How to fix Guardians under this new single target vs AE tank problem. [Archive]

View Full Version : How to fix Guardians under this new single target vs AE tank problem.

Allurana

02-15-2009, 07:08 PM

Guardians are definitely broken worse than any other tank class under this new paradigm of Taunt > DPS to hold aggro.Of the 3 identified Single Target Aggro Tanks here is their passive aggro abilities:Monk:Dragon RageOn a successful melee attack this spell has a chance to cast Dragon Stance on target of attack. This effect will trigger an average of 10.0 times per minute. If a melee attack is used, only the primary weapon can trigger this effect. Increases Threat to target by XXXPaladin:Amends (I guess this is the only one - I don't know much about paladins)Grants the target a redemptive aura. Whenever the target accrues hate, some of that hate is transferred to the paladin.And FinallyGuardian:When target is damaged this spell has a 50% chance to cast Holding the Line on target's attacker. Increases Threat to target by XXXOk here is the problem and I can not believe no other guardian has said this yet....This passive buff is a JOKE because WE DON'T GET HIT VERY OFTEN!!! 50% of never is still never!Ok, never is an exaggeration but I am trying to demonstrate my point.I have played a guardian from day one and through all the changes so far. As the game stands currently, our avoidance is SO high that we are constantly blocking, parrying, dodging, reposteing and when we do get hit our innact super guardian mitigation keeps us from being one shotted like many of the others.As of right now, I have full Tier 2 Void Shard armor, full infused Void Shard jewlery, adornments that favor agi and mitigation, I have tweak my racial traits to AGI every time. I have about 7200 ish mitigation and 12,000 ish avoidance self-buffed solo.When I fight just about anything, they can hardly ever hit me.This is a normal example of my life as a guardian:I pull more than one mob that are not encounter linked, the one I have targetted and I start working on stays on me pretty easily, EVERY other mob that I may pull in goes to everyone else in the group for the slightest of infraction. Don't even think about have warden spores on a guardian, it is frustrating that you end up asking the Warden to remove it.The extra mobs don't have a chance to build ANY aggro passively AT ALL on the guardian because they can't hit him. Like I mentioned above 50% of nothing is still nothing.Every other passive threat buff I have ever seen in this game has been attack based or transfer - GUARDIANS are the ONLY ones I have seen so far that have this stupid "TAKE DAMAGE" to get a 50% chance of maybe doing some passive threat.How about change it to When Target is ATTACKED, not "take damage"? Every time any mob attempts to attack a guardian that it has a percentage chance to trigger the passive taunt. 50% may be too high so adjusting it isn't really an issue.But as it stands right now, Hold The Aggression and all of this line of passive buff is nearly useless.When I saw the new AA ability in the Shadows Tree that Adds an effect which grants additional hate when the warrior succesfully blocks an attack, I thought "WOW! SOE finally gave us a way to fix our BROKEN Hold the Aggression passive taunt" hoping that it really DIDN'T mean just "block" like the word they used but possibly anytime a mob attacks us and fails to connect for any reason (parry, dodge, block, etc...)OH NO! It is only block. Sigh.Please consider changing our passive buff to being something that is actually useful and maybe stop the entire flame war in the forums of single target vs. AOE tank.Thank you for your consideration.

Pins

02-15-2009, 07:35 PM

Paladins don't have Amends anymore.......

Obadiah

02-15-2009, 08:23 PM

<cite>Allurana wrote:</cite><blockquote>Please consider changing our passive buff to being something that is actually useful and maybe stop the entire flame war in the forums of single target vs. AOE tank.</blockquote>What's funny about this is, Paladins were complaining about how powerful your passive threat abilities were and asking for more. I'm not saying I agreed... I mean having the Zerk version of that ability which has a only 20% chance and only on melee attacks, not ALL damage ... yours seems pretty nice to me. But saying it's OP is laughable.I think it's plenty useful though. Block is a pretty high percentage of misses, no? And with the amount that they've increased the TSO AA threat to on Test, it's a very respectable addition. My Zerk will likely be changing to that.

Danelin

02-15-2009, 08:45 PM

Right, because every other warrior isn't getting their autocombat nerfed by the same amount or anything.Berserkers have a 20% chance on melee damage to do the same thing you have a 50% chance of doing on ALL damage. At least you have a chance of doing it against casting mobs. The Berserker will have lower avoidance, to be sure, but not likely to be 30% lower.Paladins don't get Amends anymore.

Allurana

02-16-2009, 12:38 PM

<cite>Kurgan@Everfrost wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Allurana wrote:</cite><blockquote>Please consider changing our passive buff to being something that is actually useful and maybe stop the entire flame war in the forums of single target vs. AOE tank.</blockquote>What's funny about this is, Paladins were complaining about how powerful your passive threat abilities were and asking for more. I'm not saying I agreed... I mean having the Zerk version of that ability which has a only 20% chance and only on melee attacks, not ALL damage ... yours seems pretty nice to me. But saying it's OP is laughable.I think it's plenty useful though. Block is a pretty high percentage of misses, no? And with the amount that they've increased the TSO AA threat to on Test, it's a very respectable addition. My Zerk will likely be changing to that.</blockquote>I do not have hard numbers to back up my opinion, I am sorry, but it appears by just watching the combat text window by fighting that I block very little. I am parrying and dodging and reposteing like Jackie Chan in a movie (which I actually think is really messed up for a plate tank).I would much rather be getting hit a LOT and actually mitigating those hits to make them 'micro-hits' as opposed to being a monk in plate armor which we have been for a long time.Take a look at how a lot of raid tanks are specc'd especially in regards to adornments and the big giant discussions about contested vs. uncontested avoidance. I think it is really messed up game mechanics when the players "have" to end up focusing so much on not getting hit at all because even when the uber guardian does get hit with melee damage they just about about get one shotted.Make mitigation mean something.Take away the importance of avoidance for plate tanks.Then our Hold the Aggression line of passive taunt will actually be worth something.

Allurana

02-16-2009, 12:55 PM

<cite>Danelin wrote:</cite><blockquote>Right, because every other warrior isn't getting their autocombat nerfed by the same amount or anything.Berserkers have a 20% chance on melee damage to do the same thing you have a 50% chance of doing on ALL damage. At least you have a chance of doing it against casting mobs. The Berserker will have lower avoidance, to be sure, but not likely to be 30% lower.Paladins don't get Amends anymore.</blockquote>My post is not about DPS for holding aggro. I have always thought that guardians doing high DPS was dumb and out of place.My post is specifically calling out our passive taunt buff and it nearly complete lack of usefulness. I would trade you my 50% chance to taunt when I take damage for half of your current buff.Yep, I would LOVE to have only a 10% chance on my melee damage to do an additional taunt then what I have now.I swing and hit with my sword a HECKUVA LOT more than I am actually getting hit with damage from encounters. I don't get hit often but when I do it HURTS bad.This game has a serious problem in terms of mitigation actually meaning anything and multiple expansions going past where avoidance is king and mitigation is a joke. It has gone on so long that the goal now is to make sure you don't get hit at all. If you do you better be pre-warded with heals already half way through their casting times and debuffs better be flying in from about 6 different debuffers at that instant or else you are gonna get one shotted or flurried for some insane amount of damage as if you are were wearing cloth armor.I believe that we are so far gone in terms of reversing the mitigation vs. avoidance situation that I am not even going to ask for a fix to that.Instead I feel it is probably more likely and more realistic to adjust the guardian's achille's heel of a passive taunt buff which has been a massive pain for a long time, which has had HUGE consequences on our level of enjoyment as a class since our DPS was nerfed so badly and will continue to be even a larger problem once all the other tank classes get their finally adjustments when the next LU goes in.I by no means want or suggest that any other tank class gets nerfed in any way. I am by no means an expert on paladins or monks or any of them. I do know a good bit about guardians and I have looked over most of the other passive taunt abilities on the other tanks.There has been a problem with guardian taunt abilities all along which was hidden by their crazy dps.That problem has been thrust into the light as of the massive DPS nerf we have been living with for around a half a year now.And it will be even more amplified as soon as all the other tanks get some love and we will still have to ask that our groups do absolutely nothing in terms of healing or AE actions for extended periods of time on non-linked multi-mob pulls since we have to wait FOREVER for the mobs to actually damage us enough times to get the 50% taunt to maybe trigger. We have no AOE taunt, we have ONE AOE attack on a long reuse.

Kordran

02-16-2009, 02:20 PM

<cite>Allurana wrote:</cite><blockquote>I would much rather be getting hit a LOT and actually mitigating those hits to make them 'micro-hits' as opposed to being a monk in plate armor which we have been for a long time.</blockquote>From a design point of view, the problem is that mitigation is a constant, avoidance is variable. By boosting mitigation significantly, you end up back in the same kind of situation you had early on in the game where for all intents and puposes, they could become virtually immune to physical damage (and the damage being done by raid mobs increasing exponentially in an attempt to counter-balance that).That said, with TSO, mitigation has become more important. The number of mobs that can strike-through and bypass avoidance checks, as well the heavy use of AoE attacks and critical multipliers has made the ability to mitigate damage more important, although avoidance is still essential.To put it another way, if they significantly decreased avoidance on plate tanks, they would either need to compensate with things like stoneskins (essentially a rose by another name) or they would have to significantly overhaul all of the raid encounters out there. Not likely.

Bruener

02-16-2009, 02:26 PM

Lets face it on Test everything I have heard from Guards has been positive, because for every tank in defensive stance agro becomes easy mode. Instead most of the complaints still come from AE v ST. Now being a semi-smart man I would imagine that the 50% proc chance on being hit as a Guard would be much better for this situation of holding multiple mobs. I mean it is a 50% chance and the amount of hate that procs is huge. The more mobs beating on you the more that thing is proc'ing on those mobs.

RafaelSmith

02-16-2009, 02:53 PM

<cite>Bruener wrote:</cite><blockquote> Now being a semi-smart man I would imagine that the 50% proc chance on being hit as a Guard would be much better for this situation of holding multiple mobs. I mean it is a 50% chance and the amount of hate that procs is huge. The more mobs beating on you the more that thing is proc'ing on those mobs.</blockquote>Hold The Line is one of those things that looks much better on paper or in a examine window than in actual use.Its been about 2weeks since ive been on test....as far as I know not much as changed....last I checked while the numbers for the Hold The Line procs were much bigger than on live it still pales in comparison to the raw DPS that top AE DMG classes can put out.Hold The Line is nice but it only actually serves its purpose after we have being hit for a good period of time. While the raw threat being produced by a class like Guardain on test looks big....when grouped with a guard in TSO instances groups are going to have to hold back and throttle much more than they would with a SK or Zerker.While with a SK the AE DPS classes can start burning asap...Guards will still require time to make sure we have built up sufficient aggro on all the engaged mobs.

Obadiah

02-16-2009, 05:34 PM

<cite>Allurana wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Danelin wrote:</cite><blockquote>Berserkers have a 20% chance on melee damage to do the same thing you have a 50% chance of doing on ALL damage. At least you have a chance of doing it against casting mobs. The Berserker will have lower avoidance, to be sure, but not likely to be 30% lower.</blockquote>My post is specifically calling out our passive taunt buff and it nearly complete lack of usefulness. I would trade you my 50% chance to taunt when I take damage for half of your current buff.Yep, I would LOVE to have only a 10% chance on my melee damage to do an additional taunt then what I have now.I swing and hit with my sword a HECKUVA LOT more than I am actually getting hit with damage from encounters. I don't get hit often but when I do it HURTS bad.</blockquote>So let me get this straight. You would rather have a 10% chance of proccing a taunt when you get hit by a melee weapon, than a 50% chance of proccing a taunt when you take any sort of damage whatsoever? Cause the Berserk proc has nothing to do with swinging and hitting with YOUR sword, it's getting hit by someone else's. Not their AoE or their Magic Missile or their Harm Touch .... their sword.Wish I could make that trade happen, that's a sweet deal. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" />

Allurana

02-16-2009, 06:15 PM

<cite>Kurgan@Everfrost wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Allurana wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Danelin wrote:</cite><blockquote>Berserkers have a 20% chance on melee damage to do the same thing you have a 50% chance of doing on ALL damage. At least you have a chance of doing it against casting mobs. The Berserker will have lower avoidance, to be sure, but not likely to be 30% lower.</blockquote>My post is specifically calling out our passive taunt buff and it nearly complete lack of usefulness. I would trade you my 50% chance to taunt when I take damage for half of your current buff.Yep, I would LOVE to have only a 10% chance on my melee damage to do an additional taunt then what I have now.I swing and hit with my sword a HECKUVA LOT more than I am actually getting hit with damage from encounters. I don't get hit often but when I do it HURTS bad.</blockquote>So let me get this straight. You would rather have a 10% chance of proccing a taunt when you get hit by a melee weapon, than a 50% chance of proccing a taunt when you take any sort of damage whatsoever? Cause the Berserk proc has nothing to do with swinging and hitting with YOUR sword, it's getting hit by someone else's. Not their AoE or their Magic Missile or their Harm Touch .... their sword.Wish I could make that trade happen, that's a sweet deal. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" /></blockquote>I just re-read the wording on the Beserker passive taunt. You are 100% right it pretty much sucks too. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />I was VERY wrong and very publicly admit it.I guess I can understand a lot more of the discussions raging in the other threads now. Single target tanks really are screwed then. You non-guardians are looking at our hold the aggression line thinking it is this massive awesome thing. It isn't.It is SERIOUSLY broken and hardly ever works. If a guardian can not get cooperation from their group to not hesitate for a MASSIVELY extended length of time before doing AOE anything OR encounter based anything OR heals/wards/etc... our job is nearly impossible right now.I can't claim to speak for all the guardians in the game but running around hitting our emegency taunts constantly while multi-mobs ping pong all over the place is NOT FUN.It has gotten to the point where I HATE grouping with rangers and I ask everyone else that is not a ranger to all get within melee range even to cast spells so I am not having to run all over the place trying to get the kill back under control.One thing that should be readily apparent to everyone on these boards, since the DPS aggro thing was taken away Guardians are NOT fun anymore. We are chasing even single pulls around now.That part will be fixed when the LU finally get put out and our half a year of pain will finally be over but our complete lack of any outside of encounter linked or single target abilities will still make guardians VERY frustrating to play vs. AOE style tanks.I have a level 80 SK, so I do know what they are like. Talk about easy mode. Instances are a breeze when I play my SK. SKs are insanely overpowered. I have 6 AOE abilities that do dang good damage. I NEVER have a situation where the SK is out of things to cast during a fight. My guardian on the other hand, I can sit there for a LONG time sometimes with nothing to cast just waiting for my now less than half of what it was double attack to maybe trigger.

Bruener

02-16-2009, 06:22 PM

<cite>Allurana wrote</cite><blockquote>I have a level 80 SK, so I do know what they are like. Talk about easy mode. Instances are a breeze when I play my SK. SKs are insanely overpowered. I have 6 AOE abilities that do dang good damage. I NEVER have a situation where the SK is out of things to cast during a fight. My guardian on the other hand, I can sit there for a LONG time sometimes with nothing to cast just waiting for my now less than half of what it was double attack to maybe trigger.</blockquote>Again you are talking about Live. All of this is going out the window once the current changes on Test go Live. All tanks will have to tank in defensive, lowering DPS significantly and bascially making tanks taunt bots with easy-mode agro. Fun stuff huh?

Allurana

02-16-2009, 07:04 PM

<cite>Bruener wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Allurana wrote</cite><blockquote>I have a level 80 SK, so I do know what they are like. Talk about easy mode. Instances are a breeze when I play my SK. SKs are insanely overpowered. I have 6 AOE abilities that do dang good damage. I NEVER have a situation where the SK is out of things to cast during a fight. My guardian on the other hand, I can sit there for a LONG time sometimes with nothing to cast just waiting for my now less than half of what it was double attack to maybe trigger.</blockquote>Again you are talking about Live. All of this is going out the window once the current changes on Test go Live. All tanks will have to tank in defensive, lowering DPS significantly and bascially making tanks taunt bots with easy-mode agro. Fun stuff huh?</blockquote>I never use offensive stance on any tank, never have, never will. I tank to tank.

Motzi

02-16-2009, 07:26 PM

<cite>Allurana wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Bruener wrote:</cite><blockquote>Again you are talking about Live. All of this is going out the window once the current changes on Test go Live. All tanks will have to tank in defensive, lowering DPS significantly and bascially making tanks taunt bots with easy-mode agro. Fun stuff huh?</blockquote>I never use offensive stance on any tank, never have, never will. I tank to tank.</blockquote>You must have been a pretty crappy tank. There are far too many scenarios a guard would not hold aggro in defensive that he will in offensive and still have plenty of survivability.

Aull

02-16-2009, 08:16 PM

<cite>Allurana wrote:</cite><blockquote>Ok here is the problem and I can not believe no other guardian has said this yet....This passive buff is a JOKE because WE DON'T GET HIT VERY OFTEN!!! 50% of never is still never!Thank you for your consideration.</blockquote>I cut out most of the post for space saving.Ok with your statement I take it you never need a healer cause you never get hit?? Or am I wrong??I think guardians have had this ability from the start, but I could be very wrong on this. The only issue I see with it is if the mob doesn't have a chance or time to hit the guardian cause of over zealous dps classes. In that case it wouldn't be the guardians fault.

Allurana

02-16-2009, 10:49 PM

<cite>Motzi@Unrest wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Allurana wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Bruener wrote:</cite><blockquote>Again you are talking about Live. All of this is going out the window once the current changes on Test go Live. All tanks will have to tank in defensive, lowering DPS significantly and bascially making tanks taunt bots with easy-mode agro. Fun stuff huh?</blockquote>I never use offensive stance on any tank, never have, never will. I tank to tank.</blockquote>You must have been a pretty crappy tank. There are far too many scenarios a guard would not hold aggro in defensive that he will in offensive and still have plenty of survivability.</blockquote>Pre-DPS nerf - I never had aggro issues since I can single pull just about everything in the game (encounter linked multiples I would consider a single pull if nothing but the encounter comes). Pre-DPS nerf I encountered NO situation where I had to be in offensive stance to hold aggro the dps did it just fine in defensive as well as I took the least amount of damage possible also which kept my group as effecient as possible since even the healers could do more debuffs and such. My offensive stance is at adept I because I think I got it out of a chest somewhere. I cast it once to see how how my STR got and took it right back off.Post-DPS nerf/Pre-LU to fix our taunts: I can't hold aggro for crap in any situation now. The game is seriously frustrating now. Offensive/defensive/crossing my fingers/standing on one foot and click the mouse with my off hand - nothing works now.Post-DPS neft/Test Server currently: Single target/encounter linked aggro is pretty nice now even without hardly DPS now. Which is fine by me, I could care less if I am doing good dps or not. I want to hold aggro and take as little damage as possible to allow my group to do its job.Pre-DPS nerf - I was getting around 2k ish parses on a mob I selected to test on.Post-DPS nerf - I am lucky to get 600 to 800 dps on it now.Test Server currently - I am getting up to 4k combined TPS/DPS parses on the same mob - I am pretty happy with that. btw...the parser barely registers Hold the Aggression doing anything because I barely ever take damage.And Yes, I probably am a pretty crappy tank. That is completely subjective though.

Allurana

02-16-2009, 11:03 PM

<cite>Aull wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Allurana wrote:</cite><blockquote>Ok here is the problem and I can not believe no other guardian has said this yet....This passive buff is a JOKE because WE DON'T GET HIT VERY OFTEN!!! 50% of never is still never!Thank you for your consideration.</blockquote>I cut out most of the post for space saving.Ok with your statement I take it you never need a healer cause you never get hit?? Or am I wrong??I think guardians have had this ability from the start, but I could be very wrong on this. The only issue I see with it is if the mob doesn't have a chance or time to hit the guardian cause of over zealous dps classes. In that case it wouldn't be the guardians fault.</blockquote>I take a healer along for zones like Chelsith and harder since 3 up heroics that are higher level do hit me for REALLY high damage when they hit me. But most the combat spam is them missing me for some reason or another. Anything less than Chelsith level right now, I could take a group with out a healer pretty easily and safely. Bind wound and the barbarian heal trait thing work enough.Like I have posted early, I hardly ever get hit but when I do it is for massive damage since the game is messed up now in terms of mitigation vs. avoidance.My normal group right now is guard/temp/dirge - with just those 3 I sit at around 8,960 ish mitigation and 12,400 ish avoidance constant and with the guardian 30 second buffs I can get my mitigation to just under 12,000 ish for those 30 seconds. Getting hit just doesn't happen much unless it is a zone like Chelsith or harder and then the healer only needs to heal the few times the hits make it though.My issue right now is with Hold the Aggression, what you stated in your last paragraph is true to a certain extent. I don't think it is overzealous dps but I also don't think it is unreasonable for everyone else in the group to want to do something to help with the kill before the mob is down to 75% to 80% of its total HP. Right now as the game sits on LIVE that is the reality, if the guardian is going to end up with any chance of holding aggro. Heal effects/procs/shaman pets/AOEs/encounter based spells by the group members are almost a certain death sentence now for the non-encounter linked mobs that happen to add or get pulled since just about every other class then a plate tank will get one shotted by these things now.I still wonder how the game got to this point. I can already see folks posting here saying "it's progression". It's not progression, it is simply unfun. Having the smallest infraction be punishable with a group wipe in these instances is NOT fun. Perfection should not be expected constantly.