I think people percieve my spec as assault vanguard to be a little OP. I think the class play fine as I can do alot of burst damage but i am also pretty squishy too. I like being able to tank but then switch to dps and i am not tanky anymore.

Play as a tanking vanguard.

 

1. How do you think your Vanguard spec is perceived by other classes?

In our guild vanguard tanks are considered the "best" of the 3 tanking classes due to their ability to charge, pull mobs, and having some ranged abilities giving them the ability to "range tank" if needed.

 

 

2. How do you perceive your own spec?

My favorite tank class in the game, my only complaint is that my interrupt ability is limited to 4m and would like a longer range, ideally 10-15m.

Vanguard

 

1. Below average tank. DPS to low.

 

2. Great tank. DPS to low.

Edited July 18, 2012 by ahnog

1. No real idea how other people perceive the Vanguard Shield Specialist spec.

 

2. I find the Shield Specialist spec to be adaquate in most ways, though resource management is challenging against opponents whose attacks cannot be shielded. The current Shield Cycler talent makes energy cells commonly a feast or famine state, If I am lucky with shielding and lucky with the talent proccing, I am fine on cells, if I have bad RNG, or am facing an opponent that relies mostly on force/tech attacks, I am very quickly out of energy cells and unable to keep threat.

Vanguard Tank

 

1. To hard to kill, but I can't kill anything either.

 

2. I am asked to tank everything, with 2.4k endurance and 1.7k AIM I rarely even have to taunt things to keep agro as my damage is high enough to do it for me except on bosses.

1. How do you think your Vanguard spec is perceived by other classes?

2. How do you perceive your own spec?

 

1. For PVE I think that others feel Shield Spec Vanguards are fine. For PVP I think people just think of us as guard and health batteries.

 

2. For PVE I think we do great, I have had no problems holding aggro or staying alive unless something really unfortunate happens. For PVP however, I feel really downtrodden. Tanking gear has very limited uses in PVP due to the mitigation limitations. As far as DPS goes though we can put up decent numbers on the final scoreboard, it is really from aoe damage, and our single target damage is very lackluster. Unfortunately I feel the change to Static Surge which reduced the effectiveness of stock strike, hurt Shield spec vanguards quite a bit.

Edited July 16, 2012 by Meltheran

Assault Spec

 

1. Overpowered in PVP, ok in PVE but not a top choice to bring for a DPS slot.

 

2. I think the damage output is fine, but the utility is low. I feel less useful than other DPS classes, since I don't have a long lasting CC, a threat reducing ability, or any useful group buff/debuffs (like a gunslinger's bubble or a sentinel's buffs).

 

 

Tactics

 

1. People think that no one really plays tactics, which might be sorta true.

 

2. I think that tactics is twice as hard to play as assault, but yields a slight loss in DPS. It's more fun to play, but it's not worth it.

1. I've played burst dps spec and tank spec and I think most expect me to be bursty FOTM spec, but quite easy to kill if you focus fire.

 

2. I thoroughly enjoy the tanking element - more so than the burst - in PVP and PVE. I feel I make a real difference and am a leader with both.

1. How do you think your Vanguard spec is perceived by other classes?

People view assault as a somewhat overpowered burst dps spec in PvP. They also heavily overestimate how useful heavy armor is and thus think we must be a lot less squishy than them.

 

2. How do you perceive your own spec?

PVP: Sometimes if the stars align on crits+high impact bolt procs the burst can get pretty high. The only thing needed is to space out the combo and not lower the assault specs sustained damage.

PvE: Our sustained damage really needs an upgrade. It's just too low in PvE.

Edited July 16, 2012 by Sorenia

Shield Specialist

1. How do you think your Vanguard spec is perceived by other classes?

In both PvE and PvP I feel that most people would prefer a Guardian as a tank due to their better defensive cooldowns, but I don't think anyone would exclude me because of my class.

2. How do you perceive your own spec?

I love playing a vanguard, especially for the numerous AoE abilities. I may not have the survivability cooldowns of a Guardian but because of the AoE attacks I can put out higher numbers in warzones, and presumably operations. It is also great to have both a charge and a pull ability to manage the field of enemies, and a 30m base attack is very useful.

 

Assault

1. I think most people feel that Vanguard assault is overpowered in terms of damage output.

2. The damage may be a bit too high in PvE (though no higher than some gunslinger/sentinel specs), but in PvP it is mitigated by our lack of a gap closer to be able to use our reset procs on high impact bolt (Ion Pulse/Stockstrike). We are also pretty easy to kill, so I think it's a good balance in PvP. I do think that in PvE at least, Vanguard Assault has more damage than Commando Assault (in PvP their longer range negates this advantage in many situations).

1 ) We are seen as the top PVP DPS out there. On par with Sentinel, but not quite as desirable given a choice.

2) I find my assault Vanguard DPS sometimes boring, I spam 3 moves with very little change between. I'm playing this class until sage DPS is viable again or until my sentinel DPS has been leveled.

1. How do you think your Vanguard spec is perceived by other classes?

2. How do you perceive your own spec?

 

Assault Spec (primarily pve)

1. I think van dps is seen as a flexible class that provides some options in terms of off-tanking in a pinch, switching between range and melee when necessary, and generally having a lot of tools. The lack of a longer cc and a pushback are negatives.

2. Ammo management is not particularly fun, but the burst dps is. I've tried tactics, and it's too melee-centric without a really good way to close distance to a group.

Shield Specialist

 

1. How do you think your Vanguard spec is perceived by other classes?

I believe my AC is looked at as one of the strongest in the game, but my spec is looked at as a tank who can deal plenty of damage with average tanking ability (a better off-tank then main tank). In PvE we are totally viable tanks if geared properly. In PVP, we are looked at as just another tank, but 2nd tier huttball carriers behind guardians.

 

2. How do you perceive your own spec?

In PVE, I think my spec does great due to my gear but I feel I fall short just a little to guardians during boss fights.

In PVP, I wish my shield made a greater impact but we do OK, less now since the 1.3 changes and I find myself tempted to cross over to assault spec (which is a little stronger right now).

I've played all three specs with vanguard ... shield, tactics, and assault. I will buck a lot of "trend" in saying that tactics is by far my favorite and most fun to play ... but it is also the most flawed and lacking. Recent changes to shields made it far less viable in pvp due to how shield rating and absorption work ... and shield spec was my second favorite spec. Assault, to me, is a FOTM due to how you can stack numbers if you are smart about spreading around your plasma dot and getting several targets ticking at once.

 

I've also messed around with a tactics "tank" using a 8/31/2 build under ion cell ... this to me is a lot of fun to play, but it just comes up short in a lot of ways, too. "Fun factor" unfortunately doesn't translate well into group stuff ... when people are like "oh we thought you were dps assault, tactics sucks." They're not entirely wrong in saying that, either, but like I said ... I find some of the more subtle things in tactics to be fun. Currently I run what I call a "run and gun" setup which is 1/22/18 tactics/assault blend. It won't put up the sexy numbers of a true assault but it gives me some of the fun factor of tactics I like and some utility.

 

1. How do you think your Vanguard spec is perceived by other classes?

Suboptimal tank, suboptimal melee, and only good as a high dps assault spec (2/6/33). I used to enjoy doing tanking with shield or tactics based builds but everyone I run with has made the case over and over ... guardians and shadows are far superior tanks for pvp due to vanguard's poor survivability when compared to the other two (mainly lack of stellar defensive CDs). they also lack any sort of dps when compared to the other two. I went with a dps build so I at least had a chance to get an invite for warzone teams.

 

2. How do you perceive your own spec?

I enjoy my 1/22/18 spec in that it gives me a lot of mobility and some good dot and burst dmg options. It will certainly not challenge a full assault in numbers, but it offers some additional utility and as I have said before I genuinely find the tactics stuff to be the most "fun" so this brings that to the table.

1. How do you think your Vanguard spec is perceived by other classes?

I think that the vanguard assault spec is perceived as a top end raid and pvp spec.

 

2. How do you perceive your own spec?

I think that assault spec is one of the most balanced specs. it requires you to work hard on your rotation for success.

Assault spec: At the moment this seems to be a very solid build with great sustained DPS thanks to DoTs and Armour ignore, although I'll admit that the damage can be extremely spikey thanks to HiB and AssaultPlastique.(which is fine by me, I love spikey builds.) Most of the talents are decent although the lower tier abilities seem to benefit AS exclusively which is boring for other specs.

 

Tactics: I don't really understand this build at all. I think it was supposed to be advertised as the meleeDPS build or a PvP build but using HE cell over Plasma cell just loses far too much DPS and the abilities are inferior than AS even for meleeDPS. This tree needs a serious rework in my opinion.

 

In closing I'd like to see Explosive Round worked into the Vanguards trees because it's a fun ability. A proc that made it free and off the globalcooldown would be great since it's a very weak ability that costs far too much ammo.

Edited July 16, 2012 by Nyoro

Okay, so a brief introduction: I'm playing vanguard since the beta. It's my main and always will be (I've many chars, but I decided to play vang long before beta). I'm playing all 3 specs and some hybrids. Currently somewhere near 1700r in RWZs, clearing EC HM weekly w/o wipes sometimes (playing Tank or DPS, whatever is needed).

 

My take on the trees

Shield Specialist and hybrids

1. PvP - Very poor tank in the higher tier of games compared to the other tanks. Guardian has better cooldowns, AOE slow, and Guardian leap => hold outs longer when solo defending, better mobility, better protecting allies. Shadow has stealth and again - better cooldowns. The only area where Shield Specialist shines is dmg, his overall dmg is on a par with some DPS classes thanks to his AOEs (in damage gear). But then again, he'd better be off in a pure DMG build or a hybrid (31 or 23 points in tactics + ion cell).
    
   Sadly the trees are designed to not support hybrids, as they are very based on a specific cell. Tactics + ion cell works though - if you play it wise and use Battering Ram. This makes your damage output just slightly below pure DPS classes and grants you the guard ability, yet you miss the utility and survivability of other tanks (but full tank spec wouldn't help you with that anyway).
    
   Shield specialist is built heavy around the shield and absorb stats, which is a big mistake for PvP as they've much less use in it than in PvE.
    
   
2. PvE - All fine there, I'm our healers favorite tank and never ever had a problem with tanking any boss. Probably the best tank to hold aggro of multipe mobs.
   

Assault

1. PvP - Monstrous single target DPS that brings taunts and an aoe stun in addition to the awesome burst, everyone wants one or two.... or three on their team. May or may not do as much overall damage as a well played focus sent, still shines at killing single targets.
   
2. PvE - Being the top DPS on most of the bosses, can dish out 1900 sustained DPS on an Operations dummy after mastering the rotation on a 5 minute window (this is for fully re-modded rank 146 gear). To be exact, it's more like 1750-2000 depending on the Ionic Accelerator procs and crits, very spiky DPS, still great overall and one has to be cautious with the procs and ammo.
   

Tactics

1. PvP - Great damage potential with much higher utility and mobility than Assault. The biggest problem of this spec is the lower burst in comparsion to Assault, which is the main thing why is a vanguard brought to a premade team. Situationally can be as good at overall DPS as an Assault, but will never reach such burst. Unlike Assault can be countered.
   
2. PvE - I don't see much place for this spec in PvE. It's more mobile, right... but it's kind of useless as the mobility isn't a problem for a well played assault at all. The sustained DPS is about 10 to 15% lower than Assault. The only bright side is that it's more ammo friendly and as that, can be better for newer players.
   

 

Final thoughts:

1. Assault plastique - please fix the tool-tip or make it do AOE damage. It confused every sinlge new vanguard I knew. Sticky grenade has the EXACTLY SAME TOOL-TIP as Assault Plastique. Sticky grenade does AOE damage, Assault plastique is single target only.
   
2. Assault vs. Tactics - Tactics brings more utility and AOE damage potential, Assault is better at damage and burst (which is kind of the main thing). I suggest to build Tactics even more about the utility and AoE damage. Completely remove High Impact Bolt from the Tactics tree and build it around Explosive Round, that's very ammo-ineffective yet very underrated skill. With the proper talents it could be a very nice AoE damage/objective-interrupting/harassing/ranged ability to go on par with the utility of a Tactics vanguard.
   
3. Assault vs. Tactics no. 2 - Assaults are gonna hate me for this, but switch Fire Pulse and Assault Plastique (make it an AOE!). It would lower the Assaults burst that is over-the-top, yet it wouldn't mess with their DPS (10m range for Vang, 30m for Commando to boost those poor guys).
   

 

EDIT:

1. How do you think your Vanguard spec is perceived by other classes? - Most people I know are thinking that the Assault spec is overpowered for PvP and they don't want to accept tactics as a worhty alternative.

2. How do you perceive your own spec? - I love all three specs but it's true that I feel like the worst PvP tank of those 3, guardian and shadow would be more useful any day. Great Tank/DPS hybrid though if Guard is the only thing your team needs. Tactics is a jack of all trades, master of none, still it has fine DPS and utility.

Edited July 16, 2012 by Samohnat

1. How do you think your Vanguard spec is perceived by other classes?

PvE: Starting to get more recognition in PvE for being viable thanks to the AC's mobility as a whole.

PvP: I currently run a hybrid spec that has slightly less burst than pure AS/Pyro. Other players see me as a threat and usually try to burst me down as fast as possible.

 

2. How do you perceive your own spec?

PvP: My hybrid build(seen in my signiture as Terminal Velocity) is super fast-paced and incredibly fun to play. I love running in and bursting almost as hard as an AS/Pyro while retaining incredible mobility thanks to Hold the Line and/or Hydraulic Overrides. Its great to watch turret classes waste their knock-backs as I pummel them in melee range.

1. How do you think your Vanguard spec is perceived by other classes?

2. How do you perceive your own spec?

 

Vanguard Tank, PVE.

 

1. People who've played with me or another well-geared Vanguard appreciate the fact that the Vanguard's health drops very steadily, as opposed to the spikier damage profile of the other two tanks. People who haven't often assume Vanguard tanks are just bad, because their dodge% is much lower, and they don't have any self-heal/bubble effects that other tanks do.

 

2. I think Vanguards are pretty great. I am a little frustrated with the layout of the skill tree though...there are many talents that feel like they do nothing for me, particularly after the 1.3 update (two free Explosive Surges per Storm? Meh). I would like it if there were more opportunities to fiddle with my ratio of offense to defense in my skill tree, right now it feels like the choices are very obvious. Soldier's Endurance is pretty awful, even if I am weighting almost entirely towards defense I still hate putting points into it. I understand it's pretty hard to get the balance on that correct though, particular for PVP vs PVE.

 

It feels like High Impact Bolt/Ion Cell was nerfed overall...while the "smart" splash damage is nice, it's still very not-smart in many situations (hits neutral scanner droids in Lost Island, and shield generators in Firebrand+Stormcaller fight of Explosive Conflict)

 

I wish the combat logs were a bit more verbose, particularly about incoming hits. I'd like to know how much damage was avoided from shielded attacks, or even what the unmitigated damage of the attacks was. I'd also like to know whether incoming attacks are melee/ranged/force/tech, in addition to energy/kinetic/internal/elemental.

1) Assault is OP, Tactics is not seen around much to be perceived as anything and Shield is... well, a tank.

 

2) In my opinion? Assault is overpowered. Having a huge burst spec with great mobility (because, being able to use all of your huge burst skills at 30 yards range and having them all be instant is GREAT mobility) a semi-constant 50% slow and average-good survivability makes it quite overpowered. But at the same time, assault's ranged burst is all it has got so nerfing it without any kind of compensation will probably result in making the spec useless.

 

Reducing the range of some of the 30-y skills to 10-y can be a start (giving a passive to commandos in the same way Snipers and Sage have one), but will completely make Assault range fodder. A Sniper will eat an assault Vanguard completely if all its skills are 10-y range. Changing the talent Degauss to make the vanguard immune to roots and slowing effects for the duration / for 6 seconds could fix that a bit. There is the option of making Hold the Line baseline, but I'd rather Tactics keep some of its utility. The talent Focused Impact needs to be reduced to 30% (with Havoc Training giving Tactics the other 30% back) to reduce HIB's damage. Assault Plastique needs its damage reduced by 20% (plus or less) BUT it needs some sort of compensation to not make it even worse than it already is for PvE. Maybe making it refund 1 ammo when it explodes? This could help the ammo-starvation an Assault gets when RNG Gods are against you and IA does not want to proc. Also changing Intimidation and Steely Resolve's places in the Talent Trees might make Assault Plastique more tempting.

 

/feeback!? Feel free to comment on whatever I have said.

1) Currently I feel that most people believe Vanguard = Assault, most notably in PvP where the general consensus is we're OP. While there are a few underdogs who have taken the extra time and effort to master Tactics, there's not enough to show the world that Assault isn't in fact all that Vanguards can do. As tanks, I think we're viewed as walking meatshields that take ages to kill but are mildly annoying (at least compared to Guardians who can be, in my opinion, much much more annoying at peeling then VGs)

 

2) As an Assault PvE DPS I absolutely love this class, it is nowhere near as easy as people want to believe, it has a low skill floor but a high skill ceiling, it provides ample room for improvement given the will from the player and the rotation is very dynamic based on Ionic Accelerator Procs and our luck with it. Based on observations during raids it feels like we bring the 2nd highest single target dps, 1st being Sents. This only occurs when the boss fight doesn't work in our way, i.e.: there's nothing preventing the sent from just staying on the boss and nuking. I'm more concerned by how far us and sentinels are ahead of the pack, considering we're sort-of-melee and melee, there's no fight that massively favors ranged to make up for it. 1 gripe I have with Assault is how with extreme bad luck we can end up from hero to zero because soooo much depends on that 1 damned proc it's not even funny. I'd be okay with slightly lower damage as long as there was something done about RNG. Not saying remove RNG entirely, just either increase the chance or increase it slightly per use of abilities once IA proc is down, so there's no 20 secs of not one damned proc lol press hammershot.

 

PvE Tank is fun as well, with a big set of abilities each with their own uses, it confers the feeling of a mobile fortress (especially with high shield chance + the cool shielding animation).

 

In Assault PvP DPS we've got the strongest burst but bad survivability. It kind of feels like we do deal more damage then we should.

Hi everyone,

1. How do you think your Vanguard spec is perceived by other classes?

2. How do you perceive your own spec?

Thank you!

 

Vangaurd Shield (Tank)

1. Best most versatile tank in the game. Unique and ORIGINAL ranged/heavy MT design vs other MMOs, with all melee tanks. 'unkillable' hits 'too' hard for a tank.

2. Unique class, special, well designed, highly versatile. Can tank anything, sturdy meat shield, decent mitigation. The only tank design in the game that can maintain aggro on 5 targets with no one in the group taking damage.

Edited July 16, 2012 by Oshimo

I seem to have either accidentally posted in the wrong thread earlier. This will be less in depth than that post, which is unfortunate but perhaps for the best.

 

I'm Shield Specialist. Have been since day one. Vanguard remains my main class for all activities even though I have an assortment of alts. I'll answer the posed questions first and then offer some minor feedback.

 

1. How do you think your Vanguard spec is perceived by other classes?

 

I think that, comparatively, we are considered fairly useful. In PvE, there's no particular issues that we have when sized up against other tank classes except some poor cooldowns but I think we're general thought of as having lots of utility and control capability.

 

In PvP, it is mixed. The changes post 1.3 have not necessarily made Shield Spec Vanguards any less desirable as teammates but, as with nearly all tanking classes, I think we're not seen as particularly threatening. We are thought as gadflies. Non threats outside of our ability to mitigate.

 

2. How do you perceive your own spec?

 

In general, I think Vanguards are in a moderately good place. Skilled players can do well in both PvE and PvP endgame and we have a lot of tools on our table. I believe we have taken a blow in PvP and a slightly lesser one in PvE.

 

The new ability to retain mob aggro is good and the additional mechanics on Explosive Surge and HiB are very much appreciated. However, I believe that their usages are limited and that the gains we received in threat generation and maintainability did not necessitate the complete removal of bonus damage on Stockstrike. We were not particularly powerful pre 1.2 anyway and while this is clearly a move to stop hybrid builds like Iron Fist, I emphatically believe that this is a mistake.

 

But beyond that issue, I think that the change has affected PvP viability. Not immensely but notably. Regardless of the supposed Rock, Paper, Scissors dynamic that is supposed to occur with weapon damage, Force/Tech attacks, and Shield, PvP is still a realm in which one of our main mitigators (Shield procs) isn't really up to snuff. Now, some of that is offset by our usage of Heavy Armor and some mitigation talents but the new mechanics we have now are still far better in a PvE environment than PvP. Mostly, I suspect because they were meant pretty exclusively as solutions to threat drops.

 

But they're very limited tools. Supercharged Ion Cell does not earn its name. A minor increase to duration or area of effect range could help with this. Likewise, the free E. Surges on Storm do not have as much use in PVP, even taking into account the debuff from Static Field. If a reduction of single target burst is necessitated for this build, that's fine. It makes sense. But, I think it also makes sense for some of the new mechanics to balance out the spec through PvE and PvP. The recent change didn't quite do that, in my estimation.

 

Regardless, I enjoy the class and find it very playable. With some minor tweaks, it would be pretty much ideal. Which is saying something because I think there's a few ACs out there that need a lot of work. Vanguard's? I think, across the board, it just require a few tiny things.

lvl 50 Vanguard Tank

 

1) considered by others to be the best

 

2) My favorite tank, I feel our interrupt needs to be longer than 4m. Tanks in general seem to still take way to much damage even when specced pretty high if your fighting multiple mobs. Agro management is much improved.