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

If pvp tanking gets nerfed in any way I'm unsubbing. Plain and simple. I dont mean that as a sort of threat, its just that I pvp and pve tank and its the only part of pvp that im finding unique and fun in this game. If that gets ruined I see very little else keeping me playing. I absolutely hate saying that considering how much I was looking forward to this game but thats the situation.

If anything, I'd say tanking should be buffed or left as it is, NOT nerfed. Theres a thread somewhere here on how absorption and other defensive stats actually do NOTHING in pvp atm. I'd say that calls for a buff, not a nerf! I hate how people call for nerfs because they dont understand a game mechanic.

Would be cool, but the way BW nerfs things they will just make Guard only transfer 20% of the damage, then they will nerf all tanks damage by 15% because that will ensure no one will play the class in PVP

Quote:
Originally Posted by yukirshiro
Another option would be to remove guard and radically buff taunts in PVP.

You could, for instance, remove guard but make taunt transfer 85% of damage to the tank for the duration. This would make tanks EXTREMELY effective at stopping burst from a single target for a period of time, but not the walking soul-links they currently are. This would obviate the need to balance for guard being up 100% of the time, and would reward active instead of passive tanking.


No it wouldn't because if a tank AoE taunts a group then it matters not who attacks what as the tanks suffers 85% damage. So you do the math 85% damage from people attacking what they like? instead of how it works now which is 6 enemy players have their damage reduced. You would have a tank that just dies all the time for no other reason than people don't bother stopping attacking what they are attacking.

Pretty simple it doesn't work, if it worked like how you want it too basically it would be a sucide bomb for the tank and no one would use it, why would they?. Guard only affects 1 person and that is it. You have been told by many people how to effectivly counter it.

I haven't read all 33 pages but I do think the OP has an interesting ideas and the above line is the one that for me was most important. Guard does need to be fixed in some way, but in doing so you'd have to make a lot of other changes as well (which is not a bad thing).

Currently the one person that is guarded is really hard to kill but everyone else who isn't is SoL. They're going to go down fast. Even healer's can't heal for as much as DPS can hit for so ungarded people are still taking too much damage. I think you could balance guard to make it less OP for the one person it's guarding while still giving tanks a purpose, which in turn would then let you remove the healing debuff and possibly also tone down overall damage output (too tired to give that last point enough thought). This would provide an even playing field for everyone involved.

The tank could still ensure certain people are more sturdy, but not unkillable, and the rest of the population would have a fighting chance because the guarded player is only slightly more survivable than everyone else. It should only give certain people a slight leg up. Healer's would be more effective and less reliable on tanks and full Expertise gear. Devs wouldn't have to balance the game around one out of balance ability only affecting one lucky player.

I feel like I need to give this post more thought but I don't have the brainpower to do so right now.....

I think a tank's personal mitigation abilities are an entirely different issue from the Guard mechanic and the issues need to be talked about separately.

78.26% of statistics are made up on the spot.

The whole point of guard is to force you to attack the tank, who otherwise is doing low damage. If you attack the guarded player, you're doing it wrong. Think of it this way: The player being guarded is taking 50% less damage, but the tank himself is doing about 50% of the damage of a DPS specced/geared player. That's called balance.

Well that's only part of the issue. Aside from the guarded player's survivability going through the roof, the simple existence of guard is affecting every other class. Damage output is balanced around it as well as healing output lowered because of it. I think the below quote from the OP is good since it shows the entire issue he's talking about:

I will say it again. Guard is fine as it is. I use it yes and people will focus me. Yesterday I was in voidstar attacking a healer and guard went on them. What did I do? I switched to the tank guarding the healer and burned him down and kill him then guess who died next? We killed the healer np. Guard is not an issue. People need to know how to work around it or seperate the 2 people more than 15m away from eachother. This is obviously something the OP does not understand. I have posted here prior but really this is just dead in the water.

Guard is fine and works good the way it is. BW does not need to change it. Switch up your tactics. Like I said before there are people who put guard on a target then they go in the opposite direction and just waste the guard. This makes it so another tank cannot guard that target and I see this alot.

Also look at the protection at the end of a match. Not many people do it. Hell there are times I am the only one using my guard and other tanks are around. The warzones scoreboards at the end of the match can attest that most people do not use it or the numbers are so low it does not matter.

Infact if I guard a healer and they are taking a beating well guess what so am I. Eventually you will be killed when people switch over to you because you are low on health.

Leave guard how it is. Any sort of change to guard would just ruin tanking in PVP altogether. People always have to cry about some aspect in this game and the OP is one of them.

Holy cow some people just don't get it. The OP is stuck in WoW-mode and refuses to accept the new paradigm in swtor:

The whole point of Guard is to make you kill the tank before you can tunnel the healer. The reason why most pvp damage can bypass armor, defense, and shields is so you can actually kill the tank. Want to know how much damage a tank can mitigate from a Force or Elemental Tech attack? ZERO. There's a reason why pvp tanks are ditching tank stats.

You are NOT suppose to global a guarded healer while ignoring the tank. CC the healer, kill the tank, then kill the healer. No more WoW-style tunnel-visioning the healer. Thank GOD.

This is also a surprisingly silly post.

You really think this is good design? Guard is also directly responsible for tanks being so bad at mitigating damage in PVP. Because with guard in the game if you make tanks good at mitigating damage they become overpowered.

You are just proving my point for me. Guard is at the heart of just about every stupid balance decision in this game.

Trauma debuff - Guard's fault.

Excessive burst damage - Guard's fault.

Bad tank mitigation in PVP - Guard's fault.

Excessive CC, especially knockbacks and pulls - Guard's fault.