Guardians In DoV

[Rahatmattata]

<p>Well, the NDA is lifted... so, what's up?</p>

[Undorett]

<p>hit rates from the front of the mob are trash thus agro is a nightmare for all tanks</p><p>first 20AA are shared by all 24 classes and are just general stat increases like + health and + casting speed, etc</p><p>next 30 AA are so-so, of all of the endline abilities, you are only able to select one</p><p>there is only one set for armor, not an offensive and defensive as in SF, so the armor has less defensive stats than the SF defensive and less offensive than the SF offensive</p><p>stats were consolidated, agility no longer provides avoidance or crit mit, wisdom no longer provides resists, stamina was uncapped and now provides 10 health per stamina point</p><p>health and mana were removed from gear and replaced with just stamina and strength to increase our health and mana</p><p>no resists on armor, it is all on jewelry in higher amounts, so when you start to swap out your SF armor for DOV armor, be sure to get some jewelry first or you cannot equip the new armor</p><p>a new stat mobs have called critical avoidance will ensure that you need to equip all DOV gear, because some mobs require you to have over 250% crit to actually have a chance at critting on the mob because they may have 200 or 250% crit avoid</p><p>many of the procs on previous items are not showing up on items in DOV, instead they are replaced with higher amounts of stats/crit/da etc</p><p>Sentry Watch is now a group DI which no longer requires you to take the damage intended for a player in the group</p><p>Iron Will's snare reduction is remains flavor text and not actually working</p><p>If i can think of anything else exciting I will let you know <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" />  Otherwise maybe some others can shed more light on the subject</p><p>NDA lift says we can't post screenshots of the gear or quote posts from the beta boards...</p>

[Yimway]

<p>Yeah Undorett summed it up well.</p><p>If we could hit the mob, it wouldn't suck so bad, since we can't hit the mobs, good [Removed for Content] luck doing your job.</p>

[Wasuna]

<p>Hot rates took a hit. I did some testing in Kael, both overland zones on random trash and in two instances. I was getting from 60-90% hit rate in defensive. I did not do any raiding and I did not beta raid buff my copied charachter. I'm basically in T1/T2 SF raid gear.</p><p>The mob critical thing is a Serious change. In Kael I was with a warden and assassin and I was criticalling 2% of the time with 130% critical chance. The mob buff in there is 125% critical chance reduction. The instances are kind of pregression based so some zones you don't get debuffed so much and can do reasonably well. The spider instance had a 50% critical debuff that was always on me and would randomly move around the group. The warden was surprised when his heals started doing 40% less or so. Wasn't hard to heal but was a huge difference from the norm.</p><p>Your gonna need to run instances to get the new Legendary gear to get your critical up high.</p><p>Also, the mobs seem to be a bit mroe single target oriented. The giants in kael are basically all single's, the ones at the entreance have 3-4 million HP and without any criticals my little group was doing 20K dps. A raid buffed Guardian joined us and he had almost 50K HP solo and was buffed to 50K by the warden. The mobs in Kael do a AoE crushing spell that is not interuptable and was hitting me for like 14-16K. You do not want two of those on you.. no sir.</p>

[Wasuna]

<p>End line AA's are...</p><p>1. A damage reflect stoneskin. It was changed several times and I think it ended up as a several second stonskin that adds up the damage it blocks and reflects it back at the mob as damage with a cap of something like 400K.</p><p>2. A group buff that allows the group to avoid stunns, stuffles and detargets and such for 10 seconds.</p><p>3.... dunno</p><p>I didn't get the end lines and only looked at them while I was in the game. Somebody else will have to flesh this out with more accurate information.</p>

[aislynn00]

<p><cite>Wasuna wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>End line AA's are...</p><p>1. A damage reflect stoneskin. It was changed several times and I think it ended up as a several second stonskin that adds up the damage it blocks and reflects it back at the mob as damage with a cap of something like 400K.</p><p>2. A group buff that allows the group to avoid stunns, stuffles and detargets and such for 10 seconds.</p><p>3.... dunno</p><p>I didn't get the end lines and only looked at them while I was in the game. Somebody else will have to flesh this out with more accurate information.</p></blockquote><p>1.  Perfect Counter gives you three charges of stoneskin.  After the three stoneskins are gone, the unmitigated damage of the hardest hit absorbed is then doubled and reflected back at the mob.  The reflected damage can't critical.  The ability has a base reuse of 4 minutes.</p><p>2.  The group buff prevents target change, target lock, target drop, and disarms for 20 seconds.  Meanwhile, it affords 20% auto-riposte to the guardian vs frontal melee attacks and 20% auto-parry from vs other melee attacks.</p><p>3.  The third AA is a blue AE with 15m range and 2 min reuse that can strike up to eight targets.  For every target struck, the guardian gets 1% Damage Reduction and 2% Crit Bonus, maxing out at 8% Damage Reduction and 16% Crit Bonus when eight mobs are hit.  The buff lasts for 60 seconds.</p><p>Personally, I'm going to run with Perfect Counter while raiding, keeping the blue AE in my group spec instead.  Given the number raid bosses that have high amounts of Strikethrough, I don't put much stock in the 20% auto-parry buff, especially given the reuse.  The immunity aspect of it sucks, too.  Had it afforded complete CC immunity, including stun, stifle, mez, and daze, it would have been much more appealing, but it unfortunately doesn't.</p>

[Grumpy_Warrior_01]

<p>These were the three endlines, you needed 48 points spent elsewhere and they cost 2 points each, so choose one.</p><p>Perfect CounterRecast 3:19 (This was with recast buffs, assume 5 mins)Duration 24 seconds</p><p>Absorbs all damage greater than 10% max health for 3 atttacks.  Applies perfect Counterattack on termination.  On any combat or spell hit, inflicts the total amount of damage absorbed back onto the target. Cannot be modified except by direct means.</p><p>--------------------------------</p><p>Unshakable  GripRecast 2:29 (assume 4 mins base)Duration 18 seconds35 meter radius</p><p>20% frontal riposte, other quadrants have the same chance of being parried.  Makes group members immune to taunts, force targets, disarms, interrupts.</p><p>--------------------------------</p><p>Partisan CleaveAoE Damage with crit bonus/damage reduction reflectRecast 1:40 (assume 2 mins base)Casting time: 1 second15 meters radius8 targets max</p><p>Inflicts 4844-8649 AoE melee damageApplies Partisan Glory for 1 minute:  2% crit bonus, 1% damage reduction</p>

[Boli32]

<p><cite>Grumpy_Warrior_01 wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Partisan CleaveAoE Damage with crit bonus/damage reduction reflectRecast 1:40 (assume 2 mins base)Casting time: 1 second15 meters radius8 targets max</p><p>Inflicts 4844-8649 AoE melee damage<span style="color: #ffff00;">Applies Partisan Glory for 1 minute:  2% crit bonus, 1% damage reduction</span></p></blockquote><p>That's per mob you hit.</p>

[Wasuna]

<p>Yes, but it's limited to 8 mobs max. Therefore it has a max of 16% crit bonus and 8% damage reduction. Very seldom will a Guardian have 8 mobs on them in the expansion but if you take this AA it will help in those situations.</p><p>I like perfect counter. It's another 'on demand' stoneskin. The reflect is a nice benefit but I want to be able to time damage spikes and give healers a second to catch up when needed. I suspect there will be situations where Unshakable Grip will be a useful tool so I might need to get a mirror.</p>

[Costa]

<p>If you didn't see the link in the Zerk area here's a link to eq2wire where they have a break down of all the new DoV aa's.</p><p><a href="http://eq2wire.com/aabrowser/index.php?class=warrior">http://eq2wire.com/aabrowser/index....p?class=warrior</a></p><p>Experienced Insight in row 3 looks pretty good on paper so will be keen to see how that works out in practice. Can anyone confirm that 10 points yields 50% increase to hate and 20% increase to accuracy? As that's how it reads looking at what is posted for rank 1. Plus from a PvP point of view immunity to root, daze, stun and stiffle is going to come in pretty handy on my Zerk <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p>

[Frul]

<p>The third line in the tree seems rather lackluster to me. Nothing here screams out "ohh, I like that".</p><p>Personally, as a Zerker I will be speccing into Perfect Counter.</p><p>Unshakeable Grip seems more like a BG AA then anything. Hard to say though as I haven't experienced any of the DoV raid content, it would be far more useful as a raidwide but the MT or OT groups would benefit from it if there are an alarming number of Raid mobs that disarm and/or interrupt</p><p>Partisan Cleave may have it's uses as a Guardian but for a Zerk it's fairly useless for 2 points</p><p>**Edit: Costa beat me to the link, so I removed mine.</p>

[Yimway]

<p>Personally I prefer Unshakable Grip.</p><p>The damage reduction is nice, and the benefits it gives the group would be nice durring some situations.  Having all the other stoneskin options available to us, having a different trick in my bag seems more useful.</p><p>On a side note, would sure be nice in general if the amount of damage prevented from stoneskin was turned into a taunt.</p>

[Rahatmattata]

<p>Are guards a brick wall now compared to other tanks in raid and heroic content, or still pretty much the same old nothing special? How do they compare in off-tanking raids and overall defense?</p>

[aislynn00]

<p><cite>Rahatmattata wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Are guards a brick wall now compared to other tanks in raid and heroic content, or still pretty much the same old nothing special? How do they compare in off-tanking raids and overall defense?</p></blockquote><p>Paladins got a survivability boost with their heal revamp (bigger wards and heals with longer reuse timers), and now they have a weaker version of ToS with their Manawall, so we definitely haven't cornered the MT role.  At least paladins took a small hit in mitigation.</p><p>Shadowknights took a slightly harder hit, losing one charge of Bloodletter.</p><p>Adrenaline isn't as effective vs damage spikes after the nerf, so we are looking better compared to berserkers.  They will still require less healing overall, though, given the new reactive procs from Adrenaline.</p><p>Brawlers are stronger than ever.  A bruiser could certainly MT most, if not all, raid bosses.</p><p>Guardians got a few nice defensive upgrades.  The 15% Crit Mit and 10% Damage Reduction on our two temporary mitigation buffs in particular go a long way towards evening the playing field vs crusaders. </p><p>Still, it remains to be seen how effective paladins and berserkers will be in the MT role.  Assuming they'll be able to stand against all raid bosses, guardians are still an underpowered class, given that our utility and DPS continue to be inferior.</p>

[Bremer]

<p><cite>Karnos@Nektulos wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Adrenaline isn't as effective vs damage spikes after the nerf, so we are looking better compared to berserkers.  They will still require less healing overall, though, given the new reactive procs from Adrenaline.</p></blockquote><p>Less healing? Guardians can entirely block all damage, while Berserkers only have a chance to heal 50 % of non warded damage for a limited duration for a ridiculous power cost (10k+).</p><p>In my math is taking no damage at all and leaving all wards intact vastly superior to a chance to heal a % part of the non warded damage.</p>

[Undorett]

<p>Not really a thread to compare the awesomeness of guardians to the awesomeness of zerkers...we all know zerkers got the shaft, we have known since fan faire that it was coming.  The problem with zerkers is that they really dont have much to deal with incoming spike damage, but at least you can spec for the new stoneskin/reflect thingy that we can spec for too.  The overall heal power to keep a zerker alive will likely be less than for a guard, but spikes will much more easily kill zerkers than they have in the past.  I think a nice change to offset this would be to have your TSO endline stoneskin absorb any kind of damage instead of just physical.  This would give you a way to deal with badass AOEs.</p><p>Guards need a few of their skills fixed to work as they say they should, and a slight boost in DPS would be nice too, but overall the class is better off than some other classes are as of tomorrow.</p>

[Bremer]

Well, I don't see how you need more healing for Guardians, who have multiple tools to nullify incoming damage and Berserkers have none and all damage reduction abilities are shared. And the problems of the Guardian class (suck at AE content, lame and boring to play) aren't adressed, they didn't even try.

[Yimway]

<p>TBH, Guards will take less sustained damage vs raid cons, and zerkers will be easier to heal in instances, and at the end of the day, I don't really have an issue with that.  I'm less sure the same paradigm exists between the crusaders, but possibly it does, I'm doubtful.   It would seem to me the paladin wins in both scenarios when compared to its shadow.  But thats a discusion for another thread...</p><p>As far as further tweaks to guards, the real answer lies in buffing strikethru, something that might be done with guardian specific gear, or could be done with some CA tweaking or AA tweaks.</p><p>At the end of the day, I'm reasonably ok with where the class is at the end of beta, but I've honestly still not made the final determination if I will move forward into DoV with my Guard or my Pally.</p>

[Undorett]

<p>As far as strikethrough goes, I am at what, 90% or better for about 25% of the time, and about 15% the rest of the time.  I think accuracy might be more needed because with as much temporary strikethrough as we get from our warrior SF endline we should be ok.  They need to adjust block rates of the mobs from the front if they have not already done so to compensate for needing any more strikethrough than that.  That said, I will take more strikethrough if offered.  I think we will all have a better idea by the end of the week of how much strikethrough or accuracy we might need.</p><p>As far as changes to some skills we have, it would be nice for them to fix Iron Will so that it actually does what the description says it does.  Also, it would be nice to have a longer duration on the stoneskin procs from Sphere for people in our group.  The ones that proc on the guardian do not need to have a duration increase, but expecting someone to make use of the stoneskin procs that are not tanking means we have either lost agro or aoes are hitting more often than 10 seconds apart (not as useful as it should be in heroic content, would help on a few encounters in raid content).  Many of the AOEs have a longer down time between them, and your group cannot get the benefit of those stoneskin procs.  </p><p>As far as the stoneskin offered in the endlines of the new DOV warrior tree, with the recast on it, it would be nice to see it take all the damage absorbed added together and reflected back rather than just the highest hit.  It gives us a nice hit of damage now, but IMO isn't as useful as our SF guardian endline, and AA should be getting more powerful with each expansion according to Xelgad.</p><p>DPS is still a joke.  I want to see where we are compared to other fighters during DOV.  I don't see how we have gained any ground in that respect.</p>

[Yimway]

<p><cite>Undorett wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>As far as strikethrough goes, I am at what, 90% or better for about 25% of the time, and about 15% the rest of the time.  I think accuracy might be more needed because with as much temporary strikethrough as we get from our warrior SF endline we should be ok. </p><p>Also, it would be nice to have a longer duration on the stoneskin procs from Sphere for people in our group. </p><p>DPS is still a joke.  I want to see where we are compared to other fighters during DOV.  I don't see how we have gained any ground in that respect.</p></blockquote><p>I'm not sure accuracy is going to pay off when contested vs block chance.  I've looked for clarification on this from devs and never really got an answer on exactly how it figures in.  I think if our static strikethru were to reach 30-40% then I'm less concerned about mob block chances.  It seems to me they aren't going to back down completely on block chance, and I think I understand why.</p><p>I agree the stoneskin proc durration should be 15s.  If I had my drethers, I would change UW to not kill the caster (50% power hit instead), replace that AA option in the guard tree with an increase to the stoneskin proc durration of 1.5s per rank.</p><p>DPS I'm afraid may continue to be a joke.  I'm mostly concerned though with our dps standing in front of x4s.  I think if we had the strikethru advantage you might actually find we would parse competively for that content, but lose out on other content.  I personally find that a reasonable tradeoff given the defensive nature of the class.  I understand not everyone agrees, but I just don't see us getting much traction on that with SoE.</p><p>Iron Will is bugged, it will eventually get fixed, but I can understand why its low on his list.</p>

[Undorett]

<p>The problem with Iron Will is that they know there is a bug, its been bugged, and messages have been sent to Xelgad.  After these things are done he goes in and touches the spell to add resists to it for this expansion, and he doesn't fix it while adjusting the skill.  It's just plain laziness.</p><p>As for UW, it has its own set of problems.  Warrior DI recasts are entirely too long, even with the massive amount of reuse we have.  I have it capped and assuming it fires when I click it, it is back up in 7.5 minutes (capped reuse from 15 minute base).  So, not only is our DI not until canceled and kills us unless we are over lv80 with AA points spent into it, it has a longer reuse than the crusaders.  The spell is out-dated.</p><p>I guess I would prefer accuracy because I believe they will end up backing off on block as the complaints start piling in.</p>

[Yimway]

<p><cite>Undorett wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I guess I would prefer accuracy because I believe they will end up backing off on block as the complaints start piling in.</p></blockquote><p>If block was fixed, I agree with that as well.</p><p>My take is, block is staying. Too many complaints about tank toping heroic parses, too many complaints on fighter dps in general.  Increasing block chance of the mob was a fairly convenient way to shift the paradigm.  I'm sure they did it on purpose, and I'm reasonably sure they did if for this or similar reasons.</p><p>I believe their readiness to up hate gain cap and their steadfast ignoring of anything regarding hit rates from beta is a clear indication of their 'vision' going forward.</p>

[Raahl]

<p>Coming from a non-raid guardian standpoint.</p><p>I was geared with mostly level 80 T1 shard gear.  Yea I know that sucks.  <img src="/smilies/283a16da79f3aa23fe1025c96295f04f.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />  Starting in the new zone was tough at the start as some mobs (especially the armored urchins) were kicking my butt!  I ended up kiting them with my bow.  LOL  I believe these mobs have some sort of melee reflect because everytime I hit them I'd get hit back. </p><p>Anyway after getting equipped with the quest armor, my guardian is doing better.  I still have to watch what I fight as there's some mobs that have a 50/50 chance of killing me. </p><p>Unfortunately I'm lagging behind on AA's so I cannot comment on the effectiveness of the new AA's. </p><p>My guild's raid guardian is having to get use to the new tanking mechanics and has had some issues with survivability and aggro generation while being MT for groups.</p>

[Yimway]

<p><cite>Raahl wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>My guild's raid guardian is having to get use to the new tanking mechanics and has had some issues with survivability and aggro generation while being MT for groups.</p></blockquote><p>Aggro is an issue.  Everyone else's dps went up quite a bit more than our ability to produce threat.</p><p>The result is, its significantly harder to hold aggro in DoV than it was prior to expansion.  I've adjusted spec to take advantange of uncapped hate mod, but that alone isn't enough.   If I could cast our siphon raid wide, I think I could spec to it and maybe make it work, but as is, bleh.</p><p>I'm staying alive, but keeping agro off certain classes is difficult and honestly requires them to hold back.  Something I don't see working long term once other tanks are geared and can also stay alive without others holding back.  Honestly, it makes me want to play my paladin instead.</p>

[Raahl]

<p>Yea didn't the hit rates take a hit when fighting the mob from the front?  That cannot help the Tanks DPS.</p><p>As far as survivability the tank in question thinks he may have been bugged somehow.  I'll have to touch base with him and see how things are going.  I'll also mention to them about maxing the hate side of things if he hasn't.</p>

[Wasuna]

<p>I really haven't had any issues with instance group agro at all. I always have an Assassin but I have been in multiple groups that was all my transfer. I have ~20% self hate mod and I have shoulder the burden.</p><p>Hit rates from the front are noticably lower than the back but it's not unreasonable. The problem somebody with lower end gear is going to have is that hit rates are down and almost all the mobs critical attack. In essance, you hit less and they hit harder.</p>

[Soul_Dreamer]

<p><cite>Wasuna wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I really haven't had any issues with instance group agro at all. I always have an Assassin but I have been in multiple groups that was all my transfer. I have ~20% self hate mod and I have shoulder the burden.</p><p>Hit rates from the front are noticably lower than the back but it's not unreasonable. The problem somebody with lower end gear is going to have is that hit rates are down and almost all the mobs critical attack. In essance, you hit less and they hit harder.</p></blockquote><p>Same, I was destroying content in Kael contested with..Guardian/Warden/Inquis/Wizard/Illy/Troub, I'd often have trouble with groups like this in SF and before.</p><p>And holding agro like a champ, I've always specced for Shoulder the burden though, the only classes I tend to loose agro to in raids is our brigand (who is now usually my hate transfer so he doesn't pull hate) and other tanks.My AA.<a href="http://www.beetny.com/eq2aa/?902r144a@1aa21444@5aa21@388212s3355@154@255535535 @255551111@2535@1121f@15@15@55@3515@25@21@15@25511">http://www.beetny.com/eq2aa/?902r14...@25@21@15@25511</a></p><p>I think I have 1st Line - 10 HP2nd Line - 10 Reuse3rd Line - 10 - 0 - 8 - 104th Line - Perfect Counter.</p>

[Yimway]

<p><cite>Soul_Dreamer wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Guardian/Warden/Inquis/Wizard/Illy/Troub, I'd often have trouble with groups like this in SF and before.</p><p>And holding agro like a champ, I've always specced for Shoulder the burden though, the only classes I tend to loose agro to in raids is our brigand (who is now usually my hate transfer so he doesn't pull hate) and other tanks.</p></blockquote><p>Group content isn't an issue.  Anyone with a reasonable spec is going to handle heroic stuff fine with all the changes we've had.</p><p>Shoulder the burden doesn't pay off for me.  Maybe its cause of the difference in our swash vs brig parses and the amounts of the transfers, but almost always I'm getting more with the swash feeding me than syphoning form either brig or ranger. </p><p>The real agro problems are comming from other tanks (who lack hate shedding), summoner pets, followed by sorcs.  TBH, summoner pets have a host issues that need attention, not just the lack of agro shedding.</p>

[Emlar_from_Halas]

<p>After one week of intensive play, both heroic and Kraytoc raid, I'm very pleased with the way things are going on.I just hit 150 crit mitig, 200% crit chance and 100% crit bonus and I'm very confortable with both heroic and raid content.</p><p>Yes, I changed my AA to get the 15% hate transfer for heroic content.Yes, dps from my caster colleagues raised a lot, but it's very manageable even with lots of linked mobs and a warlock.Plant is quite helpful, as well as Partisan Clease for heroic content.</p><p>I can't compare with other tanks, but situation is much better than it was at beginning of SoF.</p><p>My only issue comes from our OTs in raid, when their stupid Monstrous Stud of Migh earring procs.Let's hope they will replace it soon with DoV stuff.</p><p>What ? ... Yes I kept mine <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" /></p>

[aias]

<p>Tell them not to wear it if they don't realize it yet.</p>

[Yimway]

<p>Emlar, your doing a hell of alot better than me then.</p><p>For example, I did the x2 last night, and the caster group had to hold back any time my strikethru buff wasn't available. Which amounted to 2 out of 3 fights they had to hold back on.  If they didn't hold back, it was ping all over the place.</p><p>Honestly, its just blatently obvious when you look at the parses.  With no strikethru, guard parsing 10k and not able to hold from wizard doing 100k.  When the buff is up for the pull, guard parsing 30k and holding aggro just fine from the wizard.</p><p>Too much raw hate is based off procs that require landing melee hits to proc.  You add all those procs along side the net loss in dps  leaves our hate generation lacking.  We're far too reliant on transfers again.</p><p>In my opinion, thats a big problem, in that aggro generation should be a tank's responsability, not so reliant on a feed from others.</p>

[Justalon]

<p>I ended up doing a respec to get the hate AA lines back so that I could tank Velious and still hold aggro.  I went from parsing 25-35K back down to 7-10K and the loss of DPS totally killed any hope I had of keeping hate off of the top parsers in our guild with my original spec.  We are not a hard core raiding guild and our top parsers are only doing  40-60K (raid wide seems to be sitting around 300K on the SF content), but like was said before, our (the tanks) DPS dropped and our DPSers jumped up 10-15K each and are still climbing fast.</p><p>The new spec makes tanking Heroic content pretty easy (before I had to watch for any DPS I didn't have my hate transfer on), but I still have issues in raids because of aggro management.  Strikethrough is a big help, but should it be as much of a crutch as it seems to be?  I also hate having to carry around 3 sets of armor with me.  A pure tank set (anything that can get me mitigation and hate), a dps set (for clearing old stuff and heroic), and then a mix mash to try to balance that and keep crit mitigation up there.  </p><p>Originally i did have an issue in some of the new instances where I was getting hit for 80K non crit hits from some of the named and even trash were hitting me for 40K-50K a hit.  I was at 75% mitigation, 150-160 crit mit, around 65% acoidance at the time and block and tower of stone did nothing to it to stop it.  It was as if the mobs had strikethrough and were able to use it just in time for me to try to block the incoming attacks.  This lasted for about a week, but then one of the patches completely fixed whatever was going on.  I have not had the same issue at all, even on raids with the spike damage like that.  I do not know what mechanic was fixed, but I am glad for it whatever it was.</p>

[Emlar_from_Halas]

<p><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Emlar, your doing a hell of alot better than me then.</p><p>For example, I did the x2 last night, and the caster group had to hold back any time my strikethru buff wasn't available. Which amounted to 2 out of 3 fights they had to hold back on.  If they didn't hold back, it was ping all over the place.</p><p>Honestly, its just blatently obvious when you look at the parses.  With no strikethru, guard parsing 10k and not able to hold from wizard doing 100k.  When the buff is up for the pull, guard parsing 30k and holding aggro just fine from the wizard.</p><p>Too much raw hate is based off procs that require landing melee hits to proc.  You add all those procs along side the net loss in dps  leaves our hate generation lacking.  We're far too reliant on transfers again.</p><p>In my opinion, thats a big problem, in that aggro generation should be a tank's responsability, not so reliant on a feed from others.</p></blockquote><p>I'm lucky enough to always run x2 with a dirge and a coercer in my group, and troubadour in caster's group.And when I'm even more lucky, I have an assass in mine.Though last time I had a brigand and I put 15% hate transfer on him which worked very well</p><p>On monday, we made x2 from Xalgoti until NecretiaZW, I made 17K to be compared to 48K for necro, 28K for brigand and 27K for wiz.On Zorglim, I reached 27K where necro was at 56K.</p><p>Self Buffed, I'm sitting with 20% strikethrough, and I will get an additional 7% with red adorn after sunday raid.Despite this, ZW, I only got 61% to hit on auto attack.On Zorglim though, I reached 82% To Hit%.</p><p>BTW, I have 250% crit chance and 130% crit bonus once buffed. It may make a difference as well...</p>

[aislynn00]

<p><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Emlar, your doing a hell of alot better than me then.</p><p>For example, I did the x2 last night, and the caster group had to hold back any time my strikethru buff wasn't available. Which amounted to 2 out of 3 fights they had to hold back on.  If they didn't hold back, it was ping all over the place.</p><p>Honestly, its just blatently obvious when you look at the parses.  With no strikethru, guard parsing 10k and not able to hold from wizard doing 100k.  When the buff is up for the pull, guard parsing 30k and holding aggro just fine from the wizard.</p></blockquote><p>Given the gear available to your guild, if you're parsing 10K in the x2, you're doing something wrong.  Dual-wielding (nothing in that zone except Tserrina requires a shield), you should be hitting at least 30K when you <em>don't</em> have Experienced Insight or Perfect Counterstrike up.</p>

[Yimway]

<p><cite>Karnos@Guk wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Given the gear available to your guild, if you're parsing 10K in the x2, you're doing something wrong.  Dual-wielding (nothing in that zone except Tserrina requires a shield), you should be hitting at least 30K when you <em>don't</em> have Experienced Insight or Perfect Counterstrike up.</p></blockquote><p>Then your saying my healers suck.  Cause they can't keep up with the spike damage if I don't have block chance.  So DW is out.</p><p>I'm parsing closer to 15k now when behind a shield and d-stance maybe 18-19k switching O-stance, but the casters in my guild are posting ZW's quite abit higher than what emlar is dealing with.</p><p>The brunt of the issue comes down to how fast dps can ramp up vs how slowly hate ramps up.  There isn't enough at our disposal from itemization, aa, or ability that allows for short term spikes in hate that can compair to what casters can do with TW + EB + etc.</p>

[Yimway]

<p>I spent some time this week really looking at things, and I ended up swapping gear around.</p><p>I lost over 1000hp, but I put on an item from last expansion, and one even from TSO.</p><p>Wristguards of Divine EquillibriumStud of Eternal Remembrance</p><p>With the procs+gear+acceleration strike, I'm able to max dps and haste.</p><p>The result was tonight I was parsing 50k on trash, and 35k defensively on nameds.  The predictable result was aggro wasn't remotely a problem.</p><p>None of the PQ/Instance/Raid items are replacing the dps buffs from previous expansion gear, and without that dps buffing, aggro is an issue.</p>

[Gundoz]

<p><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I spent some time this week really looking at things, and I ended up swapping gear around.</p><p>I lost over 1000hp, but I put on an item from last expansion, and one even from TSO.</p><p>Wristguards of Divine EquillibriumStud of Eternal Remembrance</p><p>With the procs+gear+acceleration strike, I'm able to max dps and haste.</p><p>The result was tonight I was parsing 50k on trash, and 35k defensively on nameds.  The predictable result was aggro wasn't remotely a problem.</p><p>None of the PQ/Instance/Raid items are replacing the dps buffs from previous expansion gear, and without that dps buffing, aggro is an issue.</p></blockquote><p>Aggro is an issue? the heck my god i got out of pre dov gear asap and ive had the exact opposite results. Our MT (Pally) cant hold aggro off me i have to hold way back.</p><p>What is  your hate mod at during raids? me i hit 97% do around 30k - 45k in defensive.</p><p>whats your heroic tree like?</p><p>i did 8 stats (close to second O stance thats allways on),  10hp, 10 cb, 10 reuse, 10 crit bulwark, and partisan cleave</p><p>are you only doing the x2's and no x4's? i noticed   my aggro and dps started to really take off  once i had about 4 fableds from the x2 and about 2 fableds from the x4's.</p><p>I now only have  the SF helm and 4 pieces of dov legendary and  my guild's MT (paladin) has trouble holding mobs off me even when i have my dirge and coercer remove thier hate  mod buffs. Have to use recapture alot to keep  bumping the pally up hate positions.</p>

[aislynn00]

<p><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I spent some time this week really looking at things, and I ended up swapping gear around.</p><p>I lost over 1000hp, but I put on an item from last expansion, and one even from TSO.</p><p>Wristguards of Divine EquillibriumStud of Eternal Remembrance</p><p>With the procs+gear+acceleration strike, I'm able to max dps and haste.</p><p>The result was tonight I was parsing 50k on trash, and 35k defensively on nameds.  The predictable result was aggro wasn't remotely a problem.</p><p>None of the PQ/Instance/Raid items are replacing the dps buffs from previous expansion gear, and without that dps buffing, aggro is an issue.</p></blockquote><p>By DPS buffs, do you mean DPS modifier?  If so, that stat is easily capped with a dirge and a few pieces of fabled gear from this expansion; almost every weapon, shield, and bow comes with loads of it, plus what you find on the odd piece of jewelry or charms.  With a coercer or inquisitor, it gets downright silly: I was sitting around 300--100 beyond the cap--a couple of days ago with a dirge and coercer in the MT group.  Berserkers buff the entire raid with, among other things, a hefty bit of DPS modifier.  And so on.</p><p>As for Attack Speed, two dirges should keep you capped, and I'm assuming you have at least that many in a full raid.  In the x2, we sometimes run with one, sometimes two, but as you mentioned, there are several items from previous expansions that work wonders if you need an attack speed boost; Band of the Corruptor off Munzok is another example; a couple of the war runes from DoV afford similar procs.</p>

[aislynn00]

<p><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Karnos@Guk wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Given the gear available to your guild, if you're parsing 10K in the x2, you're doing something wrong.  Dual-wielding (nothing in that zone except Tserrina requires a shield), you should be hitting at least 30K when you <em>don't</em> have Experienced Insight or Perfect Counterstrike up.</p></blockquote><p>Then your saying my healers suck.  Cause they can't keep up with the spike damage if I don't have block chance.  So DW is out.</p></blockquote><p>If your healers can't keep a dual-wielding guardian standing vs the named in the x2 (Tserrina being the obvious exception), then they really do need to up their game, you are running with the wrong priest classes, or you need to get your Mitigation and Crit Mit up.</p><p>A defiler/templar or defiler/warden combo will definitely get the job done, assuming they are appropriately geared (SF tier 3, DoV easy-mode, or better), have the proper AA specs, and know what they are doing.</p><p>When it comes to MT healing, the only spiky fight aside from Tserrina is the fellow with 100% Strikethrough.  I'm pretty sure that could be handled by figuring out the script, though, which we never have; we just brute-force it.</p>

[Wasuna]

<p>Let me add this to my notes...</p><p>X4 geared healers can heal a x4 geared tank in a x2 and allow the tank to relax a bit.</p><p>Got it.. check!</p>

[Yimway]

<p><cite>Karnos@Guk wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>With the procs+gear+acceleration strike, I'm able to max dps and haste.</p></blockquote><p>By DPS buffs, do you mean DPS modifier? </p></blockquote><p>While DPS modifier wasn't *quite* to the useful cap with this gear, I'm primarily talking about haste and ability mod.</p>

[Yimway]

<p><cite>Karnos@Guk wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Then your saying my healers suck.  Cause they can't keep up with the spike damage if I don't have block chance.  So DW is out.</p></blockquote><p>If your healers can't keep a dual-wielding guardian standing vs the named in the x2 (Tserrina being the obvious exception), then they really do need to up their game, you are running with the wrong priest classes, or you need to get your Mitigation and Crit Mit up.</p></blockquote><p>Generally going Defiler/Temp or Defiler/Warden.  I'm running around 13k mit and 130 CM generally.  With no block chance I can still get multi-attacked for 15k per swing on those mobs, successive multi attacks spell likely deaths.</p>

[Yimway]

<p><cite>Gundozer@Permafrost wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>None of the PQ/Instance/Raid items are replacing the dps buffs from previous expansion gear, and without that dps buffing, aggro is an issue.</p></blockquote><p>Aggro is an issue? the heck my god i got out of pre dov gear asap and ive had the exact opposite results. Our MT (Pally) cant hold aggro off me i have to hold way back.</p><p>What is  your hate mod at during raids? me i hit 97% do around 30k - 45k in defensive.</p><p>whats your heroic tree like?</p></blockquote><p>Aggro has been a persistent issue using the new gear.  I could not sustain aggro off of wizards ramping up to 125k, or our OT monk doing 100k. The issue was parsing like crap with the new gear on.</p><p>I'm running generally 90% hate mod.  Heroic tree is down reuse, Embolden, Experienced Insight, and Partisan Cleave.  I prefer the 10% DR on hunker down, as if your already meeting the crit requirements of an encounter then Critical Bulwark is doing nothing, also the durration of Hunker Down is much longer than that of Battle Cry.  I took the spike hate in Experienced Insight over 10 CB.  I thought hard on this, and ultimately decided 10 CB can be found elsewhere, the enhancements to EI can not.  I've considered changing out of this, but I don't think 10 CB is going to make or break the issues I was having.</p><p>What I found is fights that I had either Partisan Cleave of EI up for pull I could ramp up hate fast enough to generally hold it, however 1:3 pulls would have neither ability up and I would not be able to ramp hate as fast as others can ramp dps.</p><p>And to be honest, spiking up to the top of the hate list as a guard OT isn't the same thing as sustaining the top of the hate tree for the durration of all fights.  I can put on one piece of gear and spike up to the top all night long.  But the MT job is about sustaining and ramping up hate faster than dps can ramp up their output.</p><p>My issues were related to DPS/Hate output wearing the new gear, largely due to Ability Mod, Haste, and DPS mod no longer being at caps.  Putting on some of the old gear where I was wearing new gear has nearly doubled my dps parse and aggro is no longer a problem.</p><p>When I can find enough haste and ability mod with new gear, I'll be able to drop the key old stuff I'm using.</p><p>Here is my current spec:</p><p><a href="http://www.beetny.com/eq2aa/?902s1449@14a@24aa@5aa21@28@18212e334@155@43235255 555@1551@111@2551@1121s@35@25@45@15@25@15@151@1554 551131e@2a@18aa@2a@11" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://www.beetny.com/eq2aa/?902s14...e@2a@18aa@2a@11</a></p><p>I'm strongly considering getting out of shoulder the burden for flurry.</p>

[Gundoz]

<p><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Gundozer@Permafrost wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>None of the PQ/Instance/Raid items are replacing the dps buffs from previous expansion gear, and without that dps buffing, aggro is an issue.</p></blockquote><p>Aggro is an issue? the heck my god i got out of pre dov gear asap and ive had the exact opposite results. Our MT (Pally) cant hold aggro off me i have to hold way back.</p><p>What is  your hate mod at during raids? me i hit 97% do around 30k - 45k in defensive.</p><p>whats your heroic tree like?</p></blockquote><p>Aggro has been a persistent issue using the new gear.  I could not sustain aggro off of wizards ramping up to 125k, or our OT monk doing 100k. The issue was parsing like crap with the new gear on.</p><p>I'm running generally 90% hate mod.  Heroic tree is down reuse, Embolden, Experienced Insight, and Partisan Cleave.  I prefer the 10% DR on hunker down, as if your already meeting the crit requirements of an encounter then Critical Bulwark is doing nothing, also the durration of Hunker Down is much longer than that of Battle Cry.  I took the spike hate in Experienced Insight over 10 CB.  I thought hard on this, and ultimately decided 10 CB can be found elsewhere, the enhancements to EI can not.  I've considered changing out of this, but I don't think 10 CB is going to make or break the issues I was having.</p><p>What I found is fights that I had either Partisan Cleave of EI up for pull I could ramp up hate fast enough to generally hold it, however 1:3 pulls would have neither ability up and I would not be able to ramp hate as fast as others can ramp dps.</p><p>And to be honest, spiking up to the top of the hate list as a guard OT isn't the same thing as sustaining the top of the hate tree for the durration of all fights.  I can put on one piece of gear and spike up to the top all night long.  But the MT job is about sustaining and ramping up hate faster than dps can ramp up their output.</p><p>My issues were related to DPS/Hate output wearing the new gear, largely due to Ability Mod, Haste, and DPS mod no longer being at caps.  Putting on some of the old gear where I was wearing new gear has nearly doubled my dps parse and aggro is no longer a problem.</p><p>When I can find enough haste and ability mod with new gear, I'll be able to drop the key old stuff I'm using.</p><p>Here is my current spec:</p><p><a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.beetny.com/eq2aa/?902s1449@14a@24aa@5aa21@28@18212e334@155@43235255 555@1551@111@2551@1121s@35@25@45@15@25@15@151@1554 551131e@2a@18aa@2a@11" target="_blank">http://www.beetny.com/eq2aa/?902s14...e@2a@18aa@2a@11</a></p><p>I'm strongly considering getting out of shoulder the burden for flurry.</p></blockquote><p>First off  you mentioned embolden vs Critical bulwark. Heres my take on this. Embolden you only get to use once every 82 seconds. while the 10% DR is nice its not an allways up type of thing so you are  telling your healers they dont have to heal quite as much and when it drops off your takeing more dmg. allso tied to an ability that if you have to move the mobs WILL kill your scouts from time to time due to the root effect.</p><p>Critical Bulwark #1 is a group buff so you are protecting your group members with 15% more crit mit. Crit mit  on classes other than tanks are  not a good.</p><p>#2 you can pretty much keep it up  close to full time with a red adorn you only end up with about 10 seconds of down time for it. i find it more stable with my HP this way as there is no false sence of how much the healers are going to need to heal.</p><p>Now another point  you may not have noticed is your guardian tree sevearly conflicts with your warrior and heroic tree in the form of reuse. you have points spent in  aa's that lower the cooldown of some ability's that are capping out thier specific reuse speed with 2-4 points.</p><p>below is the spec i use for the moment.. and i still have  extra points  spent in reuse abilitys that i dont need. that i still need to move. I need to go back and move points around to account for it.</p><p>i would never give up shoulder the burden ot stays on my highest dps in my group at all times normaly a swash.</p><p><strong>[URL]http://www.beetny.com/eq2aa/?902k144a@14a@24a@6aa21@2188212s@353555@1555355443 35454@111@3535@1121m5@25@55@3515@125@151@15@255113 1e8@1a@1aa@2a@31[URL]</strong></p><p>heres my stats atm not in a group.</p><p>STR: 2613 in defensive, 2832 in Offensive</p><p>Crit:193%, MA:202%, CritBonus: 141%, abilityreuse 39.2%</p><p>Pot: 123%, Accuracy: 6% in D, 10% in O, Strikethrough 20%, Flurry 3%, Abilitymod: 160</p><p>DPS: 53 haste 59.</p>

[Yimway]

<p><cite>Gundozer@Permafrost wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I'm strongly considering getting out of shoulder the burden for flurry.</p></blockquote><p>Now another point  you may not have noticed is your guardian tree sevearly conflicts with your warrior and heroic tree in the form of reuse. you have points spent in  aa's that lower the cooldown of some ability's that are capping out thier specific reuse speed with 2-4 points.</p><p>i would never give up shoulder the burden ot stays on my highest dps in my group at all times normaly a swash.</p><p><strong>[URL]http://www.beetny.com/eq2aa/?902k144a@14a@24a@6aa21@2188212s@353555@1555355443 35454@111@3535@1121m5@25@55@3515@125@151@15@255113 1e8@1a@1aa@2a@31[URL]</strong></p></blockquote><p>I'm aware of reuse caps on a few abilities, and I might be able to tweak around for a few things that would be marginally useful.  I can see why you would want bulwark if your group isn't capping their CM for the content you are on.  As you reach the point that more CM isn't adding to survivability, its alot of aa not paying off.</p><p>You realize the stacking issues with shoulder? A number of classes you cast it on will negate their transfer to you.  The order the two transfers are applied seems to impact it bugging out.  This with the overall cap of hate transfer at 50% total is a bit of a problem when you look at swash, coercer, sorc, and monk transfers in aggregate.  Generally I'm exceeding the 50% cap anyway when I cast it.</p><p>With all the above conditions being true, the additional dps from the flurry line may result in more aggregrate threat due to the 50% transfer cap.  In my opinion shoulder has more usefullness in heroic play.</p><p>Also I notice your not using got your back, and honestly we find it to useful in HM/Challenge content.  The guard stoneskinning the direct attack and preventing the aoe hit to other fighters for what otherwise would be killing blows.  I can see why you electing for flurry over got your back presents you with fewer aggro issues.  My arguement for harder content, it becomes a tradeoff of shoulder vs got your back.</p><p>I'm further confused with why you don't have 5 points in Battle Cry and Hunker down in the guard tree.  These add durration to these buffs, and you realize the recast time doesn't start until the buff terminates?</p>

[Gundoz]

<p>ran out of points and like i said i still have to adjust some of the stuff because im trying to figure out where my reuse caps out my abilitys and i shouldnt put any more AA's into it.</p><p>Got your back is ok and all how ever i would have to put  5 points into intercept  and i dont much like what those points really do. but the Glacial Protection red adorn just out performs got you back hands down.</p><p>24% + 8% + 17% = 49% transfer from swashy and Coercer...  ok Yes that will put me at the transfer cap...</p><p>How ever im at the point  where my coercer keeps his hate buff on him self and i use shoulder the burden on my swashy</p><p>which is 24% + 8% +15% = 47% so i am not at the cap at all...</p>

[Emlar_from_Halas]

<p>I don't know if it's only related to last week stuff improvement, but I noticed a huge dps increase in raid yesterday.</p><p>Where Caer is a warlock, Penumbra a necro and Brack an Assass</p><p><img src="http://www.lvdla.fr/images/Dps/HighScore.JPG" width="945" height="969" /></p><p>But even on mono target (we ignore adds and burn the name), we reached a level that was quite surprising for us</p><p><img src="http://www.lvdla.fr/images/Dps/Kolskeggr_030411.JPG" width="961" height="963" /></p><p>Things are going a bit out of control <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p>

[Yimway]

<p>Yeah, after some careful respecing, and rebalancing of gear and adornments, I'm seeing similar results Emlar.</p><p>Maybe we should be quiet about it <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p>

[Yimway]

<p>Due to a wonderful bug that cause my AA to reset everytime I logged in, I had alot of time to tweak my spec over the weekend.  As well as commit it to memory in exacting detail...</p><p><a href="http://www.beetny.com/eq2aa/?902o144a@14a@24a4@5aa21@2188212l@3535@15@15553535 4555@132@1111@2555@1121p@35@25@45@151@15@15@151@15 @15551131e8@1a@1aa@2a@31" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://www.beetny.com/eq2aa/?902o14...e8@1a@1aa@2a@31</a></p><p>This is based upon a self buffed reuse of 39.9%  If your reuse is more or less, this spec would need some tweaking.</p>