Guard Needs Fixing Now, or Why We Have So Many Burst Damage Whines

Guard is simply too strong. It is driving all the burst damage AND premade whines on these forums. Which means this one ability is causing probably 80% of the PVP balance discontent in the game.

There is a huge disconnect between people who have guard and people who don't. The 50% damage link guard provides means that burst damage has to be huge in order to be any threat to organized groups. But that means that all the unorganized PVPers who don't have guard get absolutely blown to pieces by burst damage.

As long as guard continues to function as it does you will just see a merry go round of burst whines and nerfs. Either burst damage will be tuned to guard, in which case it will be too high for the unorganized who will cry on these forums, or it will be too low and no one in organized groups will ever die, prompting whines about premades on these forums.

Somethings needs to change. I like the concept of Guard as much as the next tank, but the current implementation is just too strong. The obvious choice is to make guard not reduce damage but grant the tank's mitigation skills to the guarded person, but BW has worked themselves into a corner because most skills arn't mitigable.

Another option would be to put guard on a cooldown, but that has problems too. If they go this route the best option would probably be to give it unlimited duration but only let it be switched to a different target out of combat. This transforms guard into a very effective way to incentivize people to not hit the guarded target, but doesn't allow you to swap it around to whoever is getting hit.

I think the best option may be to make guard less effective, for example by having it reduce damage by 25% but continue to transfer 50% (or perhaps 35%) of the damage to the tank. This means guard is not always just a no brainer because it will actually increase the amount of damage the group takes, although it will spread it out better. Making it into an anti-burst ability but not an anti-damage ability.

This is easily the biggest problem in pvp balance, although most people don't realize it when they whine about things they don't understand are ulitmately all tied into Guard functionality. So lets get some other ideas out there for how to fix the problem.

No its not. Guard is underpowered if you ask me.

so you are saying that because random pugs, are in essence random, an ability should be nerfed? dunno what your a smoking but can I have some?

Guard is fine. You have to be within 15 meters of the target with Guard for it to work. This is a very small leash that can often be disrupted by knocking one of the two players affected by Guard away from the other.

Guard is a huge reason why Tanks are now viable more than ever in PvP. If BW nerfs it, why would you ever want a Tank on your team when you could have the dps spec of that class isntead that is still able to AoE Taunt & single target Taunt?

If you can't grasp how an on-demand 50% damage link doesn't throw burst damage balance completely out of line the post isn't really directed at you, although it is still ultimately for your benefit since a solution to guard will stop a lot of the PVP balance problems.

Insert Lex Luther "wrooooong" here.

This is ludicrous and absurd. What you are saying is that BW should make tanks useless in PVP and that people who know how to play their role and be organized should be penalized. This is an unreasonable and ridiculous request/statement.

It's like saying that having a healer follow someone around healing them is unfair and unbalanced. It just doesn't make any sense.

Guard is awesome. Guard + Taunt is super awesome.

Whatever BW is smoking apparently, since the OP nerfs were 100% motivated by un-guarded noobs getting blown up solo.

If BW wants to only balance to guard they can do that but the result is massive whines about burst damage.

If BW wants to only balance not to guard they can do that but the result is no one ever dies in a good group.

My alt is a jugg. The 15 yard leash is not an issue except maybe on huttball. Another option would be to lower the leash to 5 yards but that really nerfs melee tanks compared to ranged tanks.

I play a tank, I use guard all the time, even when I que solo. And its not even 50% mitigation, its 50% damage transfer, hell I have been killed just because the person I was guarding got the hell beat out of them. Any "burst" complaining about guard doe not know what the hell they are even talking about. You want to kill a guarded target, cc the guarded individual and burn the crap out of the tank, then move to the guarded target.