Ideas for Improving Guardian

[GarfieldJL]

Okay I have a few ideas for improving the class.

 

Blaster Deflection causing damage to enemies:

 

This is not a Defense tree skill idea. Sorseu is good at defense in game and in Star Wars canon lore, but Sorseu wasn't set up to use enemy blaster fire as a weapon, this is actually associated with Shien which is in the vigilence tree (Shien was developed specifically to do this, fun fact: Shien is related to Djem So). All saber styles could do this, but it Shien was the fighting style that was specifically developed to do this.

 

How it would work:

 

-. Whenever blaster fire is deflected, that deflection will cause the blaster fire to instead hit a random enemy currently involved in combat (taunt will not have any effect cause this is the result of a defensive move).

 

-. I know people would like this against force lightning, but a trick like that is only really seen in Force Unleashed so from a lore standpoint I can see a saber blocking lightning but not causing it to rebound.

 

- The blaster deflection will generate threat so it will help tanks keep aggie.

 

- You can't deflect a blaster bolt that has already been deflected.

 

 

Alternate Suggestion:

 

Double current base defense so it matches consular.

 

 

 

Other little suggestions:

 

Lessen cooldowns for Force Push, Force stasis, and Saber Ward. Would also suggest lowering cooldown on resolute since we really don't have that much in the way of CCs). Cut the cooldown time of kick by at least 20%.

 

 

 

Re-Work the Defense Tree so it can actually compete with other tanking trees.

 

 

Actually give Guardians a speed boost in combat so we can chase people down if needed. Since we don't have many ranged attacks, people can turn things into running engagements and kill us that way.

[JefferyClark]

1) Make the defense (tank) tree actually add to our defense. If you've looked @ Jedi Shadow and other tank trees, you see that they get increases to threat, endurance, and damage mitigation early and often (whereas similar abilities in the JKG trees do not exist or are very high in the trees); all on top of higher base mitigation. Our tank tree puts our focus back to where it would be if we weren't in Soresu.

 

2) Increase speed and add a base resistance, say 50%, to slows/roots (talents to a higher % chance of resistance in the tank tree?). Plain and simple, even with force leap, Guardians are still hampered by the fact that they can't move around and need a boost in that area.

 

3) Increase base damage mitigations. There is no reason why a Guardian tank should have less base damage mitigation than any other tank, especially when at least 1 other class with a higher mitigation is wearing light armor.

 

4) Give us a pull. This will help with #2 also, but tanks/dps-offtanks need some sort of pull to generate threat and do their jobs.

 

5) Increase threat generation more than it is currently while in Soresu. If I'm in Soresu, even as a dps-offtank, I should be able to hold aggro from all but the strongest (stupidest) dps'ers.

 

6) Reduce the number of skills I have, merge and increase damage/cooldowns if you have to. I should not have to have attacking abilities in the side bars because there are simply too many to hold in the 2 main bars.

 

A good example of this would be to combine opportune strike and pommel strike. Increase the damage of the 1 you keep and you're good.

 

Likewise, go through and make sure all the skills that you are keeping make sense. Change the ones that don't. For example, Plasma Brand's 9s cooldown but 12s DoT. Fix it.

 

 

7) Finally, and this is for all classes:

 

MAKE COLOR CRYSTALS STAT-LESS -- Change what we currently call color crystals into something else (perhaps emitters or focusing lenses) and add a new "color" slot for a stat-less color crystal. The same could be done with the other weapons by calling it a vibration cell or blaster gas canister.

 

Artifice would make emitters/focusing lenses, armstech vibration cells and blaster gas canisters.

 

Artifice would still make the color crystals, base colors (blue/green/red) and special colors (yellow/orange) would be trainable, and then you can still keep the magenta/etc colors as add-on schematics from drops and whatnot.

Edited February 18, 2012 by JefferyClark

[GarfieldJL]

I disagree with your color crystal idea, they should actually have stats (also tbh making new crystals isn't hard if you know an artificer).

 

Also at around artifice 400 we get the orange crystal schematic, and we get the yellow schematics throughout training.

 

Your other ideas seem good.

Edited February 18, 2012 by GarfieldJL

[JefferyClark]

Let's continue the crystal idea here so as not to derail the thread:

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=312316

Edited February 18, 2012 by JefferyClark

[AndantePhist]

if they buff guardians anymore... I'll become a god...

[lost_jedi]

I would like to see def work against force/tech which in my opinion would just about fix most defense/vig spec pvp builds. We aleady have awsome defense cooldowns. From what ive seen on my guardian some of the improvements could be:

1)Resolute cooldown reduction imo should be moved to one of the dps trees and a force kick 1sec/2sec reduction put in its place.

2) Sunder cooldown reduction would also be nice and i can see it replacing stasis mastery in the def tree which then could be moved to focus.

3)Blade barrier would be better suited in vig replacing the blade storm weak dot. In blade barriers spot place force pull to assist with tanking and control in pvp.

4) pommel strike/oppertune are useless and not used post 50 by any classes variation of the same copy/pasted attack. These skils were poorly thought out and allowing them in pvp would be devestating to all classes survivabilty.

[Paydroid]

The only thing the class could use is a better AOE tank ability. The easiest way to fix it IMO would be to make Cyclone Slash generate extra threat.

 

In PvP we more than hold up.

[Philmors]

The only thing the class could use is a better AOE tank ability. The easiest way to fix it IMO would be to make Cyclone Slash generate extra threat.

 

In PvP we more than hold up.

 

They can use a bit of an increase in mitigation or avoidance as well. Troopers and Shadows beat Jedi Knights at avoidance or mitigation if I recall. They also are better at AOE tanking. All of these problems can be fixed by fixing the defense tree for jedi knights.

Edited February 19, 2012 by Philmors

[bamsmacked]

if they buff guardians anymore... I'll become a god...

 

Buff anymore??

 

Are you saying Push resetting the CD on Leap was a buff?

[gabarooni]

I think a Saber Throw that disarms ranged attackers for 2-3 seconds forcing them to come closer would be great esp if you could boomerang it off 2-3 mobs , and I would like a force leap that bonuces you off nearby enemies for some extra AoE ive seen some mobs with this power and it seems to me it would work good for the guardian.

[VragonBral]

I think a Saber Throw that disarms ranged attackers for 2-3 seconds forcing them to come closer would be great esp if you could boomerang it off 2-3 mobs , and I would like a force leap that bonuces you off nearby enemies for some extra AoE ive seen some mobs with this power and it seems to me it would work good for the guardian.

 

Boomarang Saber-Throw +1

 

Force Leap doesn't really need the AoE.

 

 

Overall though, I think they need to fix how we get our skills, as it seems to take ages to get any of your abilities that are useful as a Guardian.

[VanguardXL]

I think what needs to be done is the Focus limitation removed from Soresu, and the entire Defense tree gutted to remove all the wasted talent points there just to offset the ridiculous Focus penalty. Bring the Defense tree into parity with other tanking trees, not just force tanks to offset the artificial limit that no other tank has.

Hell, Vanguard's get a DoT proc with there. No penalty to cell generation. No additional cell cost on abilities. Just an ability that adds to their threat by adding more damage.

 

I keep seeing post after post about "off-tanking" and Guardians being so awesome, yet having to be babysat by their groups so they can hold aggro. I also see troll after troll whining about "This isn't Wow" and "u cant AoE faceroll trololol".

 

You can. Take a Vanguard. The math's been done. A Vanguard has better mitigation, better defense, better single target and AoE threat. If there are multiple tank types, and one is clearly inferior to another, the inferior tank gets left behind. They serve no purpose. That is the direction the Guardian and Juggernaut are headed.

 

To those saying "it takes skill" or "LTP", 1337 skillz means nothing when there are tanks that can do everything you do, better, with less effort.

[GarfieldJL]

3)Blade barrier would be better suited in vig replacing the blade storm weak dot. In blade barriers spot place force pull to assist with tanking and control in pvp.

 

Disagree with that for two reasons.

1. The DoT is for both Overhead strike (which the defense tree doesn't have) and blade storm, it might also boost plasma brand too (can't remember and never tested with or without cause i like my current skill setup).

2. Part of the vigilence tree's core attack ability is to be able to bypass shields, you always use Overhead Strike or Plasma brand before blade storm. So you get 2 to 3 DoT's going all at the same time (Plasma Brand does a lot of DoT). So it may not seem like a lot, but believe me, when you get multiple DoT's going at the same time, it starts doing some damage.

 

I have an alternate suggestion on this that would fit better.

 

Move defiance (given how focus starved the defence tree always is) to the Defense tree and blade barrier to vigilence.

 

If you have the shien form, you generally don't have the issue of not enough focus. You are generally a focus generating powerhouse.

 

4) pommel strike/oppertune are useless and not used post 50 by any classes variation of the same copy/pasted attack. These skils were poorly thought out and allowing them in pvp would be devestating to all classes survivabilty.

 

I agree with you about pommel strike/opportune strike.

[damolawler]

I don't think a lot needs changing to guardians.

 

Guardians should get a little more mitigation, and some of the most important abilities come too late. Force-push should be obtained before level 20, as should force-stasis.

 

I also would like to see a way to deflect blaster bolts and especially force-lighting back to the caster. Anyone has been focused by 3 or 4 sorcerors and theitr damn force-lighting smap in pvp will know what I mean. I would just link it to sabre-ward, although it could be a new separate ability to be obtained at higher levels.

[MimicUnleashed]

Adding a rebounding ability for ranged attacks would seem overpowering in PvE content. Some enemies do their damage that way. If you wanted to do that you'd have to set a health % limit.

 

Redirect

For X seconds you send ranged attack damage back to the original target (maximum X% of the Guardian's total HP).

 

Now the HP % and the seconds would need tooling so no one could simply draw focus-fire in PvP and make people nuke themselves all the time, and so if a boss is slugging out ranged shots to stress the healers gear (first boss in HM Esseless) you don't break mechanics too much. Doable? Yes. Hard? VERY.

 

However I think adding a small heal (think kinetic shadows) to ripost might be a way to increase survival significantly. The issue is how much and do you want to limit it by seconds as well? The last thing I'd throw out there would be making Guardian slash a baseline simply to add another strike at lower levels. It could help the leveling process greatly for all specs, and honestly the top tier of tanking talents needs something more... spectacular. Maybe that redirect idea. Heck, even being able to multi-stasis would be good. Throw it up and you dangle 5 targets in the air. Could do wonders for threat and AOE tanking I'd say.

[tobarstep]

I'd like to see a grapple of some kind; Force Pull maybe. Personally, I'd replace Hilt Strike with it, which would put it at the same position in the skill tree that Vanguards get their charge ability. If not an actual grapple then do as one other poster suggested and give an acrobatic move that I see some force-using NPC's do, where you leap to one target, hit it, then leap back to your original target. The former would be easier to implement than the latter.

[ManmadeChaos]

I'd like to see a skill added that would allow cyclone slash apply the sundering effect to all targets it hits, obviously I don't know the math to balance it out, a aoe sunder would be nice.

[Marwynne]

The top Tiers of Defense need to be buffed and that tree should have some sprinkled threat generating boosts. Blade Barrier needs to state how much its bubble absorbs, and should scale.

 

Vigilance's DoTs need to scale with something. Zen Strike needs to be reworked.

 

If it were up to me, I'd love for a way to "burn" those Sunders on a target. Like sacrificing it all to double the armour reduction for X seconds.

 

For Focus... Zealous Leap should at least be increased to 15m. And add in a second ability to all the skills that boost Force Sweep. Just to keep them from being too reliant on just one skill.

[Marqhill]

I do just fine with my guardian. The only thing I'd like to see added is maybe a skill where saber throw becomes an interrupt. But I don't think that's absolutely necessary. All in all I think the class is fine and balances quite well against any other class in the game under the proper circumstances. In equal gear I'd go toe to toe with any individual other class in the game with a solid chance of coming out on top.

 

I used to have a lot, and I mean A LOT of problems, with ranged classes. However, I discovered through respecialization and play testing that almost all of my issues regarding problems I was having with ranged classes were L2P issues. At least in PvP anyway. I've never had serious problems with my class in PvE.

 

Once I started spamming freezing force at every opportunity my problems with ranged classes virtually disappeared over night. Then I respec'ed to make Freezing Force free and now I'm reasonably positive that people are crying OP.

 

I dropped the defensive tree because I couldn't depend on proper support from my team mates in PUG's so I went with a DPS tree. My experience with the Defense tree was a positive one all in all though as long as I had a good healer. I can't really agree with this call for overall buffs. I would just like to see Jedi Knights/Sith Warriors get a ranged interrupt.

 

Oh yeah! And give Sentinels/Marauders a 30 meter range on their saber throw! A 10 Meter Saber Throw? What on Earth is THAT garbage!

[The_FeniX]

The top Tiers of Defense need to be buffed and that tree should have some sprinkled threat generating boosts. Blade Barrier needs to state how much its bubble absorbs, and should scale.

It doesn't need a buff, it needs to be reworked. Compare it to Tier 6 of the Vanguard tree (10% shield chance) or Tier 6-7 of the Shadow Tree which gives heals and a 7.5 second AOE high damage, threat, and slow ability.

 

Shadows and Vanguards gets access to better damage (threat) and mitigation talents the higher they get into their tanking tree. Guardians get stuck with loads of Focus management skills BW thinks we need because of Soresu's Focus reduction. This isn't an issue even when going 14/27/0, so I can't even understand why they think it's needed, unless their Guardian beta testers were just lazy.

 

Blade Barrier is about the only decent ability in the tree, but the ability itself sucks and even the 20% boost from the 4 piece bonus (which I hate having as a Vig tank) doesn't save it.

 

If BW renamed Vigiliance to Defense, could you really look at the tree and think it's anything else (even though it seems to be a PvP inspired spec)? The only "bad" thing about Vig is the last tier ability being straight DPS (which mirrors the Defense tree). But, put "High Threat" into Plasma Brand and you've got an actual Tanking tree that would need to be reworked less than Defense to make it compete with other Tank classes.

 

Not to say Full Defense isn't a viable tank spec. I should know, I used it for HMs and our current MT uses it for HM ops. But Vig just offers so much over it and has the added bonus of letting a tank switch to DPS gear and put up respectable numbers without running to the respec NPC.

[GarfieldJL]

Adding a rebounding ability for ranged attacks would seem overpowering in PvE content. Some enemies do their damage that way. If you wanted to do that you'd have to set a health % limit.

 

Redirect

For X seconds you send ranged attack damage back to the original target (maximum X% of the Guardian's total HP).

 

Now the HP % and the seconds would need tooling so no one could simply draw focus-fire in PvP and make people nuke themselves all the time, and so if a boss is slugging out ranged shots to stress the healers gear (first boss in HM Esseless) you don't break mechanics too much. Doable? Yes. Hard? VERY.

 

However I think adding a small heal (think kinetic shadows) to ripost might be a way to increase survival significantly. The issue is how much and do you want to limit it by seconds as well? The last thing I'd throw out there would be making Guardian slash a baseline simply to add another strike at lower levels. It could help the leveling process greatly for all specs, and honestly the top tier of tanking talents needs something more... spectacular. Maybe that redirect idea. Heck, even being able to multi-stasis would be good. Throw it up and you dangle 5 targets in the air. Could do wonders for threat and AOE tanking I'd say.

 

I stated an attack can't be deflected twice. That means even if an enemy has reflective shields on attacks, if their attack rebounds they take damage, not the guardian.

 

Remember our base deflection is only 5%, and I think I said random enemies.

 

That means that (assuming no defense modifiers are in play) that 1 in 20 blaster attacks will be deflected. Then assuming the blaster shot is deflected and say there is X number of enemies the chance the attacker will get hit by their own fire is 1/X.

 

That means the chance that a particular individual will get hit by their own fire in a same lvl fight with no defence modifier and accuracy is 100% would be:

 

1/(X * 20) = chance of getting hit with own weapon fire.

 

Let's say there are defense modifiers in play equation would be: Y = defense chance in this equation, X = members in attacking party.

 

chance of getting hit by own weapon fire = Y/X.

 

Since we don't exactly get 100% deflection rate for maybe more than a second or two(opening of saber ward has 2 seconds of 100% defense), the only time this would be seriously destructive in a PvE or PvP setting is if the Jedi Knight has a rather large level advantage over what he is fighting.

 

I don't know about you, but if an idiot level 10 attacks a level 50 guardian or 3 or 4 of these low level players attack a lvl 50 guardian, then quite frankly they deserve to get blasted by their own blaster fire.

 

If an idiot guardian of low level charges a high level opponent, then quite frankly they deserve to get filled full of holes.

 

The fact our base deflection % is so low, means that this idea isn't even remotely overpowering. Heck our base deflection could be doubled and it wouldn't be overpowered because accuracy boosters do more to boost accuracy than defense mods boost defense.

Edited February 21, 2012 by GarfieldJL

[Quething]

I like the idea but I'm not sure about the aggro proc. Some guards are DPS, after all, and we don't have any kind of native threat drop so keeping aggro down is already tricky for them. Perhaps it should generate aggro only in Soresu form...

 

Speaking of which. If they're really attached to the Soresu Focus hit as some kind of weird balancing factor to keep DPS from freely getting the oh-so-overpowered defensive bonuses of Soresu that really aren't particularly powerful at all, we could just put a single talent on the second tier of Defense that removes the penalty, and leave it on the base form. It would still clear our tree of all those crappy Focus talents and give room for actual threat and protection augments, and let them keep their DPS shackle on the form for non-tanks.

 

Like a talent that makes armor partially effective against Elemental damage, or something, perhaps? We're too squishy, but it's not because our shields or armor aren't good. It's because shields and armor themselves aren't that good.

[Cerion]

When people ask for a 'pull' do they mean Force Pull, or a pulling skill? If the latter, isn't Saber Throw a viable pulling skill?

[GarfieldJL]

I like the idea but I'm not sure about the aggro proc. Some guards are DPS, after all, and we don't have any kind of native threat drop so keeping aggro down is already tricky for them. Perhaps it should generate aggro only in Soresu form...

 

Speaking of which. If they're really attached to the Soresu Focus hit as some kind of weird balancing factor to keep DPS from freely getting the oh-so-overpowered defensive bonuses of Soresu that really aren't particularly powerful at all, we could just put a single talent on the second tier of Defense that removes the penalty, and leave it on the base form. It would still clear our tree of all those crappy Focus talents and give room for actual threat and protection augments, and let them keep their DPS shackle on the form for non-tanks.

 

Like a talent that makes armor partially effective against Elemental damage, or something, perhaps? We're too squishy, but it's not because our shields or armor aren't good. It's because shields and armor themselves aren't that good.

 

We could the threat generation be restricted to sorseu, but from a canonical standpoind if this was a skill tree skill, using blaster fire to deflect blaster bolts at enemies is actually the reason shien was developed. I didn't want to have this tied down in a skill tree, but if it was, it would have to go to vigilence from a canonical standpoint because of it being the core reason that Shien was developed in the first place.

 

I do agree with you on the need for elemental protections in the defense tree.

[JefferyClark]

It doesn't need a buff, it needs to be reworked. Compare it to Tier 6 of the Vanguard tree (10% shield chance) or Tier 6-7 of the Shadow Tree which gives heals and a 7.5 second AOE high damage, threat, and slow ability.

 

Shadows and Vanguards gets access to better damage (threat) and mitigation talents the higher they get into their tanking tree. Guardians get stuck with loads of Focus management skills BW thinks we need because of Soresu's Focus reduction. This isn't an issue even when going 14/27/0, so I can't even understand why they think it's needed, unless their Guardian beta testers were just lazy.

 

Blade Barrier is about the only decent ability in the tree, but the ability itself sucks and even the 20% boost from the 4 piece bonus (which I hate having as a Vig tank) doesn't save it.

 

If BW renamed Vigiliance to Defense, could you really look at the tree and think it's anything else (even though it seems to be a PvP inspired spec)? The only "bad" thing about Vig is the last tier ability being straight DPS (which mirrors the Defense tree). But, put "High Threat" into Plasma Brand and you've got an actual Tanking tree that would need to be reworked less than Defense to make it compete with other Tank classes.

 

Not to say Full Defense isn't a viable tank spec. I should know, I used it for HMs and our current MT uses it for HM ops. But Vig just offers so much over it and has the added bonus of letting a tank switch to DPS gear and put up respectable numbers without running to the respec NPC.

 

I thought the same thing. Vig spec needs less reworking to be a tank spec than the Def spec does.