Post#410 » Mon Mar 25, 2019 4:21 pm
Dear devs
The recent patch changes to the core tank architype mechanic of guard is ill thought out and has reverberations through the rest of the game. What I write here won’t be new, it has been mentioned earlier, but I feel it’s important to leave my feedback with the rest, even though I am fairly sure it will fall on deaf ears.
The changes effect the small scale community the most, but of course you knew this before pushing the changes through. Your first major mistake when taking this action was to assume all 2 hander builds are dps builds. This is categorically untrue, and assist dps comes lower down the pecking order in a team play environment. Priorities as a tank in your team:
1. Protect your team, primary tool for this is guard.
2. Control the battle field, primary tools for this are you’re CC abilities; snares, roots, knockdowns, punts etc etc
3. Buffs/debuffs, link into priority one, but also link into assist dps.
4. Assist dps, only when you are happy the above 3 priorities are secure do you start with assist dps.
What this change has succeeded in doing is:
• Forced all team playing tanks to slot sword and shield, regardless of the situation.
• Demoted all 2H builds to SOLO/YOLO – they will not be wanted in any groups.
• Reduced IB to a single target buff bot in group environment. In doing so reduced the skill level and enjoyment level of playing these classes. This speaking from an IB perspective, with my poor IB now being shelved as I don’t find the playstyle you have forced on all tanks to be enjoyable. In contrast I did find the utility builds of the 2 hander style very enjoyable to play.
o Additionally for the IB/BG you have removed the only on demand knock down they have, as the shield variant requires block/parry. BG 5 second vs IB 3 second is a topic for another time, even though BG was given cave in!!
• Further reduced diversity of builds in the game.
• Reinforced the rdps pug environment.
• Reinforced the notion that is prevalent in pug environments that 2 hander tanks shouldn’t use guard.
Yali mentioned that 2 hander tanks were offering too much in the way of utility and dps, the only 2 hander tanks that do this consistently are SM and BO. BG and IB can if specced that way but lose too much utility for my group when I do this from an IB perspective. If the SM/BO damage is the problem you are trying to address with this guard change then surely there are other less drastic solutions that don’t impact an entire architypes main role in a group.
What I also can’t get my head around is the fact there are, or should be, more pressing changes for the team to be working on yet time has been expended on this. If it isn’t broke don’t fix it! I am led to believe because you had an influx of players since invader/fort launch this has given you the confidence to make such fundamental changes. I don’t believe you would have made them when the server was back at 600 people peak, but who knows eh! This change is also the best advertisement APOC has had, well done with that.
I sincerely hope you listen to the vast majority of the community on this one and revert this terrible change.
Balthaser (BW)
Grimgarl (SL)/Lovesyou (RP)/Baltha (IB)
Starlion (WL)
Kalathor (CH)
. in zerg vs zerg gtdc is nobrainer pull in while infernal doom need to be aplied on target and its nerfed 2-3 years ago. pull in = death . slayer should run into destro zerg and apply infernall doom while choppa ( who is not targeted by all order dps clases) can do his job safety in guard range. gtdc is buffed and u can do it while moving also if u didnt know it. byt i agree rampage should be higher in tree . 
