Salarionn wrote: This. As a raid leader, My MT is a pally, my OT is a zerker., My 3rd tank is a brawler...the guard goes 4th, and is only there really to pick up the mob if the first 3 tanks die, sometimes he doesn't go if we need dps. The guard can't reach half the numbers that any of my other tanks can, and can't hold the mob as well either especially if there are multiple mobs. I play a Guard, it's my alt but it's 90 and in raid gear, with expert/masters. It was my main for awhile. DPS/Hate generation is very frustrating on that toon. A few things that I think would help: 1. Give us a blue aoe that increases threat, you can attach it to one of our exsisting attacks. Doesn't have to be a "taunt" just a slight threat increase to our short range blue aoe to help us grab mobs that are not linked. 2. Recapture needs alot of work. My thoughts, make it a temp buff you can cast on another tank (single target) that works like reinforcement. It would give us something in a raid if all of our snaps are down, or if the OT is having problems holding a mob we can snap it on him while we MT or vice versa. 3. I liked the previous posters idea about got your back as becoming a group aoe block, so that when your healers have to eat the aoe because your still in there, you can protect them if theres alot of damage being put out. 4. Since repost/parry doesn't work in raids well, I would like to see cripple rewored, but I'm not sure if a debuff and damage component would be any way of improving it. a Mitigation or damage decrease would be better. 5. I like the idea that call of sheilding would give a good hp boost, but it's not enough. Defense also means about 0 on a raid. It would be nice to have a HP boost + a mitigation increase or even a damage ward proc that has a % to go off on each person in the raid sorta like the ward procs you see on gear, only raid wide, and at a 10% chance to proc. Alternativly, add a % to threat to it. 1k hps + 5% hate transfer from the raid to the caster. 6. increase the DPS output of the guardian. A defensive tank is a good idea, but not in a game where dps > than all.
I can understand players would like some love for their classes, but let's keep this post to the Guardians please
In reference to another post: I do not think Guardians need a boost for groups. I have no issue tanking anything heroic and my gear is totally outdated (T8 raid stuff). Now as for raids: I like the idea with the raidwide health buff. To make it really interesting you could make it % based instead of a solid 1k - or attach a general damage reduction (5% might be already too strong) that'd make us much more viable as offtanks, too. A utility thing that might as well solve our thread problem would be improved moderate being raidwide OR it being a hate transfer instead of a hate gain increase/decrease ( see trak shield ) We would NOT need to do any more damage but instead we'd just hold aggro by threat. Anyhow: whatever change happens should be entirely defensively IMO. Crit buffs etc are marvelous indeed but don't quite fit our class.
1. If the raidwide buff stays extremely defensively based we're just going to continue to be sat for other tanks as the much defense is not needed. I would like to see something raid wide similar to the warlock mythical, raidwide proc for dmg and either hate postion or just an amount of hate reduction for non-fighters. Would help raidwide dps which would give us something to bring to raid that would be helpful on dps fights, and help with raid wide hate management. 2. Add some sort of buff in addition to avoidance/dmg intercept to moderate or sustain, crit bonus or potency. Would also be nice if sustain had a death intervention attached if target died w/ say a 3 min recast. Not so utility oriented but... 3. Don't think many people would be swayed into using Got Your Back or Cripple unless major major changes are made, think something that would improve the usefulness of a line we already have is turning the 9 double attack in the guardian tree to either % flurry or melee auto attack multiplier. 4. Our self buff that increases our stamina is completely pointless at this time. Would like to see an improvement here, either a self buff for shield effectiveness since we're way behind the point crusaders can reach, or a X times per min non-modifiable stone skin proc to help with survivability even while dual wielding so we can stay alive and produce decent dps.
Xelgad wrote: 1. Still pretty much usless, Change it from fighter only or change it where if the guard is the focus it will still block the AE. Because if you not tanking why else do you need a tank to stay in over your DPS? Oh thats right SK are DPS we must protect them, my bad. 2. /boggle! Who thought this was a bright idea? 3. Like others has said 1k hp? I mean really? The only time I see that being wanted is if, well I don't. I am just amazed you guys decided to address our utilities 1st. When that isn't where we are that broke ATM. The only reason I can see you addressing our utilities 1st is because you have big changes coming to the other fighters soon. Where they will be nerf down to our lvl of DPS and thread generation. I do hope that is the case because bringing us up to their level only gives god mode to another tank.
Atan@Unrest wrote: What Atan said +25 and ... Why interfere with Call of Shielding at all? Why not just increase the Health component of Battle Tactics by 1k? You are just going to complicate it further by duplicating bonuses across buffs. To make Cripple do what it says on the can i.e cripple it should be a phys dmg debuff and speed debuff (plus any dmg you wish to add) Guardian Sphere can be suicide against AoE mobs. Either reduce the intercept dmg or increase the stoneskin proc chance. (Would be nice if you did both lol) Make Got Your Back groupwide and exclude fighters. I don't care if another fighter gets a whack - if they cant take it they need to gear up or get their healers sorted. I am there to keep aggro and soak up the dmg so others can do their job. I don't want to be babying other fighters over my MT group. TBH if they die because they take aggro then they deserve it for not being able to count to 100 lol. Lastly, thanks for taking the time to look at this but as others have said, a good trawl through the other threads on what is wrong with the class would be a very good starting point.
Aviola@Antonia Bayle wrote: I respectfully disagree. I'm not raid equipped on my lvl 90 guardian at all - just a mix of legendary from current tier instances - and holding aggro on the SF instance group encounters is a royal pain w/ a good DPS'r. We need work on all tiers of content, not just raiding. I don't raid currently on my Guardian but I surely feel a lot of pain (and listen to a lot of griping) that I'm not up to par with similarly equipped other tank classes. AOE is our Achilles heel at all levels of content and unless/until that is addressed we will continue to be second-class tanks.
Here is an idea for recapture. Make it a maintained buff that can be placed on another tank. If the guardian looses agro it sends the mob to the chosen tank for 15 seconds. This way it is not russian roulet as to who it goes to and it would actually make it a useful buff. As far as agro is concerned, l have played a SK and I have a guardian that I have raid tanked and group tanked with and agro is not even close to the same. I do not believe the sk is out of line where it is at. It is a solid tank and does it's job well. Guardians though need a boost on being able to control agro. This boils down to the whole stupid idea of group and single target tanks. The problem is that zerkers, Shadownights, and Pallys all are excellent at controlling groups. So please get rid of that idea and give the guards some agro control. This needs to be in the form of our of encounter agro. Because that is really where the issue comes from.
First, thank you for the post. it is greatly appreciated. I will point out to others that Xegald noted that Guardians are lacking in other areas also but they wanted to adress Utility first. While I can appreciate that, I feel that addressing them seperate can lead to inconsistant resuslts but we can but suggest and follow how SoE will handle this. My comments: 1. Got your back - Serious Raids bring 3 fighters. One should most times be the direct target of the AoE and the description of the AA means your protecting OTHER fighters not diretcly targeted. So, your going to upen this ability to allow Guardians to help guard ONE other person in the raid who isn't even tanking? I fail to see how this would be even remotely desired or helpful. I guarantee you I will keep the spec I have now which DOES NOT include that ability. 2. Cripple - OK. No way I can comment on this until I know what the debuff is. A direct reduction of damage. A potency reduction of the mob.. etc. somthing like that would kind of be helpful. A reduction of the mobs defense by 5 is not going to help. 3. Call of Shielding - Current raids get along without this 1000 HP so it will never be a requirement. My Troubador raids will a very low end raid force and even they don't need the extra 1000 HP. Resists and stragety is much more important. Why bring a guardian and give everybody 1000 HP when you can bring a DPS and increase the total DPS of the raid by 5-10% and everything dies 5-10% faster? That's the game you have created... I'll take anything I can get but I think your way off base on what will make a Guardian desirable. Please remmember that you all designed a game/expansion where DPS > EVERYTHING. We didn't make that choice, it was given to us in terms exptations from tanks holding agro while doing massive DPS and all of these nifty blue stats that let everybody cap just about everything. As you make your changes please remmember where Guardians are: 1. Lowest TPS BY FAR. 2. Lowest DPS BY FAR. 3. Lowest Utility (eh.. allfighters have pretty weak utility but we are fighters after all) 4. Basically equal survivability. All of this needs to be BALANCED and utlity is really the weakest things for all fighetrs to balance first. I do not want to hear about Guardians soling conservatory or Library. I want a balanced, reasonable fighter group.
Aviola@Antonia Bayle wrote: I'm Legendary/fabled geared all level 90 full masters and 250 AA's. I lose agro ALL the time in groups. I try and pick groups I can handle but those are the 40-50K DPS groups and most of that is usually my Assassin wife or Swashbuckler friend that transfer hate to me. I still lose agro to them. When I get those, 70-80K DPS groups by accident (Enchanters that do 30K DPS and don't cast power regen and crap like that) It's just an agro fest with the healer going nuts. Nothing i can do but cycle snaps and hope the mob dies faster than the Enchanter.
Recaputer - Highly useful on liek 3 mobs total.. totally worthless on the rest.. no clue what to do Guardian Sphere - I only use this when i can be assured no one will be in range for me to intercept damage on, since getting hit with 6 x 30k ae's isnt the win. And my last, and most needed fix, is making Unyielding will an UNTIL CANCLED BUFF. You can leave it with the long recast, but having to GUESS when to use it is highly anoying. For a lot of guilds the harder fights take 8-10+ min, and unyeilding only lasts 3-4 min. So you ahve to guess if you think are going to die early in the fight, mid fight, or at the end of the fight. And if you use it early, it wont be back up before the fight is over due to the long recast. If you goal is to increase our surviveability this would be a great fix. Also i forgot the name, but the endline in the war tree that increases our attributes when we drop under 50% health needs to be fixed. I like the SF aa that increase your mitigation, but i think this AA needs reworked. First it should allow the buff to last for 1 min when triggered, and just make it so it can only trigger once every 3 min. Then make the SF aa add a strait damnage reductoin of 1% per rank so 8% total Also i would really like the effect on our TSO BP's back. We need a red adorn that adds teh 5% damage reductoin back to our bp's, since in the long run on most mobs, the 4% mitigation adorn is wasted anyway.
Xelgad wrote: None of these changes are all that great or desirable. Guardian utility is not the issue. The primary Guardian issues have been and remain to be lower DPS and threat generation, especially AOE threat generation. For a raidwide ability, how about a raidwide Sentry Watch or Moderate.
There are a number possiblities for improvement of Guardian utility, and I think it would be much more beneficial if some of our utility combat arts were looked at also. Plant What it does: Blue AOE root + Attack Speed debuff, also debuffs caster What's wrong with it: Debuffing yourself own offensive capabilities and mobility is not preferable to say the least. Rooting mobs is very rarely useful (if you have agro they'll usually be where you want them anyway). My Suggestion: Make it a buff that make Guardians immune the Knockback and Profession based teleportation spells (like Rift). Other tanks can get either temporary or permanent immunity to various status effects and I think this would be in line with those. Knockback effects are fairly prevailant at all levels of the game. There is nothing more annoying then having a dragon or some other mob kick you out of your position which in turn makes everyone else have to readjust. Guardian Sphere What it does: Groupwide intercept + Stoneskin trigger chance temp buff What's wrong with it: It's a death trap. Who honestly thought intercepting the entire group's damage was a good idea? My Suggestion: Groupwide Stone trigger chance with higher levels of the spell proccing more consistantly more times. Guaranteed not to cause spontaneous death. Hunker Down What it does: temporary self Mitigation buff + root proc chance + self debuff What's wrong with it: Snaring and debuffing your own attack speed is bad. Rooting mobs isn't that useful. My suggestion: Temporary self mitigation buff + Mutagenic Burst style AOE proc on incoming damage. This would help with hate management in AOE fights.
Meaghan@Lucan DLere wrote: Don't forget no real survivability differential vs other fighters, not that the content actually demands more survivability that has already been over-rewarded to *all* fighters.
Thank you for acknowledging that there are issues to look at. Please consider posting a notice about this somewhere outside the tucked behind an unexpanded Class Discussion forum heading. I've levelled my guardian...through soloing, thanks for the additional stonebrunt quests by the way, they are necessary for classes that have little to no place in instances...but had given up following along the class forums quite a while ago. I only knew about this thread because a guildmate pointed it out. 1. Got Your Back was worthless before. Raidwide worthless is still worthless. 2. What's the proposed debuff? No point in commenting without anything remotely specific. 3. 1000 hp raidwide is nice...but not a reason to bring a class that brings nothing else. Utility is a problem, but not "the problem." If you're limited to focusing on one thing at a time, please consider closing this thread and starting a new one that might help the class.
I'd have to agree with multiple posts here. The three prime things I'd like to see providing additional utility are: 1. Guardian Sphere - The one guardian group buff that is NEVER used in a group and used ALL THE TIME when solo. The whole concept of this buff is just wrong. Remove the stone skin and make is so that the Guardian only gets 10-20% of the damage (mitigated to our stats, we are the one getting hit by the way) from any intercept check that hits. This would NOT be used while MTing but it could help a group a huge amount. I'd almost hate to see this happen becasue I use this ability all the time when soloing faction or something. 2. Recapture - This is just a stupid spell. Do you even play the game? I don't have a second fighetr in a group more than 5% of the time. And, since I'm a Guardian with terrible DPS I'm always the tank since the other guy can do better in a DPS role and help the group more. So, you give me a spell to help another fighter keep agro? Really? Heck, it would be more useful if it reduced other fighters in agro level but that would only helps 5% of the time. And, if I'm bring other fighters into a group (usually a brawler) then I have sucky dps choices already and I just moderate them. 3. Unyielding will. Dunno if this is a utility item but it would sure help if it had a longer duration. Until Canceled would wonderful but I can't see that being added.
Wasuna wrote: I find this to be the biggest tease skill we have since when you are really in need of it, you cant hit it and have it instantly be usable its takes a few seconds for it to actually be up and ready. Whats the point of a awesome DI when you cant have it rdy when casted? When you're red and you know your about to drop, you hit it and pray the healers get at least one more good reactive/ward on you so it has time to actually be proc'd. Why make it flip through the rainbow or colors before it turns red and usable? This should be a insta cast, insta use... not wait a couple seconds and pray thing. Furthermore, even when I do manage to get it up and usable I have still died because it doesnt work 100% of the time.
Xelgad wrote: It's good to see that you recognise that there are issues and I hope your proposed solutions to the other issues that we have is forthcoming soon, especially with regards to agro. Obviously the utility needs to be defensive in nature, that's a given Guardian Sphere. The first thing to do is let us protect our group/raid not by intercepting and taking the damage (because those skills KILL us and then everyone else dies anyway) but by giving stone skin procs. If stoneskins also have a hate component towards the Guardian then that's even better. Nobody will spec into Got Your Back. You will have to do a LOT more to the skill than give us the ability to protect 2 other fighters in a raid and nobody in a group. You will also need to make the choices in that tree more attractive because we still won't take it even if it does become worthwhile and the rest of the tree remains unchanged - even then we would have to lose significant defensive or agro choices to take it so it would need to be very special indeed. What is the debuff on Cripple that you propose? You would need to add more health than that to Call of Shielding or add mitigation/stone skin proc to it alongside that 1,000 health to make it worthwhile and reinforce the fact that we are protectors of others. Recapture needs to be scrapped and re-done. Why would I ever want to help other tanks take agro when none of them struggle with it? What use is this skill in a group situation? I maintain that it needs to be a large true AOE taunt as an attention grabber much like gibe, grave sacrament and holy ground.
Xelgad thanks for acknowledge that you guys are working on the class and know it is badly broken. The thing is, we need to see the bigger plan in order to give good informed feedback. So with out knowing the entire plan we just balance these changes for the way it is now and well they are very lack luster for the way things are now, Sorry to say. However we do thank you for looking at our class.
Xelgad wrote: Another mechanics change. Damn do you all have to change mechanics every xpac. or should I say every new dev, damn. Stop trying to re-invent the game all the time. Fix the crap that needs to be fixed and tweak skills.
