Getting the right PvP enhancements for your DPS Guardian.

[Marqhill]

So... just so you know. For all you other Battle Master DPS guardians out there something that you may or may not have noticed is that the enhancements in our Battle Master DPS gear aren't all that great. In my personal opinion they actually kinda blow. Well as it turns out a friend of mine pointed out that with some left over champion commendations and some clever mod swapping you can actually take the matter into your own hands and get the stats that you actually need to put out max damage. There are enhancements that you can get from the scoundrel champion PvP gear that greatly increase Guardian DPS. In the Champion Enforcer Gloves the Enchancement actually has Endurance, Power and Surge. I forget the exact numbers but it's a pretty significant amount of each and whether you're Focus Spec'ed or Vigilance then it is a huge help to either.

 

Our Battle Master DPS gear is currently loaded with Accuracy and Crititcal. Which isn't terrible. It's just that when we lose the Power that our champion gear used to have in favor of Critical then we're trading our sustained damage for an increase in the consistency of our burst damage. It seems to cap off at around 30% which isn't that bad. It's actually great for Focus. Because it increase the critical hit chance of your huge hits that you get from your force attacks. Force Attacks are inarguably your bread and butter in the Focuse skill tree. In Vigilance however, you really depend on a mix of force attacks and Melee attacks both of which are assisted by Power more so than Crit. Also, Force Rush (Plasma Brand or Overhead Slash give Dispatch or Blade Storm a 60% bonus to Crit chance) is going to be something that you SHOULD be spamming. So your most of your critical hit damage is going to come from Blade Storm and Dispatch. At that point, in my mind it's less important to stack Critical in Vigilance than it is in Focus and your stat priority SHOULD be in improving your sustained damage. Power is the best most obvious stat for inmproving your sustained damage as even a moderate amount of power gives you a pretty decent improvement in your base damage. Surge as well should be seen as a method of improving your sustained damage because your critical hits that you get from Force Rush are pretty much guaranteed. So less focus is required on making it crit and more focus should be put into making it do as much damage as possible when it does. Power and Surge are sort of a win win for Vigilance because you're increasing your base damage with Power and then getting an additional increase from surge. So your already increased damage is doing even MORE damage when you critically hit.

 

Now, you will lose some stats. You will essentially be trading accuracy and crit for power and surge. In PvP I think this is a fair trade off. I've already talked about how it isn't entirely necessary to max out your critical hit chance but Accuracy becomes a whole other issue. Accuracy WOULD be a great stat for PvP if more people were stacking Defense as a stat. For every point of accuracy that you are over 100% you ignore that much of your targets defense. The problem there being that most DPS classes and healers have absolutely no defense above the base 5% or 10% if you're a Consular/Inquisitor. Additionally, even if they have their Defense maxed out then that's just a little less than meaningless against Force/Tech attacks. So even if you're swinging at a target wtih maxed out defense all of your melee attacks may miss but as soon as you open up with your force attacks you're right back to hitting them full on. As such, I personally find it to be MUCH better to have either stats (Surge or Power) over Accuracy in PvP.

 

I don't know too much about how the Focus skill tree is affected by swapping accuracy/crit for power/surge but I would love to get some insight from some of our frienldy "Focus Bombers" on the forum. I for one plan to buy as many of these enhancements as I can get my hands on.

 

Hope this helps!

[Esquire]

Nice info, thank you for posting this.

[Marqhill]

Nice info, thank you for posting this.

 

Sure thing buddy. Like I said, hope it helps.

[Herew]

The devs finally even admitted themselves that there is way to much acc on top-tier gear. The problem is not realizing that you need to swap these enhancements. The problem is actually swapping them for the right one, since this basically requires you to a, do raids and b, win the rolls, cause everyone wants these. And yes Power>>all other secondary stats due to the horrible diminishing returns and it's shear awesomeness. Edited March 4, 2012 by Herew

[Silentcricket]

Defense Tree you want + Defense Rating mixed with Shielding.

 

Vigi Tree you want Acc and power

 

Focus Tree you want Crit and surge.

 

The trees themselves spell out what enchantments you should be infesting in. Gearing accordingly to your tree should dramaticly help your class.

[Dee-Jay]

Defense Tree you want + Defense Rating mixed with Shielding.

 

Vigi Tree you want Acc and power

 

Focus Tree you want Crit and surge.

 

The trees themselves spell out what enchantments you should be infesting in. Gearing accordingly to your tree should dramaticly help your class.

 

No, you are wrong!

 

Please don't ever post again.

 

 

Anyone who thinks you need to stack Crit as Focus DPS must have some sort of mental handicap. Felling Blow already gives you 100% Crit chance on your biggest hitter. Making more Crit not all that useful.

 

As Focus DPS you want to Stack Power and Surge, and Adept Enhancements are the best place to get them.

 

 

Medic Gloves are the only Source of those level 24 Adept Enhancements I've found so far.

 

I'm curious as to weather there is a source for level 25 Adept Enhancements outside of Nightmare raids.

[KiranK]

Defense Tree you want + Defense Rating mixed with Shielding.

 

Vigi Tree you want Acc and power

 

Focus Tree you want Crit and surge.

 

The trees themselves spell out what enchantments you should be infesting in. Gearing accordingly to your tree should dramaticly help your class.

 

If you knew anything about PvP then you'd know that defense and shield are worthless, regardless of spec. Tech and force attacks can't be defended or shielded and special attacks have 100% base accuracy. That's the bulk of the attacks you'll see in PvP. Always take damage gear as a Guardian tank for PvP.

[Marqhill]

Well defense and shield aren't EXACTLY worthless. Here's the problem though. As the previous poster stated there are far too many attacks that CANNOT be defended against. So your defense stat is completely worthless against all of those attacks. These are attacks that do Force or Tech damage. I know as a guardian about half of my attacks that I use in my regular rotation are force attacks. As well all of my DOT's are elemental damage. So defense doesn't do much of anything against most of my attacks. Even so, the defense stat goes against my accuracy which is sufficiently high for most of my attacks to make stacking defense not particularly worthwhile. The only time that I ever see someone block, parry or dodge is when they've burnt a defensive cool down. Other than that it's free reign on them. Accuracy WOULD be a much better stat to have in PvP if Defense wasn't so bad that it is NEAR worthless. It's not completely worthless but it's close enough to worthless that it doesn't matter.

 

As it concerns shield it's pretty much the exact same thing. Shields don't work against elemental damage but they can absorb a set percentage of any other damage that you take. Now the issue here is that it only works a certain percentage of the time and even then it only absorbs a certain percentage of damage AND to get your shield to function at its best you have to stack 2 different stats (shield and absorb). You'll then be taking both of these stats instead of taking damage dealing stats which sort of compounds the issue. So now you're stacking multiple stats to get the chance to possibly absorb some damage sometimes... Where instead I can take surge and power and guarantee that I will do more damage all the time.