[Suggestion] Making guard less OP

[bwdaWAR]

This thread grew quite a lot today...

Spoiler:

Swap targets, control tank, or his guard target, learn, actually, play, ffs. IF MDD is guarded - kill healer, if this is the PROPER tank, and he can swap guard - instantly back to MDD and kill it, and again, and again. It's a friggin' team play. Stagger heals, and kill target even under guard with armor debuff. Thousand opportunities, but only if play in game, not at forum.

in a perfect world, this would maybe be possible.
but a tank can change guard just as quick as you are able to change targets, because there is no cooldown on the guard ability.
And right there could a change come in very handy.
maybe a cooldown of a few seconds on the guard ability.
this is exactly the kind of counterplay I am thinking about.
and please, dont waste my time with this "learn to play" crap.
this is usually the last thing ppl say when they are running out of arguments.

That is a typical example of two equally strong parties having to rely on player skill and tactics to defeat the other. If one party can DPS-focus better than the tank can switch targets, they get an advantage. If the tank is really that good at guard switching, then they will get an advantage (and even so there's a few seconds of unguarded damage).
Managing guard isn't that very easy and it requires some decent coordination from two players. It's not exactly a terribly complex thing, but still few tank-guardee pairs do it well enough.

Spoiler:

you managed to make it sound harder than it actually is.

You both are right - in principle the tasks required shouldn't be that hard. In reality, few actually do it well. It takes a different mindset than a dps and since the majority of the classes are dps and most people (even tanks and healers as they level up their own toons) play as a dps at some point.... turning that switch off and playing the role properly by working to make the dps roles function better is something many many just can't do.

All of these boil down to player skill vs player skill. You have a powerful tool available, but it takes some skill to use it properly from all parties involved (consider guard switching and coordination required for the at-the-time guardee to stay in range and not leave it all to the tank). And that's without the snare-punt-focus tactic mentioned here.
Or just, well, lots of raw damage that even with the guard, will destroy their guardee. One thing you can hear very often as counter to burst damage is: "have a tank guard you (and have healers)". The ability is a pretty core element of the game as it is.

But in the end this is mostly about what the role of a tank is. The two main flavors being DPS tank with twohanded and defensive tank with shield. The DPS tank can guard, but since they have no shield and likely less endurance so they can actually deal damage, they will take more guard damage and this also has a greater impact since they don't shrug off damage directed at them that easily either. Guard is entirely fine as it is for the DPS tank.
And then there is the defensive tank, whose main, if not sole, justification of existance is exactly the powerful Guard ability. It's true that they do have knockbacks/knockdowns, snares and a variety of buffs/debuffs, but so do DPS/healer classes, so that's likely not enough to take a deftank instead of a DPS or even a DPS tank. How many times has it been said, in the game, forums and generally everywhere, including frustrated players shouting at their team/scenario-mates, that one should attack everyone but the tank? Even with all the utilities they have available, a deftank is a nuisance at best, not a threat. The only reason people ever notice them is, yes, because they are guarding someone and doing it actually well enough to make a difference (which, again, doesn't depend only on them but the person they're guarding as well). Take away that ability, or even make it not so very powerful, and the defensive tanks will start to turn into another flavor of DPS.

So we have a strong ability that can become the center of the battle and dictate group tactics - if used well. There is definitely a good amount of the infamous "l2p" here, as the player skill of the two opposing parties will make or break how much a difference a guarded player (in most cases a melee DPS) will mean. And it's pretty much everything a defensive tank can contribute to group play (everything that other classes couldn't do, possibly better, that is).

But... if the Guard ability must absolutely be nerfed, this seems the best way to go about it.

Spoiler:

Not only does Guard treat every attack that comes through it as able to be blocked and parried (regardless of your orientation or the attack's typing), but you receive your maximum possible defense against it; to put it another way, Guard is an attack against your frontal cone from an enemy with strength zero and no strikethrough stats.

If you want to look at Guard, the first thing I would suggest is removing this exemption and treating damage from Guard as being from the person who cast it - strikethrough, offensive stat and all - for the purpose of determining the defense check. Guard should not be allowed to scale in one direction only, as it currently does.

While this does not lower the guard damage mitigation for the guardee, it does make things more risky for the tank, and give better options for strong DPS builds with over-softcap mainstat/strikethrough% to deal with the guard-guardee duo.

[mursie]

People forget that this is an MMO - buffing and nerfing is necessary. It keeps the hamster cycle going. I encourage Az and the dev team to build up, destroy, and build again any and all things. If not, you'll get a stale meta that has people quitting.

Have you guys seriously forgotten what an mmo is all about? How can you have FOTM's if you don't overbuff and overnerf things. =)

[dirnsterer]

People forget that this is an MMO - buffing and nerfing is necessary. It keeps the hamster cycle going. I encourage Az and the dev team to build up, destroy, and build again any and all things. If not, you'll get a stale meta that has people quitting.

Have you guys seriously forgotten what an mmo is all about? How can you have FOTM's if you don't overbuff and overnerf things. =)

Awww yiiish. Lets start monthly rerolling and leveling hamster wheel till everyone has all the careers with arena season sets depending on when they were OP.

[mursie]

Awww yiiish. Lets start monthly rerolling and leveling hamster wheel till everyone has all the careers with arena season sets depending on when they were OP.

Now that's the spirit - and once renown gets to higher levels...and lvl cap is 40 - you'll be here til 2020 trying to achieve that. At which point we'll probably have a vampire expansion and all new classes. And the cycle begins again!

[Shadowgurke]

2/2/2 as defined by pure tanks, pure dps, pure heals locks out classes / specs that do not conform to pure lines. This is certainly an issue for anyone who wants to actually balance the game.

Assuming balance actually means every spec is viable, which is ridiculous or ridiculously hard to achieve. Hybrids have their niche, it's just not 6v6- The fact that a balanced group requires 2 tanks 2 dps and 2 healers, to me, sounds like it is greatly balanced around archetypes. Making hybrids work should not be your goal, but the achievement of players by finding special strategies.

Guard does have existing counterplay. It has been said that the existing counterplay is somewhat limited (ie super punts).

Superpunts are now available for all tanks except BO/SM. That means every group should have that punt.

My point is that healing has a much larger number of counter plays. You noted that healing is strong. Yes, it is... but there are a number of ways to counter strong healing.

I'd like to make a distinction between counterplay and counter- HD counters healing, it isn't counterplay. The counterplay for healing is also fairly limited tp CC and punts, conveniently similar to Guard

I don't believe this thread is asking for guard to be removed... i think it has basically dwindled down to... "are there other counter plays that could be added/tweaked for guard"

I am aware of that. My issue is that all of a sudden people think guard needs counterplay for some reason or others thinking that it's too strong all of a sudden. I am sure that the frustration often comes from the fact that a single DD can't kill a guarded and healed target, but that is a non-issue for me at least

[noisestorm]

I once saw someone post that the core foundation and mechanics of AoR will remain intact in RoR.
Funny how all of a sudden you guys are taking a 360* right turn.

Turn 360° to just look at it again?

[Azarael]

2/2/2 as defined by pure tanks, pure dps, pure heals locks out classes / specs that do not conform to pure lines. This is certainly an issue for anyone who wants to actually balance the game.

Assuming balance actually means every spec is viable, which is ridiculous or ridiculously hard to achieve. Hybrids have their niche, it's just not 6v6- The fact that a balanced group requires 2 tanks 2 dps and 2 healers, to me, sounds like it is greatly balanced around archetypes. Making hybrids work should not be your goal, but the achievement of players by finding special strategies.

If I may ask... given that tanks in RvR strap on shields and WP / DoK are expressly cited as being almost mandatory for large scale combat, what exactly is the niche of a hybrid?

(Please don't say 1on1.)

[DefinitelyNotWingz]

Guard does have existing counterplay. It has been said that the existing counterplay is somewhat limited (ie super punts).

Superpunts are now available for all tanks except BO/SM. That means every group should have that punt.

While BO/SM can do ridiculous amounts of dmg. Countering guard with dmg.

[Dalgrimar]

I once saw someone post that the core foundation and mechanics of AoR will remain intact in RoR.
Funny how all of a sudden you guys are taking a 360* right turn.

Turn 360° to just look at it again?

Let me edit that to 180

[tomato]

People forget that this is an MMO - buffing and nerfing is necessary. It keeps the hamster cycle going. I encourage Az and the dev team to build up, destroy, and build again any and all things. If not, you'll get a stale meta that has people quitting.

Have you guys seriously forgotten what an mmo is all about? How can you have FOTM's if you don't overbuff and overnerf things. =)

Cycle nerfing is horrbile concept, atleast my opinion and will surely have people quitting.
Most of the time it's triggered by ppl crying for nerfs because they can't deal with certain aspects of a game and don't want to adept.
(Btw this isn't a game with a revolving meta, as no new classes will be introduced, and nerfing/buffing just to cycle the meta makes no sense.)

What is wrong with 2-2-2 beeing stronger than 1-3-2 in 6vs6? It just shows that for an optimal result you have to have a balanced group setup, 2 of every archetype.