Brildean wrote: The best way to get into a raid is to start the raid - that is independant of class. It worked for me on Monday The question is if a raid has a choice of a guard or some other equally well played plate fighter - whcih should they choose and why? Any of them can do the MT job, so it comes down to what extra they bring. That extra is where guards are lacking. All the others bring more personal DPS and better raid/group buffs. Brildean wrote: This implies that you haven't a clue about guards. We have no worries about ripping aggro accidentally, for 2 reasons: 1) We like having aggro - when we don't have it we feel near useless as tanking is the only thing we do well. 2) We can't do it - even dual-wielding in offensive our DPS is way behind other fighters when they are in defensive and using a shield.
The stance changes weren't just for guardians its for all tanks.. so that when we are tanking we dont have to worry bout the zerker goign all out doing double our dps and tps due to be in offensive. I have no problem with other dps toons.. cept tanks going all out dps. While in offensive the changes to offensive were to balance other tanks so they can dps when there is no need for an offtank cept for O sheet moments.. which would imply a simple stance change to get agro and hold agro tell ** MT ** is back up. As far as me not knowing what i'm talking about.. i pointed out the obvious problem that currently lies with the guardian class and that is limiting off tank's from dpsing. I suggested a fix for all tanks to balance out when there is no need for them to be taking agro and just dpsing away. I have no other problems with any other classes and I've tanked everything that my guild has killed so far.. The last changes were great for group survivability in raids we just need a couple more tweaks on sentry watch and possibly Plant to be more useful on raid mobs. Your just use to seeing all the other tanks have easy buttons to tanking.. well a guard is no easy button.. its all timing and surviving.
Brildean wrote: I misunderstood. Brildean wrote: That is not the only or most obvious problem. The most obvious one is that guards bring less to a raid than any other plate fighter (at least) and so don't really deserve a place on a raid. Feeling second class is not nice. I understand why other fighters did not like in RoK and agreed that they needed their tanking ability bringing up. We need the extra we bring to the raid beyond tanking brought up to their levels. Brildean wrote: I disagree. The extra hit points added a little, but guardian sphere whilst it doesn't kill us anymore doesn't actually do much either. Brildean wrote: I don't know where you get that idea about me from. It is wrong.
Tenka@Nagafen wrote: Being a berserker does Some details: They buff the group's strength rather than hit points/defense (the ability change has hurt this buff but for personnal dps it is unaltered). Their offensive stance has a damage proc rather than buffing strength. HTL only generates threat, the zerker equivalent does (less) threat and damage They go berserk buffing their dps and attack speed (though diminishing returns makes that a small factor at high level) Generally zerkers CAs are more focussed on doing damage, where a guard's are more defensive. They don't just have one fro hitting many targets.
misnomers. dps/haste are at or near capped for anyone in a decent raid. only real difference afaik between zerk and guard dps for single target is the zerk o stance proc. the only really different ca is the aggro/damage one. the zerk version is more damage than aggro while the guard one is more aggro than damage.
Tenka@Nagafen wrote: There are many more differences. I already mentioned the HTL - zero damage - Agressive defense - some damage one.A couple more: At 44 guards get a green slow casting taunt + damage CA - no use for a single target and little use for multiple ones. Zerkers get a fast casting triple attack. Guards get reinforcement at 52 - a great snap aggro tool, but it does zero damage. Zerkers get Insolence at the same level - which can damage those who hit the zerker.
Meattray wrote: Well the changes people wanted never happened, i promised i would cancel my account. My account is canceled, i think you were never serious in fixing the guardian class, over the years i have seen SOE screw classes and sometimes make them good. Guards were the king of not taking damage, now we are just rare, almost non existent. The eq2 Population is almost gone, and new EQ2 Extended is another slap in the face.
So many things have brought us to this point in game. When they launched SF, and merged all the Stat's, quite a few people pointed out how bad this would be. We are seeing the effects of it right now. Yes in ToS Guards were the number four plate tank, but there was some hope. The SF changes, made the gap even bigger. The changes screwed over a lot of people. I know quite a few rouges, that now had worthless gear on. It was all Str and Int, with no Agil. With the way gear is today, there are a lot of worthless stats on it. People can hit 100% crit with out raid gear, so there is no reason to have crit in game. Just bump up everyones damage and remove it from the game. If you do not have 100% crit, you can not do your job as well, and it makes people change out for lesser gear so they can have that 100% crit. The crit change was one of the biggest mistakes that SoE has done. Right behind it is changing what Attributes do for classes. You now have some tank and healing classes that are at or above T2 damage. This is not right and is causing all the issues in game. It is more than just tanks, that are feeling the unbalacned headache. Do I want you to fix Guardians, yes I do. I would really like you to do the fix right. I had hope when I first saw this post. Then after weeks went by and we would get little feed back on the ideas in it, that hope started to die. Yes a few people asked for things that would have made the class OP, but for the most part we wanted items to would give us a chance to make the class fun and have a roll in game. We did not ask for nerfs to other class, because we did not want to make other people go into the boat we are in now. Should some other classes be nerf'd? yes they should. Guardians, out of the four plate tanks, have some of the worst endlines in ToS and SF. This is mainly in the ToS end lines. I do not want to be the king of the tanking hill, but I want my place near the top of it. That place is the same place that all tanks should be. There should never be one or two tanks that stand on the top. SoE says that that Guardian, is the king of Defense and Mitagation, but we are at best number three. More than likely we are number four over the long run. So we as a class needs to be buffed up, or someone at SoE needs to spend ten minutes and change the class discription on the character screen. All we want is balance, witch can be easy to do. In one day, the Dev's could figure out all the balance issues with the plate tank classes. It might take months, to find fixes for all of the issues and that is fine. First everyone needs to know, what the issues are. If SoE has not run simulators and found that some tanks can do better than T2 damage, than that is where the problem lies. If they have not run defensive sim's to find out that one tanks dies way before the other ones over and over, there is yet another problem. We as players, have done our job and provided input and shown some of the issues in game. Maybe we are asking for to much, in wanting a game that is balanced and fun to play? I like playing the Defensive tanks, and I know they are lower in DPS. That is fine and I live with that fact. It is the play style I like to play. Yes it can be hard to find a spot in a raid, if we are not the MT, because we are lower in DPS. Though in most games, we bring in a lot of utility that our DPS dose not matter. We allow other classes to do a lot more. Using the Offfense + defense + util = 10, if a game came out and a tank was 1 (o) + 6 (d) + 4 (util) to make that 10, I would be all over it. I am that guy that wants the team to win. I want them to win, because I bring in the safety, buffs or Debuffs that allow others do their job. A good tank (player and class), bring the tools to allow every other class to do their job better. We hold the agro, so people can stand behind them and use rear attacks. We hold the agro, so DPS classes do not have to lose DPS, by putting on defesive gear. We have the buffs and ability, so the healers are not in panic mode trying to heal a marshmellow. We hold the agro so, healers are not having to heal ever person in the raid/group. We are the fort wall, that people can hind behind and feel safe, while they shoot at the emeny. We are not the shooters or the cannons, we are the wall. We take the punishment, so others do not have to. If a tank has plate gear, they should never be near the top of damage done. This is for equal geared players. We should be on par with the Util classes like Bards for damage done. Yes they bring the buffs and debuffs, and make everyone look better than they are. Tanks should do the same thing, because we are the one allowing them to be safe to do it.
bishoph wrote: I agree with you but things/times have changed......those of us that prefer our tank classes to be the "wall"/"meathshield"...at the bottom of the parse, yada yada are becoming a smaller and smaller minority in MMOs. A class like Guardian is obsolete in EQ2 and doubt any future MMO will have such a single purpose class. To expect designers to balance/update EQ2 to encourage a class like Guardian or give it any sorta of unique and useful identity is wishful thinking. SOE made their decision about what being a "tank" in EQ2 now means with TSO. The majority of the playerbase today wants their "tanks" to be the equiv of a SK or Zerker......both of which are able to exceed at much more than their basic archetype role while filling that basic role easily. Guardian can only performs its basic archetype role and then not really much better than any of the others ...hence it has become a pointless and obsolete class. Not really sure what the overall goal of the most recent Guardian changes were but they are not an indication that SOE has any plans to revitalize the class and make it relavent to the game anymore. The writing has been on the wall now for 2 expansions.
I doubt that SOE has any clue what is going on. It seems clear to me that Xelgad actually wants to balance the classes (look at the fighter heal crit nerf, the Victorious Concerto nerf, the first steps towards improving illusionists, the mitigation nerf coming with the next expansion, etc.). The problem is, Xelgad doesn't have a clue as to what goes on in high-end raiding. He appears to genuinely believe that guardians are fine in their current state--or at least will be, once the mitigation nerf goes through. That is manifestly not the case; paladins and berserkers will continue to tank with unrivaled survivability even after said nerf while continuing to shame the guardian in terms of DPS as well as utility. And as for right now, six months away from the potential mitigation nerf, even bruisers and SK's are MT'ing in some of the top-end guilds. I don't see what can be done to change his opinion, though. Guardians are a distinct minority, especially in high-end raid guilds, so our voices are easily drowned out by all those people who, for one reason or another, prefer to keep most fighter classes overpowered. It certainly doesn't help that we guardians are divided in what we want and what we think our class needs. To some extent, though, I guess it is unavoidable, given that we have vastly different play styles--some of us have cleared most hardmode raid content in the game while others have never even been on a raid. Even so, it would be great if we could try to reach some sort of consensus regarding possible class improvements. I would nominate the following as key goals: 1. Dramatically improved single-target DPS, especially when wielding a shield. 2. Add 10% permanent Damage Reduction to our Mythical buff. 3. Cut the base reuse time of Last Man Standing down to 2 min and lower the number of stoneskins to 3. 4. Change Block to put up a single stoneskin instead of granting 100% blocking vs single melee attack.
Karnos@Nektulos wrote: Overpowered tanks makes things mindless, easy and quick which for some odd reason people think is "fun".
Draylore wrote: This! And any one can play them, it doesn't take that much skill to play these tanks just a bit of knowledge of the encounters. Guards are the free class, they will never be as good as the none free classes, other wise people wouldn't want to buy them. Face it, we will never be equal in MT raiding again. That will be the domain of the none free tanks.
The ONE change that would have improved the class more and with greater effectiveness than all the minor spell and AA changes was an improvement to DPS. This was pointed out by many experienced players throughout the weeks of feedback and they were just plain ignored. There is no one in the world that is ever going to convince me a tank class that can wield TWO weapons should be doing subordinate damage to classes that sword and board given equal footing....else what is the point of dual wield and how much damage does a shield do?????? The DPS didn't come, so people will try out the changes for a bit, have a bit of a chat about them but in the end it is inevitable they will come to the same conclusion....Guardians are an unneeded redundant tank class. No one gives a stuff about damage absorption anymore. In todays EQ2 a tank needs 3 things only. Great Agro control, Survivability and DPS. If you only posses one or two of those things, you're a redundant tank. Nowdays surviviability is self heals, deathsaves and items with stonewall and heal procs. Mitigation is down the list. That's the hard news. Xelgad, you needed to listen to the players. This just DID NOT HAPPEN.
Britty wrote: Tanks have always needed those things. Ideally the 3 should be counter variables in balance......super high in one should mean super low in another, etc. But thats not the case anymore for at least 3 of the fighter classes......the math of balance has been thrown out the window. The problem is that Great Aggro and Great DPS have become one and the same so now its 2 variables instead of 3. Then someone decided that for some fighter classes the two variables should no longer be balanced against eachother..........hence the tanks that are suppose to be high in the DPS/AGGRO and pay for it by having low surviveability no longer have that penalty because they were given boosts/tricks/tools to boost their survivability beyond where it really should be given their DPS/AGGRO....now they have all the variables in spades. Leaving the tanks like Guardian with just the one variable and still paying the price of the other. That is what seperates the OP from the obsolete.
There need to be more changes, while other tanks have the same survivability as us we need to have the same utility/DPS/Hate as they enjoy. Yes a Guardian can stop SOME spike damage, but so can all other tanks and Paladins and Zerkers take LESS sustained damage than a Guardian, and by a decent amount! What would be VERY good is if some other tanks, and a few Guardians could post parses of both instances and raids with them in a tanking role. Parse incomming/outgoing damage zone wide with the name of the zone, Xelgad can see once and for all then what differences are there. We still have 2 abilities that can kill us if used. Sentry watch - Group death save.. IF used and catches an AOE the Guardian will take most of the AOE hit plus his own. Sentinal - Chance to absorb melee damage a group member would have taken. WILL kill if it absorbs a melee AOE. Both need changing: Sentry watch - should be an always on ability similar to bloodletter but for the group, 2 charges, not castable in combat, 2 min recast. Group member dies, they get healed to 50% for 5% HP of every group member. Sentinal - Remove the damage to the Guardian, and have it as a chance to absorb ALL damage, maybe a stoneskin buff of 30% or so. There.. abilities fixed and giving meaningful utility that benefits the group as a whole while not overpowering or adding to the Guardian in any way. Other abilities that need a fix still. Taunting Assault - 2 second cast.. honestly for an ability that does 1k damage and 3k hate.. Reduce it down to the standard 0.5 sec cast time for CA's please. Wrath of Velrak (Myth) - Riposte Imunity.. REMOVE IT and add Hate/DPS in some form (10% of stone skinned damage to hate) lots of ideas have been suggested. Make the damage reduction constant and 10%. It was stated Mythicals where to help in the areas tanks suffer, if you don't think Guardians are suffering in DPS/Hate you're a fool. Slight increases to DPS/Hate. Flurry - Increase it to 10%. Guardians are still not balanced so the changes should NOT be finished!
Pretty sure all adjustments are done until the expansion. I expect so see some more changes then to bring us more inline with the other tanks. It might not be done to us directly but I expect things will change.
I think in their (SOE) minds...stuff nerfing fighter heal crits and 'fixing' mit increase bug is addressing fighter balance. We are clearly dealing with Devs that either have no clue what is really going on or do and could care less and do the absolute minimum to give the illusion that issues are being addressed. I dont expect next expansion to be any different for Guards or fighter inbalance in general than things are right now..........which i guess is better than it was in TSO so we are not suppose to complain i bet.
