New AT Suggestion: Guardians

[GenesisMan]

In light of the delightful remix that is the Sentinel AT, I have been thinking of a new archetype for the game. I have seen others mention the general idea below before, so if there are other threads already covering this, I'd be very interested. In general, I am not a numbers guy. This is a thought exercise and the numbers would need to be developed and scrutinized by those with the technical know-how. Anyway, here is my current idea for a new AT... Guardians. Any feedback would be most welcomed!

Guardians live to protect, and as a Guardian, you will revel in supporting your fellow hand-to-hand combatants. With moderate offensive power sets designed to inflict damage and moderate support powers to aid your team, you're the most balanced melee-centered support there is. Protracted battles focus your energies to support your team, making your heals, controls, buffs, and debuffs more effective. You do lack true combat defenses, so you may be vulnerable to being overwhelmed without allies to cover you.

 

The Guardian's power sets are:

Primary: Melee
Secondary: Support

The Guardian has Medium Hit Points and Medium Damage.

Inherent Power

Prowess - Each blow a Guardian lands increases the potential of the secondary effects of their powers. A Guardian's Prowess level is shown by an orange bar between Endurance and Experience Points. It rises each time they attack and rises faster if the Guardian has more teammates. This is a mild effect with one or two teammates, but on a large team Prowess can be brought from 0 to over 90% with fewer than ten attacks. The Prowess level falls very slowly when not used, and falls to zero after 90 seconds of being activated.

When a Guardian activates their Prowess, their powers' effects like disorients, holds, immobilizes, heals, defense buffs, endurance drains, knockbacks and more, are all slightly improved for a short time. They will also gain significant protection again controls for the duration of the Prowess effect.

 

Edit: Updated the inherent to work like that of a Dominator so that mez protection could be worked into the build (they were missing that protection otherwise).

 

Primary Power Sets
The primary power sets will be almost direct copies of the Brute/Scrapper primaries, with a couple of power replacements and modified numbers. Guardians are not typically great at burst damage, so Build Up effects are replaced with a new power, Abate. They also have other crowd control options, so Taunt/Confront effects are replaced with an ally/pet placate similar to Smoke Flash.

Abate - When this power is activated, you focus your fighting prowess to find a weakness in your foe's defenses to your attacks. By sharing your knowledge of the target's weaknesses with your teammates, you effectively reduce their resistance to damage. The type of resistance that is weakened is related to the base damage type of your melee powerset.

 

Distract - By intervening on a pet or ally's behalf, you can distract foes attacking them. The Distraction will allow your ally to Placate their nearby foes, and makes them stealthy and hidden for about 10 seconds. Requires the same prompt used for teleport-other powers.

War Mace

Bash

Pulverize

Jawbreaker

Abate: Ranged Foe -Res(Smashing)

Clobber

Distract

Whirling Mace

Shatter

Crowd Control

 

Secondary Power Sets
The secondary power sets are a mix of controls, buffs, debuffs, and heals mixed thematically from other sets. With Prowess in mind, very few, if any, toggle-based powers are present as the scaling values could easily make them overpowered. Each secondary set has a Warrior power, imbuing their attack powers with an additional secondary effect for a time. The general template I'm using for a secondary set is as follows:

1. Single-Target Immobilize
2. Heal/Buff/Debuff
3. Single-Target Hold
4. Warrior Click Power
5. Sustain Power (from Blaster secondaries)
6. AoE crowd control

7. AoE buff/debuff

8. AoE buff/debuff

9. Pet

I tried a bunch of different combinations of existing powersets, and this felt like the most balanced way to achieve these sets for Guardians. Using the template above, I was able to get a decent set for Ice, Fire, Radiation, Electricity, Nature, Storm, Dark, and Devices. Here's an example of the fire set, Thermal Protection.

 

Thermal Protection

Ring of Fire

Warmth

Char

Fire Warrior - While active, most of your attack powers have a chance for additional fire damage over time.

Cauterizing Aura

Flashfire

Blazing Shields - Combination of Thermal and Plasma Shield powers with lower base stats.

Melt Armor

Fire Imps

 

I can list out the other sets I mocked up later, but as the Guardian's secondary is the most different from other sets, I thought it would be better to tweak the formula as needed first. Again, all feedback is welcomed!

Edited January 29, 2021 by GenesisMan

[GenesisMan]

One additional note: Ancillary Power Pools for Guardians

Similarly to the support secondary, I mocked up a template for Guardians' APPs:

N Mastery
1 ST Ally buff/foe debuff
2 Self utility
3 Basic self shield
4 Ranged AoE/Cone
5 Toggle

 

Most thematic sets have enough to make this work. So building on the /thermal example above, Fire Mastery would look like this:

Thaw

Consume

Fire Shield

Fire Ball

 Hot Feet

[arthurh35353]

Hmm. I'd think they would want your full armors to be separate from your mezz protection toggle and I can't see fire imps being allowed at a normal level.

[GenesisMan]

There is no mez protection toggle in these examples, not sure to what you're referring.
Side Note: I reworked the inherent to work like Domination, including the added mez protection for the duration. This was already the direction I was leaning so that the power boost effect wasn't perma in combat, but the need for added mez protection (every AT gets something after all) sealed the deal.

Guardians are a bit of a jack-of-all trades, but master of none, so I expect several powers would need to be adjusted, Fire Imps (and several other pet options) definitely fall into that category.

Edited January 29, 2021 by GenesisMan
Made update to OP

[arthurh35353]

Close melee without mezz protection? That should be an interesting (though short) escapade.