Is smash really that OP?

I switched my half BM/half warhero guardian to smash today. I really tried to stay vigilance but the numbers just don't add up. Without knowing the spec well I achieved top damage and protection in 3 out of 4 of the warzones I played. I made many mistakes and missed a few of the smashes but as my experience grows in the spec so will the destruction. I have redoubled my efforts to gear this toon since BW thinks this is balanced. Such an easy spec to use and set up.

Your problem with Sweep/Smash is that it can be used effectively? I think that takes the cakes for idiotic **** I've seen people say on these forums.

Knights/Warriors are a melee class. They have to get up in your face to do any significant damage, Sweep/Smash is no exception.

If your complaint is that a melee character is doing too much melee damage with a melee attack after you failed to counter or kill them with your ranged character that has the advantage of ranged attacks, then you have three choices. 1. learn to stay ranged with your ranged character, 2. roll a melee character, or 3. quit the game.

Rage spec has an aoe attack that always crits after using one of the leaps has a higher crit chance on your vicious throw and vicious slash has a dot that ticks for a lot of dmg and slows the target more and more as it reaches the end of the duration and the aoe cd is 12s and can be brought down to 9s by spamming certain attacks and has 30% armor pen and for juggs and aoe 9s slow that costs 1 rage and mara's have a 12s slow that costs 1 rage and a 10m leap that can root for 1s and leap people in cover and still roots for the 1s even through like dodge the only thing that doesnt get rooted is the new sorc root immunity sprint and scream can crit for like 4.5k and you have 6% extra force crit so power stacking is pretty good for that spec even though running 30% melee crit has a good effect as well as I have seen with really good players that top charts. So to say smash is not op atm is stupid people who have played the class forever and rerolled to it have said its op and it didnt need a buff and I have a mara that sometimes runs smash and it is a bit over the top I can spam my vicious slash after a beserk over and over I barely ever have to use my assault which builds rage its mostly beserk leap choke and battering assault that build my rage and on a jugg you have push to reset leap and 6% more force dmg and your scream is free after leaping and you can taunt and intercede as well so overall smash is op needs a nerf but when I say nerf I mean something to put it back in line not make it almost unplayable like mercs

Focus/Rage is the only viable DPS tree for Guardians/Juggernauts right now. If Sweep/Smash gets nerfed because a bunch of douchbag Sents/Maras decided to respec to Focus/Rage, then I expect a huge buff to the Vigilance/Vengeance tree. Otherwise Guards/Juggs will be useless as anything but tanks.

The numbers at the end of the Warzone are irrelevant in the OP/UP discussion, even without taking player skill into consideration.

Let's say BW makes a new class. The class' weapon is a pillow. The class has two abilities:
1. The player hits the enemy with the pillow. Does 1 damage.
2. The player QQ's so hard that the player's mom comes into the game and instantly kills the enemy. 1 minute cooldown.

Even though the players final damage done is not higher than that of other DPS, this does not change the fact that ability number two is completely overpowered and should not be in the game.

Fully agree. It's no big deal for the maras if rage gets nerfed because they have other totally viable dps trees...that is something juggs cannot say.

No one debates that Sorcs/Sages can put out a lot of damage and indeed I have seen Sorcs at the top of the DPS charts sometimes, but that comes from DoTs and DoTs aren't nearly as useful as burst damage in PvP right now. Sure you will get big numbers when you have DoTs ticking on 4 or 5 players but the pressure you thereby put on the enemy team is small. DPS Sorcs and Sages (especially in Madness/Balance) always have big numbers but comperatively fewer kills (unless you're Lightning/Telekinetics, then you have small numbers and few kills). So out of say the 600.000 DPS a Madness Sorc put out maybe 300.000-400.000 contributed to killing the enemy the team was focusing on.

PTs and Rage Maras/Juggs can pull off insane burst AND achieve high overall numbers (and in the case of Maras/Juggs, their burst is also AoE.). They get both, they don't have to sacrifice success in one area for another. Whereas you have dots ticking for 2-3k total damage on 4 or 5 players in the time span of 10 seconds, a Rage Mara will do 6-7-8k damage to the same amount of players instantly, depending on his and the enemy players' gear.

There's a reason why rated teams ask "Should we take another Marauder or something else today?" They are hands down the best DPS class in the game, highest damage, some of the best DCDs, instant gap closer, Predation, invisibility the list goes on but Marauders are the cornerstone of any group and no group can function properly (in rateds anyway without at least 2 Marauders). Alas, the same cannot be said for the Sage/Sorc.

Someone compared Marauders to the AK-47 in another thread and there are indeed a lot of similarities. Both are extremely versatile in any situation and are guaranteed to work no matter what and the class itself is so simple to play that even a 6-year-old village child can learn use a Marauder effectively in an hour or so. It's what makes bad people look like average.

I would expect a buff to Vigilance/Vengeance anyway because all specs should be viable for PvP. I know people who were playing Focus Guardians from day 1, when it actually took some skill to land Force Sweep, where you wanted. Force Sweep needs to be toned down, no question about that, but it shouldn't be nerfed to the point, where Focus becomes a spec that no one ever uses. A super strong Vigilance-spec, forcing all Guardians to pick Vigilance wouldn't solve anything.

Conversely, I've been playing Vigilance on my Guardian since launch and continued playing Vigilance even after the Focus buff. It's just a matter of personal preferance, I don't care if the other spec hits for 8k, I like the Vigilance playstyle more than Focus and I would like if my choice spec was as viable as Focus.

I think the way they need to go about this is to make both specs viable for PvP. Bring Vigilance in line with the damage output of Carnage/Annihilation and make it a single-target heavy spec. Make Focus an AoE heavy spec. Then you could decide what you like more, having big numbers on 1 target or having average numbers on many targets. Not like now, having big numbers on many targets.

Jesus, L2paragraph. Anyways, didn't read the OP's intimidating wall of text all the way through, I skimmed (like people do to Scarlet Letter, don't kid yourselves) but uh...L2kite, seriously, it's OP for people that like standing right next to the enemy jugg/guardian. It's like the ****ty girl that talks to scumbags at parties and thinks she's not gonna have some regrets the next day.

You do realise that at least Rage spec Juggs are pretty weak sauce in terms of their TTK....