

He actually created an excellent video that I highly recommend watching as it may very well help you out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWTxo3rDD6I

Also.. I feel stongly against being someone's pocket pet Shield-wall in a PvMP raid. If a raid leader doesn't want me in my Red tree then I'll either solo or join a different raid. Honestly as long as you watch the flow of the shuffle you don't need to be in a raid. You will get heals regardless because everyone heal tags and when you run up there into the fray leading the charge hitting all 24+ creeps, yeah freeps are going to heal you like crazy even if you are not in their group. Just make sure you don't get left behind. If you do it right when solo you will have bleeds on 24+ creeps so you will get the same renown and commendations as you would if you were in a raid that just heal tags anyway.

[siipperi]

I would say Guardians were actually in a very good spot in PvMP, a bit OP even.

I think you will get many players who will agree that.

P.S. Anyone still play in Osgiliath?

P.P.S Can Turbine at last remove 5 morale per vitality on DPS tanks, it just makes no sense how game currently is, but to make the most ridiculously OP classes even more so.

[Sakoals]

Guards are op af right now. Makes me feel bad when im playing him and killing creeps on that toon. I think its time for me to switch on my warden

[Armdyl]

Guards are op af right now. Makes me feel bad when im playing him and killing creeps on that toon. I think its time for me to switch on my warden

WHAT?................