Guardian Defense Talent Tree - Please Read

[TeaSeeOh]

Is it me or is it really inconsistent based on what it's sold as? The Defense tree should ideally be your tank tree(e.g. Protection for WoW Warrior/Paladin), however, you get more bang for your buck with the Vigilance tree labeled as damage if you want to effectively tank. Even the stickied thread in this sub-forum for Guardian tanking suggests you heavily spend there. Defense is obviously supposed to be your PvE Tank tree, considering you get reductions to your taunt cooldowns, increases in your shield chance, an ability that grants a huge reduction in damage taken, and situational increases to your defensive rating. However, this isn't the actual case.

 

Hell, there are numerous bad talents across the board(Gather Strength for example in Vigilance as explained in the stickied thread linked above), but not even limiting that to just Guardian(Scoundrel has some oddities as well, such as Scrapper having talents that increase your bleeds/damage done on bleeding targets, while Dirty Fighting is the obvious bleed/DoT tree, and conversely Dirty Fighting having things centered around stealth when stealth abilities are more geared toward Scrapper and getting Back Blast off). I digress.

 

The Guardian trees themselves feel the worst that I've played thus far. This isn't to say Guardians are bad, underpowered, underwhelming, etc. etc. before anyone uses Zealous Leap to their defense, but honestly all the trees feel like a mish mash of alphabet soup that someone vomited out. You might get a coherent word here and there if you put it together, but ultimately it feels random. Let me go on a tangent real quick.

 

Let me begin explanation. For example, Unremitting(20% DR & immunity to CCs for 4 seconds) is in Vigilance, the tree labeled "Damage". This makes absolutely zero sense to me. Most of the nasty abilities being done to a tank, both PvP AND PvE are done in the opening couple seconds, especially with Terminator AI who instantly knock you back, CC, or choke you as soon as you even finish the leap animation. Why is this in Vigilance and not Defense?

 

Another example is Second Wind, an ability which obviously increases survivability(10% health restored when using Resolute), is in Focus and not Defense. This can honestly be debatable, but I feel, in my opinion, it feels more like it was intended for Defense.

 

Keeping the ball rolling, Commanding Awe, a talent in Vigilance, reduces all damage taken by 4% AND reduces the cooldown on Awe, something that greatly aids in effectively CCing trash mobs. Why is this even there? 4% damage reduction for a tree selling itself as damage? Huh? It feels like this was meant to be placed in Defense but someone forgot to toss it over.

 

Last thing that bugs me is Protector. Honestly, let's just get mad at the name of that talent. The Protector talent is not in the Defense tree, but rather Vigilance, the one advertised as damage. A talent that increases Endurance by 4% and applies Guardian Leap's effect to you as well, is again, not in the Defense tree.

 

Force Clap is a talent that strikes me as an oddity as well. It adds 2 seconds of stun to Force Leap. Why? What is the use of this? I feel it is a waste of a talent altogether, even if it is just 1. This does nothing for you PvP, it infact hurts you PvP-wise. It just builds the enemy's resolve meter for a 2 second stun that would otherwise ALREADY immobilize for the same 2 seconds AS WELL as interrupting any currently casting ability. The stun serves no purpose. I can only see it very sparingly being useful in certain PvE situations, however, between Blade Storm & Sweeping Force stunning standard enemies, Hilt Strike & Force Stasis getting anyone in between, and Awe for any group mobs you're honestly perfectly fine in the stun department otherwise. I feel Force Clap would probably be better served in either Focus, and applying the stun to Zealous Leap, or moving it to Jedi Sentinel's Watchmen tree entirely(they can point blank leap).

 

Blade Barrier, an ability that gives you a "moderate" shield for Blade Storm is incredibly underwhelming. If the stickied thread is correct, 300-500 damage is nothing PvE-wise. Like the OP said in that thread, it won't even fully absorb one hit. This is a minor complaint, however, as there are more pressing inconsistencies in the talent trees. Overall just underwhelming rather than a stab at the overall design choice.

 

My last complaint would honestly be Sundering Throw in Focus. It lowers the cooldown and makes it so your Saber Throw ability applies 2 stacks of Sunder Armor. Wouldn't this make more sense in Vigilance considering it already has the Improved Sundering Strike talent? Or hell, in Defense again considering the way the end tree Defense ability(Guardian Slash, 5 stacks = more damage essentially) works? And now that I've mentioned Guardian Slash, wouldn't this end-tree ability belong more in Vigilance again because of Improved Sundering Strike? It feels like Plasma Brand could easily be modified to be for Defense/tanking, as a DoT with high threat generation(effectively allowing you to keep aggro on say a Strong while you focus tanking an Elite).

 

What exactly is defensive about Defense again? It's so early into the game's lifespan, but I already want to call for a change on the placement of these talents.

Edited January 9, 2012 by TeaSeeOh

[AdrianDmitruk]

I have to agree with this.

 

I am specced defense because, well, I'm a tank.

 

I had to take some incredibly worthless points (Force Clap, anyone?) to get to Guardian Slash. This meant I sacrificed Unremmitting to be able to maximize my chosen talent tree.

 

AS A TANK, I NEED UNREMITTING.

 

Please put defensive abilities in the DEFENSE tree. I shouldn't have to dilute myself with hybrid specs. kthxbai.

[Atamasama]

I have to agree with this.

 

I am specced defense because, well, I'm a tank.

 

I had to take some incredibly worthless points (Force Clap, anyone?) to get to Guardian Slash. This meant I sacrificed Unremmitting to be able to maximize my chosen talent tree.

 

AS A TANK, I NEED UNREMITTING.

 

Please put defensive abilities in the DEFENSE tree. I shouldn't have to dilute myself with hybrid specs. kthxbai.

How are you diluting yourself with a Vigilance/Defense spec?

 

I agree completely that it seems lame that you can spec mostly into a DPS tree and (arguably) be a better tank than if you went all the way up Defense. Especially since the developers specifically said that they didn't set up the trees to allow hybrids to excel at roles.

 

But if you're picking skills good for tanking in multiple trees, are you really diluting yourself? I think abilities that have little-to-no utility for tanks, like Profound Resolution, Force Clap (which sounds like a mystical STD), and Stasis Mastery are more of a dilution than many skills you can take in Vigilance. Honestly, the only skill in my current build I'd rather not have is Burning Blade, because I think that the DOT is pathetically low. On a side note, why is it that both Burning Blade and Blade Barrier are so terrible? It's almost like the developers hate Blade Storm and want to punish it.

[TeaSeeOh]

Diluting yourself? No. Diluting the true meaning of the talent trees? You bet.

 

I'd also say that Burning Blade is far superior to Blade Barrier for tanking, considering Soresu increases threat generation, so that meager damage/DoT turns into a pretty respectable threat generator.

 

Stasis Mastery is another thing I wanted to bring up. It seems more suited to a DPS tree, doesn't it? Same with Profound Resolution like stated by the poster above. Seems like something that should be more centered toward a PvP centered tree than a tank one, it's completely useless there.

 

And before anyone says the cliche "if it aint broke herp derp" you need to realize that design wise if you're never aiming for end-tree abilities for an efficient build, then it technically is broken. The only reason things are working out are because of player ingenuity.

 

Also I should clarify I'm not looking to put everything into Defense. I'm just looking for/wanting consistency where there is none.

Edited January 9, 2012 by TeaSeeOh

[ARowl]

Im rolling the dice and trying the Hybrid Tank. The Link the OP listed just makes sense to me...

 

If/when BW decides to fix it, ill just respec... no Biggy

[Atamasama]

I'd also say that Burning Blade is far superior to Blade Barrier for tanking, considering Soresu increases threat generation, so that meager damage/DoT turns into a pretty respectable threat generator.

I might be a little harsh on it, after all it's doing elemental damage which ignores armor, so it might be better than it seems. But still, the numbers seem low and I heard it will scale up to a whopping 250 points of damage at level 50.

 

Stasis Mastery is another thing I wanted to bring up. It seems more suited to a DPS tree, doesn't it? Same with Profound Resolution like stated above. Seems like something that should be more centered toward a PvP centered tree than a tank one.

You could use Stasis Mastery to turn Force Stasis into a really short CC, I guess. Force Stasis one enemy and attack the other. But it's really short so I'm not sure how useful it is, mostly I like Force Stasis because it can interrupt an enemy, and rather than use up Focus it actually gives me Focus.

 

The dev response to being "PvP-centered" I'm sure will be that they intend every tree to be viable for PvP and so sprinkle them gleefully with PvP skills.

 

And before anyone says the cliche "if it aint broke herp derp" you need to realize that design wise if you're never aiming for end-tree abilities for an efficient build, then it technically is broken. The only reason things are working out are because of player ingenuity.

Not only that, but the devs have stated in the past that their intention was to make the top tier skills so good that you'd be crazy not to get them. Yet, I'd rather have Overhead Slash than Guardian Slash as a tank, it's more DPS with the right spec and therefore more threat, and with Improved Sundering Strike I need no help maxing out Sunders. So at least with the Defense tree, I'd say the devs failed in their goal.

[JacynX]

I do not have the ability, nor will I with my current speec plan, but it seems to me that if you take Stasis Mastery it will set you up to use hilt strike/pommel strike (whichever one it is that requires the enemy to be incapacitated) and that kick you get at later levels. If you don't have the mastery then you have to do what I do and wait until just before force stasis ends to get some effect out of it and then use the strike to tack on some good extra damage.

[Dalnar]

The thing is. Originally, Guardians were supposed to be only tanks, not dps. Hence all their trees reflected that. After people wanted to dps with single saber (thanks btw) the trees were changed, but some abilities were too well designed to be simply removed. Hence the middle tree was probably meant for pvp - tanks and it reflects its abilities.

 

To me it looks like the OP wants to leech all trees of good talents and put them to defence - his tree. While gimping the other trees.

 

I can agree that defence tree could use few tweaks, but I would grant them more unique abilities and do not touch the other two trees which seems well made.

 

What I hate about that tree for example, is that there is not enough filter points that do not require soresu forum, making it very inflexible tree.

Edited January 10, 2012 by Dalnar

[DivisionBell]

First off I would like to state that I'm enjoying the guardian and don't fuid them especially underpowered. However, the defense tree is a mess and I completely agree with OP.

 

In my opinion all the defense talents above tier 4 are worthless as a tank. For example, Cyclonic sweeps and inner peace center around focus generation and, for tier 6 are seriously underwhelming! Guardian strike seems a waste when you have tier 1 Vigilance talents like improved sundering strike too. Protector seems very good for a tanks and worth the talent points.

 

I am currently running a fairly similar build to that shown in Seraphimm’s sticky post (well worth a read). This is heavy on the Vigilance tree and seems to take the most viable tanking talents. You use overhead strike as your big hitting focus dump.

 

Gear up heavy on the defense rating and it works well. I haven’t tried out the part set bonus (+20% improvement I believe) to blade barrier though which make that talent viable.

Edited January 10, 2012 by DivisionBell

[Doctorkaba]

To me, it feels as if they put PvP oriented talents into these trees. Unremitting is such an awesome pvp based talent for obvious reasons. Sure it would make one hell of a defensive talent for tanking, but I feel as if it were designed for pvp. Second win honestly isn't that good of a talent either way... 10% of your health healed every 2mins (1min 30secs talented)? We already have 3 defensive abilities, one that even restored 30% of our health (for a limited time of course).

 

Second wind is once again a more pvp oriented talent, imo. 4% damage reduction is pretty nice. Though if I do remember correctly in rift, a lot of the "dps" trees did have damage reduction talents in them. This was for two reasons. First is pve aoe situations. It seems like every dang boss EVER wanted to aoe the heck out of the raid! Also it was nice to take reduced damage in pvp situations.

 

Honestly protector should be in the defensive tree. that is just way to good to be a random pvp talent in a damage tree.

 

For pvp tankage I LOVE force clap! Now it is my view that pvp tanks should be the ones peeling, and man does a 2sec stun (talented 3secs from the shared tree Focus) help. This gives you tree stuns total and a spammable AoE 50% slow.

 

Blade barrier gives a bigger bubble than 500. In my level 40 gear, it gave about a 1k damage bubble (from what I saw). I tested this by using it before a hit that would normally do between 900-1000 damage and it said absorb so . It does seems to scale with gear, plus it is a no cost move after a force leap.

 

With improved sunder strike there isn't much of a need for the 2 stacks of sunder armor on lightsaber throw. True it would be cool to have, but it also might be considered a bit much.

 

Lastly, from my tanking experiences, the sole tanking tree won't have all the tanking talents (mainly talking about the 1-3 tiers). I lot of those talents should and can be used by other trees due to the fact that you get to spend 10 points in another tree. The other trees need a few talents beneficial to all trees (specifically imp. sunder assault, perseverance, swelling winds and second wind). These are beneficial to the Defense tree and to tanking in general, but they are placed in other trees because you get 10 extra points to spend. You can still get them, but its more specialized depending on where you are spending your points.

 

I really hope I made sense and wasn't babbling like a mad man xD! Also I do play a Sith Juggernaut and tried to switch the abilities names to the Guardian names but some might have leaked through.

 

P.S. In swtor I have been playing more pvp than pve (contrary to WoW) so please don't think I am upset in any way by what I consider to be PvP oriented talents.

Edited January 10, 2012 by Doctorkaba

[TeaSeeOh]

To me it looks like the OP wants to leech all trees of good talents and put them to defence - his tree. While gimping the other trees.

 

 

Also I should clarify I'm not looking to put everything into Defense. I'm just looking for/wanting consistency where there is none.

 

I'm just looking for more well-rounded trees, that are designed with an actual focus toward getting the end-tree talent(s). Right now, the Guardian talent trees are an absolute mess. No build that's generally agreed upon late game, PvP or PvE, has you getting the end-tree ability at all. The big argument toward Guardians being scary in PvP is setting them up to be a one-hit AoE wonder with Force Sweep. An ability you get at level 4 is more scary than an end-talent ability in any of the trees.

 

It's also not about "give everything to defense", it's about the tank tree not tanking.

Edited January 10, 2012 by TeaSeeOh

[Doctorkaba]

It seems like swtor isn't going for the lvl 50 moves equal pwnage. Makes some sense because level 50's are grouped with lvl 10s. They still have an advantage but lower levels do stand a chance.

[TeaSeeOh]

It seems like swtor isn't going for the lvl 50 moves equal pwnage. Makes some sense because level 50's are grouped with lvl 10s. They still have an advantage but lower levels do stand a chance.

 

Would make sense if they weren't already going to implement 50's into their own brackets. And I have yet to see a level 10 stand a chance versus a 50 with expertise gear, so I really don't know what you mean. Also, Acid Blade and Flachette Round would like to have a word with you.

 

Either way, has very little to do with the talent trees being an inconsistent mess, with very little to offer with their end-tree talents, in particular Defense/Immortal for Guardian/Juggernaut.

Edited January 10, 2012 by TeaSeeOh

[Drakks]

It seems like swtor isn't going for the lvl 50 moves equal pwnage. Makes some sense because level 50's are grouped with lvl 10s. They still have an advantage but lower levels do stand a chance.

 

I would disagree. At 50 there is a notable difference between hitting a level 50 player and a sub level 50 player -- and I'm talking orders of magnitude here, not just subtle variences. An attack that crits a 50 in similar gear as mine will land for 2-2.5k, while against a lower level can break 4k- and those characters can both be the same AC.

 

While the attacks themselves do not directly scale in and of themselves, the talents that drive them as well as mod/enhancement bonus change greatly the base values of the attack itself (+power), how often it crits(+crit), and the magnitude of those crits (+surge).

[Doctorkaba]

I would disagree. At 50 there is a notable difference between hitting a level 50 player and a sub level 50 player -- and I'm talking orders of magnitude here, not just subtle variences. An attack that crits a 50 in similar gear as mine will land for 2-2.5k, while against a lower level can break 4k- and those characters can both be the same AC.

 

While the attacks themselves do not directly scale in and of themselves, the talents that drive them as well as mod/enhancement bonus change greatly the base values of the attack itself (+power), how often it crits(+crit), and the magnitude of those crits (+surge).

 

Ok ok, I did make an exaggerated fallacy there, the point I was trying to make is not counting gear, a lower level can stand a chance against a higher level. The classes might stink until they get their bread and butter move (hidden strike and acid blade for op's). A geared level 50 is still going to own all, but its not that a regular level 50 will defeat a whole team of lower levels. Gear based versus level based in warzones at least.

[theothersteve]

You are either dramatically underestimating the amount of threat provided by Guardian Slash, or discussing Defense spec PVP. Either is a mistake.

 

Guardian Slash hits harder in a single GCD than any other ability we have, it's on a reasonably short cooldown, and it lets us get a full stack of sunders up nearly instantly on the pull. I fail to see how that is lackluster.

Edited January 10, 2012 by theothersteve

[Kuriostone]

You are either dramatically underestimating the amount of threat provided by Guardian Slash, or discussing Defense spec PVP. Either is a mistake.

 

Guardian Slash hits harder in a single GCD than any other ability we have, it's on a reasonably short cooldown, and it lets us get a full stack of sunders up nearly instantly on the pull. I fail to see how that is lackluster.

 

I'm using a hybrid tank spec, and have not tried Guardian Slash. I think it looks like a good talent, but getting to it makes me feel like I'm throwing away talent points compared to the mid-level vigilance tree talents.

[Kurugi]

Funny thing is if you look on the Juggernaut forum (our mirror) nobody over there is even remotely discussing doing a hybrid Imorrtal/Vengeance build. They all seem to be just sticking to their tanking tree (which is pretty much identical to ours) and they seem to be doing fine, well the ones that don't QQ anyway but they aren't QQing about talent trees anyway. Edited January 10, 2012 by Kurugi

[Drakks]

You are either dramatically underestimating the amount of threat provided by Guardian Slash, or discussing Defense spec PVP. Either is a mistake.

 

Guardian Slash hits harder in a single GCD than any other ability we have, it's on a reasonably short cooldown, and it lets us get a full stack of sunders up nearly instantly on the pull. I fail to see how that is lackluster.

 

Because it's been shown several times over that in terms of threat from damage - OH Slash > Guardian slash. The problem is it doesn't seem to have any additional threat modifier and has a rather long CD -- you're still using sundering more often than not, and sundering can apply 2 stacks alone.

[Kuriostone]

Funny thing is if you look on the Juggernaut forum (our mirror) nobody over there is even remotely discussing doing a hybrid Imorrtal/Vengeance build. They all seem to be just sticking to their tanking tree (which is pretty much identical to ours) and they seem to be doing fine, well the ones that don't QQ anyway but they aren't QQing about talent trees anyway.

 

My understanding was that the classes are mirrored but the mechanics of abilities are not identical. Is there any difference in mechanics that might contribute to this disparity?

[Drakks]

Funny thing is if you look on the Juggernaut forum (our mirror) nobody over there is even remotely discussing doing a hybrid Imorrtal/Vengeance build. They all seem to be just sticking to their tanking tree (which is pretty much identical to ours) and they seem to be doing fine, well the ones that don't QQ anyway but they aren't QQing about talent trees anyway.

 

That's just it. It's fine. It is not better on the order you would expect from a tanking tree versus a dps tree.

 

The problem is that you can also tank "fine" as a shield/vig hybrid in soresu -- and that shouldn't, imo, be a viable option for a HM main tank (and it currently is)

Edited January 10, 2012 by Drakks

[Doctorkaba]

That's just it. It's fine. It is not better on the order you would expect from a tanking tree versus a dps tree.

 

The problem is that you can also tank "fine" as a shield/vig hybrid in soresu -- and that shouldn't, imo, be a viable option for a HM main tank (and it currently is)

 

Not to be a douche but so what? As you said its just your opinion. I know people whose opinion is that hybrids should be viable. This seems to be one of those hybrid vs. not hybrid specs. The possibly best thing to do at this time is to wait and see how swtor evolves, whether is pro hybrid, not pro hybrid or indifferent. All in all its the developers opinion that matters.

[theothersteve]

I apologize for my bluntness before; this is a fairly groundbreaking discussion for me. Most of the people I've been analyzing with are Sith and I think the spec you guys are touting is something that we all missed over there.

 

Anyway, I'm going to go make waves on sithwarrior. Thanks!

[TeaSeeOh]

Funny thing is if you look on the Juggernaut forum (our mirror) nobody over there is even remotely discussing doing a hybrid Imorrtal/Vengeance build. They all seem to be just sticking to their tanking tree (which is pretty much identical to ours) and they seem to be doing fine, well the ones that don't QQ anyway but they aren't QQing about talent trees anyway.

 

Their forum has some of the same complaints, in particular their Force Scream Barrier/Bleed in Immortal/Vengeance being lack luster. They have their share of QQ threads about Juggs being terrible tanks as well. Overall meaningless to compare the two forums anyway.

 

Regardless,

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=96478&page=3

 

4th post, last quote: "I see a lot of talents in the Vengeance tree that would be a better fit in Immortal."

 

It isn't just me. The trees are pretty poorly optimized/designed, in my opinion at least.

Edited January 10, 2012 by TeaSeeOh

[Doctorkaba]

I do hope though (is they ever do organize the trees) that they don't remove all the DR talents from the dps trees. I likes me a beefy DPSer.