Guard

Winterpsy

For those unfamiliar with the skill:

Warp the space around you to intercept (x) projectiles targeting your allies, taking the damage yourself instead.
While toggled, costs (x) Stamina each second and an additional (x) Stamina for each projectile you intercept.
Drains less Stamina (this is the Stalwart guard morph)

Now. I tried this skill in Cyrodil because I found the idea of the Guard absolutely wonderful. However. This skill might have worked before the Stamina regen nerf while blocking. (No experience with this skill pre-patch). It is punishing now.
The constant stamina drain could be stopped with high enough regen I believe, but with the block up, and while intercepting projectiles, the person using guard finds himself out of stamina in no time.
Not to mention it is very situational.

I can imagine this skill working with
a) it gives some bonus while slotted,
b)does not drain stamina while toogled,
c) drains stamina, however instead of losingmore of it when intercepting a projectile it gives you stamina

A couple tweaks to this skill would bring a new layer of tactics to the table. Tanks protecting squishies moving slowly towards the enemy. They must be attacked by melee, or chaining out the squishies, stunning the tank whatever.

Discuss

ItsRejectz

I think guard is broken.. It says in the tooltip that stamina does regen whilst blocking.

Winterpsy

You don't need to hold block for this to be working. It halved my stam regen, and slowly drained it while toggled. Stam regen certainly stopped once I even held up block to actually defend against projectiles.

ItsRejectz

Winterpsy wrote: »

You don't need to hold block for this to be working. It halved my stam regen, and slowly drained it while toggled. Stam regen certainly stopped once I even held up block to actually defend against projectiles.

Oh yeah I know what you mean, it's just according to the tool tip blocking should not stop your stamina regen

Winterpsy

I wish this skill, while draining the stamina would -upon catching the arrow- act like the heavy armor passive, giving you stamina.

Especially that its not easy to acquire.

Winterpsy

Further testing of the skill:

On the character sheet the active effect of "Guarded" stucks even after Guard switched off.

Using guard 8 out of 10 times I became completely immune to ranged attacks. Uncertain why, tooltip does not show this perk of it. I see my character taking the attack, but the health bar does not move.

Guildies reported that they still took damage while my guard was active and they stood in the aura.

In most of the combats, sadly the aura does not show, players are unaware of me using guard.

I have 1600ish stamina regen. Upon activating guard, it drops to about 500. Guard still drains stamina, although I hoped a high stamina regeneration can counter this. Seems not.


One good thing tho, that intercepted projectiles seems to give a bit of stamina, due to heavy armor + black rose set passive. When intercepting a good ammount and using heavy attacks, my stamina is constantly up while guard is active.

Jura23

Great post. I was looking into this skill recently and you exactly described why I won't be using it until they make it more viable.

CP5

I tried to use this skill on my tank, and when it works and intercepts projectiles it helps, but I don't have the stamina to use it and anything else at the same time. Its situational and comes at a very heavy cost, even with the cost reduction morph.