Thread: On Never Surrender

Current thought is as follows:

Never Surrender is still controlled by the Warden. It lasts for five minutes, makes the Warden immune to death and at 10% health will trigger a heal for 50% of the Warden's morale. Cooldown on the skill is 15 minutes.

The debuff is removed.

Thoughts?

Looks awesome. So immunity to death would last for 5 minutes... and after it is all said and done, there would be a total of 10 minute down time?

The 50% heal would trigger every time they drop below 10% morale for those 5 minutes or just once?

Secondly, 5 mins of not dying? You're gonna make Cappys sad.

I believe the death immunity is only supposed to happen once. As in, it lasts for 5m until you normally WOULD die, and is then gone. Five minutes of immunity from being defeated is gonna be well beyond ridiculous, especially in the Moors.

Also, is it 50% of your TOTAL morale? It would seem very low if it were 50% of the morale at 10% health. I just want to make sure though.

What about power? Also 50% as it works now?

What about the power heal, which was a really nice addition? Also, the heal proc threshold is presently 5%, and this will increase to 10%.

Either way it's something that I can live with. As it is, the heal ends up being a 100% heal due to incoming healing.

Finally, Orion. We've been writing about the importance of masteries and the crippling NS debuff since its introduction.


Now if you also decouple the Masteries from WotW and make them trainable skills in the Lvl20-50 range to give this class an acceptable learning curve for beginners, there's reason to have hope for this class again.

Originally Posted by Orion

Current thought is as follows:

Never Surrender is still controlled by the Warden. It lasts for five minutes, makes the Warden immune to death and at 10% health will trigger a heal for 50% of the Warden's morale. Cooldown on the skill is 15 minutes.

The debuff is removed.

Thoughts?

No thanks, your nerfing our PvP panic button. I'll take the 2m penalty for a 75% morale heal and 50% power heal over a flat 50% morale heal anyday

Sounds good to me. The debuffs are pretty crippling. As others have said, I hope it is affected by incoming healing.

If affected by incoming healing -- yes. If not -- no. I would rather have a heal that is much better than half my morale for 2 minutes of debuff, being our only life saving skill.

50% of our morale is probably about 6-7k for most people fully buffed up in a group, and even less for soloers. Judging from how much damage Draigoch does and how the upcoming raid will probably be harder, I don't think that's enough. If we weren't taking more than 3-4k from big hits it would be a different story, but having our only cooldown negated by one crit is something I am not in favor of.

Why not just remove the penalties and leave the rest of it how it is? Are Wardens really viewed by the Developers as being that close to OP? If so, I'm worried.

EDIT: Didn't mean to come across snarky, thanks for looking into helping the class a little bit. I just think nerfing our only cooldown (in terms of potency not convenience) will only compound the problem.

Originally Posted by RtrnofdMax

The 50% heal would trigger every time they drop below 10% morale for those 5 minutes or just once?

Secondly, 5 mins of not dying? You're gonna make Cappys sad.

He means just once and the skill is triggered. That would be OP if you could not die for five minutes.

I like it. I did not like being crippled, through the lack of masteries usage and Hots loosing there ticks, and did not use it because of this. If there was a return of power as well than I would love this skill even more.

Thanks Orion

I think its a good idea! Its still nothing like pledge, but I think the changes will make it more usefull!

Perfect as the old way, with the debuff we sometimes rather die than receive the debuff penalty. Also can you give us feedback if you have decided to move our outgoing healing modifier from will to might like captains?

It will only fire once. After that you need to wait out the cooldown.

Originally Posted by grinko.at

Finally, Orion. We've been writing about the importance of masteries and the crippling NS debuff since its introduction.


Now if you also decouple the Masteries from WotW and make them trainable skills in the Lvl20-50 range to give this class an acceptable learning curve for beginners, there's reason to have hope for this class again.

This is not happening.

Sounds like an excellent proactive oh-#### button. I like it.

Originally Posted by Orion

This is not happening.

LoL. No wiggle room for interpretation?

Originally Posted by thunderchickn

Why not just remove the penalties and leave the rest of it how it is? Are Wardens really viewed by the Developers as being that close to OP? If so, I'm worried.

I agree, leave the skill as is (I like the threshold at 5% too btw) and just remove the debuff. Now if I pop the skill I beg that the healers don't let me hit the threshold. I guess with the debuff gone it won't be as big of a deal.

I've been worried for awhile now too.

Should have clarified this earlier 50% Morale and 50% power.

Originally Posted by geoboy

LoL. No wiggle room for interpretation?

They never surrender.

Originally Posted by Orion

This is not happening.

Hilarious!

Unsure. Pretty sure the Cooldown is way too big.
Gonna have to check the Cooldowns on Guards and Champs OH-#### buttons...

Remember, you are not trying to make us "subpar" tanks. You are trying to make us Maintanks on the same level as Guards.

Originally Posted by Orion

This is not happening.

So you're saying there is a chance?



:P

Originally Posted by Orion

This is not happening.

Why? What is the thought process on this?

Warden players essentially have to re-learn their class in the levels 50-60, and learn to build all their rotations for DPS and tanking around mastery cooldowns. No other class has such a sudden playstyle change that late, and these absolutely fundamental skills are now locked behind a legendary trait that is not exactly easy to acquire for beginners.
Just look at the statistics - how many endgame Wardens don't have WotW slotted?



Anyway, I remember how adamant both Graalx2 and you were about the NS debuff, and now you finally remove it for good. So I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Originally Posted by geoboy

What about the power heal, which was a really nice addition? Also, the heal proc threshold is presently 5%, and this will increase to 10%.

Either way it's something that I can live with. As it is, the heal ends up being a 100% heal due to incoming healing.

You have +100% incoming healing?? o_o

I would believe that with the most inc healing possible (25% cap + 5% easily inspired), you'd get a 65% heal.

Anyways, the changes look great. Thanks for listening and getting rid of the penalties!

I am now quite okay with the 5-pc set bonus on our armor being -5m NS CD.

Originally Posted by Orion

Current thought is as follows:

Never Surrender is still controlled by the Warden. It lasts for five minutes, makes the Warden immune to death and at 10% health will trigger a heal for 50% of the Warden's morale. Cooldown on the skill is 15 minutes.

The debuff is removed.

Thoughts?

Firstly thanks for listening.

Like others have said a 50% heal is nothing more than a single devastate in the raid, I am not too thrilled with the % drop, but for the sake of keeping my masteries and self heals ticking I would take this any day!!

At the end of the day even at 50% it will do its job which is stop us from dying, and now without gimping us for 5 mins.

Ah, I was referring to the present version of the skill .75 + (.75*.3) = almost 1. And yes, I can definitely live with the reduction of the heal, no problem.

This is an interesting suggestion and I had to think about it for awhile, but after a few minutes of thought I would cast my vote for your new version of NS.

Would say more but I have a chem lab that I am supposed to be doing now. Smart phones enable me to slack off once again!

Originally Posted by Orion

Current thought is as follows:

Never Surrender is still controlled by the Warden. It lasts for five minutes, makes the Warden immune to death and at 10% health will trigger a heal for 50% of the Warden's morale. Cooldown on the skill is 15 minutes.

The debuff is removed.

Thoughts?

No thanks, just remove the debuff keep rest as is. I might settle for 66% without the debuff.

Originally Posted by Tolfast

Firstly thanks for listening.

Like others have said a 50% heal is nothing more than a single devastate in the raid, I am not too thrilled with the % drop, but for the sake of keeping my masteries and self heals ticking I would take this any day!!

At the end of the day even at 50% it will do its job which is stop us from dying, and now without gimping us for 5 mins.

While a +50% heal may be a single devestate in a raid....NS is also a proactive guaranteed proc (well, once whatever that bug is that currently makes it sometimes not proc is fixed), where as the other class's emergency skills (Last Stand, Pledge) happen immediately after you hit it. If a Guardian is tanking and saving Pledge/Deep Breath+Pledge for when he gets reallllly low in health (say 5%), but gets nailed with a 6k devastate he is dead. Regardless of how much more damage Pledge can mitigate while its running, if the player waits too long to hit it, it'll mitigate 0 damage. Meanwhile the warden hit Never Surrender and for the next 5 minutes it doesnt matter what he gets hit with, he's protected (well protected once that is)....of course once the guardian is dead, the guardian can get in-combat rezzed and then challenge the darkness, or engage the mob and regain his aggro lead.

Which leads me to the next problem. What is Never Surrender's function? When it was originally made I thought it was supposed to be a post-death post-revival method to recapture aggro. IIRC the skill transferred 20% of aggro from all fellowships into the warden. This made the skill more akin to the Guardian's Engage, not Guardian's Pledge.

Since ROI people mistakingly thought that Aggression was a new "aggro copy"/"catchup" skill similar to Engage due to the large % transfer. Orion clarified that Aggression was not intended to be a post-death Aggro catchup, that that was for Never Surrender. So is Never Surrender our emergency skill? Or our aggro catchup post death (by means of not dying)? If its the catchup, we should probably be comparing it to Engage, and skills like Engage (not sure what the Champ/Captain equivilant is) rather than Pledge. Our Pledge would be fixed HoTs and..err...not dying. lol.

To me, it's a skill that will get you through 1 big devastate or 1 oopsie. A temporary get out of jail free card.

I think overall I like this - the magnitude of the heal is a bit worse then I'd like, but allowing us to function at full speed is a nice bonus.

Although, I didn't have as many issues with the previous version either which was slated to have the de-buff dropped to 2 minutes duration.

One question, I'm assuming the cool-down on this will be re-set during raid boss fights, right?

Orion, I think that is a sensible change. It addresses the issue of crippling the warden for using NS, but makes it so that players can't simply have the skill on all the time and never die. That would be pretty ridiculous and I would much prefer a skill that doesn't make wardens into thoughtless robots. But yeah, I think the changes look good.

Just thinking out load here...

It's basicly it's a 7-9k heal on a 15 minute cooldown. 8k damage is currently equivelant to 1-2 hits from a raid level boss or about 3-5 hits from an elite master. The mechanics of how it fires off is better than say man heal or a health pot which could be wasted or the possibility of dying without getting a chance to use them (warden's must use their cyrstal ball to avoid this).

I still think it pales in comparison to say pledge which has the potential to soak up a lot more than 8k damage and also can keep you from getting debuffed and/or stunned when attached to melee/ranged skills. Pledge is on a 5 minute cooldown so it is usually up for bad pulls. Not the case with a 15 minute cooldown.

This is the first version of NS where I would actually bother remembering what the shortcut key is.

So, yes, thanks Orion for listening to us.

Originally Posted by Tartartart

While a +50% heal may be a single devestate in a raid....NS is also a proactive guaranteed proc (well, once whatever that bug is that currently makes it sometimes not proc is fixed), where as the other class's emergency skills (Last Stand, Pledge) happen immediately after you hit it. If a Guardian is tanking and saving Pledge/Deep Breath+Pledge for when he gets reallllly low in health (say 5%), but gets nailed with a 6k devastate he is dead.

...

Champions won't do much damage if they don't use the right skills at the right time, Minstrels can't heal if they don't click their heals at the right time, do you see where I'm going with this? Balancing a skill based on one classes ability to click better than another is ridiculous. Smart Guardians will not wait to only use Pledge at 5%. We are not given a choice, which is why a 75% heal (our ONLY cooldown which is 3 times longer than most other classes who have multiple cooldowns) with no penalties just doesn't seem overpowered to me.

If I am understanding correctly, Orion is thinking to reduce the morale heal from 75% to 50% and up the threshold to 10% in exchange for removing the mastery blockage - that is an acceptable trade-off to me. I would be happy with this change if the bug(s) is/are fixed that are causing the heal to never go off. About half the time when I have NS up I still die without ever getting the heal.

Also while writing, I want to say that overall I like the thinking behind the recent changes to the class as they have played out. I hope the oversights will soon be corrected. It is more than obvious now after a few weeks that most if not all other classes (both freep and creep) got much better improvements than Wardens, but that is not meant as a complaint, just an observation. I think most people would agree Warden is already the least-played class overall and especially in PvMP. I can't imagine why any informed person would want to roll a new Warden right now unless they just want to take on the biggest challenge they can possibly get (that's why I still play Warden myself so there must be some of us out there).

As far as masteries and HoT still functioning, you can easily heal yourself up. So don’t really care about 25% heal nerf.

Great news, thanks Orion.

My point was that NS you have a 5 minute window to click the skill and get the benefit. Last Stand or Engage you have a smaller window (hit too early, you waste it, hit too late you're already dead). Because of this window of usage you can't just say "well 15 seconds of Last Stand can protect the captain from 15k worth of damage in a raid! NS will only heal me for 7k!" due to the way the skills are applied and activated there are additional benefits (and downsides) to each.

My other point was: What exactly is Never Surrender intended to do? When it was first released it was a post-death aggro recovery tool (of suck). You pop it after death, and in theory, would regain a bunch of aggro and continue tanking. Now its treated as an emergency don't die skill in the vein of Last Stand.

If its meant to do both at the same time...I hope the devs realize that Pledge (and touch and go) does both as well, on a shorter cooldown, with additional buffs (all the parry/blocks = lots of reactives, or crit chain opens for burgs if that one legendary is slotted), with no downsides. If the average guardian is able to save 15k worth of morale everytime he uses Pledge (has anyone run combat analysis on this?) then why shouldnt Wardens get 7k worth of heals every for NS with a fiveminute (from time of proc) cooldown without any further downsides? Even this makes Pledge seem still better. Now compare it to our current gimping of Masteries/HoTs and cry.