Now, I've defended vanguard of the balance before on the forums...it tends to be vastly underrated, with many people not fully grasping just how much DR it is going to be giving you.

But, if I'm grasping how the power works, warriors, assassins, rangers, thieves, raiders, and to a lesser extent bards and druids get a hell of a lot more use out of the power. It's potency is directly related to how much other damage reduction that you have up.

So, most of the time, mages and healers are going to get much less bang for their buck. They'll already have the DR on hand.

A question I have for the Imms is, is this for game balance reasons? Do they think that the power is okay as is?

Would it be possible to adjust the power for mages and healers, for the same reasons Maran mages were given the anti dispel power instead of zeal a few years back?

Even something like it boosting saves at the same sliding scale as DR would be something.

I've taken a few runs at Nexus mages and priests and I still find it pretty decent:

- I tend to have more inherent or easy damage reduction with the mages, but I also tend to be a much worse tank. It does less for me than a character with no built-in DR, but it does it more often.

- Having Vanguard up most of the time means I can save wands for when it really counts. I pick a lot of fights where full A/B/S is somewhere between completely unnecessary and counterproductive (since seeing grazes on me tips off most people that they should run for it) but just stoneskin (or whatever) might be cutting it a little too close. Vanguard works pretty well for those fights.

As always, your mileage may vary.

Even just someone chiming in to say

"Well, vanguard also does this thing, and mages with protections up can still get a lot of use out of it," would help out. I'm considering rolling a Nexun mage.

Maybe no one is replying because we don't follow your logic about vanguard being less useful to a Mage.

Stack vanguard on top of your other dam redux, you can achieve more as a Mage. Or use it to replace another prot for convenience. What's not to like?

That a mage with ABS and class protections will be getting next to nothing from Vanguard. And I don't think that even with, say, barrier and shield up, it's going to give you the twenty percent that aura would. At the same time, as sweet as it is, it's just not going to come close to replacing those protections by itself.

It's the one non bond power that the cabal gets, and even Daevryn has said in the past that melee'ers get a lot more out of it then mages. I was just asking why that is seen as okay, especially with the numbers giving a lot less bond options.

Would you have said that technically Marian mages still had melee attacks, so at least they got something out of zeal?

Even though vanguards % dmg redux is reduced with the applications of things like A/B/S, the reduction of 'large damage' attacks still applies. It will still make things like deathblow, ambush, backstab and the sort less effective when they hit you, which is still a sizeable perk.