[Rep] State of the Guardian Address

[Ren_simp]

All vigilance needs for pvp is a 20%heal debuff on overhead slash And buff the damage of overhead slash so It has the potential to hit upto 10k This will put it on par with focus and give us another option to play in pvp The only thing it's lacking is reliable burst, I mean sustain dps is ok but it still needs a mechanic That allow to ramp up for some burst at some point in a rotation, As is now vigilance dps just plateaus and can be managed by healer easily.

[Aelaias]

All we need for our dps is the old crit chance bonus to dispatch. Master strike is crap as the main source of dps but combined 80% crit chance bonus to dispatch and BS would make that ok.

[ArenCordial]

All we need for our dps is the old crit chance bonus to dispatch. Master strike is crap as the main source of dps but combined 80% crit chance bonus to dispatch and BS would make that ok.

 

Even if that was changed MS would still be the main source of the specs dps.

[JefferyClark]

Master Strike needs to apply a root to players. It's that simple. They can knock you back, stun you, etc. to interrupt. This is the same as other classes' channels (flyby, orbital strike, lightning storm)... the only difference is that our channel REQUIRES melee range and that frontal cone (btw, all my other classes can shoot or cast behind them if the target is in range, so why can't my Guardian?). Since we require melee range, it SHOULD root, or at least slow. Edited October 5, 2013 by JefferyClark

[Aelaias]

Even if that was changed MS would still be the main source of the specs dps.

 

The class would regain its burst.

[Alec_Fortescue]

Master Strike needs to apply a root to players. It's that simple. They can knock you back, stun you, etc. to interrupt. This is the same as other classes' channels (flyby, orbital strike, lightning storm)... the only difference is that our channel REQUIRES melee range and that frontal cone (btw, all my other classes can shoot or cast behind them if the target is in range, so why can't my Guardian?). Since we require melee range, it SHOULD root, or at least slow.

 

We should get Unstoppable for the duration of Ravage instead of after force charging. Along with the root. They'd still be able to escape using cc breakers, most classes have more than the Unleash one.

Edited October 5, 2013 by Alec_Fortescue

[Aelaias]

We should get Unstoppable for the duration of Ravage instead of after force charging. Along with the root. They'd still be able to escape using cc breakers, most classes have more than the Unleash one.

 

You get it at the moment of leap which makes you immune to cc during transition. Unremittant needs to increase by 1 second imo, either via a set bonus or a straight up buff but the function does not need to change from what it is currently.

[Keleus]

While we're here and you guys are going on about pvp stuff, I just want to throw this little thing out there because it's been bothering me for quite a bit (hint, it's pve related): Is it just me, or is Plasmabrand really lackluster when compared to other top-of-the-talent-three stuff like Guardian Slash or just about anything else?

 

Like, I see Guardian Slash, and I notice how much it does, and how overpoweringly perfect that move is.

 

It makes me want to a cry a little.

 

Even keeps me up some nights.

 

Then I look at Plasmabrand. Then I lose hope. Then I cry, but for the wrong reasons. It just seems so......weak, you know? Could we get like, instant refresh on all burn effects? Enemy takes more Elemental Damage? We get a power boost from it? Something you know, something to make it bigger and more worth an end-talent slot.

 

Just my thoughts on it. Probably not nearly as bad as I imagine it, but yea.

[JefferyClark]

While we're here and you guys are going on about pvp stuff, I just want to throw this little thing out there because it's been bothering me for quite a bit (hint, it's pve related): Is it just me, or is Plasmabrand really lackluster when compared to other top-of-the-talent-three stuff like Guardian Slash or just about anything else?

 

Like, I see Guardian Slash, and I notice how much it does, and how overpoweringly perfect that move is.

 

It makes me want to a cry a little.

 

Even keeps me up some nights.

 

Then I look at Plasmabrand. Then I lose hope. Then I cry, but for the wrong reasons. It just seems so......weak, you know? Could we get like, instant refresh on all burn effects? Enemy takes more Elemental Damage? We get a power boost from it? Something you know, something to make it bigger and more worth an end-talent slot.

 

Just my thoughts on it. Probably not nearly as bad as I imagine it, but yea.

 

Plasmabrand has been lackluster since launch. They have made it clear that Master Strike is our (Vig) main attack. I would honestly like to see plasma brand be in the position where one of the burn skills is now and something new to beef up master strike up top. Like a cool down reduction and damage increase, say 8% and then swap the 8% set bonus to the vindicator gear for stacking. That would almost be too good... Almost.

Edited October 8, 2013 by JefferyClark

[Alec_Fortescue]

The fact that guardian is the lowest parsing class on an immobile DUMMY just speaks for itself right now. How do you want to expect a dps class to do damage and compete in pvp if they can't even match anyone in pve? I want buffs. So sick of having much less defenses than other tanking/dps and dedicated dps classes. Saber reflect has to be the most useless ability added in 2.0. Usable only against certain channeled attacks, because if used differently it's purely luck dependent. Saber ward lasting 3 minutes and being used approximately twice in a warzone, while troopers and sentinels get 20% dmg reduction in much shorter time. And there is more. Pffff...

 

Taunts should also apply damage reduction to the user.

Unremitting should be changed for the duration of Ravage, not after force charging. There no time or space for charging at the enemy in the middle of combat and that's where we are most vulnerable and it's when the attacks are coming at us. Vengeance spec also relies heavily on Ravage use and that's the time we're most vulnerable and simply immobile, so enemy can get range advantage easily and we can get bashed without being able to use anything to interrupt the attackers.

Edited October 8, 2013 by Alec_Fortescue

[ArenCordial]

Saber reflect has to be the most useless ability added in 2.0.

 

Seriously? You'd prefer the Sage's Bubble? The weak Shoulder Cannon? Phase Walk?

 

Saber Reflect is freaking awesome. Its one of the best defensive cooldowns in the game. Its awesome for Tanks in every realm of play. Its great for DPS on PvP. A well timed SR can be the difference between a death and a kill. Nothing makes me feel more like a Jedi than flying through the air redirecting all that death back at my opponents. Sure for dps in PvE its more limited but there are spots where it can be a dps boost and spare your healer some work but its not useless.

 

That's crazy talk. I know you're frustrated right now man, but don't throw the baby out with the bath water.

Edited October 8, 2013 by ArenCordial

[Alec_Fortescue]

It's more offensive than defensive but it can't even be used in PvE ops, while sentinels get their great saber throw -_-

 

Saber reflection is cool when used against snipers, channeling their attacks but it won't even defend you against knockbacks and there are way too few scenarios you can use it successfully in. SR makes you a winner when soloing snipers in vengeance. Used to be fun watching scoundrels committing suicide after you used unleashed and sr the moment they "shot first" but now it's not since they learned to avoid it easily. We should be shown metrics of average damage reflected from SR. If toggled in a fight with ranged player who is not channeling, most of his attacks are rather insignificant to cause you, or him, proper harm and they range from 2k-4k most of the times.

 

I am totally frustrated. Vengeance is totally not viable for competitive pvp and taking it for rated arenas should be considered player harassment - it's like trying to deliberately fail the team. My favorite class is the lowest parsing one in the game in its best PvE spec. The only spec which actually gives dps jug a fighting chance in pvp is being called overpowered and demanded to be nerfed by stupid people who can't tell a difference between marauder and a juggernaut. Jug's Rage spec is not even close to what Marauder can do in terms of top damage and survivability. Jugs have so little defenses that I manage to destroy Focus/Rage ones before they even hit with their second smash. They go down in seconds. They die too quickly and they are wearing pvp gear. I don't see such big numbers on dps vanguards and sentinels. Troopers - sometimes but Jugs are squishiest from all heavy armored dpsers. They're primary targets in arenas, right after sages. No cc breakers, no teleport rolls, no stealthing out, just one intercede which makes them stack with their ally and risking to bring aoe to the team.

 

Guardian DPS is in a very bad state.

 

FYI top Juggernaut parsers really wanted to train and make this class work but eventually rolled their Maras/Sents. There is absolutely no point to play such class in competitive environment if you can boost your capabilities significantly by simply rolling a Marauder. It even plays pretty similarly. That's why I got one but patiently waiting until something is done with Guardians.

Edited October 9, 2013 by Alec_Fortescue

[ArenCordial]

It's more offensive than defensive but it can't even be used in PvE ops, while sentinels get their great saber throw -_-

 

Saber reflection is cool when using against snipers channeling their attacks but it won't even defend you against knockbacks and there are way too few scenarios you can use it successfully in. SR makes you a winner when soloing snipers in vengeance. Used to be fun watching scoundrels committing suicide after you used unleashed and sr the moment they "shot first" but now it's not since they learned to avoid it easily.

 

Yeah you got knocked back. However you'd have just avoided a huge amount of that Sniper damage. Usually they Followthrough after that Ambush so you made him eat a ton of damage and took zero yourself. If it was a channel like Series of Shots and they broke cover to break it then you can leap to them. Ever reflect a Tracer Missile + HSM from a Merc? Its awesome. I've had a PT burn himself down with flamebursting, HIB, and shoulder missiling with a little help from Master Strike. Yeah its only 3 seconds but that can make the difference.

 

Besides you can't think of it solely from a dps stance point. You know how reliant Defense/Immortal is on it for Ranged aggro. Yeah in PvE as DPS its harder to use, but I've used it against Kephess, the lightning adds in HM Styrak, the Trasher adds, and I'm not sure about this last one but I think it might work against Doom in NiM TFB. I hit it once and didn't die to Doom and Ciphas wanted my blood right after. I'm not sure if that wasn't some weird bug though.

 

Regardless its anything but useless.

Edited October 9, 2013 by ArenCordial

[Alec_Fortescue]

 

Besides you can't think of it solely from a dps stance point. You know how reliant Defense/Immortal is on it for Ranged aggro. Yeah in PvE as DPS its harder to use, but I've used it against Kephess, the lightning adds in HM Styrak, the Trasher adds, and I'm not sure about this last one but I think it might work against Doom in NiM TFB. I hit it once and didn't die to Doom and Ciphas wanted my blood right after. I'm not sure if that wasn't some weird bug though.

 

Regardless its anything but useless.

 

Very few scenarios / roles it can be used in = nearly useless. I find other 2.0 abilities far more useful because they actually can be utilized easily, more efficiently in much more scenarios.

Phase walk is great for hit and run and losing "aggro" in PvP. It's always used by shadows and is very useful in pvp universally. You almost always see shadows planting phase walk markers before going into fight.

 

Electro-net is a killer when it comes to attacking melee classes and people with adhd. Juggernaut moving and taking damage from it will easily lose over 30% hp until it expires.

 

TWT is a core ability and part of the sentinel rotation.

 

Shoulder Cannon is a general, very universal dps boost working against all classes and at any time you want. You don't have this advantage with saber reflection where you depend on enemy's move.

 

Teleport rolls with immunity phases - n/c. Moving so fast and so far away it's barely possible to catch up. Impossible to leap at since they're always in cover. Also grants immunity and considering that scoundrels/snipers use it when under attack - attacks will always miss them when they perform it.

 

Sages bubble is a life-saver. Always used in arena and always they get healed to full when using it. It should work both ways - no heals and no damage. It's a very powerful ability which not only allows you to get healed while being immune but also refresh crowd control and force speed to control and get away from the adversary camping you. Then you can play defensively, make them pay for trying to kill you and heal to full!

 

Saber reflection: useless against melee. Too long cooldown. Damage is capped. Very visible visual effect - can be easily avoided by veteran players. Not usable on operation bosses. Working well against channeled attacks but otherwise it's luck-based. You can never foresee living enemy's rotation and if he'll use a filler or a big hitter.

Edited October 9, 2013 by Alec_Fortescue

[ArenCordial]

 

Guardian DPS is in a very bad state.

 

FYI top Juggernaut parsers really wanted to train and make this class work but eventually rolled their Maras/Sents. There is absolutely no point to play such class in competitive environment if you can boost your capabilities significantly by simply rolling a Marauder. It even plays pretty similarly. That's why I got one but patiently waiting until something is done with Guardians.

 

Yeah its not great right now. Course its never been great. Focus is very good for the PvP. I've had some good success in the arenas and regs of course though we are of course behind the Sent version its still better than a lot of specs for PvP right now.

 

PvE....well that's the real ugly picture. To be frank with all the movement in the last few ops I've flat out given up on Vigilance and rolled Focus because even though I can dummy parse a good amount higher I get as good if not better numbers with Focus in any fight with movement. Of course throwing adds into the mix and its hard to argue in favor of Vig.

 

I think BW is afraid of some Tank-DPS hybrid the community comes up with. Its the only explanation for why all 3 of the tank classes are on the bottom of the DPS dummy charts. What makes it worse it the actual raid mechanics then further punish the classes that need it the least. I say someday we make a list of every ops fight with extra melee mechanics/or damage and post it in General about how one sided ranged vs. melee is and what utter BS it is.

Edited October 9, 2013 by ArenCordial

[Alec_Fortescue]

I also believe that Focus works better in many encounters due to dynamic nature of the fights requiring mobility which static Vigilance can't afford. Bioware also likes puting in lots of adds which stack and just beg you to smash them. Vigilance is simply out of the game now if you're into proper results. I regret spending time and analyzing my favorite class in order to hit this thread: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=664980. I want to believe that I know something about Guardian dps, since I managed to get there, while majority of Guardians I see actually struggle to get over 2700.

 

I seriously don't see a reason why being able to tank should screw up your dps. To tank you need to learn a totally different role and get totally different gear. It's not like you can switch in a matter of seconds. DPS spec should be a dps spec, no matter the class. They should be close in their capabilities and be different in playstyle, rotation or priority order, visuals and cosmetics. Player would simply play the role he finds it fits him best without having to worry that his character's damage will suck because he wanted to have a single saber, melee class.

 

Devs' reasoning that they wanted to beef up and overpower the dps-only classes to increase their chances of getting into groups is stupid. There is absolutely no reason for a group leader, looking to fill a dps spot with someone who can do something else than dps. Flashpoints and operations are designed that way so it just won't matter and you still stick to your role for the whole time.

Edited October 9, 2013 by Alec_Fortescue

[ArenCordial]

We could also say its

 

Saber Reflect: 3 second of invulnerability against direct attacks from the 3 most common attack types in the game. Not only that but it deals a good amount of damage back to the attack at range. Get rooted or electro-netted? Saber Reflect will buy you the time you need to get back in the game. That big hit your enemy was channeling well its going on cooldown and they have to eat the damage.

 

Alec do you really think SR is the problem with the class? Personally I think its one of the best things about it. The problem is the fact Vig is the red-headed step child of the Knight classes and Focus is the slightly less hot sister compared to the super model Sent version.

[ArenCordial]

I also believe that Focus works better in many encounters due to dynamic nature of the fights requiring mobility which static Vigilance can't afford. Bioware also likes puting in lots of adds which stack and just beg you to smash them. Vigilance is simply out of the game now if you're into proper results. I regret spending time and analyzing my favorite class in order to hit this thread: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=664980. I want to believe that I know something about Guardian dps, since I managed to get there, while majority of Guardians I see actually struggle to get over 2700.

 

I don't think anyone has said you that you don't. Did I miss something?

 

I seriously don't see a reason why being able to tank should screw up your dps. To tank you need to learn a totally different role and get totally different gear. It's not like you can switch in a matter of seconds. DPS spec should be a dps spec, no matter the class. They should be close in their capabilities and be different in playstyle, rotation or priority order, visuals and cosmetics. Player would simply play the role he finds it fits him best without having to worry that his character's damage will suck because he wanted to have a single saber, melee class.

 

100% agree. Vigilance suffers imo from fundamental design flaws. Its like got some really nice aspects to it, but the RNG/ low proc rates, the mobility issues, relying a 4m melee channel just combine to make this a very difficult class. You can see the spec's potential but literally when you get better and better at the class it feels like it fights you more and more for trying squeeze of more dps. It gets really annoying when you realize gee I can put out the same #s of my less geared alt of X class.

Edited October 9, 2013 by ArenCordial

[Alec_Fortescue]

Alec do you really think SR is the problem with the class? Personally I think its one of the best things about it. The problem is the fact Vig is the red-headed step child of the Knight classes and Focus is the slightly less hot sister compared to the super model Sent version.

 

Nah, I see bigger problems with my class, SR being lower on the list ! But I can brag how bad it is, too since you claim how good it's supposed to be just because it can save you in one or two pvp scenarios.

[UndyingHadyn]

In addition to the current functionality of sabre reflect, I would like it to return 50% of all incoming melee damage as well. You could place a cap on its potential, but in essence anyone, I repeat anyone attacking a jug would have to recongnize the retributive damage when fighting us. Also, for pve... Can you imagine the incredible potential this would have in raids!! A simple tweak to our one ability could solidify our position.

 

 

I highly recommend that we work together to start a petition, that will tell the developers how a simple tweak to sabre reflect, could solve many issues with the class. One of you please begin this proposed venture here on the guard forums, and I'll do the same when I get home on the jug's. I'd ask ArenCordial to lead the task, based on the strength of his arguements he's displayed in the past.

Edited October 10, 2013 by UndyingHadyn

[VitalityPrime]

Is the Guardian Rep even still around?

[Aelaias]

I am sure he is around and in any case it's not crunch time yet.

 

Plasma brand is arguably pathetic, especially for a top tier ability and its direct damage portion should be buffed to where it deals 5k damage at least, up from the miserable 3.5 now. Since the class is lacking for burst I would suggest shortening the dot and putting it in front of the DD portion for a backloaded effect.

[VitalityPrime]

I am sure he is around and in any case it's not crunch time yet.

 

It would be nice to have a vocal rep though. Someone who actually frequents the forums.

[uriaces]

I realy can't imagine that you are serious when you are asking for more power on our class ! Yes the 30% MS proc is anoying but asking for the 80% elimination crit ? are you serious ?

 

You can't ask for a better proc for MS , better crit on elimination. If you are asking for more MS you must nerf a bit this atack ( maybe 5% less damage). Give me 45% ms proc and 80% on elimination and guardian will beat any sentinel... !

 

We just need a fix on MS proc and THATS ALL. If they give us all youre desire, we will earn 200 dps YEAH IS COOL, but two month after we will be nerf! And bioware can't do a nerf without killing a spec, you want to be like shadows? Need full 75 stuff to do 3k dps ?

 

We DONT need more power, more power= nerf , and nerf = dead class!

[Riivan]

They're not taking questions anymore until after like 2.5 or 2.6 so it really doesn't matter if he's around or not. We have plenty of vocal people and a couple of them that actually say things worth listening to. Saber Reflect is fine it doesn't need anything more.

 

Fixing the MS proc is a start but I don't think that is the end all be all of our woes.