Issues and suggested solutions from guardians.

[Raahl]

Please if you have not played a guardian do not post.  I'm looking for input from guardians as far as what we are seeing.  I am not looking to debate the validity of any suggestions given here.  I just want to give Sony the guardians perspective and possible solutions, we will let Sony decide if the suggestions are valid.

It it apparent that a large number of guardians are unhappy with the recent combat changes.  Please post what issues you as a guardian are seeing and post possible solutions.

 

Problems as I see them

1. Mitigation is either broken or we need more of it.  Mitigation tank damage over time total is more than avoidance tanks.
2. Non-physical damage is the bane of our class.  And more mobs are using these attacks, so more and more we are getting our behinds handed to us from these mobs.
3. The amount of time it takes to kill a mob around my level (non-heroic) takes a long time.  With a large number of times them doing more damage to me then I do to them.  Causing either death or me running home to my mother.
4. Our protection line, does what it's advertised.  It protects others.  However, it seldom gets used because the mobs are attacking us.   Plus they do more damage to us. 
5. Equipment.  Rare harvested metals  Feysteel/Ebon/Etc are not dropping near enough.  A friend an I have spent a number of days (3-4) havesting for 2 hours each day and have yet to see a rare metal drop.  We have seen rare stone, wood, hides and roots, but no rare metal.
6. Maddening Defense Seems to be leaking power.  I fought a couple different mobs, only using MD and 1 single target taunt, and I kept losing power.  No other buffs were up except journeyman boots and shield imbue.  Autoattack was off.
7. Mitigations from armor becomes less effective as you level, making it more difficult to tank mobs of your level.

Possible solutions to the above issues

1. Add the Shield Factor on shields to the mitigation value.  This helps all mitigation tanks.
2. Perhaps raise the base resistances of the fighter types.  Or give some buff that sacrafices physical protection for non-physical protection.
3. Raise our DPS,  It does not have to be as high as a Brawler or Berserker.  But it needs to be more. 
4. Change the protection line to block or parry the damage given to the entire group.  So 100% of the damage is blocked for x number of hits.  This allows us to protect the group with skill, instead of throwing ourselves on the enemy swords.
5. Increase the drop rate of rare metal.
6. Make sure that MD does not use power as it taunts.
7. Make the mitigation % from armor stay at the same % as a character gains levels.  Perhaps adding the new level to the players mitigation will help the % stay the same as they level.

Again this is not a debate on any of the suggestions.  So please, do not debate/flame/troll/bait.

 

Message Edited by Raahl on 10-10-2005 11:32 PM

Message Edited by Raahl on 10-18-2005 11:05 AM

[TanRaistlyn]

Mitigation does seem almost useless atm.  Also it seems all the caps are so easy to hit with buffs, that getting better gear is almost pointless.  Mitigation/resists/stamina/strength, all super easy to cap with buffs, and legendary or treasured armor, whats the motivation to raid and get fabled when it makes so little difference when raiding.  I can hit most resist caps solo now.../sigh

Sheilds lack any real value..why carry the big stupid things around.  And why even bother having tower and kite sheilds when there is no difference to using the larger heavier one.

DPS is sad...sad...every other fighter class out damages us, using lots and lots less power..

No fun abilities for our class.  Get the same 10 skills every 10 levels they just get slight upgrades each time.  Something to make our class fun to experience with would be nice.  I look at zerkers skillz and they get so many fun situational skillz, im envious.

I see no difference when tanking with or without my "+defense" buffs up...what exactly does that do?

Non trauma mobs are annoying, why put mobs in the game that any class can tank just as well as a guardian...hell a mob doing poison or disease is better off being tanked by a warlock then by me. 

I dont mind getting hit all the time, but the non stop stuns is really getting old...its not so much fun being stunned non stop...or trying to train through newbie "green" areas and getting killed on the way cuz I get stunned 13 times on the run.

I used to be a fighting champion...I never worried about running from entrance to drayeks room in PF solo.  Now I cant even run from zone in to PF in everfrost...

Lookin for a fix

Cove'

[Greyto]

something I posted in another thread but I think this a good place to repeat it.

 

 

---

Greytoon wrote:

 

I just want the gap to be closed in the other areas as far as Utility and DPS.  hell let the monk tank let me whip out my 2 hander and add to the group DPS in a meaningful way. heck I never get to use the [expletive haxx0red by Raijinn] thing as it is lol.

 

There is a pretty good thread going on here about what we guardians should be asking for, and I agree with those who say we need to all get together on a few points. and if one of those points is hey make us the best again.... well we are going to be shouting into deaf ears.

 

Mitigation does seem to be broke, and that is for all plate classes. not just guards but this has been brought up so many times that I think we let the game devs verify that.

 

Myself I would like to see our DPS increased to around what some of the better fighter classes have. and let me have some type of utility that brings some real value to a group.

 

I want to play my guard and have some fun. That will keep me nicely in the SOE fold.

 

 

---

pretty much sums it up for me.

 

Thanks

---

 

I really liked where this thread was going. http://eqiiforums.station.sony.com/eq2/board/message?board.id=3&message.id=20798

I think my new sig is:

[Raijinn]

Raahl,

 

I just wanted to comment as this is EXACTLY what I would like to see.

 

Thank you for the post!

[Kfi]

Mitigation. Thats what the hundred or so Guardians are saying on this fourm. Give us back the Mitigation.

[Pry]

The Guardian Report Card

This report card is post LU13, a level 50 Guardian with Handcrafted/Treasured/Legendary gear. 39% Avoidance and 2000 mitigation. The hope of this post is to provide a constructive method including commentary to playing a Guardian post-LU13.

Soloing:

5 hours were spent in the Sundered Splitpaw: Delving into the Darkness.

Stances:

1. Defensive Stance with Tower Shield and 1-Handed Sword: Soloing with a shield/1H/Defensive is near impossible. The tower shield doesn't block as it should, and the damage output < the amount of damage taken. I was able to get to the first group of 4 3-down arrow blue level 48 mobs before I had to flee.

Grade: D-

2. Offensive Stance with SSOY (Main Hand), PGT (Off Hand): Much better, most times in yellow or orange at the end of the fight. Taking out Casters, Healers, Tanks respectively this method worked the best. I was able to go through the entire thing only having difficulty on the final group of mobs which stunned me excessively.

Grade: B

Recommendations: Defensive stance could be useful if you were to get near the red. However, by the time you are in the red, you are probably going to die. A nice effect would be to provide a ~500 hp heal when switching from Offensive to Defensive while in combat. I believe there is something wrong with shields. Not just tower shields, but all of them in general. They don't seem to provide the adequate protection they should.

Experience:

1. Experience was abysmal. Pre LU13 I was able to get 10% per run through, this time I was able to get 3% per run through. It took 15-30 minutes longer to complete the run through than Pre-LU13.

Grade: F

Recommendations: Increase experience modifier for Solo Dungeons. If I spend 1 hour doing a solo instance, and I get 3% experience it will take me 198 hours to level from 50 to 60. For someone that doesn't like logging in and LFG, it eliminates fun for someone that gets their experience primarily through solo.

Loot:

1. If you are level 50 in a solo zone, you should get comparable gear. All of the chests I opened contained level 45 - 48 adepts not for my class.

Grade: D

Recommendations: Make chest drops pertain to your class, or at least make them drop more cash loot rather than adepts that cannot be used. The final mob did drop some gear, which was a nice change.

Overall Solo Grade: D

Grouping:

I spent 5 hours in The Sanitorum with an SK, Wizard, Inquisitor, Ranger, Brigand where SK was tanking.

Stances:

The group asked for me to dual wield (again SSOY and PGT) and do DPS.

1. Defensive: I did switch between offensive and defensive when I was off-tanking mobs. It worked well for what it was worth. It would be nice to be able to switch gear more easily (clearly, using DW while in defensive is silly and difficult to switch to defensive gear while in combat).

Grade: C

2. Offensive: I did pretty well with Offensive. I had a hit of 797 at one point and seem to put out adequate DPS (I didn't have a parser so I wasn't able to compare with other classes). The Wizard commented that he hit for 4000 at one point, so effectively I was doing ~15 to 20% of what the wizard could do.

Grade: B

Recommendations: Allow gear to be assigned based on stance. Allow gear to auto equip if desired when stances are switched.

Experience:

1.  I got 25% experience through the entire Sanitorium zone. It doesn't seem to bad, but based on the 3 hours I spent in there it would take me 120 hours to level to 60.

Grade: D

Loot:

1.  Decent. There were a few good drops in there, and it seemed to be leveled appropriately. Risk Vs. Reward seemed adequate in the area of loot.

Grade: B+

Overall Group Grade:  C

Guardian Abilities:

1. I put Vigilance on the SK. I placed Assuage on the Inquistor. This seemed to work out ok. Guardian Sphere, when used only intercepted damage from the SK (bad) and nobody else, even though they were taking damage. I would say that Guardian Sphere should come with an aggro reducer, and have a greater range. Overwhelm should come with a debuff like it had pre-LU13. I definitely see these as utility skills nevertheless when you are not in the role of MT

Grade: C

Miscellaneous:

Zones:

1. The zones are beautiful compared to other MMOG's. It's difficult to get to some areas, but doesn't make it impossible. Mobs are still getting stuck in walls, which decreases the grade.

Grade: A-

Recommendations: Fix mob pathing

Factions:

1. The factions are difficult to understand, and more even difficult to increase. The rewards for increasing faction are obtuse, making it not really worthwhile to persue one, added with the fear of making a mistake.

Grade: D

Recommendations: Make the factions a little less difficult to get, and make them easier to understand.

Raiding as MT:

1.  Forget it. Mobs are doing 1-2 hit kills with this gear level and making it impossible for healers to keep up. Where I could raid any mob pre LU13, it's near impossible now. Expect a lot of debt and associated costs.

Grade: F

Recommendations: Either raid mobs have to hit for less, or Handcrafted/Treasured/Legendary gear has to mean more with buffs applied. With a 6 MT system, gear has to drop more frequently, or Handcrafted gear has to be easier to get without hours and hours of harvesting. Solo questing Fabled gear would be a good way to even the disparity.

Gameplay:

1. The mobs are still not gender specific in their speech. All of them say "Rip HIS heart out" or "Kill HIM" even if you are a female toon, rather than to be gender/class/race specific. This would add some flavor and lore to the game. Balance racial traits for all races, rather than punishing one in all areas. I would love to see some uniqueness with my toon, rather than be a carbon copy of every other Guardian out there. Hate that my gear sometimes looks mismatched, like I got it from the Salvation Army.

Grade: A-

Dueling:

1. As a Guardian you will find difficulty beating any class due to your lack of personal utility. Therefore, you are probably better off not wasting your time.

Grade: F

Recommendations:  Grant individual utility to the Guardian Class

Solo Questing:

1. Much more difficult I found than pre-LU13. The quests are often high risk low reward, and that should be evaluated.

Grade: D

Overall grade post-LU13: C-

Conclusion:  Given the LU13 changes a chance, there is potential. Some things need to be evaluated and fixed, but the game can be playable if things are properly done. These changes are my views only after 20 hours or so of playing, YMMV. Feel free to add your own opinions and I will update as I can. I don't play so much anymore, but I do get on once in a great while. I feel like it's less fun than it was before (thus lack of playtime), but that doesn't mean it can't be streamlined, and if it is I will certainly get on more.

[Raahl]

---

Raijinn Thunderguard wrote:

Raahl,

 

I just wanted to comment as this is EXACTLY what I would like to see.

 

Thank you for the post!

---

The tough part is keeping this from being a big debate/flamewar.   

[ReviloTX]

I personally feel we should ask for one thing, to tank the best.  That's why most of us chose guardian, it certainly is in my case.

 

The will never achieve "full" balance, it's been 11 months since game launch plus they had the ongoing "combat revision" going for at least 6 months before it was released, and they failed miserably.

 

There should be tradeoffs for each subclass, that allow them to excel in particular areas while being inferior in others.  For guardians, it's tanking.  We don't have DPS and we don't have utility, and most of us don't want it.  We wanting tanking to be our area of expertise, it's why we chose the class.

 

Brawlers have DPS and utility, crusaders have a bit of both as well and all 4 solo way better than guardians.  Their tradeoff should be tanking ability.  You can't balance tanking ability alone without considering other things like DPS, utility and soloablility of the toons.  All of that will NEVER be balanced.  Everyone was able to CHOOSE their path at level 10 and level 20, you either chose the most defensive tank or you didn't.  It isn't our fault if you didn't do your homework, so stop tyring to make us pay for your ignorance.

 

The argument that all tanks should tank the same is exactly the same as saying all mages should DPS the same.  It is false, and it creates a huge imbalance if you do it that way.

 

Brawlers (one in particular) like to argue that if guardians tank better than the other 5 subclasses their is no need for the other 5.  This is false, just like it is false that there is no need for enchanters because they don't dps as well as wizzies.

[Raijinn]

Raahl,

 

---

Raahl wrote:

---

Raijinn Thunderguard wrote:

Raahl,

 

I just wanted to comment as this is EXACTLY what I would like to see.

 

Thank you for the post!

---

The tough part is keeping this from being a big debate/flamewar.   

---

That's my job, no worries there. You folks have at it!

[Danan]

---

ReviloTX wrote:

I personally feel we should ask for one thing, to tank the best.  That's why most of us chose guardian, it certainly is in my case.

 

The will never achieve "full" balance, it's been 11 months since game launch plus they had the ongoing "combat revision" going for at least 6 months before it was released, and they failed miserably.

 

There should be tradeoffs for each subclass, that allow them to excel in particular areas while being inferior in others.  For guardians, it's tanking.  We don't have DPS and we don't have utility, and most of us don't want it.  We wanting tanking to be our area of expertise, it's why we chose the class.

 

Brawlers have DPS and utility, crusaders have a bit of both as well and all 4 solo way better than guardians.  Their tradeoff should be tanking ability.  You can't balance tanking ability alone without considering other things like DPS, utility and soloablility of the toons.  All of that will NEVER be balanced.  Everyone was able to CHOOSE their path at level 10 and level 20, you either chose the most defensive tank or you didn't.  It isn't our fault if you didn't do your homework, so stop tyring to make us pay for your ignorance.

 

The argument that all tanks should tank the same is exactly the same as saying all mages should DPS the same.  It is false, and it creates a huge imbalance if you do it that way.

 

Brawlers (one in particular) like to argue that if guardians tank better than the other 5 subclasses their is no need for the other 5.  This is false, just like it is false that there is no need for enchanters because they don't dps as well as wizzies.

---

Posts like this directly invite other classes to come flame, these posts serve no purpose in fixing you guys. Just my thought :smileywink:

[Moontayle]

Prynn, half your post are general GAME issues and not Guardian-specific. Trim the fat man.

[Gaige]

---

Dananeb wrote:
Posts like this directly invite other classes to come flame, these posts serve no purpose in fixing you guys. Just my thought :smileywink:

---

I just wanted to reinforce that I felt the same way upon reading that post, and even pm'd the OP to say so.

I'm not going to get into it here though, as Raahl is making a very constructive effort to list problems/resolutions and we have enough threads turning into flamefests as it is.

Good luck with your efforts Raahl.

[Greyform]

I would like to see "shield factor" mean something right now I do not see it,

 

I have a T5 fabled kite shield and a T6 imbued ironwood tower shield. I do not see any difference accept my avoidance is slightly higher with the T5 fabled, even though the T6 has 120 more shield factor.

What is shield factor? it is not avoidance and it is not mitigation, so what is it?

My damage seems to me to be the exact same with either shield.

 

Put me in the camp that would like to see it added to mit.

 

My DPS is horrible it is flat out the worse of every class other then templars, how can anyone justify the tanking ability and DPS of Bruisers and then call me equal to them in any way?

 

All fighters should be just as balanced in DPS as they are in tanking ability either bring mine up or bring theirs down. I would rather ya spend a week bringing theirs down to mine JUST so they know what we guardians are saying.

 

I have utility that barley gets used and when one of them does it ADDS 35% more overall damage to the group. I get 100% damage and the person being attacked gets 35%. 35% more damage from where? The gods of bad ideas? 

 

Give me a utility that when I am not the MT I can wield a 2 hand weapon and be DPS, let me buff up my resistance at the expense of Mit for all these spell casters. Give me a group buff that bumps up power or regen or something that a group of people who know how to play their class and not agro a mob can use.

 

overall give me a guardian I would rather be on line playing then here typing...

 

Thank You.

 

[Belce]

Some of our combat arts are not working as expected.  Tuna posted information on this on another thread. 

Sentry Watch, apparently this does not work, the heal does not go off and since that is really required for the rest of this to be useful and really the whole point of it. 

Tower of Stone, this destroys shields which I think makes it a rather unique thing in game, I am not aware of anyone else getting equipment destroyed from using their skills. 

 

[Thanous]

I would like to see more arcane resists for our armor sets.  More across the board mitigation basicly.  Does not have to be to the same mitigation level as we have vs physical damage, but with the vast number of different damage types being done by different mobs, it is just too many stats that we have to try and boost with too few slots when we are dependent on mitigation and not avoiding the damage. Why do we have AE Taunts, but also take massive damage if we are being hit from behind?  Does not make good tactical sense. Our "Ut OH!" group skills such as protections are not worth it on a risk vs reward basis.  If we protect the healer (most likely) and they get agro and start to take hits, then we take the damage (as do they for part of it), which they must still heal, which doesn't help our agro situation much.

[Eskil Wybo]

We should not be the best tanks, SoE said from the begining all fighters would tank equally, that is fine. acceptable, heck even expected. that shouldnt be the issue. here are the issues i have seen in my 52 lvls thus far.

 

Sheild Factor: there are a few things that need to be fixed with this.

   a) how do you justify a 3 foot kite sheild having the same factor as a 6 foot tower sheild when from the same teir/materials?

    b) along the same lines is the block rates, a kite sheild shouldnt block like a tower sheild, its just not physically possible.

 

DPS: we are currently lower than some preist classes in the dps dpt i dont think this was intended, currently brawlers in short fights can out dmg teir 1 dps classes, do i want that kind of dps? no not really, but do i think any fighter should? also no i dont. our solo ability is directly impacted here it takes us twice as long to kill anything.

 

Utility: we are given defensive group buffs, group hp buffs, a group sta buff, and a single target hate reducer for when we tank, when we dont tank we have the protection line, the hate reducer is a good idea but the rest of our utility is a farse, why give hp/sta/def to a group of people that if i do my job wont use it, way i see it the only halfway decent utility buff we get is the one that gives offensive bonuses. we have a huge deficit in the utility dept, this is the area id like to see the most improvement. i would like nothing more than to have some unique yes i said it devs unique utility that makes people want us in a group. right now im sad to say we are very overlooked. deny it all you want but its true.

 

Avoidance/Mitigation: when you took our avoidance and made us stuck in the mud tanks(which i totally agree with) you didnt give us any mitigation to compinsate for the avoidance you took.

 

Our high end legendary abilities are HUGELY disappointing these are not even close to useful please look into different avenues for these to go.

 

There are positives about us that i would like to thank the Devs for, we do have serious agro generation, we can hold agro better than ever now. but we are fine with what we have now. please stop giving me more taunts. thank you but enough is enough.Also i think we tank fine we dont need to tank any better as far as taking dmg, some abilities to avoid dmg would be nice for raids ect but if not i wont be heart brokenif i never see it.

 

All in all i think i would be in favor of sony shutting eq2 down for a month, working out all the bugs, getting all the classes balanced, getting all the raid mobs balanced, all the cheesy graphics up to date(im in full cobalt but i look like a lvl 40 twink in ebon) rather than the live beta we live in.

[Raahl]

Added an issue I am seeing with maddening defense in my original post.

[DaxxDea]

A big issue I find with Guardians was the addition of mobs doing magic dmg instead of trauma dmg. When mobs hit with magic auto attack dmg instead of trauma auto attack dmg it completely bypasses the Guardians main strength which is mitigation. It however does not bypass the Brawlers main strength which is avoidance.

Resists on armor are not affected by whether they are leather or plate or chain etc. So when fighting mobs who auto attack with magic dmg whether its fire cold disease etc. A Brawler can get just as high of resists vs the mobs auto attack dmg and still maintain their higher avoidance. This is not balanced.

I realise the idea behind giving mobs auto attack magic dmg instead of trauma was to make it so depending which fighter gets which resist on their defense stance that fighter would be used for the fight. What they neglected to think of was the fact that magic auto attack dmg only bypasses mitigation and doesn't bypass avoidance giving a big edge to avoidance based tanks

Just so we are clear here people I am not talking about when mobs cast magic spells because those bypass both mitigation and avoidance. I am talking about auto attack dmg being changed from trauma(pierce/crush/slash) to magic(cold/heat/poison/disease/magic/mental). These types of auto attacks bypass regular mitigation and rely on targets resists vs the specific resist base. They do not however bypass avoidance.

 

I hope rajinn won't sweep this under the rug like most guardian concerns and actually bring it up to dev's

[Wrapye]

Reposting from another thread:

1)  Taunts.  I'm often having wizards or warlocks grabbing aggro from mobs that aren't the primary target of attack due to their AoEs.  Assuage only allows me to lower the hate generation of one character, and I generally have a healer and one or more dps who are generating a lot of hate in the encounter.  I would like to see the recast times on our AoE taunts dropped to eight seconds, same as the single target taunts.  That would allow us to maintain aggro much better. 

I would also like to see the single target line of taunts (e.g. Deafen) be usable while stunned/stifled.  This will help keep aggro when we, as the primary target of attack, get stunned or stifled, but the dps and healers aren't, and continue to generate large amounts of hate.

Reinforcement is nice, but the three minute recast, 13 second duration and the requirement to hit make it an emergency measure rather than a regularly used art.

2) Turn the 30 second physical mitigation buff line into a 15 minute buff.  It was like that for a while during the beta period.  It will generate less hate this way, but it will be more generally useful.

3) Have the Wall of Brawn/Might lines and Anchor line be togglable and use concentration rather than be 30 second buffs.  Right now they are short term paliatives, and that's about it.  In a long battle, they don't matter much.

Speaking of concentration, there isn't a good reason, as far as I can tell, to have the group defense, health and combat skill buffs use concentration at present, as they are the only ones that use it.  There is no limiting factor in our use of concentration.  We have three buffs that one one concentration each.  I don't have to make a choice about anything, as I still have two concentration that is always left unused.  I'm not asking to have the concentration cost of the present lines increased.  They are worth, at best, the one concentration cost that they are already.  But there are lines that presently assess a penalty on us (rooting us, slowing us, only last 30 seconds) that could be made better and be made to use concentration.

4) Intercept lines are bugged.  I was recently non-MT in a group that had a monk tanking (very well, I might add).  I had Sentry up on the MT, and I was attacking through her, as mobs just went down too fast to keep trying to assist.  I never intercepted any damage while having her targeted.  The times where we were fighting a single big mob, and had it targeted, then I would intercept damage.  So if I am targeting the one who I am trying to intercept damage on, it won't.

Mind you, this is not what I would consider a good use of the art.  The healer(s) now have to watch to make sure both of us are healed rather than just the MT.  I'm also not certain if the damage that is being transfered is having my mitigation applied to it.

In general I don't think the intercept lines provide the same level of utility as other classes' utility spells/arts.  They don't have much impact the majority of the time, much less so than even our own group defense and attack skill buffs, which the OP has pointed out are of dubious utility.

5) Have Maddening Defense line slow us rather than root us.  I have to add my voice to the chorus on this one.  Being rooted means that if a mob turns on a dps or healer who is standing off at a distance to stay out of the mob's AoE, or just so that they can target others easier, the mob will be out of range of my taunts, particularly the ones that require an attack.  To get them back, I have to toggle off the ability, chase them down and try to taunt them back.  By that time, someone has generated enough hate that it takes me several taunts, Reinforcement or Rescue to get it back.

 

6) Sentry Watch would become useful (once the heal works) if it were like a reactive heal.  Place it on a group member, and it stays there till activated.

[Pry]

Barring any changes:I would like the opportunity to /respec into a different class without penalty. That includes the ability to sell my gear for what it's worth so I can buy gear for the new class (if applicable), and to have Adept I's for all of the new abilities that I will receive. I know to some this is going to sound like flame bait, but the reality is that the class I chose, guardian, is not the same class today that it was yesterday. And not because I am no longer "The Best Tank (TM)"When you package a product and then change it, whether the intentions were good or not, you have to allow for the opportunity for a "store credit" for that product for people who don't like what it's been changed into. And because characters aren't static (meaning you aren't purchasing a level 50 character out of the box), this request is reasonable in my opinion.

[Raahl]

Thanks to everyone for keeping the issues and constructive suggestions coming.

 

Again we do not need to debate any of the suggestions, we can let Sony decide what is reasonable and what is not.

[Briz]

I posted this in another thread - but consolidating the constructive stuff is definitely 4TW. And I've expanded some concepts, so it's almost like new. :smileytongue:

---

The problem, in my eyes, isn't so much that we're "worse" per se - because we're not. Part of the problem is that we're much more gear-dependent than other fighter classes when it comes to tanking. This, in and of itself, wouldn't be such a bad thing. But when you tack on the penalties we get for many of our special abiilities, throw in the worst DPS of any fighter class and top it off with going from the top of the tanking food chain to equivalent (this last thing is not a bad thing IMO, but it is a big splash of cold water for some), and that makes for a bad taste in the mouths of some. It can be a frustrating class to play at times.

There is little arguing - changes were needed. SOE did the right thing in pursuing a change to game balance. Game design that's based on broken combat concepts only serve to reinforce those concepts, not bring them in line. But there are some things that should be changed, no doubt.

I've seen some decent solutions offered up here and there, amidst the whines and complaints of the masses. Guardians deserve to have some of their shackles removed. Ideas:

- I understand the concept behind the self-root component of the HTL/Entrench lines - it's planting your feet in the ground, screaming "You shall not pass!", and proceeding to effect a beatdown. Sure sounds good - but the reality is, the root component can make things go south in a hurry, especially if you get adds. Some maneuverability should be available to allow for this, therefore: Change the self-root buffs (HTL/Entrench lines) to snares.

- Until someone can explain to me what the point of having a root proc on a mob doing melee damage to you is, I will maintain that this part of the "Wall of..." line is worthless. Why would I need to root something standing right next to me? Especially when I have a buff on me that self-snares. Solution: Do something about that utterly pointless root proc on the "Wall of..." line - make it a small DS, a minor slow, have it put candy in your inventory - ANYTHING but root. Heck, you could just remove it and replace it with nothing, and I probably wouldn't bat an eye. Well, maybe.

- Seriously reduce the amount of damage done to a tower shield when using Tower of Stone. Or better yet, remove it and up the reuse timer. 35% damage at adept3 is just silly. As the most gear dependant figher sub-class, this only increases that dependance. If you refuse to change this, at least give us an ammo-slot mountable shield quiver that automatically replaces the shield when we lose one with one from inventory. (This last part is, in fact, a joke. But it's a good one.)

- Protect is a good idea. But the reality is the penalty of extra mob damage, spread out among the tank and the player he's trying to protect, make this ability sometimes dangerous to use. In order to make Protect less of a "gee, I hope this doesn't get us both killed" ability: Allow mitigation to factor in on the Protect lines. If you feel there should be some penalty, fine - halve mitigation. But there should still be some.

- Guardian Sphere is...difficult to use well - and when you do manage to time it right, it's not terribly effective, partly because it's such a short duration, and partly because there's only a chance it will actually accomplish anything during that duration. To correct this: up the duration and the reuse timer on Guardian Sphere.

- Make tower shields worthwhile again. One special ability that requires it does not cut it. If it wasn't for Tower of Stone, I could do just as well with a kite shield, and in it's current state, ToS doesn't make it worthwhile. It doesn't have to be a huge change - 3-5% mitigation, perhaps. Maybe a bonus to defense.

---

 

This is the kind of thread that can create change. Bravo, Raahl.

[Ratty31]

A couple of suggestions.

-Lower cast time on tremor and goading assault and lower mana cost on these and our high damage attacks like blast

-Lower reuse time on plant(remove root and shorten cast time) and commanding aura or extend thier duration to 45 seconds and 90 seconds.

-Lower dmg taken to shield with tower of stone

 

-On the HTL skills even if my movement was slowed by 80% it would atleast let me reposition mobs a little easier.

[SkarlSpeedbu]

Make maddening defense maybe a snare effect instead of root plz?  Some movement would help even if slow.  Check intervene lines to see if they check against the guardian's mitigation if the dmg does transfer to the guardian, maybe allow for a block chance or some such bonus.  Small mitigation bump, if any, or a bump in dps.  Make shields mean more to guardians, and remove the dmg to shield penalty from that higher level guard spell, I don't think that is going to serve any purpose other than have guardians carry wagons of shields with them.

I would like to see one kind of original type of utility for guards, but I am not that creative   Otherwise, I'm pretty happy.

 

[laxi26]

Thanks for the thread Rhaal.

Seems to me that the shield factor and grp buffs are the main issue, I´m doing better now that I got Dual cobalt weaps and use Def. stance rather than the screaming mace - ironwood shield combo with offencive stance... Note that my Def. stance is appIV and my off. stance is adIII.

Bloodwolf of Oggog

[SGho]

Mainly reiterating what others have said, I think, but from personal experience:

- Stuns are killing us and our group members (literally).  When stunned, we cannot taunt.  When we cannot taunt, we lose aggro.  As a soloist, I've almost given up on trying to run from fights, even with my DoF pony since once I turn my back on mobs, I get stunned and beaten down.  Being able to deal with 360 degree damage would be helpful, or perhaps a stun-resisting buff?

- Aggro is often difficult to hold since we don't have anything to back up the taunts such as high DPS or heals which generate additional aggro.  Something that transfers aggro instead of simply lowering it would be great.  With taunts now being resistable, it's another easy way to lose aggro (heals and dps aren't so easy to resist)

- I admit to not being all too familiar with other tanking classes abilities, but our best taunt (maddening defense) comes with a whole lot of drawbacks, not the least of which is the root.  If I lose aggro, I now have to turn off my best aggro buff to go chasing down mobs.  Please reduce/eliminate the drawbacks to this line.

- Reduce the timer on Rescue, please.

- Mitigation and Avoidance.  Avoidance is now king since (a) it is effective against all types of damage and not just physical, (b) it greatly reduces the amount of times someone is stunned/stifled and (c) it's not reduced from the back or sides.   Some sort of balance between the fighter classes is needed because of these added benefits, be it higher mitigation for Guardians, higher avoidance, a three-sixty way of managing damage or mitigation being more useful against magical attacks.

- Although mentioned before, there is another aspect of the resisting taunts that hurts and that's the fact that all of our HOs end in taunts.  Again, as a Guardian who solo'd the vast majority of the way to 50, this is just nasty.  I've had timers run out on HOs because I have three taunts that will end it and all of them got resisted which means the HO doesn't complete.  In addition, as a soloer, I don't need to taunt, so it's often a waste of power to use (tho' the Deafen line has the interupt component)

- As other have mentioned, we are highly gear dependent.  Giving us a combat art that shatters our shields and only lasts for a few blows isn't all that useful, especially considering at higher levels the fact that 700+ points of our mitigation comes from those shields.  If we lose them, we're sunk.  More to the point, our armor is no different/better than other plate wearing classes now that tower shield=kite shield, one of the only unique items for a Guardian.  It would be greatly appreciated if something could be done with tower shields to make them more effective. 

- Soloing is agonizingly slow and dangerous for us.  With our DPS so low, we have to spend several minutes going toe to toe with a single mob (unlike casters and ranged types like rangers).  We can't FD or heal ourselves, and with that three sixty issue mentioned before, turning to run is often a death sentence.   My best suggestion (to solve a couple issues at once) is to increase the damage of our solo HOs and to have them end with a damage art.

Overall, the appearance seems to be that fighter defenses were all meant to be made equal with the last LU.  However, avoidance is far superior to mitigation, which means defensively, Guardians ended up falling behind the curve in the defense department.  Without much in the way of utility, there isn't much need for us in a group if there are other tanks around since we don't add that much in the way of DPS, either.

Thanks very much to the developers for listening.

Velsha Stoneshield

53 Guardian

Guild Leader, Radiance

Steamfont Server

Message Edited by SGhost on 10-11-2005 11:25 AM

[tsaav]

I agree with the idea of baby steps towards adjusting all fighters. I suggest the shield factor (since its "broken" anyways as a first step). DAMAGE: As such, i think shield avoidance should be left as is, but the "shield factor" should be changed into mitigation. This will help not only the guardians, but also the pallys. As for dps, a slight increase in our DOT would make sense. Since we "should" be able to stand around waiting for a mob to die. Hitting for (i'm level 52 ~200str)  55 points of damage every 4 seconds is kinda weak AGRO: I can't hold agro off a bruiser. Course they may not know to slow down, may not be a problem. I group with a warlock and wizard alot, they know to deliver their huge attacks just as the mob dies, so that when i do lose agro, the mob is dead. I lose agro to the bruisers so often i don't bother trying to pull it back now (just a waste of power, better to save for next mob) The 2 bruisers WANT to dps, they don't like tanking, maybe they just need to slow down. My question, should fighters be able to hold agro in this fashion, if so, agro is fine. UTILITY: Yeah, not that exciting, i see the "spirirt" of the protection line, just needs work. I also understand it would be hard to make it work the way we really want and to balance it to prevent abuse in raids. We need something crazy neat. Like guardian spehere, blocks all INCOMING/OUTGOING attacks for X seconds, or something like that. Some neat skill that helps the group in those "OH %#@$" moments , a few seconds for healers to breathe would be great!

[aislynn00]

According to Moorgard, one of the advantages guardians are supposed to have over the other fighter classes is a superior range of taunts, allowing us to hold and recover aggro more effectively than anyone else, especially versus groups of mobs.  In order to achieve this, we have been given two class-specific tools: reactive hate procs (via the Maddening Defense line) and Reinforcements.

 

Personally, I am not opposed to the notion of having superlative aggro control as my class trademark ability; however, at the current time, it simply isn't working as intended.  There are several reasons why this is the case.

 

First of all, a lot of classes have access to stuns and stifles, many of which are part of damage-dealing combat arts or spells.  While stuns and stifles dramatically improve the survivability of the tank, they unfortunately also lower the number of reactive hate procs the Maddening Defense line generates, which often causes aggro loss, especially in AE groups.  Asking other players to giving up stunning and stifling is hardly a reasonable solution, considering that brawlers, with their active hate procs, would thus be handed yet another advantage over us mitigation tanks.

 

Secondly, due to the root component, Maddening Defense can only be cast after an encounter has been pulled, which means there is a significant chance that the guardian will be stunned or stifled before he is able to put up his reactive hate proc buff.  If that happens, aggro loss is usually imminent.

 

Thirdly, post-combat revamp, taunts are just as resistible as damage-dealing combat arts, meaning they aren't an advantage compared to pure DPS when it comes to generating hate.  As a matter of fact, since they don't have any effect beyond hate generation, pure DPS--which guardians are severely lacking--is preferable.

 

Finally, while Reinforcements coupled with AE's like Tremor is a great way of regaining hate on groups of green- to yellow-conning enemies, the effectiveness of the ability drops into the realm of decidedly disappointing when facing orange-, let alone red-, conning mobs.  Tremor can be cast only once before Reinforcements expires, and yet, 90% of our attacks are avoided when the guardian has his accuracy-reducing defensive stance up and is attacking orange- or red-conning mobs.

 

There are many ways of solving aforementioned issues.  A few suggestions below.

• Remove the root component on the Maddening Defense buff line.  This would allow guardians to move while wearing the buff, thus preventing aggro-loss when stunned or stifled during a pull.
  
• Make taunts harder to resist--or better yet, make them irresistible.  This is especially important against orange- and red-conning mobs.
  
• Either increase the amount of hate generated by Maddening Defense reactive procs or reduce the recast time of Protect.  Both would effectively counteract the scarcity of reactive hate procs versus mobs being stunned and stifled frequently.
  
• Remove the offensive skill debuff components from our defensive stance and instead add a DPS debuff component.  The net DPS output should remain the same while letting us to hit mobs more frequently than currently is the case, thus allowing Reinforcements to still have an appreciable effect when facing high-level raid mobs.

 

[Suite]

Thank you for an excellent thread. I play a templar as my main and a guardian as my second. I see the templar and guardian issues as similar, in that I rolled both because I was interested in playing a meat-and-potatoes healer and a meat-and-potatoes fighter. I tried the bells and whistles of the shaman, the druid, the zerker, the monk, the SK, the pally and Lord knows what all else in Beta and since the game has gone live. I settled into a templar and a guardian happily until LU13.

Like everyone else, I think that what happened to these classes is that our fellows were improved at our expense. Though some want to be the "best" fighter or the "best" healer, I think most of us took SOE at their word when they said we would have different but equal abilities to fight or heal. This wasn't the case, and I doubt any of us begrudges the improvements that came in LU13 to classes who had been hurting for months.

Having said that, I have some suggestions for guardians:

Remove root from our Hold the Line/Maddening Defense line. You removed the snare effect from the scout sneak; you can remove the root from this line for guardians. It will make us better tanks and it doesn't make sense to keep it, given our recent gimpification. If you want to punish us for our hate increasing abilities, then have it snare us if it makes you happy. But rooting us handicaps us in dangerous ways that are not consistent with the title "Guardian."

Improve the soloability of guardians (and templars, too, I might add) across the board by improving our DPS. You told us that all classes would be able to solo; surely you didn't mean to so seriously handicap some classes just because you didn't play them? Priests should not be out-DPSing guardians! We need our DPS increased.

Guardians guard and protect, so make our taunts less resistable on the part of the mobs. Mobs that con equal to us or lower should not be resisting our taunts.

Increase our guardian abilities by giving us meaningful group or single target guardian spells or abilities. For instance, how about some arcane resistances? How about protection spells that work and do not endanger the lives of our group members? How about some type of ward or aggro reducing spell for the healer? What if we had a line specific to priests and one generic type of hate reducer that you could cast on a second person in the group without getting them killed? Play with it, but make us true guardians, not just guardians in name.

Make our armor and equipment meaningful. Fix shields and make them a significant part of our equipment, just as they were back in the day when real knights in shining armor went to battle. Give us better drops of rare metals or more nodes; have you been to a T5 or T6 zone lately and seen the fighting over nodes? /shudder  It's ugly!

And, please, if I am going to get cobalt armor, please make it look different than the ebon I have been wearing for 10 levels already! Make it a deeply cobalt blue so that there is no question that I am wearing the best.

Tizzy (Guardian) / Suite (Troubador) / Eliana (Templar)

[Krooner]

Excellent Post 3 Cheers with a BEER