Thread: Book 12: The Month of the Guardian Feedback

It’s the Month of the Guardian! This class update focused on providing interesting and viable alternative playstyles for the class while addressing core concerns such as repair costs and offensive stances. Take a look at what the Month of the Guardian has in store!

Read about The Month of the Guardian, then post your comments below!

Some of this looks interesting. Some of it not so much.

I think the Deep Breath nerf is way too extreme, but we'll see. All in all meh. Minstrel patch was a lot better overall imo.

After reading the details, in general I like the month of. With a few concerns that will cause a slightly different play technique. But that is expected. Overall GOOD JOB. (I'll confirm the good job after it goes live. I may change my mind then )

Is this summonable Tinker the same as a repair anvil? E.g. do all players have access to it, or will it allow only guardians to repair?

Gonna refrain from passing any kind of judgments on the changes til I've had a chance to actually mess with them, but my initial reaction, FWIW, is a little underwhelmed. In contrast, I *loved* the minstrel changes that Bk11 brought.

The changes to Catch a Breath and Deep Breath, I'll definitely feel. Will have to see how much faster the Overpower stance allows me to solo; that has always been kind of a turn-off for me, and a reason I log my guardian so little.

In any event, thanks for all the effort put into the Guardian for Bk12. I look forward to trying it out.

It looks nice, I hope overpower will not turn off Champion's job, but I know some Champions changes are comming too.

Great job on news, it looks like a solid love month, nice changes...

Any idea when updates will exactly come?

Deep Breath - The skill reset timer for Deep Breath has changed from 5mins/2.5mins to 15mins/7.5mins.

I suggest 10 mins/5 mins instead. This is too large of a change otherwise.

The rest looks good, though nothing overwhelming. Some skills, like Engage and Shield Wall, could have awesome pvmp applications if they are fast to use.

At least the Guardian's didn't get Captain'ed on their "Month Of Love".



Although they didn't get off scott free either.

Originally Posted by CountValamyr

Deep Breath - The skill reset timer for Deep Breath has changed from 5mins/2.5mins to 15mins/7.5mins.

I suggest 10 mins/5 mins instead. This is too large of a change otherwise.

I agree with this suggestion.

The changes look okay. I'll have to wait until the changes are put in place to make a final decision. The major factor for me will be how the Overpower stance will affect my dps and ability to solo. I rarely play my Guardian anymore because it takes so long to solo.

Thanks for the massive nerf to deep breath good on ya. Almost completely worthless trait now.

Hi !

First, i wanna say that the ideia is very good and i am curios to see it.

I think would be very interesting if guardian continuos using their shield to hit the enemies, not use two weapons like other classes, the second weapon for the guardian is the shield.

Thanks, UeZaO.

A few thoughts...

Changes to Old Skills

1. I always deep down wondered (even suspected) whether the ability to (Deep Breath)-->(Shield Swipe) was a bug...especially since we could not do it in the other direction, i.e. (Shield Swip)-->(Deep Breath) never worked. Obiously this was an extremely advantageous thing for us to be able to do, to get in a heal as well as chain up our shield attacks. Will affect us more when fighting one, difficult mob (where blocks might happen relatively rarely), not so much when fighting groupings of lesser mobs (when likely we are blocking almost nonstop anyways).

2. I was never one to use Shield Taunt to dig out of a hole anyways, so the fact it will now be an AoE threat-builder is, in my mind, a very good thing, and for me make it actually more useful than it was before.

3. Warrior's Heart healing buff is a nice thing.

4. Not being a raider, I've never been in a situation where I've used Deep Breath more than once per fight. Thus (in slotted form) being 7.5 min versus 2.5 min is unlikely to affect me; in an emergency, I can still do a (WH+DB+WH) sequence, and actually have it heal me more than it did before. I just can't do that, kill whatever mob I'm facing, and charge off a minute later and do it again. No biggie, as I am trying to figure out how many times in my LOTRO life I've needed to pull off that sequence twice in under 7.5 minutes. Nothing comes to mind.

5. Doubling the DoT duration of Thrust is a great! I've always thought that skill had untapped potential. At least now there will be some strategy to the choice of Overwhelm vs. Thrust (more damage up front + chance to stun, or, greater damge overall but spread over time).


New Skills

1. Force Opening seems to be the key skill; essentially turning our Parry reactive chain into a non-reactive chain against any mob we can dependably hit. Nice.

2. Also love the Salt-the-Wound skill, really looking forward to seeing how much DoT that does. And again, it gives Thrust a viability it never had before.

3. Stagger seems less useful solo, more useful in groups if you are the 2nd guardian and thus in a DPS role where you can maneuver behind a mob to proc the effect. But solo, with the effect only proc-ing on a crit, there will likely be better options, unless the debuffs it applies are truly outstanding.

4. Fray the Edge sounds like a great skill; ranged threat-pull skill that increases FM chance and can be stacked. Curious to see how the stacking mechanism works. But it sounds great.

5. Engage doesn't thrill me but I can see its use. Biggest downside to me is the 5m range; if I am within 5m of a mob, I really have plenty of other skills in my arsenal for pulling it back to me.

6. Item wear changes are most welcome, and the Summon Tinker sounds like a good option in an emergency though with the extra cost probably not something groups will want to rely on.

7. Shield Wall seems not that thrilling to me. Constant power drain. And with the target not able to B/P/E they are taking full damage. And despite all else, most guardians really don't have a morale pool all that much larger than the other classes if everyone is at equal level. Add to that, in most situations (PvE at least) the guardian is probably the one whose morale is already depleted even before things start going horribly wrong, it could very well be that whoever he wants to "wall" (minstrel, etc.) may very well have more morale than him. Given that he will be taking the full damage the other char would normally be taking, that somewhat limits its usefulness. Plus even if the guardian CAN use this to "save" a fellowship member, if it has a significant power drain, he's gonna have very little power left to use his threat skills, which makes it more likely he loses aggro again...and you have a vicious circle. It's an interesting idea in theory, and I want to test it out, I just think that (quite honestly) the only reason we are *really* good at "protecting" others is because we block/parry/mitigate so much damage....not because we have massive morale pools. Take away our block, parry, and mitigation...we really have very little to offer. We'll see, will be worth testing out for sure.

8. Overpower as a stance seems reasonably balanced. 15% damage increase for 20% power cost; given that 2h weapons tend to be reasonably power-efficient anyways, this is probably fine. The loss of block was expected, the 5% nerf to evade wasn't. Will definitely make us a bit squishier than we currently are using a 2-hander, but overall I think we'll adjust. I am very much looking forward to be able to farm things below-level faster, and this clearly sounds like it will provide us with that opportunity.

Overall, I'm excited. Looking forward to getting my hands on it and testing it out!

Me likee some - and not likee others...

I'll reserve my judgement until I've seen some in action - but it looks like the Guard's off. suite is much more cost effective than the Champs "defensive" if that makes sense.

Any idea Dev's when you will be posting the other changes that are occuring? Specifically the Champ ones?

Originally Posted by andulinde

Is this summonable Tinker the same as a repair anvil? E.g. do all players have access to it, or will it allow only guardians to repair?

had the same thing in my mind.... any answer?

Very interesting stuff. I think Guards are going to have some fun times working out their aggro levels and dps/tanking balance. I know as a Champ I'm looking forward to seeing how this affects my ability to pull aggro from a Guard, or not.

These changes to me look really cool, and seem to help integrate the guard with other classes even stronger than ever. I love skills that require players to work together and get a 'feel' for each other. It seems like these skills do that.

Change is not a bad thing and the changes seem to add breadth to the class. While I do not see the guardian becoming the primary DPS class, Overpower will help both for soloing and in those situations where a guardian is not needed for tanking.

Of course, when soloing elites, I have used Catch a Breath more than once in the battle, which will no longer be possible.

Should be fun relearning the class.

Just a formatting comment, the Engage skill seems out of place in its current location under the "Utility" heading since it really has nothing to do with item wear or repair costs and kinda gets lost down there...

From a longtime beta player, I think Turbine initially made the Guardian and the Champ too specialized, ie, a guardian was totally defensive and a champ was nearly totally offensive. It is nice to see this difference reduced, ie, a champ can be played successfully defensively (albeit never as good defensively as a guardian), and a guardian could be played more offensively (but never has as high a dps as a champ). The changes that have been made and will be made, seem to be reducing this difference, and thats a GOOD thing.

I have never been a fan of one-dimensional cookie-cutter classes. IMO its much better over the long run to have classes with versatility and that overlap to some extent so that we arent forced into the cookie-cutter groups that absolutely require certain classes and force them into a certain role.

Pretty much agree with MithrilSoul with one exception. I expect that shield wall will be a welcome addition in PvMP (even though I don't engage). It allows the Guardian to actually guard the healer/DPS classes even while being 'ignored' by the creeps.

I think the DPS stance will see a bit of use there as well.

Originally Posted by Eol

From a longtime beta player, I think Turbine initially made the Guardian and the Champ too specialized, ie, a guardian was totally defensive and a champ was nearly totally offensive. It is nice to see this difference reduced, ie, a champ can be played successfully defensively (albeit never as good defensively as a guardian), and a guardian could be played more offensively (but never has as high a dps as a champ). The changes that have been made and will be made, seem to be reducing this difference, and thats a GOOD thing.

I have never been a fan of one-dimensional cookie-cutter classes. IMO its much better over the long run to have classes with versatility and that overlap to some extent so that we arent forced into the cookie-cutter groups that absolutely require certain classes and force them into a certain role.

I don't want to start a bashfest here, but this is a dangerous path to walk, in some cases. Eventually you can end up with every class being nearly the same. I think specialization is a pretty cool concept, one that rarely survives in MMO's it seems.

Originally Posted by MithrilSoul

A few thoughts...

7. Shield Wall seems not that thrilling to me. Constant power drain. And with the target not able to B/P/E they are taking full damage. And despite all else, most guardians really don't have a morale pool all that much larger than the other classes if everyone is at equal level. Add to that, in most situations (PvE at least) the guardian is probably the one whose morale is already depleted even before things start going horribly wrong, it could very well be that whoever he wants to "wall" (minstrel, etc.) may very well have more morale than him. Given that he will be taking the full damage the other char would normally be taking, that somewhat limits its usefulness. Plus even if the guardian CAN use this to "save" a fellowship member, if it has a significant power drain, he's gonna have very little power left to use his threat skills, which makes it more likely he loses aggro again...and you have a vicious circle. It's an interesting idea in theory, and I want to test it out, I just think that (quite honestly) the only reason we are *really* good at "protecting" others is because we block/parry/mitigate so much damage....not because we have massive morale pools. Take away our block, parry, and mitigation...we really have very little to offer. We'll see, will be worth testing out for sure.

These will be in the patch notes, but didn't make the dev diary:

Thrill of Danger can no longer be resisted

Charge - 50% run speed buff for 7 seconds every 3 minutes

As for Shield Wall it was a very delicate balancing act. It had to be useful, but too far in any direction and it could easily become game breaking. Imagine a Guardian using Shield Wall on the main tank with full BPE and all of a sudden things become really easy. Even without BPE Shield Wall is still very powerful in the hands of an off tank. Main Tank on the edge? Give him a short breather to smooth things out. The power drain is large, but not debilitating. It is there to keep people from leaving it up for extended periods of time.

While the Guardian doesn't have a much larger pool, by taking the damage onto himself it allows the Minstrel to keep focus on one character instead of trying to heal both the himself and the Guardian. A small point that helps reduce the chaos of aggro gone bad. I can understand the initial skepticism as to the usefulness of the skill, but I think you'll find it quite practical.

Originally Posted by Hakai

This will be in the patch notes, but didn't make the dev diary:

Thrill of Danger can no longer be resisted

As for Shield Wall it was a very delicate balancing act. It had to be useful, but to far in any direction and it could easily become game breaking. Imagine a Guardian using Shield Wall on the main tank with full BPE and all of a sudden things become really easy. Even without BPE Shield Wall is still very powerful in the hands of an off tank. Main Tank on the edge? Give him a short breather to smooth things out. The power drain is large, but not debilitating. It is there to keep people from leaving it up for extended periods of time.

While the Guardian doesn't have a much larger pool, by taking the damage onto himself it allows the Minstrel to keep focus on one character instead of trying to heal both the himself and the Guardian. A small point that helps reduce the chaos off aggro gone bad. I can understand the initial skepticism as to the usefulness of the skill, but I think you'll find it quite practical.

Man you guys are so lucky to have a dev like this. <3

Originally Posted by Hakai

While the Guardian doesn't have a much larger pool, by taking the damage onto himself it allows the Minstrel to keep focus on one character instead of trying to heal both the himself and the Guardian. A small point that helps reduce the chaos off aggro gone bad. I can understand the initial skepticism as to the usefulness of the skill, but I think you'll find it quite practical.

It sounds super useful, but situational. I for one like skills like this. Skills that require knowledge, teamwork and planning to use at the right time in the right situations to their best effect.

I can see how some players who prefer to put a stance on, and cycle through their attack sequence over and over would not like some of these changes, but for players looking for a more interactive experience these changes look good.

Waiting patiently for the Champ changes

Sorry this is long but I felt like addressing everything. Bold areas are from the diary, non bold areas are my comments.


Shield Wall - ... This skill does have a number of downsides as it's an extremely powerful tool

I agree that it's powerful, but it looks like something that will always be on the minstrel as the only real downside listed is power loss (unless the power loss is huge). The b/p/e loss doesn't seem very significant, and it's not realistic. If the guard is taking the damage, then the guard should also be at least blocking and parrying some of those blows if in the correct position (evading them wouldn't make sense since it would pass to the target).

Fray The Edge - ... Strong Ranged single-target Taunt

Should have been in the game from the start. Conjunction benefit adds a nice twist.

Skill Changes

• Shield Taunt - makes sense
• Catch A Breath - this was too slow, also a good change, but shield swipe seems too slow to me.
• Deep Breath - Ok... but will have major balance reprecussions. This significantly makes the guard weaker and it doesn't look like enough has been added DEFENSE-wise to make up for this. I agree with others saying 10 min / 5 min is better, but even that can have reprecussions.
• Thrill of Danger - bug fix
• Warrior's Heart - bug fix

DPS ... I'm not a fan of these additions. The captain would have been better suited for a 2H weapons upgrade and captains imo are lacking in dps. Rarely do guards use 2H weapons since they are expected to tank with a shield for groups. Champs rarely use them either. More offensive skills like charging and takedowns would seem more appropriate for a shield bearer.

I think this could have been done better if you just enhanced the guardian parry stance to do these new overpower skills, then make the guardian block stance open up new charge and takedown skills. But anyways...

New Skills

• Overpower -
  • +15% to Melee Damage - Good start
  • Increases the power cost of all skills played by 20% - Limiting guards power can limit their offense/dps... I thought the point was to give more dps and more offensive options?
  • Reduces Evade by 5% - seems ok, probably should set evade to N/A if you want more realism.
• Force Opening - seems ok
• Stagger - Stagger is a low-damage skill that applies a debuff when used to attack from behind or on a critical hit - I don't like the attack from behind part. Just make the debuff on criticals and boost the critical chance. The point is overwhelming the opponent... to stagger someone from behind is more like tripping them, which is more suited to the dirty style of a burglar.
• Salt the Wound - can't tell the actual benefit. Will wait and see.

Skill Changes

• Sweeping Cut - Sweeping Cut previously had a long delay after use, preventing you from using additional skills. This delay has been removed - Good... I always thought this was a bug
• Shield Swipe - bug fix
• Thrust - more damage sounds good

Utility

• Summon Tinker - should have been given to captains. Captains would make better negotiators. Probably would just be a better idea to put regular npc vendors at campfires.
• Engage - so guards do get to move to the top of one threat list. But is this a toggle skill or single use skill? Meaning, are you stuck with the 85% run speed for some time or can you turn it off or just move to another target in order to get back to normal speed?

Item Wear - It is possible that the guard is taking damage for 5 other people, so the guard possibly gets a repair bill 5 times greater than anyone else in the group... and yet the only decrease is maybe 15%!!!!? Instead of the shields costing less to repair, it should probably be an across the board 50% decrease in cost when in tank mode.



We've been through extensive discussions both internally and with the Isengard testers about the potential issues associated with these changes and are confident that these changes will result in a more rewarding and enjoyable play experience.

- I would say the changes are not rewarding enough and not going to make much of a difference in enjoying game play. I am biased though since I think guards enjoyment should come from being the center of attention through tanking, having great defense / survivability, and counter-fighting to get an advantage on an opponent. I'm sure lots of guards want DPS as their secondary ability, but I'm more in favor of giving them debuffing through counter-fighting as their secondary ability as if they were more like burglars. But instead of fighting dirty, they fight with honor. Captains really need DPS and look like **** compared to what minstrels got... That's where the DPS focus should be.

Not even close to getting "hunter" love. You guys are so lucky.

Originally Posted by Leer

Not even close to getting "hunter" love. You guys are so lucky.

In a sense lol. Sometimes I feel like the kin Taxi. Ready to see some changes brought to the hunter again. But Burglar needs some changes to. But the burg class is harder to change and require more analysis since they are probably the most complex class. But it is amazing that Turbine can make a class like the Guardian complex.

Champion needs work too.

Minstrels and LM's are probably perfect

Captain needs minor tweaking.

Originally Posted by Hakai

While the Guardian doesn't have a much larger pool, by taking the damage onto himself it allows the Minstrel to keep focus on one character instead of trying to heal both the himself and the Guardian. A small point that helps reduce the chaos of aggro gone bad. I can understand the initial skepticism as to the usefulness of the skill, but I think you'll find it quite practical.

I'm a Minstrel. I appreciate the thought behind this, especially since in most cases it is my class that would benefit from this, but with no BPE this sounds bloody well suicidal. I can see an off tank doing this with some success depending on the boss encounter, but .... holy c r a p. It will be interesting to see if/how this is used.

Originally Posted by Hakai

These will be in the patch notes, but didn't make the dev diary:

Thrill of Danger can no longer be resisted

Charge - 50% run speed buff for 7 seconds every 3 minutes

As for Shield Wall it was a very delicate balancing act. It had to be useful, but too far in any direction and it could easily become game breaking. Imagine a Guardian using Shield Wall on the main tank with full BPE and all of a sudden things become really easy. Even without BPE Shield Wall is still very powerful in the hands of an off tank. Main Tank on the edge? Give him a short breather to smooth things out. The power drain is large, but not debilitating. It is there to keep people from leaving it up for extended periods of time.

While the Guardian doesn't have a much larger pool, by taking the damage onto himself it allows the Minstrel to keep focus on one character instead of trying to heal both the himself and the Guardian. A small point that helps reduce the chaos of aggro gone bad. I can understand the initial skepticism as to the usefulness of the skill, but I think you'll find it quite practical.

Interesting. I suppose Charge is self-only and not fellowship-wide.

Shield Wall, im not sure i fully understand the mechanic. So okay, youre absorbing hits that would have gone on a lore-master... do you at least get your (guardian) armor rating factored in the hits you absorb, or you are taking the full damage, and even more since you dont get bpe?

If its the latter, it means that Walling a caster means you get hit harder than if you Wall another Guardian, or plate class? Doesnt make sense to me?

As one of the few who have been houding Hakai about his original proposed changes..

I have to say NICE WORK Hakai.

Some of it's not really groundbreaking stuff... BUT, I have always complained about nto having a ranged taunt, which will be enjoyable.

Engage will be excellent. I know its misplaced in the list because you sneaked it in there last minute

DPS functionality will be nice for variety.

I have always thought the Deep Breath cooldown was overpowered and for that reason had never traited the skill. It makes weak tanks to rely on those skills. They are *emergency* buttons and I find with proper pulls and game tactics they are rarely ever needed, nor is the reset. Good work.

I've been practicing the loss of shield taunt. I still believe the catch-up was neccessary but an AOE form was way too powerful.... Thanks for listening, Hakai, Engage will be nice.

Hope they gave you a nice holiday bonus for your good work.

/charge!

Deep Breath goes from a 2.5 minute timer to a 10 minute timer? check.
(You'd never trait it now)

We permenantly lose a class trait slot? check.
(While freeing the deep breath slot we are essentially forced to slot braveheart and improved thrill of danger for high level instances to be even half as resilient as we were before)

We lose almost half of our damage on our bread and butter AOE? check.
(Good guardians were using reactives properly to eliminate the 'after cast' on this skill in order to double its dps.. this can no longer be done.)

We lose a big part of our power management? check.
(Thrill of danger recharge is essentially doubled)

We lose our one big way to regain aggro after a tank death on large bosses like thaurloch?
Check!
(Both Challenge and Challenge the darkness are taunts which don't change aggro position. Shield taunt while probably bugged was the one skill we had that legitimately bailed us out of deep holes.)

Rebalance on our ease of being stunned/knocked down after fix to turn the tables? <crickets>

Crazy mad wonderful tools to use in pvp? Check! XD
New tools to use in pve? One really amazing looking taunt.. no defensiveness though =\

Time will tell but I think we just got captain loved; no lube.

Edits/Thoughts:

- Wow! I completely misread the notes...my mistake in confusing Deep Breath and Catch a Breath. This change isn't nearly as catastrophic as I had thought, since I don't use Deep Breath all that often; I don't even have the trait slotted. Further, I love the animation reduction in CaB...getting whaled on while the animation was going isn't fun.

- Thumbs-up to Fray the Edge; a single-target taunt has been something I've been pining for of late...hopefully the cooldown is reasonable (ie, less than 1 minute). Same goes for Shield Wall; I know a few minstrels who rack up the hate like you wouldn't believe.

- I have no issue with the Shield Taunt change, since, as someone else mentioned, it's now going to work as I thought it did all along, although it will be interesting to see how that affects game play, as I use ST a lot.

- Glad to see a shorter cooldown on ToD, will make it much more useful. Also glad to see the WH change.

- Salt the Wound looks cool - Thrust will finally be useful in high-end areas (I hope).

- I certainly hope, as was suggested by someone else, that the DPS stuff was not solely added for PvMP. There's way too much emphasis on and way too many changes made because of this minor aspect of the game already.

- Like others, I'm stunned that TTT was not mentioned. This skill hasn't made sense since Alpha, and it continues to not make sense.

- As an aside, can we please see some artwork of guards that aren't dwarves? Seriously, people play guards of all races, some quite well.

Sounds like mostly good stuff. I always felt like I was getting away with something when I hit both Catch a Breath and Shield Swipe after a block, so I'm not surprised that bug got fixed. Shield Taunt is a case where the skill is going to work like I already thought it did, so that's no big.

I love Shield Wall. Sounds like a great panic button to save the minstrel. And Fray the Edge sounds neat, although someone may need to explain to me the difference between it and Challenge (other than the conjunction opportunity). Engage also sounds like a great self-sacrifice skill. And the repair changes are quite welcome. Summon Tinker sounds super-duper great, especially if the entire fellowship can use the Tinker.

So that's all good and welcome. But the change to Deep Breath sounds like trouble. 15 minutes is a long cooldown time. 5 minutes is already pretty long in a single fight, so why not just allow people in a fight that long to keep popping it? In the meantime, you're slowing down the progress of soloers who are just using it when they get into trouble. Now we have to stop and wait for it to cool down before we move into a new potentially dangerous fight. If there's one thing Guardians don't need, it's to be slower!

The difference between 15 minutes and 7.5 minutes is so great, that I'm now going to feel like I need to keep that trait slotted at all times, or else lose an important panic button. I'd rather see it change to 10m/5m. Or maybe 10m/7.5m. Or maybe abolish the trait and make it 5m no matter what.

Anyway, while the Deep Breath change is troubling, glad to know you're still evaluating it, so it might get revisited in the future.

One last comment: no comment on Turn the Tables? This has to be the most unreliable and mysterious skill I've seen, even after the patch that purported to fix it. I still don't think it's working quite right, and I really want it to work, because conjunctions are awesome.

Pretty friggen excited... thanks for the love devs.

Hmm, I'm wondering how exactly will shield wall work:

Shield Wall -
All damage is transferred from the target to the Guardian
The Protected target cannot block, parry, or evade

I am assuming the Guard will not be able to block/evade/parry the transferred damage either. However, who's mitigation would apply to the incomming damage? The guards', the protected person's, both or neither?

While only time will really tell, it looks to me as if I will be playing my minstrel more often in the future.

You all shoulda just left guardians alone.

Preliminary thumbs down from me.

Overall these changes look good!! Like many of the others I think 15/7.5 for deep breath is a little long considering I use it mainly while soloing elites and waiting 15 minutes for the skill to reset doesn't get me excited... On the other hand with the new stance maybe I won't have to get pummeled so long that I need it. We'll see, but it looks pretty good!!

Aureniel
45 Elf Guardian - Firefoot
Founder/Officer - Serpents of the Light

I'm going to wait and test out the changes before commenting too much, but my initial reactions are that many of the changes are aimed at increased utility in the Ettenmoors and solo play while reducing survivability and multi-target aggro management in group play. My biggest concerns are the changes to Deep Breath and Shield Taunt without changes to the mechanics of Challenge/Challenge the Darkness. The Month of the Minstrel and Month of the Guardian seem targeted toward making hard content even harder (doubling of the cooldowns on Rally and tripling on Deep Breath and Shield Taunt changes). Here are some comments/concerns about individual skills:

Shield Wall

I think people are thinking about Shield Wall incorrectly when talking about using it on a Minstrel. To me, Shield Wall sounds like a very bad thing to use on a minstrel in a 6-man group where you are the main tank. Say you've lost aggro on something, the minstrel is getting hit, you pop on shield wall. You are now taking much more damage that the minstrel must heal (also does shield wall stop interruptions on the target?), pushing the healer further up the aggro list. I suppose you can pop on engage to get back to the top for that one target. I'll have to wait and see how the Guardian aggro generation vs. Healing aggro generation tug of war works out when using this skill. It sounds like it's better suited to use as an off tank or overly-zealous champion who's going down fast.

Fray The Edge

Sounds useful but the CJ twist is odd to me. I wonder what the cooldown timer will be.

Deep Breath

This is obviously going to be the biggest concern for many guardians. I use is often when using Challenge the Darkness on many mobs and in panic situations as well as early in a fight to let my aggro get way ahead before any healing begins. The tripling in reset time is going change things quite significantly. I'll wait and see before commenting further. Currently, I don't see defensive changes that are going to make up for this on some of the harder fights.

Force Opening

Good skill. It'll be interesting to see if a successful Force Opening will give a parry reactive to a 2nd guardian that has a defend on you. If so, this is going to be a great skill.

Summon Tinker and Item Wear

The tinker seems useless. If it's anything like a repair anvil (but only useable at campfires, not anywhere), repair costs will be +15-30% of what they would be at a vendor. With Repulation discounts at -25%-ish, hardly anyone in my kinship ever uses a repair anvil. Why would you ever use a tinker if it can only be used at a camp site (most groups have either a hunter or a captain, or if it's tank-only, port out and acorn back).

Item wear reductions are nice but a minor change IMO.

Engage

Moving to the top of the threat list seems extremely useful. My question is how often can it be used, is it a toggle, etc... I can see this as being great in allowing other classes to DPS away and heal away if it can be used often.

but with no BPE this sounds bloody well suicidal.

I think Shield Wall will be suicidal. But it takes a suicidal person to play a Guardian. I'm all for suicide skills. And if you can save someone who has a rez skill, that's well-used.

Doesn't seem kinda dumb that if you can get a Hunter to port you to his camp fire and spend MORE money repairing there with the Tinkerer, why wouldn't he just take you to the nearest village then port back to the camp fire? Seems redundant that anyone would use this feature if they had a hunter with them. If not I can understand perhaps. Exactly what the post above me says, map out, then acorn back. Not a great feature, sorry.

I don't like the added time for Deep Breath, but that is something we'll have to deal with. The heal we get for Max Morale from Warrior's Heart perhaps can make up for that, we will have to see.

Is there any word as to when we might hope to see these changes, and all of Book 12 for that matter, make themselves available on the live servers by chance ?

Some cool looking stuff added and looks like some PvMP usefullness but PvE seems to have been nerfed pretty bad. Deep breath REALLY hurts, I want to try it on Roheryn with all the other new skills before totally bashing the change though.