Frontal guards are one of the core parts of the protection system, it provides a way to trade damage without really taking any yourself if used correctly.

There are several ways to counter forward guard, you can cc past the forward guard, break it with damage (with help from forward guard reductions too) or you can simply just grab it.

This is good, because it provides a risk vs reward element where positioning and timing can make all the difference between rewarding you with a good trade in damage, or meeting an early death.

The Problem

As time has gone on, forward guards have been getting riskier and less rewarding, with mobility creeping constantly as well as extremely easy ways of just pressing a button and bypassing forwards completely (block jumps), or with general moving melee cc skills (spiral torpedo, twirling rhapsody, etc).

The latter of the ccs, are generally ok, since they are cast in melee, where using forward guard is at its most riskiest as far as usage is concerned, but the amount of mobility that is available in the game, makes using forward guards in almost all positions, overly risky in general.

Not only this, but there are classes that still possess low risk high reward blockjumps, awk maegu being a prime example, regardless of it being her only real gameplay loop (this is just failed class design in general).

Less we forget, that PA actively nerfed normal forward guards when they tried to target super armour forward guards, they buffed SA forward guards in terms of tankiness, but gave a guard regen debuff if it broke, this only further degraded normal forward guards, rather than nerf SA forward guards specifically, which was a failed change by PA in general.

The Solution?

This is the part I am really struggling with, because the problem comes from how the game has evolved.

Making normal forward guards cone wider or making normal forward guards tankier would help, but it doesn't address the real issue, mobility creep and the absolute over-saturation of super armour, has just made forward guard less and less relevant and way too risky for its own good.

Super armour HAD two prime weaknesses, damage and grabs, however, PA has toned down the first weakness, by just slapping %DR on super armours per class for no real reason, further promoting this boring tanky meta we currently have.

Buffing forward guard around the current gameplay design doesn't make much sense, the problem is more systemic than anything else, so how do we go about making forward guards back to a healthy risk-vs-reward status? I only see toning down mobility and protected blockjumps as a viable solution, but that is NEVER going to happen for many reasons.

It would be nice to see what people think of this, some classes in the game are forward guard reliant and its a really bad time for those classes right now, specifically older classes.


TL;DR - Forward guards suck due to a systemic design failure of SA/mobility saturation, what do?

Nuke block jumps, nuke mobility, nuke SA protection counts, nuke protected CCs availability, and nuke ranged damage.

Now your FGs work again.

That being said I'd like to point out 2 things from OP post;

1. Although your FG can break, you won't be CCed through it; FG skills are CC immune from the front, even if the FG is broken. You can comfortably linger a 0 FG bar for as long as you want, as long as you aren't Q blocking.

2. Speaking of Q blocking, the FG debuff to regen is only applied when your FG breaks while Q blocking, so double reason not to do it (much) ^^

Yep I feel this pain as awk ranger. Personally I think my forward guard on my skills should not break given how easily it is to block jump behind it and punish it. and as many classes have this now. Q block or s block should break. These should not share the same resource in the current game but they do.

In general as mentioned already. The pvp system is currently terrible.

Infinite protection combat is not fun nor interesting and it creates way to many issues for balance

Mobility creep is out of control and the servers can't keep up at all.

And now thier even adding vertical warping mobility to the game and i despise fighting awk dosa and awk sage they are giga busted you cannot track them they warp around and can go render distance in travel in seconds dumb designed classes in my opinion. Lahn was annoying enough this is just unhealthy game design.

Seeing a fast mobile class barely in my render distance just gap close CC me with no counterplay is terrible  Oh just iframe or super armor it? Yes let me react to something  that has no indication it's occurring.

Honestly mobility on all these fast moving around map classes needs to be nerfed by like 25 to 30%  so the servers can actually understand what is happening.

To top it off aweagus will litterally kill me standing  warping in from off screen and spinning yes standing In Super armor I just explode that class is also not healthy for the game litterlaly just a more broken version of what sorc does. At least sorc you can run away from or try and outplay. Aweagu you either cc is immediately or it kills everyone  again just bad design. Choices.

Also we still have resists  in the game and no presets....... PA hurry up!

Yes please

If that's correct, then I actually didn't know this!
I never really noticed, since staying there lingering a broken FG, is usually asking to die, but I will take that into consideration, thanks!

Are you sure this is the case?
I (on Dark Knight), personally never Q block, since it is generally a death sentence in itself, but when my normal FGs are broken I usually see the debuff sat there for a few seconds, almost everytime I look, so either its a bug or its different per class, I will have to test.

But yeah, nerfing the actual problems is obviously the most suitable choice, but realistically, this will not happen, players have gotten far too used to the freedom of high movement without any real thought behind it, PA knows it will upset a chunk of the pvp base.

I've played a fair amount of awk ranger myself, I can confidently say (especially with the most recent changes) that it is a miserable class to play right now, being highly forward guard based to even regen stamina now is just not suitable at all in the current age of bdo, so yeah, my condolences.

Awk ranger isnt even that terrible of a class I honestly think we doom on it to much the classes biggest issue is it's just been to much mobility and power creep What's funny is i still think a simple thing like giving the class an evasion passive or a way to have more defense  to do it's job better as that backline support  is really all it needs. Its just to squishy ya we have a couple longer iframes but thier travel distances are so short your just followed and cced once your done with them. I love this class but if it wasn't a damn twig it would actually hold a candle to all the power creep. Cause PA expects us to linger SA but we die doing that.

It is correct, the debuff only gets applied when your block is broken while you are Q or S blocking, not during any forward guard skills.

Also fully support your statement, the fact that FGs are seen as weaknesses / openings nowadays is ridiculous due to how many classes can abuse it so easily, often while still playing safe and staying in SA.

So then we go back to ranged dominancy in all game modes. Any class with ranged ccs eats with these changes. You do ranged cc, teleport in, and drop melee range nuke and win. Ez game for witch and wizard, awk ranger, succ maegu, woosa, etc. Protected cc counts only really matter on a few crazy classes like Striker or DK, so that's just class tuning for them. Hard pass since you want to nuke everything.

They need to look at nerfing FG penetrations, adding some more stam restrictions/costs on perma mobile classes, make non-sa fgs a bit tankier and maybe forcing collision on mobility skills so they can't just easily check it, and better tune out the damage bandwidth between classes so squishy classes don't just die instantly in sa and tank classes can't become immortal with 800-900+ dr. The best solution is to nerf standing damage and buff special damage mods so when you cc someone, they take a lot more damage and can easily die vs not when they're standing.