Thread: Graalx2: Please consider making Challenge an immediate skill

Something for consideration for the Guardian "wish list" for a future update:

If it is feasible, are there any chances that Challenge might be made an immediate skill with a future update to the Guardian class?

There are times in raids where it is critical that this skill fires exactly when you want it to in order to "intercept" specific mobs as they head toward the main group (gathering up the Deep Haulers from opposite sides of the room and quickly separating them from the Taskmasters in the Lightning Wing of Orthanc is a prime example). As it stands right now, the time that it actually takes Challenge to "fire" is unpredictable, which can lead to occassions when all the Guardian can do is watch the desired mobs run by them into another group of adds that you don't want to get caught in the Challenge while you wait for the skill to go off. This variability makes it difficult to quickly and strategically separate groups of adds from one another, which can be a pretty significant part of various raid pulls.

If an immediate skill isn't feasible, perhaps making Challenge a fast skill would help so that the timing at least isn't as variable based upon the animation time of the skill that was used prior?

While the variability in the time that it takes Challenge to fire is certainly not game-breaking by any means, could this be a fix that might be worth looking into to allow Guardians to exercise more precise control over our ability to manipulate aggro?

This didn't used to be a problem, and I don't think it's an issue now because of any new content or mechanics. I believe the reason we're suffering problems with Challenge now is related to the pervasive lag issues more than anything else.

That being said, though, it's possible some skills are suffering from something else. I've noticed that Challenge would sometimes not fire for many seconds, even when folks were not lagging out. I've also had it where skills just will not fire. It was happening for me a lot with CaB the other night for some reason. The only gate on CaB firing should be power, but I'd sit there at 1/2 power and CaB would just stare back as I hit it repeatedly, all while combat was occurring and nothing was lagging out. I could move and fire other skills fine.

So perhaps there's multiple problems at play here. Regardless, I think those problems are a bigger craw in our sides than Challenge being immediate. Before all the skill issues/lag Challenge always seemed plenty fast to me.

While I agree that an immediate Challenge would be nice, I have to agree with Clappi.

There's a reason that not all skills are immediate. Timing is part of player skill. If timing a Challenge is important, all you have to do is keep your skill queue clear when it's time to Challenge. Same goes for Vexing Blow.

If you are keeping your skill queue clear and Challenge is still not firing when you need it to, then your problem is LAG. Making Challenge immediate will not help you in this case.

(That said, making Challenge immediate would be quite a bit more useful than the stupid snare we're currently stuck with.)

Follow up your challenge with pledge if it's off cd. Or stamp if you're in melee range of something.

That way the timing is up to you - the immediate nature of both pledge and stamp means that the animation of challenge will be cut off and the effect kick in exactly when you want it to.

That being said it is a bit weird it has such a long animation and ofc it would be a lot easier if challenge itself was immediate. But it's the tools we've been given and it's up to us to make the most of them.
Good luck on persuading the devs - though I highly doubt they'll ever read this thread

Thank you all for the replies thus far.

Originally Posted by clappi

This didn't used to be a problem, and I don't think it's an issue now because of any new content or mechanics. I believe the reason we're suffering problems with Challenge now is related to the pervasive lag issues more than anything else.

So perhaps there's multiple problems at play here. Regardless, I think those problems are a bigger craw in our sides than Challenge being immediate. Before all the skill issues/lag Challenge always seemed plenty fast to me.

I can appreciate exactly what you mean and have thought the same thing myself. This did not seem to be an issue previously and it feels like somewhere along the line something has changed that is causing some underlying problems with some of our skills firing when intended (other classes seem to be reporting the same).

Originally Posted by Nicepants42

There's a reason that not all skills are immediate. Timing is part of player skill. If timing a Challenge is important, all you have to do is keep your skill queue clear when it's time to Challenge. Same goes for Vexing Blow.

If you are keeping your skill queue clear and Challenge is still not firing when you need it to, then your problem is LAG. Making Challenge immediate will not help you in this case.

Unfortunately, from what I've observed the "skill delay/lag" does not seem to coincide with general server or client lag (the rest of the graphics/animations/movement is smooth...no hitching, spikes, etc. as Clappi also stated regarding Catch a Breath above). I fundamentally agree with you that not all skills should be immediate and that timing of skills is an important part of our ability as a player. However, as it stands right now, the varying time between when you click on Challenge and when it actually fires (could be immediate, could be 2-3 seconds later) takes player skill out of the equation. How do you anticipate how long it is going to take for the skill to go off once you click it and factor that into your play? I understand your point about trying to keep your skill queue clear when you know you are going to need to use Challenge, but I'm not sure that I am comfortable accepting this solution long term when an alternative might exist that would allow us to utilize all of the skills at our disposal.

Originally Posted by Gilias

Follow up your challenge with pledge if it's off cd. Or stamp if you're in melee range of something.

That way the timing is up to you - the immediate nature of both pledge and stamp means that the animation of challenge will be cut off and the effect kick in exactly when you want it to.

I hope that I did not confuse the issue by making an initial connection to animations. To clarify, it does not seem to be the animation length of Challenge itself that is presenting the problem, but the perception that the skill does not start when it should. For lack of a better description, you are left staring at the "crawling ants" as if there was an invisible skill inserted between the last skill you hit and Challenge (to use a baseball analogy, it is as if Challenge is "in the hole" instead of "on deck", if the last skill you used is the skill "at bat" when you actually hit Challenge).

If there is indeed some underlying issue that can be determined to be at the root of the problem then I agree that making Challenge an instant skill still may not correct/counter the problem, but it might help ameliorate some of the randomness until the possible larger problem is discovered/fixed.

Originally Posted by Anurin_The_Wise

There are times in raids where it is critical that this skill fires exactly when you want it to in order to "intercept" specific mobs as they head toward the main group (gathering up the Deep Haulers from opposite sides of the room and quickly separating them from the Taskmasters in the Lightning Wing of Orthanc is a prime example).

I find it much easier to use ignore the pain and litany + shield taunt. Plus if you get a miss or resist on one the 2nd reactive hits every time, at least for me. I'd much rather prefer shield smash be moved to fast or speed up the animation. It's a very slow skill imo.

Originally Posted by Anurin_The_Wise

I hope that I did not confuse the issue by making an initial connection to animations. To clarify, it does not seem to be the animation length of Challenge itself that is presenting the problem, but the perception that the skill does not start when it should. For lack of a better description, you are left staring at the "crawling ants" as if there was an invisible skill inserted between the last skill you hit and Challenge (to use a baseball analogy, it is as if Challenge is "in the hole" instead of "on deck", if the last skill you used is the skill "at bat" when you actually hit Challenge).

If there is indeed some underlying issue that can be determined to be at the root of the problem then I agree that making Challenge an instant skill still may not correct/counter the problem, but it might help ameliorate some of the randomness until the possible larger problem is discovered/fixed.

Ah ok I get what you're saying now (although the baseball analogy is lost on me - it's not a very popular sport in Europe )
So it's related to which skill you use before challenge, which does make perfect sense.

Since challenge is not a fast skill it is very much influenced by the skill used just before it. Like every non-immediate skill it's not bypassing the animation time of the previous skill and neither is it bypassing the long post animation delay (PA-delay) which some skills have.

This means if you use challenge after skills like sweeping cut or stamp, you're in a lot of trouble as both these skills have an extremely long PA-delay and they should always be followed up with fast skills (unless you like to do nothing for a while ).

So... If you want to be completely sure about when challenge will fire off/activate the best way is to test all your skills and find out how much PA-delay each skill has This is further complicated by guardians having a lot of fast skills that cancel out each other's PA-delay, meaning that some of the fast skills you use in a normal rotation might have a very long PA-delay that you're not even aware of since you always follow it up with a fast skill.
The best way to test this is to hit a training dummy with the skill you're testing followed up by a non-fast skill like sting or ward. For some further reading you can check out:
http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?456213-A-newer-burg-trying-to-optimize-rotation-(w.r.t-attack-speed)&p=6137613#post6137613
to see how it works for burglars.


Just the very basic theory - which I'm sure you're aware of already:
All skills have an animation and many skills have a PA-delay as well. The animation is the visible part and the PA-delay is the 'invisible' part - the time between the animation and the activation of your next skill. Only immediate skills can cut off the animations as well as resetting any underlying PA-delay of the previously used skill. Fast skills will do nothing for the animations, but will bypass any PA-delay. Do note that both immediate skills (stamp) and fast skills (stagger and retaliation among others) *can* have long PA-delays of their own. Which means you'll have to follow up with yet another fast skill.


***The beauty of Pledge***
Pledge is an immediate skill and therefore it resets all existing PA-delay and it doesn't add any of it's own, meaning that once the pledge animation is done you're free to use whatever skill afterwards with no delay.

So in your case, for those few tricky pulls it is worth using pledge just before you use challenge (unless challenge is the first skill you use ofc) to remove any remaining PA-delay that is causing challenge to not fire as fast as usual.


I hope some of these points helped, and as for your suggestion it would make a lot of sense to make challenge a fast skill. That way you wouldn't have to worry about which skill you used before it as guardian animations are generally not very long. Making it immediate is not really necessary imo - it would just mean that challenge could be used much more to speed up rotations by cutting animations and PA-delays, which clearly wouldn't be the intended purpose of the skill.

Per the Champion Dev Diary released today (emphasis mine):

Improved Skills

Level 77 – Horn of Champions (new skill!):
- In no stance and in Glory stance – Targeted (30m range) AoE threat generation.
- In Ardour stance – Point-blank AoE threat reduction .
- In Fervour stance – Single-target threat reduction, stronger than Ardour’s.
Horn of Champions is a new skill which is all about helping Champions manage their threat. The threat generation and reductions are instant, allowing Glory champions to pull multiple mobs at range with a strong threat generating ability. Meanwhile, Horn of Champions in Ardour and Fervour stance will decrease your threat on your opponent(s), letting you beat them up even more. The skill is on a 30 second cooldown, and has no Fervour pip cost.

While I know that theirs is not a force taunt (and I am glad to hear that such a skill is being added to their tanking arsenal), I wonder if it still isn't too much to ask for an on par skill upgrade for the Guardian class (in terms of making Challenge at least a fast skill, if not an immediate/instant skill)?

Originally Posted by timmyloo22546

I find it much easier to use ignore the pain and litany + shield taunt. Plus if you get a miss or resist on one the 2nd reactive hits every time, at least for me. I'd much rather prefer shield smash be moved to fast or speed up the animation. It's a very slow skill imo.

shield smash and challenge should both be fast skills, a lot of the waiting is just sitting there waiting for the skills to go off.

shield smash still has that annoyingly long animation though

I'm having the non-responsive Challenge problem also of late. It's definitely some form of lag. The reason that I know this is that most of the time that I'm frustrated by it I hear others talking about lag immediately afterwards. It's also obvious when you click on the skill and don't get a normal flash from the icon.

What I'm doing lately when I need to pull from multiple places and avoid entanglements is to use Fray The Edge on the solo mob and then head for the pair and use Ignore the Pain and Litany. When all 3 are in proximity I use Shield Taunt and problem solved. Then I have Challenge available after I've pulled them to a spot where I won't mess up a troll mez or something like that. The only time i get in trouble is when Fray the Edge misses, and that is almost never on trash mobs.

+ chall to do dmg!
Must have!!!!

I agree here, it would be nice. Not necessarily because of lag but because I'm in PUGs a lot. People who only group with friends or kin may not care about groups that aren't perfect though, but many of us deal with less than perfect groups that make mistakes. For example if someone has hit a heal just as a group of adds show up, they will make a beeline for the healer and the tank needs to grab them back fast. Sometimes sadly this means having to chase after the adds. In some fights the healer may be badly hurt just in the short time bringing the adds up to the tank. And especially at lower and mid levels a lot of players are trigger happy and will start a pull early, and I'm not the grumpy sort who wants to punish people for that.