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Potential Guardian Fighter Fix
platefaceii
Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users Posts: 13 Arc User
Forgive the doublepost but i feel i may have posted this in the wrong place originally...
I played a GF up to around level 36-37 this weekend, and had the opportunity to both do solo, 2-person group questing (with cleric), and 5-person dungeon running (3 dungeons overall). My general stance on GF tanking is that although we have the tools to do the job effectively, we are somewhat limited in our OPTIONS when it comes to threat, dishing out necessary damage or stuns, or survivability.
From what I see, the issue isn't as simple as "we do not have enough threat" or "we do not have enough survivability", or "we do not have enough positioning or evasion on bosses." The overall issue seems to be that the current structure of the class double (and sometimes triple) dips into all three important "tank" characteristics: threat, survivability, positioning.
I found that if I focused on generating threat I could really hold 1 or 2 mobs for an entire duration, but this forced me to ignore smaller minions while doing so, and I felt that it was very challenging to be able to hold the aggression of the mobs. I used the often repeated strategy of AoE taunt + stab over the shield, and alternated between 1, 2, and sometimes 3 mobs. The level 30 on demand ability to mini-charge and mark all my targets did help somewhat, and I found that it gave me more movement utility on the battlefield, but I did have to sacrifice my primary guard generating ability to do this. Beyond that, threat dropped off. My conclusion from threat generation was that: the AoE taunt was mandatory and not a CD that I would need to develop a skill as a player to know when to best use. The stab worked fine but offered no AoE tanking.
In terms of survivability, I found that mine was relatively high. I traited for threat and geared for power+defence+AC (I chose a weapon that had the single highest power stat available...best i could find was ~800 on a single weapon at 36) to get the highest overall reduction and I found that with the odd exception (most of which would be player based errors) I was capable of handing a boss and not breaking my Guard meter too frequently. This spec + gear really reminded me of BC Paladin Tanking in WOW where you had warrior gear, defensive talents, and a spellcasters mace to be capable of pulling things off well. I realised in NW that with some skill, I could balance when I was generating guard and when I was spending it. I quickly learned that I was not able to charge in, blow all CDs and then block my way to victory, but I actually needed to decide when it was worth doing one thing over another. The exception to this would be the AoE taunt which is mass spammed. I found that I could handle quite the barrage of attacks from mobs and bosses, even in the harder dungeons with smart playing. I was having a lot of fun TRYING hard to survive because I knew that skill meant success.
In regards to Positioning, I felt that we were lacking in this somewhat. I think the style of NW is more a "friends who play a dungeon crawler" than a "wait in the main city in queue for an instance" MMO (ahem - WOW). Because of this style I did not mind having to tell players to "wait on attacks so I can position the boss." This is something that tanks had to do in EQ, WoW, and all sorts of games. Unfortunately a lot of players had 5+ years of Warcraft Conditioning after vanilla where the tank could quickly get threat and positioning while the DPS unloads instantly. I do not see cooperation amount party members as a bad thing, and I liked the relationships I formed with my party members as we learned each others styles. After this minor hurdle MOST of the issues went away. This being said, I still found I was frustrated with my lack of last minute thinking. Griffin Strike, which is perhaps our best big damage threat gen attack, has such a long CD that if I spammed 3-2-1 uses of it on a boss I sometimes found myself wanting to cancel out of the last one in order to defend. Currently this is not an option.
Now, this all being said, as I mentioned before...the GF issue is that we are double or triple dipping into these 3 categories at the same time. For example: to generate threat I need to Guard, which also enters me into survivability mode, which diminishes my temporary increased survivability. Once the survivability was reduced to zero (0 guard) I could also no longer generate threat. At this point I have lost both survivability and threat when I was only wanting to generate threat in the first place. The triple dipping occurs when I am guarding and would like to move the boss back out of his frontal attacks, and I hit "s" wanting to pack up, and I simply spin and get clobbered.
The obvious solution to all of our problems would be to have generating threat, survivability, and positioning be decisions we need to make during the course of a battle, rather than all lumped under one gimmicky utility. I was capable of doing this by: Spending as many points in the traits as possible and as much time as possible building the AP meter so that I could spam my stun or high damage Daily powers to generate enough damage to threaten lots of mobs, then charge slam (marking everything), then stab while guarding the bosses or tougher minions, and then charge or mini-charge out of massive frontal attacks to avoid depleting my shield. This worked will into 35+ in dungeons.
Should I HAVE to do this? No. The solution I found that worked for me, personally, felt a little Diablo 3-esque where there are "billions of builds" but only 1 VIABLE.
My proposed solution is:
1) Fix agro issues where they have been previously pointed out. We all know its not balanced.
2) Adjust how "marking" works. It doesn't need to be an instant taunt, but it should perhaps make them more susceptible to YOUR OWN ATTACKS to generate threat. Think about mini-charging in with the shield, marking all minions, then cleaving, and actually generating additional threat that you otherwise would not have if you just plain cleaved. This would work.
3) Fine-tune the tanking style. Rather than have the guard meter be the TOTAL DAMAGE GUARDED before it breaks, make it a TIMER like the rogues stealth. Allow defence to increase the amount absorbed while guarding, but leave the timer the same. This lets us DECIDE when to guard big attacks, and when to quickly guard to stab for some extra threat, but it doesn't force us to absorb little attacks while generating threat. This stops our meter from being depleted simply by wear and tear on the tank and forces us to really use it when a big attack is coming.
4) We don't need an evade or a dodge. just make the "s" key when guarding cause us to back-step quickly. That's it. Allow us to quickly back-step while still facing the mob. Maybe this even depletes time on the guard meter to force us to DECIDE when to focus on positioning?
Just my thoughts, im sure some of you will agree and some will disagree.
thanks!
I played a GF up to around level 36-37 this weekend, and had the opportunity to both do solo, 2-person group questing (with cleric), and 5-person dungeon running (3 dungeons overall). My general stance on GF tanking is that although we have the tools to do the job effectively, we are somewhat limited in our OPTIONS when it comes to threat, dishing out necessary damage or stuns, or survivability.
From what I see, the issue isn't as simple as "we do not have enough threat" or "we do not have enough survivability", or "we do not have enough positioning or evasion on bosses." The overall issue seems to be that the current structure of the class double (and sometimes triple) dips into all three important "tank" characteristics: threat, survivability, positioning.
I found that if I focused on generating threat I could really hold 1 or 2 mobs for an entire duration, but this forced me to ignore smaller minions while doing so, and I felt that it was very challenging to be able to hold the aggression of the mobs. I used the often repeated strategy of AoE taunt + stab over the shield, and alternated between 1, 2, and sometimes 3 mobs. The level 30 on demand ability to mini-charge and mark all my targets did help somewhat, and I found that it gave me more movement utility on the battlefield, but I did have to sacrifice my primary guard generating ability to do this. Beyond that, threat dropped off. My conclusion from threat generation was that: the AoE taunt was mandatory and not a CD that I would need to develop a skill as a player to know when to best use. The stab worked fine but offered no AoE tanking.
In terms of survivability, I found that mine was relatively high. I traited for threat and geared for power+defence+AC (I chose a weapon that had the single highest power stat available...best i could find was ~800 on a single weapon at 36) to get the highest overall reduction and I found that with the odd exception (most of which would be player based errors) I was capable of handing a boss and not breaking my Guard meter too frequently. This spec + gear really reminded me of BC Paladin Tanking in WOW where you had warrior gear, defensive talents, and a spellcasters mace to be capable of pulling things off well. I realised in NW that with some skill, I could balance when I was generating guard and when I was spending it. I quickly learned that I was not able to charge in, blow all CDs and then block my way to victory, but I actually needed to decide when it was worth doing one thing over another. The exception to this would be the AoE taunt which is mass spammed. I found that I could handle quite the barrage of attacks from mobs and bosses, even in the harder dungeons with smart playing. I was having a lot of fun TRYING hard to survive because I knew that skill meant success.
In regards to Positioning, I felt that we were lacking in this somewhat. I think the style of NW is more a "friends who play a dungeon crawler" than a "wait in the main city in queue for an instance" MMO (ahem - WOW). Because of this style I did not mind having to tell players to "wait on attacks so I can position the boss." This is something that tanks had to do in EQ, WoW, and all sorts of games. Unfortunately a lot of players had 5+ years of Warcraft Conditioning after vanilla where the tank could quickly get threat and positioning while the DPS unloads instantly. I do not see cooperation amount party members as a bad thing, and I liked the relationships I formed with my party members as we learned each others styles. After this minor hurdle MOST of the issues went away. This being said, I still found I was frustrated with my lack of last minute thinking. Griffin Strike, which is perhaps our best big damage threat gen attack, has such a long CD that if I spammed 3-2-1 uses of it on a boss I sometimes found myself wanting to cancel out of the last one in order to defend. Currently this is not an option.
Now, this all being said, as I mentioned before...the GF issue is that we are double or triple dipping into these 3 categories at the same time. For example: to generate threat I need to Guard, which also enters me into survivability mode, which diminishes my temporary increased survivability. Once the survivability was reduced to zero (0 guard) I could also no longer generate threat. At this point I have lost both survivability and threat when I was only wanting to generate threat in the first place. The triple dipping occurs when I am guarding and would like to move the boss back out of his frontal attacks, and I hit "s" wanting to pack up, and I simply spin and get clobbered.
The obvious solution to all of our problems would be to have generating threat, survivability, and positioning be decisions we need to make during the course of a battle, rather than all lumped under one gimmicky utility. I was capable of doing this by: Spending as many points in the traits as possible and as much time as possible building the AP meter so that I could spam my stun or high damage Daily powers to generate enough damage to threaten lots of mobs, then charge slam (marking everything), then stab while guarding the bosses or tougher minions, and then charge or mini-charge out of massive frontal attacks to avoid depleting my shield. This worked will into 35+ in dungeons.
Should I HAVE to do this? No. The solution I found that worked for me, personally, felt a little Diablo 3-esque where there are "billions of builds" but only 1 VIABLE.
My proposed solution is:
1) Fix agro issues where they have been previously pointed out. We all know its not balanced.
2) Adjust how "marking" works. It doesn't need to be an instant taunt, but it should perhaps make them more susceptible to YOUR OWN ATTACKS to generate threat. Think about mini-charging in with the shield, marking all minions, then cleaving, and actually generating additional threat that you otherwise would not have if you just plain cleaved. This would work.
3) Fine-tune the tanking style. Rather than have the guard meter be the TOTAL DAMAGE GUARDED before it breaks, make it a TIMER like the rogues stealth. Allow defence to increase the amount absorbed while guarding, but leave the timer the same. This lets us DECIDE when to guard big attacks, and when to quickly guard to stab for some extra threat, but it doesn't force us to absorb little attacks while generating threat. This stops our meter from being depleted simply by wear and tear on the tank and forces us to really use it when a big attack is coming.
4) We don't need an evade or a dodge. just make the "s" key when guarding cause us to back-step quickly. That's it. Allow us to quickly back-step while still facing the mob. Maybe this even depletes time on the guard meter to force us to DECIDE when to focus on positioning?
Just my thoughts, im sure some of you will agree and some will disagree.
thanks!
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