For those of you who don't know, strongholds got overhauled for this season. The objective of this overhaul was to make the healing from strongholds more consistent and effective, however, what these changes ended up doing was removing the exotics original identity for the sake of something more effective on only on particular sword... The Lament. The new strongholds perk reads as follows: Clenched fist: Maximizes guard stats on equipped Swords. You take reduced damage while blocking with a Sword. Rapidly damaging targets after blocking shots with a sword grant restoration for a duration determined by the number of shots blocked. The problem with this new healing is that Number one: it removes the original identity of strongholds, which was that of a parry exotic To most stronghold users, the infinite guard was not the main defining characteristic of it. The Parry was, so removing it effectively changed why people use the exotic, especially since strongholds had large amounts of synergies with existing guard perks like flash counter and counterattack. Number two: The new healing on strongholds is objectively inferior to the previous system. The worst part about it is that the healing on shots blocked immediate after guarding did not need to be removed for this new healing system, in fact, if both were on strongholds this would not even be a problem. Since the only problem with strong holds healing previously was the lack of effectiveness in higher end content, not its ease of use. On its own, both methods of healing aren't effective enough to counteract the scaling of damage in end-game PVE or just PVP in general. It just seems needless to remove the parry heal, especially since the new heal on guard is objectively less effective in high damage situations since you must drop your guard and then attack an enemy to activate the healing. Which means that you are more likely to die in most activities. Also, This is tangential, but I think guarding with strongholds should act like the new hunter strand decoy and draw combatant aggression towards you so that strongholds users can better take advantage of their immense damage resistance and infinite guard...