Class Update - Guardians

[Deadly_Myths]

imo the damage is really high, some skills were critting for 70-80k, damage really needs a nerf.

[siipperi]

Shield-smash behaves odd on some instance mobs. On bosses it can't crit and on trash I had 60-90% crit chance with no critical rating on my gear (stock ~3-4% chance). I don't know if this is related to targets immunity stage or what. Combat analysis also showcased higher crit chance than actual crit chance is so maybe there is some oddity with the skill since CA doesn't behave like that with live versio of it. never seen this kind of behavior on other skills with the plugin. Just observed that in 2 different instances with good 500-600 attacks.

Guard DPS is legit strong now.

[Giliodor]

Terrible Wound critical chance is bugged, only crits ~13.5% of the time with 23.7% crit chance. 311 hits.

[Findun]

please keep the 1min cooldown on challenge. we've been asking for this change for years now on guardian forums, because we oldschool tanks were fed up about the fact that spamming challenge was all you needed to do in order to tank. now back to oldschool actual building up threat, but most importantly we'll be able to tell bad, good and really good guards now ... thumbs up!

now change litany to old moria days and guardian is back on track where it always belonged to again.

[BotLike]

please keep the 1min cooldown on challenge. we've been asking for this change for years now on guardian forums, because we oldschool tanks were fed up about the fact that spamming challenge was all you needed to do in order to tank. now back to oldschool actual building up threat, but most importantly we'll be able to tell bad, good and really good guards now ... thumbs up!

now change litany to old moria days and guardian is back on track where it always belonged to again.

Who's we and what exactly were you asking for ?

Challenge cooldown offers nothing in terms of old school , it's just nuisance.
The aggro system is still the same , it's problematic to say the least and a leftover from when Turbine policy was to faceroll the game to the ground. I'll take the old threat system any day , give it to me now , give me anything that remotely resembles it , i'll take it , but we got nothing like that.
I'm fine with the targets nerf but not with the cd , it's almost too long atm.

I see your point on telling good/bad guardian and it's somewhat true , although good CC will carry the guardian in most cases.
So not sure if it matters much , there's a chance even good guardians take advantage of CC to turn a trash pull into aoe zerg safely without spending extra time/effort or changing anything when it comes to dpsers initial nuke efforts.

I honestly can't understand why single target taunts didn't get a cd or duration nerf instead of challenge. I don't.......
Challenge Targets would have been enough /sigh.

I agree about litany so much though... Shame it wasn't touched at all , i can only think of very limited fights where i actually used it.
Someone could claim that it might be useful now with nerfed challenge , but i honestly don't see it coming , since if any problems show up with 'new' challenge , they will happen only in the beginning of a trash pull ( not raid boss ) when you most likely won't have enough fortification anyway. T_T

[siipperi]

Normal Aggro seems to be better than on live but 1 min CD on challenge is just bad. 45s is good compromise. It means it can't be spammed, yet it comes off CD at least once during fight, while 1 min means you basically need to wait for next fight to use it again.

I agree about litany so much though... Shame it wasn't touched at all , i can only think of very limited fights where i actually used it.
Someone could claim that it might be useful now with nerfed challenge , but i honestly don't see it coming , since if any problems show up with 'new' challenge , they will happen only in the beginning of a trash pull ( not raid boss ) when you most likely won't have enough fortification anyway. T_T

Litany is extremely good when used right. It's situational skill. Not rotational. Saved group from wipe more times than I can count with it.

[CaerArianrhod]

I just made a test:

If one skills both of the Warrior's Fortitude Skill (from blue and yellow), warrior's heart don't apply any of the mitigation or inc- heal buffs at all. I would have expected at least the buffs from the main skill tree! skill just only one either from blue or from yellow apply the correct buffs.

[Marxlne]

please keep the 1min cooldown on challenge. we've been asking for this change for years now on guardian forums, because we oldschool tanks were fed up about the fact that spamming challenge was all you needed to do in order to tank. now back to oldschool actual building up threat, but most importantly we'll be able to tell bad, good and really good guards now ... thumbs up!

now change litany to old moria days and guardian is back on track where it always belonged to again.

I am going to say it again, if this change goes to live it will brake Guardian class for most players to the point where Wardens and Captains (fark, maybe even good Beorns) are going to be preferred tanks for any instances because they have much more utilization. Especially if SSG plans to make any Fingar-style bosses in the future where Guard's CD-s are useless.
Nothing about this Challenge nerf changes actual threat building. Fact is Guards don't generate enough aggro to maintain it without force taunts.

If you want to start revamping blue line Guards, start it by changing how the aggro is built.

[CaerArianrhod]

Shield-Smash number of targets seems to be bugged:

[siipperi]

I just made a test:

If one skills both of the Warrior's Fortitude Skill (from blue and yellow), warrior's heart don't apply any of the mitigation or inc- heal buffs at all. I would have expected at least the buffs from the main skill tree! skill just only one either from blue or from yellow apply the correct buffs.

Advice, trait relentless assault. It's must have if you plan to trait redirect.

[Giliodor]

I'm really liking the new red line guardian. Strong DPS, fun rotation. Still miles behind hunters in terms of DPS, of course, but I guess wishing that they'd nerf the survivability even further in order to buff the DPS a bit more is too much.



And, again, Terrible Wound crit chance is bugged.

[CaerArianrhod]

Advice, trait relentless assault. It's must have if you plan to trait redirect.

Hint: that was not my point. Read again please: "i just made a test" I just really spend some points down the trees, maybe not as good as i would do it on live.

[Decrepify]

I just made a test:

If one skills both of the Warrior's Fortitude Skill (from blue and yellow), warrior's heart don't apply any of the mitigation or inc- heal buffs at all. I would have expected at least the buffs from the main skill tree! skill just only one either from blue or from yellow apply the correct buffs.

This isn't a new bug. It has happened and was known for years now.

Still no fix though....

[dselden]

I'm really liking the new red line guardian. Strong DPS, fun rotation. Still miles behind hunters in terms of DPS, of course, but I guess wishing that they'd nerf the survivability even further in order to buff the DPS a bit more is too much.



And, again, Terrible Wound crit chance is bugged.

Guardian dps is pretty high now. Might need a nerf on CDs like Warrior's Heart and Thrill of Danger while in red line. Also, please buff red line champs. Guardians do more dps than a primary dps class on beta right now.

[TiberiasKirk]

Did manage to login to Bullroarer to kill more wolves and still nothing new on our guardian belt.

Damage in blue line with shield smash is definitely higher than live as hits are roughly double damage what I get on live.

Didn't see a single crit with shield smash on landscape, but I only killed about 10 wolves before I had to log for work (still there)

[Vastin]

Guardian dps is pretty high now. Might need a nerf on CDs like Warrior's Heart and Thrill of Danger while in red line. Also, please buff red line champs. Guardians do more dps than a primary dps class on beta right now.

I suspect that I'll have to tweak overall guardian DPS down slightly before long. The efficiency of the new bleed is a bit higher than I was expecting - but hey, enjoy the limelight for a little while.

-Vastin

[BotLike]

I suspect that I'll have to tweak overall guardian DPS down slightly before long. The efficiency of the new bleed is a bit higher than I was expecting - but hey, enjoy the limelight for a little while.

-Vastin

Fair enough , i was surprised terrible wound was that strong as well , i also felt you had something else in mind.
But ow dear , all that also means you are going live next week -_- RIP Minstrels.

Can you take over rest of the classes too ? : D

[Giliodor]

I suspect that I'll have to tweak overall guardian DPS down slightly before long. The efficiency of the new bleed is a bit higher than I was expecting - but hey, enjoy the limelight for a little while.

-Vastin

56k DPS is incredibly high for a guardian, I believe. Before adjusting the DPS, I think you should get an indication of what the average DPS is like. There's nothing wrong with guardians doing good DPS if their survivability is toned down, and Geventh is probably an exceptional guardian. Don't jump to conclusions.

Nerf the survivability, not the damage.

[dselden]

56k DPS is incredibly high for a guardian, I believe. Before adjusting the DPS, I think you should get an indication of what the average DPS is like. There's nothing wrong with guardians doing good DPS if their survivability is toned down, and Geventh is probably an exceptional guardian. Don't jump to conclusions.

Nerf the survivability, no the damage.

I would lean towards this. Maybe making thrill of danger a yellow line only skill would be a good idea, so that it would leave red line warrior's heart (ideally on a longer cooldown) but not really any other massive cooldowns.

[Grimlir83]

The % of the bleeds in the total damages is a bit powerful, and causes the problem of rushing to use three skills. With bleeds slighty lowered (slighty hein, not a massive decrease) and keep the base damages (with increase of sweeping cut if possible), guardians will use more varied skills in order to make DPS. For example, nerf the bleed caused by overwhelming : more powerful than bleeds caused by Thrust, but less powerful than in build 4. And do not touch other aspects like War chant.

[Joedangod]

I suspect that I'll have to tweak overall guardian DPS down slightly before long. The efficiency of the new bleed is a bit higher than I was expecting - but hey, enjoy the limelight for a little while.

-Vastin

Terrible Wound could stand to lose a bit of potency but we could still really use an animation reduction on a bunch of skills. The rotation just feels really sluggish and off-putting around most of the bleed applicators and parry response skills.

There's also something weird going on with crit rates in general. Terrible Wound was generally sitting in the 10% crit rate region whilst Hemorrhaging Wound and Slashing Wound tended to be closer to 40%. Hammer Down also seemed to be averaging a 60% crit rate throughout all the parses I did combined. Really not sure how that 56k parse came about, must've been some truly absurd luck on crits.

[Seodric]

Not only Terrible Wound that is strong, highest hit from guardian also 140k on that dummy. Highest hit i saw from my red champ was 98k Remorseless strike, a skill that already has an absolutely enormous crit mutiplier (hits nearly nothing when non-critted).

I agree though, red guardian should infact be able to do strong dps, aslong as it can't have alot of selfheals/survivability. Taking into consideration the capability of cross-traiting into other lines for survivability...

[Aelir]

Shield Use Rank is still there on LI belts, but ranking it up now doesn't do anything for shield skills.

While the future of this passive is being evaluated... Can we keep it how it works on live, for now? So ranking it up would still benefit shield skills.

[Zvim666]

Can the emo champions go away, don't cry yourselves to sleep, they aren't letting Guardians out-dps any dps classes.

[Mukor]

Hey Guardians! This is the thread detailing the upcoming class changes being posted to Bullroarer for you to play with and comment on.

These changes are not final! There will be an upcoming pass based on feedback, balance issues, and bug reports.

As Cordovan requested, please keep it civil, and stick mostly to your own thoughts and opinions on the update. It's far easier for us to go through the feedback if it doesn't devolve into people challenging each other's opinions.

-Vastin

Guardian

• Guardian Keen Blade (red line) has been heavily re-designed! The reasons for this redesign were three-fold:
  
  • The prior implementation was very complex and buggy, and proved resistant to debugging.
  • The prior implementation was too server process intensive due to the way bleeds were being handled.
  • The DPS of the red line guardian was far too low to make it particularly functional for soloing or as a team DPS member.
  
  
• 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.
• 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.
• The summary of the overall redesign includes:
  
  • 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 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.
  • 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.
  • While the red line bleeds are now stronger, they no longer benefit from the yellow line Radiate talent.
  • Guardian bleeds are no longer applied or renewed by crits.
  • Several talent names were changed to reflect adjustments to their functionality necessitated by the redesign of the bleed skills.
  • Several other skills that had accumulated too many modifiers were streamlined a bit, such as Hammer Down and To the King.
  
  
• Some changes to the way damage is assigned to skills and effects is being made. These changes are largely not visible, as they are low-level changes behind the scenes, but these adjustments will make it easier for us to make changes to the classes in the future, and should make future design updates happen more quickly.
• Shield Smash and Warchant are no longer tactical skills and draw their damage from the primary weapon.
• Brutal Charge should now cause the next skill to crit rather than knockdown (note that it can still be b/p/e'd).
• Warrior's Heart bubble is now based on a % of max vitality.
• Catch a breath LI bonuses now properly affect the skill. % change is now additive, and has been adjusted to reflect this change.
• Shield Use is effectively obsolete for the time being (weapon damage applies instead). We're evaluating what to do with it currently as it has never scaled properly with our other systems.

While you change the shield-dmg etc. to the primary weapon dps, why not change shield-use-rating to tactical mitigation, incoming healing or +5% max morale? So you wil avoid a lost stat.