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Vanguard ideas/upgrades

Nasaan

New member
This is just my preliminary feel for the Vanguard.

Fortify seems nearly useless in it's default state. It lasts about 6 seconds and seems to take something like 3 minutes to recharge. This seems to be the primary defense skill for the vanguard (much like saber block, or shields, standfast, etc for other classes). Investing 5 points to fully max this out, could help in it's usefulness, but it still would only last about 9 seconds and take at least 60 seconds to recharge. In it's current state, I don't feel like it's even worth putting on your toolbar. I feel this skill should be reevaluated and brought in line with other defensive skills that other classes have.

Ionic pulse feels very lack luster, considering the default weapon is a pistol. Doing double damage on a 150-400 default pistol attack feels very underwhelming for the effort of spamming it when all other skills are on cooldown.

Vault/Reverse thrusters seems like an interesting idea but again the cooldowns are very long for what the skill does, considering the range is limited to about 20 meters. I don't feel that investing 2 points to reduce the cooldowns by 60 seconds on each skill will make them more viable, except for outside certain pvp situations.

Charged blast, Scatter shot, Coup de grace and thermal detonator seem to perform well in their current states.

Is there more information Kyber dart? It puts a debuff on the target and makes them take more damage, while applying a snare. How much more damage do they take? It is inline with the BM pet ability shaken? (ie. do they take 10% more dmg for 15 seconds?).

Defibrillator is pvp only, seems to be a running tend for this class. As this class is supposed to be a mix between a medic and officer, I feel like this could be reevaluated and made into a combat rez that could be used in all situations.

In general, the vanguard buffs are nice, but the 10 second duration (with 2 points their duration by 4 seconds!) of buffs seems tedious, could we not give them a longer duration to make them more viable? Perhaps increase the Wise Words talent to give them more time for the points invested. How long do the charge and Scatter buffs for officer last? Would we give vanguard some kind of permanent buffs like officers? But given their tactical buffs only effect one person at a time, perhaps these could be group buffs with a 10 second duration, even if the potency of them needs to be toned down some? *** Having the Praetorian's jewelry set may help with this problem, and make it not so tedious, however, I feel the option to make them group buffs could be more interesting.


At first feeling, this class feels like a hodgepodge mix of abilities geared to make a primarily pvp support oriented class. I'll continue to gear and play the class more and perhaps adjust my opinion more. I believe this class has promise and would love to see it improved.
 

ShadowOrdo

New member
I think in many regards your impressions are natural reaction, and in some situations i actually thought similar. Specifically on the fortify ability, i recall its base line duration without any expertise investment too short. With point investment as you say, I do think 9 seconds is actually quite good. Going off memory, that's 9 seconds with serious damage mitigation. In contrast, the Commando ability Standfast is a 12 second duration on a 10 minute cooldown and obtaining a 60% damage reduction.

Vault / reverse thrusts is def more a pvp oriented skill, depending on current or future revamp of playstyles of vanguard, this could be very devastating to quickly pop in and pop out to deff an enemy play or do a series of attacks and quickly get away. Any potential future melee specific update toward vanguard will really make this skill a must I feel. Also a application as is for this skill for pve, the ability to teleport into a npc often creates a few seconds delay of their attacks if they switch from ranged to melee or vice versa. Can be handy for elite npc fights potentially.

It's been a while since i toyed with Vanguard, so just my 2 cents going off memory of these specific two skills that stand out to me from what ya said.
 
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