Guard really needs some retuning

[Glower]

Not you and your threads again...

Roll the full tank and say it again.

 

But wait, you are the Cretinus, so just spam it again and again!

[Recamier]

Wouldn't 4 tanks in a WZ mean you actually had close to a balanced match for once? Wouldn't 4 tanks, 4 healers, and 8 DPS (2/2/4 per team) be the ideal make up?

[Saikochoro]

I want to see an arena with 4 tanks vs 4 healers. An 8v8 with 8 tanks vs 8 healers would be interesting to watch.

[Cretinus]

Ship Bolster gives you like 5k additional HP tops and like 60 bonus damage. If there are people with 50-60k HP in your WZ's they probably have ship bolster and PvE gear on (or just PvE gear) and if PvE geared people are giving you trouble you got a whole other set of problems on your hands.

 

No. Not really. Not every problem that people describe here is due to everybody being a terribad, while you and your friends are great players. There are balance and design issues and it's fine to come here to the forums and talk about these. It's just not as if the game had a 100% balance that is only visible to superior master players like your pals and you.

[Capt_Beers]

No. Not really. Not every problem that people describe here is due to everybody being a terribad, while you and your friends are great players. There are balance and design issues and it's fine to come here to the forums and talk about these. It's just not as if the game had a 100% balance that is only visible to superior master players like your pals and you.

 

Would you like me to post my video demonstrating ship bolster so you can see it only give me 3k additional HP?

Edited January 8, 2015 by Capt_Beers

[nitroyoshi]

the only tank that is a problem is guardian

you have to be stupid to not be a good guardian tank

[Obviousenuendo]

Guard does more harm to the game's pvp than good.

 

Positives

Requires target swapping with CC on the tank to counter. So actually takes thought to get a kill. How often do people die because people are outplaying guard? Rarely ever.

Makes tank specs viable.

 

Negatives

Imbalances damage taken to health pool when people don't have a tank. The vast majority of the game's pvp people don't have tanks running around guard swapping/absorbing damage. This has a huge negative spiral effect on everything from instant cast healing and ineffective interrupts; how crowd control is designed; unpredictable damage vs. setting up burst; the ineffectiveness of controlling a second/third target; and switching/kiting during defensives vs. just killing through/tunneling.

 

Individual survivability also gets overlapped by having a tank. Tanks encourage people to stand on top of each other instead of moving around and kiting. A big portion of the game's cooldown management (gap closers/escapes) become less important. Managing defensives is not as important when you have guard.

 

Tanks also forces arenas into a 4v4 format, which is bad for many reasons.

 

The more roles you require a team to have, the more likely games will end up imbalanced before the gates drop.

 

Using guard does not take much skill. It has no cooldown or duration to manage. Prioritizing who to guard takes as much skill as prioritizing who to shield as a sorc. Its unique skill is in positioning. Knowing when to stay in range of your guarded target. The reasons there aren't many good guard swappers is because it is foreign to other MMOs. Playing a tank without a healer in 8v8 is also not as effective compared to just playing a healer. And the more tanks a team has, the less fun/effective tanks become.

 

this guy has it, all other replies should be focusing on this post.

 

also, harbinger does have quite a few tanks that queue regularly, more than I want to fight against.

[ThorgrimLutgen]

Uhh, what??? I mean, I agree most of his threads are pure garbage, but there are a lot of tanks queueing lately... Not necessarily to his extreme, but definitely not to yours either...

 

People levelling their alts to 60 from 55 and finishing gearing them. Give it a few weeks and most will return to their mains.

 

Additionally, just because they are tank, does not mean they are a good PVP tank. The urge to derp is too strong with many. Given that, a team of 4 piss poor tanks is a gimped team as it misses out on other things.

Edited January 8, 2015 by ThorgrimLutgen

[Zadtro]

It all depends on the player. If there is a good tank reading who is getting focused and guard swapping then the match is a lot harder... which is fun but when there is a team of 2 healers and a tank then the match will never end.

 

People just need to focus tanks and cc healers a bit, attack them both at the same time. Remember the smash monkey days, that is how tanks used to get dealt with but now we have to be a bit more calculated, have everyone on the healer then 1 or 2 peeps on the tank. You won't get big crits but tank can die.

 

Or push healer out of guard range, it is a viable move.

[madtycoon]

People just need to focus tanks and cc healers a bit, attack them both at the same time. Remember the smash monkey days, that is how tanks used to get dealt with but now we have to be a bit more calculated, have everyone on the healer then 1 or 2 peeps on the tank. You won't get big crits but tank can die.

 

Or push healer out of guard range, it is a viable move.

 

Only the jug/guardian push is far enough to separate a tank from their guarded target when you aren't factoring in elevation. Pushes barely do anything to counter guard unless you have a 360 knockback and are standing in between them. Even the guardian knockback only gives your team a couple non guarded globals at most unless it's followed up by a root chain. This is assuming you also stop the guarded target from just running back over to the knocked back tank.

 

Root chains only really work against other guardians/jugs. Sin tanks will most likely be specced for a root break on sprint and Vanguards have hold the line.

 

Split pressure also doesn't work like it did with old smash. All healers now have instant or channeled AOE healing that you really can't stop without crowd control. So it just comes down to an output race most of the time. Why even have guard at that point. Same with the tank tunneling strat. Both scenarios don't add anything to the game's meta compared to if guard didn't exist. Guard just makes the game easier for everyone and frustrating to those who are actually trying to outplay the mechanic.

[Zadtro]

Only the jug/guardian push is far enough to separate a tank from their guarded target when you aren't factoring in elevation. Pushes barely do anything to counter guard unless you have a 360 knockback and are standing in between them. Even the guardian knockback only gives your team a couple non guarded globals at most unless it's followed up by a root chain. This is assuming you also stop the guarded target from just running back over to the knocked back tank.

 

Root chains only really work against other guardians/jugs. Sin tanks will most likely be specced for a root break on sprint and Vanguards have hold the line.

 

Split pressure also doesn't work like it did with old smash. All healers now have instant or channeled AOE healing that you really can't stop without crowd control. So it just comes down to an output race most of the time. Why even have guard at that point. Same with the tank tunneling strat. Both scenarios don't add anything to the game's meta compared to if guard didn't exist. Guard just makes the game easier for everyone and frustrating to those who are actually trying to outplay the mechanic.

 

True they can get back to the healer quick, it takes coordination, in arena it is always push the healer off the edge and down a tier. I find it really hard to down them in pugs because half the team are running around like headless chickens just attacking whoever is closest instead of focussing healers together.

 

Since we play stun wars, we can stun people. Just needs to be timed right which is much harder to do :/

 

For me as a focus guardian I can get 2 massive hits in a row which are normally always above 20K so I save my saber throw crit bonus and use it with force push, when I see a healer is low i push, i throw, i jump for crit bonus then unless they bubble or use breaker, worst case i have for stasis/choke. I do agree that guard is soooooooooooooooooo good in pvp, changes the state of a warzone, just try to communicate with your team really.

[Cretinus]

...Both scenarios don't add anything to the game's meta compared to if guard didn't exist. Guard just makes the game easier for everyone and frustrating to those who are actually trying to outplay the mechanic.

 

I don't think that guard needs to be completely removed from PvP.

 

A tank should be able to lend his tankiness to another player upon need, but only once every 30 secs or the like. Guard could place a debuff on the target that prevents him from being guarded again for 30 secs after the first guard wears off.

 

Moreover, if a tank lends his tankiness to a healer, then the tank should make sure that he doesn't need heals by that particular healer, otherwise the whole thing ends up as a vicious circle. A natural way to implement this would be to immediately remove guard from the healer if he starts healing the tank who is guarding him. They would have to make up their minds about who is being assisted by who and not just rely on a virtual personal union of a tank and a healer that jumps from one player to the other according to need.

 

Let's face it: A healer healing other players is fine. But a tank magically making other players to tanks, that one needs to be veeeeery situational and surely not spammable.

Edited January 8, 2015 by Cretinus

[JackNader]

It needs a slight retune and only because of the fact that AOE healing now leverages guard more than in the previous meta.

[Ridickilis]

this guy has it, all other replies should be focusing on this post.

 

also, harbinger does have quite a few tanks that queue regularly, more than I want to fight against.

 

He doesn't have it at all. Not even close. He's suggesting removing roles from the game. We may as well remove healing as well based off his suggestion because it sounds like some of you would just prefer 8 dps vs 8 dps and have at it.

 

At that rate, why don't we just make Mario vs Luigi and everyone just gets the same two abilities; a jump and turtle throw. Problem solved.

 

Cretinus' suggestion was far less drastic, which I still don't agree with, but it is an interesting thought. 30 second CD is far too long though. Perhaps if guard was on a 10 second CD and lasted 6 seconds. Still needs to be re-apllied and you'd still have a 4 second window against competent tanks. Though how are you going to manage guard swapping because you'd basically be eliminating it from the game and making tanks irrelevant. Or are you putting a guard debuff on other players rather than a CD on the tank's guard?

 

Everyone starts nuking Cretinus first, I see this and slap guard on him. Knowing I have a 10 second CD you can simply switch to anyone else knowing you have 10 seconds to do so.

Edited January 8, 2015 by Ridickilis

[Cretinus]

Everyone starts nuking Cretinus first, I see this and slap guard on him. Knowing I have a 10 second CD you can simply switch to anyone else knowing you have 10 seconds to do so.

 

My suggestion was rather like this:

You place guard on Cretinus. Cretinus remains guarded until he gets separated from you, or you decide to guard someone else (or Cretinus removes guard himself for some reason). This is exactly how it is now.

But if Cretinus loses guard (for one of the reasons I just said), he immediately gets a debuff that prevents him from being guarded again (no matter by who) for the next couple of secs.

The debuff doesn't affect the tank, he can still guard someone else, there's no CD. But he can't swap back to guarding Cretinus until the debuff on Cretinus wears off. This would be similar to the debuff on static barrier.

The 30 secs might be to long, make it 15 secs or whatever. But the main idea is good imho, cause guard is simply too strong to be swap-spammable back and forth in the manner of an o.s.h.i.t button. It needs to be more situational. The couple of secs where Cretinus is not guardable open a window to nuke him down and this is fine. If the tank needs to avoid this as a big priority, then his job will be to guard Cretinus without a gap. If he manages to do so, there will be no easy window to nuke Cretinus down. Fair enough, imho.

Edited January 8, 2015 by Cretinus

[Zadtro]

A guard debuff, it makes sense. Will make the tank and healer job more difficult because we will nuke someone to get the guard off the healer then switch, maybe 5s which is a pretty long time to be unguarded.

[Ridickilis]

What about fake-outs?

 

The other team starts on you, I guard you, their dps switches to someone else, I swap guard, then they instantly swap back to you knowing I'm locked out from helping you aside from taunts (which I've probably already used anyway). I think it would still be too easy to counter.

 

What about something like giving guard a duration? No CD or de-buff but make tanks actively re-apply it every 6 seconds or something? That would still give you more of a window than there is now, especially if the other team waits till guard is about to expire then CC the tank.

 

I don't really know if I like that either, more or less thinking out loud with your idea in mind.

[madtycoon]

He doesn't have it at all. Not even close. He's suggesting removing roles from the game. We may as well remove healing as well based off his suggestion because it sounds like some of you would just prefer 8 dps vs 8 dps and have at it.

 

I don't want to remove guard from the game. I don't want tanks to be useless. I just want tanks to not be essential for people's survival in a group setting. I would rather tanks be more of a mix between offense and defense instead of mostly defensive.

 

Guard is too polarizing in its current form. 50% constant damage soak is huge if you really think about it. It would be better if it had a duration or a cooldown or both. Or maybe not transfer as much damage. Still be a staple of the pvp tank, but be closer to the effectiveness of taunting well. Maybe give tanks lower cooldowns on their crowd control and increase their damage in pvp to compensate (make them more offensive), but also make them killable. So they are still useful and can still have their comps, but wouldn't be required for teams.

 

They should at least tweak the numbers. I mean having things like guard and expertise, trauma. They have the tools to control everything. But they never change the numbers around. Have they ever even changed the expertise percentages since level 50?

 

If guard was retuned, then they could do something about burst damage. Maybe scale crit damage down through expertise, but also increase non crit damage. So burst wouldn't come down to getting a lucky chain of crits, rather the damage would be more reliable. With the above change you could make healers more about casting instead of instant casts and channels. Scoundrel healers were always the strongest with guard. I mean it wasn't even close until this expansion, because they were mostly instant casts. My guess is they gave all healers a ridiculous amount of instant cast/aoe healing to make them all more viable with guard. Self explanatory why having too many instant casts on healers is bad for the game.

 

In a group setting survivability is centered around guard. At least that's the intended design. It should be more a mixture of coordinated defensive cooldown management (guard being more of a team defensive cooldown) mixed with good taunting, peeling and kiting. There needs to be more thought going into survival instead of do I have guard or not. This ability is too much of a deciding factor in whether someone lives or dies.

 

A change to guard is never going to happen. If they weren't happy with 4v4 and a three role design, they would have made changes with this expansion. They didn't. I'm just pointing out the negative effects a mechanic like this has on PvP as a whole. It does have its positives too.

[madtycoon]

What about fake-outs?

 

The other team starts on you, I guard you, their dps switches to someone else, I swap guard, then they instantly swap back to you knowing I'm locked out from helping you aside from taunts (which I've probably already used anyway). I think it would still be too easy to counter.

 

What about something like giving guard a duration? No CD or de-buff but make tanks actively re-apply it every 6 seconds or something? That would still give you more of a window than there is now, especially if the other team waits till guard is about to expire then CC the tank.

 

I don't really know if I like that either, more or less thinking out loud with your idea in mind.

 

I think fake-outs would make the game more dynamic to be honest. I mean teams would have to think a little more before using the guard cooldown. More coordination. I just saw my tank used his guard cooldown. I have to kite for x amount of seconds until my tank can guard me. Seems like a plus to the game.

 

Tanks would want to manage his guard cooldown and taunts. Maybe save his taunts for example for the windows where guard is on cooldown. Edit: Assuming damage is in a reasonable place.

 

The one bad thing about giving it a short duration like 6 seconds is that a tank would be more of less using guard every 4th global? It wouldn't be a bad thing to take guard off global if it had a cooldown or duration.

 

Just thinking out loud also.

Edited January 8, 2015 by madtycoon

[AdamLKvist]

I don't want to remove guard from the game. I don't want tanks to be useless. I just want tanks to not be essential for people's survival in a group setting. I would rather tanks be more of a mix between offense and defense instead of mostly defensive.

 

Guard is too polarizing in its current form. 50% constant damage soak is huge if you really think about it. It would be better if it had a duration or a cooldown or both. Or maybe not transfer as much damage. Still be a staple of the pvp tank, but be closer to the effectiveness of taunting well. Maybe give tanks lower cooldowns on their crowd control and increase their damage in pvp to compensate (make them more offensive), but also make them killable. So they are still useful and can still have their comps, but wouldn't be required for teams.

 

They should at least tweak the numbers. I mean having things like guard and expertise, trauma. They have the tools to control everything. But they never change the numbers around. Have they ever even changed the expertise percentages since level 50?

 

If guard was retuned, then they could do something about burst damage. Maybe scale crit damage down through expertise, but also increase non crit damage. So burst wouldn't come down to getting a lucky chain of crits, rather the damage would be more reliable. With the above change you could make healers more about casting instead of instant casts and channels. Scoundrel healers were always the strongest with guard. I mean it wasn't even close until this expansion, because they were mostly instant casts. My guess is they gave all healers a ridiculous amount of instant cast/aoe healing to make them all more viable with guard. Self explanatory why having too many instant casts on healers is bad for the game.

 

In a group setting survivability is centered around guard. At least that's the intended design. It should be more a mixture of coordinated defensive cooldown management (guard being more of a team defensive cooldown) mixed with good taunting, peeling and kiting. There needs to be more thought going into survival instead of do I have guard or not. This ability is too much of a deciding factor in whether someone lives or dies.

 

A change to guard is never going to happen. If they weren't happy with 4v4 and a three role design, they would have made changes with this expansion. They didn't. I'm just pointing out the negative effects a mechanic like this has on PvP as a whole. It does have its positives too.

 

Guard is the only thing making this game and its gameplay unique aside from its IP. Removing guard and its function would totally destroy the foundation which they have built this game upon - and its taken them FOREVER to get this far so I'd rather not see them do any big changes. They'll take another 3 years to get back on track.

 

No ty

[Glower]

Dream on!

 

If you want the guard on 30 sec or 6 or whatever cd then i want your burst or defensive cooldowns nerfed too. Or buffed tanks defence vs all types of damage, or significantly buffed tanks damage...

 

No? Then you can just **** with your tanks nerfs straight to the Biowares Wall of Craziness.

[Neoforcer]

Guard is getting out of hand. WZ teams with 3-4 tanks guarding everything, this is no longer PvP, it's rather fighting OP bosses. Guard needs to be redesigned for PvP, it does not make any sense the way it is now.

 

Have no issue killing some one with guard usually the tank goes ouch that hurt. You hit the person guarded hard enough they tank dies a well

[Cretinus]

What about fake-outs?

 

The other team starts on you, I guard you, their dps switches to someone else, I swap guard, then they instantly swap back to you knowing I'm locked out from helping you aside from taunts (which I've probably already used anyway). I think it would still be too easy to counter.

 

What about something like giving guard a duration? No CD or de-buff but make tanks actively re-apply it every 6 seconds or something? That would still give you more of a window than there is now, especially if the other team waits till guard is about to expire then CC the tank.

 

I don't really know if I like that either, more or less thinking out loud with your idea in mind.

 

Well, the idea is exactly that you shouldn't spam-swap guard all the time, but rather use it wisely to save a healer when the time comes, or the like. A tank is not a healer, he shouldn't be supposed to keep several people alive at the same time. That's actually the healer's job. The tank should focus on protecting one player, e.g. the healer, or some other player who is important for reaching the objectives.

[Altheran]

When a 1 Tank + 3 DPS team will have a significant advantage over a 4 DPS team, then maybe you can start to have doubts about Tank's power. And even then, you may be wrong having doubts.

 

But at the moment we're not to that point yet. We're in a situation where the Tank is just as good as a DPS at best when tanking mechanisms are favorable, or terribly worse when enemies deal unfavorable damage types.

Any nerf call against Tanks at that point can only be misdirected.

 

Have a problem with a Tank/Healer combo ? Look at the other guy, you may find the inconsistencies you're looking for.

A tank is not a healer, he shouldn't be supposed to keep several people alive at the same time. That's actually the healer's job. The tank should focus on protecting one player, e.g. the healer, or some other player who is important for reaching the objectives.

And they actually don't keep multiple people alive. You may change the person you're protecting but you mostly protect only one person at a time as a tank.

 

On the contrary healers... They still mostly rely on single target heals (a bit less now) and are able to surpass the protection a Tank would provide to an individual (guarded DPS slowly dies, healed target will generally not even have his life bulge)

 

Guess the one trespassing his role is not the one you thought it is.

Edited January 8, 2015 by Altheran

[Zadtro]

When a 1 Tank + 3 DPS team will have a significant advantage over a 4 DPS team, then maybe you can start to have doubts about Tank's power. And even then, you may be wrong having doubts.

 

You are right, I have been in many situations when the advantage goes to them because they can mitigate the damage in a dps race, also now classes have off healing to a good standard, I see wz with sorcs doing 1m+ damage and 300k healing. Dps shouldn't have healing over time, it is way too useful in my opinion.