[Rep] State of the Guardian Address

[Riivan]

We need to approach our questions as questions not as suggestions. If you want to suggest something go to the suggestion forum.

 

Regardless, shield break while nice is too limited to PvP and isn't the kind of utility that helps guards in their key concern. Either way the utility question was asked and answered by the devs so we should strike that from our lists.

 

Our 4 piece most certainly helps our sustained dps as does our 2 piece. Do some parses with and without it. It's pretty noticeable when you have to spam strike a few times or sit there using force stasis instead of getting those gains in 1 gcd.

Edited September 13, 2013 by Riivan

[OlosBC]

We need to approach our questions as questions not as suggestions. If you want to suggest something go to the suggestion forum.

 

Regardless, shield break while nice is too limited to PvP and isn't the kind of utility that helps guards in their key concern. Either way the utility question was asked and answered by the devs so we should strike that from our lists.

 

Our 4 piece most certainly helps our sustained dps as does our 2 piece. Do some parses with and without it. It's pretty noticeable when you have to spam strike a few times or sit there using force stasis instead of getting those gains in 1 gcd.

 

The 2pc is alright for vigilance, helps focus management. Not necessary for focus though at all.

 

Vigilance also wants to use the 2pc sentinel bonus, for 8% master strike damage, instead of blade storm.

 

The blade storm bonus is good for focus, but basically equal to master strike bonus unless there's nonstop movement.

[Riivan]

I don't disagree with ya, just disagree with the idea that our bonuses aren't in line with BW statements.

[Dragonexadon]

We need to approach our questions as questions not as suggestions. If you want to suggest something go to the suggestion forum.

 

Agreed. Sadly because our questions are so late in the game... it seems the Jugs already got the best questions off the bat.

[ArenCordial]

Agreed. Sadly because our questions are so late in the game... it seems the Jugs already got the best questions off the bat.

 

There's still plenty more questions that can be asked. Even from the answers.

 

Personally I'd like to know why they feel the top end dps of Vigilance needs to be nerfed to get the Master Strike change. The spec hasn't broken 3.1K yet and plenty of other specs have. I want to know if those specs should expect nerfs based of the logic given to us in the Jugg PvE question and the claim of no hybrid tax.

 

There's also quite a bit more.

 

-Why did the designers not grant the class an offensive cooldown? Its the only AC without one.

-What can be done to help turn parsed dps into more realized dps in the field?

etc.

 

Andrew did a pretty good job at the start of thread pointing some of these things out. There's plenty to ask.

 

But I agree with Riv, focus on the questions not the solutions. We're not game designers so don't act like ones. Explain the problem, ask the question that all our job really is.

Edited September 14, 2013 by ArenCordial

[UndyingHadyn]

Agreed. Sadly because our questions are so late in the game... it seems the Jugs already got the best questions off the bat.

 

Absolutely not my friend.

 

There are a multitude of incredibly good questions to ask. Ok, we may not have time to dispute whether or not a shield break mechanism is the desired democratic solution. I recently have been flirting with the possibilities of a survivability exchange for a damage increase. Simply stated, We'd throw the developer's logic regarding Vigilance/vengeance correlations back at them, by requesting a 20% damage increase with unstoppable, instead of 20% damage reduction.

 

Now the developers have stated that they want the damage potential to basically remain as is, in regards to the existing survivability. If pve'ers wanted a dps increase, and feel like they never utilize said damage reduction, would this be the simplest fix? I'd personally prefer a choice of either DR or DPS increase, but that won't happen either. The developers want Vengeance/Vigilance to behave as it is, but we're the ones playing their game.

 

We've got some theory poking around with some possibilities of such an exchange. If you guys talk it over and decide that sacrificing some Vig survivability for more damage potential is the route you'd like to take, feel free. With more analysis and considerations(although it's pretty straight forward), If you guys don't use this idea I may start a petition on the jug forums at a later date.

[SebastianII]

We need to move away from asking for buffs or changing our utility. Better questions will be asked if we go in armed with previous information. For example:

 

Based off information provided during 3 sentinel questions, Focus is intended to be an aoe spec and lack in single target damage. Since focus is available to guardians, its role also as our aoe spec seems to carry over. Unfortunately we find that the single target damage in focus is similar to the single target damage in vigilance. (Show parses of focus and vigilance here) Is this intended? If it is intended, can we have a detailed explanation as to why you, the developers, have set vigilance this way? If not, can you explain where the misconception seems to be between the specs and provide to the player community with justifiable reasons on why vigilance guardians are just as qualified for arenas and raid as focus guardians?

 

Granted this isn't a refined question, but its heading down the correct path. When you ask questions you need to use the facts already provided to guide the person answering. We need show parses if we talk dps, we need to use the devs own words in quotes. We need to do the research and show our work. All the questions asked so far have given the developers too much room to work with, and most of the communities reactions to said questions are either upset or just seem to be excepting of the answer. We need to get the answers we want to hear, the answer might not be what we want to hear, but it will be the basis for change, and will be the only way things will be changed in a positive way.

[RyderQuanTy]

Ok if we are still putting thing up for questions here is mine. I have played vigilance since launch and since 2.0 I feel like the changes fundamentally. altered the play style of the class. Most notably sunder would you consider changing the sunder cool down back to 4. 5 seconds and the cool down of plasma brand to 12 As sunder even if it ment removing the focus return from shieen form.

[OlosBC]

Ok if we are still putting thing up for questions here is mine. I have played vigilance since launch and since 2.0 I feel like the changes fundamentally. altered the play style of the class. Most notably sunder would you consider changing the sunder cool down back to 4. 5 seconds and the cool down of plasma brand to 12 As sunder even if it ment removing the focus return from shieen form.

 

Uh, don't listen to this guy

[RyderQuanTy]

Ok you say don't listen but give no reason. Give me a reason why maybe what I said and shieen reduces the cost of freezing force and repost.

 

we lost overall with the sunder changes. If you need to change targets you can no longer debuff armor on a second target.

 

 

secondly we had a 3 second period where we could hit 2 targets with plasma brand if one target escaped a second target could be hit.

 

My last complaint is the loss of dispatch almost auto crit and weakened bladestorm. Before if you had a target hit with all the burns you could go to stasis let them burn and clip stastis by a tick and go to dispatch which was a kill. This was critical to our game play and survival. Now dispatch is no longer a kill and everyone escapes and we are left defenceless at the end of a fight. Guarded by the force, snipers role, stealth all get away after dispatch and we have no way to fight back at the end unremitant is irrelevant and the snipers and stealth both have the advantage in the beginning and end the fight I can except the loss of momentum.

[RyderQuanTy]

And as a vigilance I can say master strike does not need a root is fine I have never had a problem since 1.2 . It about positioning u need to set it up put your self between the target and there escape route you will land all 3.

 

 

what we do need is a 360 degree attack angle. maybe narrowed forces perk. Why? The mobile fighters such as PT have a 10m range all the good one control with mouse and click turn if we are with in 5m melee range we often lose our target as they cross over us. So we get caught to often trying to stay in 5m when they appear to be trying to get out to the 6-10 range click turn to our back side with lag its impossible to track them for a whole fight and we will loose a gdc and get killed. 360 degree angle would compamsate for the lag. we can go to force sweep and use awe if the game is on the line but Its frustrating to use awe to compensate for lag.

 

and the MS root would just overpower sages

[Dragonexadon]

Well it looks like we wont even get a chance to ask questions. I do feel the juggernaut questions were best for our class as well. So perhaps it will work out for the best

[OlosBC]

Ok you say don't listen but give no reason. Give me a reason why maybe what I said and shieen reduces the cost of freezing force and repost.

 

we lost overall with the sunder changes. If you need to change targets you can no longer debuff armor on a second target.

 

 

secondly we had a 3 second period where we could hit 2 targets with plasma brand if one target escaped a second target could be hit.

 

My last complaint is the loss of dispatch almost auto crit and weakened bladestorm. Before if you had a target hit with all the burns you could go to stasis let them burn and clip stastis by a tick and go to dispatch which was a kill. This was critical to our game play and survival. Now dispatch is no longer a kill and everyone escapes and we are left defenceless at the end of a fight. Guarded by the force, snipers role, stealth all get away after dispatch and we have no way to fight back at the end unremitant is irrelevant and the snipers and stealth both have the advantage in the beginning and end the fight I can except the loss of momentum.

 

So you'd WANT to go back to spamming a low damage attack(sunder) every third attack instead of every 10th attack? And sunder switches are faster now, because it applies the full 20% in one hit instead of 5 x 4% stacks. And you'd want to give up the biggest feature of the spec-unique stance to do so?

 

I'll admit I haven't played much vigi since 2.0, but that doesn't sound like a good trade to me.

[JefferyClark]

And as a vigilance I can say master strike does not need a root is fine I have never had a problem since 1.2 . It about positioning u need to set it up put your self between the target and there escape route you will land all 3.

 

 

what we do need is a 360 degree attack angle. maybe narrowed forces perk. Why? The mobile fighters such as PT have a 10m range all the good one control with mouse and click turn if we are with in 5m melee range we often lose our target as they cross over us. So we get caught to often trying to stay in 5m when they appear to be trying to get out to the 6-10 range click turn to our back side with lag its impossible to track them for a whole fight and we will loose a gdc and get killed. 360 degree angle would compamsate for the lag. we can go to force sweep and use awe if the game is on the line but Its frustrating to use awe to compensate for lag.

 

and the MS root would just overpower sages

 

Making most abilities 360 degrees would solve some big issues. Of course, so would autoturn...

[RyderQuanTy]

So you'd WANT to go back to spamming a low damage attack(sunder) every third attack instead of every 10th attack? And sunder switches are faster now, because it applies the full 20% in one hit instead of 5 x 4% stacks. And you'd want to give up the biggest feature of the spec-unique stance to do so?

 

I'll admit I haven't played much vigi since 2.0, but that doesn't sound like a good trade to me.

 

will you need to go 3 attacks befor since the 4.5 was finctional 5 or you would loose an attack over a 15 second period but any way they did not remove the neeed for a filler u you just use strick now wich is worse and if you switch targets in the 15 second period now u get no armor debuff so some time u win sometimes you will lose sunder does more damage than strike so now the damage is spikey where as befor all the atacks were very close in damage so depending where you are in the rotation in pvp you can get in attacks but they are week and you are more easy to defend it plays like smash now that we are very dependent on a few skill vs a steady streem of hard hit that was critical to the game play. As for wat i mean about sunder is keep that as a filler no strike and keep the 20% debuff like commando or sniper have low cool downs on the armor debuff.

 

I also saw some post on th JUg forum anout Ms root vs a speed increas in the channel time how about roots increase the cast time of MS buy 10% stack up to 5 imes

[ArenCordial]

 

and the MS root would just overpower sages

 

....cuz Combat/Carnage overpowers them now?

 

As for the 360 attacks, Focus is the AoE spec not Vig. Its designers have been clear that its the single target dps spec. If you're having problems with kiting, I'd argue it would make more sense to say the spec could use a slow other than Freezing Force that's built into an attack ability. What you're proposing is counter to the spec's design parameters.

[JefferyClark]

....cuz Combat/Carnage overpowers them now?

 

As for the 360 attacks, Focus is the AoE spec not Vig. Its designers have been clear that its the single target dps spec. If you're having problems with kiting, I'd argue it would make more sense to say the spec could use a slow other than Freezing Force that's built into an attack ability. What you're proposing is counter to the spec's design parameters.

 

We did not say AoE, we said 360 degree attacks. If we had meant AoE, we would've said so. 360 degree attack != AoE. The issue now is that for an attack to go off, the target has to be in a cone of about 15 degrees off your center to either side, for a total of 30 degrees. Given the low range of melee, that massively increases the chance that your single target will either not be in range or in the cone of attack due to no fault of your own (ie server lag). I can't count the number of times that I've seen the enemy right in front of me, on center, and I hit my key and the GCD goes but the attack doesn't go off. Sometimes this is because of a server error in not communicating to you the proper position of the player fast enough - this happens in all games some, but it seems the BW modified Hero Engine that SWTOR uses has a particular knack for it beyond what most of us would consider normal/acceptable. A 360 degree attack sphere for melee range attacks (for all melee abilities, not just Guardians) would solve some of these issues.

[cs_zoltan]

Quote from KBN's new thread:

 

Guardian/Juggernaut DPS

 

I think it's safe to say that Vigilance/Vengeance is right now under-powered. It does enough damage that people can make it work (the world first clears of both TfB and S&V NiM used a Jugg DPS), but I wouldn't call it "balanced".

 

In addition to the vast DPS spread between Vig and Lethality, consider the spread between Focus Sentinel and Vig Guardian. Remember, Focus Sentinels are AoE specs with a lot of on-demand burst. They aren't designed to rank highly on the sustained single-target DPS meters. This is in contrast to Vigilance/Vengeance, which is a sustained single-target DPS spec with fairly long ramp-up and minimal burst. And yet, Vig is actually behind Focus Sentinel in terms of single-target DPS (by about 0.1%). That seems very, very broken. It means that, if you're currently running a Vig Guardian and you want to improve your single-target DPS, you can have them roll a Focus Sentinel to improve not only your single-target DPS, but also your sustained AoE DPS and your single-target burst! That seems very unfair.

 

Note that Focus Guardians are about 2.33% behind Vig Guardians in terms of single-target DPS, which still seems a bit too close (I'd like to see Vig farther ahead), but it's at least balanced in the right direction.

 

Verdict: Vig/Veng badly needs a buff, and a significant one at that. They should be parsing at least 5-7% above what they are right now. Especially when you consider the enormous RNG that is baked into the spec and the difficulty of achieving consistent results.

 

link: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=683087

 

I think it should be looked at by the community, taken from the Jugg rep answers they don't intend to buff Vigi dps, but actually want to lower the top-end dps in favour for less RNG. It's absolute BS, a melee sustained dps class with moderate aoe should be on the top of the board not on the bottom

[ArenCordial]

We did not say AoE, we said 360 degree attacks. If we had meant AoE, we would've said so. 360 degree attack != AoE. The issue now is that for an attack to go off, the target has to be in a cone of about 15 degrees off your center to either side, for a total of 30 degrees.

 

Ah ok I see what you want. Though I think 360 is just wrong. Hitting someone behind you...yeah lets keep it in front but wider.

 

Quote from KBN's new thread:

 

link: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=683087

 

I think it should be looked at by the community, taken from the Jugg rep answers they don't intend to buff Vigi dps, but actually want to lower the top-end dps in favour for less RNG. It's absolute BS, a melee sustained dps class with moderate aoe should be on the top of the board not on the bottom

 

If KBN got his math right (and he's a great theorycrafter) this is beyond stupid. I'd love a dev response to KBN's thread. It seems they want to keep the tank/dps classes at the bottom.

[Alec_Fortescue]

I wish they gave us back 100% crit chance on dispatch.

 

BTW I came to believe that most ppl here are from those from pvp forums complaining about "overpowered smash", wanting to nerf poor jugs so badly that they even come here and pretend to be one of them. In PvP even Marauders take less damage than dps jugs, despite their medium armor. Insane talents and abilities they have are making them far more durable.

[Alec_Fortescue]

Making most abilities 360 degrees would solve some big issues. Of course, so would autoturn...

 

Oh yes, they should've included autoturn for pvp already. With this engine it's barely possible to hit those teleporters on time.

[Hornakkan]

 

Zen Strike:

This talent is the bread and butter of Vigilance. Getting these procs can make or break Vigilance. However, this proc relies far too much on RNG. Additionally, Masterstrike's burst wihout DOTs already rolling can be a bit lackluster, which is a problem in PVP. Therefore, I propose two changes to Zen Strike.

 

First, Zen Strike needs to either have Dispatch also have a 30% chance to proc, or Plasma Brand needs to have a 45-55% chance to proc. Doing either of these would greatly help with RNG factor Zen Strike. Watchman has a similar setup for how it procs its Cauterize reset. Merciless Slash and Dispatch have a 66% chance to proc Cauterize, and Slash has a 33% chance. These numbers would need to be played with a bit, but the amount of RNG reliance that Vigilance has currently is unacceptable.

 

Secondly, the Zen Strike talent should cause all Masterstrikes ticks to apply or refresh Burning Blade and Burning purpose (the Blade Storm and Overhead Slash DOTs) and cause the first ticks to auto crit (that is, the ticks that happen with a Masterstrike tick.) This would help solve a couple issues. First, it would give PVE Guardians a bit of a boost without increasing damage output substantially. Secondly, it would increase burst in PVP and allow DOTs to be setup quicker.

 

 

100% agree with this but would'nt it be more useful to raise Zen Strike proc chance up to 45 or 50% ?

[Keleus]

100% agree with this but would'nt it be more useful to raise Zen Strike proc chance up to 45 or 50% ?

 

Both my friend, both.

 

Seriously tho what the OP listed is but merely the tip of the iceberg that can greatly, grossly, IMMENSELY help us out and I am more then sure that there are plenty of others here that think the same way. Worse yet, I am really beginning to think they hire nothing but ***** chucking monkeys at their HQ because when your response to an entire community (who are lining your pockets with gold, because you know, we're paying you to play this game) is that you're going to nerf the pure dps classes to bring them more in line with the other dps spec classes and expect it to be ok-

 

Jebeus Christmas I can't even finish that line without wanting to hit something.

 

Seriously, BioWare Devs, you guys are smarter than this, I know you are, you've made some pretty rad things. Read what the OP listed here, read his suggestions, they're damn good ones, don't be afraid to take our ideas and use them, we're ok with it, we really are.

 

But for the love of god and all that we hold dear to us, do not nerf Gunslingers and Sentinels into the ground to "bring them more in line". Nobody likes to get nerfed, instead, if you're mad that people are stacking Sents and Slingers in their Operations, make the other classes just as viable if not more so like you should've done in the first place.

 

Listen to the people playing your game, we're the reason you're here in the first place hombres.

 

Love, Peace, and Chicken Grease.

[SalvorHardin]

Just made a 2 minute Dummy parse... NOT ONE single Zen Strike's proc. I should have continued to see how far this would have taken me but I was getting really pissed and logged out.

[Hell_Kaiser_Fett]

Getting abilities to proc can be ridiculous.