Next step for Class Feedback?

So? Is it bad to make someone doubt themselves long enough to ask themselves if they are right? Yes doing it JUST to mess with peoples minds yes is a bad thing. I did read it, I also responded that right before going to bed so it is beyond plausible that I may have glazed over that last part. I thought he said that he enjoyed causing others to second guess themselves, nothing wrong with that it's what arguments are for. I missed the part about "even if they are right".

Awesome, I'm going to copy my lock over there and find some wizzy's to group with! We gotta save the lock. He's awesome soloer, but in ACT he comes off looking like a slob. I KNOW he does more dmg than it looks like he does, he doubleshots stuff to death. So why doesn't ACT show it? I look at wizzy's doing 1 million dmg in one hit and I wanna cry. They wear worse gear too.

Don't make me betray. I love my lock. He has a whole roleplay history. I played him all the way up, not a minute of PL in him.

it was a brash comment made in jest.
yet, when i do argue for the sake of arguing i'm not "messing" with your mind i'm challenging your acumen.

So it's always some sort of a test and you are a tester-jester. I see..

not test because i don't have the authority. just some fun sparring

Heya, forgot about this thread for a bit since noone quoted me

Yeah, i agree that the guardian myth buffs have benefits, its just how underwhelming they are. As far as ideas, i could throw my hat in the rink and make a fool of myself, but first, my view of the other tank classes as compared to the guard, which is based on what ive seen and read, and occasionally played.

What I thought I was getting when I chose to make my first character a guardian was, oh sweet, heres a guy whose focused on defense, and protecting the group! Thats right up my alley! The fact is, Guardians need to dps to hold aggro. This can be argued for all tanks really, but guardians, being specifically a defensive tank, trade alot of damage abilities to fit their archetype. I dont mind that specifically either, the thing that bugs me though is how the guardian stacks up against say, those filthy crusaders, or brawlers, though i wont go into brawlers today because they are in a fairly balanced spot (or so ive heard).

Compared with crusaders, they have more damage, self healing, and lots of high threat high damage spells, not to mention lots of AoE damage, invulnerability AA, several CC breaker spells, etc. Stack on top of this that paladins have heals, cures, rez, amends, sigil of heroism, and a few other AA and prestige abilities that refuse to come to my mind at the moment.

Compare to the guardian, who can proc group stoneskins, death prevent, and a group miti buff, and very picky group damage reduction... that doesnt affect you . Their mythicals are way more impressive, paladins get better damage and heals, 10% damage reduction, and 10% pseudo damage reduction, and a siphon pet(not sure how strong this is). the SK mythical is a little more down to earth, but still provides taunts off of lifetaps, and 8 second forced taunt with a 60%+ max hp threshhold stoneskin that doesnt seem to have a trigger limit.

So to summarize,
Shadowknight
Pro: Decent mythical with nice high threshhold stoneskin spell to save vs instant kill effects, strong aoe and single target damage and hate. Self heals through dealing damage, CC cures and immunity, stoneskin everything spell <50%, group CC immunity buff on kill. auto self rez, self ward.
Con: can have spells set back/interrupted sometimes (rarely interrupted with AAs)

Paladin
Pro: Great Mythical, constant 10% DR with another 10% pseudo-DR, bonus dmg and heal proc, siphon pet spell, strong aoe and single target damage and hate. Self heals through heal spells, some damage to health spells. group healing, rez, sigil of heroism, CC breakers, cures, auto self rez, stoneskin everything spell <50%.
Con: can have spells set back/interupted sometimes (rarely interrupted with AAs)

Guardian
Pro: Mediocre Mythical with low proc rate short duration(5 secs) cc immunity and 5% DR(also low proc low duration) and immunity to riposte. One stoneskin for anything over 10% max hp (which is any hit in heroic for me), 7 stoneskins with a 5% threshhold, group stoneskin buff, group miti buff, decent amount of single target hate snaps, only one aoe snap group death prevent(30s), sketchy group damage reduction buff (doesnt effect you)
Con:mythical procs are low proc and short duration, stoneskins cant reliably be used to soak instant death effects (3+ bosses in coe do a minor hit right before they do their large damage effects, eating up your 10% stoneskin, and others hit you 4 times for 747k damage, death prevents are useless against them. long reuse hate snaps, no reliable hate generation except DPS, combat art damage is very low. Death prevent eats up 5 aas so that it doesnt kill you when it triggers, and you have to activate your death prevent. low aoe damage. Getting CC'd and being unable to cast something is painful to watch and can lead to wipes.

Berserker
Pro: lol. great self healing, damage reduction, lots of aoe damage, auto trigger death prevent, good damage in general
Con: too many to list.

Now im sure some or perhaps alot of the info i posted over the other classes might be incorrect, I dont play them so this is just from what ive seen, read, and fiddled with in beta Feel free to let me know if I missed some pros or cons or if you just think im a ********.

The things id like to see improved on the guardian would be; Mythical, either boosting proc rate, duration, or change them from procs to permanents. Some people might feel permanent CC immunity would be too strong, but as guardians we have no ability to break out of cures, and if were CC'd and cant push our buttons, it generally gets very messy from there. As for permanent 5% DR, I dont know who thought that would be a great idea -.- . they give the paladins a permanent 10% DR, so why cant we have permanent 5% DR? Either permanent it or bump it up to like 25% DR on a low proc.

Higher Threshold stoneskins. I dont know about others, but I tend to save my direct stoneskins for special events, and I use guardian sphere to just lower general damage if I want to use stoneskins for that. It would be great to see a 30% or 50% threshhold stoneskin with a few triggers, and a decent duration. That way when im fighting CM venekor I dont get randomly vaporized when he does a triple hit or whatever it is he does at 60 or 50% hp with no warning :/. If not a new spell, then make tower of stone have a much higher threshhold, I cant trust it to block a big hit because so many bosses now sneak in a lower hit right before a big hit. The only thing I have to work with to even give me a chance to survive a multi hit death effect is my 7 stoneskins, and that thing doesnt cool down nearly as fast as I would need it.

Its been brought up before many times im sure, but having a group damage reduction spell that doesnt affect you is kind of silly. Im the one taking all the damage, most people are gonna be able to survive any aoes from the healers group heals and the ones that are strong can be avoided in other ways. The only time I ever pop that thing is if a wipe is occuring, and most of the time im dead before I get to activate it, and it wouldnt help me if I was alive because fighters dont deserve its DR

Need some sort of CC break, as discussed under the mythical section

Thats all I got for now, its late so im gonna go to bed feel free to poke holes in my theories and whatnot, I dont claim to be 100% competent in these classes but this is just what I see.

(gets ready for rotten tomatoes)
Regards,
Choc

I can agree with many points though believe it or not Crusaders are weaker at 'regaining' hate. Guards have good tool's but yes it requires careful use and good gear to overcome your weaknesses. As said on the Mythical/Interception threads.

Mythical either needs to proc 100% CC immunity (all types). It could be put back up at 10% Physical DR... or it could have 5% all damage reduction. The damage component is weak by comparison to some damage Mythicals.

Interception really could use to do something for the Guardian while active, currently it adds 1.2% DPS to Threat per stack which is nice but it is not a snap only a over-time generator. Given how you lose more and more stacks the longer it is up... this discourages using it as a threat-maintain. If instead it gave .5-1% Additional Ripost chance to the Guardian per stack while active then the Guardian would be forced to decide using Group DR sooner (25% roughly) OR letting it run the full duration and losing the max DR in exchange for keeping up a high Ripost Rate.

Cons to Both Methods: Mythical's buff I feel wouldn't have a major impact beyond making it unique over the other tanks, since healing themselves is more a Crusader thing. Warriors are damage avoiders/dealers (Guardians avoid. Berserkers damage).

From original design concepts at launch.
Monk: The self-sustained DPS tank class, more focus on sustain.
Bruiser: Dps Self-management tank class, more focus on damage.
Paladin: Spell-casting support tank that specializes at healing.
Shadowknight: Spell-Casting support tank that specializes at debuffing and life-siphoning.
Berserker: Melee-Damage tank that specializes at high amounts of melee damage at the sacrifice of defense (Berserk). They have temporary protections that prevent damage and heal them for a duration (Adrenaline)
Guardian: Defense Tank that specializes at avoiding damage and protecting allies at the expense of damage. Though they have strong taunts and tools to make up for it.

As to what they are now.
Monk: High DPS and high survival even when a healer is downed (about 15-25 seconds)
Bruiser: high DPS and high survival even when a healer is downed (about 10-20 secnds)
Paladin: High-AE DPS and decent survival even when a healer is downed (about 5-15 seconds)
Shadowknight: High-AE DPS and decent survival even when a healer is downed (about 5-15 seconds)
Berserker:
- Decent AE-DPS but... squishy because of it
- Die relatively fast when a healer is downed (Adrenaline is mostly their only 'sustained survival' tool and it is weak vs high damage)
Guardian:
- Low/Decnet Single-Target target.
- Can last for a long time while healer is downed (rarely do though as most bosses keep 1/2 of thier protections down at all times) roughly 5-30 seconds.

Basically the dps tank (Berserker) is only on-par with the other dps tanks... but he still is missing survival for his dps thus making him worse than most tanks and as such is not oft used. The defense tank (Guardian) is hard pressed by most bosses and dies extremely fast due to no sustain outside of his 14 stoneskins and given how many times bosses hit this lasts maybe 5 seconds if you are lucky.

Brawlers have a heal that will extend their life a short bit and a 3 trigger DI in addition to stoneskins.
Crusaders not only have multiple heals but essentially some of the best DI's in the game (permanent and SK's trigger more than once in a group).
Warriors have stoneskins or DR depending on class but neither last very long against sustained medium to high damage. Unlike other classes their heals are medium (Berserkers) or non-existant (Guardian) as such they are extremely reliant on healers.

As the game has progressed Warriors have gotten weaker and while admittedly against Mem-Shuffle Crusaders need another snap taunt that is really the only problem they have. Yes SK's will complain Bloodletter is not a true DI but it is one of the best considering a group should not die before the SK. Guardians are essentially only used in Raids and most groups I see on my alt that has a Guard in it... tbh I avoid because I have hardly if ever met another 'good' Guardian they are not easy to play. An SK or even a Zerk can get by being mediocre but Guards can't.
*Wanted to make that point clear about Crusaders vs new mobs.

TLDR(at least for Guardians): Mythical needs tweaking and Interception needs to have a protective aspect to the Guardian while active and the Recast may need adjustment because of that fact.

TLDR(Other classes): Most other tanks are better than Warriors in most settings. Warriors excel in very specific environments.

An update to prevent confusion: The focused feedback changes aren't going with the February 26th update - they're coming with a later one. Sorry about that!

/wrist. Back to GW2 till then I guess?

Disappointing.

Thank you again for the clarification. I do hope you found some suggestions in good support and are weighing things well. I look forward to seeing what happens. Though I hope tank's aren't upheaved too much.

Still sad it takes longer but hey, probably some changes may or may not be such easy fixes/changes.

The first time i heard about the class changes was 1 year ago on SS betaI And i realy would like to se the class changes before any more new content are added, or anything for that matter and now we getting 2 new zones in end of februari. I think the majority off the community would like to se the class changes and a fix to zone/spell lag before anything else tbh.

What is the advantage of new raid zones anyways, if nobody can play them due to the lag...

Out of curiosity: IF you are going to update classes and their abilities, will this be done in one go or class after class?

I share this concern. Given in reality classes and balance are better now than they've pretty much ever been, I fear these changes have more potential to do harm than good. Particularly weighting some of the bad ideas being passed around.

SOE problem is the lack of significance of the beta test (basic structure of the changes implemented before the test, even if it is terrible)

Suppose this situation:

First alpha tester tests the class A
Second alpha tester tests the class B

The first tester skilled and the second is noob
First tester need only cosmetic changes and the second need 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 ...............

-------------------> beta test (no changes) --------------------->

Final relise is:
If players A and B are skilled, that class B is OP !

For example!

In TSO clerics (esp Inque) have a lot of abilities to do damage without crit weapons (Flurry, Yaulp and more)
Then, the difference was almost imperceptible

Next, crits will unificate without nerf these ablitities

----> INQ is OP in Sentinels Fate (esp. part one) - T1-2 dps, solo heal and cure HM enc. in MT group

With fighters (Berser, sK and Pals) had the same situation

Time would have to stop stepping on rakes ! No one can understand the game better than the players
Of course ! Proposals need to be filtered !

and how would you gauge who is a skilled player and who is not?

the content they killed? there are tons of scrubs in high end guilds that just fill a spot and are terrible players.
time played? again there are tons of people that have played this game from launch and you still need to hold their hand thru content because they lack skill.

it's not as easy as you might think. to balance the content you need to first "want to balance it" and that's just not the case here i don't think. devs i think like making one class more powerful than the others so people switch up mains and alts are made or whatever.

this works ok but they need to keep other classes relevant and need to keep overpowering down to an acceptable level. when one class is doing 2mill and everyone else is doing 800k to 1.2 it's a problem.

Xelgad,
How about some basic information your looking at with the future update? Just a little information on each class. No promises or commitments but what you took from the feedback threads and what is being considered. Just to keep the players in the loop.

Thank you and thank you for seeking feedback. We all know that most of those threads turn into garbage quickly but there are always a few good ideas in them.


As for some of the concerns, I don't remember him ever saying the word balance in the feedback thread. Maybe I missed it. I remember fun being the word used. These changes are most likely going to be simplified changes. For example, Scout back abilties being changed to flank/back. More fun not class balancing change. But then again who really knows..right?

Nidy

Pretty sure you can file class feedback threads away with "not gonna happen."

I doubt that Six, Xelgad said he was reviewing them. Do not expect sweeping changes like some suggested in those Feedback Threads. Feedback is Feedback and will be at least reflected upon. Wait until the April GU before you make judgements as Xelgad and Kander have both said more changes are designed for then rather than soon.