WATCHMEN

Alright folks! Here are your top 3 issues and their answers back from the Combat team.

PvP
We the community believe that the most outstanding issue with the juggernaut dps tree's are their lack of adequate cooldowns with an emphasis on "Enraged Defense." In the Vengeance Tree "Enraged Defense" is arguably one of the best cooldowns for dps juggernauts. In the rage tree however it is almost useless when fighting 1v1 and incredibly useless when being focused by multiple enemies. A solution to the Rage Tree "Enraged Defense" would be to increase the amount of healing received by the skill or to make it similar to the Vengeance Tree "Enraged Defense." Also it will be extremely important to remove the resource cost of the skill and the resource cost while the skill is active in both trees. As it stands by using "Enraged Defense" for both trees you are inhibiting your ability to put out dps. We understand that in PvP scenarios rage juggernauts put out an incredible amount of pressure and damage, but the damage to survivability ratio is severely imbalanced. We also understand that juggernauts have the utility to taunt and mitigate damage to other players, but you can't taunt if you cannot survive.

Question: What solutions/thoughts does the combat development team have regarding the above issue?

We agree that Enraged Defense/Focused Defense is a rather costly defensive cooldown. As you pointed out, using Enraged Defense/Focused Defense limits a Juggernaut’s/Guardian’s ability to deal damage, and we are not completely satisfied with this trade-off. We will be redesigning the way Enraged Defense/Focused Defense works at some point in the future, and while we are unable give exact details on this redesign at the moment, we can tell you that the new Enraged Defense/Focused Defense will no longer drain Rage/Focus while it is active. Our goal is to improve the usefulness of Enraged Defense/Focused Defense so that it does not prevent a Juggernaut/Guardian from putting out a typical amount of damage while it is active.

As for the difference in survivability between Rage/Focus and Vengeance/Vigilance, it is intentional. Rage/Focus has more control than Vengeance/Vigilance, and as a trade-off, gives up some survivability. Obliterate/Zealous Leap, Force Crush/Force Exhaustion, and Oppressor/Intervention are examples of the control advantage that Rage/Focus has over Vengeance/Vigilance, while Unstoppable/Unremitting and Deafening Defense/Commanding Awe are examples of the survivability advantage that Vengeance/Vigilance has over Rage. As these trade-offs are intentional, they are unlikely to change (at least not any time soon).

PvE
Outside of an armor debuff, which can be applied by multiple other classes/role assignments, Juggernaut DPS has very limited group utility. Off-tanking or emergency tanking is not encouraged by any mechanics at end-game, and is not practical without sacrificing competency in our primary role as damage dealers. Similarly, abilities such as Enraged Defense and Intercede, will providing increased survivability, detract from our primary function as damage dealers (Intercede for using a global to do something other than damage and ED for the Rage cost), causing our already unimpressive damage potential to dip even further; they are also completely unneeded in end-game PvE.

With the current state of affairs with regards to class balance, a group would be better served bringing a Juggernaut tank, a Sniper, or a Mercenary for their armor debuff, due to other benefits provided by those classes/roles in addition to the armor debuff. This leaves Juggernaut DPS players without something that they can offer a group as far as utility abilities are concerned. Further, Juggernaut DPS is woefully lacking with the exception of one specific spec in one specific fight in the current tier of content.

Question: Is it intended that Juggernauts' damage output and group utility while using either of the DPS trees be sub-par due to the fact that we have the option of fulfilling the tank role?

It is not intended for the Juggernaut/Guardian damage specializations’ output and group utility to be sub-par because Juggernauts/Guardians can specialize to fulfill the role of a tank. We do realize that Juggernaut/Guardian damage dealers and some other damage dealers that can specialize in tanking or healing feel like they are not currently desirable group members in operations, and this is a high-priority issue for us to address.

Unfortunately, this is not a small issue that is standing in line for a quick and simple fix – it affects far more than just Juggernaut/Guardian damage dealers. As such, changes made to address this issue will be rolling out slowly, over time, in class-specific ways. The upcoming 2.4 changes for Powertech damage dealers are an example of this, and our much longer-term plans for this include adding new utility to the advanced classes and roles that seem to lack it. The gaps between our damage dealing specializations are already small for a game with this many specializations, but we will be working to shrink those gaps even further over time.

General
Vengeance currently suffers from two distinctive problems which affect its performance in both PvP and PvE.

First is the dependency on the Rampage proc to refresh Ravage. Unlike many other specs, Vengeance can not refresh Ravage through ability spam, as both Impale and Shatter have significant cooldowns accompanied with a comparatively low proc chance of similar abilities (30%). Given the long 30 sec cooldown on Ravage, this creates great variance in damage performance when DPS and rage generation dip down due to a 'no proc' scenario.

Second is the fact that Ravage is a melee channel, and suffers from all the vulnerabilities that go with these types of abilities. Much of its damage can be avoided simply with movement (which leaves the Juggernaut outside of melee range) and it can be be shut down with mezzes, stuns, knockbacks, etc. This is a significant issue due to how little damage our filler abilities deal, leaving Vengeance at great risk of being shut down completely in group PvP environments after the initial Ravage (from unstoppable).

To be clear, the community enjoys Ravage and considers it the cornerstone of the spec.

Question: With this in mind, would the combat team consider making some changes to ensure Vengeance can more easily deal reliable and consistent single target damage in PvE and PvP?

We agree that Rampage/Zen Strike can fall on hard times due to random number generation. We are not opposed to fixing this issue by increasing the chance that Rampage/Zen Strike occurs, but it likely means that the rate limit will also need to increase. This would give Vengeance/Vigilance more consistent damage and get it to parse less extreme outliers (both higher lows and lower highs), and this is a change we have no problem making for a future update.

As for channeling Ravage/Master Strike in PvP, we may consider giving Juggernauts/Guardians access to the Overwhelm/Debilitation skill which Marauders/Sentinels have. It immobilizes the target when Ravage/Master Strike is used. This skill would probably show up somewhere in the Vengeance/Vigilance skill tree