With Riders of Rohan being released in just a few days, I thought I had better hustle and get a post out about Guardian legacies; especially since that’s my main! Sure, I have a few ideas on what I personally enjoy when it comes to legacies, but I’m the first to admit that I’m not the best tank in the world. And when it comes to Overpower? Well, let’s just say I’m embarrassed by how long it actually took me to try that stance.
This Week’s Topic
What legacies do you use for the Guardian in:
- PvMP
- Soloing
- DPS
- Tanking
- Raiding
- Grouping
The Guardian is my little buddy and the class that I enjoy the most. I love going up into a group of 6 mobs and tanking them with my shield, or running up to a boss that’s ten times my height and keeping him controlled. There’s just something about being up in the front lines that I truly enjoy. However, I am always looking for input from others on what their experiences with the class might be so that I can tune my Guardian as best I can. So let me know what you all use!
October 10, 2012 at 8:54 am
My kin were just discussing this very subject, and it made me take a look at what legacies I use on my legendaries. I’ll be honest, I don’t obsess over my LIs. I find the whole system to be a convoluted grind-fest, ultimately unrewarding and certainly not “legendary.” They are more like Diablo-style socketed weapons with occasional hooks into the Store.
However, the fact is that LIs are a part of the game, so I do end up spending more time tweaking them than I probably should for the amount I complain about it.
One legacy that I hadn’t paid much attention to, but now am looking for on all my LIs is Stamp Cooldown. It seems like an insanely useful legacy.
For tanking, Guardian’s Ward Duration, +% Shield Damage, and +Threat Generation are the other legacies that I look for. These seem like they give the biggest bang for the buck.
For Overpower, I favor the legacies for damage skills I seem to use a lot. +% Damage on skills, also Guardian’s Ward Duration again. I also use +Bleed Pulses and +Bleed Damage. It will be interesting to see what the changes to Overpower do to Guardians.
I’m not sure if these are the correct technical names for the legacies, but they are the effects.
October 10, 2012 at 9:47 am
I don’t use OP very often myself (that could change with RoR though, we’ll see).
For tanking, here are some of the legacies I found useful or downright indispensable (mainly for threat-generation reasons):
Weapon:
Guardian Area Effect Melee Targets (must-have)
Stamp Cooldown
Turn the Tables Cooldown
Warrior’s Heart/Fortitude Duration
Guardian’s Pledge Cooldown
Guardian’s Ward Duration
Belt:
Threat Generation Up (must-have, and also the reason to add crystals to the belt first, and to your weapon only after the belt is maxed)
Challenge Targets (must-have)
Guardian’s Ward Block Rating
Catch a Breath Morale Heal
Warrior’s Heart/Fortitude Morale Heal
October 11, 2012 at 5:00 pm
Hi, you probably remember me, i’m that crazy player that is always stalking this site but never did really said how does i play.
I am a guardian, an Overpower guardian, and i’ve been that way since i started to play in 2010, i managed to find the class really useful and not precisely tanking, an Overpower guardian can nuke enemies so fast that it’s more useful to kill than tank some of the enemies. Nevertheless sometimes tanking is useful and actually an Overpower guardian can while dpsing Tank enemies that does millions of damage, of course, only for 30 seconds. (That won’t be possible when Rohan arrives, pledge in overpower is changed).
Nevertheless, i ended up with this Legacies for everything except Tanking, most of them are for DPS but some others are balanced to get agro targets and such, i use them for: Soloing, Raiding, Grouping, DPS and Sparring.
- 2-Handed Sword -
-% Overpower power cost (Always need power while in this stance).
+% Overwhelm Critical Rating (With this legacy you can stun almost always, u can try to CC a different enemy running near you while you are killing other).
+% To the king damage (That one is not really needed but it always help to get a big hit of damage in a skill that you use a lot in your rotation).
+Targeted melee skill range (With this, i can hit melee from a distance where enemies can’t hit melee on me, combine that with kiting and you are virtually impossible to be hit with melee hits).
+Guardian area effect melee targets (Your AoEs can hit 3 enemies? with this legacy that same skill will hit 6 or more enemies, combined with the previous legacy your AoE won’t only hit a lot of targets but actually hit every enemy in a big Area).
+Sweeping Cut damage (Ok, now that you know that you will hit a big area and a lot of enemies, increase the damage of your AoEs, perfect).
- Belt -
+Stagger Positional Damage (If you hit in the back, you do more damage).
+Stagger Critical Rating (Just make stagger a bit better).
+Sting damage (Now here is the trick, use Sting, wait like 1 second and use Stagger, if you time it perfect you actually clicked in stagger when Sting wasn’t triggered, that will make an interesting effect = Sting, stagger and an autohit in the same exact second, a 3attacks combo that can be repeated each 5 seconds dealing the stupid insane damage of 6k damage in my actual build. This must not be your normal rotation, this combo is actually intended to use when your rotation have 2 extra seconds, is then when you can just use this and keep doing your normal rotation – Insert Sting + Stagger everywhere!).
+Challenge Targets (what? the tank has died? ok quick use Challenge and pledge yourself, with this legacy you are making sure that you agro everything and give the raid 15 perfect seconds to rez the real Tank).
+Catch a Breath morale heal (Nothing special, i don’t use it, i dont remember why is here).
+Shield Wall Range (Just for LOLs sometimes i shield wall underlevel people when i help them doing GA or moria instances, that skill saves level 50 people easily).
Well… i didn’t really help in Tanking, and Rohan will make that guardians DPS is based in Bleeds instead of nuke dps like i do, so i’m not sure i either helped in DPS, but… you asked wich are our legacies and why so, that’s my answer
Enjoy.
October 14, 2012 at 2:49 pm
The changes to Overpower for RoR are, well, total. That I could tell during beta it played like a somewhat less squishy Champion. Tanking in Overpower seems to have gotten lost.
April 29, 2013 at 10:33 am
Old thread, I know. But I figured I would add my two coppers.
To me, rigging a Guardian for solo play is mostly the *same* as rigging one for DPS. I find I benefit more from damage legacies than anything else. The class’s natural defensive abilities need little extra attention for soloing, provided that I can hit opponents considerably harder than they can hit me.
Note that the optimal balance of damage vs. survivability depends not only on group role, but also on how your level compares with your opponent’s. For instance, if you’re soloing against a mob well below your level, you never have to think about defense or even watch your morale. However, battling even a very small number of oranges can suddenly go from “That’s one down, two down…this is going well.” to “Crap! What happened to my morale?!” faster than Pippin can regain his appetite.
I almost always solo, and I stay in OP with a 2-handed weapon rigged for DPS. Sometimes when I have trouble surviving multiple opponents in solo quests three or four levels above, I switch to a shield and change stance. The enemies survive a little longer, but so do I.
I was pretty annoyed when I noticed that all shield-related LI legacies for Guardian go on the Belt, rather than on the 1-handed weapon (1H & 2H weapons have the same legacies available). It made little sense. (But then, almost nothing about LIs does make sense for a RPG; it seems to me that LIs were introduced with the intention of reducing realism.)
On the 2H weapon, I go for DPS, Brutal Assault Damage, Might, Overwhelm Crit & Dmg, and Pledge Cooldown. (For minor: Bleed Pulse, Bleed Damage, To the King damage.) Similarly for relics, I choose ones that boost Might and ICMR before Vitality, Max Morale, mitigation, etc.
I rely on armour and jewelry for most of my morale bonuses. But, even with those, I still focus on Might and ICMR.
(I’ve always had too much invested into my Guardian to put much effort into alting. Maybe one of these days, though, I’ll bring up an alt of some other class and see how it compares with the Guardian. I find it frustrating to see some class, like a Loremaster, that is supposed to be particularly good at neither offense nor defense run into a room that I found challenging, and clear it out quickly without breaking a sweat. I think Guardian has some builtin handicap that makes it less fun as his level rises.)