Once upon a time i felt like testing the tank pet "Guardian" from Sorcery (today). Remembering how much fun it was pre-revamp to run elite alerts with this cool buddy and just having a good time without a player that has to fill the tank role. So, as i went to test some basics in the open world i immediately figured out that the watcher draws more aggro from just healing than the Guardian. So for solos its already better to just use the Watcher instead of the Guardian if you want to get enemies off of you wich is odd. Moving on, dropping below 50% health makes him taunt by himself. This works fine but is pretty unneccesary since you're most likely dead by the time he finally taunt in most content. You can also trigger the taunt by using Offering wich also gives him a shield. Thats a great synergy right there. So how do you have to play when you want to use the Guardian for the current elite alert you may ask? Here's how: You would think that you go quite close up to some enemies and hit Offering for the Guardian to taunt these enemies, right? Wrong! The Guardian only taunts after he got struck by an enemy or after you attacked first. So, knowing that, and knowing you won't survive 2 seconds on HQE hallway adds without a tank you have to use a shield first. Then you go ahead and jump into those adds, bringing your Gaurdian into melee range. This takes some time since our bricky boy is flight for "Obvious reasons?" yeah... i dont get it either. Anyway, by the time your Guardian arrives, your shield is gone and you spam Offering, hoping your Guardian immediately taunts all enemies. But whoopsie daisy we just ran into another issue. Adds tend to be spread out sometimes and since your Guardian taunt is relative to its size, its area is pretty small. One Enemy did'nt stand close enough to the Guardian and is now dry-humping a teammate, making my job as a healer quite stressful. Moving further on. The hallways are cleared and we come across our first boss encounter. From a safe distance i start the fight and immediately hit offering. Nothing happens. I hit Offering again as the Guardian is finally in melee range and he taunts and taunts and taunts. Taunting like a champ everytime i hit Offering does'nt do much tho, since bosses seem to be immune to Guardians taunt for whatever reason. So this is where my Guardian-tank journey ended and i was forced to play with the same old tank heal 2 dps setup again. If you read this sad little story of my Guardian and i, you can hopefully follow me on the changes that i'd love to see coming to the Guardian to make Sorcery heal somewhat special and interesting aside from infinite Arbiter of Destiny spam. The changes i'd love to see in order to bring more depth to Sorcery: Increase Guardians health by at least 50% Increase Guardians shield granted by Offering and let it scale with resto/dom stats like regular shields Increase the Guardians taunt range by 100% (same range as regular 360° pulls from tank powers) Make it possible to taunt bosses with Guardian Make it possible to remotely taunt the closest enemies by hitting Offering (basically starting the fight with Offering) Possibly switch Guardians movement mode or make him able to teleport to you as soon as you hit taunt Thanks for reading and let me know if you have anything to add that i have forgotten that would fit this playstyle. On a side note, i don't want the Guardian to be able to replace a proper tank in raids, because it would be ridiculous. I have thoughts about the watcher pet too but that's going to end up in a different thread soon.
A simpler solution would add healing to the Offering. Less work for developers on the one hand, and on the other, such a change will increase the survivability of all pets. I think teleporting is a bad idea, imagine that every time the pet teleports to you ... and the boss runs to you too ...
While testing the Guardian in HQE i realised that he dies quite quickly as soon as his shield from Offering broke. I was actually focussing on pet heals but i simply haven't had enough time to get his health back up before he died. If he would be able to taunt bosses in the future its going to end badly with his current health. 1 slightly stronger ability from a boss and hes dead. You're right, this would just be in place if it can't be implemented to let the Guardian taunt while out of combat. If that can be achieved the teleportation is not needed at all.
I'll be honest, the last two successful Guardian tanking experiments I had were the solo "An Escaped Experiment" from BOP, and "Bounty: Titans Go Metal" from the first Metal ... and there I had two problems: I was constantly healing the pet, even when he had a shield (HP replenished too slowly), and the second that after a certain moment the boss seemed to become immune to the taunt and I had to kite the boss for a very long time until the taunt worked again.
I do agree with what is said here, but i use Guardian alot as a tank in situations where there is no tank in the group. I sacrifice my damage score to help the group. A good example of this is in Family Reunion alert, once i was favorable with my STU renown I stopped running the elite alert and ran the reg. When queuing up for this many times there would be 4 dps's in the group and I used Guardian to tank, and he did great, i was so proud of him. I think he works best when your toon is at a high level CR and you run lower level or regular content. As you guys mentioned running elite and current CR level content with him, he wont function like a boss tank.
Its a gimmick/"have fun" power at best. Its mostly meant to be used in solo's and duo's. Alerts and Raids should always have a regular Tank, making Guardian unnecessary. Guardian does semi-decent dmg as well as throw out a weak taunt so it can potentially get a Sorcery user who's struggling with a Solo through.
It's a pet that's supposed to tank. Gadgets' Holographic Decoy also tanks (and works great in most cases) despite Gadgets not being a tank power. Guardian should either be functional or get deleted and replaced with something else.
For whatever reason, there are certain NPCs that are immune to pet taunts. The simplest way to see this for yourself is to head over to Thanagar and try Guardian or Brick (in DPS role) on the Nth Metal Golem. These two pets can't taunt this boss successfully. It's been like this for as long as I can remember (I've kept a Guardian armory for as long as armories have been a thing). There is always a certain boss that can't be pet taunted and, quite frustratingly, it's an indiscernible trait. What really ruined Guardian tanking were the changes to Ritualistic Word. Ritualistic Word used to shield all Sorcery pets, it gave some power to all Sorcery pets, AND it was an ally heal (same you + 3 group members behaviour, but it could target friendly NPCs if health bars were full). So imagine, in one move - Shield + Heal + Power - not to mention that Ritualistic Word is an actual heal that you would be using anyway, and there use to be no power regen penalty for pet users. Yeah, it's just not ever going to be the same. You can still accomplish some cool things with Guardian, but nowadays you have to give up two loadout spots for Guardian and Offering, then you really should have a burst ally heal (Trans, Soul Bolt, or Shard) which takes up another slot, and then there's the absurd power regen penalty. Smh.
