Vigilance Buffs

[BobaStyx]

Get rid of it for AoE reduction damage. I have no idea why this hasn't been implemented yet, especially to give it more survivability from the brain-dead tree next to it...

[Mattmonkey]

Concerning raid wide utility, what if the guardian had a skill that increased the defense of everyone in the raid for a brief period of time (ie. making an ideal setup to have a sentinel AND a guardian). Obviously it would have a big cooldown, but would be a step in the right direction.

.

 

This is a really good idea. Making guard and Sent the best for raiding as a melee combo.

 

The rest of the stuff here about damage increases is mis-guided imv we already do plenty of damage. with the exception of shorting the PB bleed to 9 sec - because that would make the rotations so much simpler and more people would be putting out good DPS in vig and there would be less complaining.

 

I also agree focus defence is broken - at the moment in PVE its a matter of dropping threat AND gimping DPS or forcing the tank to use his taunt when you pull from him (which happens in the first couple of min in most boss fights). i know im not going to use focus defence only to have the raid laugh at my dps i would rather cop the crap from pulling the boss and having the raid respecting my dps.

 

Edit: After writing this i tried focused defence when i was actually taking damage and found it ticks for 600 healt at a time. in my book thats quite a good self heal. When you stack it with 15% DR and threat drop its quite good. i would still much rather pull threat than spend 14 focus on it thou.

Edited December 21, 2012 by Mattmonkey

[SebastianII]

A more burstier talent would be great as well. Seeing as we are getting new skills with the rise of the hutt cartel and level increase, here is the chance to change things without altrenating the current setup. This will hopefully end the focus is always better than vigilence arguement as well.

[Mattmonkey]

A more burstier talent would be great as well. Seeing as we are getting new skills with the rise of the hutt cartel and level increase, here is the chance to change things without altrenating the current setup. This will hopefully end the focus is always better than vigilence arguement as well.

 

Focus dose not put out as much DPS as vigilance. the people that think this have not worked out how to play Vigilance.

[ArenCordial]

This is a really good idea. Making guard and Sent the best for raiding as a melee combo.

 

Actually I don't think it will have that effect. Because as long as you have an armor debuff somewhere Sentinels will still be the preferred dps for 2 melee. Transcendence does give you a buff to defense and you have 2 of those in addition to 2 Inspirations. If anything an ability like that would make Guardian tanks more valuable and not quite the same benefit to dps.

 

Focus dose not put out as much DPS as vigilance. the people that think this have not worked out how to play Vigilance.

 

In PvE.

 

At any rate I don't anyone should expect to see any balancing handed out until the expansion, do to the fact they will have entirely new abilities to balance. I wouldn't be surprised if they take this opportunity to shake up the skill trees as well.

Edited December 21, 2012 by ArenCordial

[BattleGracefully]

1 lower cool down of force push would help maybe roots snars stuns lower coold down 5 sec per .

2 How about swelling winds leads to narrow focus w/ narrow focus causing all burns to erupt and apply full damage imediatly and removes the cool down of sunderstrike so we have a usefull spamable attack and a miss does not mean 4.5 seconds later you can sunder and try to apply PB this is a big problem vs sin tanks and snipers.

3 have PB burns reduce healing.

4 force slow applies a very weak dot to snare and reveal stelthers

 

none of these would alter pve 1 and 2 help damage 3/4 utility

 

man i love that idea about burns erupting to apply full dmg at once instead over time and i pb's burns reducing healing done

[Andrew_Past]

man i love that idea about burns erupting to apply full dmg at once instead over time and i pb's burns reducing healing done

Except that most of the burns aren't long duration anyways, and if most of us have our way, Plasma Brand won't be either for very long. So, erupting the burns wouldn't be very bursty.

 

Now, Plasma Brand reducing healing, or applying some other group utility short buff/debuff would work extremely well. I have used Vigilance successfully in rateds as a target calling spec, and something along like this would further solidify that role.

 

On a side note, I want to see Bioware move Vigilance away from being a DOT spec and more into a heavy weapon damage role. Having the supplemental DOT damage that we have currently is fine, but I don't want to see the expanded Vigilance tree be more reliant on DOTs. I want more emphasis on the single target burst that is available, and possibly augment that by giving Vigilance a burst option outside of master strike.

Edited December 23, 2012 by Andrew_Past

[-ThEoNe-]

Except that most of the burns aren't long duration anyways, and if most of us have our way, Plasma Brand won't be either for very long. So, erupting the burns wouldn't be very bursty.

 

Now, Plasma Brand reducing healing, or applying some other group utility short buff/debuff would work extremely well. I have used Vigilance successfully in rateds as a target calling spec, and something along like this would further solidify that role.

 

On a side note, I want to see Bioware move Vigilance away from being a DOT spec and more into a heavy weapon damage role. Having the supplemental DOT damage that we have currently is fine, but I don't want to see the expanded Vigilance tree be more reliant on DOTs. I want more emphasis on the single target burst that is available, and possibly augment that by giving Vigilance a burst option outside of master strike.

 

Agreed. The burns that are given through the trees are kinda meh. Really hope they extend the tree to further include some sort of utility, debuff, or single target aid that is in the form of heavy damage rather than anything DoT related (unless they go along the lines of the "erupted burns" concept that has been mentioned, which would be pretty cool and unique).

[Andrew_Past]

Agreed. The burns that are given through the trees are kinda meh. Really hope they extend the tree to further include some sort of utility, debuff, or single target aid that is in the form of heavy damage rather than anything DoT related (unless they go along the lines of the "erupted burns" concept that has been mentioned, which would be pretty cool and unique).

 

But that's the thing, an ability to erupt all the burns wouldn't do much damage. If you took all the dot damage from all the burns and applied them all at once (assuming one rotation of each burn) you would be looking at about 3-3.5k damage when fully geared (IIRC, Plasma Brand ticks 4 times. If it is 6, then the damage would be 4-4.5k.) And that's with ALL the dot ticks hitting at once, so you'd more realistically be looking at 2-2.5k damage due to ticks already going off as you setup for this eruption ability.

 

So, as I mentioned before, I would like to see some other burst like ability added outside of master strike. Also, another possibility is to remove the DOTs on Overhead Slash and Blade Storm and instead have Shien stance have a chance to proc xxx amount of elemental damage, similar to Infiltration's Shadow Technique. This would solve a few different problems. Firstly, it would free up some talent points to either be replaced by new talents or just be placed elsewhere in the tree. Secondly, it would give Master Strike a little more burst due to always on elemental damage procs. Thirdly, it would be a step towards not putting DOTs on everything to mess up CC.

 

To fully move away from DOTs messing up CC, you could make Plasma Brand do 4-5k elemental damage (with a crit) and cause a (de)buff that increases damage of the new Shien stance procs. This could be tacked onto Force Rush and have another effect added onto Plasma Brand, or do something else entirely.

 

Btw, 4-5k elemental damage is what Plasma Brand already does when the first hit and most DOT ticks crit when fully geared.

Edited December 25, 2012 by Andrew_Past

[Raskle]

Just an idea, but what about replacing Gather Strength with an ability that will siphon Armor for the party? For every Sunder Armor applied, the party/raidgroup gains the same amount of defense/armoring/resistance/whatever over X amount of seconds? Call it Siphon Armor maybe.

 

If it's too Overpowered, then make it a percentage of armor stolen or something. This would bring a unique utility that we could give to the Operation, without stepping on any other class's toes.

 

 

Also, I think we need a boost to the DoTs in the lower range, and agree with the PB switch to 9 seconds time. Not too much, but enough to make a difference.

Edited December 26, 2012 by Raskle

[Karasuko]

 

Btw, 4-5k elemental damage is what Plasma Brand already does when the first hit and most DOT ticks crit when fully geared.

 

My PB crits for just under to just over 3k.

My PB dot crits for 980ish. x4 = 3800

[Andrew_Past]

My PB crits for just under to just over 3k.

My PB dot crits for 980ish. x4 = 3800

 

Then have it be a 5-6k crit then. Either way, it would help Vigilance a lot.

[AwkwardGinger]

Then i thought about guardian tanks which are inferior to shadow tanks in so many ways its just riddiculous and not even worth mentioning as its obvious.

 

You had some decent points, and I gave you credit, and then I saw this. This is so wrong that I won't even go into it. And you're bringing up Defense in a thread called Vigilance Buffs. The only reason to talk about Defense is if having a particular ability would make Defense overpowered in any way.

 

Then have it be a 5-6k crit then. Either way, it would help Vigilance a lot.

 

We already have two moves that crit in PvE for 5-6k (MS and Dispatch.) We have to be a little careful.

 

If we removed the Sunder Requirement from PB (Which is something I completely agree with), then you have the potential for even more damage than a combat sentinal/carnage marauder here. MS's final tick can easily hit for 4-5k on some classes. You follow that with a 4-6k PB and then a 5-6k guarenteed crit Dispatch and you have some of the most powerful sustained burst out there. That's about 20k damage in 6 seconds, and 4 of that can't be interrupted. If you use Freezing Force (or whatever it's called, I don't quite remember), then they really can't get away from you as you wail on them with PB and Dispatch.

 

 

But that's the thing, an ability to erupt all the burns wouldn't do much damage. If you took all the dot damage from all the burns and applied them all at once (assuming one rotation of each burn) you would be looking at about 3-3.5k damage when fully geared (IIRC, Plasma Brand ticks 4 times. If it is 6, then the damage would be 4-4.5k.) And that's with ALL the dot ticks hitting at once, so you'd more realistically be looking at 2-2.5k damage due to ticks already going off as you setup for this eruption ability.

 

So, as I mentioned before, I would like to see some other burst like ability added outside of master strike. Also, another possibility is to remove the DOTs on Overhead Slash and Blade Storm and instead have Shien stance have a chance to proc xxx amount of elemental damage, similar to Infiltration's Shadow Technique. This would solve a few different problems. Firstly, it would free up some talent points to either be replaced by new talents or just be placed elsewhere in the tree. Secondly, it would give Master Strike a little more burst due to always on elemental damage procs. Thirdly, it would be a step towards not putting DOTs on everything to mess up CC.

 

To fully move away from DOTs messing up CC, you could make Plasma Brand do 4-5k elemental damage (with a crit) and cause a (de)buff that increases damage of the new Shien stance procs. This could be tacked onto Force Rush and have another effect added onto Plasma Brand, or do something else entirely..

 

The problem with doing all this is that you have now created an infiltration shadow in heavy armor. That's BNB.

 

I'm not trying to be rude or a negative nancy, but someone has to point out flaws.

 

Now... here are MY suggestions.

 

Guardian utility: what to do?

The whole point would be to bring something to the table that another class cannot bring- Slingers have AoE damage reduction, which is beautiful, and Sentinels have AoE defense, movement speed, and damage increase...

 

Guardians? Jack squat. The problem here is that Sentinels and Slingers are "pure dps classes." That means in addition to their invariable higher dps, they also have to hog all the utility in the game. Makes perfect sense, don't it?

 

There are a few things that could be done about Inspiration. The easiest would be to move it to Guardians- we are supposed to be the leaders, after all, with inspiration of characters such as Mace Windu, Obi-wan, and Revan (he's obviously a guardian, right?). The same could be said of Juggernauts-they're the most bloodthirsty. They want to rend, maim, and kill, right?

 

But that would be too easy. It would force the ideal possible dps combination to be Slinger, Guardian, X Melee and X Other Range DPS class (Sage or Commando would be fine. Both bring CC's and are ranged dps, and have powerful AoE.) The only logical choices for melee are Vanguards and Sentinels. That shelves Scoundrels, and Shadows. They are already an endangered species in the current dps world.

 

Also, that would give the heaviest frontload pvp burst class in the game another advantage. Yes, the focus guardians. They ruin everything. (Not trying to QQ.) Yes, Focus Sentinels do technically have the same issue, but they have a whole other button and resource system for Inspiration.

 

So that's out of the question.

 

What then?

 

Do we want a straight crit/crit damage increase? Alacrity increase? Accuracy increase? Reduction to the global cooldown for all classes (I like that last one)? I really hope someone actually reads this. Do you know how hard it was to break up this massive wall of text? Not very.

 

Moving on...

 

I love the idea of an erupt ability, to be honest. And guess what... we have the possibility of a whole new tier-topping ability this spring! Looks like a match, right?

 

I'm agreeing with whoever posted about giving an increase to critical damage on burn effects. That would be lovely. The next step would be to up the base damage of the OS and BS DoT's to make them work more with eruption.

 

Soooooo let's adjust PB a bit so it works in PvP and PvE

 

Up the base damage. Significantly. Perhaps add a Crit Damage multiplier deep in the tree to it and MS.

 

Now, it still applies that DoT, which can be considered really nasty and overpowered combined with the new front-end damage. Well... unfortunately, we'd have to drop the damage a tad bit on that. Easily fixed by turning it into a 6 second DoT with 6 ticks for a moderate amount. It's a lot of damage in a shorter amount of time, and helps immensely in both PvP and PvE for bursty moments. The same is also possible to be done with the other two burns. Hopefully.

 

Now, I've been rambling a ton about the burns and this new erupt ability. Let's call it "Force Detonation," for now. FD for short.

 

Now we have FD. What FD should do is be like a ticking time bomb.

 

Force Detonation

Instant Cast

Activation: 3

Cooldown: 18seconds (For gits and shiggles)

 

Only usable in Shien Form. After eight-ten seconds, deals X (Probably about 1500-2k right now.) elemental damage. When activated, the Guardian places Force Detonation on the target. the Force Detonation gains power based on the amount of times that the Guardian's periodic effects from Blade Storm, Overhead Slash, and Plasma Brand tick on the target. Each time that one of those DoT's tick, it increases the damage of the Force Detonation by 5%. This ability does not respect the global cooldown.

 

 

So there you have it. A shiny new ability. It's full of holes waiting to be poked, kind of like the Kardashians.

 

The base damage looks kind of shoddy right now. I also realize how much this ability looks like the Sweep build from the focus tree. It draws a little inspiration from that, but this is also a solely single target damage. It's perfect for tanks and healers-they can't get rid of all of the damage. Granted, a quick force shroud from a sin/shadow and you've wasted the talent, but that's true of any class.

 

Now back to the damage. If it's 2kish damage now, that means (assuming that PB is lowered to 6 ticks over 6 seconds, and OS and BS have similar DoT ticks/second,) that you get a maximum of 15 stacks. If you pop it and PB at the same time, and then pop OS, and then BS, you've lost some of the potential ticks.

 

That still leaves you with a 75% increase of 2000. That's 3500 damage before crit. It means that if it crits, assuming 75% surge, you now have 6125 elemental damage. That's before PvP damage boosts/resistances.

 

That's a hell of a whopper. It doesn't do much for our front-end burst, but with a talent like Unremitting, it would be horrible for us to have too much burst. However, with a Guardian's defensive cooldowns, and with a pocket guard or healer, it's easily possible to survive long enough to get most of the DoT's off. You do have the issue of being stunned while going through this. If all else fails and you really need to take down a tank/healer, then you just need to push them and jump for the second Unremitting.

 

My post is full of big ideas. I like big ideas, because they make me feel important. And frankly, I'd rather shoot for the moon and land among the stars than not try at all.

 

Like the Kardashians, my argument is waiting to be poked.

Edited December 28, 2012 by AwkwardGinger

[SebastianII]

The above poster makes some good points. Too many times I hear vigilence needs buffed to be more like this class or that class. We need buffed to something thats different, that makes us stand out. Why not make all of our damage over times (dots) reduce healing done to a target? Make it like a 6th tier talent that takes 2points and reduces healing on target by 10/20%. Let that stack 3 times with our 3 dots. That would give us a unique role.

[Karasuko]

The above poster makes some good points. Too many times I hear vigilence needs buffed to be more like this class or that class. We need buffed to something thats different, that makes us stand out. Why not make all of our damage over times (dots) reduce healing done to a target? Make it like a 6th tier talent that takes 2points and reduces healing on target by 10/20%. Let that stack 3 times with our 3 dots. That would give us a unique role.

 

Its not unique, sents and slingers ahve the same thing already.

My idea for a neat utility ability to replace gather strength would to simply make force push useable on allies.SO able to abuse this for trolling purposes but it could come in handy.

 

Our biggest problem is our tree tries to do too much.

-We're OK dotters but cant double dot and our dots are not substantial.Mara and sorc dots are alot more effective.

-Our heavy hitters hit OK, they don't hit like mack trucks but theyre not noodle strikes either.

-we dont do anything well, we do everything OK. Take my shadows breach,SS and project, I have nothing that compares to the damage they can out put with CD's up.

-Our utility out of guardian leap is pretty dull and boring.yay for sunder......

-Our heaviest hitter (master strike) is shared amongst all other specs of knight and the only difference is how often we use it.

-Our 41 pter is pretty boring aswell as being lackluster compared to alot of other talents 41 pters. I dont need to say much here.

-Manuverability is good, but ocne again sents and shadows do it better and quicker.

-We have good cooldowns. yet again other classes have more better CD's for things like soaking bomb droids in the minefield etc.

 

What we really lack is identity and some of our abilities don't make sense mechanically.The really funny thing is at most we need a minor damage buff ( and i mean minor) but if they tidied up plasma brand and it's dot. I think we would be in a good place without having to tack on alot of new things.

 

Keep in mind I won't object to damage buffs like a surge talent somewhere or + % damage to x,y,z ability but we are not hurting for DPS at the moment.

 

I really like one of the prior posters suggested force detonation skill, would be an absolute blast to use, would require abit of brain power to use but..... we have other issues that need to be fixed before we add a skill like that.

 

If i had to make any suggestions mine would be simple.

Plasma Brand

9 second Cooldown

5 force to use

inflicts 1900-2100 elemental damage with another 1900-2100 damage over 6 seconds (1 second tick)

In addition, All periodic damage from the guardian now inflicts 30% more critical damage for 5 seconds.

 

This would encourage a rotation change up by de-prioritizing MS after PB and would encourage good guardians to pool resources to ensure they can string their burns into the targets. The biggest change is two-fold.

1. It actually hits alot harder.Based on my stats this is a 35% damage increase on the inital and periodic damage

2. It makes PB alot higher on the prio list, which i find sort of wrong atm with BS and OS being generally prioritised higher.

 

Keep in mind the numbers for PB would be pretty simple

Initial hits for between 1900-3738

Dot Ticks would be between 316-623

 

This is for a Vigi guardian with 1040 bonus damage and 78% surge btw. It adds approx 200 non crit inital and 700isn top end crit damage. The periodic damage gain is about 35% over 6 seconds instead of over 12 secs.

Edited December 28, 2012 by Karasuko

[AwkwardGinger]

I like your idea; I really do. The problem with it, however, would be implementing it. You see, BW already has a problem dealing with effects related to DoT's on a target. I.e., Force Suppression/Deathmark. Those are consumed by other people's DoT's, and it is not a long stretch to say that something like a flat damage increase on a target might not affect ALL Knights/Warriors at the very least; and then you have a vigi guardian/watchman sentinel melee duo that would tear through bosses. If, 55% of the time, there was a 30% increase on a watchman's sentinel's dots, those are probably getting close to 2.4-2.5k ticks of Overcharge Saber, and that's a tad obscene..

 

The underlying premise here is that BW doesn't fix issues like this, and just lets them stand. If they can manage to fix these issues, then perhaps there is some hope for something like this after all..

[Karasuko]

It appears Bioware has actually fixed that issue as far as I can see.

Thanks for the props!!!

[GarfieldJL]

Get rid of it for AoE reduction damage. I have no idea why this hasn't been implemented yet, especially to give it more survivability from the brain-dead tree next to it...

 

Agreed the biggest problem Vigilence Guardians have to deal with is AoEs because of the fact we have to fight close in.

 

I actually like our DoTs which bypass just about every damage reduction.

 

Shields are ignored, armor is ignored, etc.

 

The trick is to view the DoTs as all part of your larger DPS output. This game doesn't just revolve around burst damage.

[Karasuko]

Agreed the biggest problem Vigilence Guardians have to deal with is AoEs because of the fact we have to fight close in.

 

I actually like our DoTs which bypass just about every damage reduction.

 

Shields are ignored, armor is ignored, etc.

 

The trick is to view the DoTs as all part of your larger DPS output. This game doesn't just revolve around burst damage.

 

Except m,aster strike, sunder and over head are our largest portions of damage. Try again.

As to dealing with AOE's we do have guardian leap,enure and saber ward in addition to unremitting if things get messy..

We also have very little burst outside of master strike, a buffed plasma brand would be a god send

[Creslan]

3 things:

 

9 sec plasma brand dot

15% run speed OR 30% less AoE dmg {shien stance only } (either or in this case)

30% armor pen from focus, {shien stance only}( for all attacks or master strike/overhead only)

 

Get rid of gather strength, in its current form it's useless and any rehash of the talent won't be as good as the original.

 

additional changes- move unremitting higher into the tree and make it shien stance only. Change Narrowed Focus to either the armor pen or 15% run speed/30% AOE dmg reduction.

 

I also think that Bioware should make a conscience effort to remove hybrid specs from the game.

[SebastianII]

 

This game doesn't just revolve around burst damage.

 

I'm guessing you don't pvp much?

 

Or raid, for that matter, considering how many bosses in tfb have burn phases.

[OlosBC]

I'm guessing you don't pvp much?

 

Or raid, for that matter, considering how many bosses in tfb have burn phases.

 

Not gonna argue the PvP part, but really the only heavy burst required in tfb is on the balls in kephess and tfb, and they're currently bugged in tfb. The rest of the burn phases are executes, where vigi's auto-crit dispatch will outpace rage's burst.

 

Sure there's the towerknockdiwns on kephess, but that's on the easy parts of the fight.

 

And hell, those parts where you do need lots of burst in just a few gcd's? I manage that just fine on my madness sorc, with some of the worst burst in the game.

[Cappadin]

I loved vigilance before 1.4. Sure it was frustrating vs smash heavy groups but now there is a guaranteed chance of meeting multiple smashers and its to much.

 

You cannot solo a healer as vigilance. That's fine with me because even if you can't kill them, you can take them out ofa fight indefinetly.

 

However, when it comes time to focus them down, you've created clumping for the smash monkeys. Coordinated smashers will melt you if you focus their healers so that's smart plan a out the window.

 

Some will say hey just kill the smashers! Good idea they are super squishy! Wait.. there is 2 f them and they are focusing targets together.. im dead in 12 seconds from collateral damage and caused a wipe cuz a healer tried to heal me.. so thas smart plan b out the window..

 

So what now? Harass the ranged dps? But now the healers are freecasting heals and the smashers are going buckwild!

GG Guys, maybe next match they will only have 1 smasher.

 

I proposnee aoe reduction talent combined into narrowed focus and self heals on plasmabrand so we can stay in the fray and stay on meaningful targets

[ELECTRICJUDGMENT]

- First, move Swelling Winds/Decimate back to Vigilance/Vengeance like it was before 1.2. It has no business being in Focus/Rage and never has. This would reduce smashers by a large margin, since a good portion of them seem to be Sentinels/Marauders. - Move to the 4th tier with Effluence.

 

- Second, a 200% overall damage increase to the DoT for Plasma Brand, Burning Blade and Burning Purpose. - Move Burning Blade to the 5th tier of Vigilance with Burning Purpose.

[dufox]

not sure how vigilance is pve wise but as for pvp:

 

if you play focus and have all power modded gear then switch vigilance you will think vigilance needs a buff.

if you gear yourself correctly (and learn how to play the spec ) you will see how much of a beast the vigilance tree really is.

 

granted you have to understand that 300k single target damage is just as "important" as 500k aoe damage

 

before i get flamed... im not saying vigilance is perfect but it is absolutely playable and useful.. i would actually say its pretty damn beastly.