Guardian Redundant Abilities

[aznthecapn]

So my guardian is level 35 and I have a LOT of skills. None of them indicate that they are replaced by skills in the talent tree but I'm not seeing how I can even KEYBIND all my skills, much less find room for them in my rotation for tanking or DPS.

 

Are there any skills that are clearly intended to be replaced by a better version in your talent tree? What skills are you using to tank with? Here's how I see most of them...

 

Slice - standard Focus build

Slash - standard Focus dump

Sundering Strike - debuff, strong Focus build

Guardian Slash - debuff, strong threat attack

Hilt Strike - stun, strong threat attack

Cyclone Slash - AoE focus dump

Force Sweep - AoE, strong attack

Riposte - off GCD threat, defensive boost via talents

Blade Storm - strong attack

Master Strike - channeled, high damage

Pommel Strike - damage against stunned enemies

Opportune Strike - damage against slowed enemies

 

As you can see, speccing JUST defense as a Guardian the number of skills you get is really out of hand. Do any of these overlap somehow? I'm thinking Pommel and Opportune are for PvP but did we really need two different versions of this skill? Could we not, via talents, have brought Force Sweep to be in line wit Cyclone Slash instead of having two skills? Here's how I'd prefer to see it work...

 

Sundering Strike replaces Slice entirely. No CD, builds 2 focus (via talents).

Guardian Slash is your primary, CD based threat builder.

Slash is your focus dump when everthing is on CD and you're overloaded on focus.

Hilt Strike is high threat or stun, as it is now.

Force Sweep retains loses SOME damage but its CD and cost is reduced (via talents). Give it a 6s CD and free to use.

Riposte is my favorite skill. Usable off CD, provides a defensive barrier when used encouraging you to use it often.

 

Everything else is retooled either for DPS or PvP.

[smackphat]

A thousand times this. Even just removing the cooldown on sunder or talenting to make slice have sunder effects would make the class flow a lot better.

 

The combination of pommel strike and opportune strike would be nice too.

 

Another thing. Why are there 47 skills to interrupt on long cooldowns? Why not reduce them to one interrupt with a fraction of the cooldown? Doesn't a tank have enough to do? Vanguards don't have that obnoxious gimmick and I can't speak for shadows.

 

The rest of the stuff can be tweaked later, but frankly, the clunkiness of the priority/rotation is needlessly complex and those small changes would make it a lot better. More changes would be better, but I'm okay with baby steps. The DPS & tanking tree overhauls can come later. ;-)

Edited December 28, 2011 by smackphat

[smackphat]

You know, it occurred to me that depending on how the macro system is implemented, it might make this class a *ton* easier to play. If you can put multiple skills on one press that had conditionals. For instance, a macro to combine sunder and strike or a macro to combine the non-master strikes or a macro for your stuns, etc. Heh. It may be wishful thinking, but it would go a long way towards cleaning up the skillbar clutter.

[aznthecapn]

You know, it occurred to me that depending on how the macro system is implemented, it might make this class a *ton* easier to play. If you can put multiple skills on one press that had conditionals. For instance, a macro to combine sunder and strike or a macro to combine the non-master strikes or a macro for your stuns, etc. Heh. It may be wishful thinking, but it would go a long way towards cleaning up the skillbar clutter.

 

 

While true, my hope is that they put more thought and direction into the way the class is designed to play. By the looks of it, a team sat down and came up with a giant list of cool lightsaber skills and then threw darts at it to see which ones to use. There's way too much clutter, way too much redundancy and not enough critical thinking about how abilities should play and interact.

 

One thing they did right is in the Vigilance tree. Zen Strike resetting the CD of Master Strike is one tiny little interaction between skills that is good. MS is designed to be the high damage output and resetting it is a great idea. They need several of these in each tree to help show a direction for rotation.

[Smashbrother]

Eh I like the way Guardian works right now. There's no set rotation on skill usage--more of a priority system--and it makes combat more fun. Having a set rotation on skills is hella boring; especially during raids.

 

The thing they should fix is remove CD on Sundering so it replaces Strike complete (whether through talents or baseline doesn't matter to me).

[vekkth]

absolutely this. too much skills to use, in fact we do not need that, we need less complicated but better polished skill set. At least Sundering Strike should replace Strike, this is like - obvious.

 

Right now i can be very positive that JG developer, the person who was in charge, actually did his job rather poor. other classes are better or much better designed then JG. i can not speak for sentinels since i do not play one, but as far as it goes i guess it is a common situation, which draws me to conclusion that the person who actually did some ****** work was the one responsible for overall JK/SW design.

 

I really hope this person either improves, or gets replaced.

[aznthecapn]

There's no set rotation on skill usage--more of a priority system--and it makes combat more fun.

 

 

I use "rotation" and "priority system" interchangeably here. There isn't really any set flow to the skill system. There's no choice to make either. The only proc is Riposte and you can just spam that with on finger since its off the GCD. A priority system is just a rotation with randomness built in but its better than what we have right now. Its a mess as it is and skills should have a refinement. An elegance. A CHOICE.

 

Talents should guide us and show us a priority system but that doesn't exist as it is now.

[Phelanar]

Man, I agree with this so much. Too many skills, many of them limited to a narrow range of situations, and I'd like to see some of them folded into one another. The class right now feels like it's complicated for the sake of looking complex, not because it needs to be. I think a lot of people would find the class easier and more fun if some of the redundancies were sorted.

[Wazooty]

As a 33 sentinel I agree completely. Wayy too much clutter. I have a gazillion hotkeys and I'm still getting abilitites which seem like they could be useful but there's already way too many abilities. Combining a number of pairs of abililities could go a long way to cleaning things up. Not just our main combat abilities, but I'm getting more and more half useful defensive/utility abilities. Heck, there's that one that increases move speed by 50% and defense by 10% that I've used maybe once just because I'm bored out of combat or something.

 

As a specific example: In the ataru tree, rather than giving another strike on top of the list of 10000 different strikes we have (I'm specifically talking about the arpen strike), just have that talent tack that effect onto the bleed strike we get or something. They both have a 15s CD and are both used early in battles.

 

Every single little individual combat effect does not need its own individual strike. I have 1 through =, shift-1 through shift-5, Q, E, R, T, F, V, middle mouse and side mouse all bound and I've still ran out of room to put the abilities that we "should" be using. Too many!

Edited December 28, 2011 by Wazooty

[Grabes]

Bioware, please do not listen to these fine fine people.

 

Yougave us lots of abiltties. these abilities all have their time and place.

 

Please note that you only need six abilties solo, as the buffs from these abilities make the gaurdian a undying tank with any companion.

 

Bioware, please note that a good portion of the abilities given are for PvP, and are good for gaurdians who go dps route.

 

Please do not simplify the class to widdled down attacks.

 

i don't need to cyclone slash in pvE.

 

I do need it for PvP.

 

I don't need freezing for PvE.

 

I do need it for PvP.

 

Slash, strike, I do not need for PvP.

 

I do need for PvE.

 

 

Please people, take a look at the huge list and decide what you need for the diffreent modes.

 

Pommel, oppurtunity, they're dmg! The can be used for flair in PvE but they are generally PvP buffs!

 

yes, yes I understand. The list is daunting, and we just don't have enough hot keys for everything!

 

Yet, do you really need saber throw for PvE? Are you really going to be finishing people off with a move that does less then a thousand dmg? No. it's a reach for PvP.

 

It's unfortunate but I know skill will be removed, or changed to do the same thing and stuff. People just don't like having to do a little leg work both in muscles and brain.

 

 

Oh well. I enjoy gaurdian, and have no issues tanking mobs, or people.

[aznthecapn]

Opportune and Pommel are completely redundant. There's really no need for both, especially in a diminishing returns system that counts all crowd control as the same! If each cause DR in their own category, yes I could see needing both. But as it stands, there isn't the need.

 

I am all for having different toolsets for different things, but right now our toolset is spilling out of the tool chest and doesn't have any kind of flow or grace. Tanking is button mashing nonsense.

 

People just don't like having to do a little leg work both in muscles and brain.

 

How are we using our brains right now? We aren't. We're monkeys mashing keys as they come off CD. Where's the choice? Where's the challenge? Where's the synergy?

 

 

Oh well. I enjoy gaurdian, and have no issues tanking mobs, or people.

 

No one said they had issues tanking anything. I certainly don't. But its mindless and dull. There's no choice. There's zero challenge. Streamlining the skill set will change that. Its needed, and it can be done without changing what you enjoy about the class.

Edited December 28, 2011 by aznthecapn

[Wazooty]

There's a difference between having to think more and not having enough space on the damn keyboard to get to an ability before it's too late (as in, its hotkey is on the other side of the keyboard because you ran out of hotkeys near WASD)

[Erenax]

A macro system in this game would be amazing. Too many situational abilities with cooldowns.

[S_trijder]

Pro-tip: use shift, ctrl and alt modifiers.

[aznthecapn]

Pro-tip: use shift, ctrl and alt modifiers.

 

 

 

Still not enough.

[aznthecapn]

Moar feedbak plz.

[Atallcost]

honestly, I haven't found a good use for Pommel Strike. It hits like a Mack Truck, but honestly a place in my rotation, it has not.

[smackphat]

I'll be on tanking on my shadow until this classes issues are fixed. It'll also give me a chance to finish the tie-in novels. ;-)

[aznthecapn]

Any other thoughts from the Guardian community?

[zVariant]

The amount of skills that we have is ridiculous. More than anything it is just plain annoying; personally I prefer to not bind skills to individual keys and instead have individual bars hot keyed. I'm not even 40 yet and I have more abilities than can fit on 3 bars.

 

Every new ability I get makes the class less and less enjoyable. Why do I have to have seperate abilities that can only be used when an enemy is stunned, snared, slept, maimed, depressed, complacent, bipolar, or overly excited.

 

Seriously? There are maybe 3 JK abilities that have any synergy at all, other than that the class is less fun to play than it was at lvl 10.

Edited December 30, 2011 by zVariant

[Dryg]

I'm playing a Jug and i really hope the DON'T reduce the ammount of abilites we get.

 

All the stuff we have just makes the class fun and it think it flows great, it gets more fun the higher i get tbh.

Sure, was abit baffled where to put all my new stuff around 30 but that was easily fixed.

Got 123456, q,e,r,f,z,x,c,v + shift modifier for all of those and my mouse keys bound and i don't need to click a thing.

 

Just bind the things you use the most to keys that are most comfertable with and things you use rarely further away, once you get comfertable you won't even start thinking about what you need to press and just do it.

If you play several charecters start binding simmilar skills to the same buttons, for example i always bind snares to F, taunts to E, interupts to shift+E, aoe's to v etc

Edited December 30, 2011 by Dryg

[zVariant]

I'm playing a Jug and i really hope the DON'T reduce the ammount of abilites we get.

 

All the stuff we have just makes the class fun and it think it flows great, it gets more fun the higher i get tbh.

Sure, was abit baffled where to put all my new stuff around 30 but that was easily fixed.

Got 123456, q,e,r,f,z,x,c,v + shift modifier for all of those and my mouse keys bound and i don't need to click a thing.

 

Just bind the things you use the most to keys that are most comfertable with and things you use rarely further away, once you get comfertable you won't even start thinking about what you need to press and just do it.

If you play several charecters start binding simmilar skills to the same buttons, for example i always bind snares to F, taunts to E, interupts to shift+E, aoe's to v etc

 

So your saying you have 28 bound abilities? Why do you need that many abilities to have a class be "fun"? What happened to having a core set of abilities that could be used in a variety of situations and strategy coming from deciding of what ability to use in a given situation. As it is now, "in case of x, use y". Except for Stasis and Push there is almost no decision making.

[aznthecapn]

it flows great

 

This is completely untrue. There is NO flow to our process at all. There's no decisions to be made, its just inane button pressing. I'm not saying to outright nix half our skills, but instead actively make an effort to REPLACE some with better versions.

 

The best example I have is on my Commando. I start with Charged Bolts but when I spec in DPS I get Grav Round. Now, as it stands, I could use both but Grav Round clearly is an upgrade to Charged Bolts. It needs to read as such on the tooltip. I'm thinking some of our Guardian skills should do this as well but they aren't indicating it in any way.

 

Some talents should also allow some skills to overlap. Pommel strike is only usable on incapacitated targets. Add a talent that lets it be used on snared targets as well and it becomes opportune strike. Those two (or Cyclone Slash/Force Sweep) are the two best examples of utterly redundant abilities. They don't NEED to be separated.

 

 

Got 123456, q,e,r,f,z,x,c,v + shift modifier for all of those and my mouse keys bound and i don't need to click a thing.

 

Some of those are already keybound to things I do by the game. Z is weapon sheathing. X is sitting. C is character pane. Q and E are strafing (yes I move with my mouse but I still use all 6 movement keys sometimes). R is reply.

[xxxJXTxxx]

I currently have 1-8 bound, 1-12 on my naga mouse bound, alt 1-6 bound, = for rest, - for medpack, mouse button 4 for mount, mouse button 5 for auto-run, and buffs/stances lining my right hotbar. I've moved Opportune Strike to my 0 button because I don't use it enough to justify it being easily accessible. I'm not looking forward to getting Dispatch and Guardian Leap because I have no idea where I'm going to bind those.

 

...this game is going to make me invest in a gaming keyboard, isn't it? >_<

[MimicUnleashed]

Why do I have to have seperate abilities that can only be used when an enemy is stunned, snared, slept, maimed, depressed, complacent, bipolar, or overly excited.

 

This is the absolute truth. Pommel Strike and Opportunistic Blow are great abilities with some pretty nasty damage... but I can't use them on anything but easy mobs. Heck, I had to put freezing force back on my bar just to backhand a guy. How's about some talents in the Vig tree to let me use those at will? I mean... come on. It'd fill in gaps really well and the damage is respectable.