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

The purpose of the questions isn't to get buffs for your class, its to talk about what issues it has. As someone who has mained a Guardian since launch, we're fortunate that our class has very few issues right now, its in a very good spot in most areas.

After seeing the buffs they are making to DPS trees for other classes, holy cow. I really am interested to see what some of the other classes will be parsing, so far I've seen a 3.95k watchman sentinel.

Yeah, that's not looking good for Guardians. We need to make sure that they remember that we're a sustained DPS melee class reliant on a channeled ability, so we should at the very least be just behind Watchman if they're buffing them that much. Assault Vanguards got a huge DPS boost too, and they are 100% mobile, psuedo ranged DPS.

Yeah, that's not looking good for Guardians. We need to make sure that they remember that we're a sustained DPS melee class reliant on a channeled ability, so we should at the very least be just behind Watchman if they're buffing them that much. Assault Vanguards got a huge DPS boost too, and they are 100% mobile, psuedo ranged DPS.

Well you do need to remember that watchman has their gap closer IN rotation. But the fact that C-tor now has a 4.1k Vanguard Parse is embarassing. Something needs major tweaking.

The purpose of the questions isn't to get buffs for your class, its to talk about what issues it has.

Agreed, and the biggest issue with guardian/juggernaut was indeed that ability. On the one hand, you have to give BW credit for trying. On the other hand, it's pretty clear how little the balancing team plays its own game and they generally underbuff or overbuff. I still don't think 10 seconds was the right way to nerf it, but it helps.

Well you do need to remember that watchman has their gap closer IN rotation. But the fact that C-tor now has a 4.1k Vanguard Parse is embarassing. Something needs major tweaking.

We sure weren't good for long but I enjoyed it while it lasted.

Well you do need to remember that watchman has their gap closer IN rotation. But the fact that C-tor now has a 4.1k Vanguard Parse is embarassing. Something needs major tweaking.

Yeah the thing is, Vanguards even though they were one of the lowest parsing dummy classes, have remained awesome in operations because they avoid a lot of the melee restrictions of typical melee classes while also avoiding cast and channel time restrictions of ranged classes, they generally have the best uptime of any DPS in most fights.

Allowing them to parse as well as the best DPS on a dummy effectively makes them by far the easiest class to play in an operations setting, which is what happened pre 2.0 when they were right there with Marauders as the best class for operations, both in terms of numbers and ease of outputting those numbers.

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.

I think you're probably right. I can't remember where I read it but I recall a dev saying that adding entirely new abilities isn't as simple as it sounds and that adding new ones would likely only happen in a RotHC style expansion.

The AoE threat drop is kind of funny, because it was one of the suggestions that was discussed far too much in the jugg QA brainstorm. It really is the worst idea ever.

As someone who has mained a Guardian since launch, we're fortunate that our class has very few issues right now, its in a very good spot in most areas.

Few? Lemme start

1- Force Leap bug: still exist (it makes you land on mid-way).

2- Same as Guardian Leap sometimes.

(It's better than before but not completely fixed)

3- Tech/Force is not for mitigate so half of the "defense" of the Defense Spec has a huge gap.

4- We waited too long for the Blade turning / Warding Call set bonus fixes but I think it's fixed now.

Also,

Serious question : Have you tried focused defense as a guardian tank? I did , so many times both PVP and PVE and I believe there is nothing OP about it. It does not help against burst and since you are not stacked power/strength as a dps, your healing is not huge.

I couldn't put it better, myself!

Anyway.

What about the guardian tank survivability in pvp? I understand class reps here do not care about tanking but Bioware please consider tanks when you talk about guardian survivability in pvp. Defence is useless, focused defense does not benefit tanks as much it does dps. You may also be thinking no one is playing pure guardian tank anyway, so why bother.....

^^This. The rep obviously doesn't care about tanking, but many of us do. In both PvP and PvE, please do not nerf tanks.

Agreed. I can count so many Guardian/Juggernaut "PVP" tanks from the back of my head, still on and PvPing! Just because they're not here in this topic, doesn't mean they don't exist. So let me be their representative. I'm mainly (heck, i am playing this for PVP Tanking!) a Guardian PVP Tank and I care mostly the tanking in PVP, so here them out, please!