(Ant-Monster) Guardian Fighter Review

(<URGENT!!>CLICK HERE if you want to listen to the audio version instead of reading...)

Updated: 6/2/14

Wassup players, my name is Ant-Monster, and I want to share with you all what I believe could TRULY help the Guardian Fighter as a class, and become an essential component for ALL dungeons. But before I explain what needs fixing, we must first understand why things need to be fixed to begin with.

The Role of the Guardian Fighter:
Often times the role of the GF is misunderstood, and because of that the GF receives a negative rating. A lot of people have this mindset that it's ALL about damage, damage is king, and since the GF is unable to deliver damage on a competitive level as Control Wizards, Trickster Rogues, Hunter Rangers, and Great Weapon Fighters, they're just dead weight. Nothing more than player controlled companions. So players who have become elitist neglect GF's. But here's what people fail to realize, the GF was never truly designed to be a damage dealer. We were design to be the TANK. The GF was made to be the team's heroic savior, the dude who will guard and protect their team mates, the person you can depend on to get bad guys off your back. We were never meant to deal insane damage. If we were, our base damage would have been much higher.

The Guardian Fighter's Powers:
The GF was given some of the MOST POWERFUL encounters in the entire game to assure it's role. So I will briefly explain some of these powers, to help people better understand them.

• Fighter's Recovery grants 100% health return (if you have 3 pts in it), based on ALL damage dealt while the daily is active.
• Villain's Menace unleashes a wrath like non other, damaging all foes to be hit by it's destructive power because you pist off the GF for harming his/her people.
• Lunging Strike is by far the most AMAZING gap closing, damage dealing encounter in the entire game! Do you know what would happen to someone in PvP if hit simultaneously by 5 of these!?!? Lol brah!... Also with the new GF's encounter revamp, it's even better than before!
• Enforce Threat in conjunction with Enhanced Mark is the #1 combo to generate threat. Threat generation is the core of the guardian fighter's role for dungeons. The more threat generated, the more mobs will choose to attack the GF over the rest. Which means more survivability for the rest of the party.
• Frontline Surge used to be one of the GREATEST crowd control powers the GF had for both PvE & PvP. Anyone or anything caught in it's deadly path of shields would instantly be knocked back and left prone aching on the ground. This encounter was critical to have in PvP, especially with the +0.5 second prone duration feat.
• Threatening Rush is a mighty shield bash that marks foes causing an annoyance SO great that the enemy can barely resist attacking you!

Why some of these powers are constricted, and what can be changed:
The ideal of these powers are perfect for GF's role, but a lot of them are limited. For example, Enforced Threat has a hit cap of ONLY 8 targets... Often times in dungeons, parties like to attack far more than 8 mobs at a time which leads to a lot of party's deaths because of the shortage of crowd control. If GF's Enforce Threat did not have a hit cap, every single mob hit by it would be marked, and force to attack the GF. Meaning the other classes would be free to focus on burning down the mobs. However, that would come with a risk. The more mobs forced to attack the GF, the higher the chances of the GF dying. So the question is, what can be done to combat this issue? Well the obvious solution is to make the GF tankier, increase it's survivablilty. However, it needs to be done in a way where it won't overpower the guardian fighter in PvP.

Solutions:
1. Unlimited Guard; is by far one of the best options. But I'm sure it's overlooked by Devs because they think GF's would just sit on PvP nodes all day, never dying, causing an imbalance in PvP because they "can't be killed," bla bla bla, GF's overpowered... I can list SEVERAL good reasons why this will be false.
A). The GF's #1 threat in PvP is the Control Wizard. The CW has the ability to slow and freeze the GF using Ray of Frost even if the GF is guarding. Once the GF is frozen by the chill stacks, he's controllable. Typically the CW will freeze the GF, Entangling Force him/her, and then blow through their encounters and repeat the process.

. The Great Weapon Fighter has the ability to Sprint. The GWF can easily sprint directly THROUGH the GF to get behind his shield and use Take Down or Frontline Surge to control the GF. It's happens to me very often.

C). Need I say it, Rogues can just go invisible and Smoke Bomb us, or Shadow Strike us which will briefly disorient the GF, or whatever they want.

D). Even other GF's can get behind enemy GF's shields by running directly through them. All it takes is skill and practice.

E). Hunter Ranger's have that one sneak attack that hits from behind and prones.

My point is this... Giving GF's unlimited guard will NOT make us OP. Not only that, but the royal crown of the "Tank" will be returned back to it's rightful owners (the GF's). Right now the GWF's are the "real" tanks of the game, and do not rightfully deserve to be.

2. Higher Damage Resistance; is also a really good solution. To be honest, I'm shocked we don't have a very unique damage resistance from the rest of the classes. As of right now, most GF's can get about 45-53% damage resistance. That's ALL!?? The GF should have at least 60-70% damage resistance. And if the unlimited guard meter was implemented into the game, that would make Iron Warrior useless. So what if Iron Warrior increased damage resistance temporarily instead of boosting guard meter? If these suggestions were applied, the Guardian Fighter would DEFINITELY live up to it's reputation of being the TANK. I completely understand why we don't have high damage, but what I don't understand is why isn't this balanced by having high damage resistance?

3. Iron Warrior; could make your guard meter indestructible for 8 seconds instead of just making it stronger.

4. Remove or increase the hit caps on Frontline Surge & Enforce Threat.

Why GF's are Underrated:
Before Module 2 GWF's were challenging, but could still be kill by GF's if they knew how to fight tactically. However, that is no more. It wasn't until Module 2 when you GWF's were given a TASTE, a SAMPLE of the GF's powers which made GWF's overpowered. Do you understand what I'm saying? GWF's didn't have ALL our powers, not even half of them, just a SAMPLE of our powers sent GWF's through the roof!

Here's another thing people don't understand. In order to even be a DECENT GF (not good, not the best, not a master) with ALL the disadvantages GF's currently have, the skill level required is FAR greater than most classes. For example, what do you think will happen to a TR if he couldn't dodge or use Impossible to Catch? What do you think would happen to a GWF if they didn't have unstoppable, no shield to block, and no ranged prone/stun attacks vs. a "decent" Guardian Fighter? So far, there's only 7 GF Masters in the game. And even we can't kill a GWF 1v1, even with the new tactics we created. You know why? Because it's out of our control, there's NOTHING we can do as of right now to go toe-to-toe with a GWF. Not only that, but because of the GWF's base damage, and the copied & pasted Frontline Surge, we were nerfed along with them... Honestly, if ANY GF feels like talking trash about the GWF's who don't rightfully DESERVE our powers, so be it. Because it's doesn't belong to them.

Tenacity!:
PvP was fun and entertaining because of the way it was. Only minor adjustments were required. The TR is suppose to hurt, the CW's Ice Knife is suppose to hurt! The DC is suppose to heal, the GWF is NOT suppose to be a TANK, the GF is suppose to be the TANK. The PvP system is fragile. Before module 2 everything had a yin and yang. Not saying it no longer does, but the GWF with Iron Vanguard is the number one reason why PvP is no longer balanced, but certainly not the ONLY reason. Increasing damage resistance to all classes only slows down/bores PvP matches. What I'm trying to say is, the reason why PvP was so enjoyable (although some adjustments were needed) was because of the INTENSITY! The fast pace gameplay, the destruction to player's health points, the different play styles, character builds, strategies, and classes who pose threat to one another. All of it already worked FINE. If you change it, there's a very good chance you will hurt PvP. Trust me when I say this.

Matter a fact, here's an example. There's this game I used to play called RS (I don't know if I'm allowed to say the full name). RS had a combat system like non-other. It was very weird, everything worked in slow ticks, player's characters look turns hitting each other. Very strange, but what made it work was the INTENSITY. As weird as it sounds, players enjoy getting hit or hitting others really hard (doing high damage). Because it causes excitement or panic, all of which is ENTERTAINMENT! The PvP system in RS was weird, but it worked! The day the company decided to make MAJOR changes to the combat system KILLED the game. Hundreds of players (including myself) made threads warning the company of RS, but they still went through with it. When all they had to do was scrap the idea, and make MINOR adjustments to their perfectly working PvP system. The company of RS didn't listen to the community until it was already too late. After suffering from losing thousands of players (or should I say the player's money for membership), only then did they decide to start working with the community by using polling systems for future content. Which allows the players to vote on what they want, and the company of RS would only accept polls that passed with a 75% 'yes' rate. This happened in 2012, which is NOT long ago. My point is this...

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it." <---- This phrase is EXTREMELY important to remember.

I mean think about, the MAIN things people were asking for are new maps, new modes, and a better match making system. Do you understand what that means? That means people enjoy PvP the way it is, but they grow bored of playing the same modes, and dealing with rage quitters. Also, many players only PvE for the things they want or need for PvP. So yes, PvP does require a little bit of work. However the changes/updates should ONLY be made in SMALL doses fueled by community feedback.

Also I'm aware "feedback" is easier said than done, and there's only a handful of people who actually type out constructive feedback.

But to get back to the point, Tenacity was NOT needed. Only minor adjustments.

Tenacity Adjustments Required:
When players were first told about tenacity, we were fed the idea that it would balance things out. But how is that possible when every single class receives the same amount of tenacity? I thought they were going to give GF's a larger amount of tenacity because we're tanks, making it harder to kill us..., but I was wrong. However, tenacity can still be fine tuned to even things out, please take advantage of it PWE/Cryptic.

Side Notes:
• TAB Mark - I like the new "Perma" Mark, because it allows me to focus on attacking the boss more. I don't have to worry about him attacking any of my team mates while marked by me. Plus in PvP I don't have to worry about the debuff disappearing after my opponent has struck me.

• Critical Chance - Because of the High General set it makes sense why we don't have a natural high critical chance, plus tanks are not suppose to be high DPS. But with that said, the High General set doesn't do EXACTLY what it says (false advertisement). There's an internal 30 seconds cool down before the set will activate again; weak. However, I still prefer the High General set over Knight's Captain because the DPS boost is pretty sick.

• Guard Meter - The current guard meter is still weak for both PvP & PvE, especially against enemies with perfect weapon enchantments. The chunks that break off are too great, and causes the GF's shield to drop way too early.

• High End Dungeons - Typically people avoid GF's in parties because they want all the damage and crowd control they can get. Perfect example, Castle Never. Since controlling the mobs there is essential and often times challenging, players feels if you kill them quickly you won't have to deal with the mobs for very long time; which is true. Now that's not exactly a form of "crowd control," but it gets the job done. It also speeds up the dungeon; that's a win-win... But in order for this to work you need damage dealers, which GF's are NOT. But that's how it should be, otherwise we'll be FAR more overpowered than GWF's. Ying and Yang baby, there needs to be a balance.

• Knee Breaker & Griffin's Wrath - These two powers have SOOO much potential, but are limited. They both are very easy to avoid, and when missed the the cool down shows no mercy. Both these powers require the same lock-on feature as the GWF's Take Down encounter, and the reduced cool down if missed.

Griffin's Wrath has a really good stun feature, and could be compared to the Rogue's Impact Shot. However, there is one MAJOR difference. Impact Shot is a range attack, Griffin's Wrath is close quarters. People can easily escape Griffin's Wrath by simply holding 'W' to run... Griffin's Wrath stun effect should at least last 0.1 - 0.3 seconds longer so it's chain-able. Otherwise we'll just miss and be penalized with a cool down.

Knee Breaker would be wonderful if it had both a slowing & stun effect. As of right now, CW's, TR's, DC's, and HR's can just dodge while affected by Knee Breaker to get some distance from the slow moving GF. However, these very same classes are unable to dodge while stunned by as Rogue's Smoke Bomb which is AoE. If Knee Breaker had both the Rogue's stun effect and slow effect, it would be an EXCELLENT option for both PvP and PvE boss fights.

• High General - should do exactly as it says in it's description. If it did, that would boost DPS in dungeons (which people want...), creating a place for GF's in high end dungeons. Remove the internal 30 second cool down, so crit severity could be stacked, and refreshed every 8 seconds. By doing this, it will truly make HG a Tier 2 set. A person who dedicates his character to be a TEAM PLAYER should never be penalized with nerfs or hit caps. I would also like to point out, HG does not have the resources needed to be overpowered in PvP. GF's only use single target powers in PvP, and if they do use AoE's, they will cripple their damage capabilities (which creates a balance). Not to mention we have low critical chance to begin with, plus tenacity & tenacity gear is more popular anyways.

• Knight's Captain - Instead of nerfing it, why not just tweak it a little bit? Instead of the 60% power, 25% defense boost. Why not just adjust it to where it gives 20% power, and 60-75% defense boost? You can't go wrong with adding survivability to a team brah. If rainbow parties can't high DPS they're way through high end dungeons, why not allow them to survive they're way through it lol?

• Enforce Threat - should not have a hit cap...

• Supremacy of Steel - should last another 3-5 seconds longer.

• GWF's DO NOT DESERVE OUR POWERS. They're causing nothing but trouble for us!

• ^

• Profound & Ancient's - These items cost waaayyyy too much for such little return. I'm mostly talking about the ancient accessories and not the weapon sets. As for the profound gear, all it needs increased stats.

• The Enchantment System - is a lot cheaper, but yet very annoying. I swear it seems like I can't hold onto AD anymore, because I'm constantly pouring AD into the refinement system... And obtaining AD is no easy task, especially for those who don't have the time to grind. So in a way people are steered into the direction of purchasing Zen for resources. The enchantment system would have been much better if they would have just reduced the resources needed from 4 enchantments of the same type, too 2 enchantments of the same type. It used to be so simple to upgrade enchantments. At one point, all we had to do was put a stack of preservation wards in the slot, and smash away on our mice to create multiple upgraded enchantments. Upgrading artifacts take way too long brah.

• Transmuting - Is still very expensive. I heard it used to be much worse, but nonetheless it's still expensive. Think about it, ALL we're doing is changing the look of items. It's not like stats are being upgraded. Transmuting high end items should cost no less than 15k AD.

• Removing Enchantments - is now very affordable compared too how much it used to cost lol. But man, I used to have 350g, I'm now down to 170g. The only suggestion I have is changing the price of 2.5g to remove enchants from epics to either 1.5g or 2g.

• Guild Repositories - are extremely useful, but are very expensive to open. I would really like to see the prices greatly reduced or currency changed to gold.

• Steal Time, and Shard of Avalanche - and a few other CW powers need their casting times reduced a bit.

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These added suggestions are not in the audio version.
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• Bull Charge - needs a rollback. The original Bull Charge was much more reliable, especially when it came to knocking people off of nodes.

• Guard Defects - There's a huge delay to re-guard after recovering from prones, and stuns. For example; if a player was holding his assigned button to guard, and was then knocked prone or stunned. While still holding the guard button, the GF will NOT immediately guard from attacks again as soon as possible (in other words once the crowd control effect is over, you have to repress your guard button instead of the GF re-guarding automatically).

Another defect is when the GF will repeat the Threatening Rush animation if you press the guard button before the original Threatening Rush animation is done. Very annoying, and can cause players to die during the heat of battle.

• HR Vines - are hands down, the most annoyingly over powered encounters in the game. Not to mention their melee attack that can do 50% of a GF's health. Even CONTROL Wizards can't out CC them.

• (Griffin's Wrath) TR's Duelist Flurry Reset - When hit by Griffin's Wrath, the Duelist Flurry animation should be interrupted and reset. As of right now, TR's are able to continue the combo after being interrupted. Unlike Frontline Surge or Bull Charge which completely resets them.

• Iron Warrior Animation - GF's should be able to cancel the animation by holding guard, like we can with Knight's Valor. In the heat of the moment, the casting time can really make a life or death difference, ESPECIALLY in PvP. Example; I'm on my mount headed towards a node, and on that node there's a bad guy. Before I get to the node, I have to make sure I'm at a safe distance before casting Iron Warrior otherwise I'll be interrupted by the enemy. Once activated, I now have to walk the rest of the distance to get on the node; wasting precious time of Iron Warrior.

• Guarded Assault - should reflect 15-25% of all blocked damage at 3/3pts.

• (Protector) Guarded Assault - Should have a feat in the Protector tree allowing it to reflect 30% of all blocked damage back to it's attacker.

• Improved Vigor Feat - should be 5/10/15/20/25%

• Reckless Attack Feat - If given unlimited guard, Reckless Attacker should still give double power.

• Plate Agility Feat - should be 2/4/6/8/10%.

• Brawling Warrior Feat - should increase damage resistance by 3/6/9/12/15%

• Iron Guard Feat - should also make the GF's shield indestructible.

• Inspiring Leader Feat - should also increase the party's damage resistance by 2/4/6/8/10%, or deflect chance by 2/4/6/8/10%.

• Surging Tide Feat - should be 4/8/12/16/20%.

• Armor of Bahamut Feat - should reduce all incoming damage by 30% when guard is broken.

• Take Measure Feat - should give 40%, with a cool down of 1 minute. Because the average GF has about 29k HP, because 5% of 29k is only 1450 HP -.-...

• Greater Plague Fire - needs some animation position adjustments. For example, the GPF won't cover the entire blade of a weapon. 80% of the blade will have the GPF effects, and then the tip of the sword is left out. On the "Long Sword of the Protector" the GPF even covers some of the hilt of the sword.

• Duelist Flurry - can still finish it's combo during death/resurrection from Soulforged... For example, let's say a TR is about get his in combo in with DF, then I kill him right before he gets that combo off. The DF will still hit me, while the TR is on the ground reviving from soulforged... I have recorded footage of it lol.

• Knee Breaker - doesn't hit has hard compared to Anvil of Doom or even Bull Charge. What I mean by this is, I've only seen my Knee Breakers hit up to 3k damage. I can hit GWF's with 5-6k's with Bull Charge or Anvil of Doom (without the 2x damage). But I've never seen my Knee Breakers exceed 3.6k damage even with crits.

• Deflection - should come naturally to us, like crit comes naturally to CW's, TR's, HR's, GWF's, and DC's... GF's should have EASY access to 35% deflection from DEX at 15.

• Epic Dread Vault - is by far one of the most bugged Dungeons lol... The campfires don't work, tentacles hit outside of the AoE red indicators, the shard after defeating the boss glitches out at times canceling the loot reward, Hulks make it incredibly hard. This dungeon should have a 15k Gear Score requirement xD!...

• Enduring Warrior - should heal the GF for 10-20% for every kill instead of 1-3%. There should be a feat in the Conq' tree that boost it by +1-5% (with a total of 25% if the GF is 3/3 in Enduring Warrior + the 5/5 in the feat).

• Villain's Menace - casting animation takes WAY too long, but is AWESOME looking. GF's should be immune to CC while casting Villain's Menace.

• Griffin's Wrath - creates a guard delay after use.
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Recommended PvE Powers:
GF - Lunging Strike, Frontline, Enforced Threat, Cleave, Tide of Iron or Threatening Rush, Enhanced Mark, Combat Superiority, Villain’s Menace, Fighter’s Recovery or Supremacy of Steel.
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Tips for EXTREME tanking:

Recommended Powers - Cleave, Tide of Iron, Iron Warrior, Knight's Valor, Enforced Threat, Shield Talent, Enhanced Mark, Fighter's Recovery, and Supremacy of Steel.

Step 1: Enforce Threat.

Step 2: Active Iron Warrior (ALWAYS active Iron Warrior before using Knight's Valor).

Step 3: As soon as you active Knight's Valor IMMEDIATELY guard from attacks. By holding your shield up, you can block ALL incoming damage your party receives at little cost to the Guard Meter. However, if you take direct damage during this time, chunks will break off the guard meter.

Step 4: Wait for cool downs and repeat rotations.

- If you have your daily, and a decent amount of health. Use Supremacy of Steel FIRST, then Enforced Threat, Iron Warrior, and then Knight's Valor (remember to guard while KV is active).

- Also, here's a cool trick. If you stack life steal, then SoS will actually heal you VERY well instead of just reflecting damage back. The BEST gear for this trick is the Dread Legion set + the Fallen Dragon sword & shield, and a Plague Fire/Lightning (SoS stacks Plague Fire).