Thread: Mitigations idea

So I have been thinking about the original idea of the mitigation changes on RoI, when all changed to 40% 50% and 70% for light, medium, and heavy armour respectively. Sometimes the meaning of these changes gets lost in all the commotion generated by it.

Iirc the idea behind this was to make tank classes more desireables over burgs and hunters tanking some end game content. And that was and still is a fair reason to limit medium armour mitigations.

But as I thought of this, I realize that I used to tank sch/lib, NCF, and some other instances on my burg w/o sacrificing much dps. Which was my main aggro management. And I started thinking that such thing would not be possible nowadays, not because of the mitigation changes, but because of every other factor as a burg tanking at least.

The main thing here is that I find it very hard to reach cap mitigation on my burg, and even if I do this is not enough to stand against a boss like any in DU, or even Pits, let alone Foundry.

So my point is that the original concept seems lost in a restriction on mitigations that is not necessary to assure the tanking roles are where they should be. And rather they are naturally held in place by the other aspects of a wdn or grd that actually makes them real tanks.

My last thought and conclusion is that while the wdn has been "repaired" very well after this whole mess, we could improve our performance in ToO if we had an extra 10% mitigation added to medium armour. I know its not gonna happen, I know RoR is close, but it was something I had to let out while I am bored sitting in my car iddle :-P

Hunter and Burglar tanks during SoM and Enedwaith is most likely the main reason heavy armor and damage done by enemies were changed so dramatically - to stop DPS+CC classes from tanking and leave the tanking bit to Guardians, Captains and Champions. They forgot the Wardens in the midst of all this though, and it took them half a year to fix this.

I dont get why Burglars expect to be able to tank much, it's not a tank class.

Unfortunately, if they increased the cap on regular mits, they would also have to reduce the boost from Defiant Challenge for balance reasons, and then tanking at high levels would become more dependent on armour than skills and gambits. This would have the unintended side-effect of locking even more up-and-coming wardens out of raids, for lack of gear. If they were to increase our survivability in any way at all, I would prefer that b/p/e caps or partials' caps were raised. =]

I'd rather see them reduce Heavy Class BPE - both by reducing the bonus they get from skills like Pledge, as well as reducing the amount they get from stats or adding more penalties to heavy armor or reducing the general BPE cap for Heavy classes. If they did that, they could nerf monster damage a little, too, meaning a net increase for avoidance-tanking, aka us

Part of the problem is that Guardians can achieve near-Warden-like BPE numbers, while still having 20% extra mitigations. While DC has done a lot to close that gap, essentially being our mirror image of Pledge, Heavy classes can still stack BPE to the same cap we have, while stacking mits to a higher cap than we have.

Originally Posted by Mithlindar

So I have been thinking about the original idea of the mitigation changes on RoI, when all changed to 40% 50% and 70% for light, medium, and heavy armour respectively. Sometimes the meaning of these changes gets lost in all the commotion generated by it.

Iirc the idea behind this was to make tank classes more desireables over burgs and hunters tanking some end game content. And that was and still is a fair reason to limit medium armour mitigations.

But as I thought of this, I realize that I used to tank sch/lib, NCF, and some other instances on my burg w/o sacrificing much dps. Which was my main aggro management. And I started thinking that such thing would not be possible nowadays, not because of the mitigation changes, but because of every other factor as a burg tanking at least.

The main thing here is that I find it very hard to reach cap mitigation on my burg, and even if I do this is not enough to stand against a boss like any in DU, or even Pits, let alone Foundry.

So my point is that the original concept seems lost in a restriction on mitigations that is not necessary to assure the tanking roles are where they should be. And rather they are naturally held in place by the other aspects of a wdn or grd that actually makes them real tanks.

My last thought and conclusion is that while the wdn has been "repaired" very well after this whole mess, we could improve our performance in ToO if we had an extra 10% mitigation added to medium armour. I know its not gonna happen, I know RoR is close, but it was something I had to let out while I am bored sitting in my car iddle :-P

Sorry but i dissagree with the mitigation part 60%. The reasons are that having just 10% less mitigation than a mitigation based tank (guards), and being able to parse over 1k HPS, would be over the top. In most situations, experienced wardens are fine with the current mit. cap for medium armour. It would not make wardens with no experience any better than what they are doing atm (no offence to anyone ofc), but it would make good wardens godmode.

Easymode =/= fun

Originally Posted by droid

I'd rather see them reduce Heavy Class BPE - both by reducing the bonus they get from skills like Pledge, as well as reducing the amount they get from stats or adding more penalties to heavy armor or reducing the general BPE cap for Heavy classes. If they did that, they could nerf monster damage a little, too, meaning a net increase for avoidance-tanking, aka us

Part of the problem is that Guardians can achieve near-Warden-like BPE numbers, while still having 20% extra mitigations. While DC has done a lot to close that gap, essentially being our mirror image of Pledge, Heavy classes can still stack BPE to the same cap we have, while stacking mits to a higher cap than we have.

I would very much like to see that

Better idea - make Heavies have more Mitigation and reduce Medium and Light mitigations , Kill the Warden class as an end game Tank , will make the Dev's life soo much easier

Oops they Tried that in RoI , they forgot alot of paying customers prefer to play Warden (as a Tank) becuase it's play style is unique in all MMO's I have ever tried / played. Then spend 6 months updating to a nice(ish) place and most of us are enjoying the class again

Its already been mentioned on this forum they are thinking of doing the same again in RoR, that is making the gap wider in terms of migations between heavies and medium, changing Partials etc etc.

Before people say .. lets add 'special' modifiers to improve mitigations into Warden traits I doubt very much this will happen since the code is 5 yrs old now and they are not going to rewrite chucks of the combat algorithms to incorporate that, it is just too risky.

yeah I am an old grumpy warden, currently enjoying the class but i do think it will be hard enough when the lvl cap goes to 85 - everything hits harder, our stats don't scale very well, if they change the Mit's & Partial's it will kill the class for good.

Originally Posted by Cuuniyevo

Unfortunately, if they increased the cap on regular mits, they would also have to reduce the boost from Defiant Challenge for balance reasons, and then tanking at high levels would become more dependent on armour than skills and gambits.

Being a little more dependent on armor isnt a bad thing. DC isnt really skill either. Its just how fast can you hit the clicky when you need it. If mits were increased whats the problem with decreasing DC's bonus. I see no worrys if overall mits are greater and DCs bonus gets a small nerf to balance it to 90% still.

Mits are perfect now they fixed the warden. Don't change anything about mits. I don't want to see guards bpe reduced.

Burgs and hunters are not tanking classes and are not supposed to cap mits as easy. Cappys and Champs have the same problem to reach heavy armour cap mits if they don't want do sacrifice dps, but as they are tank classes and they can sacrifice dps to play a tank role and get mits capped.

Swap all your burg gear for vit and mits. I am sure it will be close to cap unbuffed, but your dps will not be the same.

Only thing wardens still need are good cc friendly threat gambits and single target good threat gambits.

Originally Posted by Elrantiri

I would very much like to see that

I don't play a warden but I can give you some BPE numbers as a guard. With just block stance on My block is 25.3 (partial 10.4 and 60% reduction) my parry 15.9 (partial 5.5 and 76% reduction) and my evade is 8.1 (partial 3.2 and 50.1% reduction) This is with 67.5 physical mit and 59 tactical mit

With ward up they are 27.1 (partial 14 and 60% reduction) my parry 17.9 (partial 9.1 and 76% reduction) and evade remains the same. This is with 67.5 physical mit and 61.7 tactical mit

Originally Posted by Qwyxzl

I don't play a warden but I can give you some BPE numbers as a guard. With just block stance on My block is 25.3 (partial 10.4 and 60% reduction) my parry 15.9 (partial 5.5 and 76% reduction) and my evade is 8.1 (partial 3.2 and 50.1% reduction) This is with 67.5 physical mit and 59 tactical mit

With ward up they are 27.1 (partial 14 and 60% reduction) my parry 17.9 (partial 9.1 and 76% reduction) and evade remains the same. This is with 67.5 physical mit and 61.7 tactical mit

I wasnt just talking about the displayed numbers, either...I was talking about real-world values, ie after enemy Finesse penalties.

Finesse penalizes you more if you have more raw BPE rating. A lot of our buffs come in the form of raw BPE rating, so Finesse penalizes them more, whereas Guardian BPE buffs are direct-percentage, and so they directly offset Finesse penalties. Ratings bonuses also dont let you go over-cap, while direct-percentage bonuses do, further buffering against enemy Finesse.

Wardens might be able to get, what, 25/20/15 with common (ie not full-suite turtle mode) combat buffs up? To this Guardian's 27/18/8 with Ward? Knock off -10% from Enemy Finesse, and you're down to 20.8/15/12.5 for the Warden and 21.9/14.6/6.5 for the Guard. So we're trading 20% mitigations for an extra 6% Evade, essentially?

If things were truly mirror-image fair, then heavies would cap out at about 19/19/19 while mediums cap out at 25/25/25. Lights dont tank so they could be whatever. That would give heavies a maximum total BPE of 57%. 43% unavoided * 30% unmitigated = .129% total damage...compare to 25% unavoided * 50% unmitigated (Wardens) = .125% total damage. Of course, Armor/Phys Mit is still easier to stack than BPE and doesnt get affected by Finesse, and achieving 25/25/25 is impractical if not impossible, so the advantage (or at least convenience) would still be with heavies.

Right now the gap is .25*.3=.075 vs .25*.5=.125. Yes, we have self-heals too, I know, and those are "supposed" to fill in the gap, but in most situations where the gap matters most, self-heals help the least, and enemy Finesse values are highest, and self heals definitely dont make up for the extra .050 points in net-damage.

Originally Posted by droid

If things were truly mirror-image fair, then heavies would cap out at about 19/19/19 while mediums cap out at 25/25/25. Lights dont tank so they could be whatever. That would give heavies a maximum total BPE of 57%. 43% unavoided * 30% unmitigated = .129% total damage...compare to 25% unavoided * 50% unmitigated (Wardens) = .125% total damage. Of course, Armor/Phys Mit is still easier to stack than BPE and doesnt get affected by Finesse, and achieving 25/25/25 is impractical if not impossible, so the advantage (or at least convenience) would still be with heavies.

Not to mention how hard it is to get that 25/20/20.

Guard: Need more defenses! Hit key 2

Warden: Need more defenses! Hit keys 334 21214 bm 224 23234 bm 114 32324 bm 21324 23124.

I know it is an advanced class but laid out like that it seems comical.

Remove or half Fineness on raid bosses and wardens will win.

PS: If as a warden you don't have at least 25/22/22 bpe you're doing it wrong imo.

So for guardians high B/P/E (avoidance) i want to see some screenshot like this..

Ok i know that was on an open world mob. But i want to see some high bpe as this (on lvl ofc)


As u can see on the pisture above the enemies finesse frist reducing our partial avoidances, and only with lessser value attacking the "normal" avoidances what is very good i think.

For guardians +% block buff: if they use that they have an evade reduction....

Originally Posted by droid

If things were truly mirror-image fair, then heavies would cap out at about 19/19/19 while mediums cap out at 25/25/25. Lights dont tank so they could be whatever. That would give heavies a maximum total BPE of 57%. 43% unavoided * 30% unmitigated = .129% total damage...compare to 25% unavoided * 50% unmitigated (Wardens) = .125% total damage. Of course, Armor/Phys Mit is still easier to stack than BPE and doesnt get affected by Finesse, and achieving 25/25/25 is impractical if not impossible, so the advantage (or at least convenience) would still be with heavies.

First let me state that I am all in favor of making wardens as desired as guards at all levels of the game. However reducing a guards block would be horrific for us. And reducing parry responses would be almost as bad. Our ability to generate agro depends highly upon both. Now your limit of 19% would likely leave most guards with room to grow so that is mostly likely ok. But reducing block would make it so that we would struggle in the agro generation department.

A friend of mine suggested that the warden shield would make a great place to add in the ability to increase mitigations.

Originally Posted by Qwyxzl

However reducing a guards block would be horrific for us.

....

A friend of mine suggested that the warden shield would make a great place to add in the ability to increase mitigations.

Notice the Guardian in my hypothetical still has better Block than the Warden. Remember, Guardian "Block %" bonuses ignore caps anyway, so we're talking 19 max block with +5 from Block Stance bringing it to 24 - thats still pretty much 1 in 4 attacks giving you a block response. Plus, you have Challenge, Litany, etc., which dont require a block response. Lastly, you still have Pledge, which would boost you up to 74%, and pretty much guarantee you both kinds of responses.

Since you can only use response chains as fast as the skills themselves, the extra 6% difference in BPE is going to have a lot more effect on damage taken than on tankability or amount of response chains per time.

And increasing mits on shields wouldnt do any good, most wardens are already at the cap. Unless they added a new modifier for -% incoming damage on Warden shields, if thats what you meant...but Orion, in his U6 comments, stated pretty unequivocally that he could or would not pursue increasing mitigations as a solution to balancing Wardens.

Originally Posted by droid

Notice the Guardian in my hypothetical still has better Block than the Warden. Remember, Guardian "Block %" bonuses ignore caps anyway, so we're talking 19 max block with +5 from Block Stance bringing it to 24 - thats still pretty much 1 in 4 attacks giving you a block response. Plus, you have Challenge, Litany, etc., which dont require a block response. Lastly, you still have Pledge, which would boost you up to 74%, and pretty much guarantee you both kinds of responses.

Since you can only use response chains as fast as the skills themselves, the extra 6% difference in BPE is going to have a lot more effect on damage taken than on tankability or amount of response chains per time.

And increasing mits on shields wouldnt do any good, most wardens are already at the cap. Unless they added a new modifier for -% incoming damage on Warden shields, if thats what you meant...but Orion, in his U6 comments, stated pretty unequivocally that he could or would not pursue increasing mitigations as a solution to balancing Wardens.

You are right that in block stance we get to go over the cap. But block stance is not always available to use. When there is top notch DPS in the group sometimes we dont generate enough agro as it is. But no matter how you slice it reduced block responses means reduced potential for threat.

Challenge generates no threat on its own unless you trait for it and even then generates just about the equivalent of a single attack's worth of damage. It is great for making sure that we get block responses but that is it. Litany is a block response, unless you were thinking of Challenge the darkness which is a threat copy that has a 10 minute cool down. Pledge is an awesome skill I will grant you that but it has a 5 minute base cool down. Not something that we can even vaguely count on all the time. And given that Litany has a longer cool down than the duration of pledge and shield taunt has a 10 second cool down pledge gives us at most 3 shots at our best aoe threat generators.

And yes I did mean taking warden mitigations higher. But if Orion is dead set against that then there is no real sense in pursuing those lines of thought.

Its easy to say lower the guards avoids without thinking about it, but the guard already posting here is right. They rely heavily on block and parry for aggro. I have a guard at 75 that i tank with sometimes so i know this. Truthfully i think the guards should have a higher -evade penalty from that heavy armor. There is a ranger in esteldin who says the same thing if you hang out there . I would absolutely not want guards to lose block and parry. But why nerf guards when we could still be brought up more?

Originally Posted by Erasluindor

Its easy to say lower the guards avoids without thinking about it, but the guard already posting here is right. They rely heavily on block and parry for aggro. I have a guard at 75 that i tank with sometimes so i know this. Truthfully i think the guards should have a higher -evade penalty from that heavy armor. There is a ranger in esteldin who says the same thing if you hang out there . I would absolutely not want guards to lose block and parry. But why nerf guards when we could still be brought up more?

I could get behind a reduction in evade as that would make sense. But the question is, how exactly does this help the warden. I don't play one but I do have friends that do, so I am not totally ignorant. If the dev is against upping mitigations, then you are left with self heals and better avoidance. Adding more self heals would not help wardens survive in the places where they are struggling now, in my opinion. So that brings us to BPE. I dont think that wardens really need more as they can already dominate most non boss monsters. Someone mentioned that finesse hits wardens extra hard as compared to guard. If this is the case then I think that what needs to happen is that wardens get a gambit that lowers finesse. This will leave the warden as is against regular mobs and will increase their surviveability against bosses.

Hurting guards would only help wardens in one respect. It would make us look better in comparison. For a long time i ranted about mitigations, but our dev has shown that he would rather revamp the class completely than do a simple mitigation fix. If wardens get any more BEP it could easily result in being OP. I just dont see a way to bring about a truly balanced parity without touching mitigation.

Not sure if anyone's noticed but wardens(at least good ones) are preferred over guards...

"Asking" for a guard nerf is lame. Let the guars be and damn it, they need some new stuff and better aggro skills, not nerfs. If u have issues with your warden, ask for improvements and not nerf for our 'opponent' tank class (take note on the '', because I don't feel that way and I love to duo tank with a guard).

The best tank duo for ToO T2 raids, in my opinion, is a guard + warden. 2 wardens or 2 guards don't work as good as one of each together in a raid.

Warden class is very good after update 6, only thing we are missing form my point of view are good CC friendly and single target threat/aggro gambits. It is a pain to keep aggro close to locked mobs and the same pain to try to keep aggro on a single target without getting more mobs.

Mits and BPE are working fine. Let the guards be.

Originally Posted by Tchad

"Asking" for a guard nerf is lame. Let the guars be and damn it, they need some new stuff and better aggro skills, not nerfs. If u have issues with your warden, ask for improvements and not nerf for our 'opponent' tank class (take note on the '', because I don't feel that way and I love to duo tank with a guard).

The best tank duo for ToO T2 raids, in my opinion, is a guard + warden. 2 wardens or 2 guards don't work as good as one of each together in a raid.

Warden class is very good after update 6, only thing we are missing form my point of view are good CC friendly and single target threat/aggro gambits. It is a pain to keep aggro close to locked mobs and the same pain to try to keep aggro on a single target without getting more mobs.

Mits and BPE are working fine. Let the guards be.

The group that I have been running ToO with lately have me and a warden as our tanks. The synergies work quite well. We are not having any tanking issues now that we have the specifics worked out on who is doing what and when.

At the moment wardens don't need the mitigation boost.
Our threat generation and self healing ensure we can take the time to build our defences and soften the blows.
Not to mention the CD on defiant challenge is half the CD that guards have for pledge.

Wardens are in a good spot right now.
[I got my gear before update 6 so I can't see how fresh Lv75s would have a problem outside of skill use. Wardens are a stronger beast these days.]

(P.S. I still haven't leveled my guardian past level 65.)

Originally Posted by Erasluindor

But why nerf guards when we could still be brought up more?

Originally Posted by Erasluindor

Hurting guards would only help wardens in one respect. It would make us look better in comparison.

No one talked about nerfing Guards, but nerfing Heavies. Its not a class vs class issue, its a system vs system issue, the system of mitigations vs the system of BPE, and how effectively both work in real-world situations. Now, since Guards and Wardens are the only main-role tanks, it might seem like its a class vs class discussion, but its nothing personal against Guards...

You can do one of two things to achieve balance: nerf or buff. If you only ever buff, then you eventually have to buff enemies too, and the problem there is that you get power inflation, where numbers just get increasingly higher and higher. While that's just cosmetic for things like health and damage (as long as your DPS is balanced to your enemy's health), its not cosmetic for things like mitigation and avoidance, which of course cap out at 100%. As those numbers inflate, you have to come up with increasingly arcane and byzantine systems like Finesse to keep them from reaching 100%.

Rather than just gradually increasing mitigation/avoidance, which inevitably must lead to increased monster damage, and further imbalance between tank and squishy classes, I was calling for a nerf of Heavy avoidances and a small nerf in Monster damage, leaving Avoidance tanking out ahead exactly the same as if you'd buffed our mits, and throwing a little bone to the squishies as well

Where exactly are wardens struggling these days? Is this whole discussion based on one boss that reduces BPE? That same boss that doesn't really hit very hard but has challenging mechanics to deal with?

IMHO double crit immunity and Disco Challenge are enough to deal with those kinds of situations (with self heals, good gear, high incoming healing and a competent group ofc but same applies to Guard).

High Boss Finesse is challenging but I find that survivability is still not an issue these days. Not saying its easy. Its very hard work but its possible now which it wasn't (well not really) in the RoI -> U6 period. Also, for those that haven't had the chance to explore them yet I would suggest to invest a bit into Partial BPE. Orion gave us a hint with those Warden buffs.

I do like the idea of a Finesse reducing gambit though. Nothing too major but something like -1K finesse could be interesting (I'd imagine raid bosses have about 5-7k?). Could even make that into the Determination Warden's Triumph that's being discussed in another thread.

In all but end game boss fights wardens own. We solo world content with virtual indistructability. When i do a world quest that ses go into some camp and click on something. I simply walk in and click on what i have to click on. If i happen to pull 30 mobs and they interupt my clicking...wile it will take some time i will kill them all and unless i get up to get a drink really.. cant die.

In all non end game instances i can pull all i want hold threat like a black hole to light and healing me is easy mode. The only time we are at risk of dieing is end game boss fights with out some silly stupid mistake.

Do not nerf guards. Any class calling for a nerf of another class to make their class look better is just wrong. Some things in this game are over powered and spacific things should be changed. But no class needs a nerf just a couple spacific aspects of classes here and there. The game is more balanced now than it has been in a wile. My simple fix?

Rk's have a lot of skills with a mod something like "this skill has an additional +1200 finess" or something like that. Add to our tank stance something like "targets attacking the warden have -3000 applied finesse" our bpe is not so uselessly nerfed. No other classes are hurt. Our non end game content is not buffed into op god mode and wardens with less than epic gear are not shunned. Also adding another 1k finesse to our shields would not be frowned upon either...