I have encountered three 'DPS' guardian fighters in the past week between the gear scores of 2000 and 3000. None of them has managed to crawl up from the bottom of Paingiver- and on top of that, they take net DPS away from the group by refusing to slot Knight's Valor, Into the Fray, etc, instead favoring encounters like Lunging Strike and Knee Breaker. If that wasn't already bad enough, these same GF players die more often than any party member except for GWFs, even though they have their block!
It isn't really their fault, though. I'm looking at you- the guy who plays a 4500 TIL, 3 R12 bonding Conqueror GF who caps out with DR via cleric buffs anyway, so who has started to pour points into raw damage. Stop calling your build "DPS"! You are Conqueror. It's an off-tank spec- it deals more damage than your other two specs, but to deal that extra damage, you have to TAKE damage. The mod 6 weapon damage increase did wonders for Conqueror, particularly once your artifact main hand reaches LEGENDARY- but just because the damage scales insanely well once your artifact is legendary does NOT make it a DPS spec. Anyone with a purple or below main hand is never going to come close to the numbers you advertise, and most players that follow your build example aren't going to passively have ridiculous defensive scores from R12 defense slot enchants.
So please, to those few high-damage conqueror GFs out there with the insane gear: PLEASE stop saying it's your build. It's your gear, and telling lower-gear players that your build is the answer to DPS GF is completely misleading, if not a lie. You're ruining them as potential competent tanks, making the lower-GS queues harder than they need to be, and really pissing off people who play other off-meta builds that are actually VIABLE without extreme overgearing.
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But I could point out that there are probably more so-called awesome builds out there that are actually entirely gear for other classes, too. I have this feeling that a few of the guys who post build guides on the forums here might be more interested in showing off e-peens with how much gear they have than actually trying to help new players get an idea of what the game can realistically do for someone with a much smaller budget of money and time to invest.
But hey, it's only human.
Any DPS GF not running ITF is losing a lot of personal damage as well so that's more a problem with someone being stupid and less of a problem with DPS GFs. It's not an off-tank spec because the features that let a GF tank well have nothing to do with their feats. GFs tank because of defense, their guard, steel defense and fighter's recovery. Any tank that is bad at tanking as a conqueror is going to be bad as a tactician and spec'ing into protector is pointless.
The thing your argument also ignores is that the only stat that DPS builds lose over tank/buffer builds is recovery. And the only real benefit to that is keeping ITF up with no down time. This essentially means you have to stack recovery over every offensive stat (once you've hit 60% RI) and it gets you around 4 seconds extra up time between casts on ITF. Sometimes you don't even get to use that 4 seconds because you're forced to guard/taunt/attack to maintain aggro/not die. The worst part is that you essentially build yourself into a corner at for no reason.
So building at lower ilvls with the intention of being a conq DPS spec at higher ilvls isn't going to affect you at lower ilvls. Most of the problems they'll run into as far as tanking will have more to do with not joining a guild (for guild boons/competent parties), not finishing their boons, slotting the wrong class features, slotting the wrong encounters and not knowing boss mechanics. FFS the main build problem I've seen at lower ilvls is that a lot of GFs don't know they need 60% RI to hold aggro.
I don't think its fair to hate on BiS players for evolving their builds once they have capped out, just because they won't spoon feed you the mounts, feats, boons, enchants, insignis, armor kits, powers, rotation AND play style, especially if they took the time to test and perfect it on their own dime.
That being said, a SM Conq GF is a top dps build, and just because the 2k-3k tanks you've met haven't been up to par, doesn't mean their build isn't viable for tanking, its quite the opposite because they are able to complete their dailies without having their hands held until their tank develops into something more formidable. Play a GF as a protector or tactican and tell me how long it takes to complete 6 dailies in IWD without having your hand held lol.
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The problem is that a 4k R12 Bonding SM Conq GF is a top DPS build, while anything under 3k simply.. Isn't. And because those 4k players shout that they're 'DPS' from the rooftops, without explaining what is actually necessary to DO that DPS, most of the lower-GS players who try to imitate them are doomed to failure- neglecting their defenses in favor of offensive stats early on and not dealing nearly enough damage to justify not doing their job as a tank.
@Grimah TLDR They're consistently not making it work and it's consistently impossible TO make it work without a minimum of gear, including an orange arti weapon. The specific problem here is the people who want to play GF, but don't want to tank, not even when they can't do enough DPS to justify calling themselves 'DPS'.
Conq stacks the same defensive stats that a tank build uses : \
This notion exsists throughout any game, be it fighting game, RPG, coop, shooter, chess, etc.
I don't think it is the fault of those 4k Conq players. Heck, there are quite a few 4k players in the game who don't ... quite know what they're doing with their character (and it shows).
Any GF can tank. But what does it take to be a DPS GF? It's not the build, it's the gear. This game has arbitrary limitations built into its formulas and variables and constants and so on... GFs don't generally come "fresh out of the box" as viable DPS like other classes.
There are GWFs that don't stack crit and use a terror enchant. Stupid people are stupid and it has nothing to do with conq's viability at lower ilvl.
The degree to which you prioritize anything at that ilvl is a joke. For what you're implying to be a problem they would basically have to not slot defense enchants.
If anything the main problem is the lack of good companion gear but that affects anyone that doesn't have it already.
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