A tank that won't guard?

[Lundorff]

I ran into this tank in ranked yesterday, and he said he wouldn't guard, as he "would take took much damage and die too fast." At first glance it sounded preposterous, but the more I thought about it, some aspects of it is almost sounds reasonable.

 

1) Would you guard a bad player that runs with terrible gear, has no experience with PVP and is prone to get globalled? Your time is probably better spend doing damage, and hoping you kill one of theirs.

 

2) Would you guard a sin / oper / mara? All 3 classes should be able to steal a second life once they have run through their DCDs, and losing half of yours in the process is not worth it.

 

3) Mercs. Maybe, but only once they have used most of their DCDs. A decent merc should be able to take 400k damage and still cling to life if you guard them at this point.

 

4) Juggs and PTs. Guard swapping with a good dps PT can win a match, but most are likely to get focused, annihilated and kill you in the process. Same with juggs only worse from my experience.

 

5) Snipers / Sorcerers. Yes I would guard a non-gloaballed prone sniper / sorc from the start, as both classes have a high potential to turn a match.

 

So, does any of this have any merit? Or am I taking crazy pills? BTW this is only for non-healer matches. Everything changes with a healer (and when the fire nation attacked).

 

Unrelated side-question: does diversion supersede entrench? If you entrench on a sniper, can an opposing sniper force you up with diversion if you have entrench active?

[TrixxieTriss]

IMO, if the tank is fully spec’d as a tank and not as dps, then it seems like he is more of a drag on the team than someone who gets focused first like a Jugg.

It doesn’t matter if he takes less damage and he is the last to die against against a dps person. Any decent dpser will end up winning that engagement because the tank won’t do enough damage. Especially if they’re against a Mara, Sniper, Merc or even a Dps Jugg if they are still alive will kill any tank.

Who cares if he dies first if it keeps someone else alive for 15 secs longer who can kill one of theirs.

A tank who is spec’d as tank will do very little damage, so their role should be to help keep the dps alive if there is no healer.

Running full tank spec in any form of pvp and not guarding is dumb. They should not even bother because they are a drain on the team unless it’s regs and all they want to do is guard a node. If they aren’t doing that, they should be playing another spec.

Edited March 28, 2018 by TrixxieTriss

[A_J_B]

Unrelated side-question: does diversion supersede entrench? If you entrench on a sniper, can an opposing sniper force you up with diversion if you have entrench active?

 

Yeah if you diversion an entrenched sniper you force them out of cover.

 

As for tanks not guarding it depends on the situation, I haven't played ranked this season but back when i was playing it tank tunneling in 3 dps 1 tank games was a common tactic so i would guard the tank and the team that won was usually the team that killed the others tank first

[Lundorff]

Yeah if you diversion an entrenched sniper you force them out of cover.

 

Then how are you suppose to counter that as a sniper? Lets say 4 dps focus you, and one of them is a sniper throwing diversion on you. Do you run and LOS? Use Shield probe / Evasion / Stun and hope you don't get chain stunned yourself? It seems like a very desperate situation.

[yellow_]

Not guarding people is a stupid tactic because, on average, it will lead to the other team getting the first kill. And the team that gets the first kill will usually win. 4 players at 60% health, especially if one is a tank, will typically destroy 3 players at 100% health.

 

For example, a dps sin can stealth out and heal up, sure. But if you get quad zerged as a no-more-stun-DR dps sin without guard -especially by stuff like snipers, mercs, and marauders- you go from 100 to no cooldowns and no health in a matter of seconds. It will rapidly be a 3v4 in practice while the sin (or mara, or operative) heals up elsewhere, to say nothing of the risk of getting aoed or stealth scanned or chased while attempting to do so. And when they come back to the fight that sin will die extremely quickly yet again.

 

Guarding people maximizes the amount of time the fight is a 4vX (and any subequent #vX) and therefore, on average, maximizes your odds of winning. I use phrases like "on average" because there are exceptions to every rule. I can imagine some players are truly so useless that they are not worth guarding but in my experience they are honestly pretty uncommon. If a player does some amount of damage and uses DCDs they are probably worth guarding, even if they don't do those things especially well. And there are some cooldowns worth allowing to fall off before guarding someone, as doing so would be just wasting your health. But, again, these are the exceptions that prove the rule.

 

Then how are you suppose to counter that as a sniper? Lets say 4 dps focus you, and one of them is a sniper throwing diversion on you. Do you run and LOS? Use Shield probe / Evasion / Stun and hope you don't get chain stunned yourself? It seems like a very desperate situation.

If executed correctly it can be extremely desperate (it's one of the main set plays of hard swap group ranked) but it's not as if snipers are weak overall and their countering each other with diversion is one of their few weaknesses.

 

Anyway, if you see the diversion play coming you can use the map to make the other team work as hard as possible to get to you to begin with. You can try to roll the diversion as well (it has travel time). Pillar humping and pre popping the DCDs that are actually useful while stunned (read: not evasion) may also be a good idea. And, perhaps most importantly, you wait for full resolve to use your breaker so you don't get instantly stunned again and then *definitely* globalled in the diversion.

 

Thankfully in solo ranked coordination is weak and the other dps will usually **** up the double hard stun part of the play so you can often survive. But if you learn sniper in ranked for any large amount of time you will almost certainly get diversion globalled at least a few times. It has quite literally happened to everyone.

Edited March 28, 2018 by yellow_

[Korrii]

It's probably more about the player than the class.

 

There's some players that are just not worth guarding. We've all seen those "dps" with 40k dmg per round. What is the point in guarding those?

 

Let's assume everyone on your team is of equal skill level, that you're say a jugg tank, and that you have 1 mara, 1 oper, 1 merc.

 

I don't like guarding mercs and sorcs because guard range becomes a real issue if you're not focusing one of the enemy dps that is on them. If they don't kite around/in range of you, you have to fall back to them for guard range and that pretty much removes 2 dps from your team. For sorcs, you intercede to them, prevent damage, then they phase walk and you're useless in the middle of nowhere.

 

I'd probably start with guard on mara, just so that the both of us can jump in without the mara needing to blow a dcd right off the bat. Then probably switch to operative because there's synergy with offheals. I'd assume the merc/sorc is 30m behind us, which makes guarding him terrible. I'd probably only switch to interceding him/guarding him once shield/reflect are gone and he needs to survive until shield is back up.

 

Now of course, everything will be dynamic, but you probably get my point. Guarding is preventing damage, but not all prevented damage is equal. Preventing damage on a merc with all cooldowns ready doesn't have a lot of value. Preventing that damage once his cooldowns are gone is amazing.

Edited March 28, 2018 by Korrii

[Etikofe]

Then how are you suppose to counter that as a sniper? Lets say 4 dps focus you, and one of them is a sniper throwing diversion on you. Do you run and LOS? Use Shield probe / Evasion / Stun and hope you don't get chain stunned yourself? It seems like a very desperate situation.

 

Like Doc said you can roll it since it has a travel time. I don’t recall the ability off the top of my head, seek cover maybe, gives you a speed boost when leaving entrench this helps you get enogh distance to entrench again.

[Etikofe]

Then how are you suppose to counter that as a sniper? Lets say 4 dps focus you, and one of them is a sniper throwing diversion on you. Do you run and LOS? Use Shield probe / Evasion / Stun and hope you don't get chain stunned yourself? It seems like a very desperate situation.

 

Sorry double post

Edited March 28, 2018 by Etikofe

[RACATW]

Yes some people are not worth guarding. Lets say theres a noob mara who gets stun locked and globalled. You were guarding them and wasted most of your dcds while the mara didnt use one. Was that worth it when youre half dead and the actual good players will be taking damage and using their dcds? Good players can sometimes carry 3v4 but only if they didnt waste much aside from an aoe stun or two around their bad player.

 

Otherwise if you know your team is made of entirely good players guard swap away.

Edited March 28, 2018 by RACATW

[Alec_Fortescue]

Kek, that was probably me.

 

I can't guard people who can't use their dcds proper and get globalled while in the guard mode. I just can't.

 

If you die when guarded this fast that's me losing 50% + of my health for nothing. Meanwhile I can do tripple the amount of damage you're capable of and carry. :s

Edited March 29, 2018 by Alec_Fortescue

[Hoppinswtor]

he's either not guarding people because they are bad, or he's just bad