An Idea for Savage Defense

[Kaeth]

I'm personally loving my Guardian post-5.0.4 now that I've adjusted to the new active mitigation system, but I can easily sympathize with a particular complaint about the new Savage Defense skill.

Due to the RNG nature of dodge, when facing a single target, the actual benefit of the additional avoidance is uncertain and just plain less satisfying than the immediate and obvious big green number provided by Frenzied Regeneration. That's not to say it's a bad ability -- its proper use is critical to our survival unless we greatly outgear content -- but the benefit is simply too "behind the scenes" to make proper use feel gratifying (and indeed, in RARE cases it may do absolutely nothing if you fail to dodge the ~3-4 incoming hits from a boss over its duration, or if you would have dodged the same hits without it, you lucky bear you).

So all of the obvious stated, I'd like simply to propose a minor boost to the skill mainly intended to add back in that mental gratification for pushing a button and seeing something obvious happen as a result (okay folks, here comes the TL;DR portion):

What if having Savage Defense active caused you to gain a minor heal or perhaps a short-duration, stacking damage buff whenever you successfully dodge? Nothing too significant, but just enough to change SD from the uncertain, RNG-reliant effect that it is into something with a psychological reward for its use. Whatever the actual effect of the proc, it would need a very small (1s?) cooldown to avoid making AoE trash tanking ridiculous.

What do you all think? Looking for feedback on my harebrained idea before I post on the official forums.

[alanium]

I agree it needs to be changed. I'm a little confused on your idea, sorry. You want Savage Defense to be the same, just have small heal or damage buff attached to it? If so, I could agree with the damage buff, except having a damage buff for using a tank move doesn't seem real tank like to me. I could be wrong about that. The heal seems redundant with with Frenzied Regen. I think you're idea is good, just personally don't agree with the ways you select doing it. I'm for completely scraping the dodge buff and making it a physical damage shield or some kind of damage reduction for the next melee hit.

[Kaeth]

I meant to specify that the buff would be a (100%) proc when you dodge, not just a passive buff that's up for the duration.

The reason for a stacking damage buff is that it wouldn't provide any additional mitigation. Just a secondary benefit so that the player sees something happening as a result of activating that ability.

But now that I think about it ... what if it gave you a stacking damage reduction buff of 1-3% per stack for each time you dodge? The dodge would probably have to be nerfed from 45% back down to the 40% from earlier in beta, but ... hmm, that would even linger for a few seconds after SD ends and fill in the gap between uses.

So my idea, expanded and clarified:

1. You spend 60 rage, activate SD, and get a 6-second dodge buff (45% in live, would have to be nerfed for balance).
2. For the duration of SD, in addition to the dodge buff, each time you dodge, you receive a stacking buff that lasts for 4 to 6 seconds and reduces incoming physical damage by some nominal percentage, say between 1 and 3%. Stacks up to five times.

[alanium]

I'm liking it.

[TyloBedo]

I don't really know if I understand you correctly, but you're complaining that savage defense is too rng, and to "fix" this you want to make it so that when you dodge you get something. That seems to defeat the whole purpose of your complaint, shouldn't you be asking for someyhing to happen when you don't dodge so that no matter what you always get something from hitting sd?

[Codyak]

It does seem a little odd as warriors block (and possible critical block) all attacks and pally's just get the straight 30-60% damage reduction.

[Kaeth]

I don't really know if I understand you correctly, but you're complaining that savage defense is too rng, and to "fix" this you want to make it so that when you dodge you get something. That seems to defeat the whole purpose of your complaint, shouldn't you be asking for someyhing to happen when you don't dodge so that no matter what you always get something from hitting sd?

The idea with the stacking mitigation buff isn't to remove RNG altogether, but grant an increasing defense boost with each dodge to reduce the damage on successive hits you fail to avoid. You're right, it still requires you to dodge at least once or twice to gain a benefit, and it's still possible that a horrible RNG streak curses you with taking every single incoming hit directly to the face for the duration.

On the converse, you could gain a stacking buff for every hit you DON'T dodge while the buff is in effect. But then the added mitigation scales inversely with dodge rating and agility rather than improving with gear. Though overall survivability with increased avoidance from gear would still be positive, the mechanic just wouldn't feel as rewarding as your gear improved...

[Dreyen]

One idea i had, is that bear already have quite a bit more damage reduction than other tanks.. but they lack compared to a shield tank using their active mitigation, making us weaker for strong, physical damage attacks such as impale.. My idea was to reduce the dodge from savage defense and add a small damage reduction component to it. Numbers can vary, but 5-10% damage reduction and 30-35% dodge would be great. This way, even if you fail to dodge, you still get some, albeit a minor, benefit from it.