This caught my eye on the forums...


Hakai
The Lord of the Rings Online Team

Re: Thoughts on Bk 12 Guardian love

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Thanks for starting this thread. It is good to hear the various thoughts on what the Guardian needs. While I won't go into the specifics of the new skills we're planning, I will say that the focus for Guardian will be on expanding his DPS role by providing a new stance based around 2h weapons and adding skills to support it. Hopefully that'll give you an idea of where the Guardian is headed.

I will also warn that Shield Taunt will most likely be undergoing changes. Shield Taunt was always intended to be a variable catchup skill, unfortunately due to some limitations the implemented variability wasn't sufficient to prevent it from being a full catchup. In its current incarnation it essentially is as effective as Challenge the Darkness at digging you out of a threat hole, only it won't force the AI to attack immediately if it recently switched targets.

It is quite likely that Shield Taunt will lose its threat catchup component, and instead provide a larger AOE taunt component. Essentially this will change Shield Taunt to a skill that allows you to build a large amount of threat for yourself, but will not instantly dig you out of a deep hole if the Minstrel or Hunter goes off. Another way of looking at it is the new shield Taunt will help push you even farther ahead if you currently have aggro, where the old one wouldn't.

There is no doubt that this is removing a panic button from the Guardian, but it is also adding a new tool to help the Guardian advance his threat levels to keep him from falling behind in the first place.

Cheers,
Hakai
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