Guardian Revamp?

Discussion in 'Fighters' started by Wakanash, Sep 18, 2013.

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  1. Estred Well-Known Member

    The thing is each of the MT's are supposed to have clear advantages and disadvantages. Paladins buff their healers and thereby make healing much easier and can cure their own detriments and even the groups (Zealous Smite). Monks bring more damage but they are much harder to heal because when they do get hit, it hits much harder which means if the mob spikes in DPS then a Monk should be subject to a one shot, however they aren't because they have nigh permanent temps up to protect them from that.

    Guardians on the other hand do sub-standard DPS, do not buff healers or damage and do not have significant defense-buffs to protect the group that are reliable (Guardian Sphere is a proc, procs are unreliable for AE's that kill). They also do not offer any real significant increase to survival over the Monk or Paladin. That is the core issue with Guardians and Monks doing a very disproportionately high amount of damage.

    Now monk's like dealing damage, we all do. So tie it to "not tanking" they can fill a DPS roll or Tank roll as a Tertiary tank or as the MT heck even OT in situations. However they are best suited for situational tanking and better help the raid by adding and buffing DPS. Let the low-hitting but survival oriented classes do the MTing. The issue is that most players don't seem to see that, all they see is the "glory" of being the one to tank the main boss. Screw inter-raid support if you aren't the one tanking the boss or tanking the main/swarm adds, your worthless. That is what it feels like raiding has been reduced to in tanking.

    "MT or bust" seems to be the motto when making balance suggestions on the Forums and it's led to horribly imbalanced classes despite them seeming very balanced. They all do the same job, so close in fact that anyone who doesn't do that job best get's benched.
  2. Silzin Active Member

    I dont want to derail the Guard thread any more then it is... so sorry


    I have no problems OTing, or even being a Back up DPS tank.. i like dpsing on my monk... but withing the context of the MT position, normally if the MT is subject to being 1 shotted.. then they are not Subject to MT that Mob. its that place and simple. If monks can not tank the mobs that Guards and Pally's can then we are not an MT Class any more we are something else. There have been a LOT of discussion about this at great length in the Massively Derailed Monk changes thread... some 20+ pages of derail.. and i dont want that to happen here...

    My point, i know there will (or at least SHOULD be) class changes for all of the tank classes. but if the Dev's try and push brawlers out of the MT and OT tanking positions there will not be a place for us in groups or raids any more. there are only 2 tanking roles and 3-4 tanks per raid to fill them... If brawlers need some nurfing then so be it, but monks still need to be able to MT and Bruisers still need to OT. Other classes need to be buffed so they can tank within there grouping.. and may need some nurfing so they have a harder time in the other grouping... but i am getting back off topic and i am done here...
  3. volume Member

    Well said Teah.

    In short I don't care about dps. Guard to me has always been about being the Defender. The heighest defense of all tanks, but lowest offense. Fundementally guards are not acutally lacking in dps, as others in this thread have pointed out, that was by design and intent. We are however lacking in defense and survivability compared to other tanks.

    There needs to be more of a distinction made to set a guard apart from other tanks in terms of defense. The trade off being top dps tanks should have less survivability , but low dps would give higher survavilbty. If the proposed route this thread is taking -trying to bring the guads dps in line with other tanks - gets accepted then we dont have a trade off. There are no choices to be made by the players, beacuse any one can do anything the same.

    Without nerfing anyone ( although Karnoz does bring up a good point) we should be trying to find ways to make the guard a better tank, not increase dps. An example might be with a guard tanking 3 healers would not be needed in the MT grp, so the extra healer could be replaced with a dps class (and thus increase dps indirectly for the raid). Where as if a pal or sk were tanking 3 healers would be needed but the pal or sk can do a signifcant amount of dps. In this way we diversify the classes to give the players a choice depending on what they have avaible that night.

    Any of the tanks can MT, but the guards should be able to MT with less support at the cost of dealing damage, where as pals and sks MTing might knock off a few minutes in the fight but they would require more specific classes to support them. Obviously currently this is not the case.
    Hihibanana likes this.
  4. Raahl New Member

    Guardians have talked and talked until they were blue in their faces about what will fix the class. Pretty much, it's been ignored by Sony. I've given up on my Guardian.
  5. Raahl New Member

    BTW, I agree bringing the Guardian's DPS up to the level of the top tank DPS classes is not the answer.
    Hihibanana likes this.
  6. Estred Well-Known Member

    Tell me about it. I have a few megathreads of my feedback, other fighters, other guardians and other high-raiders opinions. All of which generally have met with support from the community. I can only hope that my preaching about the class gets something done.

    It may not be, but so long as another tank survives like a Guardian and does more damage than a Guardian, the Guardian will not see major use. Either you bring up the Guardians DPS (I feel linking it to their tanking is a great mechanic as it rewards good play). That or you make Guardians extremely hard to kill and have amazing survival utility for their group to the point some would call it "Defensively OP"

    That or all other classes see some form of reduction in DPS or Survivability to enforce the idea of choosing between Survival or DPS through AA Lines.
  7. Xelgad Developer

    Open beta for the expansion starts two weeks from tomorrow...

    :)
    Cyrde, Estred and Feldon like this.
  8. Estred Well-Known Member

    Definitely will be there. Thanks for the update Xelgad.
  9. Raahl New Member

    Does this mean the Guardian class has had some positive changes and we should check them out. ;)
  10. Raahl New Member

    I would be happy to have a clear defensive advantage again. Added with some useful utility, I could live without any additional DPS.
  11. Estred Well-Known Member

    As could I, I would like to see a DPS increase through Ripost, making a useful skill for at least one class and also an interesting approach to PvP. I do not want to see CA increases really. Ripost's used to mean something in the game but they have fallen out of any real importance other than a "type of avoidance"
    Raahl likes this.
  12. Clevemo Active Member

    The ward could be higher, something like the Serene Energy Ward monks get, that's 15.1k off a block proc once every 10 seconds.
  13. Clevemo Active Member

    The current tanking mechanic that has ruled this expansion has been Avoidance. The tank with the best avoidance or most avoidance options wins. The current the mob encounter mechanic allows for sustained melee damage on a magnitude of 5-20x the MT's max health ... there is your problem. You can't hold aggro or do any DPS when you're dead on your face.

    Guardian Sphere is/was a terrible ability ... DOES NOT help when the incoming damage to proc the stoneskin one-shots you.
  14. Estred Well-Known Member

    It's too early for me really to be doing balance math so I will leave it. I had something typed out but it made no sense after I re-read it. I wish we could delete posts that are worthless :/

    I will leave this as it did make sense. Reversal can proc 7 times every time it resets. The suggested change was 20 Second with an AA to lower it to 10 seconds. If it procced like Serene that would be a very high amount of ward.
    Daalilama likes this.
  15. Daalilama Well-Known Member

    Something needs to change as the status quo on tank mechanics and abilities do put the guardian in the minus column currently. I could add we are still waiting for the promised character revamp part 2 which was to address the long overdue KoS trees and outstanding other issues not addressed during the last character revamp. Was that promise just to placate the community and never really intended to take place?

    I would love a slight boost to dps to the class but tbh a slight boost to guards is a barely noticeable change to other tanks. Survivability seriously needs a big uptick.
  16. Kham Active Member

    Well, I guess ill be betraying back to guardian to bring data to the table that shoots alot of this in the foot. alot of people are just pretty bad at the class.
  17. Typos Member

    sigh.. dumb mobs make dumb balance threads. tanking has devolved into who can automatically avoid auto attacks the best?

    zzz.. no wonder people are bored.

    You ever consider this WILL ALWAYS be a problem if they just boost mob auto attack??? like they have done for the past few years.

    Dev's you will continue to see this exact thread over and over and over and over.. if you stay on the this track. Give mobs abilities and lower auto attack. Make it SPECIFICALLY so you can't block every hit. I have 50 abilities and i have to learn what all of them do.. yet a mob gets 1-2?

    A game should NEVER play itself. the player should play it. I'm done preaching.. and i'm not going to reply.
  18. Vlahkmaak Active Member

    I know in theory this sounds good but passive damage increase through reversal and riposte is not the answer to pvp (for any class). In PVE it would be fine but PVP should be more about player execution than passive over reliance on buffs/gear. These passive things seem to always get way out of hand after an expansion or two - witness the current loss of meaningful procs due to past procflation. There are way to many hybirds these days causing less class interdependence due to over ability of most classes to self heal/avoid/mitigate/dps themselves instead of relying on other classes to work together to achieve all these things as a unified group.
  19. Silzin Active Member


    Class design and balance should NEVER be designed around PVP... EVER... if the class have PVP balance problems go take it to the PVP boards, or start a new thread about the pvp balance. I am not sure if Riposte would scale the best or not, but trying to bring pvp into a class balance thread is not the right way to approach.
    Gash, Estred and Genghes like this.
  20. Estred Well-Known Member

    The thing is Classes shouldn't be built around PvP, skill adjustments should be enabled for PvP Mode. Guardians aren't used in PvE because other classes do utterly everything better or at the same.
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