Is guard too powerful?

[Battlefield]

On my opinion 2h tanks should get guard with 25% damage reduction and it should be with some cooldown too.

2h tanks already have 25% damage reduction:

viewtopic.php?f=42&t=30934

Spoiler:

- Updated all the Chosen and Knights aura tooltips to match with how they work ingame.
- All guard effects are now halved in effect if not using a shield.
- Ground targeted AOE now properly need LoS to fire off.

I thought that change was reverted because all of collective crying was threatening to drown the server. Then again revert and the Dev team don't go together at all (I'm looking at you pet pathing).

[Abilities]

- Last weeks guard change has been reverted, we are monitoring the situation and feedback from the survey and forum closely.

viewtopic.php?f=42&t=31096&hilit=guard+revert

[nonfactor]

You are a fool to think that time to kill would be shorter with 25% guard with 2h. With that change shield would become mandatory and because of the reduced damage pressure from tanks the ttk would increase even further.

[Battlefield]

You are a fool to think that time to kill would be shorter with 25% guard with 2h. With that change shield would become mandatory and because of the reduced damage pressure from tanks the ttk would increase even further.

Yes this is more solution for crossguard tanks but as i wrote before, another offer also to decrease damage reduction of guard but increase range, for example 33% damage reduction and 45ft distance instead of 50% and 30ft but for all tanks.
In any case guard should get some cooldown!
Also a logical question, if Vigilance and Oppressor need a shield to use so why not do the same for guard?

[Battlefield]

If I would change anything about guard atmo without really nerfing it, I would make it learned at 16. Get that **** out of t1, healers are already a nightmare in t1 with a lack of kit available to deal with them, guard just amplifies the situation to silly levels.

By the way t1 sometimes is more fun than t4, i don't know maybe because there are more casual things...

[Vholrat]

in t1 you do not have extremization of gear like t4 does.

[Grious]

in t1 you do not have extremization of gear like t4 does.

You also don't have the majority of your kit. My issue with guard in t1 is not that its in t1 but that there is little counter to it. Outside of the m1 for rdps, the only tank that gets access to its punt in t1 is Ironbeaker(at 14). As much as id like to see the rdps m1 used for this it is unfortunately not often the case. This in combination with a lack of heal debuff in t1 can lead to some incredibly unkillable classes. Yeah it's not all guards fault obviously, there is the lack of focus by dps, lvl 10s still rocking the starter weapon, dps slapping tanks, etc. I am just saying it doesn't help the t1 situation. Then again I could just have a massive dislike for t1 with all the times Ive been stuck in it trying to find a class I want to stick to.

[meatcpu]

Problem of Guard also in healers in this game they are very powerful and together
with guard (50% damage reduction) it makes serious disbalance....

That is a problem. Guard is kind of fine on squishy targets like red slayers/choppas or AMs or BWs/Sorcs or ranged SWs/SHs. On all other targets, especially the tankier ones it is kind of overpowered - from my point of view.

WPs/DoKs for example are pretty tough as they are, shield WPs/Doks are kind of overpowered as they are. Now put a guard on top of that.. congrats, you have won RoR

I'm biased as I have stubbornly leveled a DoK without ever using a chalice.

Melee healer is miserable as a fresh 40. Armor mitigates melee damage. Toughness mitigates all damage. So your heals are smaller. Your defensive stats are lower and you've got a big target on your head and have to be in range of everyone to be useful. Maybe this scales fine in Sov, but its a massochistic climb to get there. That is true for all classes to varying extents, but it's a full on identity crisis for melee heals.

Without a guard you fold over fast. That takes a guard away from a dps in a 2/2/2 split. So you better heal enough to compensate. You're useless against ranged opponents and your only option to heal out of melee range drains your health. You have no solid options to heal yourself out of melee range besides potions. Being guarded on the front line is the only time you can really shine and not spend all your heals keeping yourself alive doing SnB level damage.

Try being a healer class on the front line with a WB focusing on you. Even the guard and your heals only do so much. I'm constantly faced with the choice of who to try to lifetap; DPS should have to face this choice too. Just kill the DPS my tank should probably be guarding instead, then hit me while I try to rez that DPS.

Guarded melee healers should shine. They can't do much else otherwise.

[kelmel]

I just see Battlefield not liking when balanced groups go against an unbalanced group and proper play that the balanced group wins. Specifically stating the group with more tanks won on a small pvp. I bet the melee dps of course ran right in and tried to egage the guarded healers and got focused by the tanks one by one as the solo tank cant guard them all. But the solo tank couldnt put out enough dps to offset this. Party imbalance and player issue. I find my best groups are when there is communication.

[Drednes]

I would say state of healing is more broken than guard.

A healer easily outheals a dps. There is not even a resource limit, they can do it forever.

True most people anyway just put a guard and forget to swap so its balanced by half the servers lack of knowing their role and the swap
healers on the other hand like dok and wp...tank level survivability And Massive healing that i dont think a non sov can kill in a true 1v1 with a equal set of gear
and even then id say a healer can outlast all dps eccept the top players of the classes
hated healers the first day i played this game and will hate them to the last such bullshit

[Caduceus]

Like others have mentioned, I think the issues that people are referring to happen in the high end of play: 6v6, organized warbands.

The safety net tanks and healers are able to put up in those situations is so massive that it requires a very elaborate and specific effort to take down. This is why much of high end play becomes a slog of waiting for this perfect storm to take place.

This isn't really a problem, unless you are like me and believe it is simply rather boring. There is little room for experimentation or individual skill.

Healers, in my opinion, are the main culprits, because:

- Their itemization allows them to all but ignore their primary statistic: willpower, giving them tons of room to stack survivability.

- Their healing by default greatly overshadows damage that DPS classes can put out - in my opinion the main cause for the current situation.

- Most (All?) healer classes do these things without AP ever being an issue.

- Skewed risk-reward balance, where healers are some of the most impactful classes in the game, while also having the highest range on their abilities and high survivability. Not to mention their extremely powerful group heal abilities are castable without line of sight, taking away further elements of positioning and risk.

Opinions on these matters may differ, but I see a clear issue.