[Guard Mechanic] - Discussion/Changes?

[shaggyboomboom]

Guard is by far one of the easiest mechanics to use... All it requires is applying it, following your guarded target. If that is hard, get GES and Enemy!

And if that proves to be too hard and you need it reworked... well, I don't know what more I can say.

[Jaycub]

Guard is by far one of the easiest mechanics to use... All it requires is applying it, following your guarded target. If that is hard, get GES and Enemy!

And if that proves to be too hard and you need it reworked... well, I don't know what more I can say.

It becomes a lot harder in high level play, were you need plans for how guard will be used because you will get guard breaked unless you are playing against awful people, and 1 sec on a guard swap can be the difference between winning and losing a fight.

For instance in our old melee train, our knight covered the slayer 100%. He did this because knight needed to block as much as possible to proc dirty tricks, slayer was getting targeted more and thus more guard damage, and comparatively to SM hes harder to punt because of high avoidance. SM covered me on WL, but as soon as anything happened to knight, whether he felt like the enemy chosen was about punt or he did get punted the SM switched immediately, and this let me know on WL that i needed to be ready to detaunt/kite out in worst case situation. If something terrible happened to me on WL, say CC and SM punted then the slayer knew that he needed to kite out and knight grabed me as well.

For healers, our SM was assigned to peel for them. This still gave us a presence on the frontline so we didn't fold but a guard for the back. Healers also needed to be point with calls, calling for a full peel meant that you lost any pressure on their DPS, and you fold into your healers (bad position to be in). And of course again on WL I knew instantly that I didn't have guard and took proper measures for that. Things like immunity to punt would be taken into account on the knight since hes the only front line tank, is the chosen/bg around? etc...

Both our tanks knew what to do whenever a certain scenario came up. You cannot pull this off without voice chat, and without practicing it or even giving a **** enough to tryhard to this point. I've been in tons of groups where say an out of position healer needs guard and both tanks swap to him at the same time and the dps gets eaten for lunch and things just go to hell. When you can die in 3 seconds without guard it's hard to get in the "Hey m8 I got punted swap to my dps" in time by typing, and then that even assuming that guy who lost his guard because his tank needed to cover even knows what to do in that situation.

And if in worst case scenarios both our healers are pressured we had priorities set for each tank, SM would guard WP and knight would guard RP (i've seen wipes because tanks didn't know which healer to guard many times), DPS would charge/flee out till things reset. You had plans for if the SM got pressured. So much stuff you can do with voice chat and some planning to make guard way more effective than it seems on the surface. You can't just pick up a PUG tank and expect him to be able to do this right.

Edit: Also as a DPS you have "tells" that you can gather from buffhead to see if you are about to be focused, armor burn tank m1, mara/WL root, certain heal debuffs/strong debuffs like claw etc..., can all be called out before a tank or whoever notices your HP going low on UI, not to mention just relying on UI to see HP and whatnot is just totally unrealistic/unreliable. Everyone in your party needs to use voice comms correctly, quiet people can get you wiped. Played with really good mechanically players that just refuse to call for things in TS and honestly you would rather have an average player who communicates.

[th3gatekeeper]

Guard is by far one of the easiest mechanics to use... All it requires is applying it, following your guarded target. If that is hard, get GES and Enemy!

And if that proves to be too hard and you need it reworked... well, I don't know what more I can say.

It becomes a lot harder in high level play, were you need plans for how guard will be used because you will get guard breaked unless you are playing against awful people, and 1 sec on a guard swap can be the difference between winning and losing a fight. Everyone in your party needs to use voice comms correctly, quiet people can get you wiped. Played with really good mechanically players that just refuse to call for things in TS and honestly you would rather have an average player who communicates.

Shaggy, I dont disagree by any means. I dont know why people keep posting the same thing. "its not hard" I almost solely play tanks in this game and I have GES and Guardbot and thats all I do, I have my Guardbot shield front and center of my screen. Noone has ever said Guard is too hard and thats why it should be changed.

What I have said is it isnt FUN, its a passive ability that when used correctly is the single most powerful factor in this game. The problem is, is because its not FUN to use guard correctly, you get a large majority of players who dont care to "tryhard" anymore. They dont WANT to be a "guardbot" basically being forced to constantly manage guard, swapping targets etc. They dont want to have to just follow around a slayer or MDPS, its why when people come to look at tanks everyone says "Tanks are just guard bots" and it turns people off of the class, creating a catch 22.

So what people have been saying is how can the ability be more FUN and INTUITIVE to use without making it uber Pug-ish.

This is the purpose of the thread.

Jaycub nailed it. There is much more that goes on and revolves around guard in high level play, any rework that happens I wouldnt want it to impact that level of play that much. I understand wanting to keep a high skill cap in RoR but something you have to also realize is that if you want to keep it as much like AOR as possible, then the game is destined to never get off the ground - which is why this is ROR - a totally different game.

Any hope ROR has, is going to need to be adjusted to the times and its goal should be to not just appeal to the AOR crowd but also NEW players coming into the game. I can tell you, from being a new player back in January, when I first started my KOBS, I didnt have the addons (GES or Guardbot) and I DIDNT know how far guard range was and I didnt care to know. It also wasnt until I played my BW that I truly understood the impact guard and a defensive tank plays in the game.

These are all things learned over time, but it made for a very discouraging entrance into this game not feeling like my KOBS was a very good class as I was told by a fellow guild mate that a DPS KOBS was viable, and saw videos of guys like Hurgon who went full DPS and thats what I wanted at first.

So you need to ALSO appeal to newer players to build population and many new players will compare ROR to other games out there that DONT require as my "tryharding" to play. Noone wants to come into a new game and be told they have to play a "guardbot" its just not FUN. You look at other games, like Overwatch for example... Reinhardt was my favorite character there and yeah, his job is to shield allies first and foremost, but he also gets some other fun tools to work with. But it was THEIR job to stand by me, not MY job to follow them around.

I think Guard can be changed to be made more fun and intuitive. Distances in ROR are not very intuitive unless you actually test them or without addons... Guard also isnt a very FUN mechanic to play for most people who are new to ROR... Which is why everyone always plays MDPS as their first choice.

So this is why I made this, to have a discussion around how to make guard more fun, more intuitive without mandatory addons, to make Tank classes much more about playing their character rather than being focused on guard swapping but ALSO without majorly impacting the high level play.

I really like the "active" approach that has been proposed here in making guard an ability that would be used more like "taunt" but on a friendly ally rather than a passive ability you cast and then feel mandatory to stick on some guys ass to block damage for him.

I think an active approach would be more intuitive, especially with increased range, so players will be more likely to use it, without it also being something that makes for a very 1 sided match when you do have 1-2 tanks who guard swap 24/7 preventing a pug team from ever standing a chance to kill one of their allies...

[Arbich]

Guard is by far one of the easiest mechanics to use... All it requires is applying it, following your guarded target. If that is hard, get GES and Enemy!

And if that proves to be too hard and you need it reworked... well, I don't know what more I can say.

mhm... a bit exaggerated. Guard is not that hard, but it is a reactive ability (if guard swap is an option for you^^), which makes it by default a bit more difficult than other abilities.

about the addons: Thats also true for the opposite. If guard is an too easy mechanic for you, remove addons which help you with it.

[Aethilmar]

Guard is one of the defining characteristics of this game. It differentiates button masher tanks from people who know what they are doing. It keeps the PvP from becoming completely DPS focused (see games like WoW that don't have it for an example of how this goes). And it is also one of the most complained about abilities by players who come from the WoW / Everquest universes where tanks are merely taunt-bots. It would be a huge mistake to mess with it in any way, shape or form.

[Karast]

I just don't get the complaints about guard. There are a lot of ways to deal with it. CC alone does a fantastic job, and without it, or with a weakened version, all you would do is make tanks semi useless in any premade setup.

[Tesq]

It would also lead to a rdps festa; melee would explode in 3 sec. It would be tanks or rdps.

[Bozzax]

causes issues in PVP when players DONT use it

There are inexperienced healers, inexperienced mdps and inexperienced tanks that don't use their abilities correctly, this causes issues in PvP.

I suggest we just let these players get more experienced and leave guard as is - "guard is fine"

[NSKaneda]

causes issues in PVP when players DONT use it

There are inexperienced healers, inexperienced mdps and inexperienced tanks that don't use their abilities correctly, this causes issues in PvP.

I suggest we just let these players get more experienced and leave guard as is - "guard is fine"

Quoted for effect. L2P

[Azarael]

Guard range is 10ft too wide. Missed some of the radius checks in the special ability handlers. Expect it to contract in next patch.