Greetings Guardians! First off, allow me say that we understand that the class is being outshined at the moment, and we’re working on it. It's going to take more than just one change to get Guardians back to working as a strong class again. I'm not going into details yet, but we do have a mechanics change in the works that will at least help a bit to distinguish Guardians as a more defensive tank. Even with that, the class is currently lacking in other areas, including threat generation and utility. It's utility that we want to focus this thread on. We want to bring Guardian utility up to the level that the other fighters bring to a group or raid. We have three tentative changes that will be going to test soon: Got Your Back will become raidwide. Cripple will become a maintainable debuff with a damage component. Call of Shielding will also increase the health of the raid. The level 87 version at master will amount to around 1,000 hit points. We’re looking for feedback on these ideas, and we’re open to boosting Guardian utility even a bit further, especially in heroic content. I want to emphasize that we’re not trying to turn Guardians into plate-wearing Bards or anything of the sort. However, I do want to try to focus this thread on the utility aspect of the class.
Definitely a good start. Got your back will be a decent ability now. Cripple still isn't that great of an ability and not worth getting once you have the myth/buff that makes us immune to riposte. Call of Shielding will actually be worth maintaining too. A few suggestions though, take away the 34 defense on call of shielding and add 2% parry with that hp, that way its got some worthwhile avoidance on it. Another suggestion I had was change our plant ability thats pretty much useless in all content to where it roots the guardian and makes him immune to knockback for its duration. That would give guardians the edge in being the best MT spot but wouldnt make the class overpowered. Last change I could think of would be with moderate and improved moderate, its a little overkill on the dehate. Maybe change our AA for our moderate in the guardian tree to offer something to the person you are placing this on. Like 1 crit bonus per lvl and maxes at lvl 5. Thanks for taking the time to look at our class.
Rhita@Najena wrote: With the way crit bonus works on wards I would suggest potency instead of crit bonus.
Either one, both would make us wanted more. If its crit bonus, my coercer gets it, if potency, then my defiler.
I'm glad to see posts like this detailing plans and asking for further input - Guardians definitely need the help.
Personally, I would like to see the guardian avoidance lend replaced with a mitigation lend that works similarly. Ideally this buff would allow a guardian to buff another fighter's (or group/raidmember's) mitigation, while simultaneously receiving an avoidance lend from a brawler. As things stand now the avoidance lend that guardians have is almost never used in a raid. They are always on the receiving end, and bring nothing to the raid by having an avoidance lend to give. Being able to lend some mit to another fighter/groupmember would prove far more useful in both raids and heroic instancing. Please note that I'm talking about a lend in the same sense that buffs like Tranquil Vision, shakeoff, etc. work, not one like pledge of armament. An avoidance lend does not hurt the caster when used, like pledge does.
Recapture needs to be more useful. Compared to other tanks' level 80 spell, it's sickening. I really can't think of anything cool to add to it besides like giving all fighters a temp buff like flurry or something. TBH, I'd rather it be something that helps the guardian or non-fighters in some way, rather than helping other tanks hold aggro. Maybe it would be OP, but the temp group mit buff could also add like 7% damage reduction and be.... raid-wide? Or tack on some damage reduction, either proc or static on our existing raid-wide buff. In any case, I think guard "utility" should be defensive/protective in nature. It would be real nice if sentry watch worked with magic damage and dots (pretty sure it doesn't), unyielding will is a buff that stays up until it triggers or is canceled, and tower of stone casting time is reduced to normal combat art casting speed. Thanks for posting. The last time a dev has acknowledged the guardian boards was before the launch of TSO afaik.
Rhita@Najena wrote: As for the to +def it helps some for heroic issues but as said before raid issues its pretty much worthless as for the suggestion of turning it into a raid wide Mit buff it still wouldnt be desired as mitigation is obtained in so many other avenues for other classes with Adorns/AAs the HP tho wouldnt be terrible if it was the 1k hp idea imo. As for the Cripple, making it a 5% damage reduction thats always up would bring it in line with other tank myths/spells, we had our own myth at 10% damage reduction before it also was nerfed..... and made me sad.
Xelgad wrote: Not having an understanding of where mechanics changes are going puts us at a pretty hefty disadvantage when talking about utilitiy needs. I think everyone will agree utility is the LEAST important aspect of fighter abilities. The last damn thing I want a guard brought along for is utility. That being said, yes our utility is way behind all other fighters. 1. Got your back - Thing is the other fighters on the raid don't have survivability problems, even making this raid wide is not going to be so situationally beneficial it will not be valued. I recommend dumping this entirely and replacing it with something else. However if you want to stay in the same genre, have it protect all healers in the group. I personally would rather see it as an Enhance: Battle Cry and change it to a raid wide mitigation increase. 2. Cripple - maintainable debuff is in the right dirrection, question is what kind of debuff. I personally would like to see something like 5-10% reduction of base physical damage of target. Lowering melee output and providing some defensive debuffing vs raidwide trauma. 3 Call of Shielding - Hp is fine, I know others would rather see a damage reduction component instead, but I can understand where that could be problematic. It's tough for me to say this buff would be desirable or not, as clearly are getting by fine without it,. The biggest problem with the utility changes you outline is it helps the class almost nill in grouping where it is absolutely the weakest and needs serious help. As others have stated, Recapture is totally useless putside of raiding. It should be adjusted as we described in beta 6 months ago, it should increase hate position of all fighters in raid, but it should also lower hate position of non-fighters in the guardian's group. Including some raw threat on it for the guard would be good icing, as I know none of us want to manage aggro by positional snaps alone. I would consider looking at Guardian Sphere and changing it to 50% chance to stoneskin instead of intercept damage on ally, or change it so that the guardian only takes 20% of the intended damage. Currently, it is too easy for the ability to be a death sentence for the guard rather than a save for his group. I understand your only looking at utility, but buffing utility without addressing hate generation raid wide isn't going to help us much. I find my only problem holding aggro is off of other fighters. The biggest problem I find is, I can't seem to get other fighters to stop hitting positional increases on my target. I implore you to consider taking damage components off of fighter positional increasers so that players are less motivated to use them at innapropriate times. Seperating dps components from positionals would allow me to actually hold aggro again.
And are you even considering pvp utility with these changes, since not only are we the worst raid plate tank, worst heroic tank, we're undeniably the worst pvp tank as well.
Xelgad wrote: These changes are fine, in and of themselves, but they won't make much difference to the overall desirability of Guardians in groups/raids. As you rightly say you're not wanting to turn Guards into plate-wearing bards, but this means that Guardian utility will never be at a level where a raid wants to take one regardless of their other failings. At the end of the day, in both heroic and epic content, the final arbiters in tank desirability are aggro generation capability and survivability. Now a Guardian's forte is supposed to be survivability, but this quality isn't really seeked out. Any tank class can now tank any mob with just 2 healers (Raid) or 1 healer (Heroic). Once everyone is able to stay alive then any advantage one has over the other in terms of survivability is largely moot. It's not possible to 'stay alive better'. If you want to fix Guardians properly then it will require a reworking of: 1) The class, to regain it's advantage to survivability. 2) The mobs, to ensure that that survivability is actually useful. 3) The gear, to recalibrate the cap on mitigation and maybe resists so that there's somewhere for Guards to go. At the moment I can hit mit cap vs lvl 98 solo. That should not be even remotely possible. If you just want to waylay the whinage then greatly increase aggro generation (not DPS generation) in both AOE and single target. That's fairly easy to do, just add some big-ol procs to some AA somewhere, add big time threat to assault (to give us something to compare with Holy Ground, Gibe, Sacrament that style of thing) and increase the basic threat generation of reinforcement to make it similar to Insight (but with the added bonus of the +1 hate position portion).
I would have to agree with Steelbadger on this one. I understand that Devs are looking at the bigger picture, rather than an expansion by expansion fix. However, as it stands now any other plate(and some leather) fighters can tank all of the same content a Guardian can while bringing alot more dps-oriented utility to their raidforce. The content itself isn't difficult enough because all of the raid encounters aren't hitting hard enough to create a demand for a "Survival/Defensive" oriented tank. So the question most raid leaders face is: "Why should I bring a Guardian when I could bring a Zerk or SK and achieve the same effect in less time with more dps?" 1k HP on our raidwide buff? Why is it needed when most healers that are geared enough and most dps/tank classes that are competent enough never die from raid ae's. I do like Rhita's suggestion of the kickback immunity, but that is a fix that will only affect 1 player in the raid. As a raid leader, I have to make the choice of what best improves the whole raid. Right now, with this content, I can't think of a single reason to bring a Guardian along. We have less hate generation, less dps, less utility for our own group and the whole raid, less aoe agro and all we have to show for it is an iota of survivability(which isn't even necessary).
1k HP buff would be welcomed for raidwide, maybe add 5 crit bonus or 5 potency with it. Aggro is the main problem with Guardians,Guardians will be better balanced just from that one fix alone. I have an idea that would help all MT's no matter what class. Let's call it the "Primary Tank Ruleset" 1.First tank with aggro is considered the Primary Tank 2.When the Primary Tank dies, no other tank can be the Primary tank, so then the normal ruleset applies. 3.Mobs with memwipe/or require tank switches/offtanking would not use this ruleset. 4. Any tank using hate postions while the Primary Tank Ruleset is in effect would only increase the Primary Tanks hate positions. Example, DPS rips aggro from the Primary Tank, Off tank hits rescue, mob switches back to Primary Tank. 5. No other tank can get aggro till Primary Tank dies. One of the biggest complaints for guardians, is not so much losing aggro from DPS , its the other tanks that are mainly the problem. No point in being named MT when you can't hold aggro from the OT that is just trying to be helpful and dps. I think something like this would help all MT's, plus give more room for the other tanks to dps without fear of ripping aggro from the MT.
Xelgad wrote: While I appreciate the sentiment, I'm afraid this change won't accomplish anything, for three reasons: 1) It only protects fighters. 2) It doesn't protect targets who are the direct target of the mob (i.e., the person with aggro). 3) It is an endline ability in a subtree that virtually no guardian is ever going to invest 20 points into, since doing so would entail reducing either personal survivability or personal DPS/hate generation by taking points out of the other guardian subtrees, which wouldn't make any sense whatsoever. The most any guardian is currently going to invest into this tree is 5 into Enhance: Reinforcement, 3 into Enhance: Rescue (to get to Enhance: Reinforcement), and in some builds, 5 into Enhance: Sentry Watch. That amounts to 8 (the norm) - 13 (the absolute max) points. If you really wanted to make this ability worth effectively wasting at the very least 7 AA points (aside from the cost of the ability itself), then here are some options for you: 1) Remove the class restriction, set the duration to 15 sec and the reuse time to 60 sec, and increase the range to 25 - 30m. That is to say, Got Your Back would become a group AE protector somewhat weaker then, say, AA-enhanced Tortoise Shell. It still wouldn't affect the guardian if he was tanking, but it would have become a very worthwhile utility AA. OR 2) Make Got Your Back affect every fighter raidewide, including the guardian himself, and allow it to do what no other AE protector is able to do: protect against targeted AE's--i.e., a MT'ing guardian could protect himself from an AE hit. Additionally, set the reuse time to 60 sec and increase the range to 50m. The problem with Cripple is that its sole purpose seems to give away one of our class advantages to other tanks, so they can better fill the MT role. That is, needless to say, the exact opposite of what most raiding guardians are looking to achieve. If you want to make Cripple worth it, render it a maintainable debuff that reduces the auto-attack modifier of the mob by 5% - 10%. In such a form, it would actually help any MT, not just non-guardians. Alternatively, make it a modest maintainable physical mitigation debuff, something that would actually boost raidwide DPS significantly without overpowering the guardian's personal DPS. I think that would go a long way towards making up for the currently inferior guardian DPS. Now, that sounds like a good idea, but let's face it: nobody is ever going to bring a guardian to a raid because of 1K extra HP, especially not considering the DPS and/or HPS-boosting raid-wide buffs of other fighters. Aside from the HP, how about adding a 10% auto-attack modifier component and/or a 10% Accuracy bonus? Finally, let me stress that no amount of utility will turn guardians into the first choice as raid MT's unless you return to us a significant non-situational survivability edge, and not just vs spike damage, and adjust mobs to actually require that level of survivability. After all, if you leave mobs unchanged, why would you bring a guardian, given that shadow knights, berserkers, and paladins bring more DPS to the raid and are able to tank every single mob in the game? At any rate, as far as survivability goes, we currently have no mitigation advantage whatsoever (any plate tank can easily reach the cap) while paladins have a 10% permanent damage reduction advantage plus substantial healing and a significantly higher block chance (due to AA's), just to mention one example. Raising the mitigation cap to 18,000 - 20,000 vs 98th level mobs, adding a permanent 10% Damage Reduction component to our defensive stance, and making Unyielding Will (our death preventer) a permanent buff until triggered would go a long way towards returning some manner of survivability edge to guardians.
Hello Xelgad, Thank you for taking our suggestions.. 1). recapture needs some attention. i use it quite abit during raids and often it doesnt work. perhaps this ability could be boosted abit. 2). our death save could use a makeover. often in laggy zones it gets double clicked and thus cancelled. i would love to see a death save on a shorter timer also. 3). i know this is a little off topic but when pulling multiple mobs and reinforcement is down its often hard to maintain decent aggro especally during raids. i was thinking of some kind of aggro adjustment to our class that is inert or built in that would make our class more effective. -thank you
I understand that you want to work on our utility, but you suggested that making us preferred defensive tanks is the plan, but there is a problem with that really. That is what lead us down the dark alley we find our class now. We have received snap after snap while every other tank was given more raw DPS along with being able to live almost as well. The problem is every other tank class can live through every encounter in the game and bring much more DPS to the table. Making us better defensive tanks isnt going to help us much being almost every guild leader out there is going to allow for a extra wipe or two a week for the tanks that can bring the heat. I think its rather pointless to keep stacking us with defense when being more defensive then we are currently wont help for that reason. You wont find a Guard on most of the WW ranking guilds rosters. We are defensive to death as it is, making us more defensive sounds great, but in the real world of raiding it wont help us get in raids, let alone displace the other three classes that can do it all. Why take a dependent on healers 100%, 1/3-1/2 less DPS , only a brittle hair better surviving tank, when you can have one thats good at everything do it. How many of your SF encounters have DPS checks? I can think of three and I havnt even seen every encounter yet. Why bring in Mr. Defensive when you can have a choice of three different Mr. Everything? That was the goal to make Guards the defensive warrior, but the defensive Crusader (Pally) can still hang DPS wise with the offensive arch type of the warrior and crusaders. I know I an being redundant, but I just want to make sure ya understand that its DPS we lack. When you set up encounters that NEED a certain amount of DPS, no guild is going to be switching in and out tanks when you have a choice of three who can be in there for everything.
posted this on another forum a few days ago, so ill just paste it here. few if any classes are brought on most encounters for survivability because the content does not hit "that hard" and dps "caps" seems to be what makes mob die, like before but more so now imo. the problem is that guardian is a defensive class you can't add 5% raid wide crit bonus or potency because that would not be in line with the class. i think they should take sentinel and make it a raid wide buff you receive at lvl 55. of course change it to a permanent buff but also change it to a percentage to avoid death and give hate to the guard. ie. sentinel all raid/group members have a 5%? maybe 10%? (might be op ) chance to have sentinel cast on them at death. * will heal target for 50% of health * will increase hate to caster by 5000k * will increase threat position to caster by 5 * this effect can only trigger once a minute * this effect can not be modified except by direct means. this would stay inline with guardian AND not only offer survivability but also offer DPS that is also needed. since when people die their dps seems to drop to zero
Xelgad wrote: These adjustements will make absolutely no difference to the desirability of a Guardian. If there is indeed by the dev team a focus on Guardians and their deficiencies then these items kind of make me scratch my head somewhat. You need to read the Guardian threads somewhat to see where the class is really hurting and needs attention pretty much right away.
steelbadger wrote: This. Guardians are in desparate need of hate changes that make it easier for them to be able to hold mobs on them. Also these proposed changes by Xel do absolutely nothing for the solo or heroic guard. Our tiny edge in survivability is pointless, and the Guard has next to nothing going for them being the lowest DPS tank. Reworking the class's utility should be behind fixing their hate-gen and 'why bring a guard when any other tank does it better/faster' issues.
Xelgad wrote: If you want to change some of our utility make Battle Cry be an unlimited AoE threat over time spell(i.e. Grave Sac). You can change the recast to adjust for it, but doing that would go a long way to help. As others have stated Recapture needs to be changed, we were the only fighter that got a level 80 ability that helped other fighters hold agro when they don't need help in holding agro. Another thing would be to change Sentinel Strike to a buff that adds hate to each successful hit instead of just a taunt with damage. Those are all I can think of right now.
