Guardian Top 3 Questions - Answered

[Vaidinah]

Also, the other poster is wrong in trying to suggest balance for the cooldown based on PvE tanking. It really wasn't meant to buff PvE tanking, Guardians are perfectly fine in that area already without that cooldown at all. The purpose was to give DPS Guardians an "oh ****" cooldown for when getting focused in PvP, and that's exactly the purpose it serves, even with the duration being lowered to 10 seconds.

 

The changes from the last big patch to Focused/Enraged Defense were already a nerf to good Guardian/Jugg tanks as you could get a 30% heal roughly every 45 seconds before and now you can get roughly a 50% one every 2 minutes. After the next nerf, it's probably going to heal for less than 30% yet still be on a 2 minute cooldown, effectively nerfing the skill to about 1/3 of its original strength. The only benefit in the current version is that it does not cost any Focus/Rage, which is great, but not even vaguely close to being a fair trade-off for tanks. This was totally unnecessary and it looks like Bioware is simply caving in to QQ on the forums.

 

I need to ask EVERYONE a very honest question.

 

Who the hell has THREE DAMNED TANKS, One from each Tanking AC, that is READY AND ABLE to do NiMs?

 

Holy hell people, my guild has problems finding the second one, if you have a ready tank, you take them..

 

You DON'T SEARCH FOR A SPECIFIC AC endlessly.

 

So let it go on the tanking part, all three ACs are PERFECTLY CAPABLE of clearing ANY content.

 

Uh, I do and I know at least 2 other people personally that are the same way.

 

As for being able to clear content, that's a completely useless comment. Every single AC and spec within those classes has been able to clear every single piece of end-game PvE content as far as I ever known. Being able to clear content doesn't mean there is good balance.

 

Guardian tanks are in a good spot overall for PvE, but the changes Bioware intends for Focused/Enraged Defense are terrible for them and it nerfs them for no good reason whatsoever. They already ruined an interesting and fun skill to use by dumbing it down so anybody could use it anytime and now they want screw it up even further. It's an example of Bioware lacking forethought with a nerf specifically for PvP that will negatively impact PvE. It shows Bioware does not care about the consequences of their changes just as it did with the Force Sweep/Smash nerf to force it to require a target. That was meant to nerf PvP DPS Guardian/Juggs, but it also hurt PvE tanks. From what I understand, it also hurts PvP DPS that use Force Sweep/Smash to catch out stealthers as well.

[fire-breath]

The rapid healing isn't really the issue, that's what makes the ability good as a defensive cooldown. The issue was that, with abilities that heal rapidly on damage taken, the best way to counter them is to stop doing damage to the person and let the buff drop off or make them overheal a bunch. It's definitely possible to make them overheal a bunch, and that's what you should be doing if focusing the Guardian with a buddy. However, in situations where you have to go toe to toe with that Guardian, 30 seconds can't be waited out, and literally gives them another effective health bar to have to burn through. 10 seconds, however, can be waited out and defeated, bringing the ability back down to earth.

 

Fair enough, I misunderstood the problem in PvP with focused defense. 10 seconds is certainly short enough to wait it out.

 

No, just no.

 

The whole point of the CD is to give Guardians a way to survive focus fire, SPECIFICALLY DPS guardians. The only way it's overpowered is people can't fight around it. Now that they can simply ignore it for the span of 10 seconds, it's more balanced.

 

Your nerfs ruin the ability.

 

Well, the 10 seconds nerf ruins PvE useage so feel free to offer some other idea's then.

 

Regardless the fact that the cooldown was aimed at PvP survivability you can't ignore the fact that the 2.8 nerf will mean PvE tanks can't use all 10 stacks if they are unlucky. Like I said, it might not have been the primarily reason why focused defense changed but rendering the PvE useage to waste some stacks doesn't make sense to me.

And no, I'm not debating if guardian tanks needed another cd or not. It just doesn't make sense to have an ability that only functions partially.

 

There can be a balance between PvE and PvP skills, lets try to find one since 10 seconds isn't a balance.

[Manweth]

First of all, who said otherwise? I'm simply pointing out the difference in balance between the tanks, not suggesting any are at a severe disadvantage on the whole.

 

Second of all, I actually have all 3 AC's and several of my guildies do as well. Have two geared tanks so I have options.

 

Third, you really need to stop attacking people with all caps all the time, its kind of an eye sore.

 

That's the point, make it an eye sore so you notice it.

 

As for someone else lamenting that they don't see Focus Problems,

 

 

They do. They said so.

 

They just have bigger priorities. As they also said so. Quite clearly.

 

Edit: You have two geared tanks ready and waiting on your char roster?

 

That's a surefire way to get yourself locked into tanking and never getting to do anything else, very boring imho. I keep one of each roles geared for HM Nim purposes.

Edited April 30, 2014 by Manweth

[ctor]

Currently, there are some other advanced classes (such as Vanguard/Powertech and Shadow/Assassin) which completely lack competitive, sustained Operation damage, and we would like to address those first.

 

[KeyboardNinja]

Edit: You have two geared tanks ready and waiting on your char roster?

 

That's a surefire way to get yourself locked into tanking and never getting to do anything else, very boring imho. I keep one of each roles geared for HM Nim purposes.

 

I have one tank rep side (precisely because I don't want to tank in every group ever, despite the fact that I really do enjoy the role). My cotank has all three, two of which are geared and have cleared deep into NiM DF. In my raid group, we have a healer who has every advanced class on both factions and several ACs multiple times on the same faction, a DPS who has a NiM-ready shadow tank, a DPS who has a NiM-ready shadow and vanguard tank, and another DPS who has a NiM-ready vanguard tank. We don't swap compositions, but we most certainly do have the flexibility to do so. If it were categorically impossible for a particular tank class (or any class, for that matter) to clear a fight, we would be able to get around it without any loss of time. I suspect that most progression groups are in a similar state, given the way this game encourages alting.

 

Oh, and note that this is without going outside our main progression team. We have 7 other teams in the guild with very little alt overlap. The truth is that once you get a guild established with sufficient encouragement to gear and practice alt characters, it's not that hard to shuffle things into their optimal configuration.

Edited April 30, 2014 by KeyboardNinja

[GrandLordMenace]

The changes from the last big patch to Focused/Enraged Defense were already a nerf to good Guardian/Jugg tanks as you could get a 30% heal roughly every 45 seconds before and now you can get roughly a 50% one every 2 minutes. After the next nerf, it's probably going to heal for less than 30% yet still be on a 2 minute cooldown, effectively nerfing the skill to about 1/3 of its original strength. The only benefit in the current version is that it does not cost any Focus/Rage, which is great, but not even vaguely close to being a fair trade-off for tanks. This was totally unnecessary and it looks like Bioware is simply caving in to QQ on the forums.

 

 

 

Uh, I do and I know at least 2 other people personally that are the same way.

 

As for being able to clear content, that's a completely useless comment. Every single AC and spec within those classes has been able to clear every single piece of end-game PvE content as far as I ever known. Being able to clear content doesn't mean there is good balance.

 

Guardian tanks are in a good spot overall for PvE, but the changes Bioware intends for Focused/Enraged Defense are terrible for them and it nerfs them for no good reason whatsoever. They already ruined an interesting and fun skill to use by dumbing it down so anybody could use it anytime and now they want screw it up even further. It's an example of Bioware lacking forethought with a nerf specifically for PvP that will negatively impact PvE. It shows Bioware does not care about the consequences of their changes just as it did with the Force Sweep/Smash nerf to force it to require a target. That was meant to nerf PvP DPS Guardian/Juggs, but it also hurt PvE tanks. From what I understand, it also hurts PvP DPS that use Force Sweep/Smash to catch out stealthers as well.

 

I can agree that in select cases the new Focused Defense was a nerf for Guardian Tanks, if you could ensure the synergy of your AOE taunt and FD enabling you to have consistent healing. Right now, I still see GRD tanks get unlucky, or lucky, depending on your POV, and stringdefending therefore not proccing your stacks. With the shorter timer this is definitely a killer for GRD tanks.

 

Well there are a few things we can do about it. We can have a talent for Guardian Tanks that increases the timer of the ability. Due to the fact that it's a mediocre PVP ability for tanks in full tank spec, that might be alright, but make hybrid tanks very potent which is undesirable.

 

We can also decrease the amount of stacks themselves, for example double over the healing on each stack and lower the amount of stacks for the same amount of net healing.

 

The optimal route is make it so that the healing would proc through defense.

 

We can also nerf it to the ground by practically turning it into a Kolto Overload, which would be highly undesirable, OR we could restore it to it's original form with the same CD, then remove the focus cost.

[KeyboardNinja]

Well there are a few things we can do about it. We can have a talent for Guardian Tanks that increases the timer of the ability. Due to the fact that it's a mediocre PVP ability for tanks in full tank spec, that might be alright, but make hybrid tanks very potent which is undesirable.

 

We have to be very, very careful with this line of thought. Pre-2.7 cooldown balance was very tight, between the tanks. Enure was situationally better than anything Shadows could muster, but Shadows can medpack on cooldown, which is situationally superior to Enure. Saber Ward is superior to Deflection but has a longer CD. Warding Call and Battle Readiness are almost at parity, save for BR's HoT and shorter CD. Resilience is more widely applicable than Saber Reflect and has a shorter CD. Focused Defense was the cooldown which essentially brought Guardians back up to parity (and situationally superior to) the arsenal of DCDs that Shadows supply.

 

Post-2.7, Focused Defense is more broadly applicable, heals for almost the same amount (as a tank), and is much much easier to use. The downside being that it has a longer CD. However, while that longer CD is a nerf for some very specific fights (e.g. Nefra), it is compensated by the fact that you can hit the 2 minute mark on every fight, not just those where you can coordinate your taunt and your focus pool. I would need pre-2.7 boss logs from some very, very pro Guardian tanks to be sure, but I doubt that pre-2.7 Focused Defense was usable more than once every couple of minutes on most fights, when it was usable at all.

 

The nerf down to 10 seconds does ratchet things back a bit, probably reaching a point where I would consider Guardian tank cooldowns to be slightly inferior to Shadow tank cooldowns, save for on fights with high frequent spikes and low sustained damage (where Enure is godlike). A talented increase to the duration (or reduction to the cooldown) would probably be ok, but it depends on the magnitude of the reduction(s). Remember that Guardian mitigation is right now very, very slightly ahead of Shadow mitigation due to the non-scaling nature of Blade Barrier. Between that and the fact that Guardian active mitigation is a smaller proportion and requires less precision, I think that having slightly weaker (than Shadows) defensive CDs is arguably balanced, though I could be persuaded otherwise.

 

We're talking about a game of inches here, though. The BR HoT (and up-front heal) and additive DR are only going to get better as gear improves, while Warding Call will retain exactly the same value. Thus, Shadows get progressively better defensive CDs as gear levels increase, while Guardians remain essentially static. In fact, Guardian CDs become relatively worse as gear improves since Saber Reflect loses some value with increases in defense, and (more importantly) Focused Defense loses substantial relative value since it scales with Bonus Healing rather than HP. Nerfing FD down to 10 seconds is probably exactly balanced right now, but it leaves Guardians somewhat behind just a few gear tiers down the road.

 

Bioware has to be careful, that's all I'm saying. :-) I wouldn't be opposed to a 15 or 18 second duration on FD for tanks (not for DPS), or alternatively a noticeably reduced cooldown (perhaps based on defending, similar to the Resilience CD reduction for Shadow tanks?). Going much higher than that would be a mistake.

[GrandLordMenace]

I was more thinking of a PVP standpoint as to why it would in theory be OP, I think that when we get on the PTS, we need to examine the reliability of the CD in both PVP and PVE. If the game had a timer for the duration of effects we'd be able to somewhat know how much of a nerf screwing the timer will be.

[Gyronamics]

Well, the 10 seconds nerf ruins PvE useage so feel free to offer some other idea's then.

 

So what?

 

Even tried getting meaningful use out of Adrenaline Rush in NiM? 35% does NOT cut it for a dps to take a hit.

 

70% that ED triggers at is more meaningful.

 

In a raid you have healers, in solo content you take the hits that will make it work.

[Vaidinah]

We have to be very, very careful with this line of thought. Pre-2.7 cooldown balance was very tight, between the tanks. Enure was situationally better than anything Shadows could muster, but Shadows can medpack on cooldown, which is situationally superior to Enure. Saber Ward is superior to Deflection but has a longer CD. Warding Call and Battle Readiness are almost at parity, save for BR's HoT and shorter CD. Resilience is more widely applicable than Saber Reflect and has a shorter CD. Focused Defense was the cooldown which essentially brought Guardians back up to parity (and situationally superior to) the arsenal of DCDs that Shadows supply.

 

Post-2.7, Focused Defense is more broadly applicable, heals for almost the same amount (as a tank), and is much much easier to use. The downside being that it has a longer CD. However, while that longer CD is a nerf for some very specific fights (e.g. Nefra), it is compensated by the fact that you can hit the 2 minute mark on every fight, not just those where you can coordinate your taunt and your focus pool. I would need pre-2.7 boss logs from some very, very pro Guardian tanks to be sure, but I doubt that pre-2.7 Focused Defense was usable more than once every couple of minutes on most fights, when it was usable at all.

 

Focused Defense was definitely usable more than once every couple of minutes on most fights, especially since most fights in the game are big on predictable tank swaps, which allows the player the ability to know when they could use Focused Defense without even dealing with the consequences of threat loss. The reason people rarely ever went through through the hassle of learning how to use Focused Defense like I did and various other skills that classes have, but are not utilized well by the vast majority of players is because it was never necessary to complete content. Even initial progression NiM content does not require an amazing understanding and execution of one's spec and most players can get away with only doing around 65-75% of the spec's maximum potential and still beat almost anything.

 

There are a couple exceptions to this, but even then, there's a great deal of untapped power in all the specs I am aware of that the vast majority of players simply aren't even close to reaching because they are not forced to improve. Once you get past a fight a few times and get more gear, this is even less necessary so people will do only what they need to beat a fight rather than everything they can.

 

Part of this is due to the fact that players can't play at 100% of their own skill level for long periods of time and that there are no teams in the game that have a full group of 8-16 players who can all play at anywhere close to the maximum level of their specs.

 

Regardless, Guardian/Jugg tanks are supposed to be the most DCD-reliant of the tanks so they should have the best cooldowns overall as that is their niche. If they have the best passive mitigation, that's another issue entirely and should not resolved by nerfing them in the area they are supposed to be superior. In the current game, Assassin tanks are the best tanks due to the design of current end-game content, not due to balance. I don't want to get into a discussion about overall tank balance too much. Right now, the only things that I think should happen is for the 5% chance of certain skills to fail should be removed so that all skills are reliable and that Vanguard tanks get an improvement to Adrenaline Rush/Kolto Overload because for being the longest tank DCD in the game, it is terrible for NiM level content when you can easily get killed while it's up.

Edited May 1, 2014 by Vaidinah

[ShadowMudkip]

I'm not making out Guardian tanks to be bad at all as that's not what I said or implied. I'm correcting someone else who thinks they are the best tank. Also, you are incorrect as well about I/E damage being the sole reason for Assassins doing particularly well. Their pull, higher mobility and in general stronger utility in NiM DF fights is helping them go to the top.

 

Assassins are the least mobile tank out of all three tank archtypes. The reason? The force lightning channel that has to happen at least every 12 seconds or they lose their stacks of DR. Unless you mean mobility tools, such as force speed and force pull. Even then they fall behind because Vanguards have HTL and harpoon and Storm, while Guardians have leap and intercede (though this makes them inferior to both others).

 

Agreed that Assassins have higher Utility, but I would argue that the Guardians defensive cooldowns are more powerful and have only a slightly longer cooldown than the inferior (though still impressive) Assassin Cooldowns.

 

Edit: Just wanted to say that the Guardian class rep has to be one of the most attentive and active rep out of almost all of the other class reps I have seen. Exceptional job coming from a fairly balanced view of how to balance Guardians out, instead of the "Buff ma class cuz power" type questions others have submitted.

Edited May 1, 2014 by ShadowMudkip

[Gyronamics]

Edit: Just wanted to say that the Guardian class rep has to be one of the most attentive and active rep out of almost all of the other class reps I have seen. Exceptional job coming from a fairly balanced view of how to balance Guardians out, instead of the "Buff ma class cuz power" type questions others have submitted.

 

The fewer significant issues you have the easier it is to not want anything looked at.

 

The questions and answers can be summed up as a general agreement that there's only minor issues bothering the class and the only urgent issue at all is toning DOWN the ED/FD HTF button that was just given out to make PVP more bearable for other classes.

[DarthSylar]

Combining 6% Strength boost with the 3% Accuracy buff would be great, and would also end the uncertainty for full Immortal builds where there is no consensus on which is better. Thematically, merging the Blade Storm and Overhead Slash DoTs would make sense.

 

yea....that would be a bit over powered, would make jug tanks stronger, when their intention is to mprove vigilence

[Sith-Viscera]

Yeah, hows this for all the babies out there crying about Juggs/Guards, just remove them all together that should make u happy as hell. I mean there really isnt anything left good any more, so remove the classes. Then they can start on removing another good class.

 

Hell i also just dont play JUGG/Gaurd, i also play Sage, and as much as i like Sage, and that the class kicks @S$, its overly powered big time so as much as i love sage there is lots to be nerfed with it. So work on that and LEAVE JUG and GUARD the Hell alone!!!!!!!!!!!

 

 

Enough, is Enough!!!!!!!!!

[TACeMossie]

Edit: Just wanted to say that the Guardian class rep has to be one of the most attentive and active rep out of almost all of the other class reps I have seen. Exceptional job coming from a fairly balanced view of how to balance Guardians out, instead of the "Buff ma class cuz power" type questions others have submitted.

 

*KeyboardNinja, Shadow AND Sentinel class rep, silently cries inside

[Marb]

I can agree that in select cases the new Focused Defense was a nerf for Guardian Tanks, if you could ensure the synergy of your AOE taunt and FD enabling you to have consistent healing. Right now, I still see GRD tanks get unlucky, or lucky, depending on your POV, and stringdefending therefore not proccing your stacks. With the shorter timer this is definitely a killer for GRD tanks.

 

Well there are a few things we can do about it. We can have a talent for Guardian Tanks that increases the timer of the ability. Due to the fact that it's a mediocre PVP ability for tanks in full tank spec, that might be alright, but make hybrid tanks very potent which is undesirable.

 

We can also decrease the amount of stacks themselves, for example double over the healing on each stack and lower the amount of stacks for the same amount of net healing.

 

The optimal route is make it so that the healing would proc through defense.

 

We can also nerf it to the ground by practically turning it into a Kolto Overload, which would be highly undesirable, OR we could restore it to it's original form with the same CD, then remove the focus cost.

 

In hindsight, I think they should have removed the threat drop from the original enraged defence and transplanted it onto a new ability, then reduced the rage cost/consumption for dps juggs through skills. Instead they redesigned the entire ability, and created brand new balance considerations for dps in pvp, which will result in it being needlessly nerfed for tanks in PvE and potentially put some tanks into a position where they're actually worse off then they were before they revamped ED.

Edited May 1, 2014 by Marb

[GrandLordMenace]

*KeyboardNinja, Shadow AND Sentinel class rep, silently cries inside

 

Hehe nahhh I think he's alright

 

But Andrew kinda cut off an arm and a leg to write these questions considering he had to do it last minute from what we know from his previous forum posts. Considering he's a busy person I'm glad he actually ended up making the questions!

[Vaidinah]

Assassins are the least mobile tank out of all three tank archtypes. The reason? The force lightning channel that has to happen at least every 12 seconds or they lose their stacks of DR. Unless you mean mobility tools, such as force speed and force pull. Even then they fall behind because Vanguards have HTL and harpoon and Storm, while Guardians have leap and intercede (though this makes them inferior to both others).

 

Agreed that Assassins have higher Utility, but I would argue that the Guardians defensive cooldowns are more powerful and have only a slightly longer cooldown than the inferior (though still impressive) Assassin Cooldowns.

 

Edit: Just wanted to say that the Guardian class rep has to be one of the most attentive and active rep out of almost all of the other class reps I have seen. Exceptional job coming from a fairly balanced view of how to balance Guardians out, instead of the "Buff ma class cuz power" type questions others have submitted.

 

You are forgetting about two things with the first being Phase Walk. While it mainly used as a healing boost, it also serves as a teleport, which is very, very helpful on certain fights like Brontes NiM and Grob'thok NiM. The other boost they have is in the middle tree talent called Misdirection/Obfuscation as you can get it without much of a sacrifice for a 15% boost in speed at all times. The Guardian/Jugg version of this only works when your target has taken damage recently and does not have nearly the same uptime in general.

[Herald]

Having played Jedi Guardian Tank since launch, why should the tanks suffer a NERF, that the Devs seem to be placing upon the vigilance/focus spec, by reducing the duration of Focused Defense down to 10 sec. This affects all trees.

 

Should the DPS spec benefit from Focused Defense more so then the Tanks specs? Why is Through Peace in the Focus tree giving DPS a 30sec reduction cool down in Focused Defense rather then in the Defense tree?

 

If you are going to NERF Jedi Guardians Vigilance, Focus, Defense Trees reduce Focused Defense duration to 15 Sec and allow Through Peace to either be placed in the Defense tree or have Through Peace in the bottom two rows of the Focus Tree next to momentum or second wind.

 

That way Defensive Tanks can utilize Through Peace and Focus or Vigilance DPS can also gain benefit from it as well.

[TACeMossie]

Having played Jedi Guardian Tank since launch, why should the tanks suffer a NERF, that the Devs seem to be placing upon the vigilance/focus spec, by reducing the duration of Focused Defense down to 10 sec. This affects all trees.

 

Should the DPS spec benefit from Focused Defense more so then the Tanks specs? Why is Through Peace in the Focus tree giving DPS a 30sec reduction cool down in Focused Defense rather then in the Defense tree?

 

If you are going to NERF Jedi Guardians Vigilance, Focus, Defense Trees reduce Focused Defense duration to 15 Sec and allow Through Peace to either be placed in the Defense tree or have Through Peace in the bottom two rows of the Focus Tree next to momentum or second wind.

 

That way Defensive Tanks can utilize Through Peace and Focus or Vigilance DPS can also gain benefit from it as well.

 

Guardian Tanks were balanced with focused defense not treated as one of their defensive cooldowns.

2.7 gave Guardians Focused Defense as a defensive cooldown

2.8 is reducing its effectiveness, but its still a defensive cooldown that was almost unusable as a tank prior to 2.7.

Edited May 1, 2014 by TACeMossie

[Marb]

Guardian Tanks were balanced with focused defense not treated as one of their defensive cooldowns.

2.7 gave Guardians Focused Defense as a defensive cooldown

2.8 is reducing its effectiveness, but its still a defensive cooldown that was almost unusable as a tank prior to 2.7.

 

Do you have a dev quote for that? Focused Defence has been utilised by guard tanks successfully since launch. It sounds like you just chose not to use it.

 

And why would they not expect a guard tank to use it in pvp? Considering the changes they made to the ability, I would guess that they assumed it was a defensive cooldown for all specs, and just decided that it was too punishing to use.

Edited May 1, 2014 by Marb

[wadecounty]

Do you have a dev quote for that? Focused Defence has been utilised by guard tanks successfully since launch. It sounds like you just chose not to use it.

 

And why would they not expect a guard tank to use it in pvp? Considering the changes they made to the ability, I would guess that they assumed it was a defensive cooldown for all specs, and just decided that it was too punishing to use.

 

Since launch? Focused Defense wasn't in the game at launch, it wasn't introduced until game update 1.2. Also its fairly clear it was never intended to be used while tanking as it doubled as a threat drop. However while with newer threat drop abilities they've added in later patches where you spec into the defensive in your DPS tree, they hadn't come up with that yet at this point in the game's life and so it had its defensive ability baked in.

 

The problem with Focused Defense was its original implementation, they tried to kill 2 birds with 1 stone, making it a threat drop and a defensive cooldown for DPS who were lacking one, and that coupled with the insane Focus cost just made it a very clunky ability. Of course back at this time, they still had weird things like interrupts and Awe costing Focus as well, not sure if people remember this.

 

What they really should have done was kept Focused Defense as the threat drop, but have any secondary effects tied to the DPS trees, like other threat drops in the game work. Instead, we have an ability that still fits really weirdly compare to all the others in the game, and lost an AOE taunt just to gain a threat drop. Just feels like a bunch of lazy design decisions to me.

Edited May 1, 2014 by wadecounty

[Marb]

Since launch? Focused Defense wasn't in the game at launch, it wasn't introduced until game update 1.2. Also its fairly clear it was never intended to be used while tanking as it doubled as a threat drop. However while with newer threat drop abilities they've added in later patches where you spec into the defensive in your DPS tree, they hadn't come up with that yet at this point in the game's life and so it had its defensive ability baked in.

 

The problem with Focused Defense was its original implementation, they tried to kill 2 birds with 1 stone, making it a threat drop and a defensive cooldown for DPS who were lacking one, and that coupled with the insane Focus cost just made it a very clunky ability. Of course back at this time, they still had weird things like interrupts and Awe costing Focus as well, not sure if people remember this.

 

What they really should have done was kept Focused Defense as the threat drop, but have any secondary effects tied to the DPS trees, like other threat drops in the game work. Instead, we have an ability that still fits really weirdly compare to all the others in the game, and lost an AOE taunt just to gain a threat drop. Just feels like a bunch of lazy design decisions to me.

 

Yea I had a feeling it could have been a post launch addition but I couldn't remember. I should have read through the patch notes to be sure.

 

If they removed the ability completely from tanks (by turning enraged defence into a generic threat drop and tying the defensive aspects to high tier rage/vengeance skills) then it would be obvious that they never intended it to be used by tanks, but instead they just removed the penalties from the base ability. If they didn't want tanks using the original enraged defence, what justification could they have for giving tanks another defensive cooldown in 2.7?

[wadecounty]

Yea I had a feeling it could have been a post launch addition but I couldn't remember. I should have read through the patch notes to be sure.

 

If they removed the ability completely from tanks (by turning enraged defence into a generic threat drop and tying the defensive aspects to high tier rage/vengeance skills) then it would be obvious that they never intended it to be used by tanks, but instead they just removed the penalties from the base ability. If they didn't want tanks using the original enraged defence, what justification could they have for giving tanks another defensive cooldown in 2.7?

I kind of agree, except they also made the design decision to strip all DPS of their aoe taunt by turning it into a threat drop, and also strip all tanks of a threat drop option. Now Guardians have the unique distinction of being the only DPS AC with a taunt that can't aoe taunt, and the only tank AC with no access to a threat drop.

 

Do you agree that those are conscious design decisions? Or just pure laziness on the part of the devs since it would have been more work to come up with an entirely new ability that function as a threat drop? And if those changes were actually intended, wouldn't it make sense to strip the other tanking AC's of their aoe taunt when in DPS stances, and strip the tanks of their threat drop when in tanking stances?

 

I think its just a case of developers being lazy imo, and for that same reason they've never really bothered with Focused Defense much in terms of its effect on Guardian tank survivability. IMO, it almost puts the class in a borderline OP area for tanking... I literally never run out of cooldowns against Nightmare Draxus when solo tanking him, not even a Shadow can truly boast that.

 

EDIT: To clarify, I think the reason they didn't just tie ALL defensive bonuses for FD to skills in the DPS trees and keep it as a threat drop is because they wanted to buff the ability to increase DPS Guardian survivability, which has always been a bit behind what it should be until now. However, in doing so they had to lengthen the ability's cooldown to justify its improved effects, which shifts the threat drop elsewhere, and being as lazy as they are, they just tacked it onto the aoe taunt. I assume they factored in that basing FD's heals on bonus healing would keep tanks from getting good heals, but if you're asking me if they factored in the overall ability to a guardian tanks survivability, my answer is no I don't think they did...

 

I think the one area they kind of neglect with regards to tank balance is cooldowns, for two reasons, one its more difficult to balance as their uses vary, and two straight math doesn't always give you an answer, as while one cooldown can be numerically superior when used "on cooldown", in reality that's never how you're meant to use your cooldowns as a tank.

Edited May 1, 2014 by wadecounty

[Docmal]

These questions were so good that they nerfed Guardians. Well done.