Andrew_Past Posted July 17, 2012 Share Posted July 17, 2012 (edited) First off, I want to say that I love my Guardian. I love the mobility and playstyle. Both Vigilance and Focus are good trees, and can do well against any class. After playing Guardian for a long time now in both high-end PVP and PVE, I would like to propose a few changes. Vigilance Gather Strength: Whenever your movement is impaired, you are immobilized, knocked back, or otherwise incapacitated, you gain a 5%/10% bonus to your next melee ability that costs focus. This effect can stack up to 5 times and lasts up to 20 seconds. Gather Strength is a fairly decent PVP talent, but doesn't proc as often as I think it should. Allowing stuns and knockbacks to proc it will allow the ability to stack up on a more consistent basis. Increases the proc duration to 20 seconds will allow Guardians that want to time its use in a burst situation to set up more consistently. Narrowed Focus: Increases movement speed by 15% while in Shien stance. This is a talent that no one ever specs into. Vigilance is already swimming in Focus, and doesn't need a talent that grants one focus on a very inconsistent basis for standing in something that a Guardian shouldn't. Vigilance is all about getting in an opponent's face and applying constant single target damage and pressure. 15% run speed would complement that role perfectly. Besides, Guardian is the only melee class that doesn't have an option to have passive extra run speed. This would alleviate that. Vigilance: Reduces cooldown of Overhead Slash by 3/6 seconds and Blade Storm by 1.5/3 seconds. This is to accommodate the next change. Effluence: Lowers the cooldown of Force Kick by 1/2 seconds. Okay. This is an ability that a lot of Vigilance Guardians spec into. So why change it? Vigilance, as I mentioned earlier, is all about single target pressure. Force Sweep honestly doesn't fit into the mix of smooth flowing abilities that Vigilance already has. To get the full benefit of Effluence in its current state, you would need to put 2 points into swelling winds to make sweep a medicore damage ability. Sure, its better damage than strike as filler, but is that really worth 3 points and 1 less focus generation? In my experience in PVP and PVE, the answer is,"No." A cooldown reduction for Force Kick would again help with that single target pressure role for harassing healers and ranged DPS in PVP. It would also help with a few mechanics in PVE. Sundering Throw: Lowers the cooldown of Saber Throw by 5/10 seconds and causes Saber Throw to apply 1/2 stacks of sunder armor to the target. For a sixth tier ability, this talent just never seemed worth putting 2 points into. This change would give a more significant cooldown reduction. Focus Zephyrean Slash: Slash has a 50%/100% chance to refund 1 focus. Currently, Slash as Focus is a good filler move when specced. (I can get 3k crits on WH sorcs.) However, the inconsistent focus cost detracts from its usefullness. This change would alleviate that while still providing the same long run focus (compared to the current version + Swift Slash.) Pulse: Lowers the cooldown of Force Stasis by 7.5/15 seconds. Force Stasis is rarely used in situations where pushback is much of a concern anyways, so it is fairly useless in its current form. This change would give Focus both more PVP utility and a cooldown on a stack builder. Through Peace: Increases damage reduction by 1%/2%. Additionally, Focused Defense has a 50%/100% to apply its affects without a focus cost. The current version is very lackluster. The activation cost isn't why Focus Guardians don't use Focused Defense. They don't use it due to losing focus during Focused Defense's duration. This change would encourage use of Focused Defense more, and give a bit of a small persistent survivability boost. Edited July 17, 2012 by Andrew_Past Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MimicUnleashed Posted July 17, 2012 Share Posted July 17, 2012 Narrowed Focus: Increases movement speed by 15% while in Shien stance. This is a talent that no one ever specs into. Vigilance is already swimming in Focus, and doesn't need a talent that grants one focus on a very inconsistent basis for standing in something that a Guardian shouldn't. Vigilance is all about getting in an opponent's face and applying constant single target damage and pressure. 15% run speed would complement that role perfectly. Besides, Guardian is the only melee class that doesn't have an option to have extra run speed. This would alleviate that. If you want run speed go Focus. They do, in fact, get a run speed increase when they use an ability. 40% for 5 seconds. Vig needs an AOE damage reducer far more. Removing narrowed focus and adding an AOE damage reducer is, solidly, the way to go. In fact I always thought a lot of the PvP talents should be shoved into the Focus tree. Vig lacks some serious meat, which may be why it's the tank spec right now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andrew_Past Posted July 17, 2012 Author Share Posted July 17, 2012 (edited) If you want run speed go Focus. They do, in fact, get a run speed increase when they use an ability. 40% for 5 seconds. Vig needs an AOE damage reducer far more. Removing narrowed focus and adding an AOE damage reducer is, solidly, the way to go. I'm sorry, I should have clarified. When I said that Guardians don't have a speed boosting option, I meant a passive 15% speed boost (I edited my original post to reflect this.) Also, I would welcome an AOE damage reducing talent. However, Vigilance survivabilty is in a good place right now (Focused Defense can heal me for about 6-6.5k over duration, which gives Focused Defense about 25-35% net mitigation.) So, I believe that Vigilance would benefit more from a passive run speed bonus. In fact I always thought a lot of the PvP talents should be shoved into the Focus tree. Vig lacks some serious meat, which may be why it's the tank spec right now. Vigilance is NOT a "PVE tree." Vigilance is in a good place damage wise. For me, my last hit of Master Strike hits almost as hard Focus's sweep. I can follow it up by Overhead Slash and then an auto-crit Blade Storm. This is plenty enough burst for me when I'm attacking squishy targets, and the DOTs are good against harder targets. I have no problem competeing damage wise in rateds, even against Sentinels and Vanguards. Anyways, do you agree with the other points I made? What further changes would you like to see? Edited July 17, 2012 by Andrew_Past Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MimicUnleashed Posted July 18, 2012 Share Posted July 18, 2012 (edited) For PvP Focus Defense is awesome. Leveling, even heavy AOE moments you can count on. However for general purposes of AOE fights where the AOE comes all the time (Toth and Zorn being a hug offender) Focus Defense can't do much of anything except eat focus for little return. The AOE spikes 10-ish second apart, meaning you get healed for a few hundred for spending 5 total Focus, but still eat 3-4k. And since these types of AOE mechanics seem to be BW's go-to that's why I put it much MUCH higher than run speed. Also by moving a few of the PvP talents you can free up space for talents that work to give Vig 'meat' as I said before. Such as moving stagger to the low-focus tree, and giving us the ability to force-leap point blank like a Watchman. Or much higher in the tree to keep balance, but you see my intent. The lower part of the Vig tree is too full of "semi-good" talents that may or may not get used half the time. Perhaps shuffling those to Focus to roll into a few of their skills (which has more synergy to me, not just that Focus is the PvP tree) you can get abilities that add something. Defiance: Not a great ability for a tree that has an inherent resistance to this mechanic after a force leap. It would make more sense in Focus as they are vulnerable to it. Effluence: I like the skill while leveling, but I rarely force sweep anymore. It's really just a filler ability from time to time, and honestly it would be a grand ability for Focus. Burning Blade: Totally not needed. The damage is horrible, so removing it for your run speed increase, or actually beefing it out would be the way to go. Accuracy: Really for low gear levels this is a good talent, but it really could go away without much issues to the spec. After you get a certain level of gear it becomes useless, and while having that 3% may be crucial to tanks, folding it into something else or moving it is really the way to go. Second Wind: With Focused Defense now a skill, do we really even need this anymore? It could honestly make room for Stagger or even Momentum which makes way more sense in the Focus tree. And there are other skills Focus needs more. Removing Pulse to give Stasis Mastery, or giving Through Peace a work-around to not drop threat in Soresu along with it's current implementation for the Defense spec. I'd even like to be able to get Zealous Leap as a Vig guardian. I love the ability. Perhaps make it baseline to Guardians? I dunno, but Plasma brand is awesome and not worth trading unless you PvP a lot. Then you should because burns get cleansed left and right, and without the burn Plasma brand is a slash crit for more focus cost. Edited July 18, 2012 by MimicUnleashed Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Invictusthetaru Posted July 19, 2012 Share Posted July 19, 2012 Literally agree with every single change made in your post . Those talents are lackluster and rarely taken, except for maybe saber throw just because I like starting w/ 2 stacks on my target. +1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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