Critian Posted February 19, 2012 Share Posted February 19, 2012 hello, i am guardian and i kinda have issues with tanking, i want to hear peoples thoughs and maybe guides on how to turn Guardian in to dps. Level 50 of course. thanks /Critian Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dee-Jay Posted February 19, 2012 Share Posted February 19, 2012 It's simple, spec into either Vigilance or Focus and DPS. Vigilance is a very straight-forward spec, rotating different instant attacks (and Masterstrike) while Focus DPS requires more proc management. Both deal decent damage, although I'm not sure how they compare to other DPS specs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Critian Posted February 19, 2012 Author Share Posted February 19, 2012 is it effective in Ops? FPs? PVP? Quests? (if you know) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VanguardXL Posted February 19, 2012 Share Posted February 19, 2012 From everything I've seen, Vig is perfectly viable DPS for Ops and so-on. Just be aware that you are going to encounter pushback unless you're in a guild or have a regular group. People have the mindset that Guardian equals Tank, and that Guardian DPS is "gimped." Impossible to prove since there are no DPS meters, and geared properly Vig Guardians do just fine. As for Focus, it's almost exclusively a PvP end-game spec. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GarfieldJL Posted February 19, 2012 Share Posted February 19, 2012 (edited) It's simple, spec into either Vigilance or Focus and DPS. Vigilance is a very straight-forward spec, rotating different instant attacks (and Masterstrike) while Focus DPS requires more proc management. Both deal decent damage, although I'm not sure how they compare to other DPS specs. Uh why in the heck are you using master strike? It really isn't a useful attack for Vigilence, it generates no focus and you really can cycle through cooldowns to get back to your main attacks fairly quickly. Heck Force sweep actually becomes a focus generator for the vigilence tree. While I may use master strike every once in a while, it really isn't an essential attack for the vigilence tree and often really isn't worth wasting the time to use. Also DPS Guardians can't provide the same sustained damage as other classes, that is true. However, our mainstay attacks like plasma brand (despite some people thinking it's a waste of time) actually can punch through shields and ignore many damage reductions. While if the enemy is temp invulnerable this doesn't do much, but against enemies with more standard shielding, this is means we can do damage while other people are still hitting the shields. Another advantage is we don't generate as much threat as other DPSers and the tank often doesn't have us pulling aggie away from them. A further note, even if you are not a tank, gear yourself with some defense and shield boosts. A good selling point to go on a FP is if you can successfully say that you can off-tank if the real tank is in trouble. This can actually be a real selling point. Additional Note: Since this class isn't popular to be on high level FPs and HMs, be courteous to players and help lower level players with their FPs. This can be rewarding in the fact that they are more apt to invite you on missions later and put up with the fact that our class is underpowered compared to someone of another class at equal level. Edited February 19, 2012 by GarfieldJL Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mystry Posted February 19, 2012 Share Posted February 19, 2012 (edited) Uh why in the heck are you using master strike? It really isn't a useful attack for Vigilence, it generates no focus and you really can cycle through cooldowns to get back to your main attacks fairly quickly. Heck Force sweep actually becomes a focus generator for the vigilence tree. While I may use master strike every once in a while, it really isn't an essential attack for the vigilence tree and often really isn't worth wasting the time to use. Also DPS Guardians can't provide the same sustained damage as other classes, that is true. However, our mainstay attacks like plasma brand (despite some people thinking it's a waste of time) actually can punch through shields and ignore many damage reductions. While if the enemy is temp invulnerable this doesn't do much, but against enemies with more standard shielding, this is means we can do damage while other people are still hitting the shields. Another advantage is we don't generate as much threat as other DPSers and the tank often doesn't have us pulling aggie away from them. A further note, even if you are not a tank, gear yourself with some defense and shield boosts. A good selling point to go on a FP is if you can successfully say that you can off-tank if the real tank is in trouble. This can actually be a real selling point. Additional Note: Since this class isn't popular to be on high level FPs and HMs, be courteous to players and help lower level players with their FPs. This can be rewarding in the fact that they are more apt to invite you on missions later and put up with the fact that our class is underpowered compared to someone of another class at equal level. You're straight up wrong about Master Strike. Its easily our hardest hitting ability, you should spam that **** whenever its up. There is a reason deep vigilance talents let OS and PB refresh the CD of it. And if you waste gear stats with tank stats, you can expect to never be invited to a raid. Tank or DPS. Pick one. Edited February 19, 2012 by Mystry Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GarfieldJL Posted February 19, 2012 Share Posted February 19, 2012 (edited) You're straight up wrong about Master Strike. Its easily our hardest hitting ability, you should spam that **** whenever its up. There is a reason deep vigilance talents let OS and PB refresh the CD of it. And if you waste gear stats with tank stats, you can expect to never be invited to a raid. Tank or DPS. Pick one. My setup works just fine thank you, and it's actually made the difference in FPs between success and failure. I've managed to step into a tank role in FPs when the tank managed to get themselves killed. I may not kill things as fast as a Sentinel or a Commando, but I generally am ignored by the enemy meaning a tank doesn't have to worry about me pulling away aggie, my damage ignores shields, and I can survive beatings that a straight up DPS guardian whom throws everything to crit, power, or surge can't. I built my gear the way I did, specifically for the fact I often end up in situations where I have to off-tank. I can get away with the fact this class doesn't do as much damage because I can tell people I can off-tank or bluff being a tank, in an emergency. While there is one point I would like to move in my skill tree, I really don't think it's that big of a deal. Finally, I built my gear the way I did cause for my playing style it works, it lets me finish missions and come back alive. Dieing in this game gets extremely expensive, and honestly I'm on a budget. Anyways, my gear isn't put together haphazard, all the upgrades are purples cept one blue 50. I also have 1 purple 48 cause the 50 version is actually not as good as the 48 version. Further, all my gear is orange gear. I have found, that it is a real balancing act though, there seems to be a sweet spot (which I may have found on accident), that if you get stuff set up just right this kind of mixed gear works quite well. Upset that balance, and you end up in serious trouble. For example, I have found that I have to have a critical boosting saber crystal and it can't be an endurance crystal (power might work but haven't seen many of those). If I use an endurance crystal my damage starts going downhill and I get clobbered despite the boost to hp. What really annoys me is there isn't any good upgrades that boost both defense and power at the same time. Backstory: I got full sith warden in my first maelstrom run (which no else needed the gear in the group) including the boots and gloves, I started to switch things since I'm a dps, and found that suddenly I was able to do more damage but had an increase in survival. I was like hey this works, so I decided to keep the same mix as I leveled and now I'm a lvl 50. It was a pain being able to maintain the balancing act though. Edited February 19, 2012 by GarfieldJL Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FalmeseReb Posted February 19, 2012 Share Posted February 19, 2012 From everything I've seen, Vig is perfectly viable DPS for Ops and so-on. Just be aware that you are going to encounter pushback unless you're in a guild or have a regular group. People have the mindset that Guardian equals Tank, and that Guardian DPS is "gimped." Impossible to prove since there are no DPS meters, and geared properly Vig Guardians do just fine. As for Focus, it's almost exclusively a PvP end-game spec. Not true, I do fine in ops/hm ops with my focus guardian. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GarfieldJL Posted February 19, 2012 Share Posted February 19, 2012 Not true, I do fine in ops/hm ops with my focus guardian. You do fine until Bioware decides to nerf something having to do with Force Sweep. I didn't go the focus tree route because it is a one trick pony. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AndantePhist Posted February 19, 2012 Share Posted February 19, 2012 You do fine until Bioware decides to nerf something having to do with Force Sweep. I didn't go the focus tree route because it is a one trick pony. You severely underestimate how hard focus abilities hit for. If all my force exhaustion ticks crit, thats 6k damage right there... Bladestorm crits for 3-3.5k for me Zealous leap crits for 2.5k+ Not to mention the 5-6k "one trick pony" forcesweep crits. All in PVE raid buffed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elyx Posted February 19, 2012 Share Posted February 19, 2012 I'd love to see the data showing that DPS guards do less then the "other" DPS classes in general. the actual timed tests that I've actually seen (rather then just reading non-substantiated rumors) show DPS Guards above quite few of the other "DPS" classes. This does not count PvP either...too many variables, and a very narrow component of the game. Screenshots of PvP damage table are about as factual as the Creature from the black lagoon. you can take the best DPS class in the game, give it to a complete newb, and they'll show poor numbers. I think the impression that guards to less damage may come from their limitations in Immortal spec. But the OP was asking about DPS specs, not Tanking spec. But I have VERY high doubts that the other tank classes do 2-3x more damage. that's pure dramatic speculation. Your talking about a game that is developed, tested, and played regularly by the Dev's and their teams. there's a blue quote stating specifically that they have played and ran every aspect of the game on every class. one class doing literally twice as much damage as another is as glaring as a hole in your foot. there is simply no way that we do half the damage of the other tank classes. If you have data that shows this I'm all ears (no PvP screenies plz...) But we certainly do less then the others, I wont argue that. And Bio is working on resolving that issue. But i ramble about tank specs....to the OP: you will do fine. The biggest hurdle you will face is ignorance, plain and simple. I'm not a fan of DPS meters, but sometimes i wish I could have one just to shut up a few peeps. but the truly ignorant would still live in their little caves... You guys aren't ignorant. it's the ones who walk around thinking that a guard in a DPS spec is worse then other DPS specs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Skirion Posted February 19, 2012 Share Posted February 19, 2012 Hi i think the dmg of the Jedi Guardian is quite good. I tried to make a little youtube Video -> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GarfieldJL Posted February 19, 2012 Share Posted February 19, 2012 (edited) You severely underestimate how hard focus abilities hit for. If all my force exhaustion ticks crit, thats 6k damage right there... Bladestorm crits for 3-3.5k for me Zealous leap crits for 2.5k+ Not to mention the 5-6k "one trick pony" forcesweep crits. All in PVE raid buffed. Crit, crit, crit... Okay so you are totally relying on critical hits instead of sustained damage. All well and good, till you got hit with the surge nerf. Edited February 19, 2012 by GarfieldJL Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AndantePhist Posted February 20, 2012 Share Posted February 20, 2012 (edited) Crit, crit, crit... Okay so you are totally relying on critical hits instead of sustained damage. All well and good, till you got hit with the surge nerf. This is after surge nerf... I have 42% chance to crit with force attacks with sage/smuggler buff. I also have 105% crit multiplier for force, and 75% crit multiplier for weapon attacks. L2 gear properly. Edited February 20, 2012 by AndantePhist Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vaesis Posted February 20, 2012 Share Posted February 20, 2012 Guard DPS is insane for a supposed tank-class. Me and my other half have been levelling together, him as a Guard and me on a Shadow. When we started, I thought since I was the stabby stabby-kinda girl I was bound to out-dps him. Not true. It's insane. Guards keep good aggro, can do mad dps and have a good dose of survivability. There's little they can't do from what I've seen. Makes me feel proper "bluh" when my top-hit has not passed 2.3k yet (level 40) and his is around 2.6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grandmasterslash Posted February 20, 2012 Share Posted February 20, 2012 (edited) Here's my take on Vig DPS(for me anyways). I leveled, and started doing ops specced Vig initially. I didn't have great gear(Champion gear/Oranges with the mods from dailies), and I found the rotation to be a bit unwieldy. I liked the utility sure, but I never really felt like I did much damage. Then our guild's tank quit due to RL issues (possible eviction>this game), and I stepped up to tank. Even though I was more or less ejected into this position, I did my research and tested out different specs, rotations, and ways to gear. Eventually I found my groove and tanked pretty much everything up to about the halfway point of Nightmare ops. My tank gear is all Rakata or Augmented crafting items, besides my weapon. Recently, we are gearing up a Vanguard tank and I have decided to switch back to DPS. For my dps gear, I have picked up all Columi pieces, with about 4 being Rakata. Not only does it feel like I hit 3x as hard because of my new gear(I figure because this class seems to scale with gear so well), but honestly the dps rotation is an absolute JOKE compared to the tanking rotation. I find my DPS to be very high and have amazing utility to the raid. TL;DR: Vigilance's DPS does seem a bit underwhelming at first, but once you get some gear(Columi/Champion or above) and really get used to the rotation, you will start to see some really impressive damage. ...Oh, and whenever you use Master Strike, cancel it IMMEDIATELY after the first two hits! I cannot stress this enough to starting Vig DPS Guardians! Edited February 20, 2012 by Grandmasterslash Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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