Guard needs to be weaker or interrupts need to be stronger.

[Tiresias]

I would like to preface this by saying that I play a fully-defensive, 31/0/10 Kinetic Combat Shadow that spends a lot of time Guarding healers in Warzones -- and have been since closed beta. The only DPS gear that I wear is the headpiece and gloves for the increased range on Force Slow and Mind Snap.

 

It's absolutely incredible how quickly a Warzone stagnates if each team has two tanks guarding two healers. Even under concentrated focus fire it is incredibly difficult to stop a healer from healing, largely due to how weak interrupts are. Compounding this matter is how powerful a cast-time heal is when successful, easily replenishing 25%-50% of the target's health.

 

Combine this with a tank who has a modicum of skill in using their taunts, control abilities, and debuffs and it becomes nearly impossible to affect a healer in any meaningful way. Large group fights turn into indecisive, drawn-out stalemates where those who die re-join the fight before a decisive victory can be had. Small group fights stagnate completely, with nobody dying at all unless a dramatic error is made.

 

Nerfing healing is the wrong answer altogether; ignoring a healer should be a punishing oversight. The problem lies in the combination of a powerful guard/taunt mechanism and a weak interrupt system. There are very few classes that can interrupt abilities reliably -- and even then certain specs are required to make the interrupt ability itself useful.

 

One suggestion is to reduce the effectiveness of Guard to 15% and increase the effectiveness of taunts and group taunts to 50% or greater. This requires the tank to be actively defending his guarded target, instead of putting up the blue bubble and swinging away at whomever he would like within 15 meters. If this change is implemented something would need to be done to make it VERY clear who was taunted and by whom they were taunted.

 

Another suggestion is to make interrupts more punishing. This would reduce the stand-and-spam mentality of healers who feel no need to kite a melee class or seek cover from a medium-ranged class (those with abilities that work at 10 yards) and simply rotate through whatever abilities they have available. A good idea would be for interrupts to double the resource cost of all abilities used within six or eight seconds of having an ability successfully interrupted. Another idea would be for a successful interrupt to automatically have its cooldown reset -- forcing casters to try to "juke" the interrupter.

 

Something to keep in mind is that making interrupts stronger punishes ALL casters, not just healers. Altering the way the guard/taunt system works may be preferable since a tank + guarded DPS is nowhere near as degenerate as a tank + guarded healer.

[SajPl]

Guard is fine, best way to kill a tank is through damage transfer.

 

As for the self - refreshing interrupt when it is succesfull, yes that is a good idea.

[Chissey]

Guard and taunt need to be linked to the Defense Stat. Base they need to be 10%....and scale with Defense. That way true tanks get the benefit, and not DPS Tanks.

[Tiresias]

Guard and taunt need to be linked to the Defense Stat. Base they need to be 10%....and scale with Defense. That way true tanks get the benefit, and not DPS Tanks.

 

This is actually an extremely good idea.

 

Thanks for your contribution.

[Elogio]

Guard and taunt need to be linked to the Defense Stat. Base they need to be 10%....and scale with Defense. That way true tanks get the benefit, and not DPS Tanks.

 

This is actually a great idea.

 

+1

[Brytag]

Guard and taunt need to be linked to the Defense Stat. Base they need to be 10%....and scale with Defense. That way true tanks get the benefit, and not DPS Tanks.

 

this is a very good idea

[TheronFett]

None of this is really a good idea. Guard is fine.

 

Several PvP issues can be fixed by limiting the number of classes allowed to be in a warzone. With group size limited to 8, 2 healers are fine IMHO. 3+ and it becomes more like the scenario described by the OP.

[Tiresias]

None of this is really a good idea. Guard is fine.

 

Several PvP issues can be fixed by limiting the number of classes allowed to be in a warzone. With group size limited to 8, 2 healers are fine IMHO. 3+ and it becomes more like the scenario described by the OP.

 

I have no idea how you could possibly code the queuing mechanism to support this idea without unfairly punishing popular classes or specs.

 

You suggestion swings a sledgehammer at an issue that can be corrected with a scalpel.

[HughGeorgie]

Problem on my server now isn't tanks guarding healers, but one side is full healers. 2 premade groups with 4 healers each, since it's already so difficult to kill a healer one on one, it is even harder trying to cap an objective with a full 8 man healing group. By the time you kill one, the one you just killed is back. Either that, or you get one almost killed, and they run away, so either you chase after him leaving the objective open, or let him run away, heal himself to full with 2 heals and come back. And you can't even run the healers out of force. It's getting ridiculous.

[Zbus]

OMG this junk again read up on defense stats and you will see why all the tanks for the most part wear the dps gear.

 

Here I will link a good one for you on the vanguard fourms http://taugrim.com/2012/01/19/understanding-swtors-avoidance-and-mitigation-mechanics-for-tanks-in-pvp/

 

Tieing taunt or guard to broken stats that dont work in pvp like they should is just silly. Most true pvp tanks would love to wear the gear thats been put in game for us but the simple reality is THEY DO NOT WORK and thats why we wear the dps gear.

Edited May 12, 2012 by Zbus

[Helistin]

Guard and taunt need to be linked to the Defense Stat. Base they need to be 10%....and scale with Defense. That way true tanks get the benefit, and not DPS Tanks.

 

Very nice idea. Hopefully someone at BW reads this.

[Adzzy]

OMG this junk again read up on defense stats and you will see why all the tanks for the most part wear the dps gear.

 

tank stances should probably have their damage linked to their defensive stats, that way it pushes their damage up a bit (big deal), but also links otherwise pointless survival stats to a real return and strips the dps gear paradigm.

[Zbus]

Very nice idea. Hopefully someone at BW reads this.

 

No its a bad idea tieing skills to stats that dont work in pvp.

[Tiresias]

OMG this junk again read up on defense stats and you will see why all the tanks for the most part wear the dps gear.

 

Here I will link a good one for you on the vanguard fourms http://taugrim.com/2012/01/19/understanding-swtors-avoidance-and-mitigation-mechanics-for-tanks-in-pvp/

 

Tieing taunt or guard to broken stats that dont work in pvp like they should is just silly. Most true pvp tanks would love to wear the gear thats been put in game for us but the simple reality is THEY DO NOT WORK and thats why we wear the dps gear.

 

Actually, with the rise of Marauders, Juggernauts, and Snipers I am finding my defensive gear to be increasing in value.

 

Having said that... there are too many Tech/Force attacks in this game. Not only does it diminish the value of defensive stats in PvP, it diminishes the value of Accuracy in both PvP and PvE.

 

Abilities like Rocket Punch, Shiv, Back Blast, etc. should be considered melee abilities, able to be dodged, parried, or shielded. Tech/Force attacks should be able to be shielded across the board, even if they are not affected by Defense. Killing a tank should be difficult.

 

However, tanks should not be running around annihilating people. More of their abilities and "flow" should be tied to defensive stats. If a tank wants to wear DPS gear for a damage boost it should be an option, but they should sacrifice not only durability but group utility in the process.

 

Tanks should also have ways to ignore the massive amount of armor penetration that is given to DPS classes. There is absolutely no reason that a tank should ever take a High Impact Bolt for 5k damage. You deal with a tank through CC, knockbacks, and mezzes; you kill them after their healer is dead. In return there needs to be changes made such that a tank cannot turn a healer into a nearly-invulnerable mobile hospital.

[Zbus]

Actually, with the rise of Marauders, Juggernauts, and Snipers I am finding my defensive gear to be increasing in value.

 

Having said that... there are too many Tech/Force attacks in this game. Not only does it diminish the value of defensive stats in PvP, it diminishes the value of Accuracy in both PvP and PvE.

 

Abilities like Rocket Punch, Shiv, Back Blast, etc. should be considered melee abilities, able to be dodged, parried, or shielded. Tech/Force attacks should be able to be shielded across the board, even if they are not affected by Defense. Killing a tank should be difficult.

 

However, tanks should not be running around annihilating people. More of their abilities and "flow" should be tied to defensive stats. If a tank wants to wear DPS gear for a damage boost it should be an option, but they should sacrifice not only durability but group utility in the process.

 

Tanks should also have ways to ignore the massive amount of armor penetration that is given to DPS classes. There is absolutely no reason that a tank should ever take a High Impact Bolt for 5k damage. You deal with a tank through CC, knockbacks, and mezzes; you kill them after their healer is dead. In return there needs to be changes made such that a tank cannot turn a healer into a nearly-invulnerable mobile hospital.

 

Cool beans but perhaps you should lobby BW to get tank stats to work first. Then open a discussion about guard being tied to defensive stats dont ya think.

[Aikiyc]

Compounding this matter is how powerful a cast-time heal is when successful, easily replenishing 25%-50% of the target's health.

 

Combat log, please. That's just... No. Just no. With the trauma debuff, you heal for 25% or less on per average cast time heal. Nobody can heal 50% of a health bar with one ability in PvP unless we're talking a super geared healer healing a naked person.

 

Combine this with a tank who has a modicum of skill in using their taunts, control abilities, and debuffs and it becomes nearly impossible to affect a healer in any meaningful way. Large group fights turn into indecisive, drawn-out stalemates where those who die re-join the fight before a decisive victory can be had. Small group fights stagnate completely, with nobody dying at all unless a dramatic error is made.

 

Sounds like epic competitive PvP to me. See SCII and other fast paced PvP games. First mistake that's capitalized on loses.

 

Nerfing healing is the wrong answer altogether; ignoring a healer should be a punishing oversight. The problem lies in the combination of a powerful guard/taunt mechanism and a weak interrupt system. There are very few classes that can interrupt abilities reliably -- and even then certain specs are required to make the interrupt ability itself useful.

 

... I... just... what? ._. Very few classes can interrupt reliably? What, exactly, do you mean? Every AC has an interrupt except Merc/Commando. That's 7 out of 8. Or 14 out of 16, if you want to count mirrors. If that's not what you meant, what do you mean by reliably? Are you including stuns in the interrupt category?

 

Another suggestion is to make interrupts more punishing. This would reduce the stand-and-spam mentality of healers who feel no need to kite a melee class or seek cover from a medium-ranged class (those with abilities that work at 10 yards) and simply rotate through whatever abilities they have available. A good idea would be for interrupts to double the resource cost of all abilities used within six or eight seconds of having an ability successfully interrupted. Another idea would be for a successful interrupt to automatically have its cooldown reset -- forcing casters to try to "juke" the interrupter.

 

Something to keep in mind is that making interrupts stronger punishes ALL casters, not just healers. Altering the way the guard/taunt system works may be preferable since a tank + guarded DPS is nowhere near as degenerate as a tank + guarded healer.

 

Yes, it punishes all CASTERS. Caster. As in, needs a cast time to do anything of worth. As in, if interrupted properly, they're locked out of an important ability for 4 seconds at least. Plus stuns. We're talking upwards of 12 to 18 seconds of nothing as is. You add in a doubled cost, when non-Sage/Sorcs struggle with resource management as is, and you just demolished casters in PvP. Period. Interrupt that automatically refreshes upon success? No caster anywhere would ever do anything. Ever. Interrupt as an option every GCD or two is so awful and stupid and OP. Hell. No.

 

Good casters kite. And fakecast. And seek cover. Bad ones don't. If you can't kill the bad ones, l2p. Honestly. Or recruit 2 buddies to focus the caster. It's not hard. Everyone can throw up target markers these days.

 

I'm speaking from a healer perspective. I couldn't care less about your proposed guard changes because nobody freakin' guards me these days anyways. Go figure.

[Vriwhulth]

Abilities like Rocket Punch, Shiv, Back Blast, etc. should be considered melee abilities, able to be dodged, parried, or shielded. Tech/Force attacks should be able to be shielded across the board, even if they are not affected by Defense. Killing a tank should be difficult.Tanks should also have ways to ignore the massive amount of armor penetration that is given to DPS classes. There is absolutely no reason that a tank should ever take a High Impact Bolt for 5k damage. You deal with a tank through CC, knockbacks, and mezzes; you kill them after their healer is dead. In return there needs to be changes made such that a tank cannot turn a healer into a nearly-invulnerable mobile hospital.

Cool beans but perhaps you should lobby BW to get tank stats to work first. Then open a discussion about guard being tied to defensive stats dont ya think.

i think he was, just sayin. Most people who are talking about tanks defensive stats are hoping/wanting BW to fix them and make them worth having tank pvp wise. Try reading everything instead of just repeating the same **** over when someone mentions tying in tank defensive stats into their abilities...

[LancelotOC]

I would love for guard to be nerfed and for us healers to in turn get a survivability buff since the general notion is us healers are purposely coded squishy to keep guard in line. I just dont see why interupts are weak. I'm a healer and I interupt people constantly. I often lament staring at my interupt key because it seems to never be up often enough.

 

So as a person who juggles healing 8 people, kiting 8 people trying to kill me and constantly pops interupts as they come available I can't imagine anyone playing the simpler classes having a hard time interupting.

 

Sorcs/sages , the caster healers, already die too easy as is . I think even I, as a low dps healer, can kill a fellow sorc/sage if I wanted to. The only class that can't kill us is low dps tanks. So unless we need tanks to be able to also kill sorcs/sages for some odd reason or people to be able to kill us even easier buffing interupts unfortunatly sound like a terrible idea to me.

[exphryl]

I still think there should be two guards

 

one for force damage

one for tech damage

 

Both having minimal Melee damage.

 

That way it requires a bit more work on the tanks part to keep their healer up, rather than setting their guard up and sitting by as all damage is transferred. I think such thought process to chance the guard to the appropriate type like this is beyond the comprehension of most pvp tanks out there though.

[GemG]

I would love for guard to be nerfed and for us healers to in turn get a survivability buff since the general notion is us healers are purposely coded squishy to keep guard in line. I just dont see why interupts are weak. I'm a healer and I interupt people constantly. I often lament staring at my interupt key because it seems to never be up often enough.

 

So as a person who juggles healing 8 people, kiting 8 people trying to kill me and constantly pops interupts as they come available I can't imagine anyone playing the simpler classes having a hard time interupting.

 

Sorcs/sages , the caster healers, already die too easy as is . I think even I, as a low dps healer, can kill a fellow sorc/sage if I wanted to. The only class that can't kill us is low dps tanks. So unless we need tanks to be able to also kill sorcs/sages for some odd reason or people to be able to kill us even easier buffing interupts unfortunatly sound like a terrible idea to me.

 

"One suggestion is to reduce the effectiveness of Guard to 15% and increase the effectiveness of taunts and group taunts to 50% or greater. This requires the tank to be actively defending his guarded target, instead of putting up the blue bubble and swinging away at whomever he would like within 15 meters." -OP

 

Combat log, please. That's just... No. Just no. With the trauma debuff, you heal for 25% or less on per average cast time heal. Nobody can heal 50% of a health bar with one ability in PvP unless we're talking a super geared healer healing a naked person.

 

I play with plenty of healers that can easily crit 6k-7k heals. Note the adverb "easily." It isn't exactly 50% but it's definitely 25%-50%.

Edited May 12, 2012 by GemG

[Zocat]

This is actually an extremely good idea.

 

Thanks for your contribution.

 

How would it change anything in your op? You are a tank - so you have a lot of tank stats. And you say it's to difficult to kill your guarded healer.

So linking def stats to guard/taunt changes nothing for you. The whole situation you describe would still be the same.

 

I dont see the interrupt problem. It's not like only one person with an interrupt is attacking the healer.

One thing which might be an option though is to streamline the interrupts to an untalented 8sec cooldown (like knights, vanguards). Smugglers with 12sec seem to be a bit off (dont know about sage/shadow).

[LancelotOC]

"One suggestion is to reduce the effectiveness of Guard to 15% and increase the effectiveness of taunts and group taunts to 50% or greater. This requires the tank to be actively defending his guarded target, instead of putting up the blue bubble and swinging away at whomever he would like within 15 meters." -OP

 

 

 

I play with plenty of healers that can easily crit 6k-7k heals. Note the adverb "easily." It isn't exactly 50% but it's definitely 25%-50%.

 

 

Are you talking about Ops healers?

[RobNightfall]

Guard and taunt need to be linked to the Defense Stat. Base they need to be 10%....and scale with Defense. That way true tanks get the benefit, and not DPS Tanks.

 

This would require that BW fix the defense stat and make it useful in PvP. Given their track record for fixing bugs and balancing the game so far, I wouldn't want to see what would happen if they attempted to do this now. You might end up with tanks that can't be killed ever lol.

[syntxerr]

I believe it would be a step in the right direction to reduce guards and at the same time increase healer survivability. At the moment it's just crazy and quite frankly, having classes (healers) designed around a tank's talent is just not that good of an idea. So yes, given the proper changes to healers, I'd support such a move.

 

Regarding interrupts, I strongly disagree. They are already far too many. From a Seers perspective you just don't get many casts off at all. Add to this that some ACs got interrupt on a 6 second CD. That's interrupting every second cast. Also don't forget that there are other ways of interrupting as well. Knockback, stun... almost every class has those.

[Kalliadies]

Im not convinced guard needs to be touched.

 

Certainly interupts need to be alot more taxing than they are now.

 

As it stand (at 50 in full gear) a lone dpser struggles to out dps the heals (considering interupting damage, ccing, los, opposition intervention). Maybe if the healer sat there a dpser could eventually win. the problem is that if the damage is even let up for a second, you are back to square one.

 

Infact it is very hard for even 2-3 focus firing to bring the healer down. Add to this conundrum another healer starts healing the first healer and then you are going no where. This is without even bringing in guard and taunt into the equation.

 

I have seen nothing but teams with 2-3 healers vs 1 or none. It was near impossible to get kills with 4 being the most acheivable in certain games.

 

Now I play a sniper and Can hit insanely hard. My highest crit at this point has been 5K (weak oponent), but more often around the 3.5 mark. In the game where we got 4 kills, thier healer crit for 5.6k in a single heal (commando, bastards can go immune to interupt). that stood out as a little odd.