Everything wrong with guardians @Vastin

[cbfan14]

Adjusting B/P/E is going to necessitate a rebalance of all the tanks as it is currently functionally worthless so adjusting B/P/E is going to throw the dtps profiles for all tanks physical damage out of whack.

Speaking on the subject of B/P/E, I would like to know what kind of changes Vastin has in mind for B/P/E since he posted about making adjustments. Is B/P/E still going to work the same, or is Vastin thinking of fundamentally changing the mechanic? I would really to get more details and soon, because this could massively affect the way our tanks function depending on what's going to change.

[HolyDuckTape]

shall we take it from the top?

Tanks benefit from taunts in an unequal way? No. All tanks benefit in the same manner from taunts. Taunts establish aggro and force taunt for a certain duration.
Tanks are unequally affected by taunt IMPLEMENTATION by the devs. i.e. this is a DEV problem, not a tank standardization problem. And this problem is because the devs are applying piecemeal bandaid fixes on top of a broken frame.

I'm not going to go through all your critiques of the different tank classes, I don't play beorning tank enough to critique it, I loathe cappy tanks, I strongly disagree with the changes made to chanks and I have no idea what you're talking about with warden tanks getting harder to play. I'll apply a simple generalization. IF all tank taunts were standardized to apply ONLY a taunt effect, this would be meaningless. The issue with taunts is the secondary effects built into the taunts which is just poor class design. Adding rotational effects to taunts (or vice versa) limits tanks effectiveness in an offtank role and is something I strongly discourage.

Taunts will always affect each class differently. Upfront it does sound good tho, remove taunt effects and all taunts will be the same but we do not want to go down this route because all classes work differently and all classes benefit differently from certain changes. This would mean all ''on hit'' emergencies and traits would need to be either removed or changed aswell because they all give different tank classes, different buffs to having the aggro of mobs. So this would mean pretty much mean removing or changing:

Guardian: Block heal, thrill of danger heal, juggernaut block chance, guardians pledge bpe chance, adaptability, all BPE traits/skills, parry dmg, protection(by the sword), manifested ire, parry responses, block responses, tenderize, bolster, all debuffs.

Captain: Last stand reduction, exemplar procs, defeat response procs, all BPE traits/skills

Beorning: guarded attack procs, sacrifice wrath/threat procs, all BPE traits/skills, all debuffs

Warden: evade healing, all BPE traits/skills, all debuffs

Chank: Unbreakable, all BPE traits/skills, adamant, all debuffs, parry/reflect/dmg chance.

In order to make all taunt changes 100% the same to all classes aka standardize them. (Ofcourse most of these traits mean nothing as you will already have aggro most of the time but there are a few that do benefit a lot from suddenly grabbing the aggro of a ton of mobs)

Let's right now remove the taunt effects and see how it would change the tanks tho:
-

• Captain: gets extremely buffed with the 10 targets. They now get an even lower Last stand cd, an even lower SoD cd and they get more defeat responses. Giving the tankiest tanks in the game acces to 10 targets also really increased the gap between cappies and the other tanks dramatically.
  -
  Only if the targets would stay on 6, only then it would make captains pretty much the same as they already are. Altough captains who rely on taunt spamming to hold aggro will see it as a nerf. Skilled cappies wouldn't see any difference.
  -
• Guardians: They didn't get affected by this change at all it did make them more afk tho aggro wise.
  -
• Wardens: they got slightly nerfed. Warden's aggro capability which they quite need has been reduced. (they need to have a lower taunt cd because they do not have the same passive aggro capabilities of other tanks)
  -
• Chanks: let's say it's implemented correctly well then it would still be a max targets loss. So they would be nerfed. (they need to have a higher max target for the way their playstyle works)
  -
• Beornings: They got buffed massively by this. They now need to rely less on their other taunts and this gives them a LOT of time to focus on their utility instead. (they need to have a higher cd to actually make them use majority of their skills instead of focusing on only a few skills and pretty much removing the purpose of all their other taunt skills)

So even if taunt effects would be gone, this still gives all tanks different outcomes because they all have their strengths and weaknesses. All of them get a different amount of help from taunts. Standardizing something like this in a fair way is impossible unless you remove a ton of traits and skills.

Let me look at your other point then. Specifically in regards to Wardens.
Wardens HAVE an invulnerability cooldown already. Its called LAST STAND and its currently bugged. Wardens were not OP with last stand. Its a simple invuln cooldown, good for one hit with no duration after it triggers. So whats your point here exactly?

Yes with this point i tried to show that standardizing more things like emergencies for example would be horrible for the balance of tanks. There are already quite some people advocating for all tanks having a skill like last stand, either making you take zero dmg for a certain duration or make you not die for a certain duration. This is a horrible thing and it also applies to other emergencies like BPE and healing emergencies. All tanks work differently and these kind of changes could easily make them tanks overpowered.

Giving wardens a last stand would make them overpowered, they are the best passive survivability tanks already (if fixed), giving them an emergency this big would make them crazy. Same story with beornings, they would become the best tanks in the game, their only weakness has now been covered. This would keep guardians close to the same as they already kinda got a invulnerability skill but to physical dmg. And finally: it would make chanks (if they got fixed) become the tankiest tanks in the game.

Now add a BPE emergency to all tanks other than guards and you will literally make captains who are already the best at everything, the most overpowered class in the game. They would totally smash all competition when it comes to adds tanking. Give this to wardens and they would totally be invincible vs adds, give this to beornings and they would lose their only weakness, give this to chanks and they would be the tankiest tanks in the game (if they got fixed)

Standardizing the toolkits of tanks would make them completely unbalanced unless all tanks became the complete same. TankbusterTanks with kinda the same toolkit as AddsTanks would destroy AddsTanks in every way possible balance wise. And giving AddsTanks kinda the same toolkit as TankbusterTanks would make them overpowered but still below the original TankBusters.

All tanks got different utility, different mits, different inch, critdef, bpe, ressistance, different healing, different skills and different traits. A single one of these things already makes any attempt at standardizing tanks unfair unless all of these things would be the exact same. Or atleast so close that the difference would be miniscule. So standardizing in itself is just a bad idea when classes are different from eachother.

[mrplaneswalker]

Taunts will always affect each class differently. Upfront it does sound good tho, remove taunt effects and all taunts will be the same but we do not want to go down this route because all classes work differently and all classes benefit differently from certain changes. This would mean all ''on hit'' emergencies and traits would need to be either removed or changed aswell because they all give different tank classes, different buffs to having the aggro of mobs. So this would mean pretty much mean removing or changing:

So even if taunt effects would be gone, this still gives all tanks different outcomes because they all have their strengths and weaknesses. All of them get a different amount of help from taunts. Standardizing something like this in a fair way is impossible unless you remove a ton of traits and skills.


Yes with this point i tried to show that standardizing more things like emergencies for example would be horrible for the balance of tanks. There are already quite some people advocating for all tanks having a skill like last stand, either making you take zero dmg for a certain duration or make you not die for a certain duration. This is a horrible thing and it also applies to other emergencies like BPE and healing emergencies. All tanks work differently and these kind of changes could easily make them tanks overpowered.
Giving wardens a last stand would make them overpowered, they are the best passive survivability tanks already (if fixed), giving them an emergency this big would make them crazy. Same story with beornings, they would become the best tanks in the game, their only weakness has now been covered. This would keep guardians close to the same as they already kinda got a invulnerability skill but to physical dmg. And finally: it would make chanks (if they got fixed) become the tankiest tanks in the game.

Standardizing the toolkits of tanks would make them completely unbalanced unless all tanks became the complete same. TankbusterTanks with kinda the same toolkit as AddsTanks would destroy AddsTanks in every way possible balance wise. And giving AddsTanks kinda the same toolkit as TankbusterTanks would make them overpowered but still below the original TankBusters. All tanks got different utility, different mits, different inch, critdef, bpe, ressistance, different healing, different skills and different traits. A single one of these things already makes any attempt at standardizing tanks unfair unless all of these things would be the exact same. Or atleast so close that the difference would be miniscule. So standardizing in itself is just a bad idea when classes are different from eachother.

Taunts aren't the issue here. The disparate toolkits are. And to be clear, everything you brought up is not an issue with taunts, its an issue with number of mobs engaged by the tank. Any tank with a -cd on inc damage trait is going to benefit from increased density of mob pulls, its always been this way. If the devs were smart they'd add an ICD to the CDR trait so the number of mobs becomes less important. All the tanks gain the exact same thing from a basic taunt. Aggro. Adding multiple effects onto the taunts (such as captain defeat responses) is the problem. Standardizing taunts is a good thing. Hell, they could stand to remove a ton of taunts from the game as it currently stands. We don't need repeat taunting as a tank build, its dull. Just adjust the threat of multiple mob pulls if you're so very against wall-to-wall pulling. Or increase tank AoE output if you want to embrace it.
I don't have issues with AoE pack threat so I don't know where you're coming from on this one. If I pull 10 mobs I expect to tank 10 mobs and I only really use an AoE taunt if I'm gonna be lazy (on my guard at least). My warden doesn't even need an AoE taunt, but you use it regardless because its rotational and applies defensive buffs.

So basically I get that you're unhappy with the way certain classes scale with larger numbers of mobs, but thats not a taunt issue, thats a base class scaling & design issue.

Invulns...
Invulns are not overpowered. They're short duration panic buttons. If you have to use a panic button to survive then odds are you're going to die in the next 30s regardless. Invulns are nice when used preemptively, it allows you to cycle out some other cooldowns, but they're not going to make or break a fight because soon enough that invuln is going to wear off and as soon as it does you're back to taking all the damage you were before but now without the "can't die" flag.
Captain is a problem because it has too frequent access to its invuln. But again, this is a class design issue and not an issue with invulns in and of themselves. Warden has a cooldown of what... 3 minutes? Same for Guard I think? actual uptime on those abilities is somewhere around 1% to 10% of the fight (if used off cooldown). An invuln is only really worth the extra damage mitigated over the average hps of the healer. Its excellent for spike damage (tankbusters) but is completely lackluster for typical pulls unless you're already struggling, and if you're already struggling you'll still be struggling with the invuln wears off in just about every single case. If you're able to buy enough time for the dps to reduce your incoming damage enough to be survivable, thats about the only case I can think of where an invuln can become clutch. But since theres no OOM issues (which aren't mechanics) theres basically no other reason to use the invuln to buy time. Its basically just an "I'm gonna ignore this one mechanic or tankbuster" button.

And finally, standardizing the toolkit of the different tanks won't unbalance them. I've never said they all need the exact same cooldown suite. Only that it needs to be similar. It'd be very easy to give every tank a -20% inc dmg cooldown, but make wardens -10% inc dmg & +10% block rate instead.
What I'm saying is that all the tanks need a similar cooldown suite. Such as a short cooldown anti-tankbuster dcd, a longer cooldown dtps dcd, a fairly long and powerful dcd and an invuln. Its easy enough to differentiate them, make Guards short anti-tankbuster the ability to force a partial block or resist for the next 3 or 5 seconds. Cappies can get a -30% dmg for 5s, Chanks can keep their sudden morale bubble, wardens can force a full block or partial resist... give beornings a big heal... there are plenty of ways to make each of the tank classes different while also standardizing the toolkits.

If they really wanted to be fun the devs could abolish parry & resist and make blocks & evades function against tactical damage. Then eliminate full block and partial evade so you're left with blocking but taking damage, evading and taking no damage, mitigations, morale bubbles & -inc damage from cooldowns.
Then give each tank a specific focus for passive dr. i.e. Cappies: -inc dmg. Guard: block. Warden: Mits/Self heals. Bear: Mits. Chank: Morale Bubbles.
Once you've isolated what you want each tanks gimmick to be, then just take an archetypal cooldown and modify it to best suit the specialization of the tank. Take my list from earlier, with the above archetypal specializations in mind...
Guard: force partial block
Cappy: -inc damage
Warden: force evade
Bear: -inc damage
Chank: Morale Bubble.

Then balance them out. Since full evades are left and partial blocks, make guard last for 5s and warden for 2s. Since cappy and bear share a simple dr dcd, lets cappies be used on other targets and make bears self-only but slightly stronger.

I hope thats enough to convince you that differentiation is hella easy for anyone even mildly competent. Standardization does not mean that you can't be a special snowflake anymore, its just means bringing all the class performance expectations in-line.

[Forohir]

So have we given up on getting Flash of Light un-nerfed? Or for the +Light legacy to actually do anything meaningful?

[HolyDuckTape]

Regarding Guardians:
Class balance is an ongoing process. We know Guardians need some love. We won’t forget, but that isn’t in the cards for 28.3.

Bump. Seems like guardians are getting some attention again. Will revive this thread as it's filled with a ton of great info and details for what's needed in a guardian update. It has to be huge as guardians are just in a completely dead state. There's so many issues with them, mainly in red and yellow line, but also blue line ofcourse. Let's hope SSG will listen to most of the stuff on here. I encourage everyone to post their wishes for the guardian class update, let's hope we can make it a great one!

[Joedangod]

-Beorning: 75% P, 70% T 20% morale bear form + Vitality trait + 4,8 morale
-Guardian: 70% P, 70% T 0% morale, NO vitality trait, 4,8 morale
-Warden: 65% P, 65% T (70%-70% with 130 set bonus) 20% Morale, NO vitality trait, 4,8 morale
-Captain: 63% P, 63% T 33% Morale, NO vitality trait, 4,5 morale
-Champion: 60% P, 65% T 20% Morale, Vitality trait, 4,5 morale

..Honestly, this is disappointing to read. I expect better from you. Don't misrepresent/hide information just to make guardians look bad. The correct breakdown is as follows:

• Captain: 63% mitigations, -20% incoming damage. -15% on a 41% uptime. Overall take ~27.32% of incoming damage.
• Blue Guardian: 72% physical mitigations, 70% tactical mitigations, -35% incoming damage on ~35-40% uptime. Overall take ~24.29% of incoming physical damage and 26.06% of tactical damage.
• Yellow Guardian: 60% mitigations, -35% incoming damage on ~35-40% uptime. Overall take ~34.75% of incoming damage.
• Beorning: 75% phys, 65% tact mitigation. Overall takes 25% of incoming phys damage, 35% of tact.
• Warden: ~70% phys/tact mitigation (depends on gambit uptime) with set bonus. Overall takes 30% of incoming damage.
• Champ: 60% physical, 65% tactical, -10% incoming melee damage. -10% incoming damage with Sudden Defence up 15s duration / 25s cooldown. (Blue set bonus from Remmo). Adamant, -29% incoming melee and ranged damage, -27% incoming tactical damage, 15s duration / 1min cooldown.
  
• Melee; 60% mits, with an effective -23.25% incoming damage = 30.7% taken damage.
  
• Ranged; 60% mits, with an effective -13.25% incoming damage = 34.7% taken damage.
  
• Tactical; 65% mits, with an effective -12.75% incoming damage = 30.54% taken damage.

• Captain: 33% bonus to morale. 4.5:1 morale:vit ratio
• Blue Guardian: 0% bonus to morale (does have a defensive cooldown that boosts it). 4.8:1 morale:vit ratio
• Yellow Guardian: 0% bonus to morale (does have a defensive cooldown that boosts it). 4.8:1 morale:vit ratio
• Beorning: 20% bonus to morale + a low uptime 15% morale bonus roar that nobody uses since you need to be healed for that morale gain. +9.5k Vitality from traits. 4.8:1 morale:vit ratio
• Warden: 20% bonus. 4.8:1 morale:vit ratio
• Champ: 20% + 10% uptime on another 20% bonus. +9.5k Vitality from traits. 4.5:1 morale:vit ratio

4. Blue Guardian has literally zero group/raid utility, let's compare:
-Captain: To arms, Yellow/Red Banner, Double rez, Revealing mark/Telling mark, Brothers call, -5% inc dmg, AoE healing, Muster Courage, SoD, In harms way+LS
-Beorning: Armour crush, Bees, Healing, Sacrifice, Rez, -40% outgoing dmg
-Warden: Mit javelins, group wide mits
-Champion: -10% outgoing, -20% outgoing dmg, -30% outgoing dmg,
-Guardian: 2% raid wide mit and a shield wall/litanny of defiance that you literally can never use unless you want to die.

You're misrepresenting information again. Beornings don't have access to a rez whilst tanking, nor does it have access to -40% outgoing damage. In fact most of these -outgoing damage % debuffs are actually -mastery % so barely provide any reduction to damage, you'll actually reduce incoming damage by roughly the same amount (or more) via the 2% raid mits blue guard provides. The external healing a tanking Beorning provides is pretty limited as well, the devs were smart enough to block bellow/roar/maul from being accessible outside of yellow. I assume you didn't update this with the break ranks change but that'll definitely change things up a bit. The non-stack nature of the Beorning/Warden debuffs severely limits the value of taking them in the tank role (not implying they should stack here, just noting that their value is limited. I'd rather see these dumb mit debuffs removed entirely or shared between several classes).

5. Guardians got very weak passive BPE. Guardians are not meant to be a BPE tank cause that's warden's job but guardian still gets beaten by all tank classes BPE wise.
-Captain: 5% parry, 5% block, 8% evade, big amount of BP from rating
-Wardens: huge amount from self buffing but still weaker than captains which is ridiculouss
-Champion: 5% block, 15% parry, big amount of BP from rating
-Beorning: 10% evade, huge amount of BPE from rating
-Guardian: 5% block, average amount of parry from rating and huge amount of block from rating. (U can't trait the 5% parry chance unless you sacrifice blue capstone/yellow redirect.

...

Beornings have an 8700 evade rating bonus with a low uptime. That's it. That's all the rating bonuses. The 10% evade uptime is dependent on having Remmo set bonus but worth noting that the absence of swords means Bears have a -1% parry compared to any other tank spec. Captains don't get any block from rating and their parry amount is a fraction of guardians ward parry. Odd that you're ignoring partials entirely here, mostly plays to wardens strength but Guardians are definitely the distant second for partials.


I get you're annoyed at the position Guardians have found themselves in but misrepresenting information doesn't help anyone. It just tells us that you're biased.

[HolyDuckTape]

..Honestly, this is disappointing to read. I expect better from you. Don't misrepresent/hide information just to make guardians look bad. The correct breakdown is as follows:

• Captain: 63% mitigations, -20% incoming damage. -15% on a 41% uptime. Overall take ~27.32% of incoming damage.
• Blue Guardian: 72% physical mitigations, 70% tactical mitigations, -35% incoming damage on ~35-40% uptime. Overall take ~24.29% of incoming physical damage and 26.06% of tactical damage.
• Yellow Guardian: 60% mitigations, -35% incoming damage on ~35-40% uptime. Overall take ~34.75% of incoming damage.
• Beorning: 75% phys, 65% tact mitigation. Overall takes 25% of incoming phys damage, 35% of tact.
• Warden: ~70% phys/tact mitigation (depends on gambit uptime) with set bonus. Overall takes 30% of incoming damage.
• Champ: 60% physical, 65% tactical, -10% incoming melee damage. -10% incoming damage with Sudden Defence up 15s duration / 25s cooldown. (Blue set bonus from Remmo). Adamant, -29% incoming melee and ranged damage, -27% incoming tactical damage, 15s duration / 1min cooldown.
  
• Melee; 60% mits, with an effective -23.25% incoming damage = 30.7% taken damage.
  
• Ranged; 60% mits, with an effective -13.25% incoming damage = 34.7% taken damage.
  
• Tactical; 65% mits, with an effective -12.75% incoming damage = 30.54% taken damage.

I was talking about morale and mits only and i was right so no misinformation, the only mistake i made was beorns 70 > 65% tmit. You want to add incoming damage to it? Alright then, but why don't you add incoming healing or morale to this inc dmg table? Cause even if blue guards have less inc dmg, they have disastrously lower health and lower inch than for example a captain making the 3-1% inc dmg difference mean nothing when it comes to actual survivability.

Not only that but with break ranks (and when litanny is fixed) we will have a lot of time below 70% mitigation further increasing our damage taken. Redirect also has a very very low uptime due to parries not existing in current endgame increasing the dmg taken drastically which this inc dmg list does not count aswell. Ofcourse once bpe is fixed it's alright. Guardians do not have 72% mit in general, they only have that when applying the warriors fortitude buff, this can only apply when you use it and goes away when you die aka it's not a permanent thing at all and often times only kicks in very late into a fight making it very unfair to add this as their general mitigation. Then why not add SoD to captains? It's the same thing. Why not add litanny of defiance +20% mit and say guards are 90% mit tanks? Because it's not their general mitigation/dmg reduction. Blue guardians are 60% mit tanks and will often drop down to it by cashing out but because their fortis are up at anytime to be built up they are 70% mit tanks indeed. Just like cappy pets are also there almost 100% of the time making them 63% mit tanks instead of 60%.

• Captain: 33% bonus to morale. 4.5:1 morale:vit ratio
• Blue Guardian: 0% bonus to morale (does have a defensive cooldown that boosts it). 4.8:1 morale:vit ratio
• Yellow Guardian: 0% bonus to morale (does have a defensive cooldown that boosts it). 4.8:1 morale:vit ratio
• Beorning: 20% bonus to morale + a low uptime 15% morale bonus roar that nobody uses since you need to be healed for that morale gain. +9.5k Vitality from traits. 4.8:1 morale:vit ratio
• Warden: 20% bonus. 4.8:1 morale:vit ratio
• Champ: 20% + 10% uptime on another 20% bonus. +9.5k Vitality from traits. 4.5:1 morale:vit ratio

Captain: 43% morale due to motivational speech* Ofcourse if a captain is present (and in range) then other tanks get this buff aswell but it's far from guaranteed for other tank classes especially in 3 and 6man content. Quite a few moments in raid content aswell.
Beorning: Everyone uses assertive roar cause extra morale still means extra morale (and u get healed 5% of the 10% morale) and it has a 25% uptime which is still pretty good. Funny enough, guardian's WH has a lower uptime than assertive roar and uptime > strength

You're misrepresenting information again. Beornings don't have access to a rez whilst tanking, nor does it have access to -40% outgoing damage. In fact most of these -outgoing damage % debuffs are actually -mastery % so barely provide any reduction to damage, you'll actually reduce incoming damage by roughly the same amount (or more) via the 2% raid mits blue guard provides. The external healing a tanking Beorning provides is pretty limited as well, the devs were smart enough to block bellow/roar/maul from being accessible outside of yellow. I assume you didn't update this with the break ranks change but that'll definitely change things up a bit. The non-stack nature of the Beorning/Warden debuffs severely limits the value of taking them in the tank role (not implying they should stack here, just noting that their value is limited. I'd rather see these dumb mit debuffs removed entirely or shared between several classes).

Indeed blue beorns dont have an incombat rez that was a mistake, they do however have -30% outgoing dmg instead of 40% (slam+piercing). (edit they got - 39% due to claw swipe debuff) Even with it being mastery based it still by far beats the 2% guard mits during a big boss attack where it actually matters most like blood surge/trash etc. If a mob AoE's a lot then beornings also win but if the dmg source is from multiple mobs then yeah guardians win in that regard. Yeah the healing output is quite low and the utility in general is also quite useless when a yellow beorn is present which i did tell about a million times in tank balance threads.

Beornings have an 8700 evade rating bonus with a low uptime. That's it. That's all the rating bonuses. The 10% evade uptime is dependent on having Remmo set bonus but worth noting that the absence of swords means Bears have a -1% parry compared to any other tank spec. Captains don't get any block from rating and their parry amount is a fraction of guardians ward parry. Odd that you're ignoring partials entirely here, mostly plays to wardens strength but Guardians are definitely the distant second for partials.

When geared, beornings will have pretty good bpe from rating itself. Not actual trait/skill rating tho. And it still makes them have a better passive bpe than guards.

I get you're annoyed at the position Guardians have found themselves in but misrepresenting information doesn't help anyone. It just tells us that you're biased.

Im not biased at all, i want all tanks to be great and to be used in endgame content. I have already made countless threads on the forums about tank balance updates etc. The tanking balance is in this game is the worst ever and the only real tank we got atm are captains (with the exception of guards in amdan dammul but thats because the instance itself is too easy and even blue wards/champs/beorns can tank it on the highest tier) I am totally up for a tank balance update with all tanks getting their much needed buffs and to keep the OP captain in check.

[Joedangod]

3. Blue Guards are meant to be the superheavy tanks of the game, the true mit tanks/inc dmg tanks. But they don't really have much of an advantage over other classes at it honestly.

I was talking about morale and mits only and i was right so no misinformation, the only mistake i made was beorns 70 > 65% tmit. You want to add incoming damage to it? Alright then, but why don't you add incoming healing or morale to this inc dmg table? Cause even if blue guards have less inc dmg, they have disastrously lower health and lower inch than for example a captain making the 3-1% inc dmg difference mean nothing when it comes to actual survivability.

Leaving out incoming damage reductions does indeed misrepresent the situation. It'd be like comparing DPS but ignoring DoT effects, you have to look at the whole picture. Now as for the 3-1% inc damage difference...that's not the actual difference in damage taken, (24.3/27.3)*100=89 shows that Guardians are taking ~10% less damage than captains overall. Not 1-3% less.

Not only that but with break ranks (and when litanny is fixed) we will have a lot of time below 70% mitigation further increasing our damage taken. Redirect also has a very very low uptime due to parries not existing in current endgame increasing the dmg taken drastically which this inc dmg list does not count aswell. Ofcourse once bpe is fixed it's alright. Guardians do not have 72% mit in general, they only have that when applying the warriors fortitude buff, this can only apply when you use it and goes away when you die aka it's not a permanent thing at all and often times only kicks in very late into a fight making it very unfair to add this as their general mitigation. Then why not add SoD to captains? It's the same thing. Why not add litanny of defiance +20% mit and say guards are 90% mit tanks? Because it's not their general mitigation/dmg reduction. Blue guardians are 60% mit tanks and will often drop down to it by cashing out but because their fortis are up at anytime to be built up they are 70% mit tanks indeed. Just like cappy pets are also there almost 100% of the time making them 63% mit tanks instead of 60%.

Break ranks drops your mits for a few seconds of each minute (if you even use it during that minute, you should but it's never a given). Litany doesn't lower your mits, it increases them. Redirect has perfectly fine uptime since you aren't reliant on parries as you can proc it with sting, uptime is high enough that it's most comparable to To-Arms, which is why both are listed. All damage reductions with high uptimes are listed. Warriors Heart should be popped early on to maximise the value of the mit bonus, typically not an issue as most encounters don't endanger the tank early on.

Captain: 43% morale due to motivational speech* Ofcourse if a captain is present (and in range) then other tanks get this buff aswell but it's far from guaranteed for other tank classes especially in 3 and 6man content. Quite a few moments in raid content aswell.
Beorning: Everyone uses assertive roar cause extra morale still means extra morale (and u get healed 5% of the 10% morale) and it has a 25% uptime which is still pretty good. Funny enough, guardian's WH has a lower uptime than assertive roar and uptime > strength

It's 33% simply because Motivational Speech is generally a given in any actual group content. You'll have a Captain in any competent 6 man composition and you'll take a Captain in all raid fellowships. It's unavoidable, it's stupid, I hate it, but it is what it is. I basically didn't include any raid buff that is expected i.e. food, scrolls, racials.
Assertive roar does not heal anything and it oft requires you to drop morale shortly to use it since it's man form only. If you want to trade WH for Assertive Roar every Beorning main would give you a very, very confused look as they happily take a useful panic skill off of you. Your uptime > magnitude argument falls flat when the uptimes are 25%:16% and the magnitude difference is 15%:45%.

Indeed blue beorns dont have an incombat rez that was a mistake, they do however have -30% outgoing dmg instead of 40% (slam+piercing). Even with it being mastery based it still by far beats the 2% guard mits during a big boss attack where it actually matters most like blood surge/trash etc. If a mob AoE's a lot then beornings also win but if the dmg source is from multiple mobs then yeah guardians win in that regard. Yeah the healing output is quite low and the utility in general is also quite useless when a yellow beorn is present which i did tell about a million times in tank balance threads.

Again, those things are mastery. Wanna know the rough damage reduction of 20% piercing + slam? ~4.3%. If a character has 53% mits the guard mit bonus is outright a better damage reduction, when you start factoring in uptime on roar the value of the mastery reductions drops further. That 2% on the second tank is a notable defensive improvement, especially if that tank is a guard/bear/warden.

When geared, beornings will have pretty good bpe from rating itself. Not actual trait/skill rating tho. And it still makes them have a better passive bpe than guards.

Beornings BPE derivations are borderline equal to Guardians. Beornings get 6 points of BPE from Might, 2 points from Agility and 1 point from Will. Guardians get 5 points from Might, 5 points from Agility. Guardians have more BPE from rating than Beornings due to Ward/Heavy Shields, significantly more in fact.

Im not biased at all, i want all tanks to be great and to be used in endgame content.

Good, now back that up by accurately reporting information and not leaving out notable class abilities.

[HolyDuckTape]

Leaving out incoming damage reductions does indeed misrepresent the situation. It'd be like comparing DPS but ignoring DoT effects, you have to look at the whole picture. Now as for the 3-1% inc damage difference...that's not the actual difference in damage taken, (24.3/27.3)*100=89 shows that Guardians are taking ~10% less damage than captains overall. Not 1-3% less.

Only showing the dmg taken also misrepresents the survivability of tanks. Even if blue guards take aprox 10% less dmg than captains, captains have a humongous amount more morale, a huge amount more inch and the best emergencies in the game. Blue guards are nowhere close to the survivability of a captain despite taking less general dmg. That's the thing im trying to say. It's easy to show that blue guards take less dmg and say they are not that bad off but when you factor in all the other stuff, blue guards are far from being as good as these kinda stats tell you they are.

Break ranks drops your mits for a few seconds of each minute (if you even use it during that minute, you should but it's never a given). Litany doesn't lower your mits, it increases them. Redirect has perfectly fine uptime since you aren't reliant on parries as you can proc it with sting, uptime is high enough that it's most comparable to To-Arms, which is why both are listed. All damage reductions with high uptimes are listed. Warriors Heart should be popped early on to maximise the value of the mit bonus, typically not an issue as most encounters don't endanger the tank early on.

Break ranks drops mits for aprox 3-20s depending on rng (when not bugging it bruh). Sometimes rng can even be so nuts it takes ages to rebuild mits but that's only if very unlucky. And then you got litanny which atm indeed gives mits unless ur rng is trash again and it runs out without rebuilding all stacks, but this skill should be reworked to work as an actual cashout aswell but we'll see what ssg will do with that. Again sting is complete rng and can sometimes take absolute ages to proc something, it's way too inconsistent even when spamming the hell out of it. Yeah in the content of today which is basically dummy 2.0 u can indeed use WH too early but in actual challenging fights you always have to save it up untill whenever it happens that u need it. In actual content where 2% phys mit matters, you will be a 70% mit tank in general.

If you want to trade WH for Assertive Roar every Beorning main would give you a very, very confused look as they happily take a useful panic skill off of you. Your uptime > magnitude argument falls flat when the uptimes are 25%:16% and the magnitude difference is 15%:45%.

Guardians work in a different way and as they already have zero morale, the magnitude is better than uptime for them so i wouldn't wanna switch indeed. But for beornings uptime is much better than magnitude tho it's a close fight cause beornings do lack emergencies. They are definitely built to be more stable tanks and rely on a strong base build. Guardians are also quite strong in their base build but they rely a ton on emergencies and reactive abilities like redirect, they are not that stable.

[Joedangod]

It's easy to show that blue guards take less dmg and say they are not that bad off but when you factor in all the other stuff, blue guards are far from being as good as these kinda stats tell you they are.

No, those stats accurately represent where they are (which is moderately in line with Captain). They definitely still need a slight morale boost when tanking but their base defence is fairly reasonable, yellow falls behind in this area but blue does not. Guardian falls behind in group utility vs yellow captain and in defensives vs captain, we're both aware of that. We shouldn't be presenting fragmented information that makes it look like the issue is anything else. If you're gonna hold up a sign to the devs saying "This is the problem with this class" you owe it to everyone to be as honest in your assessment as possible.

Break ranks drops mits for aprox 3-20s depending on rng (when not bugging it bruh). Sometimes rng can even be so nuts it takes ages to rebuild mits but that's only if very unlucky. And then you got litanny which atm indeed gives mits unless ur rng is trash again and it runs out without rebuilding all stacks, but this skill should be reworked to work as an actual cashout aswell but we'll see what ssg will do with that. Again sting is complete rng and can sometimes take absolute ages to proc something, it's way too inconsistent even when spamming the hell out of it. Yeah in the content of today which is basically dummy 2.0 u can indeed use WH too early but in actual challenging fights you always have to save it up untill whenever it happens that u need it. In actual content where 2% phys mit matters, you will be a 70% mit tank in general.

Generally speaking you can build stacks moderately well, the vast majority of the time you will be at full stacks and if you hit a situation where losing stacks is a legitimate issue...you're not going to be popping that Break Ranks. Sting is RNG but the odds aren't bad and you only technically need the one parry event within ~6 seconds of redirect coming off cooldown, odds on getting it are pretty good (~60% chance of having it in time for redirect). You would pop WH early in Erebor raids and throughout Throne, same for most other content since then. It's not a new move to make. Bonus mits are generally always better than the -outgoing damage abilities unless SSG decides to randomly turn around and make those -damage abilities apply directly, I just hate people going "Oooo, big number reduction" when in reality it truly is closer to being a 1% debuff.

Guardians work in a different way and as they already have zero morale, the magnitude is better than uptime for them so i wouldn't wanna switch indeed. But for beornings uptime is much better than magnitude tho it's a close fight cause beornings do lack emergencies. They are definitely built to be more stable tanks and rely on a strong base build. Guardians are also quite strong in their base build but they rely a ton on emergencies and reactive abilities like redirect, they are not that stable.

No. 15% morale bonus for 10s that needs to be healed up in the first place is super inefficient, made worse by the fact that you literally have to give up a 20% morale bonus for ~2-3 of those seconds to get it in the first place. The uptime is awful, the magnitude is tiny and all around it's an incredibly mediocre button. The Guardian equivalent of it would be redirect...but with magnitude reduced to -13% or so and the cooldown no longer gets reduced by warchant. That's how mediocre it is.

All in all Guardians being more reactive than most is totally fine. That's their playstyle. If someone wanted to be really pro-active on a tank they should really be playing Warden/maybe champion, if they really don't want to put any effort in then Beorning/Captain are available. People deserve choice.

[skarnarval]

I am happy we got confirmation about guardian work coming up finally! Few things i wanna see very badly:

-Red guardians becoming an actual viable line for raiding. It is barely viable for low tier 3 mans at this point. We really need a competetive red line so we can also fulfill another role inside of content instead of only tanking which we are not even the best at for almost all content in the game. So either make us have a competetive dps line usable in all raiding tiers OR make us the best tanks in the game so we have to be chosen for tank which obviously sounds ridiculous as all tanks should be good and none beating the other by far (which is the case now with captains being OP). Red guards really need the line reworked to have a more fun and mechanics based rotation with actual impactful skills and traits. Not only that but we either need more offensive/defensive support OR a huge dps boost in order to become even anywhere close to competetive after the traitline is fixed. Imagine having a class who sucks at tanking and then not having any other role but tanking lines. Red line competetive is a MUST



-Blue guardians are quite meh, it's so far the best line they have but it's still far from actually good. We need more supportive abilities (mainly in the form of drastically buffing Litanny, Shieldwall and break ranks range.) Things like disorientation now becoming a mit or inc dmg debuff sounds great and i would love for guardians to have this ''guarded'' aura like captains have with In defence of middle earth. Something like a -10% inc dmg and some inchealing or vitality in a ranged aura around the guardian would be great. Especially when i look at the sure strike buff captains have which gives ''on guard -5% inc dmg'' to the group which literally sounds like something guardians were supposed to have. A few buffs in general to morale and certain traits would be a must aswell.

- Yellow guardians are a disaster, they were never really good but since the FoL (flash of light) nerf they have been completely abandoned. Make it an actual debuff line which offers some offensive capabilities aswell. Many here have already said, buff the debuffs DRAMATICALLY and make them actually capable of dishing out some respectable dps. As others here have said before, in order to make them do respectable dps without it getting exploited by dps guards is to buff FoL DRAMATICALLY both in dmg and targets.

These are the main things i wanted to summarize! Please give us a good and big enough update as we have been in the grave for way too long and have become quite outdated. Thank you ssg

[HolyDuckTape]

-Red guardians becoming an actual viable line for raiding. It is barely viable for low tier 3 mans at this point. We really need a competetive red line so we can also fulfill another role inside of content instead of only tanking which we are not even the best at for almost all content in the game. So either make us have a competetive dps line usable in all raiding tiers OR make us the best tanks in the game so we have to be chosen for tank which obviously sounds ridiculous as all tanks should be good and none beating the other by far (which is the case now with captains being OP). Red guards really need the line reworked to have a more fun and mechanics based rotation with actual impactful skills and traits. Not only that but we either need more offensive/defensive support OR a huge dps boost in order to become even anywhere close to competetive after the traitline is fixed. Imagine having a class who sucks at tanking and then not having any other role but tanking lines. Red line competetive is a MUST

This is probably one of the most important things for guardians and i hope that SSG won't miss this shot. Guardians NEED to have a line next to tanking which they can use in all content, cause if they are not the best tanks for x content then they are simply out, easy as that. Having a COMPETETIVE dps line would GREATLY help guardians. But this is gonna be a hard one to reach as it will need quite drastic change.

The dps of red guardians is really horrible atm. It hits like ~30-40% the dps of actual dps classes at this point which is completely abysmal. The changes red guardians will need to begin with are already huge by pretty much changing almost the entire line and changing how it works entirely. Next to that making it actually competetive will need either one of these options to happen:

• Dps becomes one of the best out of all dps classes due to red guards not bringing any utility to the table
  OR
• Red guards should get massive utility buffs in order to bring something special which means there's always spot for them (with acceptable dps to back it up ofcourse)

And both these options sound pretty radical but are very much needed in order to make red guardians actually useable in content especially in high tier content. This is a big must have SSG pls make it happen!

[Treadstone87]

I'm a pretty casual player so I have nothing to offer in terms of hard stats or complex theorycrafting, but I agree with the sentiment that Red or Yellow Guardians should be reworked so that they're actually welcome in groups. In fact, I personally feel that every class should be viable in two different roles. We've seen what happens when a class is only good at one thing and then suddenly another class can do it much better than they can - the weaker class falls by the wayside.

Buffing Red's DPS might be the quickest fix, but I wouldn't mind terribly if Yellow was reworked to provide some significant group utility. It'd have to be a pretty big rework though.

[Fermongu]

It's infamous that red and yellow guard specs are sooo badly behind and useless for soo many time, besides many other specs in game.

Years, YEARS! And not even a placeholder for shield use rank. Speaks a lot of company quality.

A few meta specs, and the rest are left to ROT.

Besides many many game systems. Such a big game and a big world, LOTS of instances, and 98% of it is ABANDONED, only last zone is relevant if you want any meaningful rewards at cap. I miss the days when all of scaled instances gave different pieces of gear, you had a BIG world to play on, you had more variety (and no need of locks). Now this big game is reduced to farming STAIRS again and again, and again, until you run out of locks and then you can better go play another game. This is so SAD.

SSG will put the last nail on the coffin with Gundabad expansion if these issues are not cared for/updated/reworked, I tell you all.