More Guardian Thoughts

[Rino90]

Hi Orion, I've been giving "Bastion of Light" and the other skills/effects associated w/ it some thought. I feel that making it a hot spot will not be good ideas because some of the raid/instance and delving mechanics will basically negate these skills/effect. For example:

1. Puddles = will have to be constantly moving out of them and therefore rendering the hot spot useless along w/ all the other skills/effect associated w/ Bastion of Light.

2. Eyes (and the associated effective) = will force the guard to move. A good example of this is Sagroth and the yellow eye someone in the group, including the tank, get.

3. Punts = will move the guard out of the hot spot rendering "Bastion of Light and the associated skills/effect less effective or useless.

4. Kiting = will render Bastion of light and associated skills/effects completely useless.

I think a better solution would be an AURA around the guard w/ the same effects. Please reconsider the HOT SPOT idea.
Thank You

If the description of the skill and its trait specifies a radius, then 30 meters is a huge zone (War-chant radius with the talent is 20 meters) which is unlikely to have the problems you described, rather the opposite, it will be difficult to use such a skill because of the effects of control. If it's a diameter, it's still a pretty wide area, and given the not too long recovery time of the skill it can always be used quickly in a new position. The game is full of positional skills like banner and tar, and they don't cause much of a problem for gameplay.

[zipfile]

No more Guardian thoughts :'(

[Technician46]

If the description of the skill and its trait specifies a radius, then 30 meters is a huge zone (War-chant radius with the talent is 20 meters) which is unlikely to have the problems you described, rather the opposite, it will be difficult to use such a skill because of the effects of control. If it's a diameter, it's still a pretty wide area, and given the not too long recovery time of the skill it can always be used quickly in a new position. The game is full of positional skills like banner and tar, and they don't cause much of a problem for gameplay.

Yes, thank you, I failed to take the area of effect and the cd into consideration but even then, I still feel that it would be more beneficial to have it placed on the guardian himself then on a spot on the ground for what seems to me obvious reasons. It will allow us to move around freely w/o having to be concerned if we are in the affected area after a puddle/punt/kitting or PVMP situation. It would allow us to take with us the benefit of the affects in any emergency situation or otherwise, in other words we will be able to receive its benefit 100% of the times as apposed to a possible not 100% of the time.

Another question I have is, "What if there are 2 guardians in the group" ? Lets say two guardian tanks or 1 blue tank and 1 red dps, will the effects stack? Will the area of effect widen, will the timer on the effect reset or will they negate each other? what will happen and what is the plan for these situations? Will it work like the captain's "Oath Breaker" where you can't use it on the same target more then once I believe every 3 minutes ( I'm thinking specifically on boss) but in the case of "Bastion of Light" every 20 sec. ?

Thank you ahead of time for your response.

[Hephburz-2]

Yes, thank you, I failed to take the area of effect and the cd into consideration but even then, I still feel that it would be more beneficial to have it placed on the guardian himself then on a spot on the ground for what seems to me obvious reasons. It will allow us to move around freely w/o having to be concerned if we are in the affected area after a puddle/punt/kitting or PVMP situation. It would allow us to take with us the benefit of the affects in any emergency situation or otherwise, in other words we will be able to receive its benefit 100% of the times as apposed to a possible not 100% of the time.

But this is a gameplay mechanic? Certain buffs require you to be stationary in a particular position, banner, tar, as explained above, Bastion of Light will just add to that mechanic, it's meant to be something you have to play around with, and not something you receive the benefit of 100% of the time, simply because if it did, it could not be as potent.

[SSG_Orion]

No more Guardian thoughts :'(

Not currently. We start implementing from this base in all likelihood.

[Rino90]

Not currently. We start implementing from this base in all likelihood.

By the way, maybe consider adding a passive talent for hammer damage similar to the captain's Improved Halberd Training talent? No class or race currently specializes in hammers, and I think they would be a good weapon for the guardian and add variety. Besides, if I'm not mistaken, when you use the gift of the Valar, the guards get the hammer as a legendary weapon. In this case, it would also be nice to change the weapon bonus for hammers.

[Thunderblast]

Not currently. We start implementing from this base in all likelihood.

Sounds good. Honestly, the most recent iteration you posted looked almost flawless.



Is there any chance you could skip the Juggernaut change that you proposed? I know you're trying to help, and give Defender of the Free Guardians a skill that helps with unavoidable big hits (which is really our one tanking weak point), but the proposed rework sounds like a poor man's Never Surrender (it would do effectively the same thing except that it restores to lower morale and has a longer cooldown, in addition to having an effectively weaker damage reduction effect and not lasting as long).

There were a couple of ideas earlier in the thread that imo looked better, and the old version really wasn't that bad. While it was pretty similar to Pledge, it wasn't nearly as similar as the current proposal is to Never Surrender.

[SSG_Orion]

Is there any chance you could skip the Juggernaut change that you proposed? I know you're trying to help, and give Defender of the Free Guardians a skill that helps with unavoidable big hits (which is really our one tanking weak point), but the proposed rework sounds like a poor man's Never Surrender (it would do effectively the same thing except that it restores to lower morale and has a longer cooldown, in addition to having an effectively weaker damage reduction effect and not lasting as long).

There were a couple of ideas earlier in the thread that imo looked better, and the old version really wasn't that bad. While it was pretty similar to Pledge, it wasn't nearly as similar as the current proposal is to Never Surrender.

Yes, I think that the feedback around Juggernaut was rather conclusively against the proposed change.

[zipfile]

Not currently. We start implementing from this base in all likelihood.

Do we have a timeframe on when we will see the first implementation on Bullroarer?

Skip Palantir for obvious reasons...

[SSG_Orion]

Do we have a timeframe on when we will see the first implementation on Bullroarer?

Skip Palantir for obvious reasons...

These changes will be after the next big release. So not for some time.

[Hephburz-2]

Yes, I think that the feedback around Juggernaut was rather conclusively against the proposed change.

Tbh, I'm not sure why.

I really don't understand the "need" for multiple b/p/e based cooldowns, pledge has a short enough cooldown that serves its function very well when tanking multiple adds, I personally liked your proposed change.

[Fantomex]

Okay now that I've had a chance to read through the back and forth I think I've wrapped my head around the proposals and am mostly fine with them.


The biggest issue I have is the combination of eliminating Fighter of Shadow specialization with the Bastion of Light hot spot.

By putting the 100% uptime hot spot in the utility line, you're effectively making the Guardian class a hot spot class, red or blue. Which is not necessarily a bad thing but... it's a significant change to add a 4x/minute cast to a class that until now has thrived on mobility and autonomy. We're a high aps class in either line, do we really need more busy work?

You could argue that if we don't like it, we're free to not use it. But that's not realistic in a progression raiding setting where everyone's expected to use every tool at their disposal for the clear. I would much rather see it become a FoS-only spec bonus that makes room for Guardian to play support-first with dps/off-tank capabilities depending on the fight.

If you're set on killing FoS, then I think the hot spot idea needs to go and just roll the light dot/debuff triggers into War-Chant. It's already a regular part of our rotation with a similar (albeit moderately smaller) radius that functions the same. Move WC outgoing damage debuff to Vexing if you must. Again, we don't need the busy work.


Converting Warrior's Fortitudes into passives is a bit boring. Passive traits in general are boring. I agree that non-stacking bonuses triggering off of a 2m cooldown is silly, but surely there's a more active way to convert this. Even something as simple as changing the bonus based on sword+board vs 2h (similar to red champ dw/2h) is more interesting.


I'm glad to see the pushback on the Juggernaut change. The proposed 20% damage reduction with after-heal is just Warrior's Heart in reverse. Which is to say, largely unnecessary and not interesting. Every class ability does not need to be 100% useful in every scenario. Changing a signature skill just because a few boss skills can't be avoided is ridiculous when we have so many other tools to offset those mechanics. Everyone being able to do everything is how you end up with a boring, flavorless game.


The Rupture addition sounds mostly good. Having its own strong bleed to replace the ones it consumes is good.

The secondary "increase damage by X% on target" is a bit bland. It's too much like Gut Punch and Oathies but with more work to apply and much shorter duration, so it's harder to time optimally and significantly less useful to anyone except the Guardian applying it. I'd like to see it changed to an aoe debuff that applies to nearby enemies. You are crushing an already bleeding target, after all -- that should have a palpable effect on its allies.

[Rino90]

By putting the 100% uptime hot spot in the utility line, you're effectively making the Guardian class a hot spot class, red or blue. Which is not necessarily a bad thing but... it's a significant change to add a 4x/minute cast to a class that until now has thrived on mobility and autonomy. We're a high aps class in either line, do we really need more busy work?

I wouldn't say the red guardian rotation requires any extra attention, especially with the red set (and given the supposed Retaliation and Whirling Retaliation changes, we'll get rid of problems in the future as well). Yes, it's pretty dynamic considering the number of interrupting skills, but all of the core skills are just used in the same sequence in each iteration, due to the multiplicity of their recovery times (2.5, 5, 10 and 40 seconds). I think that a skill with a 20-second cooldown would fit nicely into the rotation, periodically replacing it with some not too strong skill like Stagger for solo damage and Vexing Blow for AOE.
As for the blue line, let's be honest, because of the current aggro mechanics tank gameplay is extremely boring requires focus only when new mobs appear, so I would even be happy with some additional activity.

The secondary "increase damage by X% on target" is a bit bland. It's too much like Gut Punch and Oathies but with more work to apply and much shorter duration, so it's harder to time optimally and significantly less useful to anyone except the Guardian applying it. I'd like to see it changed to an aoe debuff that applies to nearby enemies. You are crushing an already bleeding target, after all -- that should have a palpable effect on its allies.

The point is that we can use Radiate to copy this debuff to other targets, and Insult to Injury, with some luck, will prolong the effect. I'm not quite sure if Orion decided to keep Incapacitation as a learning talent for the yellow line, but if so, the debuff effect will also increase.

[Thunderblast]

@ Orion

Do you have an idea of which will happen first: Hunter rework or Guardian rework? While the Guardian rework is arguably more "due", I can understand putting Hunter next or doing it simultaneously simply because there are so many more Hunters in this world than there are Guardians.


@ Rino

Not with you about hammers. We can do just fine with swords. My elven Guardian main really doesn't want to have to carry hammer around to get peak DPS. He looks and works great with a sword. However, updating the hammer wield bonus for all classes, not just Guardians, to be something at least marginally useful (compared to swords with +% parry) would be great.


@ Hephburz

Honestly it's ok if Juggernaut is pretty similar in effect to Pledge. The proposed rework to Juggernaut would be effectively turning it into a different skill, though, which I don't particularly support. Ideally, there would be a way that would tweak Juggernaut to be more universally reasonable, as opposed to OP in some situations and useless in others (as is currently the case, in add-heavy situations, 100% block means the healer can literally die and you would keep going just as well as if you were a Captain Last Standing, but in boss situations, well, you get flattened in a way that a Captain Last Standing never would).

Imo the best way to do this would be to add an additional mechanic to Juggernaut, one that distinguishes it from other survival skills in the game, but with a cooldown increase to accommodate to make it reasonable. This has the added benefit of not completely flipping a long-time (although not as long-time as Pledge) Guardian skill into something else.

I'm not sure what such a mechanic would look like, though, and I imagine the devs have the same dilemma. My hope would be for a damage-replacement device, so: "on any damage: negate 100% of damage, and subtract 30% of max morale". This though requires the avoidance boosts that Juggernaut currently gives to stay, or a Guardian could potentially be decimated by getting hit a couple unlucky times by minor attacks that got replaced by the flat 30% hit.

So, to prevent this from not being OP, a cooldown increase to 5m would be in order. With that change, though, I would imagine that would fix the "Guardian tank gets hammered by unavoidable hits" problem that we currently have, while also preserving the nature of the skill as it's been for years now.

[Rino90]

Not with you about hammers. We can do just fine with swords. My elven Guardian main really doesn't want to have to carry hammer around to get peak DPS. He looks and works great with a sword. However, updating the hammer wield bonus for all classes, not just Guardians, to be something at least marginally useful (compared to swords with +% parry) would be great.

All races in the game have a +5% bonus to a certain weapon. In your case it's a sword. I suggest simply adding a +5% hammer damage passive talent that levels the damage of hammers for the guardian with the damage of racial weapons and allows you to choose them as an alternative, just like it's implemented for the captain with his halberd.

Edit. Oh, I forgot that classic elves only have a one-handed sword bonus. But anyway, I'd be happy for the hammers to become relevant for at least some class or race in the game.

[Thunderblast]

All races in the game have a +5% bonus to a certain weapon. In your case it's a sword. I suggest simply adding a passive talent for +5% hammer damage, which levels the damage of hammers for guards with the damage of racial weapons and allows you to choose them as an alternative, just like it's implemented in the captain with his halberd.

Ok, fair enough. I agree with this, the idea being to give players more choice about which weapon to use... Why hammers for Guardians, though? I understand that hammers don't make much sense for other classes, either, but Guardians were based off of Samwise Gamgee, who would never have used a hammer. Hammers run contrary to the entire Guardian class fantasy of being a nimble tank that blocks/parries attacks and then uses the moment afterwards (when the enemy is presumably off-balance having just had their attack avoided) to catch a breath or strike back.

Captains/Brawlers/Beornings are more of the "weather the blows" style of melee combatant that might use a hammer (which, if you look at the in-game hammers available, look rather heavy), aware of the sacrifices that must be made in terms of nimbly warding off enemy blows and reacting.

This might be just the fact that my Guardian is an elf though XD.

[zipfile]

Hammers run contrary to the entire Guardian class fantasy of being a nimble tank that blocks/parries attack

...

[Rino90]

Ok, fair enough. I agree with this, the idea being to give players more choice about which weapon to use... Why hammers for Guardians, though? I understand that hammers don't make much sense for other classes, either, but Guardians were based off of Samwise Gamgee, who would never have used a hammer. Hammers run contrary to the entire Guardian class fantasy of being a nimble tank that blocks/parries attacks and then uses the moment afterwards (when the enemy is presumably off-balance having just had their attack avoided) to catch a breath or strike back.

Captains/Brawlers/Beornings are more of the "weather the blows" style of melee combatant that might use a hammer (which, if you look at the in-game hammers available, look rather heavy), aware of the sacrifices that must be made in terms of nimbly warding off enemy blows and reacting.

This might be just the fact that my Guardian is an elf though XD.

For me personally, it's all about feelings XD. The guardian skill animations look more forceful and crude than technical and dexterous, which is even more emphasized when using an axe or hammer (at least for humans and dwarves). I think you'll agree that powerful blows like To The King, which the guardian has a lot of, would look more logical with heavy weapons. Skills with fast animation (Stagger and Sting), have a cool animation of hitting with the weapon hilt. Skill names like Stagger, Force Opening, Overwhelm (which had a hammer icon in the past), Brutal Assault, and Hammer Down also hint at the power component of Guardian combat.

Considering the more pragmatic reasons.
1. At this point, hammers are completely useless.
2. A guardian gets a legendary hammer when using the gift of the Valar (if I'm not confused).
3. Since with the help of costumes hammers can be replaced by axes, it opens up more room for customization of hobbits, humans and elves without losing DPS (do not consider the hypothetical difference in animation in different types of weapons), and this is a significant part of playable races for the guardian (dwarves, forgive me XD).

[Technician46]

Yes, I think that the feedback around Juggernaut was rather conclusively against the proposed change.

I do agree with you original analysis of Juggernaut being a bit redundant considering we had Guardian Pledge. And I very much liked and agreed with the idea of Juggernaut being a "- incoming damage reduction skill" but the proposed change of - 20% was a bit underwhelming. Like other posters have mention, our weakness is unavoidable boss hits, specially in higher tier. So my question is what are you going to do with this skill? Any ideas yet ?

[SSG_Orion]

Do you have an idea of which will happen first: Hunter rework or Guardian rework? While the Guardian rework is arguably more "due", I can understand putting Hunter next or doing it simultaneously simply because there are so many more Hunters in this world than there are Guardians.

Guardian and Hunter will likely happen concurrently.

[zipfile]

Guardian and Hunter will likely happen concurrently.

U36 or subsequent 36.XX patches?

or

U37 or subsequent 37.XX patches?

[SSG_Orion]

U36 or subsequent 36.XX patches?

or

U37 or subsequent 37.XX patches?

U37, U36 is too close. This would mean before the expansion later this year so we have time to shake out any balance issues.

[Rino90]

U37, U36 is too close. This would mean before the expansion later this year so we have time to shake out any balance issues.

As far as I understand from the roadmap, classes will be updated in small groups. The most recent threads about redesigning classes were created in the Guardian, LM and Hunter sections. Can we conclude from this that the next planned update with redesign will affect these classes?

[SSG_Orion]

As far as I understand from the roadmap, classes will be updated in small groups. The most recent threads about redesigning classes were created in the Guardian, LM and Hunter sections. Can we conclude from this that the next planned update with redesign will affect these classes?

We hope to touch all the classes by the time we get to the expansion.

[Fantomex]

As for the blue line, let's be honest, because of the current aggro mechanics tank gameplay is extremely boring requires focus only when new mobs appear, so I would even be happy with some additional activity.

Interesting viewpoint. Personally I've always found plenty to do on Guardian in 140s content between interrupts, aoe interrupts, corruption removals, building/executing FMs on key targets, Shield-walling fellows in danger, and building/executing Break Ranks; so the idea of maintaining a hot spot on top of that does not really appeal to me.

The point is that we can use Radiate to copy this debuff to other targets, and Insult to Injury, with some luck, will prolong the effect. I'm not quite sure if Orion decided to keep Incapacitation as a learning talent for the yellow line, but if so, the debuff effect will also increase.

So not only do you have to apply and maintain 4 bleeds on a target (that has enough health not to bleed out/die instantly from Rupture damage), but you must hope the tank has positioned it within your personal hotspot or that your hotspot is ready to be replaced. That's quite a lot of work in order to meaningfully differentiate it from other class' 1-button dps increase capstone. And a bit risky considering the game's tendency to "throw" hot spots in unexpected places.

I don't know. Of all the tanks, I've always appreciated the Guardian most as the one that allows me to act and react to fight mechanics the fastest. Hot spots are sort of the antithesis of that, thematically more appropriate for planners like Captains and Lore-masters, and I suppose Brawler tanks. Adding the single most high maintenance hot spot in the game to both remaining lines is a big shift I'm just not in favor of as a new core mechanic when it could just as easily be a new/renewed FoS feature.