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.

It isn't about being able to counter guard. It's about guard changing PVP dynamics too much to balance to both situations.

If you balance for being able to counter guard anytime you don't have guard involved things are going to be unbalanced. In particular you are going to be blowing people up in 3 seconds and CC is going to have a ridiculously overblown effect.

If you do the opposite and balance without guard in mind guard becomes pretty much uncounterable.

Right now BW is trying to do both and it can't work mathematically. Guard has too much of an impact on game balance to have a balanced game both with and without it.

Guard is not overpowered, nor does it change the way PvP works any more than any CC ability with a moderately long duration.

Uh how is that possibly a controversial statement?

Unless you think guard has no effect on pvp survivabiltiy it clearly does change ability balance.

Do you approach a situation where there is a guarded target the same way as a situation without a guarded target? Of course not. Your fundamental approach to the situation changes because otherwise you will get rolled.

What is important when someone is guarded is completely different from when someone isn't guarded. It has by far the biggest impact on overall game balance of any ability in the game.

It was the same thing in Everquest with slow. The monsters damage was based on the fact that it would be cut by 75% becuase of slow. This mean that when there was no one who had slow around the monsters damage was 4 times as bad as "normal".

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.

Why can't you adjust tactics. Both sides have tanks with the abuility. If you ID the tank CC/interupt healers and use your dps on the tank it is game over. I am a tank who guard a healer all the dam time and i can tell you once i am ID it is game over for me.

Your fundamental approach to a situation will ALWAYS change depending on various variables within the game.