GodlessCrom wrote:They may have phrased it a bit harshly but they are right. Guard is the primary purpose of a tank, in addition to CC. And if you are guarding proper targets (i.e. melee dps, or focused target to whom you swap) then Guard will be a massive portion of the damage you take.
To be honest, I both agree and disagree. Guard is a primary function of tanks. But if Guarding factors in the mitigation of your target and not you, then you're taking probably 3-5x more damage than you would be if the enemy was attacking you. Ideally, the enemy would be ignoring you and focusing on squishies. This doesn't happen that often for a lot of cases. Many players are proximity attackers. They'll sit there and spam spell after spell on a tank rather than move to the target 10 feet behind him. They shouldn't, of course. But many do.
If you're taking Guard damage that is effectively making you take 300% more damage, you're going to die a lot faster. The tank's job is to take damage for people (which Guard does), but do so as long as possible. You're wasting efficiency by taking Guard damage over soaking the damage that enemies are mistakenly throwing at you instead of the squishy. If you're Guarding, you'll die faster and then you're useless to the whole WB, rather than being alive and being the target of the enemy players that aren't smart enough to move to another target and ignore you. This also doesn't account for spamming Hold the Line, in my opinion. Guard helps a single ally survive twice as long. Hold the Line helps up to 5 members survive 15% longer, which is a total of 65% reduction over Guard's 50%, and your survivability is increased 45% at the same time, meaning your group's overall survival is 105% higher, compared to Guard being 50% for one ally (and 50% less for you, so pretty much cancelling it out anyways, since you're taking a crap ton more damage than you would be). Ideally you Guard and Hold the Line for the best effect, so this is all kinda moot anyways.
TL;DR: Guard would be much more effective if it used the tank's mitigation on their portion, rather than the ally's. Everyone knows the tank's job is to help keep allies alive. But everyone also knows that Tanks/Healers are much more necessary than DPS (not my words, most everyone else's here - including GMs). You're trading your Tank for a DPS by Guarding, because all that is happening is your Tank is just taking 50% of the health damage, and not 50% of the damage before mitigation, meaning they're going to die as fast as a DPS, specifically to only keep a single DPS alive in their place. Not worth it, in theory, unless you only have 1 DPS left and know you can't kill the enemy on your own.
All that being said, I still Guard, and swap Guards to focused targets. But thinking about it in more detail, Guarding seems like a waste to trade your Tank for a DPS. I think the goal is more to give healers more time to heal up both targets to avoid a DPS getting bursted down instantly, which is what makes Guard worth using, even at the cost of wasting 50% of your tank's health (assuming they have the same health, which they normally will not, just using 50% as a simple placeholder, it'll probably be more like 25-35%). This is why Guard tanks stack Wounds, while ones who don't Guard as often stack Armor or Toughness, since those stats are wasted on damage you take from Guard, and Wounds makes the trade more favorable (50% ally health = 20% your health, etc.).
This is getting a bit out of hand, but still technically within the topic. Sorry for such a long post, and I appreciate the feedback. Overall, I always Guard, and shift Guard to focused targets as often as possible. But, after typing this up and learning that Guard does not factor your own mitigation in, I can definitely see why some tanks choose not to Guard to increase their own survival.
