Word on the street says that "Protection" in Warzones isn't important....

[Frisemort]

Protect your healer and let the noobs brag about their loldps, good players will know you're doing it right.

[ShadowOfVey]

If someone says protection isn't important they are bad.

 

That's all you really need to know.

[vimm]

Warzones are all about getting top damage and least deaths! Edited March 27, 2012 by vimm

[SinnedWill]

IMO the best pvp tanks are tank-specced shadows/sins, albeit, some good non tank-specced powertechs can really help out with guarding - rage juggs tend to be far too squishy to bother with guarding. The reason I say this is because tankasins/shadows and non-tanking powertechs can still dish out some dirty dps while they guard.

 

Furthermore, I actually disagree with others when they say that guarding someone as an undergeared 50 is the best thing for you to do because this causes you to be EXTREMELY SQUISHY when someone drops AoE nuke damage down upon both you and your guarded target. As a 31 madness sorc, I've gotten far too many 2-for-1 kills by putting DoT's on a fresh tank-specced p-tech/jugg that was guarding either a healer or a marauder/sentinel and using a recklessnes/relic empowered Death Field (I've actually gotten 5k damage medal in this manner on two occasions due to the fresh-guarder taking the majority of the damage from the guarded player in addition to the damage he took from being in death field's radius). End result is the fresh-tank guarding being killed VERY QUICKLY, leaving me with a squishy target at about half health to finish off solo.

 

So, beware of AoE's.

Edited March 27, 2012 by SinnedWill

[mclammitys]

Do +500k protection and join my club =)

 

and tell the guy he sucks

[MrXen]

Okay, so I just got out of a Warzone [Huttball] where I had like 70K Protection and one guy on my team said that protection isn't important.

 

Before the match, this same dude told me that I needed to get better gear. I told him that I just turned L50 yesterday and I am still working on getting the commendations. I told him even though I am undergeared, I still haven't been out-tanked and that I always lead my team in protection.

 

I said it like this:

--------------

 

Me: Despite that, I still haven't been out tanked! I always lead my teams in protection. So what does that tell ya?

 

Him: That protection is situational lol

 

---------------

 

He then went on and called me out for only having 30K damage the prior Huttball match and so on.

 

 

So yeah, is he right? Does Protection and by extention, being a tank is useless in PvP Warzones? The way he talked, it is as if only Healers and Damage is important. Is he right?

 

 

I ask this because my character is a tank and that is what I specialize in. I am equipped for taking damage, not giving it. Am I doing it wrong?

 

 

Quite the contrary. Damage and healing tell nearly nothing about usefulness in a team. Healing is a bit more "realistic" since healing requires hurt teammates (so is always helpful) but can be skewed by several classes/abusing silly mechanics and spoofing those numbers (such as purposefully hurting yourself to heal it etc).

 

 

Damage is about the most meaningless meter in any video game out there. AoE'ers automatically win this race, with the bigger numbers going to the one who "hit the most targets" and the usefulness of that damage being nearly 0 since hitting 5 people with 300 damage is worthless compared to hitting a low hp tank, or a healer for 1500 damage. Instead of looking at damage, its better to look at kills, and instead of looking at kills, its better to look at killing blows. (in terms of metrics)

 

 

Killing blows tells a much more realistic story about who was being useful and who wasn't. Sure some guy can hit 500k damage, with 1 killing blow, 20"kills" and 10 deaths, but in reality how useful is that? Especially when he was in all likelihood spamming AoE's or DoTing their entire team via tab-target. But if you look at killing blows, AT LEAST you know that the person with the highest KB's removed X amount of enemies from gameplay, making it easier for objectives to be done (at minimum).

 

 

Protection is the same, AT LEAST you know that someone was being protected for X damage by some tank, allowing them to survive longer and making it easier for objectives.

 

And the same goes for objective points, AT LEAST you know that the highest obj point player was in close proximity to the objective and therefore at MINIMUM provided meat shielding (someone the enemy had to kill or deal with) to that objective.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Damage is the worst metric to go by, closely followed by healing. I've lost plenty of matches where we had all the top numbers in damage/healing, but I've never lost a match where we had a large advantage in kills/killing blows or a huge advantage in obj points etc.

[furiousferret]

I personally feel that the Guard philosophy that people have is way off. As a Jugg, I lose some of my capabilities if I want to effectively guard a healer. Force Charge will put me out of range, and a standard attack will probably put me out of range. Furthermore, if I stand next to a healer he is going to eat AOE's intended for me.

 

With the exception of maybe Sorc's, healers do fine on thier own. If they get marked, guard wont help much and I'll be taken out. If someone jumps them I can put a quick guard on them for the moment.

 

The preferred way should be guarding a melee dps, such as a Marauder. They'll always be in range because you will both focus on the same target, and he will take the majority of the damage. This also improves your survivabilty with a healer, as the 2 of you can burn a dps on the healer and switch guard on him if necessary.

 

I've never understood the tactic of guarding a healer; in thoery it sounds great but it will be a waste on a good healer.

 

Guard is a useful dynamic, I would rather have strong dps though. Juggs take a hit in that market, Assasins though are nasty still with guard up.

[EternalFinality]

The guy was right in that protection is situational.

 

However, what he fails to realize is those situations happen quite frequently in warzones.

[ByeToWoW]

I agree with the posters stating that guarding a healer is not necessarily the best. In fact, saying that guarding "X" class is the best is quite the opposite.

 

As someone who can guard, you need to be looking at the raid/ops frames just like a healer would do. The friendlies that are roughly 50% health or less are generally being focus fired upon.

 

This is what I do:

 

1) You target them and then guard them.

2) Next, hit your "assist" keybind and start attacking their target (you do have "assist" keybound, right?)

 

Another option is:

 

1) Select a random (or key) DPS that is attacking one of your teammates

2) Hit your taunt on them to reduce their damage output

3) Use your "assist" keybind to find out who they are targeting to do damage to

4) Guard said teammate

5) hit your "target last target" key bind

 

Notice how I didn't say "guard the healer" or "guard 'X' class"? Your guard is most effective when used to save someone from going down, healer or not. If the enemy is focusing this person, and they are not a healer, chances are your team's nearby healer will not be attacked and can therefore do their job more effectively. You guarding this low HP person will allow your healer more time to get everyone topped off.

 

The one thing that throws a monkey wrench into this playstyle is the 4-piece set bonus of super commando which increase your damage output by 5% as long as you have someone guarded. Once you get this, try and keep guard up as much as possible to maximize your own damage. Don't want to die from guarding a low gear-level friendly that is taking damage? Just guard someone that is not taking damage instead. You'llhelp your team out better by staying alive to interrupt a node-cap than you would by taking too much damage by guarding a weak target (gear-wise).

 

One other note I have found: Taunt the DPS targets that are at high HP levels, not low. Since you can not spam taunt like you can with guard, you need to be very selective on whom it goes onto. Taunting can become even more effective if you taunt a DPSer and then leave them alone to go assist your team finishing off the low HP guy nearby. This allows more uptime of taunt on any target.

[ByeToWoW]

The preferred way should be guarding a melee dps, such as a Marauder. They'll always be in range because you will both focus on the same target, and he will take the majority of the damage. This also improves your survivabilty with a healer, as the 2 of you can burn a dps on the healer and switch guard on him if necessary.

 

I've never understood the tactic of guarding a healer; in thoery it sounds great but it will be a waste on a good healer.

 

Said better than I could.

[EternalFinality]

Guarding healers is not simply to reduce damage to the healers, but as a psychological deterrent. "Oh god he's guarded, I'll never kill him, better target someone else" so they don't even try, allowing the healer to freecast more often, which is the best thing possible.

 

Even if you don't guard a single point of damage the effect is huge.

[ShadowOfVey]

I agree with the posters stating that guarding a healer is not necessarily the best. In fact, saying that guarding "X" class is the best is quite the opposite.

 

As someone who can guard, you need to be looking at the raid/ops frames just like a healer would do. The friendlies that are roughly 50% health or less are generally being focus fired upon.

 

This is what I do:

 

1) You target them and then guard them.

2) Next, hit your "assist" keybind and start attacking their target (you do have "assist" keybound, right?)

 

Another option is:

 

1) Select a random (or key) DPS that is attacking one of your teammates

2) Hit your taunt on them to reduce their damage output

3) Use your "assist" keybind to find out who they are targeting to do damage to

4) Guard said teammate

5) hit your "target last target" key bind

 

Notice how I didn't say "guard the healer" or "guard 'X' class"? Your guard is most effective when used to save someone from going down, healer or not. If the enemy is focusing this person, and they are not a healer, chances are your team's nearby healer will not be attacked and can therefore do their job more effectively. You guarding this low HP person will allow your healer more time to get everyone topped off.

 

The one thing that throws a monkey wrench into this playstyle is the 4-piece set bonus of super commando which increase your damage output by 5% as long as you have someone guarded. Once you get this, try and keep guard up as much as possible to maximize your own damage. Don't want to die from guarding a low gear-level friendly that is taking damage? Just guard someone that is not taking damage instead. You'llhelp your team out better by staying alive to interrupt a node-cap than you would by taking too much damage by guarding a weak target (gear-wise).

 

One other note I have found: Taunt the DPS targets that are at high HP levels, not low. Since you can not spam taunt like you can with guard, you need to be very selective on whom it goes onto. Taunting can become even more effective if you taunt a DPSer and then leave them alone to go assist your team finishing off the low HP guy nearby. This allows more uptime of taunt on any target.

 

 

I'm so glad to see someone post about using target of target for guard. I comment on this all the time and sometimes feel like I'm the only person in the world that does it.

 

If you're beating on someone and trying to kill them before they take out your teammate, it's no problem at all to taunt them while doing so, hit target of target hotkey (defaults to alt+t I believe) pop guard on your teammate, then tab back to the guy you were beating on.

 

There's so much more to guard than just putting it on a healer every time you spawn.

 

It's also frustrating trying to guard a healer you're near, but getting the "target already guarded" message because someone else guarded them 2 minutes ago and is now 150 yards away. As a side effect of using guard properly you'll eliminate this problem for others by more often applying it to people within guard range for you, while freeing up guard targets for others that are elsewhere.

[Astarica]

Guarding healers is not simply to reduce damage to the healers, but as a psychological deterrent. "Oh god he's guarded, I'll never kill him, better target someone else" so they don't even try, allowing the healer to freecast more often, which is the best thing possible.

 

Even if you don't guard a single point of damage the effect is huge.

 

I don't know why so many players are intimidated by a guarded healer, or worse yet attack the tank instead. A guarded healer is actually an opportunity for a good DPS. The fact he's guarded doesn't change the fact that a good DPS can still shut down a healer's big heals. If you assume 2 DPS versus tank + healer, if both DPS attack the healer the DPS intake of the healer should be equal to 1 DPS vs 1 healer (half of it is shared but you have two DPS), and you have two interrupts which should easily lock down the healer, thus negating his heals.

 

Guarding a Darkness Assassin is actually the most dangerous use of Guard in the game, because the guy you're guarding can do top tier DPS and his mitigation is generally as high as whoever is guarding him, so there is no risk to Guard him at all. Marauders are another good candidate, since their effective mitigation is also very high due to Cloak of Pain.

Edited March 27, 2012 by Astarica

[SinnedWill]

The preferred way should be guarding a melee dps, such as a Marauder. They'll always be in range because you will both focus on the same target, and he will take the majority of the damage. This also improves your survivabilty with a healer, as the 2 of you can burn a dps on the healer and switch guard on him if necessary.

 

Guard is a useful dynamic, I would rather have strong dps though. Juggs take a hit in that market, Assasins though are nasty still with guard up.

 

I agree that marauders are the best to guard if you're a jugg and you stick with the marauder, but I disagree that juggs take a hit in the dps market since a rage juggs' empowered smash is the most powerful burst damaging attack; it happens to hit for 1600-2500 MORE than a rage marauder's smash (I've seen BM geared -with mods flipped for power/surge- juggies' smashes deal up to 7800's against BM geared opponents as recently as last night). While the rage Jugg lacks the rage marauder's ability to maintain above average dps during smash cooldowns, it has more potential to buy time between its empowered smashes. Also, I find the rage juggy's empowered smashes to be far more difficult to avoid compared to the marauder's with a good rotation and extra CC.

[VoidJustice]

Protection and DPS are not mutually exlusive. It is hard to do but you can pull 100k protection and 300k damage in a match. The 300/100 split is a good target and benchmark that you are learning the Guardian class, by far it is not the best we can do, but it is a good target and average to shoot for as you learn, especially in a pug.

 

As a young guardian concentrate on the protection mechanics as they are your priority and unique to our class, get your guard ability and target next friendly keybound in easy to use area's. I use ctrl-e for target friendly and ctrl-g for guard.

 

As you become comfortable as a guarding guardian start to learn when to put down your soresu comfort blanket and go to shien or shi-cho. At this point you will need to bind your stances, your dps stance (shi-cho/shien) and soresu to easily reached keybinds.

 

In an organized team guardian stance dancing is what seperates the pro's from the casuals.

 

Always guarding one player is simplistic. Far better play is using soresu/guard and your dps stance optimally as the situation warrents.

 

Eventually you will realize that shooting for the 300/100 split or 500/200 split is really sub-optimal as different games will require you in different stances for more or less time and Wz are far more liquid than static targets will allow.

 

In general the master guardian shoots for 100% victories and no friendly deaths regardless of Wz board statistics.

 

May the force be with you.

Edited March 27, 2012 by VoidJustice

[SinnedWill]

Guarding healers is not simply to reduce damage to the healers, but as a psychological deterrent. "Oh god he's guarded, I'll never kill him, better target someone else" so they don't even try, allowing the healer to freecast more often, which is the best thing possible.

 

Even if you don't guard a single point of damage the effect is huge.

 

Best class to guard a healer has to be a tank-sin/shadow hands down. They tend to keep enough distance from the healer so that AoE's won't cause the same issues caused by a Guardian/Jugg needing to be within melee range of attackers (whom in all likelyhood are hugging the healer). I also tend to find powertechs/vanguards frequently getting within AoE range of the healer, since their melee attacks tend to reset the cooldowns for their attacks. Tank-sins/shadows can dish out great dps from a safe distance while guarding a healer.

 

IMO: Juggs/Guardians are best guarding marauders, Powertechs/Vanguards are best at guarding mobile/semi-mobile dps'ers (Ops/Scoundrels/MADNESS Sorc/Sage-since hybrids won't be able to use wrath-procced chain lightning-) and mobile healers (Ops/Scoundrels - but I believe their Heal over time is becoming channeled with 1.2) while tank-sins/shadows are best at guarding the least mobile classes (Mercs/Commandos-both dps and heal specced-/Snipers/Gunslingers/Sorc/Sage-again both dps and heal specced versions) in order to maximize THEIR DPS at the same time as keeping the target of their guard within range.

[Coramac]

Okay, so I just got out of a Warzone [Huttball] where I had like 70K Protection and one guy on my team said that protection isn't important.

 

He's kind of right on some level... in the same way that we can argue that damage is irrelevant. Damage is meaningless if it doesn't result in kills or some change in the current game state (if you force a Sage healer to Force Speed and run away for example).

 

Protection that doesn't change anything is meaningless. Anyone who argues differently is simply wrong. It become a bit more complicated with Protection than it is with damage. Taunt and Guard are fundamentally different. Taunt eliminates damage while Guard transfers damage. If you are Guarding someone and there is no healer, it's pretty insignificant for the most part. If there is a healer involved, it may or may not matter (but chances start moving significantly in your favor).

 

Guard can be a liability. Depending on specs of opposition, it is an ability that is very easily exploited to burst a high mitigation target down in seconds. There's a time to Guard and a time not to Guard.

 

Since the dawn of PvP, kills overwhelming trump everything as an indicator of success. Damage is the only way to achieve kills. This pretty much makes it critically important. While damage may not result in kills, without damage, there won't be kills. Protection that serves to mitigate kills is effective.

[SinnedWill]

I'll waiger that they probably meant that protection MEDALS weren't important, since you can easily get 3 medals in about 10 seconds. If that's the case, I'll actually agree since protection medals are simple to obtain.

[ByeToWoW]

I'm so glad to see someone post about using target of target for guard. I comment on this all the time and sometimes feel like I'm the only person in the world that does it.

 

If you're beating on someone and trying to kill them before they take out your teammate, it's no problem at all to taunt them while doing so, hit target of target hotkey (defaults to alt+t I believe) pop guard on your teammate, then tab back to the guy you were beating on.

 

There's so much more to guard than just putting it on a healer every time you spawn.

 

It's also frustrating trying to guard a healer you're near, but getting the "target already guarded" message because someone else guarded them 2 minutes ago and is now 150 yards away. As a side effect of using guard properly you'll eliminate this problem for others by more often applying it to people within guard range for you, while freeing up guard targets for others that are elsewhere.

 

I KNOW! Seriously! To all of you that are capable of guarding... whenever you die, or happen to stray away from your guarded target, do this:

 

1) De-select any friendly targets

2) Hit your "guard" keybind

 

 

This effectively removes your guard from whomever it was on, which will:

 

1) Free up that target to be guarded by someone closer to them than you are (read: guard will actually work)

2) If you are rezzing, for crying out loud, you are contributing NOTHING to your team by holding onto that guarded target for yourself. Remove your guard so the guarded target doesn't have to worry about it in the fray.

[KekoSplit]

Guard is awesome. 75k protection is even better then 75k healing. Because you guard even when you're stunned, knocked down, interrupted, and your guard can prevent that big hit one-shotting the person you're guarding... Taunts are free and can be used even with the worst gear. To use guard you have to be careful and choose wisely to avoid dying even when no one is hitting you. There are some good advices here.

[Lemmy_DB]

Focus fire kills people even when healers are around.

 

Guard alone 'de-focuses' that focus fire.. ofc, you need competent healers around or guarding doesn't gain you much for very long...

 

A good assist train can down a target before the time it takes the healer to realise who the target is, how fast his health is dropping, switch target, start casting and complete that cast.

 

A good tank will buy that time.

 

A good assist train will quickly switch targets to an unguarded enemy.

 

A good tank will switch guard

 

A good assist train will target the tank

 

A good tank will drop guard and had better have enough defensive stats specced and his defensive cd's and cc's up (but should already have the healers attention..)

 

In the meantime, your dps have hopefully beat-down the rest of the opposition.

 

 

ofc. that's an ideal world..

[Codename_Quincy]

i don't know why you would let someone troll you into posting on the forum by saying something like 'protection isn't important'.

[Wallach]

Tanks are great in the context of the current Warzone metagame. You don't want a team full of them necessarily, but they're extremely important when it comes to most of the current objectives.

 

That said, I feel like most of the people that try and "tank" in Warzones don't yet understand how to best go about it. Too much emphasis on Guard and not enough emphasis on taunts, particularly when queuing as a solo player who can't quickly communicate with the people he/she is trying to protect.

 

As far as the actual Protection score, it doesn't tell the whole story but it means a heck of a lot more than the overall damage or healing stats at the end.