Hey everyone,
As you can see in this thread: http://forums.icarus.nexon.net/discussion/17208/guardians-are-almost-useless-in-pve Guardians are feeling pretty left out at the moment. I thought I'd put this in general chat so it gets a bit more visibility and allows other classes to see the issues that we're having at the moment.
Firstly I'll go through some of the reasons why:
1. Don't bring much to the party when it comes to world bosses. Don't do enough DPS to justify a slot, and don't bring enough utility in terms of buffs/usefulness either.
2. Mounted raids have the same issue. The buff range is so insanely small that you have to be INSIDE me to actually receive it and again I don't do enough dps to justify taking me over any other class. Why take a Guard to Attius or Isle when you can take a zerk/wiz/sin that does FAR more dps or a priest that has buffs/heals and STILL does more mounted damage.
3. Gearing up is by far the hardest on Guardian. A guardian with poor gear simply cannot run harder dungeons, as his/her death will cause the whole party to wipe. With the incredibly ridiculous drop rate in breach on H5, imagine being a new tank that is forced to run H1,2,3 to try and gear up? (I realise breach is a bad example as you don't even need a tank [another issue] but the principle still stands).
The gear check for Guardians for legendary dungeons is way above any other class. This is not to say gearing up on say, a sin, is easy by any means. All I'm saying is that a party can carry a +10 level 40 heroic equipped sin through a legendary dungeon, and that sin can contribute meaningfully. A +10 guardian with level 40 heroics, however, will get obliterated by even trash mobs, not to mention requiring 70% (yes 70, after 30% debuff) CDR to have a hope of holding aggro and being able to block enough attacks to stay alive.
4. The way aggro is generated in this game means that 90% of a Guardians skills will cause them to lose aggro upon using them. A prime example is block. In the time between casting block, blocking a skill and using chain or grasp again, I've lost aggro and the priest just ate an arrow to the face and died. We have several skills that state they 'massively increase threat' but in reality, they simply do not. Our only way of keeping/holding aggro is the constant spam of our chain skill which gives us 3 seconds of guaranteed 100% aggro (unless it misses) and haikans grasp, the aoe chain ability (unless it misses)plus rampart charge I guess, but that's a 20second cd (which can also miss). So, we can't properly dps, we can't utilise our many debuffs and we can't fully destabilise, we're forced to repeat the same 4-5 skills over and over and pray to RNGesus that our aggro skills don't miss because if they do, guess what, the monster just 360 noscoped the sin, now the priest has to res which means they can't heal, I die then RIP.
These are, I feel, the main issues facing the Guardian class at the moment. Now, on to my suggestions for improving the class and making it feel warm and welcome in any group:
1. Make our defensive aoe buff a passive and always on. At the moment, as I'm sure you know, we have 3 active buffs: PHYS, MAGIC and DEFENSE. By making our defensive buff a passive, our utility within the group is massively increased. Giving everyone a +HP +PDEF etc buff while ALSO boosting their dps makes for a compelling reason to take a guardian with you. Perhaps even tweak the buffs so their bonus's are increased, or change depending on other factors, such as the more dps you do, the stronger the buff. Say for instance I hit for 1000 dmg, the buff 'spikes' for 3 seconds and gives everyone an extra 1% attack. This would give guardians a reason to build more dps and groups more reason to take them, without disadvantaging the weaker-geared ones. I'd also like to see them have some additional effects, such as the defense one boosting healing received by the party, or the phys atk one giving a small chance to absorb health. Basically, make the buff skills awesome rather than mediocre so a guardian will always be wanted in a party.
2. INCREASE THE RANGE OF OUR BUFFS WHILE MOUNTED! I feel like this is an easy one to implement. As I stated earlier, the buff range while mounted is TINY, meaning that in a raid with a lot of movement, 99.9% of the time no one is even getting your buff. Simply by increasing the size of the buff, you're greatly helping Guardians be more accepted in raids.
3. Make our skills that say 'generate threat' ACTUALLY GENERATE THREAT. This could be a simple numbers game. Say skill 1 generates 100 'threat'. All you'd have to do is increase that to, say, 500 to make them actually do what they state. No need to increase the dps of the skill, simply increase the amount of threat it generates. EZPZ.
3. Change the way our block skill works. I would like to see it function the same way our chain does: 100% guaranteed threat for 3 seconds. As you can't 'miss' a block on a high level mob, this would give the guardian a bit of breathing room in terms of aggro, and allow us to actually use the skill as it was intended. You could also add some additional functionality to it, for example, a successful block creates an aoe debuff that generates threat, buffs the party with additional HP regen or creates a 'thorny skin' effect so mobs that attack you after a block take damage.
4. I honestly don't have any suggestions for helping with the gear requirement struggle that Guardians have. However, if my changes to threat generation were implemented, this would help greatly. No longer would you need 50% cdr to be viable in a dungeon as, instead of a measly 2 skills giving reliable threat, you've got several to cycle between.
Hopefully you read all the way to here and if you did, thank you for taking the time. Please, vote and contribute to the thread and hopefully we can get the attention of @cuddlewings and @cream so someone higher up takes a look.
Xoxo Superloveman
As you can see in this thread: http://forums.icarus.nexon.net/discussion/17208/guardians-are-almost-useless-in-pve Guardians are feeling pretty left out at the moment. I thought I'd put this in general chat so it gets a bit more visibility and allows other classes to see the issues that we're having at the moment.
Firstly I'll go through some of the reasons why:
1. Don't bring much to the party when it comes to world bosses. Don't do enough DPS to justify a slot, and don't bring enough utility in terms of buffs/usefulness either.
2. Mounted raids have the same issue. The buff range is so insanely small that you have to be INSIDE me to actually receive it and again I don't do enough dps to justify taking me over any other class. Why take a Guard to Attius or Isle when you can take a zerk/wiz/sin that does FAR more dps or a priest that has buffs/heals and STILL does more mounted damage.
3. Gearing up is by far the hardest on Guardian. A guardian with poor gear simply cannot run harder dungeons, as his/her death will cause the whole party to wipe. With the incredibly ridiculous drop rate in breach on H5, imagine being a new tank that is forced to run H1,2,3 to try and gear up? (I realise breach is a bad example as you don't even need a tank [another issue] but the principle still stands).
The gear check for Guardians for legendary dungeons is way above any other class. This is not to say gearing up on say, a sin, is easy by any means. All I'm saying is that a party can carry a +10 level 40 heroic equipped sin through a legendary dungeon, and that sin can contribute meaningfully. A +10 guardian with level 40 heroics, however, will get obliterated by even trash mobs, not to mention requiring 70% (yes 70, after 30% debuff) CDR to have a hope of holding aggro and being able to block enough attacks to stay alive.
4. The way aggro is generated in this game means that 90% of a Guardians skills will cause them to lose aggro upon using them. A prime example is block. In the time between casting block, blocking a skill and using chain or grasp again, I've lost aggro and the priest just ate an arrow to the face and died. We have several skills that state they 'massively increase threat' but in reality, they simply do not. Our only way of keeping/holding aggro is the constant spam of our chain skill which gives us 3 seconds of guaranteed 100% aggro (unless it misses) and haikans grasp, the aoe chain ability (unless it misses)plus rampart charge I guess, but that's a 20second cd (which can also miss). So, we can't properly dps, we can't utilise our many debuffs and we can't fully destabilise, we're forced to repeat the same 4-5 skills over and over and pray to RNGesus that our aggro skills don't miss because if they do, guess what, the monster just 360 noscoped the sin, now the priest has to res which means they can't heal, I die then RIP.
These are, I feel, the main issues facing the Guardian class at the moment. Now, on to my suggestions for improving the class and making it feel warm and welcome in any group:
1. Make our defensive aoe buff a passive and always on. At the moment, as I'm sure you know, we have 3 active buffs: PHYS, MAGIC and DEFENSE. By making our defensive buff a passive, our utility within the group is massively increased. Giving everyone a +HP +PDEF etc buff while ALSO boosting their dps makes for a compelling reason to take a guardian with you. Perhaps even tweak the buffs so their bonus's are increased, or change depending on other factors, such as the more dps you do, the stronger the buff. Say for instance I hit for 1000 dmg, the buff 'spikes' for 3 seconds and gives everyone an extra 1% attack. This would give guardians a reason to build more dps and groups more reason to take them, without disadvantaging the weaker-geared ones. I'd also like to see them have some additional effects, such as the defense one boosting healing received by the party, or the phys atk one giving a small chance to absorb health. Basically, make the buff skills awesome rather than mediocre so a guardian will always be wanted in a party.
2. INCREASE THE RANGE OF OUR BUFFS WHILE MOUNTED! I feel like this is an easy one to implement. As I stated earlier, the buff range while mounted is TINY, meaning that in a raid with a lot of movement, 99.9% of the time no one is even getting your buff. Simply by increasing the size of the buff, you're greatly helping Guardians be more accepted in raids.
3. Make our skills that say 'generate threat' ACTUALLY GENERATE THREAT. This could be a simple numbers game. Say skill 1 generates 100 'threat'. All you'd have to do is increase that to, say, 500 to make them actually do what they state. No need to increase the dps of the skill, simply increase the amount of threat it generates. EZPZ.
3. Change the way our block skill works. I would like to see it function the same way our chain does: 100% guaranteed threat for 3 seconds. As you can't 'miss' a block on a high level mob, this would give the guardian a bit of breathing room in terms of aggro, and allow us to actually use the skill as it was intended. You could also add some additional functionality to it, for example, a successful block creates an aoe debuff that generates threat, buffs the party with additional HP regen or creates a 'thorny skin' effect so mobs that attack you after a block take damage.
4. I honestly don't have any suggestions for helping with the gear requirement struggle that Guardians have. However, if my changes to threat generation were implemented, this would help greatly. No longer would you need 50% cdr to be viable in a dungeon as, instead of a measly 2 skills giving reliable threat, you've got several to cycle between.
Hopefully you read all the way to here and if you did, thank you for taking the time. Please, vote and contribute to the thread and hopefully we can get the attention of @cuddlewings and @cream so someone higher up takes a look.
Xoxo Superloveman