This is currently on the Test Server as far as changes go. Avoidance - Your likelihood of avoiding an attack is now based on two primary factors: - The con color of the attacker. - The type of armor you are wearing. The heavier your armor, the lower your chances of avoiding an attack. - Increasing your Defense skill gives you a better chance of avoiding attacks, but there is now a cap on how much it can be buffed or debuffed. - Increasing your Agility improves your base chance of avoiding an attack, but it will not improve your likelihood of parrying, deflecting, or blocking with a shield. - There is now a cap on the effectiveness of Deflection buffs and debuffs. - Mages and Priests no longer receive the Parry skill. It temporarily still shows in the Skills window, but these archetypes will no longer have any chance to parry. - There is no longer any way to buff the Parry skill over your current skill cap, and there is a limit on how far it can be debuffed. - Shields now have the following base chances to Block: Tower (20%), Kite (19%), Round (5%), Buckler (3%). Your chances to Block scale up or down based on the con of your opponent. Shield buffs no longer have any effect. Mitigation- The base mitigation values of armor have been adjusted as follows: Heavy (35%), Medium (25%), Light (20%), Very Light (10%). - Mitigation values scale up or down based on the con color of your attacker. - There is now a cap on how much mitigation can be buffed or debuffed. Damage- Melee damage bonuses are now calculated based on the attacker's strength versus the defender's agility. - The damage output of both players and NPCs should now increase more smoothly rather than receiving a sharp boost at levels 10 and 20. I'm willing to take this in stride if it works like they want it to. Having a base 20% with a Tower shield will be good, and the 19% at Kite shield won't hurt too much if the stats are better, so that gives us more variety if we're willing to part with that 1%. Scaling mitigation and avoidance based on opponents level already happened so that's no big deal. However, the Parry thing worries me. Guardian's Call and Call to Battle both buff Parry so what is going to happen to those two skills? So essentially it looks good on paper. Now to see what it's like in the field.
Some of my concerns: Parry cannot be buffed - what happens to our parry buffs? Defense is capped - will this limit our character growth and group desirability? That is, why bother raising a defense buff skill or have more than a certain amount of defense buffing in a group? Less dodging with heavy armor - am I going to be effectively silenced(via crushing blow) in an encounter with more than one NPC? Not this will make it very hard to cast the aggro inducing buffs and group taunts due to cast duraiton. These are things that popped into my head while reading that, its really pretty vague right now so hard to determine the totality of the changes yet. Are there any higher level guards/serkers on test who can check this out?
I am sure they are taking a look at a guardians ability to avoid / be stunned. What people tend to miss is that a guardian, as well as any plate tank, will be rendered 100% useless if his avoidance is so low that he can't avoid a large amount of attacks. If this is not taken care of, either through spell additions or inherent stun avoidance abilities, you will see many guardians quit, as it will not equate to balance, but a totally useless class.
Well our class really has only one use anyway - meat shield. I can do away with parry buffs. I just don't want my mitigation to fall too much and/or my avoidance to severely be crippled (dodge, block, parry, and riposte). I have a feeling that SOE is doing a knee-jerk reaction and effectively debuffing everyone TOO much in order to compensate for the fact that people are winning fights that they feel shouldn't be winnable. Example: Vindication doing Venekor with 15 people. I'm fairly sure a Group x 4 mob should require 4 groups, especially if its 53rd+ and such. But I digress. I've always contended that we should remain right around 50% / 50%. Looks like we're pushing 40/50 or so with these updates, but I won't know until this goes live. Would like to see someone on test comment.
You have more faith then I do. But I hope your right. If the defense is capped, does that mean that any other tank class will have the same amount of defense as a guardian, if they have a warder/troub with them? Would that make a troub/warden defense buffs worthless when theyre grouped with a guard? IE> Will a gnome zerker/paladin/monk grouped with a troub/warden have the same defense as a ogre guard grouped with a troub/warden? Depending on the cap, this could make alot of our defense buffs/racial traits etc. worthless in raids. But, guess we do not know for sure until we see that cap... I bet the bards are nervouse... Message Edited by uglak on 04-14-2005 03:53 AM
Lets see what happens guys with the patch. no point speculating till we either get some hard data from test or wait till patch. If they nerf us to much, all we have to do is shout as loud as the other classes that already have and get it changed :smileywink:
it seems like they are down scaling everything, mob damage spikes and all. They are also boosting preist heals, so something tells me this is the tip of the ice berg and we will be getting some changes to taunts and such when the preist balancing ensues..
Caps are never a good thing from past experience. Why upgrade armor if you already have the cap? Why raise stats if you can reach the cap? Why have x class in your group if you can reach the cap? Why have x buff if y buff already made you reach the cap? What good is X fable loot if your already at the cap? It limits your character building, group building, etc. Caps are generally a band aid fix to a deeper problem. They limit your options/strategies etc. for both group make up and your character make up. Of course, we do not really know where these caps are and how far its going to be taken.. Did that just say that all heavy armor will have the same mitigation? As in, Ebon not gonna help much over fulginate?
Now lets all bow our heads and pray for the lost fighters... the crusaders who got stuck between the brawlers and the guardians and were subsequently crushed to death. Guradians needed to be adjusted... we all knew it was coming - you'll avoid less but mitigate more just like moorguard promised... and just like he promised Pallys the gimped guardians will no longer be able to cast a single spell in comabt and hang up our holy boots in shame at the inability to farm greys.
Thats the first question I had when I read the patch notes...ok maybe not the real first question i had was..."Do Mages really need a nerf in tanking..." =P It said "BASE" mitigation of HA will be 35%. What does BASE mean...for that matter what does the mitigation value on the armor pieces themselves mean? Is everything based around "average/common" gear for a particular tier...i.e A full set of fulginate will equal 35% mitigation...so Ebon and better drops will increase that somewhat? Why oh why do they need to complicate things even more?
Personally. I think there should be more of a difference between kite and tower shields. Like 20% for Kite, 25% for tower, or something along those lines. 1% seems rather idiotic. Also, losing the +parry buffs are going to hurt... but, maybe they will replace the +parry with +mitigation or something like that. If any of you guys have high level Guards on test.. now would be a great time to share the actual affects. hehe
A tower shield only has a 1% benefit to kite? Please. That makes no sense at all. I'll start carrying a kite just because it's easier to see around. The tower is 3 times the size. Common sense says 1% is nuts. I'm concerned about this cap thing. I build my toons to max the skill for the class. I've read a rating of "200" in any one -- Str, Wis, Agi, etc, is the cap? Is this true? My L38 Templar is at 202 Wis right now -- is it capped? I was looking forward to getting my Guardian to 200 Str; he's already 110 at L23. I can clearly see if it's capped; once I hit T4 I'll won't bother upgrade squat since I'll be at the cap. But the original thought -- Tower shield should be AT LEAST 5% better then kite; I think 10 to 15% better would be appropriate based on size alone. That's the whole point for having that huge thing. ESPECIALLY is we're expected to take more hits with the nerfs -- we need that big thing with a SIGNIFICANT defense/block buff -- or there is NO POINT in being a Guardian. Make everyone a Mage. No one needs armor or shields. We'll talk our way thru fights. Oh; that's better; no fighting we'll negotiate settlements with MoBs.
These were pretty much my thoughts. That and the fact that you can no longer buff parry. I certainly didn't see any adjustments under Guardian Ability changes that addressed our parry buffs. These update notes scare me.
Having Shields and Armor have a set % of mitigation/avoidance just sounds wierd. Gear obviously differs in quality and this should have some impact on its performance. They need to explain how the quality of gear affects combat before we can understand how things will end up. The other thing - no parry buffs, caps on defense and mitigation values, etc. This obviously is scary for Guardian's because these are what define the class. What happens to our Parry buffs - I see no indication in the patch notes that these will be changed to be something useful, do we just end up with an entire line of broken combat arts? Will our defense and mitigation buffs actually be useful now? If a normal group can buff any fighter's tanking abilities to their cap and they are equal that of a guardian, it makes us probably the least desirable tank. We sacrifice a lot of utility, DPS, etc for those defensive abilities. If any tank can obtain that level of defensive effectiveness on top of their other advantages, there is no reason for the Guardian class to exist at all. I'm not ready to scream about the sky falling since I think this is just the tip of the iceberg for the changes coming, but these changes definitely will cause a lot of issues with the Guardian class if not addressed.
They are killing the game. Caps make bards and Dirges useless now. The monks like Gage have finally gotten their wish. Guardians are going to be spending 70% of their time stunned and stifled. They havent reduced the chance of mobs to stun and stifle you and when you get in combat with these new things, guess what? You get hit tripple the number of times and that is statistically tripple the chance to stun you.
On a side note - what is the current parry rate for tower shields against an even con monster? I'd venture to say that it is nowhere near 20% even with buffs. Seems like the parry skill and sheild type are actually gaining a lot of importance with this change. Warriors being able to dodge 1/5 attacks simply based on their shield type is pretty significant. Also, it has been mentioned, the 19% for kite shields is probably a typo. Maybe not, but 10 or 15% would seem to make more sense. We'll see - we are still missing a lot of info about the chnages.
I will have to actually play once this is live to tell if it is good or bad. A few points/questions 1. What were the previous mitigation numbers? I could only find one note where Heavy was increased by 11 %, and light was increased by 35 % from the previous numbers. I'd hope that this would mean someone who previously had 10 % mitigation with heavy armor would have 11.1 % mitigation, but can't be sure. 2. What is the new cap? I know I can personally raise my defense by 30+ with my own abilities. Will my buffs be trivialized, because a support class with a different tank class that doesn't have our Def buffs can put them over the cap. 3. So my defense stance is now going to be worthless? 4. Why can't we have things scale based on your level? For example if I'm 50 with the defense of a 52 I get the full defense bonus, however, if I have the defense of a 54 I only really have the defense of a 53 as far as effectiveness goes. Maybe if I had the defense of a level 60 it would only work as well as if I was a 55 with no buffs. You make everything else scale like this (even if you should be rewarded for breaking hard to reach thresholds), why not add Defense to the list instead of capping it out? We could always just cap all skills at 255 (just some generic number). 5. What if I wear 5 pieces of heavy armor and 2 pieces of very light armor? How does that chance my avoidence? I'm tired and just finished a term paper so I might not be all there, but there it is. Just discuss or something ;p =/ Grondax Ix'Thania of the Shard Member of Genesis on Highkeep Level 50 Guardian / Level 50 Woodworker Server First Discovery for the Prismatic Longsword World First Discovery for the Pristine Conditioned Imbued Short Bow
whats going to be the point of a guardian? we chose to give up damage output for superiour damage avoidance and mitigation right? with caps on skills, caps on mitigation and 1% better block with kite shield? What a pile of ****, we have nothing that differentiates our class at the moment as it is. Raise the defensive ability caps over other classes as we are SUPPOSED to be a defensive orientated class, all we are now is a zerker with crap dps... Meat shields need love too
