Guardian stealth nerf: talent completely removed on test; no mention in 1.2 pnotes

I don't think you got my point.

You say, not actually giving any figures or calculation towards your conclusion which ends up being your qq opinion again and still ignoring that Focused Defence offers 15% DR and a 3% heal over 10 seconds and Protector offers 20% DR over 6 seconds.

Which you base on a 45 second cooldown vs a 15 second cooldown, totally ignoring Focused Defence is useable while stunned and off GCD, Protector requires a friendly target to use and potentially removes your ability to move back to your healer quickly when they need it. Keep on ignoring those little parts in your "math".

You simply have no evidence to back up anything you say because both have advantages over each other that are hard to test outside of a live environment.

Yet again, lots of opinion and baseless fact and missed off information where you assume I disagree with you simply because you can't back up your opinion with either accurate maths with an actual calculation, or testing.

*shock* you mean, one build does less damage than another build that focuses on maximum survivability? THE HUMANITY!

I get a kick out of the psychoanalysts in this thread who tell us, with all authority, BW's reasoning behind this change: they want to kill the hybrid spec's and/or they want you to give up survivability in order to gain DPS.

Pure trash.

Too bad FD does cost 4 focus.
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Protector has more damage reduction than FD, and almost 50% more uptime.

You keep assuming that my statements concerning protector vs. FD are based on pvp, when in actuality it's concerning pve. The fact that I mentioned tanking and bosses in my previous posts should have made that obvious, but apparently not.

You keep accusing me of not showing any evidence, yet you do not show any either to support your claims that I'm wrong..

Too bad you still don't get the point.

You make a blatant mistake and when someone points it out, you just make some nonsensical "you don't get it" argument instead of owning up to it shows I'm wasting my time in having this discussion with you.

Welcome to ignore list.

My point was that you're statement that "vig surv hasn't changed because we now have access to blade barrier" is moot because no one (even tanks) will choose blade barrier over force rush. Guardian tanks have a serious threat issue.

Force Rush is obsolete. Guardian Slash now generates enough threat on it's own, while allowing you to grab the utility in the top of the Defense tree such as Cyclonic Sweeps and Stasis Mastery. You can also get Blade Barrier, Hilt Strike, Inner Peace, and Shield Specialization without being forced to accept less tanky talents in order to get the only two tanking talents left in the Vigilance tree: Unremitting and Commanding Awe. And somehow 4 seconds only on Unremitting seems really lackluster with the rubber banding gone.

The biggest nerf to the hybrid spec was Protector being cut but also Swelling Winds moving away.

I wouldn't go that far. Removing Protector also means you don't have to put those two points into Vigilance Tier 6, so the hybrid can now go 14/25/2 and still get full Swelling Winds (now 2 points), plus those three points that used to go into Swelling Winds can now be put into Single Saber Mastery or Stagger, or both if you take some points out of something like Accuracy. Heck, I'd consider taking Shien Form for the hybrid, if you're going to throw down those points into SSM already. So the hybrid's skill tree remains largely intact, though the leapfrog chain of Guardian Leap/Force Leap buffing being broken, making the hybrid of old into more of a real two-way spec than a tanking replacement, IMO.

Now, a new hybrid layout that tries to be a proper tank would possibly be a 17/24/0 or 18/23/0 spec. This spec would give up points in Swelling Winds and either one or both points in Force Rush to take Pacification, Blade Barrier, and possibly Stasis Mastery in the Defense tree. So you'd have the 4% full DR from Commanding Awe, plus you'd have Blade Barrier on a shorter 9s cooldown from Vigilance (the skill), so you can throw it out faster than a full Defense Guardian. This also allows for the bizarre combination of Blade Barrier and Shien Form should you choose to take it.

That being said, the revised full Defense Guardian should come out ahead in threat now that Guardian Slash has extra threat generation. That's a pretty big bump in extra threat, given that's it's the top damage dealer in the tree and is on a 15s cooldown, plus full Defense now has access to SSM to boost its damage a little further. My guess is that a lot of full Defense Guardians go 31/5/5, taking SSM, ISS, Insight, and SW in the off trees to get a little all-around boost to their offense. Not sure where the usual point distribution will go in Defense now that Command is Force Push only; either Solidified Force or Momentum would be my guess.

Shien turns off most of the Defense Tree talents making tanking futile. The hybrid spec you describe will suffer from focus starvation and especially poor threat. the whole point with the Vig spec was for increased single target threat and aoe threat. well now the defense spec does both better than the hybrid.

As for Shien, yes, it would turn off your defensive benefits, but it's now possibly a 1-point investment instead of a 4-point one, so it's easily taken for flexibility, with an eye towards the hybrid being, well, a hybrid, and not a full-on tank replacement.

Well I was saying the hybrid (and here I'm talking about the current 14/27 hybrid, modified for 1.2) would play more as a real hybrid, someone who can play offense or defense, but not be tops in either (in PvE, anyway), and that it's still a viable spec that can take Swelling Winds; 14/25/2 is basically the exact same hybrid as before. The spec always suffered from Focus starvation, 1.2 didn't change that. And the full Defense tree was always potentially better at AoE damage, with access to both Swelling Winds and Pacification (though that's sorta faint praise, all things considered).

The threat generation should still be similar to before, too; one of the rarely noted effects of Guardian Leap Protector hopping was that the buff also reduced threat on application, so Focused Defense's threat shedding isn't all that much worse, though it does do additional shedding with the healing aspect. What the hybrid offered was higher damage through Overhead Slash and a faster Blade Storm, plus DoTs, and thus more threat generated from damage done. That hasn't changed, either; what's changed in the head-to-head is that Guardian Slash now generates high threat, too, so it's worth a lot more threat than the damage it does. So it's not so much the hybrid-as-is losing threat as it the full Defense tree gaining threat.

As for Shien, yes, it would turn off your defensive benefits, but it's now possibly a 1-point investment instead of a 4-point one, so it's easily taken for flexibility, with an eye towards the hybrid being, well, a hybrid, and not a full-on tank replacement.