Ideas for Guard Damage

[Silestrius]

With the change of how guard damage works from live, changing all guard damage from block/parry mitigation to retaining its original damage type, all tanks are required to stack dodge/disrupt to prevent melting from guard damage. This change makes sense but I feel that tanks need something to compensate for the lack of ability to stack adequate dodge/disrupt in the face of mainstat strikethrough. Every tank class has some short term buff to parry but no tank can boost dodge and only a few can boost disrupt. (BO's you wot? being an outlier)

Instead of the classic forum whining and complaining about the problem, I would like to focus this thread on throwing out ideas for potential solutions the devs can read through and refine into workable ideas. I have talked briefly with Idrinth on his stream about this problem and we came up with a couple ideas to help tanks cope with this change a little better than they have been lately (especially 2h tanks).

Tanks are probably the least played role and I think for the health of the game it would be a good idea to focus on making tanks more fun to play. For me the main appeal of playing a tank is being able to survive anything and holding ground against superior forces as well as protecting the most impactful players in my warband/party.

The changes to guard damage strongly incentivizes all tanks to play SnB and to literally only press "hold the line" which is not the most engaging of gameplay. Both 2h and SnB tanks are now quite vulnerable to guard damage and are subsequently less fun to play as since we are all being boxed into HTL spamming at all times to not only contribute, but also just to survive. This isnt just 2h tanks, even SnB feels dangerously squishy unless using channels which isnt the most fun way to play this game compared to damage dealers or healing.

First Idea: Allow toughness stat to mitigate incoming guard damage. This would incentivize stacking toughness on 2h tanks that some feel were capable of doing too much damage and I think this would be a quick and easy fix to implement and test out.

Second Idea: Toughness has a secondary benefit (like most other stats) with either providing extra wounds at a decreased ratio, or providing block/parry/dodge/disrupt at a decreased ratio.

Third Idea: uncap wounds for tank classes and change itemization and/or above idea with toughness providing extra health at decreased ratio of wounds and/or create a new tactic to increase wounds on tanks. This change would allow tanks to survive better with competent healers but would also keep pressure on healers more than the other ideas.

Fourth Idea: Change Hold the Line to a passive "always on" buff when holding a shield with subsequent reduction in values and/or range. I think this could be a really good idea in practice if the numbers are tweaked to lets say only 20-30 ft range behind the tank and only providing 3% dodge/disrupt per tank but stacking up to 5 times. This would incentivize SnB play but allow SnB players to actually press buttons and play the game instead of channeling one ability as their entire role.

Please feel free to comment on potential consequences of the above ideas or submit your own ideas for how to make tanks more desirable to play!

[Oglaf]

Then there's the big elephant in the room:

Rampage carrying over into Guard as a result of this change (Guard dmg inheriting the attributes of the attack mitigated) making Destruction tanks take two sources of Undefendable damage and just melting to pieces as a result.

[Drednes]

first idea looks good!
second sounds good also
third ehh i dont like that tanks just stack wounds as is so i kinda dont want them to go deeper that path BUT guard as it is now is just adding your health (tanks health) to the guarded target with little hope of any clever mitigation of it outside ablities
for the 4th one it can be then you Use hold the line you have a higher chance to block/parry the guard damage only or something like that
and interesting idea
SM in 2h spec should get a disrupt,dodge or parry bonus since (dont know how many people care about lore) but they can block arrows or small projectiles with just their swords,a small thing that helps
or just Flavor to classes like that is needed
as it is now 2h order tanks are just a wasted slot in most play if they dont have Vanquisher/invader minimum which is a shame

[Ysaran]

The "Guard change" actually consist of two big change:
-guard damage from ranged attacks is avoided with block first and then with dodge/disrupt, isntead than the old block and then parry.
-guard damage from all sources keeps the attacker strikethrough from gear/stats, instead than baing damage dealt with 1 str (which gave a natural +50% block and +25% parry).
IMHO it would be enougn to revert the 1st change and keep the 2nd one. This way guard would still nerfed, just in lesser extent