Guardian Thoughts; 1 Expansion After Refresh

Olebenny

Olebenny

Shield Bearer
Heyo, after an entire expansion of playing with the Guardian refresh I just wanted to toss out some quick thoughts on the class.

Tank
I really enjoy the current state of Guardian tank. I don't think it needs any adjustments other than buffing the tanking stats as a whole D:
Thats honestly it except @Orion you mentioned during the refresh you were considering removing Shield Swipe from the block chain rotation, make it aoe and useable all the time with heightened threat like Shield Taunt, and then allow blocks to let us immediately access Bash and Shield Taunt. Is that still coming by chance? Definitely not a need, but it was something I was looking forward to when you mentioned it.

DPS
I understand the nerfs at first after the update with how strong the red guard was, but right now it is quite apparent that they are not a strong higher tier dps'er. If that is the intention with how strong they are as tanks, then that's fine I suppose. But if you really do want them to be real contenders for dps in T4/5 content, then they need a small buff. They got just a few too many nerfs and their set bonuses are nowhere near as good as all the other dps set bonuses. The current best parse for Guardian in Ghyn's discord is how much my rk can do while I'm eating a bag of chips and watching youtube at the same time, and that gap will be SIGNIFICANTLY greater in an aoe setting since Guard aoe is complete doodoo.

So right now, they are slightly behind mini/rk/lm/champ/bear/warden single target and milesssss behind rk/lm/warden in aoe settings. And they just do not have as strong of buffs to provide as all of them. Guard tanks are the most staple tank right now so the -% mits from crit reaction skills is (in a practical sense) already mostly covered by a Guard tank. Leaving a dps guard with +3% damage from Protection and +8% incoming damage single target that you can keep up 25% of the time. For reference, a rk can keep up +5% incoming damage AOE 100% of the time, along with -15% armour and -5% tact mits and flurry of words and dnf even with its 20s cd. Or a champ can do some Guardian level damage boosts via Blade Wall and Dev Blow, but then have their super strong damage reduction via their Taunt, champ horn, and Aggressive Exchange. Warden marked and diminished targets alone is way better than the Guard's buffs. I could continue for all the other classes but I think the point is made

I know that Guard also has warchant and you won't *always* have a Guard tank to cover that and the mit reduction debuff, but Guard tank is the most common tank from what I can see and those attributes are in all practical sense covered in most group content. These would be some suggestions from me for a boost to dps
  • Just a damage boost in general. Somewhere around 10%. I don't know if SSG has something cooking with new set bonuses in LoM, but if not, Guard needs a straight damage boost. Ya'll nerfed him too much after the refresh and we have the data now to show it
  • Hammer Down could be a sizeable boost to our dps if when you cashed out your bleeds on a target, the Hammer Down bleed was spread to surrounding targets along with its +incoming damage debuff.
Thats really it. I enjoy the state of red and blue for Guard with how they play and the mechanics of the class, but its dps needs a tiny bit of love.

Cheers friends.
 
Thanatos

Thanatos

Well-known member
I'm really waiting for some damage boosts. I have a lot of fun as red guardian, much more then with a champion, and would really like to play him as a dps later in endgame.
The debuff of Hammer dawn really lasts too short. +10% incoming damage (2,5% per spent bleeding) with a cd of 45 is just too short. The champion for example can keep up +10% incoming melee damage all the time.

Thrust > overwhelm are the main rotation of the red guardian, maybe they could procc a damage buff to the group or any kind of weakening debuff to the target.
Cataclysmic shout would be great for aoe dps, but 3 minutes is just TOO long. It doesnt even really fit into a longer damage rotation. It should be reduced, maybe to 1 minute, or at least its cd should be reduced by 1-2 seconds by using other skills.
And the damage reflect by "protected by the light" is a joke. It reflect maybe just 10% of the damage of 1 tick of the thrust bleeding. Either its damage should be increased for more aoe damage, or the protected by sword buff should get an additional boost to the group, like +% crit chance.
 
M

Mojito

Well-known member
Olebenny said:
Heyo, after an entire expansion of playing with the Guardian refresh I just wanted to toss out some quick thoughts on the class.

Tank
I really enjoy the current state of Guardian tank. I don't think it needs any adjustments other than buffing the tanking stats as a whole D:
Thats honestly it except @Orion you mentioned during the refresh you were considering removing Shield Swipe from the block chain rotation, make it aoe and useable all the time with heightened threat like Shield Taunt, and then allow blocks to let us immediately access Bash and Shield Taunt. Is that still coming by chance? Definitely not a need, but it was something I was looking forward to when you mentioned it.

DPS
I understand the nerfs at first after the update with how strong the red guard was, but right now it is quite apparent that they are not a strong higher tier dps'er. If that is the intention with how strong they are as tanks, then that's fine I suppose. But if you really do want them to be real contenders for dps in T4/5 content, then they need a small buff. They got just a few too many nerfs and their set bonuses are nowhere near as good as all the other dps set bonuses. The current best parse for Guardian in Ghyn's discord is how much my rk can do while I'm eating a bag of chips and watching youtube at the same time, and that gap will be SIGNIFICANTLY greater in an aoe setting since Guard aoe is complete doodoo.

So right now, they are slightly behind mini/rk/lm/champ/bear/warden single target and milesssss behind rk/lm/warden in aoe settings. And they just do not have as strong of buffs to provide as all of them. Guard tanks are the most staple tank right now so the -% mits from crit reaction skills is (in a practical sense) already mostly covered by a Guard tank. Leaving a dps guard with +3% damage from Protection and +8% incoming damage single target that you can keep up 25% of the time. For reference, a rk can keep up +5% incoming damage AOE 100% of the time, along with -15% armour and -5% tact mits and flurry of words and dnf even with its 20s cd. Or a champ can do some Guardian level damage boosts via Blade Wall and Dev Blow, but then have their super strong damage reduction via their Taunt, champ horn, and Aggressive Exchange. Warden marked and diminished targets alone is way better than the Guard's buffs. I could continue for all the other classes but I think the point is made

I know that Guard also has warchant and you won't *always* have a Guard tank to cover that and the mit reduction debuff, but Guard tank is the most common tank from what I can see and those attributes are in all practical sense covered in most group content. These would be some suggestions from me for a boost to dps
  • Just a damage boost in general. Somewhere around 10%. I don't know if SSG has something cooking with new set bonuses in LoM, but if not, Guard needs a straight damage boost. Ya'll nerfed him too much after the refresh and we have the data now to show it
  • Hammer Down could be a sizeable boost to our dps if when you cashed out your bleeds on a target, the Hammer Down bleed was spread to surrounding targets along with its +incoming damage debuff.
Thats really it. I enjoy the state of red and blue for Guard with how they play and the mechanics of the class, but its dps needs a tiny bit of love.

Cheers friends.
Click to expand...
You can almost bet that Shield swipe is not going to happen, once they put stuff in the back burner they've pretty much forgot about it or have no real motivation to get it done. Might be a couple years before we see it. I really hope I'm wrong.

As for dps, the nerf was completely unnecessary. I would say a good 15% increase to general dps and bleeds or even more would be a good start.
 
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khluzainn

khluzainn

Active member
Bleed them dry trait is also currently bugged. It gives the bleed pulses correctly but it does not give a boost to bleed damage… This has been reported multiple times. In my opinion guardian just needs all its bleed but Rupture to get a hefty buff and red will be fine again.
 
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