Class Update - Guardians

[BotLike]

Thank you Vastin for all the hard work you've done with the class balance, was awesome seeing you pop in from time-to-time as well.

Though, it wasn't perfect, eh, nothing is. Overall, you did right by us and I'll not complain.....aside from renaming Overwhelm to Salt the Wound....

P.S. Please keep in mind Hammer-Down is still broken as hell cause you can get old bonuses when using a raid set.

I couldn't agree more. And seeing the patch notes for tomorrow , it's the first time i see a really decent list on known issues , which makes me confident most of the remaining issues will be fixed soon : )

#VastinForMinstrel

[Zahu]

Maybe I am to pessimistic and wrong (and I wish I am wrong), but as I see it, after update, guardian will be an ok dps calss for 3 mans, maybe for 6 mans, before the dps goes down a bit, as notes imply. On the other hand guardian's aoe tanking will be kinda worse, while most classes will have their max targets+low cd aoe taunts, at least untill they change them too, which we don't know when will happen. So these classes will be chosen over guardian for tanking atm, at least in raid, which is the only real end level content now. I feel that you all focused on the improvement in guardian's dps, and you lost the big picture. I have a fear guard will be overall gimped again after this update. And the fact that they admit the known issues of guardian, is not the same as fixing them, ask beorning players in the last couple of years for that.
As I said I might be pessimistic and wrong. But we will all be here tomorrow and we will see who was right and who was wrong.

[Oelle]

Maybe I am to pessimistic and wrong (and I wish I am wrong), but as I see it, after update, guardian will be an ok dps calss for 3 mans, maybe for 6 mans, before the dps goes down a bit, as notes imply. On the other hand guardian's aoe tanking will be kinda worse, while most classes will have their max targets+low cd aoe taunts, at least untill they change them too, which we don't know when will happen. So these classes will be chosen over guardian for tanking atm, at least in raid, which is the only real end level content now. I feel that you all focused on the improvement in guardian's dps, and you lost the big picture. I have a fear guard will be overall gimped again after this update. And the fact that they admit the known issues of guardian, is not the same as fixing them, ask beorning players in the last couple of years for that.
As I said I might be pessimistic and wrong. But we will all be here tomorrow and we will see who was right and who was wrong.

why worse aoe tanking? most skills deal more damage and threat. All guards lose is 30s cd on 15 targets, which is converted to 10 targets and higher cd... In most fights, I just use challenge once. Roughly after 10 seconds. Thats enough to the end of the fight. And 10 targets is easily enough.
All that changes is, that a champion that starts full AoE dps half a second after the tank engages dies. And thats not a bad change imo. Nothing wrong with waiting for 3 seconds.

[Joedangod]

So these classes will be chosen over guardian for tanking atm.

Beorning has literally always had better aggro over AoE than Guardian/Warden/Captain, hasn't really helped them take the main tank spot before, unlikely that it will now. Guards will be fine, it's trickier to handle threat now but that isn't necessarily bad.

[pinlu]

Vastin,
About the removal of the 125 damage runes. For people who were playing the guardian in redline originally,before the released balance (which has made the dps really good btw ) a few days ago ,all had 125 tact damage runes in, to increase warchants damage,which is lacking in Bullroarer and in in the old patch. Are you able to address this? By increasing warchants damage or just to us the 125 damage runes which made a little difference anyways ?

[Litreb]

Hi!

First thanks alot for finally giving guard a good dps buff. IMO Catch a breath needs reduced cooldown-time due to the removal of percentage-heal from crits. Honorable Combat is completely useless now so maybe changing that could compensate for crit-heals also.

[assembled]

Is there an updated guardian red line tree guide somewhere? I am having some trouble understanding how exactly latest changes affect it. For example, is Radiate now useless?

[dawaaagh]

Thanks for the changes, vast improvement in dps but a few issues for me.
Honourable combat is very underwhelming for such a high skill in redline especially as bleeds can no longer stack to 10, even more so with catch a breathe healing for a decent amount and being a basic non spec skill and can benefit from reduce cd legacy, basically makes honourable combat pointless.
Same sort of issue with overwhelm/raw power trait as bleeds no longer stack to 10.
Radiate not spreading bleeds hurts, i understand its a yellow trait and not red, hoping it can somehow affect the new bleed system where its not absolutely pointless and not completely broken op.
Brutal assault damage seems on the low side when compared to other skills like whirling retaliation which deals aoe damage not st like brutal assault.
War chant not benefiting from bleed spreading also hurts, understandable change, possibly make the -5% damage debuff stack depending on number of bleeds on targets ?

Again tnx for the recent changes, much appreciated.

Hi!

IMO Catch a breath needs reduced cooldown-time due to the removal of percentage-heal from crits.

The reduce cd legacy helps with this which is nice because it was previously useless.

[siipperi]

Is there an updated guardian red line tree guide somewhere? I am having some trouble understanding how exactly latest changes affect it. For example, is Radiate now useless?

Radiate radiates terrible bleed.

[Kasius]

What i can say:
Yesterday we had a red Guardian with us on abyss t2c boss 1(twins).
he was using pvp gear(55k crit,170k mastery and useless 120k phys mit).
he did 80k dps over 4 or 5 min till he died the first time,that was really impressive.

i think a minmaxed geared guard can do 100k+ on that boss and quite insane numbers on boss 2+3 aswell

[NovaT]

I just tested on landscape and nothing special but was so pleased to see I could actually kill things and quickly!! WOOT TY!

[daemonied]

Radiate radiates terrible bleed.

Is this intentional? Didn't see it mentioned in the release notes.

[Nemulas]

Didn't do Bullroarer but the improvement to soloing was very much needed.

Prior to 22.2 , my sword and board guard with a max number of star lit crystals, was doing regular hits for 1k and crits of 2k in red. OK, you could get more damage with a 2H and her gear is all with tanking stats, but a dual wield champ in my kin was reporting crits of 70k. That's 35 times more damage, which would be untenable even if I had 35 times better mitigation than the champ (which i do not!). Which reminds me, agonisingly low DPS wasn't really being offset by the ability to solo super hard content - our main self heal, Catch a Breath, was broken, hunters could just blast and kite and champs get endless killing spree heals.

The update has transformed Catch a Breath to a 40k heal instead of a 4k heal. Damage seems to have increased by a factor of 2 or 3 - regular hits of 2k and crits of 6k. Red doesn't seem to have increased all that much more than blue, but it started from a higher base.

I have a level 25 guard i was playing for fun in the lone lands. In sword and board red, on-level mobs die in about 3 hits, which given how fast they execute on 1H seems crazy fast. Makes me wonder how many of these balance issues stem from the vast changes in stats from 105 to 115 - the old guard was acceptable up until i entered mordor, then every quest became like a raid and it was touch and go whether i could turn in before my gear broke.

I'm starting to think the <level 65 content is becoming too easy mode on all classes , not just broken hunters. Trivializing the combat doesn't help people learn their class, and doesn't really address the sheer length of the levelling up process new players now face.

[Joedangod]

Radiate radiates terrible bleed.

Well that's not good.

Terrible wound needs to be nerfed down a bit in size and that interaction needs to be removed. Also need to neuter guard self heals a little, warriors heart is excessive right now. Thrill of Danger will probably be fine if it's the only thing red guards have other than catch a breath (although need to make sure no thrill of danger CD reduction sets are reintroduced).

[Nemulas]

Well that's not good.

Terrible wound needs to be nerfed down a bit in size and that interaction needs to be removed. Also need to neuter guard self heals a little, warriors heart is excessive right now. Thrill of Danger will probably be fine if it's the only thing red guards have other than catch a breath (although need to make sure no thrill of danger CD reduction sets are reintroduced).

In the old Days (Mirkwood to Rohan), CaB was our main heal (15 second CD with legacy) and Warrior's Heart was a panic button with a 5 minute CD. WH is still our biggest self heal per second probably , it feels wrong to be using it so regularly. Plus, as a regular heal, you have to let yourself get alarmingly low before using so as to not waste any of the heal.

CaB should be the major part of our healing and it should be tied to having a shield equipped, to give the player a reason for actually using one. I'm not sure how I feel about being able to generate reactives to use it out of thin air from Force Opening or Shield Blow, or being able to use it while blocking with a 2 hander in yellow.

Red is the reckless, DPS at any cost stance and probably should not come with any morale restore at all (other than CaB, if shield equipped). Power restore is ok, but if the content is hard enough to need healing, swap !

[SACLOTRO]

Well that's not good.

Terrible wound needs to be nerfed down a bit in size and that interaction needs to be removed. Also need to neuter guard self heals a little, warriors heart is excessive right now. Thrill of Danger will probably be fine if it's the only thing red guards have other than catch a breath (although need to make sure no thrill of danger CD reduction sets are reintroduced).

Please quit with the nerfs to guard self healing talk

self healing on red guard now is ####...

we used to be able to get alot of heals thru crits on the multitude of bleeds, now that is gone.

honorable combat is worthless,
thrill of danger is worthless,
strength of man although a racial skill is so pathetic I actually trait uppercut instead

the only thing we have is catch a breath and warriors heart and catch a breath is underwhelming to say the least.

[Joedangod]

Please quit with the nerfs to guard self healing talk

self healing on red guard now is ####...

And damage is pretty great. I'd much rather have the damage than the healing so I'm going to keep recommending that the healing be reduced so that it's in line with the other DPS traitlines. If you want something totally different go ahead and make your case but otherwise stop telling me to be silent.

[Decrepify]

the only thing we have is catch a breath and warriors heart and catch a breath is underwhelming to say the least.

[Joedangod]

Red is the reckless, DPS at any cost stance and probably should not come with any morale restore at all (other than CaB, if shield equipped). Power restore is ok, but if the content is hard enough to need healing, swap !

They generally seem to be leaving DPS traitlines with a small-ish % based heal. CaB is fairly in line with self-motivation and blood arrow for example. Thrill of Danger is somewhat tough for a red guard to trait (very hard if they drop honorable combat for a more useful capstone ability) and it's not that great in T2C or vs single targets. Pledge still needs to be moved deeper into blue though.

[Nemulas]

That's weak ! With legacy maxed, it looks like this -



Also, it is modified by incoming healing factor. So my 112k Morale Guard restores over 40k with it

[Fermongu]

First, I want to thank you Vastin for making red guard to be functional again. However, I want to give some feedback on unaddressed questions in the red tree, so hopefully it can be revisited on a later fix to guards.






I did a quick and careless parse on dummy just to show the "true power" of Reactive Parry trait in red tree. Scale or delete please.

[Fermongu]

That's weak ! With legacy maxed, it looks like this -



Also, it is modified by incoming healing factor. So my 112k Morale Guard restores over 40k with it

I am happily surprised too for CaB being finally useful, that's 2 imbued legacy replacement scrolls used after changes just for it (both tanking and dps belts). Also keep in mind that frecuent War-Chant use reduces the effective cooldown of CaB even more, to around 30s total.

[Joedangod]

Been testing on live and it seems Guardian in general is overtuned at low levels. It's about as absurd as low level minstrel in terms of trivialising low level content and the base damage of the class should probably be adjusted to not be so high at low levels.

[Litreb]

They generally seem to be leaving DPS traitlines with a small-ish % based heal. CaB is fairly in line with self-motivation and blood arrow for example. Thrill of Danger is somewhat tough for a red guard to trait (very hard if they drop honorable combat for a more useful capstone ability) and it's not that great in T2C or vs single targets. Pledge still needs to be moved deeper into blue though.

Hi

Please do NOT move pledge deeper Into blue line. Remember that red line was totally massacred with U16, so guards start from a very low dps/selfheal in red line.

[ChromiteSwiftpaw]

Been testing on live and it seems Guardian in general is overtuned at low levels. It's about as absurd as low level minstrel in terms of trivialising low level content and the base damage of the class should probably be adjusted to not be so high at low levels.

Yup. Am usually one-shotting things on a guardian I took through the newbie intro instance and up to level 9 or so using the newbie 1handers. Soon as you get a 2hander it's almost always a one-shot.