Class Update - Guardians

[zipfile]

Thank you for the clarification of what you call a bug regarding brutal charge. You are lucky to have the time and patience to grind out 4 maxxed Li's for 1 character, I, and I'm sure many many other players do not, this one change to the shield use will effectively mean I have to start both LI's again from scratch, belt and 2H to have anything other than very slow dps for landscape content.

You don't have to start anything from scratch. Get imbued legacy replacement scrolls from Minas Tirith Pelennor/ToDT vendors (super EZ to get coins now) and just swap out some legacies. You do not lose all the unlocked tiers, though you lose any XP advacement for the legacy. But then again, XP runes drop like crazy in COS....it honestly shouldn't be that big of an issue.

Once again, let's see what Vastin makes of Shield Use ranks in the upcoming build(s)...

[toalevika]

As a Guardian main, I have to say that I would almost rather have all the current bugs than have the healing component removed from Prey on the Weak. The main thing that makes it so powerful currently on live is the interaction with Radiate and bleed tiering up. With the new separate bleeds, there must be some way to keep the healing but not have it as insane as it is on live. Simply having PotW add more damage in some way is not enough. What made Guardian red line unique (since the trait revamps) was having a dps line that also provided consistent sustain. I don't want red line to become just straight dps. We have plenty of classes for that already. I would prefer to sacrifice a little dps in order to be tanky when I run red line. That's why I play Guard and not Champ.

Just my two cents, but there's nothing I appose quite so strongly as removing the healing from PotW. It must be possible to change red line without throwing away what made it unique.

[srit]

As a Guardian main, I have to say that I would almost rather have all the current bugs than have the healing component removed from Prey on the Weak. The main thing that makes it so powerful currently on live is the interaction with Radiate and bleed tiering up. With the new separate bleeds, there must be some way to keep the healing but not have it as insane as it is on live. Simply having PotW add more damage in some way is not enough. What made Guardian red line unique (since the trait revamps) was having a dps line that also provided consistent sustain. I don't want red line to become just straight dps. We have plenty of classes for that already. I would prefer to sacrifice a little dps in order to be tanky when I run red line. That's why I play Guard and not Champ.

Just my two cents, but there's nothing I appose quite so strongly as removing the healing from PotW. It must be possible to change red line without throwing away what made it unique.

I do like the idea, But there are 3 class traits, red blue yellow. It would be nice to see red pure damage yellow dmg \ tank and blue tank. I dont wana see how it is now with a small increase in damage. We still do need a huge increase in damage. Where the damage in redline is now they can still increase our self healing and we still wont be overpowered as our damage in comparison to other classes is still low.

So yellow line would be more dmg and still good healing

[zipfile]

As a Guardian main, I have to say that I would almost rather have all the current bugs than have the healing component removed from Prey on the Weak. The main thing that makes it so powerful currently on live is the interaction with Radiate and bleed tiering up. With the new separate bleeds, there must be some way to keep the healing but not have it as insane as it is on live. Simply having PotW add more damage in some way is not enough. What made Guardian red line unique (since the trait revamps) was having a dps line that also provided consistent sustain. I don't want red line to become just straight dps. We have plenty of classes for that already. I would prefer to sacrifice a little dps in order to be tanky when I run red line. That's why I play Guard and not Champ.

Just my two cents, but there's nothing I appose quite so strongly as removing the healing from PotW. It must be possible to change red line without throwing away what made it unique.

It was buggy and in the right scenario, completely broken. Not to mention the attempts to fix it and how they all fell flat. I welcome the change, and while POTW heals will be well remembered for some hilarious moments, the thought of actually doing damage on landscape and having a proper rotation, not to mention how much easier it will be leveling the Guardian for new players....all in all, good riddance to heals.

[Joedangod]

Bugs

Not a comprehensive list but a few have popped up lately.

• The trait brutal charge does not result in the next skill critting.
• Hammer down is currently being considered a parry response skill, as such it benefits from CD reductions via warchant and can proc the brutal assault reset.
• Hammer Down still resets on kill.
• Bleeds don't stack between guards.

On the bright side bleeds seem to working as intended, crit rate and all.

Current Thoughts

Damage is still a little bit low as things currently stand. With the (deserved) self heal nerfs red Guardians somewhat need to rely on their ability to quickly DPS mobs down. Unfortunately this DPS isn't quite there. Overall I'd say Guardians need a roughly 25% DPS increase over their current position in order to bring them just below their closest counterpart; red champion. I'm just not entirely sure how such a buff could be implemented.

There are a few obvious places to improve damage:

• Hammer Down could do with being doubled, for a skill with a minute long cooldown it doesn't hit particularly hard.
• Sweeping Cut has very low damage with the base skill barely dealing 10k damage with both strikes combined vs the tavern dummies.
• Brutal assault, Hammer Down and whirling retaliation also have very long animations that slow down gameplay, these could all be shortened.
• Force opening is in dire need of a massive damage boost. The tooltip barely exceeds 10k even with 202k mastery.
• Critical magnitude could do with an increase, prey on the weak for example could be set to offer a 30-50% increase in crit magnitude. Offers a bit more variety than flat skill damage buffs.

In general the single target skills could use an increase in damage so that the bleeds don't account for too much of the DPS. As mentioned in an earlier post scaling 2h passive stats would go a long way to improving the Guardian mastery situation.

[siipperi]

As a Guardian main, I have to say that I would almost rather have all the current bugs than have the healing component removed from Prey on the Weak. The main thing that makes it so powerful currently on live is the interaction with Radiate and bleed tiering up. With the new separate bleeds, there must be some way to keep the healing but not have it as insane as it is on live. Simply having PotW add more damage in some way is not enough. What made Guardian red line unique (since the trait revamps) was having a dps line that also provided consistent sustain. I don't want red line to become just straight dps. We have plenty of classes for that already. I would prefer to sacrifice a little dps in order to be tanky when I run red line. That's why I play Guard and not Champ.

Just my two cents, but there's nothing I appose quite so strongly as removing the healing from PotW. It must be possible to change red line without throwing away what made it unique.

Guard still has extremely potent healing skills. On average fight you should be able to heal about 160-180% of your morale. So almost heal to full 2x. But fights do not last that long anyway for such need. If tou want self healing go blue line, you can produce insane amount of self healing in that line.

[HerpThatDerp]

We're obviously finding it very hard to not respond to each other's opinions here . . .

The red line guardian on Bullroarer is just not the red line I fell in love with years ago. I appreciate the damage increases, and love that I might be able to actually do some fellowship content as a red guard, but removing the sustained healing from Prey on the Weak has killed the feel of the specialization for me. The survivability of the line is what I enjoy, not just being another middling DPS in the fellowship. The sustain on PotW needs a reduction, it does not need to be removed. I would like it if it was put back in its current form (applying a bleed to a bleeding enemy heals you) for a while to let us test it with the loss of the interaction with radiate and the loss of applying bleeds on critical strikes. With the loss of those two factors, it should already be MUCH weaker, and nowhere near the silliness that it was.

[Madmanthief]

Pre U18.1 before Headcase, I mean Edgecase got a hold of it, radiate was magnifying the heal so that the 2.5% of max morale was being multiplied by the number of parry responses if you had multiple mobs around you. Was it OP, Yes, I'm not denying that. I don't believe however that it should be gimped to satisfy a certain subset of the player base.

The only way I would support removing the heal from ToB is if a separate skill was reworked to have a heal that is based on getting hit, but could only occur once every 5-8 seconds or so, so that it's not grossly op.

But as it stands, it looks like certain people in this thread care only for what they want and are not willing to compromise on anything.

[Oelle]

As I didnt test myself, I'll just chime in and tell you, that one guaranteed critical hit is totally irrelevant and boring.
For burglars, a guaranteed critical with aim leads to an impressive bleed if used with their bleedskill or a huge burst with SurpriseStrike or CDG.
For Guardians however, one crit is nothing. Losing the aoe knockdown however is quite hard.
The guaranteed crit was available even before, so what does this change?

If the knockdown has to go, which I may understand, then maybe give us something interesting in return. Like 10 seconds guaranteed critical hits with all skills after use of charge. Or 5% lifeleech as long as charge is up. Or immunity to CC as long as charge is up. Anything is better than one crit that could have randomly happened anyway.

[zipfile]

Pre U18.1 before Headcase, I mean Edgecase got a hold of it, radiate was magnifying the heal so that the 2.5% of max morale was being multiplied by the number of parry responses if you had multiple mobs around you.

Radiate, again, had nothing to do with ToB. ToB has nothing to do with Bleeds. Radiate has nothing to do with Parry response. It was just a heal on parry response crit, and if you critted with a whirling retaliation between multiple mobs, every single crit would give you a heal.

2.5% per crit. You crit on 5 targets, you get healed by 12.5%.
Radiate, ITI, any Bleeds or any other mechanic had nothing to do with it.

[Madmanthief]

And yet here you are on a crusade to remove heals.

I have no videos to prove anything to you so I can't verify anything I claim, I can only know how good my Guardian was doing before that update, and how abysmal it was after it got borked.

You seem to have it in your head that you and only you know what's best, keep thinking that if you wish, I'm done with your constant arrogance.

[zipfile]

And yet here you are on a crusade to remove heals.

I have no videos to prove anything to you so I can't verify anything I claim, I can only know how good my Guardian was doing before that update, and how abysmal it was after it got borked.

You seem to have it in your head that you and only you know what's best, keep thinking that if you wish, I'm done with your constant arrogance.

I guess explaining how a trait properly works and arguing is now disguised as arrogance.
Best of luck then.

Edit: Weren't you the same guy that called people and devs pathetic in multiple posts?

[Joedangod]

And yet here you are on a crusade to remove heals.

For obvious balance reasons you can either have a DPS line or you can have an unkillable self-sustaining tank line. Can't do both. Guardian has two fairly unkillable self-sustaining tank lines, might as well let red be DPS, no?

[commdorvis]

If they wanted to nerf the Guardian's self-heals, Prey on the Weak was the way to go (though if they had, red-line Guardians wouldn't have been able to survive much before dying because their dps is so bad). It operates randomly and leads to some strange situations. Thrill of Battle was fine because it at least depended on using certain skills that define the Guardian, the response skills, and it was never the source of most healing. You could chain parry response skills in a strategic fashion to maximize their healing potential. With POTW a lot of it is just using Sweeping Cut.

[Dmunney]

Yes. Taken from the main patch notes:

We recognize that this will impact some players' current IA layouts. To manage this, those existing Tactical bonus relics will be removed from your IA items and relic inventories, and be replaced by barter tokens that can be exchanged at a Gorgoroth raid vendor for an equivalent relic (either DPS or HPS), so that you can rebalance your IA build around the new restrictions.

NOOOOOOOOOO ... you have lost 3500 ash

[siipperi]

Hopefully Vastin replaces potw power heal with damage focused capstone trait. Thats whats needed. Self heals are plenty, damage can take little increase but self heals arguably still overpowered compared to the damage. Maybe little physical mitigation debuff as capstone for some skill.

[zipfile]

Hopefully Vastin replaces potw power heal with damage focused capstone trait. Thats whats needed. Self heals are plenty, damage can take little increase but self heals arguably still overpowered compared to the damage. Maybe little physical mitigation debuff as capstone for some skill.

Each different currently active bleed reduces physical mitigation by a flat amount in rating?

[Joedangod]

Each different currently active bleed reduces physical mitigation by a flat amount in rating?

Would suggest steering away from mitigation debuffs and the like. Guardian still has some pretty strong self healing so probably shouldn't offer much in the way of group DPS support.

Overall I think a 30-50% crit magnitude buff from Prey would be good. Whilst it sounds excessive it's still far less than other classes work with and it could go a long way towards helping the low average damage per attack that guards suffer. Could also do with a 5% crit chance buff replacing Brutal Charge to further improve that area.

[siipperi]

Each different currently active bleed reduces physical mitigation by a flat amount in rating?

I would prefer flat % if that would happen, no matter of mechanic how we would apply such thing. Rating has history of scale poorly over long duration of time or be op/underpowered depending on the level. % is always % even if its small amount of it. Also rating seems way more demanding thing to implement from dev side.

Sure like 2% each bleed or such would be interesting mechanic but if they would do something revolving around mitigation reduction I would think they prefer more simple approach.

[zipfile]

I would prefer flat % if that would happen, no matter of mechanic how we would apply such thing. Rating has history of scale poorly over long duration of time or be op/underpowered depending on the level. % is always % even if its small amount of it. Also rating seems way more demanding thing to implement from dev side.

Sure like 2% each bleed or such would be interesting mechanic but if they would do something revolving around mitigation reduction I would think they prefer more simple approach.

Yeah, good points about the ratings. Though, thinking a bit more, it could give more power to a Guardian as a DPS in 3/6 mans (if you're that desperate or you kin wants to do a fun run)...

[zipfile]

Would suggest steering away from mitigation debuffs and the like. Guardian still has some pretty strong self healing so probably shouldn't offer much in the way of group DPS support.

Overall I think a 30-50% crit magnitude buff from Prey would be good. Whilst it sounds excessive it's still far less than other classes work with and it could go a long way towards helping the low average damage per attack that guards suffer. Could also do with a 5% crit chance buff replacing Brutal Charge to further improve that area.

Pretty interesting. Though, it would require crit rating to be useful, and while leveling, there aren't many ways of getting high crit rating. Changing Thrill of Battle to add %crit could help remedy that...

[Gandalfy]

I agree with those who have said "Leave knockdown alone"

There is no reason to remove it.

It is the last fun skill that a guardian has.

If you feel you must remove it, please give us an AEO stun skill in its place. (like champs and hunters have)


To make redline guardian DPS viable for soloing in Mordor, remember that the morale of the mobs is from about 60k up to 170k,
so taking 3 minutes to kill each individual mob is tedious. (plus the respawn time in some areas is very fast)

Also bear in mind that until you hit L112 (when you get access to the first available LoE gear bartered for ash),
it is very difficult to equip more phys mastery as well as LoE and finesse.
So people posting DPS data who have hit Level 115, and have massive phys masteries are NOT giving a realistic picture of what it's like to solo in Mordor at Level 105-112.
My own guardian is at L 107 and has a phys mastery of only 50k.
I could increase it, but at the cost of much finesse, morale or LoE.


Having said all this you are on the right track:
1. Increase damage of base skills dramatically.
I haven't played on Bullroarer but from the stats already posted, I can see they need Much more boosting yet.

2. Eliminate a 10 tier bleed system, and replace with much simpler, faster system.

Congratulations to SSG for boosting the Red Guardian.
I have been asking for this for a long time, and it fell deaf on Turbine's ears.

[zipfile]

I agree with those who have said "Leave knockdown alone"

There is no reason to remove it.

It is the last fun skill that a guardian has.

If you feel you must remove it, please give us an AEO stun skill in its place. (like champs and hunters have)


To make redline guardian DPS viable for soloing in Mordor, remember that the morale of the mobs is from about 60k up to 170k,
so taking 3 minutes to kill each individual mob is tedious. (plus the respawn time in some areas is very fast)

Also bear in mind that until you hit L112 (when you get access to the first available LoE gear bartered for ash),
it is very difficult to equip more phys mastery as well as LoE and finesse.
So people posting DPS data who have hit Level 115, and have massive phys masteries are NOT giving a realistic picture of what it's like to solo in Mordor at Level 105-112.
My own guardian is at L 107 and has a phys mastery of only 50k.
I could increase it, but at the cost of much finesse, morale or LoE.


Having said all this you are on the right track:
1. Increase damage of base skills dramatically.
I haven't played on Bullroarer but from the stats already posted, I can see they need Much more boosting yet.

2. Eliminate a 10 tier bleed system, and replace with much simpler, faster system.

Congratulations to SSG for boosting the Red Guardian.
I have been asking for this for a long time, and it fell deaf on Turbine's ears.

You have bash, keep a shield on a swap.
Investing into blue, you can get shield-smash.
Finally, hammer-down now stuns the target if it's under 50% morale.

[Macdui]

So coins are easy to get for raiders to get plenty of legacy replacement scrolls...

So the guy with only 2 LIs and one being a double hander is more than likely to have never been given a raid slot (unless his raid leader was an EdgeCase disciple), he may have an alt who has the currency ofc. But the fact of his complaint tells me he doesn't yet have this access to imbued legacy replacement scrolls that the raiders have.

Ok raiders have earned their coin but I'd argue the majority of players will not have these accomplishment achieved. Yet, and not being class specific, still be in the same boat in that they ideally have to re-jig their LIs or fall further behind the curve.

Perhaps it's in their minds to require a certain amount of players to need to use the store and so pay for the changes. For me I have 28 imbued LIs over 7 characters and not a lot of coin. I'm sure a few scrolls will be in the update going live but different characters and classes are going to "need" different numbers dependant of the current state of their LIs and specific requirements.

For myself I have future proofed the class changes by making alt build LIs that won't need so much of a re-jig and the resources to make more from scratch if needed. I have kept LIs with up to now duff legacies that, it would seem, are now coming into their own. Other's won't be so OCD about it and be dumped on by SSG's changes.

I'm yet to try the guard on BR, been putting it off as it's likely to effect my game play more than my other classes since HD made the bleeder possible and replaced the fun I once derived from tanking.

Mac

[Oelle]

Please dont scale tanking skills dps/threat with melee weapon dps.

Guards lost many nice legacies (guardians ward duration, melee targets, warriors heart duration) with imbuement and as long as shieldskills scale with the belt item, keeping those nice legacies and just not imbueing was totally viable.

Sure, I'll always have an imbued sword with me for cases where my guard wants to deal damage... but I'd prefer, if my imbued weapon didnt triple my tanking dps compared to my unimbued one.