Small Changes coming to Guardian

[Orion]

First, I need to open this with an apology as there is a small nerf coming to the damage output on the guardian. Currently, this will reduce most of the damage on guardian skills by about 5%.

With the stat adjustments and the myriad bug fixes that we've been addressing, we did not start seeing consistent and coherent data for about 2 weeks. In that time, we have come to see that Keen Blade guards, in particular, are overtuned by a fair bit.

The modest change in the general damage will be updated in the upcoming Bullroarer.

The good news is that as part of this Bullroarer run we are also putting the duration on Rupture back to the 10s.

Anything else that is planned to change will be added here.

 

[Zipfile]

5% seems more than fair given the reports, however, with the expansion coming up, which means a new level cap, any major changes should be withheld till the cap is raised.

Reasoning is that, every single time Guardian got changes, next level cap, it didn't matter, Red would get absolutely obliterated due to poor scaling.
It's pretty terrifying to know this has happened pretty much every time, SOA to Moria, Lothlorien to Mirkwood, Helms Deep through Gondor, Mordor to Grey Mountains....you get the idea.
Have them be mostly as they are now, content's changing in about a month or two anyway.

Better to be like this for a bit than to have a spec underperforming for another 2-3 years.....again.....

However.... there's implied to changes to Blue? Or Yellow traits?

 

[Orion]

5% seems more than fair given the reports, however, with the expansion coming up, which means a new level cap, any major changes should be withheld till the cap is raised.

However.... there's implied to changes to Blue? Or Yellow traits?

That's the plan. Any major changes will be held until after the expansion would go live.

We are seeing some cases where Guards are significantly higher than where we expected and wanted to get ahead of these updates early. We will continue to assess. Traits are not being touched at the moment.

 

[Break]

Please fix invigorating responses to give the correct amount of power! Red guards sucking down power like no tomorow atm

 

[Bjorngard]

While you are busy with the nerfs, could you please take a look at Catch a Breath and its application in-combat. Currently it's quite broken as anything interrupts it (incoming damage, your own autoattack, movement). So that you press the skill, but nothing happens - luckily at least that doesn't put the skill on cd as double clicking does.

The only reliable way to use it is to use another skill first, and then press CaB itself. Otherwise you may end up continuously pressing it, but not getting it to get applied.

It's been it this state since u37, out of combat CaB applies just as it used to: on the first press regardless of whether you are moving during that action or not, etc.

 

[JohnMHammer]

While you are busy with the nerfs, could you please take a look at Catch a Breath and its application in-combat. Currently it's quite broken as anything interrupts it (incoming damage, your own autoattack, movement). So that you press the skill, but nothing happens - luckily at least that doesn't put the skill on cd as double clicking does.

The only reliable way to use it is to use another skill first, and then press CaB itself. Otherwise you may end up continuously pressing it, but not getting it to get applied.

It's been it this state since u37, out of combat CaB applies just as it used to: on the first press regardless of whether you are moving during that action or not, etc.

I've noticed this with the Minstrel's Chord of Salvation, too. Maybe it's related to some change in u37 and the way they are both Immediate skills?

 

[Mojito]

First, I need to open this with an apology as there is a small nerf coming to the damage output on the guardian. Currently, this will reduce most of the damage on guardian skills by about 5%.

With the stat adjustments and the myriad bug fixes that we've been addressing, we did not start seeing consistent and coherent data for about 2 weeks. In that time, we have come to see that Keen Blade guards, in particular, are overtuned by a fair bit.

The modest change in the general damage will be updated in the upcoming Bullroarer.

The good news is that as part of this Bullroarer run we are also putting the duration on Rupture back to the 10s.

Anything else that is planned to change will be added here.

Sorry but this has been a consistent pattern with you guys and the Guard throughout the years, you guys give then take away. A bit frustrating. That said, what's equally frustrating is that you have nerfed our self heals, and now are nerfing our dps but leave our mitigations in the same pathetic situation. As I've mention in the past, its been impossible to get anywhere near 60% mits on red guard for even a t1 raid without losing physical and critical cap masteries in this and previous updates. Now imagine how impossible it is for a red guard to reach tiers 2/3 mitigations w/o really losing physical/critical masteries. We simply can't do it, it's impossible for us. This has been one of the guard's dilemma since the beginning of time and this got mentioned by me in bullroar. On my Minstrel in both my dps and healing line I can reach t3 mits and keep both my ogh, tactical and crit rating at cap. I can NOT EVEN get t1 mitigations on my guard w/o losing physical and crit rating and much less keeping both physcial and crit rating at cap on higher tiers and you nerfed our self heals and now want to nerf our dps without fixing our mitigations?

You guys really need to balance our physical/crit rating, our mitigations and self heals. You guys increase our dps ( but are now nerfing it), nerfed our self heals but did nothing to balance our mitigation in red line of which we can NOT even get near 60% cap w/o losing most of our physcial and crit rating.

For all intense and purposes we are a medium armour class in red line that can't even reach t2/3 medium armour class mitigations.

 

[Happy Kirby]

Sorry but this has been a consistent pattern with you guys and the Guard throughout the years, you guys give then take away. A bit frustrating. That said, what's equally frustrating is that you have nerfed our self heals, and now are nerfing our dps but leave our mitigations in the same pathetic situation. As I've mention in the past, its been impossible to get anywhere near 60% mits on red guard for even a t1 raid without losing physical and critical cap masteries in this and previous updates. Now imagine how impossible it is for a red guard to reach tiers 2/3 mitigations w/o really losing physical/critical masteries. We simply can't do it, it's impossible for us. This has been one of the guard's dilemma since the beginning of time and this got mentioned by me in bullroar. On my Minstrel in both my dps and healing line I can reach t3 mits and keep both my ogh, tactical and crit rating at cap. I can NOT EVEN get t1 mitigations on my guard w/o losing physical and crit rating and much less keeping both physcial and crit rating at cap on higher tiers and you nerfed our self heals and now want to nerf our dps without fixing our mitigations?

You guys really need to balance our physical/crit rating, our mitigations and self heals. You guys increase our dps ( but are now nerfing it), nerfed our self heals but did nothing to balance our mitigation in red line of which we can NOT even get near 60% cap w/o losing most of our physcial and crit rating.

For all intense and purposes we are a medium armour class in red line that can't even reach t2/3 medium armour class mitigations.

Ok. First, why using medium armor on guardian? Second, it is proven that guardian dps is on par, or even higher than hunter if optimized, which is too op and not very fair for other classes like hunters or champions. And healing is not much needed even on landscape. Third, after stat crunch, physical mitigation is easier to reach cap than before, however tactical mitigation becomes more of a problem to reach cap

Guardian really op on real gameplay compare to other class and need nerf lol

 

[Mojito]

Ok. First, why using medium armor on guardian? Second, it is proven that guardian dps is on par, or even higher than hunter if optimized, which is too op and not very fair for other classes like hunters or champions. And healing is not much needed even on landscape. Third, after stat crunch, physical mitigation is easier to reach cap than before, however tactical mitigation becomes more of a problem to reach cap

Guardian really op on real gameplay compare to other class and need nerf lol

Nobody is using medium armour, what I'm saying is that to keep physical and crit ratings at cap our physical/tactical mitigation can NOT rise above a medium armour class toon for tier 1 raiding. If you are going to run higher tier raids and want to stay at medium armour level mitigations for a tier 2/3 in red line you will NOT be able to keep your physical and crit rating at cap.

Nobody mention landscape we are talking raiding on higher tiers. Hunter can reach at least t2 mits and higher and still reach their physical and crit rating cap. Another good example of this is Minstrels like I mentioned in my example above. Guardians can NOT do so in red line without losing physical and crit rating. So the logical conclusions is that we won't be able to reach full dps potential if we rise our mitigations any higher then a medium class toon in red line for tier 1 level raiding. If we want to reach t1 heavy armour level mitigations we will NOT be able to reach the physical and crit rating cap. And they want to nerf our dps by at least 5% and are doing nothing to give us at least the same amount of survivability in return in the form of mitigations. And like I said, for all intense and purposes we are a medium armour class in red line because we can not reach heavy level status without losing our physcial and crit ratings. We can not even reach t2 medium armour level mits if we want to keep our physical and crit rating at cap. This is my complain.

 

[DoRonRon]

Just a reminder of a recent BR build that unveiled a first look at the "WILL" guardian. That they were at least thinking about tact mit on heavy armour wearers might be the only explanation for that... anyone able to offer another reason?

Ideally if you have all the BiS and all available essence slots every class and build should be able to reach their role caps as well as their mits caps. But heavy have always been disadvantaged with further to reach. Then how screwed up is the morale stacking avoidance bypassing arms race of the last few years?

Haven't needed to address mastery and critical before because who'd take a keen blade into a proper raid before now? Cant give us a flat 5% crit in a trait, just a crit builder that disappears when you crit?

I always imagine a line of plaques in the Needham path up to the front door, with all the Guard re-vamp devs in a line, long line.

 

[NotAnEnt]

Traits are not being touched at the moment.

Does this mean that Bolstering Blocks isn't getting a rate limit?

The trait probably could use a nerf, however it would be much healthier to nerf potency (and cut ties to max morale) instead of adding a rate limit and leaving it as a 1% heal, which will reduce stat diversity and incentivize players to just stack even more morale.

If you're looking for a quick way to do this, have it heal based on main-hand weapon damage. That should scale nicely across levels and still be a weaker than before (yes, I know, 2h blue Guards will be healed more, but that's such a small fraction of the Guardian population anyway).

 

[Orion]

Our current plan, is to hold steady for the time being. Assess as the expansion begins to progress and see how classes line up alongside the Mariner.

Small changes may continue in interim releases. But larger adjustments and re-tooling will happen as we near the first big release after the expansion. And, we fully intend to discuss any of those larger shifts ahead of time.

 

[Rino90]

As I've mention in the past, its been impossible to get anywhere near 60% mits on red guard for even a t1 raid without losing physical and critical cap masteries in this and previous updates.

With minstrel's buff I reached the mitigation cap for t1 without losing crit and mastery. If I change all essences to top ones, I can almost reach the cap for t2.

Spoiler

 

[Mojito]

With minstrel's buff I reached the mitigation cap for t1 without losing crit and mastery. If I change all essences to top ones, I can almost reach the cap for t2.

Spoiler

To be honest I'm not sure how you are pulling these number w/ a 2hander and no buffs. Atm I'm sitting at both physical and crit cap rating with +58k physical mits and almost 53k tactical mits ( and that's w/ 8 tactical mit lively Delver's essences slotted). I have all my virtures capped and both my belt and sword are capped at lvl 495 with all gold traceries. And even if I were to have the Vivid essences slotted I'd still come up short. I do not have the Sagroth gold bow which would give me an extra essence slot but that would hardly make up the difference. 60% mits for heavies sit at 68k for t1 and as you see I'm falling short by 10,000 just on physical mitigation and much more with tactical and that just for t1. I can't even imagine coming close to t2 or t3 mitigation cap ratings. And if you are suggesting that getting to t1 level mitigation with buff, scrolls and other store bought tomes to get you over t1 lvl mits is ok then I would very much disagree.

On another note, Orion is nerfing our dps by 5%, and people are saying ok what's the big deal. Well that 5% will turn into 15% once we lose are HH gear set bonus so please keep that in mind.

 

[Gekh]

Nerf it more.
Best in Moors. Best dps pve. Huge sustain and mits.
Why ? Guard is and will be the must have tank. His red line can be close to other dps classes, but not overperforming /like now.
Should not deal more dmg than red burg or LM. Also giving him block in dps spec ? Why ?

 

[Happy Kirby]

Nerf it more.
Best in Moors. Best dps pve. Huge sustain and mits.
Why ? Guard is and will be the must have tank. His red line can be close to other dps classes, but not overperforming /like now.
Should not deal more dmg than red burg or LM. Also giving him block in dps spec ? Why ?

Because lm hasn't in rework, yet.. and burglar actually have higher dps. Also, guardian nerf is in br only. Not out yet

 

[Gekh]

Because lm hasn't in rework, yet.. and burglar actually have higher dps. Also, guardian nerf is in br only. Not out yet

False with burg dps. Higher burst maybe, but not overal dmg. Also there is no burg playing red in raids / unless RL is simping.
5% wont be enough, but i guess is wise to see how it scale with 150 gear, and then decide to balance it or not.

 

[Rino90]

And if you are suggesting that getting to t1 level mitigation with buff, scrolls and other store bought tomes to get you over t1 lvl mits is ok then I would very much disagree.

I don't see why buffs shouldn't be considered if they are used in high tier instances and raids, which is exactly where high mitigation values are needed.
In any case, the current numbers are higher than what was possible before the rework.

On another note, Orion is nerfing our dps by 5%, and people are saying ok what's the big deal. Well that 5% will turn into 15% once we lose are HH gear set bonus so please keep that in mind.

Sets will disappear from all classes, so there will be a 5% change in overall damage.

 

[Rino90]

Nerf it more.
Best in Moors. Best dps pve. Huge sustain and mits.
Why ? Guard is and will be the must have tank. His red line can be close to other dps classes, but not overperforming /like now.
Should not deal more dmg than red burg or LM. Also giving him block in dps spec ? Why ?

The red line should not be close, but similar in utility to any other DPS line of any other class. The fact that the guardian has a tank line should not affect his perspectives as a damage dealer in any way.

 

[Gekh]

The red line should not be close, but similar in utility to any other DPS line of any other class. The fact that the guardian has a tank line should not affect his perspectives as a damage dealer in any way.

ye but his tank line /yellow/ become accessable to red guard. Which makes him kinda OP after red rework and buffs.