Class Update - Guardians

[Gandalfy]

The suggestion to use yellow line to use cataclysmic shout is invalid because this thread is about Red line.
Currently Red line is the only useful line for DPS.
Yellow line DPS is incredibly small due to the small base damage of the skills (which it seems is not being significantly increased)

99% of the game involves the need for guardians to have DPS. (Even the 1% of players who get to tank in the abyss raid probably spend more time doing DPS in dailies)
98% of the game involves the need to kill multiple mobs at the same time.

Guardian DPS is already so low that the game is tedious.
To force us now to kill only one target at a time is going to make it worse.

Why are they turning Guardians into a weak version of burglars, but taking away our AOE and CC skills?
If they gave us a new stealth skill, that would give us some compensation.

Why can't Guardians be similar to champs, but with slightly lower DPS?

I suggest that a message be sent to all VIP guardians and ask them how they feel about losing Charge knockdown skill without getting any skill to replace it.
The feedback ought to give SSG an idea of how many will quit and how much income they will lose by making that mistake.

Whining Free-to-play creeps and wardens should not be listened to because they are not trying to improve the game.
Creeps want knockdown removed because they hate falling down for guardians, and Wardens are jealous of our awesome Knockdown skill.

[Decrepify]

The suggestion to use yellow line to use cataclysmic shout is invalid because this thread is about Red line.
Currently Red line is the only useful line for DPS.
Yellow line DPS is incredibly small due to the small base damage of the skills (which it seems is not being significantly increased)

99% of the game involves the need for guardians to have DPS. (Even the 1% of players who get to tank in the abyss raid probably spend more time doing DPS in dailies)
98% of the game involves the need to kill multiple mobs at the same time.

Guardian DPS is already so low that the game is tedious.
To force us now to kill only one target at a time is going to make it worse.

Why are they turning Guardians into a weak version of burglars, but taking away our AOE and CC skills?
If they gave us a new stealth skill, that would give us some compensation.

Why can't Guardians be similar to champs, but with slightly lower DPS?

I suggest that a message be sent to all VIP guardians and ask them how they feel about losing Charge knockdown skill without getting any skill to replace it.
The feedback ought to give SSG an idea of how many will quit and how much income they will lose by making that mistake.

Whining Free-to-play creeps and wardens should not be listened to because they are not trying to improve the game.
Creeps want knockdown removed because they hate falling down for guardians, and Wardens are jealous of our awesome Knockdown skill.

Go to Bullroarer now and test the DPS. Sweeping Cut alone with it's new bleed deals close damage to what you're doing in total on live.
You are not being nerfed, this is an overhaul, aimed at increasing and stabilizing the entire trait tree.
Guardian's world isn't going to end, our DPS will be in a much, much better spot than before, something we wished for all along. In the end, it's your choice to make.

Oh, and depending how well the upcoming builds come along and how they are going to utilise Shield Use ranks, POTW and some traits, I will be resubbing on a regular basis, so they might lose you, but they will gain me.

[Joedangod]

Can people please start logging into Bullroarer and start testing stuff before yelling on forums?

You've made up your mind on this point before you even tried it in practice.

[Macdui]

Mac, I feel so ashamed that I actually had hope that the devs would realize the mistake they made

I quit for 3 months when Helm's Deep hit. Such a depressing time for LOTRO.

Yeah I kind of stopped playing the Guardian. The end game Big Battles... everything ignored my threat and taunts, nothing hit me to get any reactives off. I was behind the curve on the Bleeder spec, we were in Gondor before I tried it. And then I was finally getting some fun back into playing Guardian. Then the bizarre flat damage boost to mounted melee skills came in and found ST damage mounted far exceeded on foot ST damage (or tactical class mounted damage), so had some fun with that.

I have a cap burglar I don't play because it's a ST for damage, a Champ for AE fun and the guard wannabe champ heading for ST misery now? If they are going to knacker my AE on foot are they going to give my mounted guard some AE skills? No.

We've had to take so much abuse to our class with the threat mechanic destruction just the obvious tip.


There is a chink of a smile on my face with the realisation at the queue of official streamers you'll be dressing up for the new hunter build, rotation and add-on setups in the coming months. Yeah take the summer off...



Mac

[Bhorn_EU]

About the base dps boost, on live my 1h sword is 298 dps, on BR it is now 500.9 dps; i take it this is how the the damage has been increased rather than increasing the damage of the skills themselvs.

[Gandalfy]

Here is a list of reasons to keep Brutal Charge Knockdown

1. It is a favorite skill for many guardians
If anyone doesn't believe this, then do a proper survey of people who actually play guardians.

2. It makes the guardian class much more fun to play.
Why? By watching the animation of orcs and uruks fall down on their knees while you beat on them.
It gives you the satisfaction of being able to pay back those creatures for all their evil deeds and for all the times they have killed you.
The more fun a class is, the more people will play it.

3. It buys you time to kill mobs.
If you run into a group of mobs that would kill you in 5 seconds, but instead you can stun them for 5 seconds, you have a much better chance to win the fight.
If you don't have the knockdown skill, you may die.
So, it increases survivability, which is in line with the identity of the guardian.

4. If you take away a powerful skill without an equally powerful replacement skill, people will feel they are being nerfed and will likely leave the game.
This is particularly true for people who primarily play the guardian class, and can't see themselves playing other classes.
If large numbers of guardians quit the game, then their friends (who play other classes) will also leave the game because their friends are gone.
Loss of players = Loss of revenue

Here is a thread started by another player:
https://www.lotro.com/forums/showthr...uardian+charge

Here is another quote from someone on this thread.
"Please keep the knockdown or perhaps make it a toggle/alt skill where we can select either knockdown OR crit?
Seriously though, it's about time we Guardians got a lil lovin', we've been nerfed too many times over the years"

5. Making major changes in a negative direction (taking away useful skills like knockdown) will result in a negative emotional response of the players.
Turbine learned this lesson the hard way in the past, which is one reason why they gave Guardians the brutal charge knockdown skill in the first place.
SSG is new to the scene and has yet to learn this lesson.

6. One of the first business principles is to give the customer what they want.
If they don't get what they want, they will go elsewhere.
Many people in this thread have asked to keep brutal charge, so let them have it.

7. Those who suggest that shield bash is equivalent are ignoring the fact that the brutal charge knockdown can be used with a 2H weapon, which is the default weapon for redline Guardian.
After putting about 500 Scrolls of Empowerment into a 2H sword, I'm not going to give up this valuable skill without a protest.

8. If SSG leaves the Brutal charge knockdown skill as it is, it will cost them nothing.
If they remove it, it will inevitably result in loss of players and loss of revenue.


The improvement to bleeds is most welcome but loss of a great skill like Brutal charge knockdown is not.

[Zvim666]

I was busy testing other classes during build #1 and didn't get around to the Guardian because he was a lower priority, given blue hasn't been changed. I've had a chance to test the red changes during build #2 so will give my thoughts on the changes.

"The goal of this redesign is to strip out a lot of the underlying complexity of the tree, while retaining its general flavor and giving it a faster, more effective skill rotation."

In general, I like the changes, more specifically I like the intent of the changes. I am not sure where the ideal damage levels are or if they are going to be adjusted down, the damage output for landscape seems strong, probably too strong however with the best gear available but haven't tested it with lower tier gear/essence/relics.


"The line is intended to be a functional soloing build for the guardian that will allow them to play through the game at a much more acceptable pace. It is not explicitly intended to be fully competitive as a raid-DPS line, though we'll see where it actually sits in testing."

While it is strong for landscape I don't think it will translate well for a raid simply because the bleeds don't stack/tier up so all you do is refresh the duration, the non-bleed based abilities are reasonable for landscape but a long way off the dps classes.


"Overall skill damage for the guardian has increased substantially. The blue and yellow lines will see some benefit from this through the base skills, but the red line will see the bulk of this benefit, through their tree specific skills and bleed effects."

The damage is substantially higher.

The three core abilities are now the abilities that afflict the bleeds; Brutal Assault inflicts (Haemorrhaging Wound 3), which is the strongest of the bleeds, a short 5 tick bleed. Sweeping Cut inflicts the second most potent bleed (Slashing Wound 3) and Thrust inflicts the weakest of the three bleeds (Deep Wound 3) which when traited is a 14 tick bleed.

To inflict all three bleeds requires Brutal Assault -> Force Opening -> Retaliate -> Thrust -> Sweeping Cut It doesn't matter if Thrust, Sweeping Cut or Brutal Assault are partial BPEd, the bleeds are still inflicted and once ticking they can't be BPEd so they are a very strong source of damage. Due to landscape fighting the guardian is front-on to mobs all the time, the non-bleed abilities tend to have their damage crippled by BPE and partials. Doing some testing on the target dummy the singe target non-bleed abilities didn't contribute a significant amount of damage, even the traited abilities like hammer down and to the king weren't contributing much in the way of damage, when landscaping there is considerable BPEing/partial from mobs and there aren't any single target abilities that penetrate some of the BPE like some of the champion abilities, ie Brutal Strike and Ferocious Strike.

It isn't the end of the world if the bleeds remain as strong as they are, however, if Guardian goes live similar to how it is now, I will probably ignore most of the single target abilities, rely on the rotation that stacks bleeds and focus on the area of effect abilities.


"The tiering bleed concept has been eliminated due to bugs and performance issues. Additionally, we felt it was not a good concept for landscape play, as it took too long to set up Bleed stacks to be worthwhile."

You used to be able to tier up very quickly with radiate and a bunch of mobs, I understand it was a cumbersome mechanic. In red spec, Thrust plus Deeper Wounds lasts for 14 ticks (28 seconds). Without tiering or stacking it is a very long duration for landscape combat, I don't think landscape combat vs a signature would last half as long as that even with a 1her, which makes the investment in Deeper Wounds somewhat redundant.


"The new version has three separate bleeds associated with Sweeping Cuts, Thrust, and Brutal Strike, and the primary skill rotation revolves around keeping these up as efficiently as possible, while weaving in other skills as feasible. There are still some skills that play off of existing bleeds (such as overpower), or cash them out (such as Honorable Combat), but otherwise the bleed structure is much simpler and the interactions are fewer and much more explicit."

I like the changes overall, I think it is a move in the right direction.

I haven't tested Honourable Combat, I think the maximum health restore you can get is 12%, I have about 83k morale in dps gear, that would put it to around a 10k heal for stripping all the bleeds from Sweeping Cut if memory serves me correct. I don't think Honourable Combat has ever been at the stage where it sounds like a good idea to use it. In the grand scheme of things, if you are in melee with 4 mobs, the 10k isn't going to last very long, you would probably lose the 10k in the time it takes for the global cooldown to refresh.

I am not sure if it is something you plan on changing, but at present Smashing Stab after a Retaliation puts on bleed that inflicts about 300 damage a tick. I assume you want to keep it to the 3 bleeds? Tenderize also creates a bleed but I haven't tested it, I assume that one is similar to Smashing Stab.


"While the red line bleeds are now far stronger, they no longer benefit from the yellow line Radiate talent."

Radiate was the major problem and was holding the Guardian back from getting some decent fixes. I think the Guardian's ability to damage a few mobs at the same time is quite reasonable. However, I am not sure if Sweeping Strike is bugged, it's damage outside of the traited bleed is quite low compared to the other area effect abilities, it used to be one of the better AE abilities.


"Brutal Charge now causes the next skill to crit instead of a knockdown effect (note that it can still be b/p/e'd)."

Isn't this the same effect as the rank 6 To The Rescue effect? Is that being changed? It has been a contentious issues, it seems, I never used it that often and don't really care if the knockdown is removed, however, it situationally was useful when you had to deal with multiple mobs.


"Warrior's Heart bubble is now based on a % of max vitality."

It is a good change, but I feel Stoic is least useful for blue spec given how often and how hard you are being hit, the 20k ish bubble for a non-tank is probably a lot more useful than the 50k ish bubble for a tank.


"Catch a breath LI bonuses now properly affect the skill. % change is now additive, and has been adjusted to reflect this change."

I like the changes to it.


"Shield Use is effectively obsolete for the time being. We're evaluating what to do with it currently as it has never scaled properly with our other systems."

Perhaps it can provide an incoming healing benefit.

[TiberiasKirk]

I was busy testing other classes during build #1 and didn't get around to the Guardian because he was a lower priority, given blue hasn't been changed. I've had a chance to test the red changes during build #2 so will give my thoughts on the changes.


"Overall skill damage for the guardian has increased substantially. The blue and yellow lines will see some benefit from this through the base skills, but the red line will see the bulk of this benefit, through their tree specific skills and bleed effects."

The damage is substantially higher.

It might be for red, but I managed to get my blue guardian on last night and kill about 50 wolves in the dale lands. My shield smash was critiing 25% lower, mostly because I have lots of tactical mastery in my essence slots instead of physical mastery. No time to get essence reclaimation scrolls and switch out the essences with physical master or just might as the test server is already down again. Blue guard damage probably isn't higher but there is more work to do.
that's what I object to the most. I have to rebuild my blue guard for these changes that will probably in the end produce no more damage than before and may still leave him nerfed albeit slightly. For a toon that already was hurting for dps, I don't see the point.

The bubble will be nice, but it means giving up other traits. Probably will give up on some yellow stuff. Catch breath is nice as well. So no more or maybe less damage and more survivability...not sure its a trade I wanted personally but could understand if the community prefers it this way.

"Shield Use is effectively obsolete for the time being. We're evaluating what to do with it currently as it has never scaled properly with our other systems."

Perhaps it can provide an incoming healing benefit.

its not finished and shows a lack of care. Not an impressive way of doing business with soloers and small groupers like me putting some work into getting those starlit crystals.
Then inviting us to test it while it clearly is unfinished. Why bother?

[yorrie]

We are in a better place then we was so i'm happy with the change tbh

[Gandalfy]

Some have suggested that the ideal guardian in red would be limited to single targets only and this is the reason to remove the AOE knockdown.

Changing the guardian into a ST only class in red makes no sense for these reasons:

1. Of the hundreds of quests and instances, encountering multiple enemies at the same time is compulsory most of the time.
Being forced to kill only one at a time would be tedious and frustrating.

2. The primary role of the Guardian is to protect others in the fellowship.
How can you protect your light armoured friends from multiple enemies if you can only deal with one at a time?

3. For the past 11 years, Guardians have been an AOE class.
The main Guardian's red line skills are AOE skills and have always been - Sweeping Cut, Vexing Blow and Whirling Retaliation.
Are they planning to remove these in future updates?

4. No one signed up to play Guardian with the vision of becoming a ST only class.
If we wanted to do that we would have chosen burglar, because at least then we would have stealth, evade and amazing CC skills that Guardians are not being given.

5. Going from AOE to ST is a nerf, and players hate their favorite class being nerfed. Players react by simply quitting the game.

[Decrepify]

Some have suggested that the ideal guardian in red would be limited to single targets only and this is the reason to remove the AOE knockdown.

Changing the guardian into a ST only class in red makes no sense for these reasons:

1. Of the hundreds of quests and instances, encountering multiple enemies at the same time is compulsory most of the time.
Being forced to kill only one at a time would be tedious and frustrating.

In all the quests I've seen, excluding the "Kill a dozen of X and one Y", you rarely have to fight more than 3 unless you yourself make that large of a pull by running in and AOEing. And again, if you were on BR, you'd notice that you can still AOE more than fine with just Sweeping Cut, Whirling Retaliation, War-Chant and if you build that way, Shield-Smash. AOE damage is still there, and present.

2. The primary role of the Guardian is to protect others in the fellowship.
How can you protect your light armoured friends from multiple enemies if you can only deal with one at a time?

Red line is a not a protection/tanking line. It's a DPS line.

3. For the past 11 years, Guardians have been an AOE class.
The main Guardian's red line skills are AOE skills and have always been - Sweeping Cut, Vexing Blow and Whirling Retaliation.
Are they planning to remove these in future updates?

All 3 skills got massive buffs on BR. That shows the opposite, which is something you'd have noticed if you paid attention.

4. No one signed up to play Guardian with the vision of becoming a ST only class.
If we wanted to do that we would have chosen burglar, because at least then we would have stealth, evade and amazing CC skills that Guardians are not being given.

True. But you're now looking at the big picture, not just Brutal Assault. Guardian is an AOE class, tanking prioritized, with more than capable DPS line for soloing or doing smaller/easier instances like FIs or underscaled stuff.

5. Going from AOE to ST is a nerf, and players hate their favorite class being nerfed. Players react by simply quitting the game.

You are still getting good AOE damage. Sweeping Cut (Did I mention it now has a bleed of it's own?), Whirling Retaliation, War-Chant, *Shield-Smash*. All pretty good AOE skills.
If the Knock down removal is something that makes you quit, in light of all the massive buffs and reworks you're getting instead, then it kinda looks like you were just asking for a reason to quit.

Questing speed, especially for lower levels, will be much, much, much faster now that critical hits are no longer needed for bleeds, Radiate not needed to spread them and POTW to survive 2 minute fights in Mordor with a single mob.

....Posts about someone else's feedback that are opinion-based in nature WILL be deleted from this targeted feedback thread." There are two posters in this thread disobeying the rules....
It's pretty obvious who they are.

They aren't opinion based, they're factual, backed up by masses and masses of accessible DPS parses that were done by the said posters.

[yorrie]

GUARDIAN LIVE VS BETA CLASS CHANGE



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[Decrepify]

GUARDIAN LIVE VS BETA CLASS CHANGE



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Thank you for the video. Exact proof needed for people to see that AOE potential is not only still there, but massively improved, just as ST DPS is.
And at what cost? Losing POTW self-healing and Brutal Charge knock down (Brutal Charge wasn't even used in the video). A great step in the right direction.

Edit: What's the music used? Sounds pretty epic and awesome.

[Zvim666]

It might be for red, but I managed to get my blue guardian on last night and kill about 50 wolves in the dale lands. My shield smash was critiing 25% lower, mostly because I have lots of tactical mastery in my essence slots instead of physical mastery. No time to get essence reclaimation scrolls and switch out the essences with physical master or just might as the test server is already down again. Blue guard damage probably isn't higher but there is more work to do.
that's what I object to the most. I have to rebuild my blue guard for these changes that will probably in the end produce no more damage than before and may still leave him nerfed albeit slightly. For a toon that already was hurting for dps, I don't see the point.

The major difference is not getting anything from shield use, however, now shield abilities scale based on the weapon which means you will get the full effect from a striking relic, the enchantment ones have taken a substantial hit. You would need to convert to striking and physical mastery to do a more accurate comparison of the variance.

I converted over my R/B spec weapon LI to a striking relic and replaced the belt one with a physical mastery relic. Outside of the shield legacies, those LIs focused on AE attacks, sweeping Cut i think is bugged, the initial damage it inflicts is very low when it used to be quite good. That spec seemed to function okay, the damage is still quite solid, my R/B gear has a few evade essences and I use a few pieces that have BPE stats on it, overall it is very solid defensively and are able to dish out a reasonable amount of damage to multiple targets which is suited well for fighting multiple mobs at the same time, it also reduces the incoming damage sufficiently that the new Catch a Breath is worthwhile, heals for about a third of your morale if you take the legacy.

My R/B spec goes deep enough in blue for Shield Smash/Follow Through and enough into Yellow for War Chant, you still have plenty of points to max out Brutal Assault and Thrust traits, even though you can't spread the bleeds with radiate any longer, I never took thrust or brutal assault in my live R/B shield oriented build, I think they are strong enough now that you want to take them and just drop bleeds and switch targets when they are available.

I still find the shield combos to be better than the non-bleed melee strikes when you use a 1h/shield combo, largely because you have a +12% critical strike chance with the shield abilities and a few of the shield abilities stun mobs, which mitigates some of the damage you take, which helps when fighting multiple mobs.

There is still a significant difference in damage output between 2h and 1h/shield, I think if I was questing and most of the encounters are just 1 or 2 mobs I would prefer going in with the 2her, if you are doing something which involves you going into a camp or dungeon or whatever where you can get 3, 4 or more mobs, I would prefer the 1h setup. I think there is a good trade-off in the beta, in live the 1h/shield combo was probably the best in every scenario.

The bubble will be nice, but it means giving up other traits. Probably will give up on some yellow stuff. Catch breath is nice as well. So no more or maybe less damage and more survivability...not sure its a trade I wanted personally but could understand if the community prefers it this way.

Stoic is too far down the tree to be of interest for anything other than a blue build and I don't think it would be that great for a tank spec guardian. I am not sure about an offensive B/R combo, Bleed them Dry adds 1 tick to Sweeping Cut and Brutal Assault bleeds, adds 2 ticks to Thrust bleed which you can live without. The main benefit of being red, outside of the extra bleed ticks, is the offensive benefit of Overpower and Heavy Blows. Blue would give you the benefit of Fortification and some passive healing with Bolstering Blocks. There probably isn't a massive difference in terms of offensive damage, particularly if you prefer the 1h/shield combo. Sweeping Cut and Thrust bleeds are easy to replace, Brutal Assault is probably harder to refresh, probably not that hard if you fight a number of mobs and generate a lot of parry responses.

I think the way bleeds worked you always had to go red but the specialisation itself is not as strong as it used to be meaning going blue wouldn't be the trade-off that it currently is live.

its not finished and shows a lack of care. Not an impressive way of doing business with soloers and small groupers like me putting some work into getting those starlit crystals.
Then inviting us to test it while it clearly is unfinished. Why bother?

Betas, that is what they are there for, to test things they are working on, even if it is not in a finished state. It is critical people feedback and they allow problems not to go live as finished.

[Macdui]

For me the Guardian has always been about being tough and able to survive. So it's never been a priority to do much in the way of damage.


Entering Mordor there were quite a few of us going for a shield spec, even if inexplicably I had lost the ability to make on level shields. I stayed in red, some even speced blue. As every fight was much longer for a guard we were getting all sorts of special attacks and stuns that other classes never saw because they killed stuff quicker. Those Uruks in Tali that healed themselves I never saw on champ, mini and hunter. Maybe RKs suffered too being static in red, perhaps a few chose yellow for Mordor ease. But getting down to Shield-smash got us interrupts and stuns to get in behind to get the full potential of staggers and prey on the weak. Stuff that's however briefly stunned doesn't hurt so much. If you're kiteing a load of mobs a smash here and there stops most of the first rank of mobs hitting you, the other ranks are still trying to catch up while you can reapply bleeds and other AE before backing out. But you're still only wearing stuff down and staying one foot ahead of mobs, so finding a few more mobs to spread some bleeds onto is just efficiency. It wasn't that we were powerful, we were just trying to make the best of what had been left to us. We could pull a load of mobs in an area but were we actually clearing quicker than any another class? Don't we all just pull as much as we can efficiently dispatch. One is a bit boring, two or three adds a bit, but a full camp gets the juices flowing and relief from the grind and more tedious content. And it kind of made up for the single button push to lock in aggro on the tank role.

Where have I heard that complaint of a 1 button rotation?
I had the LIs to make the build work straight away so it was easy to switch and see the potential.


Will doing more damage be as fun? Well we will pull as many mobs as we can efficiently dispatch, don't yet know what ballpark figure that is yet. Possibly our AE target max? I guess I won't be pulling the entire Arganaith Uruk camp again.


Mac

[Marxlne]

No one running red will run with a shield. Its our turn to laugh at the suggestion that they would.

But this is a real hoot.

Keep laughing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnXFQdd__es

[Decrepify]

Keep laughing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnXFQdd__es

Pretty awesome seeing 150k crits on shield smash....another proof of the potential of a S&B build.

[TiberiasKirk]

Keep laughing:

I'm really happy to see that shield smash is working so well. My guard has a 1-H weapon, so I don't have a problem, but....

You missed the point so I am laughing even harder.
All you did was prove my point which was part of a larger conversation about what Guards with 2H weapons will do with no AOE stun.

On live server a lot of redline guards have 2H weapons so they will have to change to get this performance and have AOE stun.

Nothing you are showing changes that.

The casual player who doesn't have more than 1 legendary weapon is going to get driven away by a total revamp of the Guard which leaves them out in the cold.
Having to change from a tactical build to a physical mastery build is some unwanted work for even guards who have 1H weapons.
Having lower game population isn't good for anyone.

Red line should continue to be a viable way to play for people who have 2H weapons. Thanks to demos like this they will feel double left out now (lower damage AND no AOE stun)

[danee593]

Keep laughing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnXFQdd__es

Wow shield smash! Any tests with blue line, Did SM changed somehow? We migh be able to get enough threat with real skills rather than challenge.

[Decrepify]

Wow shield smash! Any tests with blue line, Did SM changed somehow? We migh be able to get enough threat with real skills rather than challenge.

I wanted to test it while BR was up and running, but getting a decent group for any real instance was pretty difficult. Till update hits live or there are more people who aren't busy parsing entire time on next BR build, we won't know for certain. I really hope so.

[Joedangod]

Keep laughing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnXFQdd__es

That's... probably not good. Even with it being level 105 T1 if shield smash crits for 150k the suggestion I put forth for a 50% crit magnitude increase should probably be ignored. Pledge definitely needs to be moved further down the tree.

[Decrepify]

Has anyone ran any actual test with bleed critical rate and bleed critical damage from the legacy? If not, I'll make parses when BR comes up again.

[Decrepify]

..It is likely that in the future the red-line will see some significant tweaks to its game-play, shifting it back away from AoE/self-heal, and more towards a full out DPS/leveling line, while we try to get Yellow back into the primacy for AoE off-tanking. I don't have any details to offer on those as I'm currently working on other matters, but in terms of intent, expect the builds to move in those general directions.

Vastin, with some bugs and traits left to iron out, I would say you've done an amazing job so far with the Red line Guardian, bolded part is near completion and I'm very thankful for it.

However, a part that still remains is clarification as to what the yellow line is supposed to be?
AOE damage? Off-tanking? Debuffing? Trait tree is all over the place, in some places too complicated and yet useless (Bolster, Tenderize, Singular Focus), while at the same time having insane panic skill in the Thrill of Danger traits. And right next to it, a decent AOE damage.

Will we see any reworks for yellow in this patch or upcoming builds? Or are we waiting a bit further down the line?
Also, if possible, can we make BR server stay open for at least 4 full days (weekends included)? I think you'd gather many more people onto the server to provide more information.

[dawaaagh]

I don't even know why people insist brutal charge knockdown being useful in landscape. Extremely rarely available for landscape due to long CD and just few second stun. Garbage for landscape, breaks mechanics in instances.

Care to elaborate why it breaks instance mechanics ? its not like its the only aoe stun in the game and u said it yourself it has a long cd.

Furthermore proper groups don't take red line guards into instances anyway unless its an instance that is easy at which point group makeup/an aoe stun on a lengthily cd doesn't make a difference.

from my point of view the stun on brutal charge only makes those of us who play a spec that is generally considered bad have something that can be considered useful in some situations.

Btw as someone who's main focus is landscape its far from garbage, will it suddenly make it unplayable ? no, the same way leaving it as is doesn't make it game breaking.

[TiberiasKirk]

Had time to kill about 50 wolves out in the dale lands while the test server was up this week.

Killed about equal numbers using a rotation of [Guardian's ward, shield blow, shield swipe, bash and shield smash].
to trigger disorientation

Melee auto attacks occurred in large numbers spread throughout the rotation (about 400 total over the 25 wolves for each case).

Chart below show how DISORIENTATION ACTUALLY INCREASED FULL AVOIDANCE CHANCE instead of decreasing it (calculated by taking avoided auto attacks and then dividing by the total number of auto attacks not including missed attacks which there were very few anyway)



The difference between the average is much greater than the margin of error depicted by the min and max values for the two cases. The increase in full avoidance for using disorientation on the test server is statistically significant.

Now looking at partial avoidance, nothing changes. The difference between the average partial avoidance with and without disorientation is well within the margin of error represented by the min and max values that are +/- one standard deviation below and above the average values as seen on the chart below.



chat logs for the two cases are available for download and represent the raw data used in the analysis below. Files are titled to indicate whether disorientation was traited or not.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/14nz...ew?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1u96...ew?usp=sharing