Class Balance: Guardian Fighter

strumslinger · July 2016

For Guardian Fighters, we knew we wanted to look at two things: their damage, and their group utility.

http://www.arcgames.com/en/games/neverwinter/news/detail/10080453-class-balance:-guardian-fighter

rayrdan · July 2016

from hydrogen bomb to nuclear bomb...
still oneshotted.

lirithiel · July 2016

For Guardian Fighters, we knew we wanted to look at two things: their damage, and their group utility. For their damage, we were concerned that they were too low on the sustained side of things and too high on the burst side. As for their group utility, they were very desired by high-end groups, but primarily because of one overpowered buff – Into the Fray.

Into the Fray was a problem for a few reasons. Providing a buff that could be kept up virtually indefinitely that could grant your entire party well over a 100% increase in damage is a concern all on its own. That buff being provided by statting defensively, allowing you to still have incredible survivability, while turning those stats into a massive damage boost, was also not great. There’s really no great way to say it – this power needed a nerf.

So my question is: how on Toril could you create such an OP buff in the first place? You guys admit it was stupidly powerful but it stayed in game for how long again? I'm not arguing that ITF needed a nerf because it did but seriously - you guys bring these problems on yourselves by leaving things OP for far too long.

beckylunatic · July 2016

lirithiel said:
So my question is: how on Toril could you create such an OP buff in the first place?

That's surprisingly simple to answer. The power was buffed to scale off damage resistance back when the level cap was 60 and stats couldn't be boosted to this degree. It was a good buff then, but didn't get ludicrous without all these guild boons and mount powers and bonding runes and etc.

scathias · July 2016

To a lesser extent, we found that Tide of Iron was in a similar place – the debuff it provided was so powerful for your entire party, that Guardian Fighters HAD to pick it as one of their At-Wills, and it’s never fun to be forced to pick something. As such, we changed the debuff to only affect the casters damage, instead of the whole party. This means it’s still a very useful power for increasing your damage (and threat), but it isn’t a required debuff to make your whole party more effective. It also got a sizeable damage increase, again aiming to make this power fun for the caster to use, instead of required for its easy-to-maintain debuff.

This change has assured that I will never slot Tide again. I am tanking. I don't need the debuff for myself, i want it for the party. If i want to increase my own damage i will use WMS for the 30% boost to atwills and combine that with Staying power to boost my encounters by 10%. over all my damage as a DPS GF will be better, as well as being able to slot a good single target at will with a good AoE at will.

In addition, using tide while tanking dangerous enemies is hazardous. if you don't time everything perfectly you can end up getting yourself killed, this is especially apparent while fighting Orcus. With this change to tide, since i don't need that increased damage, or can get it better from other sources that grant more damage, i will never use something Tide.

If i want stamina regen i will shield slam the boss because that is safer, why would i leave myself defenseless to use tide for stam regen when i get get 50% of the stamina regen and be completely safe? yes the stam regen is half as much from shield slam as on tide, but i am not in danger of being one shot if i mistimed dropping my shield.

Anyways, I thoroughly dislike this change to tide. It makes it completely useless IMO, but if anyone thinks my reasoning is wrong please explain.

Rest of the GF changes are interesting and we will have to see how they pan out. ITF change was needed and is still useful, but the change to tide makes it unnecessary no matter what you are doing (and yes, i said that like 4 times now)

-edit- I am told i am being an idiot and reducing overall buffs available helps to diminish power creep since buffs are multiplicative and contribute more to power creep being an issue than the actual power creeping of stats. I don't like it, but i guess it is true. BIS people will still steamroll and pugs will still complain things are too hard so the change makes little difference in the end

scathias · July 2016

beckylunatic said:

lirithiel said:
So my question is: how on Toril could you create such an OP buff in the first place?
That's surprisingly simple to answer. The power was buffed to scale off damage resistance back when the level cap was 60 and stats couldn't be boosted to this degree. It was a good buff then, but didn't get ludicrous without all these guild boons and mount powers and bonding runes and etc.

IIRC, ITF started scaling with DR in mod 6 when the level cap was changed to 70. Towards the end of mod 6 it wasn't that bad because as you say, no guild boons, mount bonuses, bondings etc. In mod 7 people discovered bonding stones and guild boons appeared, mod 8 everyone learned about astral shield/hallowed ground + ITF, and mount bonuses, mod 9 we got better bondings.

The devs just plain forgot to think about power creep when they reworked ITF

theguiido · July 2016

So you all have no problem listening and talking to your HR and SW fanbase, keeping up with them about bugs that are fixed and what might be buffed, did you guys even see the amount of feedback and bugs left on the Official GF thread? @amenar

thegodofwar1220 · July 2016

I personally think that reducing the gf that much including anvil of doom is complete insanity.

evalira · July 2016

"Combat Superiority was another cause of their big burst – coupled with the Tactical Superiority Feat, you would deal 15% more damage, all the time."

Well if it was active all the time then it wasn't really burst damage was it, but the so called "long-term dps" you say you are trying to give the GF.

Regarding Tide of Iron - the change is stupid as already pointed out, and due to the double animation bug that happens pretty much everywhere (except against test dummies) I never used it anyway since you get locked in animation and unable to move out of the red. Similar thing happens with aggravating strike, but at least you have shield up then and can survive.

Steel defense - to me this is the worst change of all and is totally unnecessary. It seems you just want all GF's to have cower behind the shield poking and stabbing at bosses and doing pretty much nothing else. 6 seconds allowed me to get off a couple of encounters safely to buff and do a bit of dps to maintain aggro without getting one-shotted by Orcus. Now all I can do is shield bash, maybe without any latency/lag I could get off ITF but it's too risky since if I die, the party wipes, unless they are ranged and use pets to aggro. If dps is low in the group (and it will be lower with ITF nerf) this is going to take a lot longer and it is totally boring gameplay. Would rather put a tank better on and cast ITF from a distance and be safe. PLEASE RECONSIDER THIS CHANGE, or at least speed up our daily animations and make sure steel defense proc instantly.

ninefingers222 · July 2016

From a PvP perspective these changes still aren't enough, ITF nerf is great and all, but one of the saving graces when fighting a GF in a high level pvp game was it didn't have that much hp, so they died on a good focus, this was because of the necessity to stack defense to get DR for ITF, now we will see 190-200K HP GF monsters which still have far too much burst by the way, they are actually worse now in all honesty, if you thought 200K HP GWF's were tanky, wait til you see GF's in mod 10 ...

beckylunatic · July 2016

theguiido said:
So you all have no problem listening and talking to your HR and SW fanbase, keeping up with them about bugs that are fixed and what might be buffed, did you guys even see the amount of feedback and bugs left on the Official GF thread? @amenar

I think interaction with the playerbase was waiting for this post to be published and will commence shortly. Don't throw accusations around needlessly.

spike · July 2016

Tide of Iron
"we found that Tide of Iron was in a similar place – the debuff it provided was so powerful for your entire party, that Guardian Fighters HAD to pick it as one of their At-Wills, and it’s never fun to be forced to pick something."

But in terms of group play I will feel forced NOT to use Tide. Was this your intention? Is there no middle ground? I tank, any damage i deal in group play is just fluff sprinkled over my real function. Slotting Tide in a party after this proposed change would be very selfish on my part. Please reduce the group buff % or add significant threat generation. Give a tank some reason to use Tide for anything other than solo play.

Lunging Strike
The fast cooldown made LS was a wonderfull tool for mobility. I already spend too much time playing catch up with my party to see my best mobility tool have its frequency halved. Reduce its damage if you need, just let my use it to cover ground quickly and frequently. This isn't an issue of difficulty, its a fun issue. No fun for a party to stop and wait for the tank and no fun for the tank to arrive at the end of the fight just in time to realize he/she wasn't needed anyway.

Threat
The passive heroic feat that adds threat, how about an increase to the values.

Thank you and have a nice day.

taitinhakkaaja · July 2016

Nothing on knight's challenge? gg, well still have fun in pvp

solbergx · July 2016

Lets see how pvp goes now!!!

theguiido · July 2016

beckylunatic said:

theguiido said:
So you all have no problem listening and talking to your HR and SW fanbase, keeping up with them about bugs that are fixed and what might be buffed, did you guys even see the amount of feedback and bugs left on the Official GF thread? @amenar
I think interaction with the playerbase was waiting for this post to be published and will commence shortly. Don't throw accusations around needlessly.

I hope so. An updated list would be amazing.

Otherwise, I like the aim of the developers.

rafaelda · July 2016

I dont mind the reduced DMg output but i really think we GF should be ablle to recieve more hits in PVE, we have almost the same HP as a CW, even with hight def it means nothing when the dmg com from Knight Valor...

More HP or armor in PVE PLS ....

urabask · July 2016

Personally what I dislike most about this whole balance pass is that it doesn't take into account the investment players made in gear to make ITF powerful. Nerfing ITF is fine, but not adding anything that allows us to take advantage of all the extra DR means that we have to rework our builds while every other class hit by the balance pass doesn't really have to. Furthermore other classes have buffs that require little or no investment in recovery so we got the short end of the stick there too in that to keep ITF we need to invest in recovery or it's even worse than a 30% damage buff.

blog said:
This is still very powerful – 30% more damage for your entire party (at max rank) is a great ability. However, it won’t completely trivialize most of the end-game. This change also removes the need to focus entirely on Damage Resistance, allowing you to branch out a bit more and spread your stats around a bit more.

What I'd like to do know is how they arrived at 30%. Did they test runs with a HR, MoF CW, GWF/SW, DC, and OP and make comparisons? Or did they just run a few times with the buff at different numbers in random parties and settle on 30% as a good number?

Because end game content will still be trivial and you left buff/debuffs alone on HR but GF got whacked with the nerf bat as hard as you could. If you aren't looking at these buffs in relation to each other none of this balance will matter and end game content will remain trivial.

blog said:
To a lesser extent, we found that Tide of Iron was in a similar place – the debuff it provided was so powerful for your entire party, that Guardian Fighters HAD to pick it as one of their At-Wills, and it’s never fun to be forced to pick something. As such, we changed the debuff to only affect the casters damage, instead of the whole party. This means it’s still a very useful power for increasing your damage (and threat), but it isn’t a required debuff to make your whole party more effective. It also got a sizeable damage increase, again aiming to make this power fun for the caster to use, instead of required for its easy-to-maintain debuff.

This wasn't even true. ITF was so OP that you didn't need to use Tide of Iron.

If you were trying to make this power fun for the caster to you use you would done something about the ridiculous animation that makes it a hazard to use. Like everyone else has said no one will use it now.

scathias said:

-edit- I am told i am being an idiot and reducing overall buffs available helps to diminish power creep since buffs are multiplicative and contribute more to power creep being an issue than the actual power creeping of stats. I don't like it, but i guess it is true. BIS people will still steamroll and pugs will still complain things are too hard so the change makes little difference in the end

The whole balance pass makes it seem like they've decided that they want to get rid of strong buffs/debuffs on GF but they're not really sure what to replace them with.

evalira said:
Steel defense - to me this is the worst change of all and is totally unnecessary. It seems you just want all GF's to have cower behind the shield poking and stabbing at bosses and doing pretty much nothing else. 6 seconds allowed me to get off a couple of encounters safely to buff and do a bit of dps to maintain aggro without getting one-shotted by Orcus. Now all I can do is shield bash, maybe without any latency/lag I could get off ITF but it's too risky since if I die, the party wipes, unless they are ranged and use pets to aggro. If dps is low in the group (and it will be lower with ITF nerf) this is going to take a lot longer and it is totally boring gameplay. Would rather put a tank better on and cast ITF from a distance and be safe. PLEASE RECONSIDER THIS CHANGE, or at least speed up our daily animations and make sure steel defense proc instantly.

They didn't even explain this change either.

Not sure why this was a priority with paladins are invincible.

greyhawk · July 2016

Spread points around? Like I WANT to do that after upgrading full def slot companions and making a ton of Azures? Just thinking of the cost of retooling my GF and going Conq - cause that's now the ONLY viable tree - is enough for me to bench my GF.

I don't have the Zen or the AD to buy completely new companions just so I can play a weak dps with a shield! I'll play my healadin or GWF, or find a new game to spend money on.

GG!

fatninja144477 · July 2016

So why are we worrying about the DPS of the GF anyway? The class is a tank, so are we now removing it form the list of tanks in this game? Between my pally and GF that are at the same gear score I would rather play a class that is almost unkillable in PVE than a class that has had its ability murdered.

deathbeez · July 2016

evalira said:

Steel defense - to me this is the worst change of all and is totally unnecessary.

Yep.

So what about the other nerfs from preview? Lunging strike, Villan's Menace , Enforced thread, etc?
Did you forget those or did they get dropped from that massive nerf-list?

rondy44 · July 2016

So many bugs

1 - Bull Charge was also a little high on the Burst damage spectrum, but it turned out to be primarily because of a bug:

2 - Great Weapon Fighter: Steel Grace: No longer shared with the Guardian Fighter. Renamed to Steel Resolve. Several bugs with this power have been fixed, which should make it work much more reliably.

3 - We reworked the buff that Commander’s Strike provides. It now only affects Encounter powers, and it now triggers when hitting any Marked target, instead of needing to specify yet another target with the power. This should make it easier for your teammates to see who to hit to get the benefit. The power also had several bugs that we fixed – it will generate AP now, it will have an activation time, and it will be affected by damage buff, debuffs, and resistance.

dionchi · July 2016

It seems to me that whenever we hear about a "CLASS BALANCE", we should all just take for granted that a toon will be made weaker, less desirable and the player will have to invest in some kind of 'alternate means' (buy something) to remain playable at the same level as previously configured...

Which (again to me) just shows what a waste of money it is to invest on building your character because as soon as you do someone comes along and nurfs it and makes the investment(s) next to worthless.

NOT EVERYONE PLAYS IN A GROUP! So for those debuffs effecting group dynamics it is totally meaningless and ultimately disadvantageous to a solo player.

Instead of decreasing the viability of existing characters in currently existing areas, for those people who think "it's too easy" , make more challenging new areas for them, not make existing areas harder for the current crowd?

For the people who complain that PVP characters are improperly balanced how about making some of these changes only applicable in PVP - not PVE? There are already separate sets of armor for PVP and PVE so how about building those balancing restrictions into the PVP armor and tuning PVE armor to the equivalent of wearing a paper bag if someone takes it into PVP?

It seems instead of pursuing the path of least resistance, people asking for and making changes are seeking the most offensive and most deleterious methods they can think of for solo players and those not willing or able to spend a lot of money to buy the things they need to stay competitive after these changes.

-anyway that's my opinion.

lantern22 · July 2016

Tide of Iron

I think the overwhelming feedback from the GF's is that we don't want it changed and we don't feel like we have to slot it and are put out by that. The feedback is if you make those changes, it will be useless in group play.

Given the massive difference to ITF, I think the game can support Tide of Iron staying as is.

Please consider not crucifying this at will.

Lunging Strike - this is as much a utility as anything else, please consider keeping this as is.

Regarding targeting of powers etc. - this doesn't need to be made any easier, there should be some skill required to land a hit. I think you can leave that as is as well.

The rest I'm not overly fussed about but I play an IV, always have, so I'm not sure about the SM nerfs.

destrowod · July 2016

Look i tried to read the full thing but its a bit complicated, im not really good at understanding all these specs, especially since there is a lot of powers i never use. But the Into the Fray and Anvil of Doom aspect is what i use. One thing i know for sure is that at 2.5K , wich is the most common item level in the game, a decent builded character yet far from "endgame" , my GF is completely HAMSTER in term of damage dealth but tank pretty well. Thats what its supose to do i guess. I don't even do dailies with him anymore or stuff like that cause its too annoying. Anvil of Doom does not do massive crazy damage... And while my fray buff me , i do not start to do crazy damages when i activate it. Its usefull to people in dungeons that play with me but again its nothing crazy.

What i don't like is that you pretty much want to remove a part of my utility in dungeons (buffing) while buffing and tanking is the only thing the character is use for. Its damage output is a joke.

But on top of that, even when questing by myself you want to decrease my hitting power? LOL ok, whats next guys, replace my sword by a broomstick?

You know what i hate about this pattern, you give us new boons and stuff but we have to work hard to get them, but down the road you nerf nerf nerf all the time what we had. So in the end you know what happen? We work hard to get on the same power level as we used to be .... WE PLAY FOR NOTHING basically. We don't have this feeling of progression.

theguiido · July 2016

I wonder what will happen with the updated build for the test server.

shiva79 · July 2016

urabask said:
Personally what I dislike most about this whole balance pass is that it doesn't take into account the investment players made in gear to make ITF powerful. Nerfing ITF is fine, but not adding anything that allows us to take advantage of all the extra DR means that we have to rework our builds while every other class hit by the balance pass doesn't really have to. Furthermore other classes have buffs that require little or no investment in recovery so we got the short end of the stick there too in that to keep ITF we need to invest in recovery or it's even worse than a 30% damage buff.

this brings it to the point
most people agree, that ITF needed to be adjusted, but cutting the link between ITF and DR completely, will make almost every current GF's trincket and enchantment build utterly useless
think this is even worse than LM fix back then (because there, people knew, that it wasnt working as intended and collected it on own risk)

tor · July 2016

Feedback:

I'm pretty much going to be saying the same things as everyone else, but I still feel that it needs to be said.

I think everyone agreed that ITF was OP and needed to be nerfed. I'm disappointed that it is a flat buff and doesn't take into account your DR, mainly due to the massive investments people have made that are now obsolete. We are talking millions and millions of AD in some cases. Luckily for me I'm only a 2.8k GF, but even I have spent a couple of million refining Defense artifacts, buying defense pets, etc. which with these changes will be obsolete. This is not something that a free respec will solve. I'm no expert , but couldn't there be some way to use your defense rating to feed in to something even if it isn't ITF so all this work isn't wasted.

Also you mention being able to spread your stats about a bit more but to what? It's pretty easy to max out your DR and become a perma ITF by 2.8k to 3k IL. So unless you plan to PVP there is little or no incentive to improve your character beyond that point.

I have grave concerns which might be unfounded that once these changes are made that the new group meta will be 3 DPS + 2 DC. You say that ITF is still a great power, but compared to what the other two support classes can offer it's not enough by itself. A DC can buff/debuff/heal, an OP can buff/heal, a GF can buff and err...not sure. The reason I've not mentioned tanking is that this game is DPS orientated and doesn't really have content that truly needs a tank. Top end groups will get by with a tank pet in all probability. This is especially true with the Tide of Iron nerf which I have never felt compelled to use myself except with Orcus who is cheap, but that's a whole different discussion. Tide of Iron should be left as is, with the current changes it will never be used. I hope I'm wrong.

Moving on I really would like to know why it's felt necessary to nerf the recharge time on Lunging Strike by 50%, that's massive, for what is essentially a mobility/utility power. Please don't do it.

In the blog you mention wanting to curtail the GF's burst damage, but boost our sustained damage. I'm just not seeing where or how are sustained damage is being improved. Am I missing something?

Finally the nerf to Steel defense, would love to know the reasoning. I use it, but I have actually been trying to wean myself off it and use Guarded Assault instead. If anything I'd like it to be increased to 4 seconds instead of 3.5 seconds, just so it's easier to countdown it's uptime in my head, specifically for Orcus where I still use it as he is a joke.

johnjohniii · July 2016

IFT - I think a nerf was needed but you nerfed it a little much.
Tide of Iron - I think it's nerfed to being obsolete. With the changes proposed I will not slot it anymore.
Steel Defense - are you kidding me... how is me being invulnerable (most of the time) for 6 seconds OP when my tank competitor can make THE ENTIRE GROUP INV FOR 6 SECS!!! seriously.... seriously...

It seems the dps builds are getting a buff while the tank builds are getting killed. Pretty much a hard core bummer.

airlv14 · July 2016

I don't agree with the nerf to Steel Defense to 3.5 seconds max. Dailies like Villain's Menace already eat up almost 1.5 seconds in activation, leaving only 2 seconds for pve content to survive massive blows such as Orcus. Apply this to pvp, but leave it alone for pve. I have a feeling this is a purely pvp decision and shouldn't be reflected on pve.

In fact, is it possible to just leave these effects alone in pve, and just apply them to pvp? I've noticed daze and stuns are treated that way on encounters.

While you're at it, can u give us something that's on par with Paladin's Binding Oath? I don't feel Iron Warrior can even compete with it.

Class Balance: Guardian Fighter

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