ghoulz66Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 3,748Arc User
edited February 2014
Something needs to be improved on. My GF spent more time running for her life and biding for potions against the pirate king. My GWF had no such issue.
Not enough options to keep guard up for extended periods of time. If you decide you need to bring up your guard that only gives them the opportunity to swarm you and leave you helpless when it gets broken again.
Seeing as my Paladin GF concept would likely be too extreme, I thought about a new power that draws on the GWF's Determination. Could possibly be an idea for a new tab feature.
Battlefield Bastion
In the heat of battle you let out a ferocious roar, smashing your sword into your shield, rallying your allies and challenging nearby enemies. You are immune to all damage, you boost the defence of your allies and nearby enemies are marked while Battlefield Bastion is active.
The base can be a buff that lasts 3 seconds with a 5% buff to your allies' defence. Through feating you can increase these numbers, thus; 4 seconds & 10% buff, 5 seconds & 15% buff, 6 seconds & 20% buff.
Both classes are fighters intended to be where damage is being dealt so both need a means to fight through damage and the GF's paper shield currently makes this largely impossible. It makes sense that the berserker/barbarian (GWF) gets a ''selfish'' feature to fight through damage while a protector (GF) should have the means to become the focal point of the battle, drawing all damage to himself and protecting (hence the party buff) his allies.
I know we have Enforced Threat, Knight's Challenge and Knight's Valor but you can pool those into one truly useful utility power.
PSA: You don't need to grind Spinward Rise for your Elemental artifact main hand if you have some AD lying around. You can craft it via the Tyranny of Dragon's campaign screen.
From my experience there are a lot of great posters that add content to discussions, then their are the 90% that add nothing and would rather put down people and demonize them!
From playing with lots of GF I can confidently say that there are excellent GF out there who make the class work. However, 90% of GF are mouth breathing morons who complain about doing low damage instead of concentrating on actually tanking.
In a game where a lot of folks are over gearing instances and taking 5x CW or 5x GWF where do you think GF fits? Or DC's? Or HR's? Or TR's? None of them fit anywhere outside of tiny, tiny niche roles. It's all about AoE damage and control. Nothing actually needs to be 'tanked' in Neverwinter, so why do people roll a class that is meant for aggro control or tanking when neither role is ever actually required to succeed?
If people ran more instances at 10k instead of 15-20k you'd see a bigger role for GF. So you can safely blame the community for the uselessness of the GF class. Most especially, you can blame the GF community for being bad in general. I can safely say this after running tons of PUG queue instances. Most tanks are quite simply awful. I know it isn't the class either, because I have seen some amazing at-level tanks hold aggro on everything.
Don't hate the game, hate the players.
Shieldbash60 GF ~ Iron Vanguard19.0k Overpowered60 CW~ Thaumaturge14.5k ==========================================
~ GF Buffs were great we are much better, please fix the bugs now... Thank you!
Shieldbash60 GF ~ Iron Vanguard19.0k Overpowered60 CW~ Thaumaturge14.5k ==========================================
~ GF Buffs were great we are much better, please fix the bugs now... Thank you!
0
dissssppppMember, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 24Arc User
edited February 2014
The biggest issue with the class is DPS downtime from super slow animations and constantly being hit with knock downs and control effects. As a tank we're taking the brunt of most mob's CC abilities, which is something the other classes just don't have to worry about. GWF just hits unstoppable and can fight right through everything, and TR just stealth and fight from the side or back and almost never have to worry about it. The only way to avoid getting CC'd is either blocking or having Villain's menace up, and both of those have issues. When you block you're doing no DPS, and lowering your DPS potential due to diminished block meter if you're a Conqueror build. Villain's menace has a ridiculously long cast time, during which you have a great chance of getting interrupted if you're in a pack of mobs, unless they're already being CC'd.
I'm a 17K+ GF with all the stone/GPF, etc., and can do respectable DPS when there's tons of crowd control and stuns (9 or 10 million in MC vs. 16-ish of GWF with 1-2k less GS). Once I start getting knocked around and have to block more frequently my DPS drops by 1/3 or 1/2.
I think increasing attack speed of cleave, lowering the animation times for most of our skills (including drawing our shield, which is ridiculously slow), and making Villain's Menace/Fighter's Recovery be near instant casts would completely fix the class. I get interrupted and knocked down so much hitting Villain's Menace and Fighter's recovery in the middle of packs that it's maddening. From animation start to being able to make your next attack is 3 or 4 seconds with VM, and that's far too long when you're in a pack. The class needs a better way to get out of getting knocked down, stunned, and silenced. At my GS I have my daily available constantly, but it's almost worthless when I constantly get punched out of the fight.
Give us faster casts on everything instead of this slow as molasses garbage, and the class gets fixed. There's no reason my shield should take 2-3 seconds to draw when other classes can instantly dodge.
Very disappointed in the direction of this game allowing the DPS version of the tank to be a better tank and the Tank version do no Dps! Its really a wonder what devs were smoking when they allowed such an oversight of the classes, the GF needs some changes or the GWF needs to be changed so he cannot perform so well in every aspect!
The GF deserves its own paragon paths, and should allow him to be decent DPS should he desire so, or allow him to be the BEST tank in the game!
Shieldbash60 GF ~ Iron Vanguard19.0k Overpowered60 CW~ Thaumaturge14.5k ==========================================
~ GF Buffs were great we are much better, please fix the bugs now... Thank you!
Think about it! a wizard... THAT CAN FLY! we can have the arabian paragon path where he flies on a carpet, or the gandalf paragon path where he has an eagle! IT WILL BE GLORIOUS!!
Ya shall not passss !
Nancy - Dragonborn, SM Guardian Fighter A proud member of "mythical horde of DPS GFs"
1). Is SW more dps or tank based? 2). Yes. I am panzer! 3). Get ACT if you want to celebrate your epeen. 4). Horniness will not stand between me and what I believe - "MM"
The biggest issue with the class is DPS downtime from super slow animations and constantly being hit with knock downs and control effects. As a tank we're taking the brunt of most mob's CC abilities, which is something the other classes just don't have to worry about. GWF just hits unstoppable and can fight right through everything, and TR just stealth and fight from the side or back and almost never have to worry about it. The only way to avoid getting CC'd is either blocking or having Villain's menace up, and both of those have issues. When you block you're doing no DPS, and lowering your DPS potential due to diminished block meter if you're a Conqueror build. Villain's menace has a ridiculously long cast time, during which you have a great chance of getting interrupted if you're in a pack of mobs, unless they're already being CC'd.
I'm a 17K+ GF with all the stone/GPF, etc., and can do respectable DPS when there's tons of crowd control and stuns (9 or 10 million in MC vs. 16-ish of GWF with 1-2k less GS). Once I start getting knocked around and have to block more frequently my DPS drops by 1/3 or 1/2.
I think increasing attack speed of cleave, lowering the animation times for most of our skills (including drawing our shield, which is ridiculously slow), and making Villain's Menace/Fighter's Recovery be near instant casts would completely fix the class. I get interrupted and knocked down so much hitting Villain's Menace and Fighter's recovery in the middle of packs that it's maddening. From animation start to being able to make your next attack is 3 or 4 seconds with VM, and that's far too long when you're in a pack. The class needs a better way to get out of getting knocked down, stunned, and silenced. At my GS I have my daily available constantly, but it's almost worthless when I constantly get punched out of the fight.
Give us faster casts on everything instead of this slow as molasses garbage, and the class gets fixed. There's no reason my shield should take 2-3 seconds to draw when other classes can instantly dodge.
Shieldbash60 GF ~ Iron Vanguard19.0k Overpowered60 CW~ Thaumaturge14.5k ==========================================
~ GF Buffs were great we are much better, please fix the bugs now... Thank you!
From a game design point of view I think casting time animations has a nasty emergent property type interaction with the concept of guard.
I mean coming at it from league of legends a significant casting time animation lock is regarded as a self stun. You voluntarily lock yourself out of moving and fighting. It is a huge detriment. If such a thing doesn't also come with an advantage like an auto-attack timer reset it is pretty painful to cast spells for no reason. Just the animation gives a significant casting cost to anything even beyond the cool down. Time is a resource. You use it to auto and you use it move, but more importantly for GF you use time to block or build block meter, and casting time is lost block time and lost building block meter.
You would think given this nasty interaction where not only are you locked out of moving and fighting (Like everyone else) but you also locked out of your class defining guard that GF fighter animations would be unusually short compared to other classes, but nooooo.... they are hideously long. Makes no sense, but it also one of those things you don't really think about until you see it.
I am in a bad place as I thought being the only shield carrier I would be the BEST tank in the game and be needed as such, now come to find out we are mere speed bumps in the grand design of the game! I have a lvl 50 GF and am thinking of just quitting the game as I refuse to play the Over Powered classes GWF / CW / TR and the other classes seem weak also in comparison...
Seems to me either everyone else needs a buff or those 3 classes need to be toned down.
Shieldbash60 GF ~ Iron Vanguard19.0k Overpowered60 CW~ Thaumaturge14.5k ==========================================
~ GF Buffs were great we are much better, please fix the bugs now... Thank you!
I have pushed through the t1 and now working on t2, and I have come to the conclusion there is a bit of a skill issue with GF.
One of the "ahhh-ha" moments for me was when I realized that taking advantage of attack animation reseting on mobs with a bit of a dubstep was more powerful than just raising your shield and taking 10 hits. In t2 you start to see more mobs at once than anyone has a rational business just standing and face tanking, but that doesn't mean you need to break into a full kite. I was standing there noting 10 mobs tee-ing off on me in random order and then I did something profound: I took a step back. What happened? The 10 mobs finished their attack and ran at me again, but this time they were slightly more aligned and swinging all at once. I thought, "I could block this or..." I took a step back. Now everything walked forward again this time even more in alignment, so I plowed in with my abilities, and then... I took a step back. I came to the conclusion that the best way to tank in this game was not to stand around and wait for attack animations to go full swing. You are never going to be perfect at it, but it makes it a whole lot easier. Now I have no idea how well a GF does this compared to other classes, but I do know this: there is probably a lot of opinions out there from people that just run up, raise shield, and let bad guys "tee-off" on them, and it is just not optimal... for any class.
In League of Legends dub stepping away from jungle mobs between attacks is a known way to reduce mob dps while getting your attacks in. In this game it works even better, and you can get away with not doing it to a point, but unlike league of legends eventually you get so many adds that if you are not stepping out of the bulk of attack animations you are just going to get wrecked. In evitably, everyone realizes that, but the "ahh-haa" was realizing you could do it even before you needed to and give up very little while making everything smoother.
That said, I been thinking about this issue a bit, and it seems to me this idea of a mark on "Tab" is kind of lame. I know they are improving it, but even improved mark is kind of lame compared to other tabs. I think that Guardian Fighters would play a whole lot better if they let us socket "Enforced Threat" on "Tab" (and just enforced threat). It is such a bread and butter skill, and it would turn a lame tab into something useful and allow us to get a real 3 encounter power build going. Enforced Threat would give a GF a meaty tab. Something not subtle. Technically this is only as valuable to a GF as replacing that mark with another encounter, but ehh.
GF shouldn't be concerned with getting out DPSed. Its role is to tank, not deal loads of damage. The problem lies with the game design where mobs are spammed in boss encounters, which forces a GF to do nothing but kite.
Easy solution would be to slow down the rate that mobs are spawned and limit the number that can be in the room at any one time. This will allow a GF to tank mobs AND boss, rather than endless kiting. This would improve the game experience for everyone. Boss and mobs focused on GF, everyone else can burn down boss safely with ease. Nice smooth runs.
all gf needs is more aoe control and a lot stronger shield in pve atm it drains away very fast and staying power feat should be changed on gf it should give mark to weapon master instead of reduce mitigation on target on his encounters makeing weapon master to mark would made tanking aoe trash on gf a lot more easy
While I still actively enjoy playing my GF and can get into everything but speed runs, here are my more refined views on how to help us out a bit;
First and foremost, game design is probably the biggest reason as to why GFs are marginalised, so it isn't necessarily that the class sucks.
Fixes on the game's side;
1 - Less trash, more CC-immune elites.
2 - Bosses need lower cooldowns, at-will attacks and moar HP. They also need to move more. The ToS #2 boss going down in 5 seconds is laughable. Maws in SP put up a better fight.
3 - The GF's threat mechanic should be the only thing that can manipulate elites and bosses, otherwise they will just rampage.
Fixes on class side;
1 - GWFs need their ability to stack defence and deflection reduced. You are wielding the biggest, heaviest weapon in the game, wearing the second heaviest armour AND can do massive single-target damage at the speed that a class that wears leather and wields two knives can. You CANNOT have the best of both worlds. The GWF should be a class clad in leather as well or just lighter armour, trading defence for damage output. The IV Sentinel is just a lolbuild. BS that this guy can run around with 35%+ DR, have an immunity feature AND do CW-levels of damage.
2 - The GF's TAB needs to be changed. The TAB feature needs to be something befitting of a protector. I propose Battlefield Bastion. This feature will be similar to the GWF's Unstoppable.
When pressing TAB;
a - The GF will become CC, stun and prone-immune and resist all damage for the duration of the buff,
b - The GF will release an AOE hard-taunt that focuses all nearby enemies on him/her for the duration of the buff,
c - All nearby allies will receive a buff to their own damage resistance for the duration of the buff. This buff can move from 3% to 12% via feating.
The Battlefield Bastion meter will be filled by raw damage taken, so damage blocked by your shield won't fill the meter.
3 - The paper shield needs work. I propose a threshold is set that a certain level of damage is utterly ignored by the shield meter, so only the heaviest of hits affect it. This means blocking trash should hardly affect your shield. Also, to aid with mobility the shield can be raised and the GF can maintain his normal run speed, only slowing down to a crawl when striking/bashing an opponent with the shield raised.
4 - All animations need to be sped up. I'm not talking TR/GWF speed, but a nice little buff.
Instead of just giving the GF moar damage bring the game closer to his skills and features. We don't need the GF to become more like the GWF, we need the GWF to move away from the GF and the game needs to shift from CC-deeps to ''bring a tank or squishies will get rolled''.
PSA: You don't need to grind Spinward Rise for your Elemental artifact main hand if you have some AD lying around. You can craft it via the Tyranny of Dragon's campaign screen.
i was just thinking that maybe tab could be the buff encounter slot, sort of like spell mastery but instead of just another more powerful attack it allows dps and allows for using things like....
TAB:Iron Warrior or KV etc ENC1:Enforced threat ENC2Bull Rush, etc and mark can be a mechanic encounter just for in the buff slot thats just there to slot if in the boss arena and you actually want it and you would still be able to slot buffs in regular encounter slot.
Just spit ballin it; but this would cause no drop in dps for the GF but would add the party and self buffs that a lot of GFs want to use but want to knock down or what ever because they are limited to three and want to actually fight. This might set the GF survival with GWF survival because thats basically what unstoppable is its a buff. Every other class has something that changes them with tab but the GF and this wouldn't make them op just more desirable.
And your right thats exactly how you do it you dont stay there behind the shield you move or jump out of the way and with this idea you could buff your speed if we had this mechanic making it even easier.
thats why FH is our best event because you cant cc a rimefire golem and you certainly can't cc 12 of them if they did this it would make it so that there was an actual need for the tank.
If they had a harder dungeon with more elites it wouldnt hurt either.
Animations do need a slight buff in speed.
Having a limiter on how many mobs there are in boss arena but increasing thier quality through out the dungeons would make these speed runs not have to be the main focus and we could actually all handle them without needing or even wanting 4 cw.
These old dungeons have been kinda neglected for things like classes and campaigns but even then we would have to wait anyway....
if they fixed at least some of those things along with thier next class or campaign would be great.
- Warpet Mark to wms? I'd rather have mitigation debuff to at wills and encounters, wms is perfectly fine especially if you mark them first and have the aggro generation feature on or steel blitz just my opinion though.
I kinda wish they made the conq paragon feat student of the sword instead of the 1 sec stun for end of flourish as it would allow SM GF to also shred defense with wms or flourish but thats neither here nor there.
Wms is awesome with SM GWF because student of the sword was easy to apply debuffs to enemies with it.
I was reading about a mmo today and thought of two solutions to the class.
gf tab: the "bastion" gf could be a flag that gf plant on the battlefield (yes, she has her own hp and an area of effect).
within this area of effect:
1 - all, taking the gf, generate much less threat.
2 - everyone, including the gf, receive a boost in speed recharge stamina.
3 - an effect which could be added by feet.
seems more consistent with the gf and not take the "job" of dc and cause less trouble in pvp. Gwf:
I was reading about a game that subdivides the "gwf" them into two; slayer and berserk. The two hit hard, but the berserk is slow and resistant (can also block). The slayer on the other hand is less resistant, but it is fast.
The gwf 3 currently has the characteristics of both worlds. Ideally, he had only 2.
Unfortunately the trend of the game is to reduce the damage ... but only lessen the damage impairs pve ... I see no solution but to make slower the animations using swords . From this point comes the differentiated compensation:
Instigator: current speed
Destroyer: cumulative damage vs multiple targets
Sentinel: I do not know; hehhe
Increase the challenge of the class, and would cut the opportunism of cannibals.
I don't think a team buff via a Battlefield Bastion TAB mechanic would marginalise DCs. The way I described it, your allies won't get healed nor will they receive temp hit points, just improved DR for a short period and all aggro taken off of them. They can still take damage if they are caught in an AOE which means a DC would still have a roll to play by healing.
Right now the GF needs to use 3 seperate encounters to be a complete protector and that completely negates any sort of damage output. If your roll Knight's Valor, Iron Warrior and Knight's Challenge your damage output is severely reduced. Sure you can slot in Anvil of Doom or Enforced Threat, but AV only really shines when something is nearly dead.
This is what gave me the idea for a TAB mechanic that makes a GF immune, an aggro magnet and a protector (by buffing your allies DR in a sense is indicates protection);
He listened to the pounding of the demon's hooves drawing near and to the frantic rhythm of his companions' feet as they fled behind him. If he could buy them a little time, maybe they could get to safety. Maybe Verna Wouldn't die.
The demon rounded the corner and bellowed in triumph. Its roar assaulted his ear, shook the stone beneath his feet, and blasted at his face, but Brandis held his ground. Lowering its head, the demon charged.
With a roar of his own, Brandis ran to meet the onrushing demon. He let his fury and his despair carry him forward like a crashing wave of steel. He threw himself down under the demon's curving horn, then with all his strength brought his blade over his head to slash across its neck. Acrid blood sprayed over him, but the demon didn't fall. Howling, it swatted at Brandis with a massive fist, sending him staggering backward.
"At least I know I got your attention," Brandis muttered, gripping his sword more tightly. He couldn't hear his friends anymore, just the pounding of blood in his ears.
[Martial Power Page 22, Last Stand]
With a roar of his own can be the GF tabbing Battlefield Bastion, making him temporarily immune to everything, a threat magnet and a true protector.
PSA: You don't need to grind Spinward Rise for your Elemental artifact main hand if you have some AD lying around. You can craft it via the Tyranny of Dragon's campaign screen.
Sorry, but not to battlefield bastion. I apreciate the idea, very much so, but you need to understand that the game already promotes stacking everything (mobs and players) WAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY too much. We do not need to further reinforce that.
Sorry, but not to battlefield bastion. I apreciate the idea, very much so, but you need to understand that the game already promotes stacking everything (mobs and players) WAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY too much. We do not need to further reinforce that.
Riiight so how about we change that to "Battle HAMSTER"? Something like "You HAMSTER in the general direction of the enemy, annoying them immensely". Would be still better than the current.
City of Heroes tanks had a class mechanic called punchvoke. Each attack generated a stacking amount of aggro to the mobs hit with it. I am not sure why Cryptic didn't just reuse that mechanic in this game.
That being said, of my 60's the GF is the least fun to play in a team.
I haven't given up yet, but as I get better gear I actually do less DPS? It's almost like GF gear is built to suck! All we are is team buffer and thats it? I had more power with a 11,000 GS in all blues, now Im all epics and 13,586 and I do less damage.
I will continue on, but if things don't change I will quit the game as I don't feel fairly treated as when I made the GF it didn't tell me I would be a poor DPS, unnecessary class that will wonder endlessly as a Solo player....
Shieldbash60 GF ~ Iron Vanguard19.0k Overpowered60 CW~ Thaumaturge14.5k ==========================================
~ GF Buffs were great we are much better, please fix the bugs now... Thank you!
I haven't given up yet, but as I get better gear I actually do less DPS? It's almost like GF gear is built to suck! All we are is team buffer and thats it? I had more power with a 11,000 GS in all blues, now Im all epics and 13,586 and I do less damage.
I will continue on, but if things don't change I will quit the game as I don't feel fairly treated as when I made the GF it didn't tell me I would be a poor DPS, unnecessary class that will wonder endlessly as a Solo player....
Think outside the purple box if you want to maintain DPS.
I have 3 sets;
1) Timeless + blue rings (the ones that stack 243 POW + 133 crit + offense slot) + blue belt (133 crit + 243 arpen + offense slot). That one gets me just shy of 17k and it is what I use when I daily or run not-so-serious dungeons.
2) KC + ancient slaughterer's rings. I drop to 15.9k with this one and I use this for serious DD'ing. I have to swop the rings because I lose nearly 6% deflection with the KC set, which I'm not comfortable with.
3) Kiting/Karru boss 1 + 2 gear. 2x Grand Regent + 2x Timeless. Grand Priest's Rings. Forgot the name of the purple neck and belt, but they load defence as well. I get to 52% DR and 25% deflection with this.
PSA: You don't need to grind Spinward Rise for your Elemental artifact main hand if you have some AD lying around. You can craft it via the Tyranny of Dragon's campaign screen.
Some of the blues are REALLY cheap. The 243 power, 133 crit rings are now more than most purples, but you get a cheaper version (200 power, 100 crit) for less than 300 AD.
My suggestion; visit the AH, set your search to level 60, set your stats to critical strike and armor penetration and do that for rings, waist and neck and you'll be surprised at what you find and at really good prices.
Also, ALWAYS pick up blue items and then identify them. Some of them can go for thousands on the AH due to their great stats or you could even use them yourself.
You can also use the Drake seals you get from T2's to get Minor Grand neck, waist and rings from the Seal Vendor to keep it cheap. Their stats are hardly worse than Ancients anyway (12 points less, which is nothing). This will allow you to build different sets for different occasions. Saying that, some Ancient items are dirt cheap. My Ancient Slaughterer's rings cost me 22k AD for both, peanuts.
PSA: You don't need to grind Spinward Rise for your Elemental artifact main hand if you have some AD lying around. You can craft it via the Tyranny of Dragon's campaign screen.
I don't know about HRs, but for anyone but TRs it seems to stay in the 30-40% range assuming you are getting Armor Pen and not completely overgeared. My GF was able to hit 20% until I regeared and just ignored the stat. It seems rather pointless to bother with it, but I'm not an expert at the GF by any means. I took a build from this forum back in August, but that's pre-mod 1 and I can't even remember the name to the build to find it again.
"We have always been at war with Dread Vault" ~ Little Brother
Yea it would just be nice to have another option other than Better DPS, less Tank role , or Better Tank role , no dps! Like TR can go INT and perma stealth there really is no other feasible option to increase fun factor for GF, your either a Tank, or a poor tank with poor dps.....
I don't know about HRs, but for anyone but TRs it seems to stay in the 30-40% range assuming you are getting Armor Pen and not completely overgeared. My GF was able to hit 20% until I regeared and just ignored the stat. It seems rather pointless to bother with it, but I'm not an expert at the GF by any means. I took a build from this forum back in August, but that's pre-mod 1 and I can't even remember the name to the build to find it again.
Shieldbash60 GF ~ Iron Vanguard19.0k Overpowered60 CW~ Thaumaturge14.5k ==========================================
~ GF Buffs were great we are much better, please fix the bugs now... Thank you!
Comments
Not enough options to keep guard up for extended periods of time. If you decide you need to bring up your guard that only gives them the opportunity to swarm you and leave you helpless when it gets broken again.
The base can be a buff that lasts 3 seconds with a 5% buff to your allies' defence. Through feating you can increase these numbers, thus; 4 seconds & 10% buff, 5 seconds & 15% buff, 6 seconds & 20% buff.
Both classes are fighters intended to be where damage is being dealt so both need a means to fight through damage and the GF's paper shield currently makes this largely impossible. It makes sense that the berserker/barbarian (GWF) gets a ''selfish'' feature to fight through damage while a protector (GF) should have the means to become the focal point of the battle, drawing all damage to himself and protecting (hence the party buff) his allies.
I know we have Enforced Threat, Knight's Challenge and Knight's Valor but you can pool those into one truly useful utility power.
Overpowered 60 CW ~ Thaumaturge 14.5k
==========================================
~ GF Buffs were great we are much better, please fix the bugs now... Thank you!
Overpowered 60 CW ~ Thaumaturge 14.5k
==========================================
~ GF Buffs were great we are much better, please fix the bugs now... Thank you!
I'm a 17K+ GF with all the stone/GPF, etc., and can do respectable DPS when there's tons of crowd control and stuns (9 or 10 million in MC vs. 16-ish of GWF with 1-2k less GS). Once I start getting knocked around and have to block more frequently my DPS drops by 1/3 or 1/2.
I think increasing attack speed of cleave, lowering the animation times for most of our skills (including drawing our shield, which is ridiculously slow), and making Villain's Menace/Fighter's Recovery be near instant casts would completely fix the class. I get interrupted and knocked down so much hitting Villain's Menace and Fighter's recovery in the middle of packs that it's maddening. From animation start to being able to make your next attack is 3 or 4 seconds with VM, and that's far too long when you're in a pack. The class needs a better way to get out of getting knocked down, stunned, and silenced. At my GS I have my daily available constantly, but it's almost worthless when I constantly get punched out of the fight.
Give us faster casts on everything instead of this slow as molasses garbage, and the class gets fixed. There's no reason my shield should take 2-3 seconds to draw when other classes can instantly dodge.
The GF deserves its own paragon paths, and should allow him to be decent DPS should he desire so, or allow him to be the BEST tank in the game!
Overpowered 60 CW ~ Thaumaturge 14.5k
==========================================
~ GF Buffs were great we are much better, please fix the bugs now... Thank you!
Ya shall not passss !
A proud member of "mythical horde of DPS GFs"
1). Is SW more dps or tank based?
2). Yes. I am panzer!
3). Get ACT if you want to celebrate your epeen.
4). Horniness will not stand between me and what I believe - "MM"
Overpowered 60 CW ~ Thaumaturge 14.5k
==========================================
~ GF Buffs were great we are much better, please fix the bugs now... Thank you!
I mean coming at it from league of legends a significant casting time animation lock is regarded as a self stun. You voluntarily lock yourself out of moving and fighting. It is a huge detriment. If such a thing doesn't also come with an advantage like an auto-attack timer reset it is pretty painful to cast spells for no reason. Just the animation gives a significant casting cost to anything even beyond the cool down. Time is a resource. You use it to auto and you use it move, but more importantly for GF you use time to block or build block meter, and casting time is lost block time and lost building block meter.
You would think given this nasty interaction where not only are you locked out of moving and fighting (Like everyone else) but you also locked out of your class defining guard that GF fighter animations would be unusually short compared to other classes, but nooooo.... they are hideously long. Makes no sense, but it also one of those things you don't really think about until you see it.
Seems to me either everyone else needs a buff or those 3 classes need to be toned down.
Overpowered 60 CW ~ Thaumaturge 14.5k
==========================================
~ GF Buffs were great we are much better, please fix the bugs now... Thank you!
I have pushed through the t1 and now working on t2, and I have come to the conclusion there is a bit of a skill issue with GF.
One of the "ahhh-ha" moments for me was when I realized that taking advantage of attack animation reseting on mobs with a bit of a dubstep was more powerful than just raising your shield and taking 10 hits. In t2 you start to see more mobs at once than anyone has a rational business just standing and face tanking, but that doesn't mean you need to break into a full kite. I was standing there noting 10 mobs tee-ing off on me in random order and then I did something profound: I took a step back. What happened? The 10 mobs finished their attack and ran at me again, but this time they were slightly more aligned and swinging all at once. I thought, "I could block this or..." I took a step back. Now everything walked forward again this time even more in alignment, so I plowed in with my abilities, and then... I took a step back. I came to the conclusion that the best way to tank in this game was not to stand around and wait for attack animations to go full swing. You are never going to be perfect at it, but it makes it a whole lot easier. Now I have no idea how well a GF does this compared to other classes, but I do know this: there is probably a lot of opinions out there from people that just run up, raise shield, and let bad guys "tee-off" on them, and it is just not optimal... for any class.
In League of Legends dub stepping away from jungle mobs between attacks is a known way to reduce mob dps while getting your attacks in. In this game it works even better, and you can get away with not doing it to a point, but unlike league of legends eventually you get so many adds that if you are not stepping out of the bulk of attack animations you are just going to get wrecked. In evitably, everyone realizes that, but the "ahh-haa" was realizing you could do it even before you needed to and give up very little while making everything smoother.
That said, I been thinking about this issue a bit, and it seems to me this idea of a mark on "Tab" is kind of lame. I know they are improving it, but even improved mark is kind of lame compared to other tabs. I think that Guardian Fighters would play a whole lot better if they let us socket "Enforced Threat" on "Tab" (and just enforced threat). It is such a bread and butter skill, and it would turn a lame tab into something useful and allow us to get a real 3 encounter power build going. Enforced Threat would give a GF a meaty tab. Something not subtle. Technically this is only as valuable to a GF as replacing that mark with another encounter, but ehh.
Easy solution would be to slow down the rate that mobs are spawned and limit the number that can be in the room at any one time. This will allow a GF to tank mobs AND boss, rather than endless kiting. This would improve the game experience for everyone. Boss and mobs focused on GF, everyone else can burn down boss safely with ease. Nice smooth runs.
Butters TR PVP
Overpowered 60 CW ~ Thaumaturge 14.5k
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~ GF Buffs were great we are much better, please fix the bugs now... Thank you!
First and foremost, game design is probably the biggest reason as to why GFs are marginalised, so it isn't necessarily that the class sucks.
Fixes on the game's side;
1 - Less trash, more CC-immune elites.
2 - Bosses need lower cooldowns, at-will attacks and moar HP. They also need to move more. The ToS #2 boss going down in 5 seconds is laughable. Maws in SP put up a better fight.
3 - The GF's threat mechanic should be the only thing that can manipulate elites and bosses, otherwise they will just rampage.
Fixes on class side;
1 - GWFs need their ability to stack defence and deflection reduced. You are wielding the biggest, heaviest weapon in the game, wearing the second heaviest armour AND can do massive single-target damage at the speed that a class that wears leather and wields two knives can. You CANNOT have the best of both worlds. The GWF should be a class clad in leather as well or just lighter armour, trading defence for damage output. The IV Sentinel is just a lolbuild. BS that this guy can run around with 35%+ DR, have an immunity feature AND do CW-levels of damage.
2 - The GF's TAB needs to be changed. The TAB feature needs to be something befitting of a protector. I propose Battlefield Bastion. This feature will be similar to the GWF's Unstoppable.
When pressing TAB;
a - The GF will become CC, stun and prone-immune and resist all damage for the duration of the buff,
b - The GF will release an AOE hard-taunt that focuses all nearby enemies on him/her for the duration of the buff,
c - All nearby allies will receive a buff to their own damage resistance for the duration of the buff. This buff can move from 3% to 12% via feating.
The Battlefield Bastion meter will be filled by raw damage taken, so damage blocked by your shield won't fill the meter.
3 - The paper shield needs work. I propose a threshold is set that a certain level of damage is utterly ignored by the shield meter, so only the heaviest of hits affect it. This means blocking trash should hardly affect your shield. Also, to aid with mobility the shield can be raised and the GF can maintain his normal run speed, only slowing down to a crawl when striking/bashing an opponent with the shield raised.
4 - All animations need to be sped up. I'm not talking TR/GWF speed, but a nice little buff.
Instead of just giving the GF moar damage bring the game closer to his skills and features. We don't need the GF to become more like the GWF, we need the GWF to move away from the GF and the game needs to shift from CC-deeps to ''bring a tank or squishies will get rolled''.
i was just thinking that maybe tab could be the buff encounter slot, sort of like spell mastery but instead of just another more powerful attack it allows dps and allows for using things like....
TAB:Iron Warrior or KV etc ENC1:Enforced threat ENC2Bull Rush, etc and mark can be a mechanic encounter just for in the buff slot thats just there to slot if in the boss arena and you actually want it and you would still be able to slot buffs in regular encounter slot.
Just spit ballin it; but this would cause no drop in dps for the GF but would add the party and self buffs that a lot of GFs want to use but want to knock down or what ever because they are limited to three and want to actually fight. This might set the GF survival with GWF survival because thats basically what unstoppable is its a buff. Every other class has something that changes them with tab but the GF and this wouldn't make them op just more desirable.
And your right thats exactly how you do it you dont stay there behind the shield you move or jump out of the way and with this idea you could buff your speed if we had this mechanic making it even easier.
thats why FH is our best event because you cant cc a rimefire golem and you certainly can't cc 12 of them if they did this it would make it so that there was an actual need for the tank.
If they had a harder dungeon with more elites it wouldnt hurt either.
Animations do need a slight buff in speed.
Having a limiter on how many mobs there are in boss arena but increasing thier quality through out the dungeons would make these speed runs not have to be the main focus and we could actually all handle them without needing or even wanting 4 cw.
These old dungeons have been kinda neglected for things like classes and campaigns but even then we would have to wait anyway....
if they fixed at least some of those things along with thier next class or campaign would be great.
- Warpet Mark to wms? I'd rather have mitigation debuff to at wills and encounters, wms is perfectly fine especially if you mark them first and have the aggro generation feature on or steel blitz just my opinion though.
I kinda wish they made the conq paragon feat student of the sword instead of the 1 sec stun for end of flourish as it would allow SM GF to also shred defense with wms or flourish but thats neither here nor there.
Wms is awesome with SM GWF because student of the sword was easy to apply debuffs to enemies with it.
I was reading about a mmo today and thought of two solutions to the class.
gf tab: the "bastion" gf could be a flag that gf plant on the battlefield (yes, she has her own hp and an area of effect).
within this area of effect:
1 - all, taking the gf, generate much less threat.
2 - everyone, including the gf, receive a boost in speed recharge stamina.
3 - an effect which could be added by feet.
seems more consistent with the gf and not take the "job" of dc and cause less trouble in pvp.
Gwf:
I was reading about a game that subdivides the "gwf" them into two; slayer and berserk. The two hit hard, but the berserk is slow and resistant (can also block). The slayer on the other hand is less resistant, but it is fast.
The gwf 3 currently has the characteristics of both worlds. Ideally, he had only 2.
Unfortunately the trend of the game is to reduce the damage ... but only lessen the damage impairs pve ... I see no solution but to make slower the animations using swords . From this point comes the differentiated compensation:
Instigator: current speed
Destroyer: cumulative damage vs multiple targets
Sentinel: I do not know; hehhe
Increase the challenge of the class, and would cut the opportunism of cannibals.
Right now the GF needs to use 3 seperate encounters to be a complete protector and that completely negates any sort of damage output. If your roll Knight's Valor, Iron Warrior and Knight's Challenge your damage output is severely reduced. Sure you can slot in Anvil of Doom or Enforced Threat, but AV only really shines when something is nearly dead.
This is what gave me the idea for a TAB mechanic that makes a GF immune, an aggro magnet and a protector (by buffing your allies DR in a sense is indicates protection);
With a roar of his own can be the GF tabbing Battlefield Bastion, making him temporarily immune to everything, a threat magnet and a true protector.
Riiight so how about we change that to "Battle HAMSTER"? Something like "You HAMSTER in the general direction of the enemy, annoying them immensely". Would be still better than the current.
That being said, of my 60's the GF is the least fun to play in a team.
I will continue on, but if things don't change I will quit the game as I don't feel fairly treated as when I made the GF it didn't tell me I would be a poor DPS, unnecessary class that will wonder endlessly as a Solo player....
Overpowered 60 CW ~ Thaumaturge 14.5k
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~ GF Buffs were great we are much better, please fix the bugs now... Thank you!
Think outside the purple box if you want to maintain DPS.
I have 3 sets;
1) Timeless + blue rings (the ones that stack 243 POW + 133 crit + offense slot) + blue belt (133 crit + 243 arpen + offense slot). That one gets me just shy of 17k and it is what I use when I daily or run not-so-serious dungeons.
2) KC + ancient slaughterer's rings. I drop to 15.9k with this one and I use this for serious DD'ing. I have to swop the rings because I lose nearly 6% deflection with the KC set, which I'm not comfortable with.
3) Kiting/Karru boss 1 + 2 gear. 2x Grand Regent + 2x Timeless. Grand Priest's Rings. Forgot the name of the purple neck and belt, but they load defence as well. I get to 52% DR and 25% deflection with this.
Overpowered 60 CW ~ Thaumaturge 14.5k
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~ GF Buffs were great we are much better, please fix the bugs now... Thank you!
My suggestion; visit the AH, set your search to level 60, set your stats to critical strike and armor penetration and do that for rings, waist and neck and you'll be surprised at what you find and at really good prices.
Also, ALWAYS pick up blue items and then identify them. Some of them can go for thousands on the AH due to their great stats or you could even use them yourself.
You can also use the Drake seals you get from T2's to get Minor Grand neck, waist and rings from the Seal Vendor to keep it cheap. Their stats are hardly worse than Ancients anyway (12 points less, which is nothing). This will allow you to build different sets for different occasions. Saying that, some Ancient items are dirt cheap. My Ancient Slaughterer's rings cost me 22k AD for both, peanuts.
Crit would increase our DPS
Crit would increase threat generation
Crit would make the class a lot more fun and not so blah.
Crit would allow new hybrid specs to try and build more diversity...
The average class has what 40% -50% crit, the GF is lucky to hit 17% if he stacks and gears for it.
Overpowered 60 CW ~ Thaumaturge 14.5k
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~ GF Buffs were great we are much better, please fix the bugs now... Thank you!
Overpowered 60 CW ~ Thaumaturge 14.5k
==========================================
~ GF Buffs were great we are much better, please fix the bugs now... Thank you!