Blade Guardian (warrior AA) doesn't stack with the cleric ability Divine Guardian (like a second DI). IMO Blade Guardian is pretty bad, and you should use Divine Guardian instead (if it's available). [38257] Blade Guardian Duration: 6m (60 ticks) 1: Cast: Blade Whirl if HP Below 40 Percent 5: Stacking: Delayed Heal Marker (10) Text: A guardian spirit watches over you. [38260] Blade Whirl Casting: 0s, Recast: 18s Duration: 18s (3 ticks) 2: Increase Chance to Parry by 86% Text: Magical blades whirl around you. Parse: Warrior offtanking Bzzazzl during Bixie 2. He had 35 total parries (I didn't paste them all), only one of which was during a Blade Whirl proc. [Sat Mar 29 18:15:16 2014] Bzzazzl tries to sting Maathers, but Maathers parries! [Sat Mar 29 18:15:16 2014] Bzzazzl tries to sting Maathers, but Maathers parries! [Sat Mar 29 18:15:39 2014] Bzzazzl tries to sting Maathers, but Maathers parries! [Sat Mar 29 18:15:49 2014] Bzzazzl tries to sting Maathers, but Maathers parries! [Sat Mar 29 18:15:51 2014] Bzzazzl tries to sting Maathers, but Maathers parries! [Sat Mar 29 18:16:01 2014] Maathers is surrounded by magical blades. <--- Blade Whirl proc [Sat Mar 29 18:16:03 2014] Bzzazzl tries to sting Maathers, but Maathers parries! <--- wow one parry. impressive [Sat Mar 29 18:16:24 2014] Bzzazzl tries to sting Maathers, but Maathers parries! <--- Blade Whirl ended already [Sat Mar 29 18:16:26 2014] Bzzazzl tries to sting Maathers, but Maathers parries! [Sat Mar 29 18:16:28 2014] Bzzazzl tries to sting Maathers, but Maathers parries! [Sat Mar 29 18:16:35 2014] Bzzazzl tries to sting Maathers, but Maathers parries! [Sat Mar 29 18:17:15 2014] Bzzazzl tries to sting Maathers, but Maathers parries! It would be cool if DG and BG stacked. It would also be cool if BG was more effective.
Yeah, it's another nigh-useless warrior ability. A button with no real effect. 86% increase sounds like a lot until you realize they are talking about an 86% increase to a 2% chance. Generally speaking, I never use the thing if the clerics are able to keep their version on me. I only ever bother to fire it if I've already seen the cleric ones land on me and fire already anyhow.
Well sure, trolling clerics is usually worthwhile in and of itself. /reflexively looks around, expecting a smack from his guild leader.
I actually have a GINA timer set up to remind me to recast blade guardian on myself every time it drops. I think its most useful for determining when I should hit Flash of Anger. I see the big letters that it has dropped early and just instinctively hit Flash if I have it up. Clerics can't keep DG up on you at all times as well, which is another reason I use it.
Seems the question is it worth it? You look at the parse and you parried once. You could have parried a 4k hit or a 30k(?) hit, which could have saved you. If it keeps you from dying during even 1 event per night, I'd say it's worth it, but it's hard to say. I wish we had abilities or BG could be changed to negate double/triple/quad hits and only take the initial hit.
You know Maathers, if you're looking for something that triggers every time you hit 40% health to tie a GINA trigger to, you're overthinking things by using the Blade Guardian trigger. Just use the "You go into a berserk frenzy" message, or however it reads in game. It's always there and not tied to an ability that might be down. Of course, then you may have issues with spam, but you can always turn off the trigger when you don't want it, right?
I assume that if I hit that message without Blade Guardian up that either I hit DI and I don't need to flash direly, or I am as good as dead without time to hit Flash Also, in my testing of BG so far, I have noticed it lasts between 30 and 35 seconds, not 18, so 4 of the parries in the provides snippet in the OP were while BG was up. In my initial testing on trash mobs in WK, parry rates seem to go from about 12% to 18% or so with it running, but can only get 30 seconds worth of parse every 10 mins so it is slow going.
I know this is kinda old, did a search on this since I had a warrior in guild get upset because I cast DG on them. They believe their Blade Guardian is better. Another warrior I spoke with said that Blade Guardian procs at max once for him, so he'd rather 6-7 clerics cast DG on him each time it's up, than worry about one knocking off his BG. Was wondering if anyone had anything else to add about Blade Guardian versus Divine Guardian?
I will add that a bonus to Parry, as provided by Blade Guardian, does exactly nothing versus most raid mobs, who cannot be Parried at all. In groups, especially grouped with an actual cleric? Getting either one to trigger ain't real easy.
This kind of approach gets us 200 weak/situational/underpowered abilities that are never used rather than a couple of powerful ones that everyone puts on their primary hotkey bar and uses constantly.
I'm a fan of the low HP mechanic of Blade Guardian, but have always found the balancing of BG underwhelming. I think the dev that made it saw the 50-75% (original, 86% now) parry boost and thought that sounded strong, but it's 50-86% boost to a single digit ability, and half of those parries would have been misses. Another issue: with 2H stance on, it'll be 0%. I hope we get viable low HP mechanic abilities in the future, but BG isn't one of them in its current state.
So, what I'm hearing is: while raiding, the 57k base heal proc from Divine Guardian if the war gets below 30% hp is better than Blade Guardian? Because: a war cannot parry raid mobs anyway (because of the strikethrough bug), and even if the strikethrough bug on raid mobs DOES get fixed, Divine Guardian is still probably better, because 86% increase chance to a base 2% chance is a whopping 3.72% chance to parry, IE about 1 additional parry, MAYBE, while it's running?
Well, the Darkened Sea AA preview document that Elidroth shared prior to the class AA discussions showed Blade Guardian to be getting 3 new ranks, presumably to raise the Parry mod but otherwise not change how the effect functions. I asked about an AA to allow the buff to be more than a single-shot consumable trigger, but there wasn't much discussion to be had. Even if the effect was changed to be able to trigger multiple times, I would expect to see Blade Guardian used in the group game only due to the Divine Guardian conflict.
