Fix Gaurd!Follow

i can kind of understand your viewpoint here... but at the same time i can understand SE's current mechanic.

When i first got to play with a shield it was a bit awkward timing in gaurds and watching to make sure my gaurd didnt drop, etc. But you do start to get used to it. You get a feel for how long your gaurd stays up and anticipating when you need to regard.

And I am not sure but I seem to get the feeling that as your sentinel rank increases the amount of time your gaurd stays up increases.

Last I heard (and from what I've experienced) Guard has a set duration (10 seconds or so). It's not random.

Also, having your guard fall off for a couple of seconds here and there isn't going to make or break you. The focus is noticing when it's down and getting it back up ASAP. Most of the time, you're going to find that your guard falls off when you're in the middle of something else. No biggie. If you're in a fight where keeping guard up is actually a "must have" for survivability, then you'd adjust your rotation so that you're never in the middle of something when you expect it to fall off (hint: get in the habit of counting how many actions you can typically take between refreshing guard...it's a more fluid indicator than trying to count down in your head, watching your combat log all the time, or trying to notice it on-screen what with party animations so borked right now).

Also, I think for the time being we might want to suspend judgement on how best to make use of Provoke. In the context of XI, Provoke was a generic threat tool that you would tend to use whenever it was off cooldown to maintain enmity on your primary target. In other MMOs, the concept of an ability like "Provoke" is to draw mobs off of other players. It's not intended to be used every time it comes off cooldown...it's more of an "oh-sh*t" button that you use only if and when needed. Gladiators are not very mobile tanks. The last thing you want is to be taking a beating from behind and if you need to chase down a mob that just bolted after your healer while Provoke was on cooldown because you're using it as part of your standard threat rotation, you could be in serious trouble. To be fair and clear, more testing needs to be done with regards to how SE has tuned enmity this time around, so what I'm trying to say is to keep a flexible mentality with regards to the use of Provoke until it's sorted out.

My gladiator is rank 12 and tanking is not horrible. What's horrible is getting your group to cooperate with you and not start unloading nukes before you've even had a chance to land an attack of any kind. Once you get a rhythm going and get used to working a suitable rotation, it's a decent start. I'm not happy with the group combat dynamics in general, but I am trying to keep an open mind.

You failed to explain how guard falling off from time to time is going to create such enormous consequences that the mechanics should be changed. For starters, I'm still holding onto the notion that Provoke and Taunt may or may not be suited to use in a standard threat rotation, but for the sake of argument, let's suppose that they are. Let's assume that you're not being an effective tank unless you're using both as soon as each comes off cooldown. Rampart, I can assure you, is not intended for common use. That's indicated by the fact that it has a short duration relative to its cooldown. It is what is referred to in other MMOs as an "oh sh*t button", meaning you use it in an emergency situation. That leaves basic attacks, Phalanx, Defender (if you have it), Provoke, Taunt, and TP moves. That's not a lot to keep track of. With guard up vs. DC mobs, the block rate is pretty obscene.

For the record, Pugilist tanks have more to watch for. Light Punch buff for defense and evasion, Concussive Blow (stacked) debuff for mob accuracy, and it's harder to see when you successfully evade for Haymaker than it is to see a block for Phalanx.

So let's say you're doing some endgame stuff or a particularly challenging mission encounter and the one hit the mob landed while Guard had fallen of ends up making the difference between success and failure. You know what that means? You have room to improve in the skill department. That's it. Trust me, I played another MMO where one of the tanking classes had an almost identical ability to guard and in some endgame encounters, letting it fall off and taking a hit with it down could literally lead to a tank going from full HP to dead. Nobody complained that they had too much to keep track of (they actually had a lot more than we have to deal with now). It was just a mechanic in the game that added to the depth and skill requirement.

The game hasn't even hit official service yet and you guys are already complaining that it's too hard. You haven't had time to get used to the mechanics and develop a fluid rotation. For the last year and a half all we've been hearing about on these forums is that people didn't want a mindless button mashing game and now we've got a system in place that requires some attention to details and strategic execution and you're complaining. Maybe tanking isn't for you if you just want to attack attack attack and not have to time abilities or worry about balancing defense with offense/enmity.



Lag right now is irrelevant. It's expected. It's a pre-release server stress test, not a demo. Again, just because you're not familiar with the concept of emergency defensive abilities doesn't make them stupid. It just makes you inexperienced. My experience with Rampart is that it accounts for about a 10% reduction in incoming damage. The duration is plenty to smooth out a rough patch or buy a little breathing room for your healer(s) at a crucial moment. It's not intended as a buff you put up at the beginning of every fight and try to keep up for the duration. The theory that vitality increased defense so far is proving to be just that...a theory. The only thing we know for sure about vitality is that it increases your HP.

Please, let's not allow ignorance and a lack of familiarity with the game's combat mechanics to become justification to call for changes at this point. Tanking with a gladiator is a reasonably involved process...as it should be. If I just wanted to wail away on a mob, I'd have focused on a damage role and not concerned myself with the tanking aspects.

There are plenty of areas where I think SE dropped the ball.

Instead of addressing the issue, you come back and accuse me of nuzzling SE's nuts.

Let's be clear about something. Lag during this phase of testing is fully expected. If you think otherwise, you're uninformed. There's no reason to be looking at what we're seeing now and saying, "Ya, but the lag makes it terrible so change the mechanics." If the lag is your primary issue, wait until the game has gone live and SE has addressed it. Lag is a part of every MMO at some point or another and it's usually one of the first things a developer seeks to address when they're tuning and refining the game. Even after a game goes live, patches and tweaks to the game can cause the lag monster to rear its ugly head.

I'm not talking about what I hope the game will be like at release. I'm talking about my experience in the game right now. My primary combat class is gladiator. I'm one of those unfortunate schlubs who had to pay 43k gil for a shield because I got shafted with the levequest rewards, and I didn't end up getting my shield until rank 10. There was a brief period following the acquisition of my shield where I had to adjust how I had grown accustomed to playing in order to accommodate the use of Guard into my rotation.

The complaint I'm reading is that it's too hard to keep track of everything. There's really not that much to keep track of. Yes, lag and/or bugs right now means that not all combat animations are being displayed properly. (Quite often I'll trigger a TP attack and my character doesn't move but the cooldown timer on the ability starts, my TP bar drops, and I get a message in my chatlog telling me that it hit for <x> damage (or missed). So yes, you're not always going to be able to see the visual cues that you just blocked an attack but do you know what else you can do? Judge by the damage you see your character take. You can judge by the sound the game plays when the mob hits you. When the game is working properly (lag dramatically reduced and animation glitches worked out) there will be a total of three indicators that you have blocked an attack that don't require looking at your combat log at all.

My character is a Hyur Highlander. Fairly large model. If you're playing as a Lalafel, maybe your character's model isn't large enough for you to be able to easily distinguish between their stance with guard up and their stance with shield down. Maybe it's just part of the learning curve but again, there's a visual cue that precludes the necessity for checking your combat log to see if Guard has fallen off.

So what does that leave us to watch for? Cooldowns on a few abilities. Glancing at TP and health from time to time. Really, not a lot.

So thus far, nobody has explained why it's so horrible to have Guard fall off from time to time at the level of content most of us are participating in (rank 10-20 range). Like I said, we've all got time to grow accustomed to the basic mechanics before we're likely to find ourselves in the situation where having Guard fall off for a couple of seconds here and there is going to routinely spell the difference between success and failure.

I've been tanking in MMOs for years now. It's not for everyone. And when I see complaining that what we've got to watch for is already too much, I kind of think that those are the people who aren't going to like tanking anyways. Tanking is about situational awareness. It's about knowing what's going on at all times and that includes not only what the mobs and your party members are doing, but also what abilities you have available and which ones are priority. Demanding SE start dumbing down the mechanics now is premature.

One thing they could do is to change the duration to be the same as the cooldown, and have any bonuses you get that extend the duration extend the cooldown by the same amount.

@Aurelius

Now Aurelius you deserve an apoligy from me. I have been building a kind of grudge against the people that defend this game saying "Everything will be fixed before release." and i may have but it out on you and i am sorry about that!

Now i never said you where wrong in anyway regardning the guard skill, i think it's cool, awesome even. But it is broken because the game is laggy. And i know they are stress testing the game and i know that the game will be kinda laggy But come on, do you really think all this lag will dissapear once the game is released. That the game will go through the "BUG FIX MACHIIIIINEEEEE!!" and we will live happy ever after, no i dont rhink so. Now i really do hope that i am wrong, i loved FFXI it was my frist mmo and my time playing was magical. But i've gone through so many open betas and i have defended many of them the same way you know defend this game, just to be proven wrong once released.

The thing i don't like about the way you try to defend this game is that you ignore the core elements of this game. You said: "So yes, you're not always going to be able to see the visual cues that you just blocked an attack but do you know what else you can do? Judge by the damage you see your character take" NO! That is not ok! This is a core problem you should not look past it, it is right in you face! If a cat poops a bean you don't say "If you rub it against you jacken, close you eyes and eat it you won't taste the poop." ITS STILL POOP ON THAT BEAN.

And thats what i want to get across, this is a bean covered in poop. It is a very very tasty bean, but there is too much sh*t on it for me to eat it!

Aurelius, i wish you all the luck in this game. I hope it's me that's wrong you and that is right.

OP: I feel gladiator to be a challenging demanding job which test your ability to keep focus on several things at the same time

Let me comment about a couple of interesting things that I saw in this thread:

Because it's part of the challenge, I prefer my skill to be in charge of my survival, eventually this sort of thing is what separates excellent tanks from the rest.

I think this very important, it's way to early to request job changes, we are far from a clear understanding of the combat mechanics at this point, besides there is a ton of things that require fixings first.

Ken

Edited, Sep 29th 2010 7:09am by kenage

No way. You can't blame your shield dropping for that. Your block rate with Guard up is not 100%. It gets very close to 100% when you're fighting mobs of a considerably lower rank than your Gladiator, but if one extra hit from one of those mobs ruins the fight for you, might I suggest you stop engaging mobs when you're at or below 10% HP? If you're fighting harder mobs, you still have no guarantee that the hit you took while guard was down would have been blocked. If SE wanted us to have Guard up 100% of the time, they wouldn't have made it the way that they did. Your block rate would be a passive stat just like parry/evasion. They didn't set it up that way, however, which means we all have to learn how to make due. Just because some people think they should be able to have Guard up all the time doesn't necessarily make it so.

That's still no justification to change Guard. Hey, let's figure out all the other excuses we could throw at SE for not making us invincible:

"I would have won that fight if I had gotten a block instead of a partial block on the third attack, so get rid of partial blocks."

"I would have won that fight if I had blocked all of those hits instead of 2/3 of them so get rid of failed blocks."

"I would have won that fight if the mob had hit me for 97 damage on the third hit instead of 103, so always round down damage."

"I would have one that fight if I hadn't missed that second Phalanx, so get rid of misses."

"I would have won that fight if the mob had only hit me 17 times instead of 18, so make mobs hit slower."

"I would have won that fight if I hadn't died, so make us all invincible."

People seem to be under the assumption that SE intended for Guard to be up 100% of the time. Obviously that's not what they had in mind. To isolate any one component of the RNG in a combat system as something that will make or break a fight on a regular basis and use that as justification to demand it be changed is ridiculous. If you're not willing to accept the risk associated with fighting the mobs that you're fighting, go find something else to fight. If it's really coming down to a case of an extra couple of hits routinely spelling the difference between success and failure, you could point to any number of other things that could go wrong and say those are the reasons you failed as well. Why aren't people screaming for better parry rates to make up for those rare occasions when you get tagged while block is down? Why aren't people crying that block doesn't work on mob TP moves?

We can rationalize and justify all day long why something is broken but at the end of the day you just have to ask yourself whether you're being realistic or just whining. Hint: the better players are the ones that learn to work with the mechanics as presented and roll with the punches. The mediocre/bad players are the one who blame straightforward game mechanics for their failure.

Guard has a set duration of 15 sec however this timer starts when the spell acually goes up. If you que Guard while another attack is going off then the timer starts when you toon starts to raise there shield. With this in mind I started using Guard from a macro.

/ac "Guard" sub <me>
/wait 16
/tell <Your First Name> <Your last Name> >>>>>>>>GUARD IS ABOUT TO DROP<<<<<<<<<<<<

I tried using a wait macro to just recast Guard as it fails but it can fail from lag/low stam/spell queing so this seemed to be the best solution. You can lower the wait time so you can be ready to activate the macro again. This will just give you a heads up spam that its about to drop.

I retract my comments, did not occur to me macros could count.
Thanks Calzero.

Edited, Sep 18th 2010 12:41pm by MaFi0s0

personally i like guard its hard now but later i have a feeling this is going to be very very nice for dmg reduction/threat if done right i can almost spam phalanx that has alot of potential lol

and if anyone played pally in ffxi for a long time the way it played and tanked was almost completely changed like 5 times over the years so i wouldnt complain too much right now

Edited, Sep 25th 2010 11:05am by Darthtaco75

Please keep guard the way it is! This isn't WoW, if you've noticed everything in this game takes 3 things... Time, Ability, Dedication. The guard mechanics in this game separate good glads from run of the mill grinders. If you get lazy when you tank on 20leves 4star then you'll get run over quickly. If you aren't rank 10 sentinel then wait until you get aegis boon, you'll appreciate guard 10x more.

Thank you sooo much!! ive been trying to figure out how to make a guard macro forever

Yeah, coming from Nin tanking in XI you learn to just get the feel for when your shadows were going to drop and not really count anymore. I guess after I quit they got the windower to count them for you but that is a whole nother story.

What I wish they would do for Guard would be make it to where it doesn't have to fully drop before you can put it back up. THe animation takes a bit of time and it isn't make or break but it is just annoying seeing my sheild drop and watching me get hit, just whining I know.

I have yet to tank in a multiple mob party so that will be interesting