Bullroarer Update 28 - Preview #3 CLOSED

[Amirwolf]

As someone before has already briefly mentioned, I'd just like to double check if there will be any adjustment made to creep side in the expansion as well to counter balance the additional power boost freeps will receive from the new gear and virtues?

I am very much liking the look of the expansion and gear, but I'm worried that without any update to creeps at the same time, this will damage the PvP system a lot.

[Shaele]

Armour and Jewellery from Traveller's and Adventurer's Lootboxes will have a maximum of +2 possible item level bumps.
Adventurer's gear, when opened at level 130, is now base item level 424, with the chance to create at up to item level 426.

So with the nerfing of ember drops in old content, and the p2w of lootboxes being buffed, will we see any improvement to crafting and the drops of craft boxes from the MM instances? or is this update just going P2W?

[Bragolos]

With the new raid Amdân Dammul, the Bloody Threshold available for preview up to Tier 3, we wanted to talk a bit about how difficulty will work with this raid as we are changing things up a bit:

Tier 1 has been made significantly easier, and can be considered a “Story Mode” aimed at lower difficulty raiding.
Tier 2 is the new “base” difficulty, and is as complex mechanically as a previous Tier 1.
Tier 3 is now as difficult as a previous Tier 2.
Tier 4 is now as difficult as a previous Tier 3.
Tier 5 is now “challenge mode”, and will introduce a raid-wide mechanic to further test our best raiders.

When War of Three Peaks is released, Tiers 1 through 3 will be available, with Tier 4 releasing a short time later, and Tier 5 a short time after that. A "lead the charge" style title will be available for Tiers 4 and 5 only. Players can expect raid chest locks to operate per usual, although we are considering offering several favored pulls per week at Tier 1 difficulty.

Wow, very good news!!! Been thinking about this for years, and with the introduction of a 4th and 5th tier some time ago I specifically asked for this because I thought this should be possible. Wondering about the specifics, such as if there's a mandatory minimum group size and the necessary time to complete. But this really is encouraging news for someone who is a 'passionate, but in terms of group play a more casual' player, simply not being able to commit to a long group playing time, due to RL constraints (3 kids, etc. etc.). It also makes me reconsider my decision to, for the first time in 10 years, not buy the mini-expansion. Mainly because it is the first time I'm actually a bit dissappointed in the landscape.

[Gunhard]

As someone before has already briefly mentioned, I'd just like to double check if there will be any adjustment made to creep side in the expansion as well to counter balance the additional power boost freeps will receive from the new gear and virtues?

I am very much liking the look of the expansion and gear, but I'm worried that without any update to creeps at the same time, this will damage the PvP system a lot.

Still care about ettens? You are the patient one. Its a pve game, so first things first. Dont worry, be happy.

[Gunhard]

There is a huuuuuge stat bloat issue atm, we already had more than enough stats to do Remmorchant t5 BEFORE THE LI BUFF. And now we are getting even crazier with the stats, hopefully the new raid will have extremely high stat requirements or else this will just be a blunder.

Thing is to make higher tiers available for more ppl probably. If your kin could have done t5 before li buff and bosses nerf then you could be happy with that, take your title etc. But most of kins cant do that and i dont see any problem to have gear with better stats for those semi hardcore kins to be able to compete on higher tiers. Super hardcore raids in lotro are very debatable. Thing i would like to see is probably higher mastery % cap, coz since bosses have enrage timers extra survivability may not help you to be in time there. There are new runes, so maybe devs decided to left it for li ranks/runes with increasing damage. Again, its may be blunder for you, but for many others who wants to participate it will be nice.

[swjale]

This changes look rly promising and its a big step in positive direction. Hopefully you guys come up with something that will put guard on par with captain now that you brought it as a class much closer to captain tanks. There is still stuff do to to make that happen but nothing happens overnight so this probably wont too. We have seen you managed to pull champion and hunter from some dark weird forgotten place and make them viable in raids again, so i do not doubt it will eventually happen with a guardian and his one and only usable role in a raid which is you guessed it right TANK. Like break ranks buff now makes sense and 20% dmg-e reduction is jut what warriors heart needed, also the heal on hit should be more useful now which is also nice touch. Looking forward to more changes and hope it doesnt end here, like i didnt expect to see anything about guard change when i started reading notes so only thing i can say is GG SSG for not completely forgetting guardian population that is forced to tank on captain.

[NeebPlayer]

You'd better make good on your missions cuz I'm already massively pissed by some of this. Especially the virtue increase. You just half-converted a willing-to-pay customer into a resentful hater again.

[Morellian]

With the new raid Amdân Dammul, the Bloody Threshold available for preview up to Tier 3, we wanted to talk a bit about how difficulty will work with this raid as we are changing things up a bit:

Tier 1 has been made significantly easier, and can be considered a “Story Mode” aimed at lower difficulty raiding.
Tier 2 is the new “base” difficulty, and is as complex mechanically as a previous Tier 1.
Tier 3 is now as difficult as a previous Tier 2.
Tier 4 is now as difficult as a previous Tier 3.
Tier 5 is now “challenge mode”, and will introduce a raid-wide mechanic to further test our best raiders.

When War of Three Peaks is released, Tiers 1 through 3 will be available, with Tier 4 releasing a short time later, and Tier 5 a short time after that. A "lead the charge" style title will be available for Tiers 4 and 5 only. Players can expect raid chest locks to operate per usual, although we are considering offering several favored pulls per week at Tier 1 difficulty.

Broadly in favour of this change, thanks for listening to the community. The only caveat would be to make sure that rewards from Tier 1 are nerfed in line with the difficulty (or removed altogether). Nice to see that apparently the highest tier will now offer some more additional mechanics/challenges, as opposed to the previous tiering approach of mostly just sticking a bigger multiplier on mob health & damage.

[bjute]

One of the main drivers for this adjustment is that the sources for this armour and jewellery have increased.

Why is this a problem then? Personally I would understand that you would do this to keep players invested for a longer time, but that argument falls flat when you can aquire ilvl 426 gear in minutes using store.

For a paid expansion, this monetized gearing system should NOT be in place! You don't even get the mount with the expansion..

[skarnarval]

Don't really understand the intent behind the Guardian changes. If the idea is to make Guardians competitive with Captains in terms of support potential I'd question if you understand why Captains are favoured at all?

Numerically Guardians and Captains have similar incoming damage, whilst a Guard runs higher mitigations a Captain is able to throw up enough -% incoming damage that it roughly breaks even. The discrepancy on the defensive side is due to Captains having a 33% morale bonus over Guardians before you even factor in Motivating Speech. On top of this Captains have absurd incoming healing bonuses that don't take any effort to maintain. So not only does Captain have more morale...it's easier to heal that higher morale pool up. Amusingly Guardians don't even win on avoidance, neither has great ability to cap partials and Captain ends up with higher full BPE chance overall.

When you go on to compare defensives the discrepancies get even worse. Litany of Defiance has the unique property of being an effective means by which to commit suicide in a raid setting, meanwhile Captains can produce the same defensive effect safely by simply combining In Harms Way with Last Stand. Shield can also be used to either keep the Captain alive or save someone else from dying, meanwhile Pledge/Heart/Juggernaut will only apply to the Guardian and tend to be infinitely less effective since BPE is so frequently ignored by major boss abilities.

If we move on to compare support abilities Captain will once again pull ahead. Guardians are limited to applying a 2% mitigation buff to their fellows, meanwhile Captains apply a passive -5% incoming damage, 9-15% incoming damage reduction/outgoing healing/outgoing damage buff with 25s duration, 1 min cd, 10% morale bonus and 1.2k of each stat (barring vitality at 950 or so), +30% incoming healing 30s duration, 1 min cd, 2 relatively strong heals and revealing mark.

Now after all that you might be thinking that Guardians need a whole lot more buffing to compete but... honestly Yellow Captain is the issue. You really need to reduce the power of that spec so that the other 5 tank specs can have a chance to compete with it.

Exactly, captains are just insanely overpowered, there is no way a tank should be both the tankiest and the most supportive tank at the same time, you either go support or sturdy, the sturdier you are the less support and vice versa. Captains just got everything a tank can have except for debuffs lmao. They are crazy overtuned and need to be nerfed. It's also funny how you can nerf the morale of yellow captains by 50% and they will still be able to tank remmo t5. That's how insane they are.

[NeebPlayer]

Exactly, captains are just insanely overpowered, there is no way a tank should be both the tankiest and the most supportive tank at the same time, you either go support or sturdy, the sturdier you are the less support and vice versa. Captains just got everything a tank can have except for debuffs lmao. They are crazy overtuned and need to be nerfed. It's also funny how you can nerf the morale of yellow captains by 50% and they will still be able to tank remmo t5. That's how insane they are.

Except this has been the case since u15 in 2014. Not kidding. People have just now noticed it and everybody's crying for Cappy nerf. This is a people problem. You always want the best for every job excluding everybody else, and when you finally feel this on yourself, you demand that other people's classes get nerfed.

[Joedangod]

Except this has been the case since u15 in 2014. Not kidding. People have just now noticed it and everybody's crying for Cappy nerf. This is a people problem. You always want the best for every job excluding everybody else, and when you finally feel this on yourself, you demand that other people's classes get nerfed.

Except I did ask that Captain get nerfed a few years ago. Here's one from 2018

Ooo, Captain suggestions. Fun:

• Remove all access to the rez from yellow line.
• Make SotD self only and nerf it to around -50% (but let it stack with other inc damage sources).
• Improve Captains capability to generate aggro in yellowline by buffing threat generated through healing and damage skills.
• Increase the number of targets captains can hit in yellow line.
• Remove the motivating speech aura in yellow line or turn it into a self only variant (perhaps with more defence focus) that doesn't stack with other captains.
• Nerf incoming healing modifiers on captain by a fair amount (you know, so they don't hit 80% higher inc healing than anyone else can possibly reach).
• Remove the trait granting 10 extra seconds of last stand (this skill somehow managed to be better than 90% of other tank CD's whilst having a longer duration).
• Add a slight mitigation to the redirected damage from In Harms Way.

Also gonna throw in a fancy blue talent change:

• Gut revealing mark.

Also suggesting adding a few buffs to the class which...kinda just happened anyway without the nerfs occurring. Back then the only reason cappy wasn't meta tank was not due to us "not noticing it was OP" more that it just couldn't reliably hold aggro on consistently spawning enemies. Oh and Guard was really useful in a few places in Throne (corruption removal in UO, solo reinforcement tanking mumaks, yellow guard debuffing crawlers in Nazguls to name a few). And yes, I do play Cappy as one of my main classes.

I'm really more of a guy who wants every single traitline to be competitive with one another so I can stick the tank/dps/support/healer playstyle I enjoy rather than play the meta, I don't really care for this "My class should be best" nonsense.

[bjute]

Except this has been the case since u15 in 2014. Not kidding. People have just now noticed it and everybody's crying for Cappy nerf. This is a people problem. You always want the best for every job excluding everybody else, and when you finally feel this on yourself, you demand that other people's classes get nerfed.

Is that an excuse? And yes, it was in 2014 they screwed class balance and it's been a mess since.

[Sezneg]

I'm really more of a guy who wants every single traitline to be competitive with one another so I can stick the tank/dps/support/healer playstyle I enjoy rather than play the meta, I don't really care for this "My class should be best" nonsense.

What if I told you that people wanting this is what lead to the class system disaster that was HD?

[Joedangod]

What if I told you that people wanting this is what lead to the class system disaster that was HD?

What if I told you the people fighting against it is why it didn't work out?

Conceptually there's nothing wrong with the trait tree system, the implementation currently leaves something to be desired. We're not going back to the old system so pushing trait trees just that little bit further to produce something that actually works and results in competitive playstyles is the logical route to go.

The old system really wasn't as good as you might remember it being.

[Elmagor]

Still yet to see any boar mount in u28 on Bullroarer, or any dwarf NPC using boar mount. May be it comes only with one of versions (not with 20$) and have nothing related to PVE content?

[bjute]

What if I told you the people fighting against it is why it didn't work out?

Conceptually there's nothing wrong with the trait tree system, the implementation currently leaves something to be desired. We're not going back to the old system so pushing trait trees just that little bit further to produce something that actually works and results in competitive playstyles is the logical route to go.

The old system really wasn't as good as you might remember it being.

The old system left you more choices that the current system. Back then you had a class that was way more versatile, and you could simply improve certain areas of the play style you prefered, it gave you OPTIONS. This system does not. Giving the game spec identity instead of class identity was the most stupid thing they have done to this game.

[Joedangod]

The old system left you more choices that the current system. Back then you had a class that was way more versatile, and you could simply improve certain areas of the play style you prefered, it gave you OPTIONS. This system does not.

It didn't really provide much in the way of options since a decent chunk of the power was in the spec set bonuses. A bunch of the traits were duplicated as well, wardens had multiple "increase HoT/DoT pulses by 1" traits. The only really defining traits were the legendary ones and a lot of those were shrug-worthy. If it gave you options it was only really because nothing made a notable statistical difference in the first place so picking a numerically weaker trait didn't matter as you'd still get the set bonuses.

It may have been better implemented than the current system is at the moment but it really wasn't a better concept. Leave the rose-tinted glasses behind.

[Sezneg]

What if I told you the people fighting against it is why it didn't work out?

Conceptually there's nothing wrong with the trait tree system, the implementation currently leaves something to be desired. We're not going back to the old system so pushing trait trees just that little bit further to produce something that actually works and results in competitive playstyles is the logical route to go.

The old system really wasn't as good as you might remember it being.

I think it didn't work out because they increased the magnitude of required class "upkeep" by a factor of 2 to 3 depending on the class, and stretched the class design awkwardly to fit classes into having 3 roles (looking at you, Burglar and LM).

In 2014, the game was on year 4 of its lifecycle as a Freemium/F2P model with a single developer in charge of class design and balance by late HD time period. The game design was already far outstripping the ability of the engine to actually run the game as designed on the live server environment, and critical engineering resources had been shifted to Infinite Crises in an attempt to make the dated engine work for a high APM MOBA game, the hubris.

Any design decision that increased the resources need to maintain classes and features through future content was a mistake. And it was entirely reasonable for players at the time who were invested in their classes to be against the change, especially those who saw it playing out exactly as it did.

[NeebPlayer]

Except I did ask that Captain get nerfed a few years ago. Here's one from 2018

Also suggesting adding a few buffs to the class which...kinda just happened anyway without the nerfs occurring. Back then the only reason cappy wasn't meta tank was not due to us "not noticing it was OP" more that it just couldn't reliably hold aggro on consistently spawning enemies. Oh and Guard was really useful in a few places in Throne (corruption removal in UO, solo reinforcement tanking mumaks, yellow guard debuffing crawlers in Nazguls to name a few). And yes, I do play Cappy as one of my main classes.

I'm really more of a guy who wants every single traitline to be competitive with one another so I can stick the tank/dps/support/healer playstyle I enjoy rather than play the meta, I don't really care for this "My class should be best" nonsense.

Is that an excuse? And yes, it was in 2014 they screwed class balance and it's been a mess since.

The way I see it people are spoiled wanting to have every win handed to them by the most skilled people playing the most OP classes. They don't want coordination or challenge, they want everything to become a quick farm. Last time I played ESO, it had 2 single-target taunt skills. That's tanking in ESO for you. The same could be done in LOTRO if people were willing to work with the tank. This is, of course, very different from LOTRO and I don't want it. What I'm trying to say is it's way more fun to try and find ways to work with what you got than getting the most OP of everything and then following the book. Obviously, people will never get this.

[Laurelinarien]

Still yet to see any boar mount in u28 on Bullroarer, or any dwarf NPC using boar mount. May be it comes only with one of versions (not with 20$) and have nothing related to PVE content?

https://massivelyop.com/2020/09/23/l...-bundle-perks/

[Joedangod]

What I'm trying to say is it's way more fun to try and find ways to work with what you got than getting the most OP of everything and then following the book. Obviously, people will never get this.

Except people are competing with one another. Let's say a 6 man run is forming and it needs a tank, I apply on my Chank, another person applies with their Cappy. Who gets in?

[Kehleyr_SSG]

A few new notes have been added to the OP.

[NeebPlayer]

Except people are competing with one another. Let's say a 6 man run is forming and it needs a tank, I apply on my Chank, another person applies with their Cappy. Who gets in?

I don't even play outside my kin. I firmly believe this game is not worth playing without a kin where the people are more important than the outcome of a fight. I know, another extreme idea, but the is how I get to chank. Sometimes.

[Geremir]

Bullroarer is OPEN

• Guardian - Cooldown for Thrill of Battle heal reduced to [20->8s].
• Guardian - Stoic bubble now provides damage reduction during its effect rather than a heal on expiration.
• Guardian - Break Ranks now applies a group-wide buff rather than individual.
  
• The skill is now triggered by Shield-taunt rather than Shield-smash.
  
• This buff can only be triggered once every 60 seconds.
  
• Fortification can now begin rebuilding immediately after being cashed out.
• Guardian - "Bellow" trait reduces Challenge cooldown by 5s per rank. Trait tooltip has been updated to reflect this.
  

Hello Vastin and Dev team, with this message I want to put my attention straight to you guys. To long has Guardian been neglected and to make it viable again it needs a few crucial changes. This needs to be intertwined with maybe a few alterations to the captain as well, although on the latter you can make your own decision.

GUARDIAN:
I would like to put some attention to the Guardian changes initially. Currently Guardians are in a weak spot because of several reasons. The foremost reason is the fact that captains have way more reliable cooldowns, which basically make you survive plain raw damage. In the entire last raid (Remmorchant the Net of Darkness) there is not a single boss on which a full sequence of skills can be avoided, parried or blocked. The latter is the reason that skills like Juggernaut and Pledge loose their complete value. Due to these reasons I haven't seen a single Guardian properly tanking the entire last raid and since Guard does not have a secondary role at all(DPS cannot be compared to all other classes) you should focus full attention to a serious amount of changes to the Guard. An additional option is to put a few changes to the Captain as well to bring them back on par.

BREAKDOWN OF CURRENT CHANGES

• Guardian - Cooldown for Thrill of Battle heal reduced to [20->8s]. The idea behind this change is to get more heals from Block and Parry responsive skills with crits. Although the idea sounds promising the amount of crit Guardians have overall is relatively low. With Shield-Spikes and the traits in blue (which are barely even used, because there are additional stronger traits) crits will have a significant increase, but never more then approximately ~10-12%. Therefore the initial chance on actually getting that heal in the first place is already very low. Instead it would be an idea to use or put this heal on receiving a critical hit instead, rather then doing a critical hit. Apart from actual questing in an area or maybe a bit of PvMP Guardians are not damage classes anymore and therefore this change doesn't make an impact at all.
  
• Guardian - Stoic bubble now provides damage reduction during its effect rather than a heal on expiration.. Again the idea is nice, but to put this on your currently strongest survivability skill makes no sense at all. -20% damage reduction while your morale has just risen up to 1,2 million with a captain in your group is only useful in combination with using 5 stacks of fortification and a cashout of Litany of Defiance for your fellowship, by intercepting 50% of their incoming damage for the same time. On the highest tiers of the new raid or instances it is my experience that with the amount of damage (lets say Blood Surge on Rukhor the Pale Herald, a Guardian just dies instantly from the hit he intercepts for his fellowship members even with that moralepool). The initial suggestion is to put this damage reduction skill on something else, Pledge or Thrill of Danger might be a changer for this, as B/P/E doesn't seem the trend in Lotro anymore with the current spike hits and effects(that can not be avoided in the first place).
  
• Guardian - Break Ranks now applies a group-wide buff rather than individual. I like the impact of this buff, but yet again you don't want to force yourself to put a tanking Guardian in the DPS group for obvious reasons. A DPS class that could be in the DPS group will benefit still much more from captain buffs then this buff from Guardian. 40% damage is a good buff, but to make it properly useable in a group or raid, this buff should be raid wide instead. This way you can keep the Guardian in the group that you like and not give the buff to tanks or supports instead.
  
• The skill is now triggered by Shield-taunt rather than Shield-smash. This change seems fine!
  
• This buff can only be triggered once every 60 seconds. 1/4 of the time for this buff seems fine. 40% vs 20% from captain for 30 seconds(with their banner) is about similar. But again the buff should be raidwide then, just like the banner and just as I said before.
  
• Fortification can now begin rebuilding immediately after being cashed out. Perfect, just like rebuilding fortification after using Litany of Defiance for your group. Nothing wrong with this.
  
• Guardian - "Bellow" trait reduces Challenge cooldown by 5s per rank. Trait tooltip has been updated to reflect this. Nothing wrong with this, although all tanks seem to be on par now with an AoE taunt with 30 seconds cooldown. The amount of taunts a Captain and Beorning have is just way to much though. Having 4 taunts with 5 seconds forcetaunts, makes you never reliable on any other aggro skills anymore, which takes the concept of tanking away entirely.

ADDITIONAL NECESSARY CHANGES:

• Give Guardians a bigger morale pool. This is the foremost change for a Guardian. Currently Guardians and Captains receive about similar incoming damage (if you don't talk about the additional buffs both classes have). A Guardian with fortification weighs up about similar with a captain that is battle hardened and the ''On Guard'' -5% defence buff. If you talk about To Arms, Redirect, Shield of the Dunedain, the Captain is way stronger overall. Combine that with the increase of morale in Yellow (25% passive moralebuff in yellow for captains + 8% from Steeled Resolve in yellow, gives the Guardian a significant disadvantage, and since the Captains overall have a significantly bigger morale pool also way way more survivability in the end. In addition a Yellow Captain also gives way more support then a tanking Guardian. Compared to other classes like Warden, Beorning and Champion also have a 20% morale increase from their corresponding tanking line. Therefore Guardian Morale increase is the first start to bring them on par with Captains.
  
  
• Block/Parry/Evade Skills must change. Guardian is usually a tank that gets responses from block/parries and evades. If you take the current raid (Remmorchant the Net of Darkness e.g.) a Guardian is in no circumstance able to avoid any spike hits from Bratha Tasakh, Thossolun the Massive/Daughter, Rukhor the Pale Herald or Shelob. Therefore two of the foremost skills of Guardians are somewhat ''useless''. In comparison to a fight like Isvitha the Gluttonous (Anvil of Winterstith) first boss, where apart from the Eye, pretty much everything else could be avoided there. Similar on the Thirteen Dwarf wights, similar on Karazgar/Vethug, a lot of skills could be avoided and made Guardian actually still useful there. So the necessary change is that Block/Parry/Evade should be part of a sequence or maybe even part of your fortification buff and for skills like ''Pledge'' or ''Juggernaut'' there should be something different. I really liked the suggestions from a few other people here to give ''Juggernaut'' the ability to negate 100% of the damage that is being done. You could rename the skill if you like to ''Stone Skin'' to match the buff its potential. As for Pledge you can think of a buff that decreases the amount of damage for every time a mob/boss hits you. Like ''Thrill of Danger'' where the morale return stacks, you can make a stack that decreases incoming damage for every hit more you receive. These are ideas that are subject to change of course, but the current buffs from Pledge and Juggernaut don't really add up anymore at this stage, apart from trashpulls with mobs that have no real mechanics.
  
  
• The new forcetaunts are an issue. Whilst Warden, Beorning, Champ and Captain all had an additional change to their amount of targets or the amount of forcetaunts, Guardians didn't got anything but a reduction to Challenge. Now that a Captain can taunt up to 10 targets, even Captains have a full ability to tank whatever trash wave/add wave with a lot of adds. Even by considering the bigger picture that Guardian used to be the tank to tend to a significant amount of adds in previous raids (OD, ToO, Throne, Abyss of Mordath and even Anvil of Winterstith), its a shame to see that Captains had an additional forcetaunt added with Elendil's Roar(yes Blade of Elendil, Grave Wound and Threatening Shout are the others), gives Captains 4 abilities to forcetaunt adds and therefore making it a very reliable tank for multiple mobs. Even with the new Threshold raid I don't see any reason to take a Guardian over a Captain.
  
  
• DPS from Guardian needs to change across the board.While we consider Guard to still be a tanking class, I am convinced that Guardians should receive a decent DPS threshold and making it more viable overall (not nearly as significant as other dps classes, but definitely more significant as it is now, same applies to RK's at this very moment, but one thing at the time.) Old Hammer Down was actually nice, you had a stacking buff and upon a kill it would reset (wouldn't be a bad idea to reverse this for starters)
  
  
• Yellow Buffs including Attack Duration and Target Movement Speed need to change. The Idea behind bigger debuffs from Take to Heart on a Target are nice, but since most bosses are unaffected by these effects, there is no impact on these skills at all. Attack duration on bosses does only make an impact in those specific bosses have the necessary inductions (Hrimil Frost-Heart) was a good example, by delaying her casting for a tiny bit in yellow stance. Also bosses cannot be slowed, but for some reason Champions Duel on Champs that should bypass immunity doesn't work either. Whilst a Warden in yellow can slow everything with Improved Hampering Javelin. Even though the intention is good to slow people with Stagger or Engage and giving increased effects in yellow line, when Take to Heart is applied to the target, doesn't make it very useful since most main bosses are immune to those effects. Instead a damage reduction, incoming damage buff(like telling mark from captain) would be good alternative changes for slows or debuffs to attack duration.
  
  
• Guardians have a lot of issue with their power. Ignore the Pain uses up to 606 power for a single use, thats for most Guards about 10-15% of their power bar, thats HUGE. Even though Blue Line offers 30% power reduction on Guardians Ward there are a lot more useful things to trait. Since most might gear and additional buffs doesn't give the Guardians as much fate to other classes, the amount of power consuming is way bigger then the amount of power receiving. Thrill of Danger and Catch a Breath should have a bigger increase on receiving power back, or the amount of power cost from each skill need to be significantly reduced.
  
• Singular Focus: The capstone from yellow must change. Currently this gives a 67k armour minus to the target, but if you intend to make yellow a buffing line you should give an incoming damage buff (if you score a critical hit with a parry response skill) instead.
  
• Warriors Fortitude: Warriors Fortitude from two different traitlines should stack! Therefore receiving more beneficial buffs from using Warriors Heart.
  
• Protection Buff (yellow line): These stats with B/P/E make no impact at all, should be changed into something more significant or bufflike (tiny damage increase, or tiny damage decrease on a target)
  
• Bolster (Critical Defence): Something should be done with crit defence, currently I don't think most people have any idea in the first place how crit defence actually works or is implemented at this point. Therefore this trait in yellow line is only traited to get further down in the traitline itself.
  
• Shield-Smash: The targetting range or radius of the Shield-Smash skill is very buggy often and well dependent on the position you stand or face too. Even though the radius of the skill is 5.2m, the skill can still not high targets that are in a close vicinity to the target you are hitting. This is also affected by mobs that are larger then mobs standing by. Might need a look.
  
• Disorientation: Proc (%) chance to reduce the targets parry/block/evade rating, doesnt work properly at this moment, needs attention or rework.
  
• Adaptability Ratings in yellow: These ratings from B/P/E have never changed, should need a rework to catch up with the current system.

Probably there are more things to think of as a change, but these are the ones that came initially to mind, feel free to add up to these. But Guardians should be viable again. The next rework we can count on will probably take another two years again.

Sincerely,

Aegiys