More Guardian Thoughts

[Rino90]

As long as there are no traits that interact with it and increase its potency, +12% incoming damage for 20 seconds sounds about perfect. While it will require a bleed cashout, it will get you a debuff about 1/3 the strength of Oathbreaker's Shame and with much higher uptime. This sounds like a capstone that could finally see Keen Blade Guardians occasionally picked as DPS. But only as long as there are no traits that increase duration/potency or spread the Rupture debuff. See below about Fighter of Shadow traits.

Look at it this way. 12% incoming damage for 20 seconds at a cooldown of 40 seconds is equivalent to a 6% permanent debuff, which is only 1% stronger than the captain's mark. In addition to this debuff we have Protection by the Sword on the group, and other not too strong guardian debuffs, which together in my opinion will give less utility than the captain, warden or brawler.
The main problem with yellow line debuff mechanics is that there wasn't really a debuff that made sense to boost, copy, and refresh. Now such a debuff can appear. I agree that you should be careful with the base value of the debuff, and maybe weaken it, but I think the peculiarities of interaction with debuffs from the yellow line should be kept and applied to the debuff from Rupture.

[zipfile]

Look at it this way. 12% incoming damage for 20 seconds at a cooldown of 40 seconds is equivalent to a 6% permanent debuff, which is only 1% stronger than the captain's mark.

I think context matters far more. If the time to do damage is limited, than the 12% is far greater than a persistent 5%.

[SSG_Orion]

After yesterday's discussion I went back to the whiteboard in my head and started thinking more about the potential changes. Again, this is just an evolution of the thinking based on feedback and me trying to piece the puzzle together.

If there is no mention of the trait it means it will remain untouched.

The Defender of the Free

Guardian's Ward

Moves up to the 0 tier and takes the place of Defensive Expertise

Adaptability

When you are hit by an attack you gain a mitigation bonus to the damage source (physical or tactical) that stacks up to 3 times for 20s

Protection by the Shield

Replaces Shield Wall as a set trait bonus

Toggle skill - not disabled by combat states

The Guardian and all Fellowship and Raid members within 40m of the guardian, reduce their incoming damage by 3%

Shield Wall

Trainable

Shield of Light

5 Tiers

Tier 1-4: Adds .25% inc damage reduction to Protection by the Shield/tier. Your Shield-taunt generates 3% more threat/tier.
Tier 5: Your Shield-taunt generates 3% more threat and increases targets by 1.

Warrior's Fortitude

Passively increases Physical Mitigation, Incoming Healing, Block and Partial Block ratings.

Juggernaut

Reduces all incoming damage by 20%
You become immune to combat states.
If an attack would defeat you, instead you are restored to 30% health and Juggernaut is removed.
Duration 15s
Cooldown 3m

The Keen Blade

Retaliation and Whirling Retaliation become Breach and Whirling Breach
Gains the skill Overwhelm

Reduce Outgoing Healing by 50%.
Parry, Evade, and Shield response events increase damage by 3% stacking up to 5 times expires if out of combat for 9s.

Thrill of Battle

5 Tiers

Damaging Attacks in combat increase your Critical Chance by 5%/tier to a maximum of 25%
Critical removes the effect.
Duration 20s or out of combat for 9s

Martial Master

New Trait - replaces Skillful Deflection
5 Tiers

Guardian's Ward damage increased by 1% per tier
Guardian's Ward gains mastery bonus while active

Heavy Weapons Training

Add 1% damage to two-handed weapons/tier
Add 1% damage to melee skills/tier

Thrust
After discussion with you all, Thrust will remain unchanged.

Bleed Them Dry

Moves into the 10 deep Set trait spot

Invigourating Response

Add Block responses to the wording

Protection by the Sword

15 deep Set Trait

Toggle Skill - not interrupted by combat state effects

Increases Fellowship or Raid members Melee Damage by 5%
When a fellowship or raid member within 40, fully or partially blocks, parries, or evades an attack you opens a combat response event

Battle-fury

Replaces Reactive Parry

20 Deep set Trait

Increase damage by 20% for 20s
Unlock Combat Response Skills for 20s.
3m Cooldown

Warrior's Advantage

Renamed from Warrior's Fortitude

Passively enhances Physical Mastery, Melee Crit Chance, Parry and Partial Parry rating

Rupture

Replaces Honourable Combat

Hammer Down now removes all bleeeds
Increases damage for each Bleed remoce and applies Ruptured Artery (High damage 8s Bleed)
Increases incoming damage on target by 2% per removed bleed for 5s per bleed removed (counts as a debuff)

Prey on the Weak

Increases damage from all skills if the target has any active bleed. (Value to be determined)

The Fighter of Shadow

Can no longer be specialized.

Force Opening

Trainable

Bastion of Light

Bastion of Light
Trainable skill

Places a 10m hotspot at the Guardian's feet that deals a small amount of light damage to all targets within. Place a mark on all affected targets making them more susceptible to debuffs applied by the Gurdian
Duration 15s
Cooldown 20s


Defensive Expertise

5 Tiers
Increase Parry and Block by 1%/tier

Light-touched

5 Tiers
Tier 1: Can Block with 2-hand weapons
Tiers 1 - 5:
+1% Melee Damage/Tier
+1% Incoming Healing/tier

Radiate

3 Tiers

Increases the range of Bastion of Light by 5m for 1st two tiers
Increases the range of Bastion of Light by 10m for 3rd tier
AoE attacks have a 10% chance to spread to +1 marked targets/tier

Tenderize

5 Tiers
Fully or Partially Parrying, Blocking or Evading grants you bonus Critical Rating.
Expires if out of combat for 9 seconds.

Flash of Light

Increases damage dealt by Bastion of Light by 10%
Increases duration of Bastion of Light by 5s
While within Bastion of Light, melee skills deal Light damage

High-spirited

Now requires 15+ traits in The Fighter of Shadow

Protected by the Light

Adds a 30% reduction to combat state effects to Protection by the Shield
Adds a small reflective damage shield to Protected by the Sword

Warrior's Guile

Replaces Warrior's Fortitude

Passivle enhances Tactical Mitigation, Critical Defense, Evade and Partial Evade ratings

I'm leaning toward cutting Mark of Permanence and Manifested Ire completely.

Open for discussion - if you'd like.

[Tralfazz]

Retaliation and Whirling Retaliation become Onslaught and Whirling Onslaught
Gains the skill Overwhelm

There is a Warden Gambit called Onslaught. It might be better to not reuse that name for a different pair of skills.

Add 1% damage to two-handed weapons/tier
Add 1% damage to melee skills/tier

I solo in Red but use a weapon/shield combination, mostly. Is it important to encourage use of two-handed weapons for Guardians who spec Red?

[SSG_Orion]

There is a Warden Gambit called Onslaught. It might be better to not reuse that name for a different pair of skills.

You are correct. I will change it.

I solo in Red but use a weapon/shield combination, mostly. Is it important to encourage use of two-handed weapons for Guardians who spec Red?

I don't want to discourage SaB, whch is why I want to add block events to all possible combat events.

[Khluzainn]

After yesterday's discussion I went back to the whiteboard in my head and started thinking more about the potential changes. Again, this is just an evolution of the thinking based on feedback and me trying to piece the puzzle together.

If there is no mention of the trait it means it will remain untouched.

The Defender of the Free

Guardian's Ward

Moves up to the 0 tier and takes the place of Defensive Expertise

Adaptability

When you are hit by an attack you gain a mitigation bonus to the damage source (physical or tactical) that stacks up to 3 times for 20s

Protection by the Shield

Replaces Shield Wall as a set trait bonus

Toggle skill - not disabled by combat states

The Guardian and all Fellowship and Raid members within 40m of the guardian, reduce their incoming damage by 3%

Shield Wall

Trainable

Shield of Light

5 Tiers

Tier 1-4: Adds .25% inc damage reduction to Protection by the Shield/tier. Your Shield-taunt generates 3% more threat/tier.
Tier 5: Your Shield-taunt generates 3% more threat and increases targets by 1.

Warrior's Fortitude

Passively increases Physical Mitigation, Incoming Healing, Block and Partial Block ratings.

Juggernaut

Reduces all incoming damage by 20%
You become immune to combat states.
If an attack would defeat you, instead you are restored to 30% health and Juggernaut is removed.
Duration 15s
Cooldown 3m

The Keen Blade

Retaliation and Whirling Retaliation become Onslaught and Whirling Onslaught
Gains the skill Overwhelm

Reduce Outgoing Healing by 50%.
Parry, Evade, and Shield response events increase damage by 3% stacking up to 5 times expires if out of combat for 9s.

Thrill of Battle

5 Tiers

Damaging Attacks in combat increase your Critical Chance by 5%/tier to a maximum of 25%
Critical removes the effect.
Duration 20s or out of combat for 9s

Martial Master

New Trait - replaces Skillful Deflection
5 Tiers

Guardian's Ward damage increased by 1% per tier
Guardian's Ward gains mastery bonus while active

Heavy Weapons Training

Add 1% damage to two-handed weapons/tier
Add 1% damage to melee skills/tier

Thrust
After discussion with you all, Thrust will remain unchanged.

Bleed Them Dry

Moves into the 10 deep Set trait spot

Invigourating Response

Add Block responses to the wording

Protection by the Sword

15 deep Set Trait

Toggle Skill - not interrupted by combat state effects

Increases Fellowship or Raid members Melee Damage by 5%
When a fellowship or raid member within 40, fully or partially blocks, parries, or evades an attack you opens a combat response event

Battle-fury

Replaces Reactive Parry

20 Deep set Trait

Increase damage by 20% for 20s
Unlock Combat Response Skills for 20s.
3m Cooldown

Warrior's Advantage

Renamed from Warrior's Fortitude

Passively enhances Physical Mastery, Melee Crit Chance, Parry and Partial Parry rating

Rupture

Replaces Honourable Combat

Hammer Down now removes all bleeeds
Increases damage for each Bleed remoce and applies Ruptured Artery (High damage 8s Bleed)
Increases incoming damage on target by 2% per removed bleed for 5s per bleed removed (counts as a debuff)

Prey on the Weak

Increases damage from all skills if the target has any active bleed. (Value to be determined)

The Fighter of Shadow

Can no longer be specialized.

Force Opening

Trainable

Bastion of Light

Bastion of Light
Trainable skill

Places a 10m hotspot at the Guardian's feet that deals a small amount of light damage to all targets within. Place a mark on all affected targets making them more susceptible to debuffs applied by the Gurdian
Duration 15s
Cooldown 20s


Defensive Expertise

5 Tiers
Increase Parry and Block by 1%/tier

Light-touched

5 Tiers
Tier 1: Can Block with 2-hand weapons
Tiers 1 - 5:
+1% Melee Damage/Tier
+1% Incoming Healing/tier

Radiate

3 Tiers

Increases the range of Bastion of Light by 5m for 1st two tiers
Increases the range of Bastion of Light by 10m for 3rd tier
AoE attacks have a 10% chance to spread to +1 marked targets/tier

Tenderize

5 Tiers
Fully or Partially Parrying, Blocking or Evading grants you bonus Critical Rating.
Expires if out of combat for 9 seconds.

Flash of Light

Increases damage dealt by Bastion of Light by 10%
Increases duration of Bastion of Light by 5s
While within Bastion of Light, melee skills deal Light damage

High-spirited

Now requires 15+ traits in The Fighter of Shadow

Protected by the Light

Adds a 30% reduction to combat state effects to Protection by the Shield
Adds a small reflective damage shield to Protected by the Sword

Warrior's Guile

Replaces Warrior's Fortitude

Passivle enhances Tactical Mitigation, Critical Defense, Evade and Partial Evade ratings

I'm leaning toward cutting Mark of Permanence and Manifested Ire completely.

Open for discussion - if you'd like.

I will speak only on the red changes here.

I think your proposed red changes here are very good. I generally like most of these items. As long as damage is tuned to be competitive I could enjoy this version of red guard.

As for RUPTURE, I think this is a completely acceptable form of a cashout as long as the bleed is effected by bleed traits and tracery OR as long as the bleed is properly tuned to sustain the loss of 4 other bleeds. I think this version of Rupture has tools built in to fine tune it down the road. If for example the % debuff is too weak/strong you can easily tune that percentage while keeping the actual bleed this trait applies at a high impact value. In my opinion the bleed from rupture should always hit hard(basically replacing all 4 guardian bleeds for 10s+) and the debuff is what needs to get looked at over time. Currently it looks like the max debuff is 8%. When factoring in most support offered by other dps classes this doesnt seem out of place honestly. The only class that provides less support is champion and in my opinion champ just needs another damage pass. DPS burglar, brawler, beorning, hunter, minstrel, runekeeper, captain, and warden all provide the same OR MORE support to the group then what you have proposed. Which is fine as long as guardian is doing enough overall damage. I dont think red guard should be stacked with too many group support buffs/debuffs. What you have here is 5% ONLY for melee and 8% for the group with a 35% uptime. Overall I think its acceptable. Looking forward to testing it out.

Looks far more promising.

[zipfile]

Now we're talking, let's roll!

The Defender of the Free

Guardian's Ward

Moves up to the 0 tier and takes the place of Defensive Expertise

You mean Guardian's Ward: Tactics trait, right? Sure, makes it easier to pick up in Red I suppose.

Adaptability

When you are hit by an attack you gain a mitigation bonus to the damage source (physical or tactical) that stacks up to 3 times for 20s

Will this be % based or ratings based?
If %, make it small (0.1/0.3/0.5% per stack) since Guardian can get pretty high mits already.

Protection by the Shield

Replaces Shield Wall as a set trait bonus

Toggle skill - not disabled by combat states

Fellowship and Raid members within 40m of the guardian reduce incoming damage by 3%

Okay, this is neat, I like. Not too big, not too weak, can certainly have a use.

Shield Wall

Trainable

Please look into the trait tree bug where you cannot use Shield Wall if you do not have Guardian's Pledge traited.
Like this change too.

Shield of Light

5 Tiers

Tier 1-4: Adds .25% inc damage reduction to Protection by the Shield/tier. Your Shield-taunt generates 3% more threat/tier.
Tier 5: Your Shield-taunt generates 3% more threat and increases targets by 1.

Is it possible we get some numbers as to how much threat it is? Cause....well, we were kinda at random just how much threat it generates.
And when we don't know that, we don't know how impactful 3% will be.
But...my old love Shield Of Fire is back!

Warrior's Fortitude

Passively increases Physical Mitigation, Incoming Healing, Block and Partial Block ratings.

So, unhooked from Warriors Heart, neat. Good change.

Juggernaut

Reduces all incoming damage by 20%
You become immune to combat states.
If an attack would defeat you, instead you are restored to 30% health and Juggernaut is removed.
Duration 15s
Cooldown 3m

I wouldn't change Juggernaut at all, to be honest. It has it's uses, it's a good skill.
At best, lower the cooldown a bit, but keep it as it is. We don't need a "Never Surrender at home"

The Keen Blade

Retaliation and Whirling Retaliation become Onslaught and Whirling Onslaught
Gains the skill Overwhelm

Reduce Outgoing Healing by 50%.
Parry, Evade, and Shield response events increase damage by 3% stacking up to 5 times expires if out of combat for 9s.

What is Onslaught and Whirling Onslaught and how do they differ from Retaliation and Whirling Retaliation?

Considering Guardian's self-healing is % based, reducing outgoing healing like this won't do anything unless you plan on changing CAB/WH to ratings...which I don't support.
Or you plan on making separate values for Red spec from Blue.
(For example, Blue has 36.5% CAB heal, which means Red will have 18.25%)

Thrill of Battle

5 Tiers

Damaging Attacks in combat increase your Critical Chance by 5%/tier to a maximum of 25%
Critical removes the effect.
Duration 20s or out of combat for 9s

Big thumbs up on this!

Martial Master

New Trait - replaces Skillful Deflection
5 Tiers

Guardian's Ward damage increased by 1% per tier
Guardian's Ward gains mastery bonus while active

Nice! Making Guardian's Ward a buff you maintain...I support this.

Heavy Weapons Training

Add 1% damage to two-handed weapons/tier
Add 1% damage to melee skills/tier

Why the change from 10%?
I guess it's still net equal...but this just hurts 1H/B builds.

Thrust
After discussion with you all, Thrust will remain unchanged.

Yes, sir, thank you sir.

Bleed Them Dry

Moves into the 10 deep Set trait spot

Okay.

Invigourating Response

Add Block responses to the wording

Can you add a small heal to this so it's worth picking up in certain scenarios?

Protection by the Sword

15 deep Set Trait

Toggle Skill - not interrupted by combat state effects

Increases Fellowship or Raid members Melee Damage by 5%
When a fellowship or raid member within 40, fully or partially blocks, parries, or evades an attack you opens a combat response event

Okay, I can live with this. But can you change it to affect all damage?

Battle-fury

Replaces Reactive Parry

20 Deep set Trait

Increase damage by 20% for 20s
Unlock Combat Response Skills for 20s.
3m Cooldown

Change the name so it doesn't confuse people with Brawler's skills name. I'm certain you can have MoL write something up for you
Otherwise, YES! This is exactly what Guard needed in a big rework, a big DPS CD and I love that it opens Response chains! This is proper big braining!
Can we lower the cooldown a bit, however? I think 2 minutes would be a lot better, maybe even 90 seconds.
Oh, and have it be affected by Minstrel's Call to Greatness, so you can reset it's CD during big burst phases? Then it can keep the large CD...

Warrior's Advantage

Renamed from Warrior's Fortitude

Passively enhances Physical Mastery, Melee Crit Chance, Parry and Partial Parry rating

Same as the other, neat!

Rupture

Replaces Honourable Combat

5 Tiers
Increases damage for each current Bleed and applies Ruptured Artery (High damage 8s Bleed)
Increases incoming damage on target by 2% per removed bleed for 5s per bleed removed (counts as a debuff)

Just to confirm, this is still on Hammer Down or is it a separate skill?
Otherwise, FIFTH BLEED!
Is this bleed affected by Bleed Them Dry, however?

Prey on the Weak

Increases damage from all skills if the target has any active bleed. (Value to be determined)

Can we get better wording on this? Is it an incoming damage debuff? A fixed value like Latent Light/Current POTW?

Bastion of Light

Bastion of Light
Trainable skill

Places a 10m hotspot at the Guardian's feet that deals a small amount of light damage to all targets within. Place a mark on all affected targets making them more susceptible to debuffs applied by the Gurdian
Duration 15s
Cooldown 20s

Okay, I like this, keeps the spirit of Yellow and feels unique to others.

Defensive Expertise

5 Tiers
Increase Parry and Block by 1%/tier

Light-touched

5 Tiers
Tier 1: Can Block with 2-hand weapons
Tiers 1 - 5:
+1% Melee Damage/Tier
+1% Incoming Healing/tier

Swap it from Tier 1 to Tier 5, the block aspect and it's good.

Radiate

3 Tiers

Increases the range of Bastion of Light by 5m for 1st two tiers
Increases the range of Bastion of Light by 10m for 3rd tier
AoE attacks have a 10% chance to spread to +1 marked targets/tier

I like this, neat! However, keep in mind that Radiate right now cause a debuff to permanently bounce between two targets if it keeps procing.
This isn't that bad for other debuffs, but with Rupture, you might consider looking into making it have a cooldown similar to how Gut Punch does.

Tenderize

5 Tiers
Fully or Partially Parrying, Blocking or Evading grants you bonus Critical Rating.
Expires if out of combat for 9 seconds.

Can you change this to Response skill plays instead? That way Red can benefit from it as well...

Flash of Light

Increases damage dealt by Bastion of Light by 10%
Increases duration of Bastion of Light by 5s
While within Bastion of Light, melee skills deal Light damage

Deja vu?

Protected by the Light

Adds a 30% reduction to combat state effects to Protection by the Shield
Adds a small reflective damage shield to Protected by the Sword

Might be a bit strong with the CC reduction, but otherwise okay. Maybe make the damage shield deal Light damage?

Warrior's Guile

Replaces Warrior's Fortitude

Passivle enhances Tactical Mitigation, Critical Defense, Evade and Partial Evade ratings

Replace Critical Defence with....Resistance maybe? Guardian has enough of Crit D...

I'm leaning toward cutting Mark of Permanence and Manifested Ire completely.

For the best, I believe.

Open for discussion - if you'd like.

Cool, looking forward to this now!

[Rodired]

After yesterday's discussion I went back to the whiteboard in my head and started thinking more about the potential changes. Again, this is just an evolution of the thinking based on feedback and me trying to piece the puzzle together.

If there is no mention of the trait it means it will remain untouched.

The Defender of the Free

Guardian's Ward

Moves up to the 0 tier and takes the place of Defensive Expertise

Adaptability

When you are hit by an attack you gain a mitigation bonus to the damage source (physical or tactical) that stacks up to 3 times for 20s

Protection by the Shield

Replaces Shield Wall as a set trait bonus

Toggle skill - not disabled by combat states

The Guardian and all Fellowship and Raid members within 40m of the guardian, reduce their incoming damage by 3%

Shield Wall

Trainable

Shield of Light

5 Tiers

Tier 1-4: Adds .25% inc damage reduction to Protection by the Shield/tier. Your Shield-taunt generates 3% more threat/tier.
Tier 5: Your Shield-taunt generates 3% more threat and increases targets by 1.

Warrior's Fortitude

Passively increases Physical Mitigation, Incoming Healing, Block and Partial Block ratings.

Juggernaut

Reduces all incoming damage by 20%
You become immune to combat states.
If an attack would defeat you, instead you are restored to 30% health and Juggernaut is removed.
Duration 15s
Cooldown 3m

The Keen Blade

Retaliation and Whirling Retaliation become Breach and Whirling Breach
Gains the skill Overwhelm

Reduce Outgoing Healing by 50%.
Parry, Evade, and Shield response events increase damage by 3% stacking up to 5 times expires if out of combat for 9s.

Thrill of Battle

5 Tiers

Damaging Attacks in combat increase your Critical Chance by 5%/tier to a maximum of 25%
Critical removes the effect.
Duration 20s or out of combat for 9s

Martial Master

New Trait - replaces Skillful Deflection
5 Tiers

Guardian's Ward damage increased by 1% per tier
Guardian's Ward gains mastery bonus while active

Heavy Weapons Training

Add 1% damage to two-handed weapons/tier
Add 1% damage to melee skills/tier

Thrust
After discussion with you all, Thrust will remain unchanged.

Bleed Them Dry

Moves into the 10 deep Set trait spot

Invigourating Response

Add Block responses to the wording

Protection by the Sword

15 deep Set Trait

Toggle Skill - not interrupted by combat state effects

Increases Fellowship or Raid members Melee Damage by 5%
When a fellowship or raid member within 40, fully or partially blocks, parries, or evades an attack you opens a combat response event

Battle-fury

Replaces Reactive Parry

20 Deep set Trait

Increase damage by 20% for 20s
Unlock Combat Response Skills for 20s.
3m Cooldown

Warrior's Advantage

Renamed from Warrior's Fortitude

Passively enhances Physical Mastery, Melee Crit Chance, Parry and Partial Parry rating

Rupture

Replaces Honourable Combat

Hammer Down now removes all bleeeds
Increases damage for each Bleed remoce and applies Ruptured Artery (High damage 8s Bleed)
Increases incoming damage on target by 2% per removed bleed for 5s per bleed removed (counts as a debuff)

Prey on the Weak

Increases damage from all skills if the target has any active bleed. (Value to be determined)

The Fighter of Shadow

Can no longer be specialized.

Force Opening

Trainable

Bastion of Light

Bastion of Light
Trainable skill

Places a 10m hotspot at the Guardian's feet that deals a small amount of light damage to all targets within. Place a mark on all affected targets making them more susceptible to debuffs applied by the Gurdian
Duration 15s
Cooldown 20s


Defensive Expertise

5 Tiers
Increase Parry and Block by 1%/tier

Light-touched

5 Tiers
Tier 1: Can Block with 2-hand weapons
Tiers 1 - 5:
+1% Melee Damage/Tier
+1% Incoming Healing/tier

Radiate

3 Tiers

Increases the range of Bastion of Light by 5m for 1st two tiers
Increases the range of Bastion of Light by 10m for 3rd tier
AoE attacks have a 10% chance to spread to +1 marked targets/tier

Tenderize

5 Tiers
Fully or Partially Parrying, Blocking or Evading grants you bonus Critical Rating.
Expires if out of combat for 9 seconds.

Flash of Light

Increases damage dealt by Bastion of Light by 10%
Increases duration of Bastion of Light by 5s
While within Bastion of Light, melee skills deal Light damage

High-spirited

Now requires 15+ traits in The Fighter of Shadow

Protected by the Light

Adds a 30% reduction to combat state effects to Protection by the Shield
Adds a small reflective damage shield to Protected by the Sword

Warrior's Guile

Replaces Warrior's Fortitude

Passivle enhances Tactical Mitigation, Critical Defense, Evade and Partial Evade ratings

I'm leaning toward cutting Mark of Permanence and Manifested Ire completely.

Open for discussion - if you'd like.

I just want to say the red line changes sound good even tho the group buffs still might be a bit too low (but not by much either way). Something i still see a problem with is aoe damage. This could maybe be incorporated in the parry chain by altering thrust, overwhelm and ttk depending on if you opened the chain with whirling or normal retaliation. Another option i had on my mind is a wow idea steal just giving vexing blow an effect that the next x st skills hit +y tragets. But as i said before i like most of your new ideas just this nitpick or concern however you wanna call it.

[SSG_Orion]

You mean Guardian's Ward: Tactics trait, right? Sure, makes it easier to pick up in Red I suppose.

Correct.

Will this be % based or ratings based?

Rating

Please look into the trait tree bug where you cannot use Shield Wall if you do not have Guardian's Pledge traited.
Like this change too.

Bugs need to be addressed.

Is it possible we get some numbers as to how much threat it is? Cause....well, we were kinda at random just how much threat it generates.
And when we don't know that, we don't know how impactful 3% will be.
But...my old love Shield Of Fire is back!

Potentially, on both fronts.

I wouldn't change Juggernaut at all, to be honest. It has it's uses, it's a good skill.
At best, lower the cooldown a bit, but keep it as it is. We don't need a "Never Surrender at home"

We'll see, it is a little redundant.

What is Onslaught and Whirling Onslaught and how do they differ from Retaliation and Whirling Retaliation?

Changed to Breach and Whirling Breach. They would allow you to gain access to the parry chain without parrying.

Considering Guardian's self-healing is % based, reducing outgoing healing like this won't do anything unless you plan on changing CAB/WH to ratings...which I don't support. Or you plan on making separate values for Red spec from Blue. (For example, Blue has 36.5% CAB heal, which means Red will have 18.25%)

We'll have to see how it goes.

Can you add a small heal to this so it's worth picking up in certain scenarios?

Maybe

Okay, I can live with this. But can you change it to affect all damage?

Might make it too good.

Change the name so it doesn't confuse people with Brawler's skills name. I'm certain you can have MoL write something up for you
Otherwise, YES! This is exactly what Guard needed in a big rework, a big DPS CD and I love that it opens Response chains! This is proper big braining!
Can we lower the cooldown a bit, however? I think 2 minutes would be a lot better, maybe even 90 seconds.
Oh, and have it be affected by Minstrel's Call to Greatness, so you can reset it's CD during big burst phases? Then it can keep the large CD...

Name will be made to fit and will look into the Call to Greatness aspect.

Just to confirm, this is still on Hammer Down or is it a separate skill?

Affects Hammer Down, removes all bleeds and applies a short cycle high damage bleed to replace those removed. So it is still a cashout. And yes, affected by bleed them dry.

Can we get better wording on this? Is it an incoming damage debuff? A fixed value like Latent Light/Current POTW?

Sure. Skills used against targets with a current guardian bleed take more damage.

I like this, neat! However, keep in mind that Radiate right now cause a debuff to permanently bounce between two targets if it keeps procing.
This isn't that bad for other debuffs, but with Rupture, you might consider looking into making it have a cooldown similar to how Gut Punch does.

There will need to be a solve for this issue, yes.

Can you change this to Response skill plays instead? That way Red can benefit from it as well...

If I can make it happen, yes.

Deja vu?

Actually, don't think so.

Might be a bit strong with the CC reduction, but otherwise okay. Maybe make the damage shield deal Light damage?

True on point one and it would likely be light damage.

[Kotal]

After yesterday's discussion I went back to the whiteboard in my head and started thinking more about the potential changes. Again, this is just an evolution of the thinking based on feedback and me trying to piece the puzzle together.

If there is no mention of the trait it means it will remain untouched.

The Defender of the Free

Guardian's Ward

Moves up to the 0 tier and takes the place of Defensive Expertise

Adaptability

When you are hit by an attack you gain a mitigation bonus to the damage source (physical or tactical) that stacks up to 3 times for 20s

Protection by the Shield

Replaces Shield Wall as a set trait bonus

Toggle skill - not disabled by combat states

The Guardian and all Fellowship and Raid members within 40m of the guardian, reduce their incoming damage by 3%

Shield Wall

Trainable

Shield of Light

5 Tiers

Tier 1-4: Adds .25% inc damage reduction to Protection by the Shield/tier. Your Shield-taunt generates 3% more threat/tier.
Tier 5: Your Shield-taunt generates 3% more threat and increases targets by 1.

Warrior's Fortitude

Passively increases Physical Mitigation, Incoming Healing, Block and Partial Block ratings.

Juggernaut

Reduces all incoming damage by 20%
You become immune to combat states.
If an attack would defeat you, instead you are restored to 30% health and Juggernaut is removed.
Duration 15s
Cooldown 3m

The Keen Blade

Retaliation and Whirling Retaliation become Breach and Whirling Breach
Gains the skill Overwhelm

Reduce Outgoing Healing by 50%.
Parry, Evade, and Shield response events increase damage by 3% stacking up to 5 times expires if out of combat for 9s.

Thrill of Battle

5 Tiers

Damaging Attacks in combat increase your Critical Chance by 5%/tier to a maximum of 25%
Critical removes the effect.
Duration 20s or out of combat for 9s

Martial Master

New Trait - replaces Skillful Deflection
5 Tiers

Guardian's Ward damage increased by 1% per tier
Guardian's Ward gains mastery bonus while active

Heavy Weapons Training

Add 1% damage to two-handed weapons/tier
Add 1% damage to melee skills/tier

Thrust
After discussion with you all, Thrust will remain unchanged.

Bleed Them Dry

Moves into the 10 deep Set trait spot

Invigourating Response

Add Block responses to the wording

Protection by the Sword

15 deep Set Trait

Toggle Skill - not interrupted by combat state effects

Increases Fellowship or Raid members Melee Damage by 5%
When a fellowship or raid member within 40, fully or partially blocks, parries, or evades an attack you opens a combat response event

Battle-fury

Replaces Reactive Parry

20 Deep set Trait

Increase damage by 20% for 20s
Unlock Combat Response Skills for 20s.
3m Cooldown

Warrior's Advantage

Renamed from Warrior's Fortitude

Passively enhances Physical Mastery, Melee Crit Chance, Parry and Partial Parry rating

Rupture

Replaces Honourable Combat

Hammer Down now removes all bleeeds
Increases damage for each Bleed remoce and applies Ruptured Artery (High damage 8s Bleed)
Increases incoming damage on target by 2% per removed bleed for 5s per bleed removed (counts as a debuff)

Prey on the Weak

Increases damage from all skills if the target has any active bleed. (Value to be determined)

The Fighter of Shadow

Can no longer be specialized.

Force Opening

Trainable

Bastion of Light

Bastion of Light
Trainable skill

Places a 10m hotspot at the Guardian's feet that deals a small amount of light damage to all targets within. Place a mark on all affected targets making them more susceptible to debuffs applied by the Gurdian
Duration 15s
Cooldown 20s


Defensive Expertise

5 Tiers
Increase Parry and Block by 1%/tier

Light-touched

5 Tiers
Tier 1: Can Block with 2-hand weapons
Tiers 1 - 5:
+1% Melee Damage/Tier
+1% Incoming Healing/tier

Radiate

3 Tiers

Increases the range of Bastion of Light by 5m for 1st two tiers
Increases the range of Bastion of Light by 10m for 3rd tier
AoE attacks have a 10% chance to spread to +1 marked targets/tier

Tenderize

5 Tiers
Fully or Partially Parrying, Blocking or Evading grants you bonus Critical Rating.
Expires if out of combat for 9 seconds.

Flash of Light

Increases damage dealt by Bastion of Light by 10%
Increases duration of Bastion of Light by 5s
While within Bastion of Light, melee skills deal Light damage

High-spirited

Now requires 15+ traits in The Fighter of Shadow

Protected by the Light

Adds a 30% reduction to combat state effects to Protection by the Shield
Adds a small reflective damage shield to Protected by the Sword

Warrior's Guile

Replaces Warrior's Fortitude

Passivle enhances Tactical Mitigation, Critical Defense, Evade and Partial Evade ratings

I'm leaning toward cutting Mark of Permanence and Manifested Ire completely.

Open for discussion - if you'd like.

now we're talking!
thank you, this looks amazing! huge support for pretty much all of it. maybe tweak some CDs (Battle-Fury), but this looks really good!

[Tiaasnin]

I liked the idea of keeping yellow tree spec-able and also making all melee skills on that tree become AOE

[Bagrash]

Now those changes look really promising! Just one question. Is it possible to get a small healdebuff in the red line? Since the other classes were changed groups kinda lag healdebuffs now if they dont have the perfect composition

[SSG_Orion]

Now those changes look really promising! Just one question. Is it possible to get a small healdebuff in the red line? Since the other classes were changed groups kinda lag healdebuffs now if they dont have the perfect composition

There are other classes where that might fit more. I'm looking at you Champion.

[Gamlieldar]

I've been paying attention to the bustle of this forum since Friday, and will contribute my feedback on today's brainstorm since I haven't seen a lot of responses yet. Overall, I've been liking the brainstorming that's occurred. And I really enjoy the compromise of keeping yellow-line as utility while still giving it that "Warrior of the Valar's Light"/Glorfindel theme. Bastion of Light sounds tight, no rhyme intended. Now for the feedback:

Guardian's Ward

Moves up to the 0 tier and takes the place of Defensive Expertise

An interesting replacement for Defensive Expertise. Just so I'm understanding, the guardian would be required to trait for Guardian's Ward in Blue Line, making this ability an official blue line spec. This leads to certain implications:

#1: Red-Line Guardians would have to spend two points in blue line to get their strong power restore
#2: Guardian's Ward, now a blue-line trait, is enhanced to provide a parry response opportunity in the Hiddenhoard Red Guard 4-set bonus. An odd dichotomy that we could probably live with since by the time the rework happens the Hiddenhoard sets won't be relevant for much longer. I think this idea is fine, not really something worth changing.

Adaptability

When you are hit by an attack you gain a mitigation bonus to the damage source (physical or tactical) that stacks up to 3 times for 20s

Excellent! More mits are always good. I'd be curious to see if this effect is only procced when the guardian takes direct damage or if Damage-Over-Time effects would trigger this to proc.

Protection by the Shield

Replaces Shield Wall as a set trait bonus

Toggle skill - not disabled by combat states

The Guardian and all Fellowship and Raid members within 40m of the guardian, reduce their incoming damage by 3%

Beautiful idea! Guardians are already sturdy tanks as it is, but are slightly lacking in group utility. This is a good bump up! And thanks pointing out that this toggle cannot be removed via combat states.

Shield Wall

Trainable

Thank you for giving us the option to trait this. I still find this ability useful in limited but valuable situations (such as final boss in Thaurisgar, preventing squishy person with low morale from getting one-shot by green eye bile vile pile). Given how slow this ability is animation-wise, and given that it has a 20 second cooldown upon being toggled off, it would be nice to see the target of this ability get a -% incoming damage buff for 3-5 seconds. Is the intent to have this ability be removed through combat state effects such as stuns?

Shield of Light

5 Tiers

Tier 1-4: Adds .25% inc damage reduction to Protection by the Shield/tier. Your Shield-taunt generates 3% more threat/tier.
Tier 5: Your Shield-taunt generates 3% more threat and increases targets by 1.

Could probably play around with the numbers to make this feel more impactful, but concept-wise solid. Maybe make ALL shield skills generate more threat/tier.

Warrior's Fortitude

Passively increases Physical Mitigation, Incoming Healing, Block and Partial Block ratings.

To reduce clutter, I will say this for all Warrior's X traits across the guardian lines: Given that the bonuses are so minuscule, making these passive is a solid choice. Great choice!

Juggernaut

Reduces all incoming damage by 20%
You become immune to combat states.
If an attack would defeat you, instead you are restored to 30% health and Juggernaut is removed.
Duration 15s
Cooldown 3m

Okay, consider this definition of juggernaut: a huge, powerful, and overwhelming force or institution. The current rendition of Juggernaut fits this definition more than what you're proposing, and honestly, I enjoy the Juggernaut we already have because of its synergy with Bolstering Blocks. 100% chance to block + Bolstering Block Morale heal + lots of adds = Indomitable Juggernaut, nearly. The only reason why so many guardians (myself included) have been crying out for more damage reduction is because this ability doesn't make us feel like a juggernaut when tanking bosses with heavy, unavoidable hits (such as Dushtalkbuk's Maul and Hrimil's Fangs). Personally, I would like to see just the 20% damage component added to Juggernaut. Ditch the heal upon otherwise defeat and the consequential disappearance of the buff. If not, apply this 20% damage reduction component to Guardian's Pledge.

However, allowing Force Opening to be traited for in yellow will allow Blue Guardians more liberal access to the parry chain, and therefore Re-Direct. Between Redirect's 30 second cooldown further reduced by warchant, its 10 second duration, and our ability to use Redirect on cooldown consistently with Force Opening, I personally do not believe that changing Juggernaut from 100% Block Chance to minuscule Damage Reduction is a great idea. Thematically speaking, the current rendition of Juggernaut is great. If you add the Damage reduction component, we'll be a lot happier. But bottom line: this proposed rendition is very lackluster and pretty-much a Never-Surrender copycat. Not a fan at all.

The Keen Blade

Retaliation and Whirling Retaliation become Breach and Whirling Breach
Gains the skill Overwhelm

Reduce Outgoing Healing by 50%.
Parry, Evade, and Shield response events increase damage by 3% stacking up to 5 times expires if out of combat for 9s.

Great buff, even though guardians don't have Evade response skills. Interesting name change on retaliation/whirling retaliation, because as a red guard you're not retaliating blows or avoidance events. Biggest thing I feel like needs to be said, even if it has been said again:

This isn't 2007 anymore. It's 2023, gone are the days of classes having "Primary" specs. Captains excel as both damage/support and tanks, Wardens excel at both damage and tanking. If Guardians are going to be subjected to the 2007 philosophy, fine, make us only do 90% single target damage of what a hunter would do (better than what we got on live), but do NOT nerf our outgoing healing/survivability to compensate. If you are willing to let Guardians do as much damage as a hunter, then I'm open to the outgoing healing nerf (maybe not 50%, maybe lower?), granted that we are the only class that can heal to full and gain a % max morale boost from a tracery. Even though our damage on live is bleh, our survivability is intense that I as a Red guard can solo T10 delvings with minimal issues in the event of overpulling, even with the damage reflect affix. But I digress...

Thrill of Battle

5 Tiers

Damaging Attacks in combat increase your Critical Chance by 5%/tier to a maximum of 25%
Critical removes the effect.
Duration 20s or out of combat for 9s

Martial Master

New Trait - replaces Skillful Deflection
5 Tiers

Guardian's Ward damage increased by 1% per tier
Guardian's Ward gains mastery bonus while active

Heavy Weapons Training

Add 1% damage to two-handed weapons/tier
Add 1% damage to melee skills/tier

Thrust
After discussion with you all, Thrust will remain unchanged.

These are all good abilities. My only thing is that a trait boosts the damage of an ability that, according to your brainstorm, is earned in the first row in blue line. I think Guardian's Ward should just be baseline for the Martial Master trait to make sense.

Protection by the Sword

15 deep Set Trait

Toggle Skill - not interrupted by combat state effects

Increases Fellowship or Raid members Melee Damage by 5%
When a fellowship or raid member within 40, fully or partially blocks, parries, or evades an attack you opens a combat response event

Hopefully these AoE toggle skills around the guardian can work and not cause lag issues. But if this is going to have such a wide range, why not make it ALL damage? Not just melee damage.

Battle-fury

Replaces Reactive Parry

20 Deep set Trait

Increase damage by 20% for 20s
Unlock Combat Response Skills for 20s.
3m Cooldown

So you take an okayish trait (if had scaled properly) and transform it into a DPS cooldown with interesting functionality? WORKS FOR ME! :-D

Rupture

Replaces Honourable Combat

Hammer Down now removes all bleeeds
Increases damage for each Bleed remoce and applies Ruptured Artery (High damage 8s Bleed)
Increases incoming damage on target by 2% per removed bleed for 5s per bleed removed (counts as a debuff)

So continuing with the bleed cashout mechanic, this is what is supposed to happen, if I'm understanding correctly:
#1: Increases damage for each Bleed removed -- Clarify, is the damage of Hammer Down increased for each bleed remove? Or does the player get a % damage increase buff for X seconds for each bleed removed? I'm assuming the former, but just so I understand.
#2: Ruptured Artery -- High Damage Bleed for 8 seconds sounds great, especially if it's going to do more damage than all four bleeds would have done during that duration had they not been consumed. Work on the tuning for this, and it can be VERY good.
#3: 2% damage on target down from 3% per bleed removed. Sounds like a nerf that is happening because of possible synergy with bastion of Light prolonging this effect's duration and ability to be spread to other targets. Maybe some more tinkering with the numbers or synergy would be needed, but still seems good.

FAR better than Honourable Combat, I will say. I cannot wait to see how this idea ends up.

I've been paying attention to the bustle of this forum since Friday, and will contribute my feedback on today's brainstorm since I haven't seen a lot of responses yet. Overall, I've been liking the brainstorming that's occurred. And I really enjoy the compromise of keeping yellow-line as utility while still giving it that "Warrior of the Valar's Light"/Glorfindel theme. Bastion of Light sounds tight, no rhyme intended. Now for the feedback:

Prey on the Weak

Increases damage from all skills if the target has any active bleed. (Value to be determined)

Spruce it up by increasing both regular damage and critical damage, maybe? :-D

Bastion of Light

Bastion of Light
Trainable skill

Places a 10m hotspot at the Guardian's feet that deals a small amount of light damage to all targets within. Place a mark on all affected targets making them more susceptible to debuffs applied by the Gurdian
Duration 15s
Cooldown 20s

This is a better iteration that doesn't have a target limit/count. Now, suppose you're kiting monsters and they go through (in and out) of the hotspot. How long does the guardian have before the mark disappears and the increased susceptibility/magnitude is no longer applied to monsters that recently went through the hotspot? Obviously it would be ideal for the guardian to stop kiting and let the mobs stay in that spot, but this question is brought up for mechanical/implementation purposes. Doesn't necessarily need an answer, but should be considered when implementing this effect.

Radiate

3 Tiers

Increases the range of Bastion of Light by 5m for 1st two tiers
Increases the range of Bastion of Light by 10m for 3rd tier
AoE attacks have a 10% chance to spread to +1 marked targets/tier

This is great! Now, given that this will likely spread the Rupture effect from red-line to other targets, it makes sense to nerf the +Incoming Damage/cashed out bleed on Rupture itself from max 12% for 20 seconds to max 8% for 20 seconds.

Tenderize

5 Tiers
Fully or Partially Parrying, Blocking or Evading grants you bonus Critical Rating.
Expires if out of combat for 9 seconds.

Okay, so the same effect, but we can get the Tenderize Stacks from other avoidance effects. Given that Blue Guardians depend on critical hits from shield skills to rebuild fortifications, this will help tremendously in conjunction with shield spikes.

Flash of Light

Increases damage dealt by Bastion of Light by 10%
Increases duration of Bastion of Light by 5s
While within Bastion of Light, melee skills deal Light damage

#1: How does Bastion of Light deal damage? Do enemies in the bastion take damage every X seconds while standing in it? Do they only take initial damage upon entering?
#2: Does the duration increase cover a gap for Bastion of Light to be maintained at near 100% uptime? I remember you mentioning something about the uptime of this effect.

Protected by the Light

Adds a 30% reduction to combat state effects to Protection by the Shield
Adds a small reflective damage shield to Protected by the Sword

#1: What is meant by "Small, reflective damage shield?" Negate 5% damage, reflect 5% damage, something similar to redirect?
#2: Regarding the reduction to combat state effects: This doesn't seem like a groundbreaking addition for Protection By the Shield in a lot of PVE situations, though there are some (Stuns in Hrimil encounter). In PVP, it'll probably be a very good benefit.

I'm leaning toward cutting Mark of Permanence and Manifested Ire completely.

Open for discussion - if you'd like.

Definitely remove Mark of Permanence - If I understand your ideas behind Bastion of Light + Radiate, you have to use AoE skills to maintain 100% uptime on your debuffs. This is more active, engaging gameplay, which Mark of Permanence does not encourage. Remove.

Manifested Ire - If the only effect you can come up with is a -run speed mechanic, we already have that with Engage, which can be spread via Radiate. The intention behind this ability was for the guardian to get away from adds that were attacking him/her so that they would have a run speed debuff that's permanent - helpful for kiting mobs that you don't want damaging the guardian at all for whatever reason (Guardian needs extra time to confront the mobs with cooldowns, mobs do deadly stuff if they hit the guardian, etc.).

Maybe this effect could be remade into an active ability with a 60 second cooldown that force taunts a certain amount of targets in an area around the guardian, similar to Challenge, and gives them a -50% run speed for x seconds, or perhaps -y% outgoing damage for x seconds. The roleplaying thoughts behind this ability is that the guardian manifests his ire/her whenever he/she wants, and as a result, surrounding enemies are demoralized by doing significantly less damage or having a hard time running faster. Just a fun thought to put out there. Either way, what we have on live for Manifested Ire is meh, I agree.

[Gamlieldar]

Still eager to hear your thoughts regarding Cataclysmic Shout/Singular Focus/Litany of Defiance. Many people on the forums have mentioned making these abilities be more useful than they currently are on live. The most common feedback being:

1. Cataclysmic Shout is a functionally useless ability with the most awesome animation ever
2. Singular Focus can't be spread via Radiate or affected by permanence (the latter probably won't be relevant)
3. Litany of Defiance feels like a suicide button at times because you end up in situations where group members are taking damage they shouldn't be taken, and you get punished for protecting them by dying.

[dudlord]

First of all, great job! I can tell you put a lot of thought into this an were very receptive to feedback! Love to see it! Now for my responses to each change...

Defender of the free:
Guardians ward (assumed to be guardians ward tactics?)
-Sure, make this more easily reached by red, which you've now incentivized to keep up guardians ward. Cool.

Adaptability
-Considering this is a ratings change, I think this is fine. It's probably less value than the BPE on live, but that's perfectly fine since were picking up value in other places with the rest of these changes. As zip said, if this was % it would need to be very low to not be insanely powerful.

Protection by the shield
-Cool! nice little group utility pickup thats not too big but also not negligible! I will say I think toggle skills that have no reason to be turned off are a little weird, but thats fine.

Shield wall
-Decent change. Most average level players aren't actually good or active users of shield wall so they get to save points on something they don't really value, and the playmakers who do use it actively will still be able to pick it up, so I think this is good!

Shield of light
-Cool! Like putting more base threat into the skills

Warriors fortitude
-I see now that your wording here is meant to untie these from WH. I approve!

Juggernaut
-I think the biggest thing about juggernaut on live is that it feels incredible vs mass adds but super underwhelming vs bosses (considering how much of their damage/skillsets are unblockable in mordern content). I think Capstones should feel good almost universally, instead of good in one type of fight and underwhelming in another. This just sort of feels underwhelming all around is the issue. 20% is not much, and a 30% heal is also not that much. For reference, if you were to panic pop this while low health and burn through the cheat death mechanic in under 5 seconds... this would be purely worse than catch a breath with the current raid set. I do like that you listened to feedback about its imbalance, but this might need more tuning. Also feels too much like a clone of Never surrender.


Keen Blade
-Breach change to not need parry responses is amazing, best change you could have made for this spec, good job.
-OGH change... from my understanding this stat doesn affect % heals, so doesnt affect any of guardian heals at all? If you want to reduce red guard healing (which I agree with), youre either going to have to make the heals rating (I do NOT agree with this!) or address the traceries in some way. The most egregious offender is obviously the warriors heart tracery which turns a 30% heal into a full heal + more. I think without the healing traceries, red guard healing likely sits around where you want it to be, so possibly consider moving the power from those instead of attacking it like this.

Thrill of battle
-Same as last set of ideas, Still cool!

Martial master
-I'm glad you're incentivizing use of ward in red. Good to add at least a little bit of management opportunity to the playstyle, as guardian is meant to be more of an "entry level" class than some others, this is good practice, and will also help landscape guards practice keeping their ward up for when they tank

Heavy weapons training
-You reduced the value of this, but since damage values will be adjusted to tune overall damage either way, the implication is that you either want this one trait to be relatively less appealing compared to others than it was before, or you want less incentive to go 2h over SaB. Either reason is fine, but im curious what your intention was here?

Thrust
-Cool! Glad you considered the feedback!

Bleed them dry
-moving set bonuses up or down tiers is has no impact on cap level play so I have no strong feeling about this

Invigourating response
-Fine, although in its current for restoring power It probably wont see much use since now with these changes red line is also being incentivised to keep ward up

Protection by the sword
-Cool! again toggle skills that have no reason to be off are kinda weird

Battle-fury
-Awesome! an offensive CD! Guards not having this made them relatively worse in group content cause they couldnt match their damage profile to debuff profiles like OB! This is really nice! (but also since in red you now have breach instead of retal you dont need the free responses, so this is literally just if you wanted... block responses? CAB?)

Warriors Advantage
-See above notes about blue equiv.

Rupture
-I like this. If the new bleed damage is tuned well its very incentivised to sync this properly with other classes support debuffs (debuff stacking and all that) and will add more cordination to red guard in group play, like a couple of the other changes. Good job here!

Prey on the week
-cool, now not reliant on the bleed being sweeping specifically, also not reliant on crits. I'm a fan!


Fighter of shadow
Force opening
-cool

Bastion of light
-glad we're seeing that ground area control idea make its way in! My one note is that if this is 20s CD, and you will need to hit it on cd for full uptime (relatively high maintenance) don't make this animation too slow.

Defensive expertise
-You've consolidated the red and blue versions of these traits here, I like it

Light touched
-Cool. I like zips idea that blocking with 2h is gated behind rank 5 here

Radiate
-wording on the spreading is confusing to me. Does this spread the marks from bastion to people outside of bastion? does this spread debuffs from someone marked to someone else marked?

Tenderise
-As zip said, red wont get anything out of this if it works the way it does on live. I will take this moment to say that I think the best solution to this is actually to make all bpe PROC responses trigger affects like these, so you can also get them from group mates bpeing with protection by the sword, or from using force opening. I think that helps keep the feel of this skill while still making it useful to dps guards. It's also better than making this tier up with use of reaction skills because... red guard will just do like one parry chain and immediately go to tier 5? lol

Flash of light
-So I noticed this has changed to be while YOU are in bastion of light skills do light damage, regardless of wether or not your target is. I approve of this, helps keep damage profile controllable by guardian instead of being super reliant on tank position. See my note above about uptime though, since with ths its 20s duration 20s cd

High spirited
-I dont particularly feel like 5% inc healing is strong enough that it needs to be gated to the 15+ point level of the tree, but I dont feel particularly strong about it one way or another

Protected by light
-wow CC reduction... is this the only skill/trait CC reduction in the game? Interesting choice here. I honestly can't tell how meaningful this will be.

Warriors guile
-since this still exists even when yellow is no longering going to be a spec tree, is the intent here that you can now have multiple of these traits at once? on live only one will work at a time, so I assume this means multiple will work at a time with this change? If so good to see pmit in blue and tmit in yellow will be stackable


Overall super super good set of changes. I have 2 mid tier importance points and potentially 1 minor aside though

Mid tier points:
1. Don't really like this juggernaut idea. went from busted strong in some scenarios and mediocre in others to mediocre all round.
2. Red still has no AOE paradigm! Like i said before I would strongly encourage whirling -> overwhelm spread thrust instead of upgrade it and this keep the play paradigm roughly parallel with single target but theres other things you could possibly do too.

minor aside:
In my previous response I mentioned strong bursts maybe belongs in red instead of yellow. When I was thinking about it, It seems like swapping its position with to the rescue might be a great choice. Thematically, strong bursts is damage oriented, and to the rescue is more of a utility trait, so I think swapping the two would make both of them fit better with the tree they end up in! you might consider taking the autocrit off to the rescue though.

Good job!

[Gamlieldar]

-OGH change... from my understanding this stat doesn affect % heals, so doesnt affect any of guardian heals at all? If you want to reduce red guard healing (which I agree with), youre either going to have to make the heals rating (I do NOT agree with this!) or address the traceries in some way. The most egregious offender is obviously the warriors heart tracery which turns a 30% heal into a full heal + more. I think without the healing traceries, red guard healing likely sits around where you want it to be, so possibly consider moving the power from those instead of attacking it like this.

EDIT: OGH does NOT influence how much heals guardian abilities do. My test with an earring that had OGH rating forgot to consider difference in max morale. Sorry, Zip ????

[Joedangod]

Battle-fury

Replaces Reactive Parry

20 Deep set Trait

Increase damage by 20% for 20s
Unlock Combat Response Skills for 20s.
3m Cooldown

Battle Fury is the name of the Brawler capstone so probably wanna go with something else. Seems decent, albeit still a bit generic. I assume it'd get some tracery to reduce the CD?

Bastion of Light

Bastion of Light
Trainable skill

Places a 10m hotspot at the Guardian's feet that deals a small amount of light damage to all targets within. Place a mark on all affected targets making them more susceptible to debuffs applied by the Gurdian
Duration 15s
Cooldown 20s

With 20s duration and 20s cooldown I imagine this is gonna feel rough in any scenario involving tanks that move. If the class is gonna be hotspot bound it'd be preferable to have a notably lower CD than duration so you can move it early if needed. I.e. 12s CD, 18s duration. Tough to visualise the increased range, scalewise I feel like this thing should be about 2/3rds of a cappy banner or so.

[zipfile]

Potentially, on both fronts.

Yeah, a lot of the Guardian tooltips lack basic information and should really be updated.
For example, Overwhelm doesn't state the damage of Terrible Wound.

We'll see, it is a little redundant.

What is redundant? Juggernaut? Not really...it's perfectly fine, just decrease the cooldown a bit and it's solid.

Changed to Breach and Whirling Breach. They would allow you to gain access to the parry chain without parrying.

Will they remain 5 seconds CD?
Is there an internal cooldown to this Parry chain effect?
Also, this would make Force Opening a bit weak by comparison....perhaps add a Mitigation debuff to Force Opening? Would fit thematically...

We'll have to see how it goes.

I believe this is the best course, yes.

Might make it too good.

I don't think so. In fact, it might be a reason to consider picking up a Guardian in a group.
You did want Guardians to have some offensive utility in Red, no?

Name will be made to fit and will look into the Call to Greatness aspect.

Neato!

Affects Hammer Down, removes all bleeds and applies a short cycle high damage bleed to replace those removed. So it is still a cashout. And yes, affected by bleed them dry.

Neato again!

Sure. Skills used against targets with a current guardian bleed take more damage.

So..is it an incoming damage debuff then? Or does it remain the same (extra flat amount of damage whenever the target is hit by a skill while Bleeding?)

There will need to be a solve for this issue, yes.

Cool.

If I can make it happen, yes.

I don't see a reason why it shouldn't be possible.
Playing a Response skill places a Critical Rating buff on the Guardian. Stacks up to 5 times.

This version would make it far more beneficial to Red Guardians when you're not the one taking hits.

Actually, don't think so.

Yup, I've misread it.
All good on this front, IMO.

True on point one and it would likely be light damage.

Okay, awesome! I'm really looking forward to this now...I hope all of these can be achieved.

Some random notes:

• Consider reducing the duration of Terrible Wound and Deep Wound in exchange for higher damage.
• Consider reducing the amount of points the traits require. 5 is already a lot, 6 is just horrible....
• Do away with the "20/40/60/80/100% chance..." traits, they feel horrible while levelling. Have the effects always be 100% to occur, but make the potency scale up as you invest points in them?
• Would be a shame to leave Cataclysmic Shout untouched....any plans for it? It's visually stunning...and that's about it. It's Shield-smash but worse in almost every way except that it can stun longer on one target...
  
  • Maybe you can find a way to tie in Bastion of Light with it?

[Gamlieldar]

Passively increases Physical Mitigation, Incoming Healing, Block and Partial Block ratings.

Juggernaut

Reduces all incoming damage by 20%
You become immune to combat states.
If an attack would defeat you, instead you are restored to 30% health and Juggernaut is removed.
Duration 15s
Cooldown 3m

I wanted to touch more on this Damage Reduction effect. Prior to the Hiddenhoard Set, Guardians only have Redirect as a primary source of -incoming damage/damage negation. Once Guardians hit level 145 in the next expansion, they can kiss the Catch a Breath Damage Reduction goodbye. I do want to emphasize that having another short-term, frequently available damage reduction ability would be nice. What if this were applied to Engage, which is on a 30 second cooldown?

Another idea is that Cataclysmic Shout, under a 30 second cooldown, will shout at enemies for massive light damage and provide a 5s stun similar how it is on live and gives certain benefits if specialized in Blue/Red:

If specialized as Keen Blade (Red): Cataclysmic Shout extends the duration of bleeds and increases bleed damage by X% and incoming melee critical chance of struck targets by Y% for 8 seconds.

If specialized as Defender of the Free (Blue): Cataclysmic Shout reduces incoming damage by 35% for 5 seconds and refreshes the duration of Bastion of Light.

[Skohgar]

With bastion of light would it be possible to have the duration only tick down while the guardian isn't in the area and when the guardian re-enters the area the duration is reset.-As part of a later trait
And the cooldown would be used to move it to a new location if necessary rather than just reapply it in the same place every 20 seconds as depending on the animation time this could become slightly annoying.

Make Cataclysmic Shout feel more impactful e.g. a powerful debuff or buff for so many seconds which could tier up with number of targets hit

Would it be possible to have a trait deeper in the tree that restores the AOE light damage+ heal on marked/bastion targets on hit?-maybe increase it potency compared to before with ranks or have it cost a base 5 with only a single rank

[SSG_Orion]

@Zipfile - Prey on the weak is a damage buff against targets that are "bleeding."

@dudlord - Warrior's Fortitude, Warrior's Advantage, and Warrior's Guile will stack - since they hit different ratings it makes sense that they stack.

I'll work on cataclysmic shout - especially since it is going to be such a large investment into the utility.

[Gamlieldar]

EDIT: OGH does NOT influence how much heals guardian abilities do. My test with an earring that had OGH rating forgot to consider difference in max morale. Sorry, Zip ????

Bumping my response. Please note Orion that if you want to nerf Guardian heals in red that -OGH will not work.

[Technician46]

After yesterday's discussion I went back to the whiteboard in my head and started thinking more about the potential changes. Again, this is just an evolution of the thinking based on feedback and me trying to piece the puzzle together.

If there is no mention of the trait it means it will remain untouched.

The Defender of the Free

Guardian's Ward

Moves up to the 0 tier and takes the place of Defensive Expertise

Adaptability

When you are hit by an attack you gain a mitigation bonus to the damage source (physical or tactical) that stacks up to 3 times for 20s

Protection by the Shield

Replaces Shield Wall as a set trait bonus

Toggle skill - not disabled by combat states

The Guardian and all Fellowship and Raid members within 40m of the guardian, reduce their incoming damage by 3%

Shield Wall

Trainable

Shield of Light

5 Tiers

Tier 1-4: Adds .25% inc damage reduction to Protection by the Shield/tier. Your Shield-taunt generates 3% more threat/tier.
Tier 5: Your Shield-taunt generates 3% more threat and increases targets by 1.

Warrior's Fortitude

Passively increases Physical Mitigation, Incoming Healing, Block and Partial Block ratings.

Juggernaut

Reduces all incoming damage by 20%
You become immune to combat states.
If an attack would defeat you, instead you are restored to 30% health and Juggernaut is removed.
Duration 15s
Cooldown 3m


****** Just want start by saying a GREAT BIG THANK YOU. YOU ARE STARTING TO LISTEN TO US IN REGARDS TO BLUE LINE AND IT'S LOOKING GOOD. THANK YOU AGAIN. *******

There some things we need clarification on and some request if they don't seem un-reasonable to you.

Clarifications:

1. Adaptability: I'm assuming due to the way you wrote this that the "cash-out" part of the set trait bonus is not going to be part of the trait right? Please, Please, Please, tell me that it will NOT be part of it. If its not then great you got the point of "CASH OUT" being anti-productive.

2. Adaptability: How soon after the 20sec duration is up that we can start stacking deflections up again?

3. Adaptability: Will the mitigations increase be in % or flat rate? Either way I hope it turns out to be something meaningful. 1, 2, or 3% total IMO is not really meaningful. I believe starting at 5% and up starts to become a little noticeable but yea 1, 2 or 3% means nothing in reality.

4. Adaptability: Will the increase in mits be added above cap if we are already capped or not?

4. Warrior's Heart: Can you please give us an idea what these numbers will look like. I'm hoping they are in percentages (%) instead of flat rate but either way I hope you can make them something meaningful again.

5. Warrior's Heart: forgive me if you may have mentioned this already (I think you did but to lazy to go back and double check) but I recall that you might of mentioned that the different iterations of Warrior's heart might be stackable, and will we be able to if we have enough points to reach it? And if so how will it interact? We won't get double heal right? Will the ratings just be adds onto the version of "Warrior's Heart" we are in?

6. Warrior's Heart: Are we keeping the -20% incoming damage reduction from "Stoic" ? I'd like to take the opportunity to mention that "Stoic" cost way to much....... I believe that in general no skill should cost more then 5 points, this includes "To the Rescue" in red line and "Strong Burst" in yellow.

7. Shield of Light: I love fact that you are putting an add threat generation to "Shield Taunt" making it useful again (THANK YOU...... GOOD JOB. YOU ARE LISTENNING AGAIN.) So the clarification is "Shield Taunt" and "Break Ranks", will they still be tied together? Will we still lose 10% mitigations when using "Break Ranks" ? Like I've posted before I never understood why we have to "lose to gain" concept built into the guardian..... . Why can't we just keep our mits while benefitting the group? Just need clarification.

REQUEST:

1. "Protection by the Shield", "Shield Wall", "Shield of Light": Let me start off by saying I love what you are doing with this. Keep up the good work !!!!!. My request is simple (if you feel its not to much), I'd like to see the starting - incoming damage rate for the Guardian himself start at 5% and the groups at 4% then with "Shield of Light" it can increase to 6% for the guard and 5% for the group. I just think that 3% in real time will not make much of a difference.

2. "Shield Taunt/Break Ranks": I'm requesting that you 1: separate these skill/trait into 2 separate skills that way we can determine when to use them and 2: please remove the "Cash Out" of mitigations from Break Ranks. Why should we lose 10% our our survivability when using this skill while other tank don't suffer lose when helping/buffing the group?

3. Juggernaut: Again THANK YOU, YOU ARE LISTENING. As you are aware that blocking just almost never, ever, happen in boss fights and Guard's have been struggling in higher tier boss fight for a very long time. So my request is simply increase the -20% incoming damage to at least 50% I mean after all just the name of the skill implies a much stronger defense then 20% and it will go a long way to help Guard's not be replaced by the likes of Brawler and Captains which benefit/buff the raids groups more then Guards are presently.

4. Shield Animations: Are a bit slow in all lines please speed them up.


I'm leaning toward cutting Mark of Permanence and Manifested Ire completely.

***** Please cut them out. They just complicate stuff and really haven't been that useful at least not in their present form*****

I do hope that you can put something more useful in their spot......

Open for discussion - if you'd like.

***** FINAL COMMENTS*****

I will reserve commenting about "The Keen Blade" until later but I do want to say, "You are heading in the right track when minimizing "deflection response skill". They are a best unpredictable and at worst non-existent. I really don't understand these poster that seem to suggest (apart from "Force opening") that you could seem to get a predictable deflection response skill off by being near others or your tank (if your tank is near and not having to kite as been the meta lately). Maybe this is somewhat true when raiding against adds but NOT in a boss fight.... just won't happen w/o "force opening". Anyway you are moving the right direction here, away from "deflection response skills" when in "The Keen Blade"

And MOST IMPORTANTLY for our main line "DEFENDER OF THE FREE", I know I have criticized you and your crew in the resent past but I am glad to praise you and your crew for the changes you are planning for our main and most important line, "Defender of the Free". Thank you!!! Again you are moving it in the right direction. I really hope that my suggestions/request for this line are reasonable and hope to see them implemented. Ultimately I know I'm not the final word on this, you are but I hope that somehow my request seem reasonable to you.


Thank you again. Nice work, keep it up.

P.S. Sorry, my post formatting doesn't always come out the way I'm thinking in my head but starting from the Yellow Highlights down its my stuff...

[SSG_Orion]

With bastion of light would it be possible to have the duration only tick down while the guardian isn't in the area and when the guardian re-enters the area the duration is reset.-As part of a later trait
And the cooldown would be used to move it to a new location if necessary rather than just reapply it in the same place every 20 seconds as depending on the animation time this could become slightly annoying.

Make Cataclysmic Shout feel more impactful e.g. a powerful debuff or buff for so many seconds which could tier up with number of targets hit

Would it be possible to have a trait deeper in the tree that restores the AOE light damage+ heal on marked/bastion targets on hit?-maybe increase it potency compared to before with ranks or have it cost a base 5 with only a single rank

What is more than likely going to happen with BoL is the duration will be 20s and the cooldown 20s or 15/15. Depends on how it fits in the rotation. The animation would likely be something very, very short because you are literally just enforcing your will over an area. The damage will be tactical too.

Also, one thing that I really need to look at is the corruption removal on Improved Sting. It really feels too often. We might want to put it on something with a little longer cooldown.