Solkarr
10-05-2005, 06:06 AM
<DIV>Ok, I did post this in the guardian class bruised thread, but its kind of buried, and that thread is very much a rant fest, although some of the posters are trying hard to be constructive... so I am starting a fresh thread with my constructive ideas copied here... and hopefully people will limit responses in this thread to constructive ideas. =)</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>These ideas are to bring back a small portion of guardian pride in being a mitigation tank, but give us a true non-tank utility thats still useful if we are tanking (on par with life taps/wards/heals/mend/group regen/etc)</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> <P> </P> <P>To fix guardians I suggest 3 things (one of which will help all the tanks actually):</P> <P>1) Make our line of protection spells better... don't make us take 75 to 100% of the attacks damage and still let the other person take a portion of it (only some of pur spells block all the damage thus some of them actually INCREASE the damage the group takes as a whole) let us BLOCK the attacks, with our shields, not our heads... ie. we block 100% of the attack and do not get beat to a pulp ourselves... this adds utility because if we are maintanking we do not die extra fast because we were protecting the group, we actually make the group survive better... AND this adds raid utility when we are NOT the maintank because we can protect the maintank... utility in a raid without being the maintank is better than being left out of the raid (or if we MUST take some of the damage, let us mitigate it! I am NOT going to take my armor off mid battle before I jump infront of the cleric to intercept an attack!)</P> <P>2) make our defensive stance a bit more... well... defensive. Although I was the warlock in the guild raid situation above I do play a level 50 guardian, and have Master 1 of the lev 44 defensive stance... its not shaby. 21 defense, 21 parry, 1408 heat resistance, and 352 mitigation... sounds impressive. However 352 mitigation means I take about 7% less damage than without it... and 21 defense 21 parry means I avoid about 12% more attacks, and the heat resistance... well, it helps me resist an extra 28% in about a 5th of the nukes I get hit with, but is a nice bonus... and all this is at the expense of 13 points off all my offensive skills, making it of course harder for me to hit things and thus hold agro (the percents are based on being level 50 of course... lower benefits as I level up since the spell stays the same but the mobs get tougher). But this is the MASTER version, most guardians have a much weaker version (adept 1 or 3 or even an app4!) Thus many guardians get more benefit from their shield than they do from their defensive stance. If the stance gave us a really helpful mitigation boost (leave the defense/parry about where it is, we are not avoidance tanks, although I keep my agil high to avoid what I can). Make our defensive stance give us for example a 300 to 900 mitigation boost! (300 for app1, 900 for master) and make us feel like mitigation tanks! This would mean that although even with one of the best shields in the game, very high agility (I have over 200 unbuffed) and our defensive stance on, we get hit by about half of the attacks and combat arts, but can actually mitigate them down to a reasonable level. (maybe there is a version of this spell in the 50s that could be made THIS strong, and make the version I have kind of intermediate ( 200 to 600 mitigation ... just as long as its more useful than currently.)</P> <P>3) Lastly make it very hard for taunts to be resisted, or remove the resists altogether. Its not like this is a fireball or a lightning bolt, I am yelling insults at the guy, pulling its tail, or otherwise [Removed for Content] it off. No matter how many ice comets the wizards throw at the red dragon, if the tin can (guardian) calls it a snivelling newt, or the inbred son of a worm, the dragon is going to turn and attack the tin can (or monk or what ever is taunting it). period. Thats how dragons are... and since taunting is a tank's specialty we tanks will know the right way to tank everything... just as an assassin knows the right place to backstab everything (even a slime blob!) This will help all tanks, not just the guardians. We no longer have 6 to 7 different taunt to cycle - the ones we have cast fast, thats GREAT, I love it... but they still reset slowly, so a resist means a lot of trouble. (oh, and make rescue be on a 1 minute timer... then it can be used more than once during a raid, and can be used roughly once per group battle, or maybe every other battle... as needed.</P></DIV>