Class Update - Guardians

[Kasius]

Red Guardian dps seems fine,the new bleed is a bit to high tho.
With slighty nervs to this bleed and a bit more experience in terms of rotation i think quite many guardians will be able to get ~55k on that dummy.

maybe give guardians a -50% heal debuff in the red traitline?i really dont see a fullheal from warriors heart necessary as a red guard.

[Zvim666]

I think the damage is too high on longer rotations, specially when you factor how much warrior's heart and the new catch a breath can heal you for, I have way better self healing in red than I do on my minstrel, funnily enough, minstrel has probably the worst (self-healing outside of blue) for any class capable of self-healing in a damage spec which is pretty odd.

I don't know how much time you have left, but I would recommend get rid of Honourable Combat (because it is terrible) and replace it with Berserk, a toggle that can't be turned off while in combat. When in Berserk stance you can't self-heal or block, but you have higher damage output (a bit less than current). When outside of Berserk stance, you can cut the damage back a bit more.

That way if I am running around killing loner landscape mobs and I don't really need the survivability, I can opt to go Berserk to speed that process up a bit, but if I have to go somewhere I will face multiple opponents with frequent pulls then I can take a more cautious approach with a bit less damage.

Ultimately, once the maximum potential dps is a fair bit lower than dps classes and Guardians wont be filling dps roles, it really doesn't matter what they actually do, but I think it would make it more enjoyable to have a bit more risk v reward or consequence for choices rather than give no options/flexibility and just adjust everything based on the lowest common denominator.

All-in-all, I think you have done a great job on red spec changes.

I am not fond of the longer cooldown on Challenge

Bullroarer is down atm:
I assume Warden's Defiant Challenge is still a 10 target force taunt (5s) on a 20s cooldown?
I assume Captain's Improved Threatening Shout is still a 6 target force taunt (5 sec) on a 15 second cooldown?
I assume Beorning's Thunderous Roar is still a 5s force taunt (5s) on a 16s cooldown? Not even sure what the max targets is on this, if any.

1 minute cooldown is way too long. 30s cooldown was fine for it's longer period of force taunting. The period of the force taunt really isn't the clutch, I can keep mobs on me as a captain tanking with the shorter force taunt duration, albeit fewer mobs at a time. Once mobs lose about 25% morale, one force taunt and they are pretty much on you until they are dead. Unless you are altering the agro mechanics, you will basically be forcing organised raids to ditch Guardians entirely and switch to a Captain/Beorning combo instead.

I already preferred tanking with my Captain since Mordor due to higher morale, better mitigation and more flexibility when it comes to tactical fights. You would need to cripple the other classes area force taunts for this change for the Guardian to have the intended impact. Guardian wont remain the preferred trash tanking class with this change to Challenge.

[Joedangod]

With slighty nervs to this bleed and a bit more experience in terms of rotation i think quite many guardians will be able to get ~55k on that dummy.

Unlikely. That 56k parse is massively above average in terms of crit rate so the average high level parse is going to be closer to 45k than 55k once terrible wound gets the appropriate nerf and the crit rate issues across all skills gets sorted (pretty much everything except Terrible Wound averaged a 35%+ crit rate on a class that caps crit chance at 25%).

[Kasius]

Unlikely. That 56k parse is massively above average in terms of crit rate so the average high level parse is going to be closer to 45k than 55k once terrible wound gets the appropriate nerf and the crit rate issues across all skills gets sorted (pretty much everything except Terrible Wound averaged a 35%+ crit rate on a class that caps crit chance at 25%).

i disagree a bit:

yes the crit chance was very high.

on the other Hand:
- there are still skills who got a Buggy crit chains(like max 10% instead of 25%).
-br was up with those changes for not even 24 hours.I am quite sure with more time and more practice you can achieve more average and more Peak dps.
-that parse is without the bb set.+10% bleed dmg would do quite a big dps boost since a lot of guard dps comes from the different bleeds.

[Giliodor]

Unlikely. That 56k parse is massively above average in terms of crit rate so the average high level parse is going to be closer to 45k than 55k once terrible wound gets the appropriate nerf and the crit rate issues across all skills gets sorted (pretty much everything except Terrible Wound averaged a 35%+ crit rate on a class that caps crit chance at 25%).

This is true, and it illustrates the danger of uploading your highest parses, rather than your average parses. Terrible Wound is currently bugged so that it only has a ~10% crit chance. In Geventh's parse, it crit way more often than that (judging by the average bleed tick). Likewise for a bunch of other skills. That isn't to say it's not impressive, I think it's very impressive. I just don't think that even he is going to consistently do much more than 50k, which is perfectly fine.

Just be sure to further reduce the survivability, to compensate for the rise in DPS.

[Joedangod]

i disagree a bit:

yes the crit chance was very high.

on the other Hand:
- there are still skills who got a Buggy crit chains(like max 10% instead of 25%).

That was one skill, in fact it was the biggest skill in terms of DPS and it deserves a nerf anyway. As I said in the post above; crit rate on pretty much every other skill is way above average.

So to summarise what you ignored: terrible wound needs a nerf and a fix for crit chance and every other skill needs a similar bug fixed so everything is going to go down in damage. You're putting way too much faith in one exceedingly lucky 56k parse here, did you actually try red guard yourself?

[Decrepify]

-that parse is without the bb set.+10% bleed dmg would do quite a big dps boost since a lot of guard dps comes from the different bleeds.

Actually it wouldn't. You lose too much mastery and crit for it to be viable. It best, it would even out, seeing even base skill damage is quite high.

[dselden]

Unlikely. That 56k parse is massively above average in terms of crit rate so the average high level parse is going to be closer to 45k than 55k once terrible wound gets the appropriate nerf and the crit rate issues across all skills gets sorted (pretty much everything except Terrible Wound averaged a 35%+ crit rate on a class that caps crit chance at 25%).

I mean, 30.7% crit rate is a bit high for a guard parse, but nothing that far out of the ordinary. A champ parse with around 35% crit in yellow did about 55k. Another parse in the same general area:

[Joedangod]

I mean, 29.7% crit rate is a bit high for a guard parse, but nothing that far out of the ordinary. A champ parse with around 35% crit in yellow did about 55k.

And pray tell, what was the average parse on said Guardian?

[Giliodor]

I mean, 29.7% crit rate is a bit high for a guard parse, but nothing that far out of the ordinary. A champ parse with around 35% crit in yellow did about 55k.

35% is what you might expect when taking into account the +10% critical chance on Strike Skills and +5% critical chance after critting with Wild Attack. 29.7% for a class with 25% crit chance is incredibly high considering how many attacks are made.

Assuming champion crit chance is ~32% (it's theoretically 0.40*(51+36)/491 + 0.30*(1-(51+36)/491) = 31.77% in the parse you mentioned, without taking Wild Attack into account), and Guardian crit chance is 25%, we get the following probability distribution:

Edited to account for Terrible Wound


Which shows that the guardian got considerably luckier than the champion.

[dselden]

And pray tell, what was the average parse on said Guardian?

I'd have to ask, but was above 50k on average once he'd ironed out rotation, I believe.

[Zvim666]

35% is what you might expect when taking into account the +10% critical chance on Strike Skills and +5% critical chance after critting with Wild Attack. 29.7% for a class with 25% crit chance is incredibly high considering how many attacks are made.

Assuming champion crit chance is ~32% (it's theoretically 0.40*(51+36)/491 + 0.30*(1-(51+36)/491) = 31.77% in the parse you mentioned, without taking Wild Attack into account), and Guardian crit chance is 25%, we get the following probability distribution:



Which shows that the guardian got considerably luckier than the champion.

One of the bleeds is bugged and it's crit rate is substantially lower than it should be, getting a crit rate that high seem a bit dodgy, actually, seems a lot dodgy.

I'm sure he could reproduce it with a dev watching.

[Giliodor]

One of the bleeds is bugged and it's crit rate is substantially lower than it should be, getting a crit rate that high seem a bit dodgy, actually, seems a lot dodgy.

I'm sure he could reproduce it with a dev watching.

You are correct, I forgot about that. Accounting for that, it would look like this:



Which, indeed, shows that the guardian was even luckier than I originally thought.

[dselden]

You are correct, I forgot about that. Accounting for that, it would look like this:



Which, indeed, shows that the guardian was even luckier than I originally thought.

On average he was 53-56k. At 2 minutes he was peaking over 60k on occasion, so it’s not really a case of an outlier parse even though the crit was high.

[Giliodor]

On average he was 53-56k. At 2 minutes he was peaking over 60k on occasion, so it’s not really a case of an outlier parse even though the crit was high.

Clearly, though, the specific parse linked was a definite outlier, unless there's a crit chance modifier that I'm unaware of. That's all I'm saying. We could analise other parses similarly, but they haven't been posted.

All I'm arguing is that guardian DPS does not need to be nerfed, because these abnormally high parses are, frankly, abnormal. If necessary, nerf survivability to compensate for increase in DPS. I think if guardian DPS on average lands around ~50k, that would be a fine mark.

[Justapvpdude]

Haven't been on bullroarer myself and don't really know how the new training dummies are acting, but on live dummies I'm getting a lot more parry responses than on regular mobs (in red).
So there might be a dps difference between the dummies and actual mobs because of less parries (and thus acces to parry response skills).
Since I haven't been on BR and thus don't know how many parry responses guards are getting on these new dummies I can't judge.

Just something to considder even though there are workarounds.

[Kasius]

That was one skill, in fact it was the biggest skill in terms of DPS and it deserves a nerf anyway. As I said in the post above; crit rate on pretty much every other skill is way above average.

So to summarise what you ignored: terrible wound needs a nerf and a fix for crit chance and every other skill needs a similar bug fixed so everything is going to go down in damage. You're putting way too much faith in one exceedingly lucky 56k parse here, did you actually try red guard yourself?

i did tried red guard myself ang got 50k average,but sadly there was not that much time to test.
I am quite sure with more experience,a better Rotation and bb set(yes you can cap crit+mastery with bb set) would do quite something.

While vastin already said the terrible wound will most likly get a small nerv and with the bugfixes dmg would go up in compensation.I dont ask for more nerv,i am actually super fine with Guardians doing 55k dps.

would be cool to see selfheal a bit reduced then.
oh and red champions doing at least same st dps

[Grimlir83]

We should remember the release notes :
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

The goal isn't to have a few number of guardians competitive with other DPS in AoM, but to have a decent DPS for the great number.
Consequently, it would not be a drama if the new build would be an average between build 3 and build 4.
I think it could be done by fixing the % of crits, AND nerf their magnitude : the legacy +57% magnitude of critical bleeds could be lowered to 35% (as legacy of bleeds), 29% or event removed.

Edit : I had tried on build 4 with and without the magnitude of critical bleeds (on dummies, but more on mobs in landscape and instances), there's a noticeable difference in DPS.

[dselden]

We should remember the release notes :
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

The goal isn't to have a few number of guardians competitive with other DPS in AoM, but to have a decent DPS for the great number.
Consequently, it would not be a drama if the new build would be an average between build 3 and build 4.
I think it could be done by fixing the % of crits, AND nerf their magnitude : the legacy +57% magnitude of critical bleeds could be lowered to 35% (as legacy of bleeds), 29% or event removed.

I'd rather just nerf red line survivability. Dps as it is now is strong solo, but wouldn't be optimal in a raid due to having no fire type damage and offering no real debuffs or anything which seems about right to me.

[dselden]

And pray tell, what was the average parse on said Guardian?

Apparently he was getting a normal crit rate on terrible wound as well, so not sure if it's due to a bug or LIs or what.

[Grimlir83]

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

The discussion should be about how doing that, and not talking about things not directly connected with that (such as survivability)

[dselden]

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

The discussion should be about how doing that, and not talking about things not directly connected with that (such as survivability)

I disagree. The reason why dps shouldn't be as high as it is atm is because of guardian's high survivability. If the survivability got nerfed in red line, then the dps could be the same as it is currently.

[Joedangod]

The discussion should be about how doing that, and not talking about things not directly connected with that (such as survivability)

High DPS is it's own form of survivability. I'd rather retain the high DPS than retain warriors heart in red. The old red guardian level of invincibility needs to go for good.

[Grimlir83]

That's sophistic. What kind of survavibility could be warrior's heart in a AoM raid (in red) ?
Folks should understand that the main problem with the red guardian is NOT to have similar DPS than hunter for example. It's to be viable in solo DPS for the lanscape (and with warrior's heart there's no invicibility at all if you pull too much NPCs in beta 4). The purpose is not to work for a little minority even among the raiders, and in this point of view a little less DPS than in build 4 is not a problem. This point of view in order to rework the red guardian has been retained, so trying to put it in another direction is out of subject.

[Seodric]

Well, pretty sure we're talking about survivability when you cross-trait (Bring on the Pain ranks on Thrill of Danger in yellow for example), which makes survivability silly in moors/landscape with red grd. Having this much dps and crazy survivabilty at the same time is overkill (same with red warden having access to lots of heals etc in red, blood arrow heal for hunter etc, which also should be nerfed, since dps is now so high).

I would support the idea of having red grd dps high, thus nerfing survivability capabilities rather.