Guardian Alpha Patchnotes

[Deleted]

Not as easy as that. How much Rage do you have? What's going to happen in the next 2-3 seconds? Do you have a CD up? What are your healers doing?

The general rule is: Keep SD up, use T&C on CD, FR if you need to. However there are lots of things that can change that.

That's true, thanks for the reply!

[Dreyen]

Recent tweet from Celestalon: https://twitter.com/Celestalon/statu...76690470916096

Interesting.. not sure why they are necesairly touching tank hp and boss damage, i thought they wanted tank healing to be significant again? High damage taken and high health pools are the way to go for that. I expect they might not be touching bear tank mitigation that much though...

[Callsignecho]

Interesting.. not sure why they are necesairly touching tank hp and boss damage, i thought they wanted tank healing to be significant again? High damage taken and high health pools are the way to go for that. I expect they might not be touching bear tank mitigation that much though...

The part of the tweet that is interesting is the Resolve design tweak (and who knows where that will go). Everything else is a numbers game.

[Raugnaut]

Interesting.. not sure why they are necesairly touching tank hp and boss damage, i thought they wanted tank healing to be significant again? High damage taken and high health pools are the way to go for that. I expect they might not be touching bear tank mitigation that much though...

I'm not sure why they would even touch tank HP, unless its specifically for Bears/DKs who can get stupid amounts of HP with the right gearing strat.

More health on everyone gives healers even more time to react, which further encourages triage healing playstyle.

Well, I do guess that having 800k DKs/1 mil+ druids while warriors sit at 450k is kinda silly.

[Arielle]

Interesting.. not sure why they are necesairly touching tank hp and boss damage, i thought they wanted tank healing to be significant again? High damage taken and high health pools are the way to go for that. I expect they might not be touching bear tank mitigation that much though...

Well the boss damage thing is obvious. Any situation where being 2-3 shot is a possibility goes directly against what they're trying to do. So I get why they're trying to fix it. I think UM triggering off of individual Lacerate ticks is probably horribly overpowered whenever you have more than 1 target. It's fine for 1 target, but once you start adding target it gets insane.

[Raugnaut]

Anyway, lets see how Druids can get nerfed mitigation wise.

1) Mastery.
2) More armor nerfs.
3) hits to TC/FR/SD.
4) Hits to Pulverize.
5) Reduction in Thick Hide magical damage taken.

Aaand... Thats all I can think of for overall mitigation. Possible hit to Barkskin, but I doubt thats likely.

[-Doko-]

It might be needed to make it possible for healers to be able to heal the tanks while keeping the current model from going insane at higher ilvls.

Lower health should make so that the scaling of spellpower for healers is a bit more on pace with the health of tanks (which gets ridiculous at higher ilvls). I'm guessing at some point it becomes necesary to have 2.5-3 healers just to keep the tank up.
Lower boss damage -> lower tank mitigation can be controlled to keep it the same % of health taken per swing.

Not sure exactly how they plan to change resolve though. But I would imagine they are just gonna lower armor for all tanks down to like 30% to give it some room to grow with gear. Right now my warrior zoning to heroic UBRS had 70-72% armor DR.... yeaaaaah

[Dreyen]

Well the boss damage thing is obvious. Any situation where being 2-3 shot is a possibility goes directly against what they're trying to do. So I get why they're trying to fix it. I think UM triggering off of individual Lacerate ticks is probably horribly overpowered whenever you have more than 1 target. It's fine for 1 target, but once you start adding target it gets insane.

Yea, 2-3 shot is stupid i concur. I expected the model to be more like, you get 4 to 7 shot, but healing back one boss hit requires one active mitigation move and 2-3 heals from healers in worth of healing, making you an obvious focus for healing. Something like having 1mil hp, boss hits for 200k, greater heal heals for 80k.

At least i guess time will tell, i dont think bears will get many nerfs, perhaps ursa major since they want to nerf health... i think they have nerfed us enough in terms of mitigation, we're not exactly kings in mitigation compared to other tanks right now, even if you count our self-healing.

[Raugnaut]

It might be needed to make it possible for healers to be able to heal the tanks while keeping the current model from going insane at higher ilvls.

Lower health should make so that the scaling of spellpower for healers is a bit more on pace with the health of tanks (which gets ridiculous at higher ilvls). I'm guessing at some point it becomes necesary to have 2.5-3 healers just to keep the tank up.
Lower boss damage -> lower tank mitigation can be controlled to keep it the same % of health taken per swing.

Not sure exactly how they plan to change resolve though. But I would imagine they are just gonna lower armor for all tanks down to like 30% to give it some room to grow with gear. Right now my warrior zoning to heroic UBRS had 70-72% armor DR.... yeaaaaah

Or they could just let tank health be high, and allow tank mitigation, boss damage, and healing throughput to all be equalized. Thus, going from T17-T18, the tank goes from tanking 15% health in damage from a melee hit to 10% health in damage from the melee hit, BUT healers go from healing them 7.5% health per heal to 5% health per heal, and take damage intake is relatively the same number wise. (Fights get less spikey, but healers ability to keep tanks up remains the same)

Granted, that would make some %health based self-healing much more powerful.

[exochaft]

It might be needed to make it possible for healers to be able to heal the tanks while keeping the current model from going insane at higher ilvls.

This was one of my chief concerns I voiced quite a few months ago with the intended healer/tank models and the potentially massive HP of Guardians/DK's. If you give tanks a large health pool and design them to need it, it has the potential to cause undue burden on healers based on the tank class since almost all heals don't recover fixed percentages of health. While it can be balanced with allowing said tanks to heal back up or average out the heals required over time, logistically it's a nightmare and doesn't really work with the current tuning while ensuring tanks are more reliant on healers.

As a slight aside, this broad tank change might have a bit to do with PvP, as well. Tanks are insanely resilient with their current tuning, and while I like being OP-Bear I do have some sense of fairness.

[Valkon]

As a slight aside, this broad tank change might have a bit to do with PvP, as well. Tanks are insanely resilient with their current tuning, and while I like being OP-Bear I do have some sense of fairness.

Are tanks that OP in PvP with no resolve though? At least, I'm assuming PvP doesn't give resolve like vengeance doesn't work in pvp currently.

[Raugnaut]

Are tanks that OP in PvP with no resolve though? At least, I'm assuming PvP doesn't give resolve like vengeance doesn't work in pvp currently.

A) Tanks deal ~75% of a dps's dps.
B) Tanks take 25% more damage in PvP.
C) Tanks have way, WAY more then 25% more mitigation in PvP.

For Monks and Warriors, the 25% extra damage pretty much only cancels out their 25% reduced damage taken thing. After that, both Monks and Warriors have significantly better baseline mitigation (Way higher armor, shuffle/block/dodge/parry), more health (15% more health for warriors, 40% more for monks), and LOTS more self-healing (Monk Expel Harm spam sub-35% = they don't die 1v1. Warrior has their MS health regen, plus talents, and Shield Barrier.)

This is not to mention Guardians (2-5x more health then everyone else, powerful CDs that negate all burst), Blood DKs (2x more health, tons of self healing), and Prot Paladins (Once again, tons of self healing).

In beta, for PvP, tanks win against melee dps pretty much automatically. Range have better chances, but if they can't get the tank off their face (Prot, Guardian, Monk. DK/Paladins are decently kitable) they also fail.
Healers can't win against tanks 1v1, but they also can't lose. Well, Holy priests currently might be able to win against a tank.

Depending on the magnitude of the nerfs, however, Arms/Fury warriors may become capable of off-tanking adds, given those strange additions of revenge/shield bar/devastate. If tanks are nerfed too much, Arms/Fury will be brought in as off-tanks if the fights do require some off-tanking, but not often enough to bring 2 tanks.

[exochaft]

Depending on the magnitude of the nerfs, however, Arms/Fury warriors may become capable of off-tanking adds, given those strange additions of revenge/shield bar/devastate. If tanks are nerfed too much, Arms/Fury will be brought in as off-tanks if the fights do require some off-tanking, but not often enough to bring 2 tanks.

I was assuming those warrior changes were akin to giving Ferals some Guardian abilities, in an effort to be quasi-tanky in a pinch... especially since the abilities pretty much line up with what Ferals have. If this makes DPS warriors viable OT's in some situations, I'd chalk that up to poor tuning. It will really depend on how the tank changes pan out, especially in regards to the damage reduction of bosses and adds in conjunction with lowered tank survivability. Still wanting some more baseline rage generation!

[Raugnaut]

So first nerfs are in. Bonus stamina from Bear form decreased to 30% bonus instead of 60%. Bonus Health from Ursa Major now only lasts for 25 seconds, which is an ~17% decrease in power from my bad maths. Not too bad, DKs got hit way worse.

In comparision, Paladins got knocked to 15% bonus stamina from 25%, DKs got nerfed waaay down, 20% bonus stamina down from ~38% bonus stamina, and their DC bonus health was nerfed a whopping ~40% from previous iteration, monks, reduced to 25% bonus health, down from 40%.

Warrior health remains unchanged, but the arms/fury psuedo-tanking capabilities were removed.

I anticipate that Warriors will be hit by the mitigation nerfs WAY more then everyone else.

Meh. I was looking forward to 1 mil+ hp pools through MS stacking for DK/Druid.

[Gemini Soul]

So first nerfs are in. Bonus stamina from Bear form decreased to 30% bonus instead of 60%. Bonus Health from Ursa Major now only lasts for 25 seconds, which is an ~17% decrease in power from my bad maths. Not too bad, DKs got hit way worse.

In comparision, Paladins got knocked to 15% bonus stamina from 25%, DKs got nerfed waaay down, 20% bonus stamina down from ~38% bonus stamina, and their DC bonus health was nerfed a whopping ~40% from previous iteration, monks, reduced to 25% bonus health, down from 40%.

Warrior health remains unchanged, but the arms/fury psuedo-tanking capabilities were removed.

I anticipate that Warriors will be hit by the mitigation nerfs WAY more then everyone else.

Meh. I was looking forward to 1 mil+ hp pools through MS stacking for DK/Druid.

Can only hope wars mitigation get nerfed, with all but them getting their EH nerfed they in a way buffed warriors.

[Arielle]

Unsurprising changes are unsurprising.

[Dreyen]

Unsurprising changes are unsurprising.

Yea... they haven't touched any tank's mitigation like they said they would. Warriors are completly untouched and they were pretty damn strong (Less damage taken than us, as much absorb as we can self-heal..)

trash damage was doubled.

[Braindwen]

trash damage was doubled.

cat thrash.

[satanicway]

Anyone else feeling really unsafe about keeping Guardian as main?

We were on a bad spot, where we were just big heal sponges, with alot of HP and low damage reduction.
Now we lost huge amounts of HP...

125% to 115% Pally 0,92

140% to 125% Monk 0,8928

160% to 130% Druid 0,8125

If my numbers are right, we got the worse of this process... On a class that was showing signs of being the worse tank so far, and only having huge HP to compensate.

Either they nerf other tanks mitigation into oblivion, or we will be useless for Mythic progression at the start of the expansion.

Healing will change, healers will need to adapt, and you making it even worse for then, and not even being really efficient at it, seems a very very very bad choice to pick druid as your tank on the first tier.

Anyone think differently?

Do we have any hope?

I need to do some math to see how much mitigation they need to nerf other tanks over us, for us to be competitive with the nerfs that just happened.
I know anything can change so far, its beta, but we are pretty close to release, and the first weeks are very very important to make progression and build a name for recruitment on your server, and a weak tank can cause some problem. (I'm not saying that it is impossible to do fights with the way guardian works right now, and neither i'm saying that it is a so big disvantage that it can make or break your progression, but we are at a game where min/max matters, and every little thing stacks for a kill or a wipe, and i'm right now worried about the future of guardian, i started to love this class... and i fear that my min/max spirit will force me out of it.)

[Braindwen]

Anyone else feeling really unsafe about keeping Guardian as main?

No. It's beta, with a couple of months left to go. Under or Over powered means pretty much nothing.

Plus, if my raiding situation stays anywhere near where it's been for the past two expansions, I'll be OP no matter what class I play. It's fun to be on a class that's not even that great, and be told you're not allowed to play anything else .

As an aside, I hope they give numbers on resolve soon. Looks to have slightly higher (~10%) stamina scaling, and slightly lower (~10% again) scaling on damage taken in the new build.