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NERF : Guardian Tanks


Leafy_Bug

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Nerf Guardian Tanks. In the current state of the game, they are a faceroll class where you get a significant advantage compared to other classes, especially Shadow. We have recently cleared SV HM with a 31k guardian duo without bonus set or any optimizations. Guardian cooldowns are too good at the moment and the way Jesse Sky is pushing content to favour them even more is ludicrous.

 

 

Conclusion : bring the tanks in line and someone tell Jesse Sky that SWTOR is not his playground where he changes stuff as he deems fit slapping the thousands of Shadow players in the face.

Edited by Leafy_Bug
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Guardians were always the weaker class in comparison to shadow and powertech before, it has only been after 2.0 that they were rebalanced. So no, Guardians are not op in the slightest, they were weaker before and they are at the place they were supposed to be in the first place. Edited by Ephesia
3r2134
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Guardians were always the weaker class in comparison to shadow and powertech before, it has only been after 2.0 that they were rebalanced. So no, Guardians are not op in the slightest, they were weaker before and they are at the place they were supposed to be in the first place.

 

Threat wise, yes. Juggs have been brought into line and now all three tanks are quite comparable in terms of tps. The tank balance itself though, got thrown out the window when they changed Jugg mitigation (which was always well balanced pre 2.0 with the other tanks).

 

Jugg tanking is all pros and no cons I'm afraid, we have the same damage profile as a vanguard tank with the best cooldowns in the game, and also our own version of force shroud: saber reflect. We were literally given all the things that made the other two tanks stand on their own. Juggs are hands down the best PvE tanks in the game right now.

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It really is a problem with how the damage dealt by the operations bosses are designed rather than disparity between the tanking classes. Personnally, operations bosses should have different mechanics for different tanks (and even tanking combinations).
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For two months we have asked for tank balancing and not nerfs. I think the shadow community is the most understanding and we do not condone how BioWare does class balancing by taking from one class and giving to another. It took over a month to get a reply in our forums form the community manager and not Jesse Sky. Which is a bit ironic because Jesse Sky felt the need to reply, instead of Eric, in the 'separate HM/NiM mode lockouts' thread. We have asked nicely, we are still asking nicely but this time using a language BioWare speaks : nerfing one class at the expense of the weaker. Having said that, I will promote, from this day forth, Guardian Tank nerfs and if you think I am a fanboi who hates the game and cries for nerfs all the time, check my post history for the past months and you will see that all my posts say ' guardians should not be nerfed, they are okay'.

 

 

I have changed my tune as this is the method which gives results. Shadows were nerfed all the time due to the daily cries in the PVP section. The majority cried nerfs and the minority cried balancing. The majority won so we are taking a page out of that book and we support Nerfs. So having said that please find below :

 

 

1. Saber reflect is an OP skill that is not bugged like resilience. Saber reflect does not have the 200% and 5% chance to be hit. Saber reflect works all the time and is an OP skill favoured by Jesse Sky. Look at the content design leaning towards saber reflect and completely ignoring resilience. Either both work or none at all, that is balancing. We are talking about nerfs here so increase the cooldown on it, like you did with resilience when you re-did the skill tree.

 

 

2. Guardian defensive cooldowns are OP. Guardians are the only tanks that have a 100% survival chance at Sunder in HM taking two 'The End' in a row. The other tanks cannot do this and another point in favoritism. Increase the coodldown of saberward as it was pre- 2.0.

 

 

3. Guardian mean mitigation profile is poor, however, it has perfect spike mitigation profile. Drop the spike mitigation profile and improve the mean mitigation profile. This brings the tanks closer in terms of spike damage and increase the chance of the guardian almost dying in cases where other tanks do and the guardian facerolls.

 

 

4. A poorly geared Guardian is able to clear SV/TFB HM 8 man 16 man without any issues. The vanguard follows closely but the shadow needs to be BIS and played at a very high skill cap to actually stay alive. This discrepancy should not exist, nerf is needed to bring the tank in line with the others.

Edited by Leafy_Bug
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I've posted this in another thread, but I wanted to reiterate that I don't think well-designed dice-rolling games should incorporate 'I win' buttons. Such buttons include Guarded by the Force, Force Barrier, Resilience, and Saber Reflect. Such abilities are the reason I quit pvp. I am baffled as to why Bioware released two ridiculous cooldowns (Saber Reflect and Force Barrier) in 2.0, and Saber Reflect of all things incorporates a

  • 1 minute cooldown
  • damage immunityof all types except melee, with melee of course being the most basic type of damage in the game and therefore typically easily mitigatable and low-damage
  • damage reflection
  • AOE threat on a huge radius and no target cap

 

Let's look specifically at its intention in design, the niche this ability fills. I get that each tank class needs some trash-clearing utility; Vanguards get neural surge (hard AOE stun 2.5 seconds, 45 sec cooldown) and smoke grenade. Guardians get Awe (8 sec AOE stun, breaks on damage, 60 sec cooldown), their damage reduction from AOE taunt, and now the aforementioned Saber Reflect. Shadows get Resilience and stealth cc, and their Force Wave and Spike give functionality that is kinda like Awe/Neural Surge, but of course much worse.

 

You already knew that Guardians have steady damage mitigation (cf Shadows, who have a 50% chance to drop dead every time if they initiate combat on trash), close to immediate in-combat proc buildup(oh god i have to click Bladestorm AND Rebuke???; cf 3 stacks Energy Blast, 3xHS TKT), and Awe, which is a decent trash-clearing cooldown. You also knew that in PVE bossfights, the attack is typically used to absorb one major attack, so its effectiveness could have been similar in PVE bossfights if it was 'next attack reflected' rather than 'all attacks for 3 sec' and its utility could have been good on trash (basically still an easy mode AOE taunt, a bit of damage reduction and damage redirection too). You already knew that Guardians had the best suite of defensive cooldowns.

 

What urgent need does Saber Reflect satisfy? And furthermore, how did this go live? Sure, maybe -one guy- designs all your class balance. I'm clearly not a fan of that idea, but I can deal with it. But how did this get released? Surely someone must have noticed that this wretched ability was going live and said "hey is this a typo? it should be on a 10 minute cooldown right?"

 

Maybe if you had given Saber Reflect to Shadows and given it a 10 minute cooldown I could see an argument for it being balanced. I'd still disagree about its balance immediately on the grounds that it's still an 'I win' button, but at least if I heard someone argue that it was balanced I wouldn't think they're a gibbering idiot.

Edited by MGNMTTRN
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Guardians won't ever be directly nerfed because of bad PR. If they'll do it, it won't be mentioned and will be denied for months as they've done with Shadows/Assassins :rolleyes:

 

Another good option would be to buff Shadows/Vanguards and increase the difficulty of the content with regards to tanks/healers only, anyone else think that everything came from the fiasco of the 2.0 patch when they screwed up all tank mitigation and then balanced it according to Guardians only.

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Threat wise, yes. Juggs have been brought into line and now all three tanks are quite comparable in terms of tps. The tank balance itself though, got thrown out the window when they changed Jugg mitigation (which was always well balanced pre 2.0 with the other tanks).

 

Jugg tanking is all pros and no cons I'm afraid, we have the same damage profile as a vanguard tank with the best cooldowns in the game, and also our own version of force shroud: saber reflect. We were literally given all the things that made the other two tanks stand on their own. Juggs are hands down the best PvE tanks in the game right now.

 

Juggs pre-2.0 always had inferior damage and their threat issues were huge. Not only did they have significantly worse threat on single targets, but they were by far the worst tanks for AoE threat. This is especially true if you ran the hybrid to try to partially compensate for their inferiority elsewhere. The only advantage Juggs had pre-2.0 were good cooldowns over Powertechs and they were less spiky than Assassins. Oh and they also got an armor debuff that was made redundant since almost every team ran snipers and/or mercenaries. In every other measure, they were strictly inferior and much harder to play effectively. This also isn't even counting the fact that Assassins could cheese so many mechanics in the game with Force Shroud and Force Cloak that the developers ended up slowly fixing them one by one (thus indicating they were unintended).

 

After 2.0, Juggs are far stronger than before and are arguably the strongest tanks overall if you know how to use their cooldowns. If you don't, they are just a worse version of a Powertech. Their damage profile is significantly more spiky than a Powertech and they require significantly more healing than any other tank (especially Assassins who require the least from healers). That is their weakness. Their main strength lies in the fact that they have best defensive cooldowns now. Other than that, they don't have any special strengths over Assassins (both classes have good utility with Assassins being a little better) and the current tank balance is much better than it has been in the past. Tank damage and threat is pretty much even now (with some slight favoring to Assassins again).

 

If any class has a legitimate gripe, it would be Powertechs because they don't have anywhere near the same utility that Juggernaughts/Assassins do and have the worst defensive cooldowns. For Assassins, Force Shroud not working 5% of the time doesn't make any sense and is the only problem I currently have with them. Unreliable skills are very frustrating to use and I have no idea why the developers made that particular change.

Edited by Vaidinah
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1. Saber reflect is an OP skill that is not bugged like resilience. Saber reflect does not have the 200% and 5% chance to be hit. Saber reflect works all the time and is an OP skill favoured by Jesse Sky. Look at the content design leaning towards saber reflect and completely ignoring resilience. Either both work or none at all, that is balancing. We are talking about nerfs here so increase the cooldown on it, like you did with resilience when you re-did the skill tree.

 

There are many skills that work for Resilience and don't work for Saber Reflect and vice versa. Outside of the 5% chance of failing, both skills are almost equivalent in terms of quality for being a defensive cooldown while Saber Reflect has a longer cooldown (due to the fact that Force Shroud's cooldown will go down when tanking). You can look at Thok-Zeus's posts for where Resilience works and there are other places he hadn't even mentioned. Saber Reflect wins out over Resilience as a skill in general because it also provides great AoE threat and helps with the Guardian's damage as well. Based on the way the skill currently works, it's only OP as an extremely easy way to hold threat on any trash pull. Due to the fact that Guardians have no good way of holding aggro on mobs that aren't close to each other (Force Push is far inferior to the other two tanks' pulls), Saber Reflect was the developer's solution to that problem. It may be a bit inelegant, but it works fine.

 

Also, I want to point out that currently, Blade Turning (the 100% M/R defense chance bonus for 2-3 seconds) for Saber Ward does not currently work at all so it's not like Assassins are alone in having broken skills.

 

2. Guardian defensive cooldowns are OP. Guardians are the only tanks that have a 100% survival chance at Sunder in HM taking two 'The End' in a row. The other tanks cannot do this and another point in favoritism. Increase the coodldown of saberward as it was pre- 2.0.

 

Guardians have the best defensive cooldowns for a tank in the current game. That much is true and based on what happened in 2.0, this is likely intended. Your example doesn't prove your point, though. Why does the ability to tank 2 "The End" skills matter at all when the large majority of teams don't even do that strategy. Assassins can completely negate the add spawning mechanic on the Withering Horror, which is far more useful.

 

3. Guardian mean mitigation profile is poor, however, it has perfect spike mitigation profile. Drop the spike mitigation profile and improve the mean mitigation profile. This brings the tanks closer in terms of spike damage and increase the chance of the guardian almost dying in cases where other tanks do and the guardian facerolls.

 

I actually think this is a good idea as it makes the healer's job on a good Juggernaught tank easier while still allowing for more differentiation of the tanks.

 

4. A poorly geared Guardian is able to clear SV/TFB HM 8 man 16 man without any issues. The vanguard follows closely but the shadow needs to be BIS and played at a very high skill cap to actually stay alive. This discrepancy should not exist, nerf is needed to bring the tank in line with the others.

 

Being able to clear SV/TFB HM without any issues does not mean much. Skill matters far more than gear in this game in general and even if the tank isn't great, a good team that knows the fights well can carry any type of inexperienced tank that can listen. People were doing both of these HMs days after 2.0 came out with terrible gear (mostly 63s) on all the tanks. There are many people who have complained on the forums that both of these operations after 2.0 were not a challenge for their guilds.

Edited by Vaidinah
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Tbh after all the trouble Guardians went through pre 2.0 they deserve their new skillsets and they are not OP in the slightest. Most people will have trouble timing their Saber Reflects in the most ideal moment, sometimes it will end up being useless. It depends on the skill and experience of the user. Saber Reflect is one thing that keeps the aggro of trashes on the guardian tank for once now, and no Force Sweep or Awe was nowhere near enough.
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Tbh after all the trouble Guardians went through pre 2.0 they deserve their new skillsets and they are not OP in the slightest.

 

Your argument is *seriously* "Guardians sucked before so they deserve to be incredibly strong right now"? The *only* issue that Guardians had pre-2.0 was damage/threat, and, because it was damage/threat, it wasn't even a major issue.

 

Anyone telling you anything else about their performance pre-2.0 is deluding themselves: Guardians were excellent tanks. The only reason that Shadows won out was because you actually had to play a Shadow based upon your own skills/timing and the fight in question rather than just learning your resource management and being done with it. Every fight was the same for a Guardian. Every fight was different for a Shadow.

 

Furthermore, in one of the more disturbing breaks from reality I've encountered on the forums, the Guardian threat/damage issues pre-2.0 only affected their ability to function as a tank for the first 10-15 seconds of a fight and was not a near guarantee of a wipe if it occurred. It was *not* a holistic problem across the *entirety* of a fight. You could easily predict *when* the threat problems would be around and easily work around them (generally by telling your DPS to hold the hell off for 3-4 seconds if you had a Guardian tank which wouldn't even affect their mean DPS in any appreciable manner; oh noes, mean DPS went down by .77%!; conversely, you could just have another tank start off the fight, generate said gobloads of threat, and then let the Guardian take over with a taunt). The Shadow spikiness problems are *explicitly* a problem across the entire portion of a fight and *most definitely* threaten to wipe the entire attempt if said Shadow tank gets gibbed.

 

The "badness" that Guardians faced pre-2.0 was comparatively minor. Threat was *designed* to be super simple so having bad threat was a minor problem at best. Taunt spamming means that you can, quite literally, keep aggro by just taunting after the first 20-25 seconds. Because of that, bad threat means *nothing*. Guardians didn't threaten to fall over dead based entirely on RNG. Any suggestion that Guardians were as bad off as Shadows are now is either deluding themselves, outright lying, or incapable of grasping the concept of comparison beyond the binary assignation (X better than Y rather than X is such-and-such better than Y).

 

Pre-2.0, the differences in play between the ACs was small enough that you brought the player and not the class. The class was, at best, a tiebreaker if you had 2 players of the same caliber with different ACs. If you were given the choice between a mediocre Shadow and a good Guardian, you'd take the Guardian (one of the major reasons being that player skill actually had a pretty big impact upon a Shadow tank's survivability whereas a Guardian player's skill only really impacted threat/damage). Right now, if you were given the option between a good Shadow and a mediocre Guardian, you'd actually have a pretty hard time deciding since Shadows are so risky while Guardians are idiotproof and ridonculously good. The only time that a Shadow is going to get a spot is when they're already a member of an established raiding group or they are the only tank available.

 

Given the option, most raid leaders that aren't just doing cake runs will attempt to find something to replace the Shadow because Shadows represent a *lot* of liability that will exist no matter *how* good a Shadow happens to be. Guardians, at their worst, represented a bit of liability at the start of the fight which stopped existing completely after the first 10-15 seconds. It's not a like comparison because the differences are separated by a *huge* difference in the magnitude of the impact of said liabilities. Hell, right now, Guardians represent no liability whatsoever because the only things they "suck" at are things that simply don't matter (mean mitigation is the only thing they do poorly, and they're actually tied with VGs because Blade Barrier has variable value based upon incoming DPS; its only when you do the *absolutely highest* incoming DPS fights that Guardians slip behind and they slip behind *just barely*). VGs have terrible CDs, which is a concern when dealing with the fights that essentially *require* CD use, and Shadows have abysmal spikiness, which is a major concern since there are a lot of fights with spikes in game atm. The only Guardian "weakness" isn't even a weakness.

 

Honestly, for the tank to be rebalanced, Guardians need to get nerfed down a bit and the other tanks need to get buffed.

 

Guardians need to have their mitigation profile fixed so that they have less armor and more Shield/Abs (so that they actually have a reason to use Shield/Abs): the only reason they got said armor buffs were because Defense wouldn't work on K/E F/T damage so the devs decided to give them pure DR instead even though it would've been a hellluva lot smarter and more balanced to provide Shield/Abs instead (since you'd be swapping out RNG mitigation for RNG mitigation, roughly preserving the spikiness balance that existed before). The need to have their CD suite weakened (increase the CDs on all of their CDs by 30 seconds by removing the CD reduction in the talent tree and increasing the CD on Saber Reflect by 90 seconds or removing the ability for it to work on ranged attacks): the reductions in Saber Ward and Warding Calls CDs were entirely appropriate *before* the inclusion of Saber Reflect which just screwed everything else up and Saber Reflect is *too damned good* for its CD.

 

Shadows need their spikiness fixed (reduce self healing by ~50% and increase DR by 4-5%), and VGs need to get some kind of F/T functionality CD (since Guardians getting Saber Reflect has pretty much made having one a standard of sorts): Shadows need their spikiness fixed so that they don't risk falling over dead for reasons outside of their control and VGs already had the weakest CD suite which the improvements to the Guardian and Shadow suites (adding Saber Reflect and turning Battle Readiness into a *real* tank CD) only made worse.

Edited by Kitru
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Pre 2.0 juggs/guardians specced mostly into vengeance, because immortal was just so terrible. They finally fixed it, and now you want it nerfed? LOL...

 

Besides, don't forget that shadows are really nice in PvP, just like guardians. For once, things are working fine, so stop calling for nerfs.

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I'm running both a Jugg and a PT through NIM progression right now (2 NIM Kills on the Jugg, 3 on the PT). Anyone claiming PT's are gimped is trying to play them as the pre-2.0 Flame Burst spamming variant. Their utility is amazing, their damage output is fantastic, they don't suffer from spike issues, and their cooldowns are actually quite good (18 seconds on Energy Shield is almost as long as the Imperiling Serenity relic).

 

For Jugg's, I'm not sold on them being beyond OP aside from Saber Reflect. I think the way to nerf it is to tweak some boss damages to just bypass Saber Reflect. Best example of this is Scream from the Terror. I'm not there in NIM yet so I don't know if it works there, but a Jugg shouldn't be able to Saber Reflect scream if a Sin can't Force Shroud it. I'm not even sure how a Jugg is able to Saber Reflect it, seeing how it's actually a cleave and not a single target ability.

 

It's not a nerf or buff sort of thing, but I would like to see the gap between Jugg and Powertech armor become noticeable again. Having Jugg armor only .5% behind PT armor really infringes on the Powertech's special niche. The above idea of upping absorb chance on a Jugg would be a good way to do that since proper Jugg gearing has absorb just over 30%, so shielding an attack doesn't really do that much.

 

On a different note, I got to try the 2 Sin tanks on 16 man HM Thrasher a few days ago. That was hilariously impossible, and was a nice practical lesson in Sin tank spikiness.

Edited by WillLongstick
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Kitru: Maybe I missed it, but at no point have I seen somone in this thread argue that there is balance between how Juggs were pre2.0 and how shadows are post. If I did, I apologize, and in that case you are correct, having to up your skill or taunt usage to increase threat vs honestly being unable to prevent a RNG death are two completely different issues of completely different severity. That said, I do not necessarily agree with the sentiment that Jugg tanks are just so over powered.

 

To start with, before I rolled my tank, I healed and dpsd with a lot of baaaaaaaaad tanks of all classes, both pre and post 2.0. Hell, this morning I was in a pug with an abysmal jugg tank (ironically, I had wanted to mess around in vengeance for once). There is still skill involved in jugg tanking, and to a large degree. For most content at the moment, most fights are sort of face rollish for most tanks. The one situation that I feel is a food test of a tanks ability is HM Golden Fury adds: its a burn race with two mobs being attacked by some of the raids highest dps with generally not a lot of time given to the tank to build threat which also requires the tank to be aware of interrupts. I have dpsed that instance many times on a Mara and on a merc (the Mara only did adds once as smash), healed it on a sorc, and tanked it on my jugg. As a dps I have frequently died to bad tank aggro management, and the same is true if my healer. When I recently tanked it I did so simply to see if I could do it. My tank isn't geared amazingly (mostly 69s but its not a gear check its a skill check) and I had two of the top parsing ranged dps on the harbinger on the adds with me. It took my 5 sets of adds (3 in one attempt that ended when our mt lagged and stood in the laser and 2 8in the next pull) to get a threat rotation down that kept the adds from hitting healers or other dps. In the end I settled on (T1 = The add I was not focusing on for interrupts T2 = my main target)

 

1st set

Smash>Sunder T2>Crushing Blow>Backhand T1>Taunt T1>Retaliation T2>AoE Taunt

 

2nd set

Smash>Saber Reflect>Sunder T2>Crushing Blow>Backhand T1>Taunt T1>Retaliation T2

 

When I did anything other that those rotations I lost one of the adds. Period. In fact, in the 1st set I had typically lost T1 by the time I taunted. On top of that, ill admit to a noob moment when I let my Iso fall off in the first attempt, got the AoE and just got overwhelmed by damage and died. Juggs aren't too op when they can still die to their own mistakes, imo.

 

Now I can't speak to tanking in NiM content, but I am more than willing to accept the consensus that it takes a Sin with a LOT of skill to be able to survive up to the point where RNG will rape your soul. I have however healed an under geared sin in HM S&V and don't mistake me, it was a freaking workout. I remember one attempt on T6 when I bubbled>resurged him just to top him off, turned and got 1 innervate tick off and realized he'd dropped to >30% hp. That is broken. Absolutely. The only time that I will concede Saber Reflect as being super easy threat is on trash and balancing tanks for trash is just silly.

 

That's my 2p.

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The one situation that I feel is a food test of a tanks ability is HM Golden Fury adds: its a burn race with two mobs being attacked by some of the raids highest dps with generally not a lot of time given to the tank to build threat which also requires the tank to be aware of interrupts.

 

For Guardian/Juggs:

 

Step 1: Saber Reflect

Step 2: Laugh as you have all of the threat you need thanks to up front threat and damage reflection.

 

The only "hard" parts about tanking the adds on HM Toborro's is target swapping to catch the interrupts, which can be handled in a number of ways (DPS burning separate targets; learn to swap targets to catch the interrupt when you see the focus target start casting) and maintaining threat on the both of them if they decide to spawn without being within 5m of each other, which hurts Shadows and VGs a lot more than Guardians (VGs and Shadows should reserve their pull for canisters; Saber Reflect is up for *every* set of adds and turns keeping aggro into a joke).

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Saber Reflect is up for *every* set of adds and turns keeping aggro into a joke).

If by up you mean it is off cool down at some point during the duration of the adds, then yes, you are correct. It is not, however up at the start of every add phase and thus is useless because it will either not cause enough threat to prevent a pull and it won't do anything to get back mobs you've already lost and therefore does not have the functionality of a taunt. If you burn it on every add phase you will very quickly push end up with it being on cd when you need it and therefore it shouldn't be used like that.

 

 

You brought up pull, so lets discuss that. Aside from Saber reflect and taunt, how does a Jug build threat on multiple adds at range in any fight? Smash has a decent range so you can do that IF they are close enough but smash vs a dps focusing a target out of your melee range is pretty ineffective. All I can do is Saber Reflect and then run around hoping stuff dies before I lose it. A sin or a pt can pull that mob into AoE range and simply tank it as usual. You say pull should be saved for isos? Fair enough, how is a jugg supposed to handle having his ISO run out or removed mid fight? We could jump away, sure, but then we risk turning the boss or losing aggro. I could throw my saber and hope it crits. Sins and PTs need only pull it and they're fine. How is that fair? In terms of lore how does it make sense that a Juggernaut can't pull an enemy?

 

How about HM Xeno where a Sin can shroud/cloak the stacking debuff to avoid most of it whereas a Jugg can only avoid 5 seconds and a PT can't avoid any? That's not very "balanced". If all you want to do is whine about how juggs get this cool ability that you don't get to have while ignoring the vast number of effects that can be cheeses by other clases that Juggs can't then use your time better and role a jugg. If however you want to have a serious discussion about balance in which all parties attempt to respect the others viewpoints, then hit me up.

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It is going off topic a little bit, but saber reflect isn't off cooldown for each add set, at least its not off cooldown when it counts (when they spawn). If you try to use it on every spawn you will eventually push back the cooldown to the point where you are using it when the adds are half-dead. You just rotate reflect with aoe taunt however and its fine.

 

I wouldn't be so quick to diminish the challenge of tanking those adds in HM, on the spawn when they are far apart, a guardian can't hit them with guardian strike or sweep, keeping agro on two separate targets without any collateral aoe is a bit stressful in the opening moments when they spawn. I have noticed that you can sweeping strike the area when they spawn before the models appear and that causes them to laser you, so it seems you generate threat on the before you can damage them.

 

I would list these adds as one of the few genuinely challenging tank duties in the game, OPs are just full of heal checks, with tanks baby sitting the big boss mob and yelling swap.

Edited by Marb
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Now this is where I really must disagree with Kitru. (And maybe i should lay out cookies, muffins and milk first :p)

 

Your argument is *seriously* "Guardians sucked before so they deserve to be incredibly strong right now"? The *only* issue that Guardians had pre-2.0 was damage/threat, and, because it was damage/threat, it wasn't even a major issue.

 

Anyone telling you anything else about their performance pre-2.0 is deluding themselves: Guardians were excellent tanks. The only reason that Shadows won out was because you actually had to play a Shadow based upon your own skills/timing and the fight in question rather than just learning your resource management and being done with it. Every fight was the same for a Guardian. Every fight was different for a Shadow.

 

Furthermore, in one of the more disturbing breaks from reality I've encountered on the forums, the Guardian threat/damage issues pre-2.0 only affected their ability to function as a tank for the first 10-15 seconds of a fight and was not a near guarantee of a wipe if it occurred. It was *not* a holistic problem across the *entirety* of a fight. You could easily predict *when* the threat problems would be around and easily work around them (generally by telling your DPS to hold the hell off for 3-4 seconds if you had a Guardian tank which wouldn't even affect their mean DPS in any appreciable manner; oh noes, mean DPS went down by .77%!; conversely, you could just have another tank start off the fight, generate said gobloads of threat, and then let the Guardian take over with a taunt). The Shadow spikiness problems are *explicitly* a problem across the entire portion of a fight and *most definitely* threaten to wipe the entire attempt if said Shadow tank gets gibbed.

 

The "badness" that Guardians faced pre-2.0 was comparatively minor. Threat was *designed* to be super simple so having bad threat was a minor problem at best. Taunt spamming means that you can, quite literally, keep aggro by just taunting after the first 20-25 seconds. Because of that, bad threat means *nothing*. Guardians didn't threaten to fall over dead based entirely on RNG. Any suggestion that Guardians were as bad off as Shadows are now is either deluding themselves, outright lying, or incapable of grasping the concept of comparison beyond the binary assignation (X better than Y rather than X is such-and-such better than Y).

 

The issue was with Guardian tanks having the lowest dps among the tanks and hence the lowest base threat generation. The problem with threat generation is serious especially in mechanics requiring a tank swap (at least the initial one). A DPS can pull aggro off a Guardian even after using both taunt and challenging call, and if this is close to the time to swap aggro, the Guardian Tank either taunts back (hence delaying the swap), or holds back the taunt until the swap (hence giving his co-tank a Boss running amock and out of position). It was serious enough that some Guardian tanks used the hybrid spec to have better DPS/TPS. In close fights, tank contribution to DPS matters. This problem was only compounded when Hilt Strike and Guardian Slash received a nerf in one of the patches.

 

Aside from threat, Guardians were the worse tanks in terms of kiting and hold aggro on add spawns or groups of mobs. Guardian tanks simply did not have enough AOE or range DPS. The high threat Guardian abilities were single target melee abilities (there was a time that Guardian Slash was single target).

 

Outside of Enure, Guardians had the lowest HP among the tanks, so there were problems dealing with elemental/internal damage as well as bad RNG.

 

Pre-2.0, the differences in play between the ACs was small enough that you brought the player and not the class. The class was, at best, a tiebreaker if you had 2 players of the same caliber with different ACs. If you were given the choice between a mediocre Shadow and a good Guardian, you'd take the Guardian (one of the major reasons being that player skill actually had a pretty big impact upon a Shadow tank's survivability whereas a Guardian player's skill only really impacted threat/damage). Right now, if you were given the option between a good Shadow and a mediocre Guardian, you'd actually have a pretty hard time deciding since Shadows are so risky while Guardians are idiotproof and ridonculously good. The only time that a Shadow is going to get a spot is when they're already a member of an established raiding group or they are the only tank available.

 

Guardian tanks are still the only tanks who need to generate their own resources, which outside for melee range they can only do every 30s for minimal focus. (The focus generated from taking damage is also not that much.) Guardian focus generation and threat generation were anything but idiot proof and running anything less than the optimum rotation as well as taunting outside of melee range pretty much ran the risk of DPS pulling aggro off without much effort.

 

A mediocre Shadow was in a much better position than a good Guardian and it simple was they case that Guardians needed much better gear to match Shadow performance. The smoother damage taken profile of the Shadow was pretty much a huge quality of life boost a raid, and higher Shadow tank DPS did make a difference between clearing and not clearing a particular fight.

 

For Guardian/Juggs:

 

Step 1: Saber Reflect

Step 2: Laugh as you have all of the threat you need thanks to up front threat and damage reflection.

 

I don't think you have much experience with the Guardian tank on add duty for HM Golden Fury. In the 16man Saber Reflect must be used together with challenging call. Even after challenging call and saber reflect as well as the standard Guardian AOE, DPS (on adds) and healers are able pull right off a Guardian.

 

The cooldown of Saber Reflect is also longer than the time taken for the adds to spawn. The cooldown of challenging call finishes first, but using challenging call at the second add spawn without saber reflect is just silly. Using it in the middle or at toward the end is also a terrible idea. Further, Saber Reflect alone on the third adds spawn is simply not enough to ensure that the adds are shooting at your and self generating aggro.

 

During the alternate add spawn the Guardian tank is left with their horrid standard AOE threat generation.

Edited by leto_cleon
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It is going off topic a little bit, but saber reflect isn't off cooldown for each add set, at least its not off cooldown when it counts (when they spawn). If you try to use it on every spawn you will eventually push back the cooldown to the point where you are using it when the adds are half-dead. You just rotate reflect with aoe taunt however and its fine.

 

I wouldn't be so quick to diminish the challenge of tanking those adds in HM, on the spawn when they are far apart, a guardian can't hit them with guardian strike or sweep, keeping agro on two separate targets without any collateral aoe is a bit stressful in the opening moments when they spawn. I have noticed that you can sweeping strike the area when they spawn before the models appear and that causes them to laser you, so it seems you generate threat on the before you can damage them.

 

I would list these adds as one of the few genuinely challenging tank duties in the game, OPs are just full of heal checks, with tanks baby sitting the big boss mob and yelling swap.

 

With 2 jugg tanks it is a joke, just tank swap every add spawn so you make sure they have saber reflect up for every single add group, and with any other tank you should also do that to keep cds and relics up, not to mention AoE taunt. I don't understand why people try to use crazy tactics keeping one tank always on boss and another on adds.

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With 2 jugg tanks it is a joke, just tank swap every add spawn so you make sure they have saber reflect up for every single add group, and with any other tank you should also do that to keep cds and relics up, not to mention AoE taunt. I don't understand why people try to use crazy tactics keeping one tank always on boss and another on adds.

 

O.o Crazy tactics? You say swap tanks as if it just a matter of moving a few feet when what you are really talking about involves ensuring both tanks have 100% uptime of ISO, are able to move from one side of that room to the other in an increasingly small window while preventing both tank targets from 1 shotting every one else not to mention how the MT needs his/her cds for tanking the boss and not to be used on the much less hard hitting adds. Have you ever actually tanked 16M HM TC? On SM it is entirely possible to single tank the whole encounter which could explain your belief that its "easy". As for needing saber reflect for every set of adds, you're flat out wrong. With the right rotation and being, you know, skilled at the class you can hold both without saber reflect. A previous poster made the excellent point that even saber reflect alone won't hold aggro against good dps for long after it ends.

 

it seems to me that there are a lot of misconceptions about saber reflect and its usefulness. Its a great way for a melee tank to build ranged threat fast, its also occasionally hilarious in PvP if timed correctly (watching a sniper murder himself in 5 seconds is just glorious but since snipers are the only class that can put out that much damage in that short of a period of time they are the only class you can effectively murder with one skill and even so it takes amazing timing and luck), and it is phenomenal for trash. Aside from that it has severely limited utility in ops and is basically a once a minute guaranteed non boss hit.

 

Force Shroud - Removes all removable hostile effects and increases your chance to resist force and tech attacks by 100%. 60 second CD.

 

Saber Reflect - Reflects all direct single target ranged, force, and tech attacks back to the attacker for 3 seconds. The damage dealt this way is capped. 60 second CD.

 

Comparing the two sins get to remove all hostile effects which makes it a survability CD juggs get to reflect back damage which makes it a threat Gen cd. Guess what? Juggs need help with ranged, force andtech mobs threat. Sins need help with survivability. They both got it. Seems pretty *********** balanced. And as for sins, I was not going to say it because its a hot button issue but honestly I'm sick to death of the whole waaaaaaah sins are hard and we get hit hard waaaaah bs. Guess what? Its tough. Yup. But guilds have downed everything so far with and without sins so you're not completely broken. And as for what rng kills sins, you are talking about extremely end game content that doesn't effect the vast majority of players. The vast majority of people who pay for the game. Why the hell would/should bioware care about what 1% of the population thinks? You think they should,spend the money they earned for the other 99% of people tuning a game for you?

 

But you know what? I'll put my money where my mouth is; I honestly do not believe that tanking on a sin (or a pt for that matter) is that much harder than a jugg, so lets find out. Starting tomorrow,I'll roll a shadow and level it up, gear it just like I did with my jugg through comms, alt runs, etc, so when he hits 55 he is in good enough gear to step into hms and I'll see just how much more skill is needed. Maybe I'm wrong, but since every other time I've done tried something like this I ended up seeing that,nope they are preeeeeetty much the same I really doubt it.

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