Update 6 BR testing

[Erasluindor]

Besides ferrets, There is still one thing missing from the update... Mitigation.
Ghamp is a nemesis troll that you can find hanging around Limlight Gorge.
Im sitting here on my warden staring down a nemesis and of course...

Challenge Accepted
Things were going great! He gets a buff that gives him a huge boost to crit chance and i was pretty quick to remove it everytime it came up. It came up once when i had him to about 11k morale when all of a sudden i didnt remove it in time.
BAM!
The Ghâmp scored a critical hit with Critical Onslaught on Krackus for 11,219 Common damage to Morale.

Ok i know soloing a nemesis is a little overpowered but we will be expected to take hits like this when tanking in raids as well. The mitigation issue is still there and there just isnt anything we have that can counter spike damage like that. If im sitting above 10k morale im not so worried that i need to go ahead and pop NS...

The above mentioned hit killed me. Taking on Ghamp was incredibly fun and i plan on doing it again soon! Until that point i felt in control of the fight and things were going great! Just an example of how we feel strong against everything but spike damage and why guards will still be preferred in raids.

[Aiyah]

That gear has never added up to me we have about the same morale maybe a 1.2-1.5k difference with my new build but your build is so squishy compared to most ive seen.

Lets get this Straight. You sit in your own firedots that constantly stack up without moving much. however if likes been said you have a few 1st ages flying around to up the dps then yes i see this pretty plausible, at the very least ive done this with 3cappies, 2 hunters, and myself one make up and ive done it. with 2 cappies. But i still cant see how you can sit in your own fire puddle with a cappy healing. I dont normally call BS but if you do it all the time post a P.O.V in that thread with fraps and shut everyone up. COmes update 6 this is the Attitudes Im personally Worried about

I find it so Shocking that you LEFT one of the top raiding kins. and also for a fact you never downed t2 shadow solo tanking according to your predecessors

I dont normally call BS but if you do it all the time post a P.O.V in that thread with fraps and shut everyone up.

Sorry to derail but... this is a silly accusation. I too have tanked both bosses with a cappy healer and no mini around. Scrumptastic solo healed my group (confirm with him). He has capped outgoing healing and knows his class. In pug runs, I'm still able to tank both without kiting at all except when I get the eye. I get unlucky sometimes especially when I get stunned but that's when I pop NS. It's all a matter of keeping up BPE buffs, not tanking near the forge and not standing in fire puddles :\. I don't understand what's so impossible about the last foundry fight. Orthanc is another story but not completely impossible. I wish I could bring my warden more to my group's runs. So far they've only taken wardens to Lightning/F&F/Acid wings T2 and saruman T1. One of the best wardens I know is able to do things like tank draigoch's head without a healer and solo heal foundry runs(after healer died repeatedly by their own fault). Give the class some credit. We may be broken right now but nothing is really impossible to do until update 6 comes.

[Minyacairwen]

Is anyone else having trouble with this? Enduring expert shieldwork works exactly as advertised above, but the other two do not.
[snip]

Am I missing something?

No, you aren't
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http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.p...gs-suggestions

[Vindrayeth]

I don't get this discussion about the Foundry last boss t2hm. I literally always tank both, even if the group doesn't want me to, as I go 'oops' and spam aggression to ensure they lock on to me (:P). The key to doing this successfully is to 1) kite when needed (with conviction), eg. when the group is on the forge or man, and make use of the forge's line of sight, as you don't have to tank all the time and the forge and man are pretty much stationary, and 2) to run away from the orc if he goes for his knockdown, which he will call out (this is very important, as it will require the orc to run to you, reducing the amount of hits he gets in while you are knocked down and without bpe) and make sure shield tactics is up just before the aoe stuns. Just be careful and know when the fire comes (always at the same spot, at the same point in the fight). I have literally had zero problems; I usually pop NS right before the forge goes down in case I get a 10k crit on me (it has happened).

Sorry for being offtopic but it's kind of annoying to see all these posts about it.

[Minyacairwen]

Sorry for being offtopic but it's kind of annoying to see all these posts about it.

It's an american Warden forums-thingie - derailing !!

Joke aside, it would be great if we would get back on track - NOW is the chance to be constructive and get things changed/fixed.... pass that chance b/c derailing is more important and we get at least another 3 months of suckiness

[Minyacairwen]

Also, @my experience so far:


General Stuff:

Soloing is great, but I think most seem to forget that Resolution seems to be bugged (it can stack multiple times now, resulting in insane heals vs 3+ opponents even when in ASSA/RECK stance)
Also, I've seen Champs taking on 10 landscape mobs, so I don't see any op stuff there - every class is quite op when soloing right now.

@Selfheals: Got bigger, so of course soloing and 3-mans are easier now. This was kinda expected though.
But still - that wasn't the problem on live =/
(I guess the discussion about foundry show that - if your group is great you can even do 6-mans in live right now with ease ... which is kinda not due to the Warden though, but the group being awesome)

Assailment is buggy as hell and plays clunky - waiting for an update b4 venturing into it

Recklessness provides huge amounts of dots, but actually my DPS is lower than on live - mostly b/c Dots still tick every 4 seconds (so there is a finit amount of dots you can stack) and you can just stack 3 bleeds and 3 light dots.
Hopefully we'll see something addressing that problem (ticking every 2 seconds or more different dots - esp. for that sh/sp line would be an option)
I like the Lifetap from SP/FI in Recklessness, but there seems to be a missing lifetap for SP/FI/SP then - and/or for Boars rush ?

Tanking/surviving feels good, but even though your Hots tick for 24 seconds now, you got less time in 6mans -- due to needing ALOT more threat skills (aggression does not really work anymore).
I don't have enough time to stack any buffs from the SH/FI buff line except DoW, which is kinda sad.
Neither can I stack buffs from the FI/Sh-buff line, as I just got time to use the 4 gambit there (b/c it adds threat) =/
So while Hotting is definitely better, I hope those fellowship leeches will be looked into.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Detail-y stuff:

Shield tactics reads nicely, but ultimately still is useless - sadly
I simply can't predict when to get stunned/knocked down when tanking and 10 secs is too short to fire it every 30 seconds. =/

2 Wardens can't stack buffs from Conviction - hopefully this will get fixed. I don't mind that you cant stack the heals to avoid it being up, but sharing buffs would be nice - right now when a warden is tanking another Warden who is DPS-ing should not use Conviction, thus losing a great buff for the group.
Otherwise its really great now !

Light Dots are severely improved ! Finally it's viable to use Brink of Victory, Desolation or Surety of death again ! Thanks !

PB still is fine, Piercing strike feels broken with that 1-2sec AFTER-cast delay (i.e. after you've seen the dmg number), SoV still takes long to animate, but is okay - and finally good threat again.


I think Stance-dancing should be limited - right now you can easily swap stances and thus change from DPS to healing/tanking. Of course thats nice and that's what a good player should be able to do. But you can switch ALL the time - so perhaps we'll see a longer CD on those stances... so we'd still be able to swtich if stuff goes wrong, but can't abuse it that easily -- and due to less abusive stuff we hoefulyl get some buffs to the individual stances (?)

-------------------------------------
Theres alot more, but in General most stuff feels "good", but needs some more ironing out and alot of polishing/tweaking

[Osolep]

I believe I noticed when reading Orion's blog that Agression will no longer be a threat transfer, but an AOE threat gain. Could be a nice new opener now that WC has no threat component.

Edit: From Orion's Blog

Aggression
Low Damage to a Single Target;
AoE Threat Gain
+3% Tactical Damage to Nearby Fellows for 10s if +3% is present increases to 4%
On Critical, Pulsing Lifetap

[Liltaro]

I have problem with "RPG" part of warden's U6.
Example, warden performing War Cry.
On life:
Mob thinks: Oww, we have badass warden here. Let's pay attention and keep escape way ready. Threat and little morale loss.
On BR:
Mob thinks: He is so agile when shouting. It will be difficult to hit him.
Same for SoD. Warden stabs mob's belly and suddenly starts dodging better.

[Osolep]

Could be that he is dodging better because his spear is now embedded in his belly and no longer hindering his/her movements.

[Iznogoot]

I was talking to other wardens when we were doing the 6 warden Foundry. We came to the conclusion that Conviction from the 3 stands should be counted as 3 different skills, thus they should stack to each other. Say if we have 2 tanks 2 dps and 2 ranged dps wardens, and they fire up conviction as the same time. The Recklessness conviction would replace each other, so does the Determination Convictions and Assailment Convictions, but we should have 3 types of conviction buff/heal stacking up.

[Aelbryht]

What are the new stances like guys? I don't recall seeing any mention of the actual numbers they give and was wondering how the icpr compares going from say conservation+legacy to determination+legacy for example.

[Creepkilla]

Lol and how many healers do you need to save your behind???...this post is just hilarios lol....

I run with one healer. Why would you need more? I don't get what's funny. Every tier two wing of Orthanc has been beaten with a warden solo tanking it. Foundry is easy.

@Acidburn - someone is a warden hater :P

@Rauthgar yea i don't have a problem handling both bosses when doing foundry with kinnies, although wouldnt say i'd do that with a pug group not knowing how well they know the fight etc

I was talking to other wardens when we were doing the 6 warden Foundry. We came to the conclusion that Conviction from the 3 stands should be counted as 3 different skills, thus they should stack to each other. Say if we have 2 tanks 2 dps and 2 ranged dps wardens, and they fire up conviction as the same time. The Recklessness conviction would replace each other, so does the Determination Convictions and Assailment Convictions, but we should have 3 types of conviction buff/heal stacking up.

+1

interesting point, imo too they are seperate skills, seeing them stack would be great in a raid or even with 1 warden we could stance dance to get up all 3 :P


p.s. anyone know a proposed date for U6 coming out?

[geoboy]

Ultimately, the main obstacle of successful raid tanking hasn't changed a bit. Have other games been able to deal with lighter armored tanks?

[danno8]

Ultimately, the main obstacle of successful raid tanking hasn't changed a bit. Have other games been able to deal with lighter armored tanks?

Yah they usually just get a stance that ups their armour by say 150% or something. Only reason that doesn't work here is because of mit caps for armour types.

With proper and careful itemization you should not need mitigation caps. I mean I'm just spitballing here but shouldn't devs have access to the entire database of armour/weapons/gear in the game and come up with a top end number of possible armour combinations. Then you just make sure that top end number is adjusted to where you want it to be by adjusting the values on the gear.

Allow some room for buffs by going through possible buffing skills of all 8(?) classes and you're done!

Basically what I am saying is a light armour wearer, for instance, should not be able to get above 40% even with the best combination of gear/clickies/buffs in the game if itemization is done well. If it is not, or you think it would be too much work, then you throw up a cap so you don't have to worry about it.

[Orion]

That build is a little older. A newer one will appear. Apparently copying a character can only be done once. I am hoping that we can get a wipe, so that characters can be copied fresh...but not certain if that will happen. Characters that were copied with DC broken will still have DC broken...sadly.

War-cry is likely to get threat back.

In the Moors - you will be losing either the number of mobs targetted by lifetaps or all pulses from heals. (likely the former)

The infinite Battle Prep issue will be fixed (Battle Prep will not allow the builders to be used infinitely while active.)

Unfortunately, some of the clunkiness with Assailment is likely to stay for a while.

As are the tooltip issues with lifetaps. (I wish I could fix this sooner.)

[Balan64]

Quote "I advise you to delete the characters that you copied over and recopy them."

I don't recomend this as you will not be able to re-copy any toons you already have copied over. I learned this the hard way just now

[Leonardan]

for some reason i copied a char I dont use just to see if i can recopy it, and yes, I cant. gladly I didn't on my rk that Im using for testing.

[Iznogoot]

All hail Orion who finally graces us with his visit.
_ Hurray for War-Cry threat
_ Who cares about Moors? Just make us good tank
_ Boohoo about Battle Prep being nerfed
_ Assailment can wait. I'm not heart broken about it. But it's still a good idea that needs more love.
Can we at least know when the next BR fix is online so we can come back and test? And more instruction with character recopy would be appreciated.

Thank you.

[Bels_illuminati]

Ultimately, the main obstacle of successful raid tanking hasn't changed a bit. Have other games been able to deal with lighter armored tanks?

I think we all agree that the only thing we can't tank right now is Orthanc tier 2. And it s not even so much the bosses that are the problem. I find we are pretty much just as good as guardians in this respect even now on live. The big problem I find is the trash pulls, it's just painful trying to do them on a warden.

Even our stupidly well geared guardian main tank in our tier 2 raid group is basically relying on pledge double spam on some trash, and making sure that our dps simply kills a couple of the most dangerous mobs during this period of virtually invincibility. Now of course we wardens cannot compete with this, not even close. Never surrender pales into utter insignificance in Orthanc tier 2. It's useful on bosses, useless on trash I find. We have no way to regularly avoid large amounts of damage on a short cool down.

Update 6 isn't going to fix this I don't think. If anything we will become more viable on bosses than we are now, which is great. But the awkward part is simply reaching those bosses.

For me the question has to be however, not are wardens too weak now, but is Orthanc tier 2 trash simply too hard for current tanks and gear levels. When the games 'primary' tank is forced to use their 'poop' skills during every pull, isn't this a sign that the balance is slightly out of whack? When you have trash that aoe silences and does large tactical damage with insane attack speed, isn't this simply anti-tank just for the sake of it?

There is something to be said for forcing every member in the raid to be on top of their game, and I love this fact in Orthanc. On my LM if I debuff the wrong target just once during trash it can mean a full raid wipe. This sort of difficulty is commendable. My problem here however is that tanks are only allowed to exercise one area of their abilities (ie aggro gen). We as wardens simply can't mitigate the damage no matter the build, and so are utterly reliant on our fellows no matter the job during each pull. Guardians are no different frankly relying on pledge etc to see them home. As tanks our base avoidances, mitigations etc don't really have any impact (when comparing one warden to another warden and one guard to another guard). I think my concern is that there is actually very little skill involved in Orthanc tier 2 tanking by and large. There arent really many ways we can avoid damage via clever positioning or ensuring we don't get caught out by mechanics etc. It's a case of aggro what we are told and hope we don't get crit and actually bpe something after finesse.

Guess my point in this rather boring post is that Orthanc needs tweaking to reward skilful tanking, not simply as it is now to be made so hard as to require cool down skills virtually every pull. Which is my main reason as to why wardens cant tank in here. I fear update 6 has done nothing to address either side of the problem, with content still just as hard, and wardens still lacking in suitable cooldowns. Personally I prefer to steer away from CDs on a warden, but if tier 2 stays as it is now I see little alternative without making us grossly OP.

[horus418]

That build is a little older. A newer one will appear. I advise you to delete the characters that you copied over and recopy them. DC had some issues that were fixed.

War-cry is likely to get threat back.

In the Moors - you will be losing either the number of mobs targetted by lifetaps or all pulses from heals. (likely the former)

The infinite Battle Prep issue will be fixed (Battle Prep will not allow the builders to be used infinitely while active.)

Unfortunately, some of the clunkiness with Assailment is likely to stay for a while.

As are the tooltip issues with lifetaps. (I wish I could fix this sooner.)

Very cool. IMO, we need just a little bit of real threat with War-cry to get the ball rolling. I'd even say to ditch the DoT component altogether.

Assailment is clunky but I can see it being enjoyable and beneficial for group play. My only grip about the stance is having to run in and out of melee range for some of the gambits, it just doesn't seem to make sense to have to do so when buffing other ranged/ranged tactical classes.

Overall I love the changes, but I still have to tank to see what kind of beating I take before I completely sing praises.

[Crell_1]

That build is a little older. A newer one will appear. I advise you to delete the characters that you copied over and recopy them.

We cannot recopy characters without a wipe and reset due to the way the automation tech works. I'd love to see a wipe and fresh copy with the next build.

[Vivito]

I have not been on BR, but reading this thread, I have a really nerdy hangup on the WC threat issue:

A war cry is something you do to signal to your enemy that your intention is to end them, their line, and their grandmother (if you yell loud enough).

As such, removing the threat element seems to turn this into a rather poorly named gambit.

[Chanah]

We may keep the threat after all, says Orion. I really hope so.

[Regero]

That build is a little older. A newer one will appear. I advise you to delete the characters that you copied over and recopy them. DC had some issues that were fixed.

Hurray!

War-cry is likely to get threat back.

HURRAY!

On this note, how have our other threat skills been adjusted? Is it really like the tooltips are saying where Spear of Virtue is now more powerful, and Precise Blow took a nerf? etc.

In the Moors - you will be losing either the number of mobs targetted by lifetaps or all pulses from heals. (likely the former)

Why? Yes, we have near god mode survivability in the moors, but we also can't do feces for damage. In the moors I've found that I can easily live through a 4 warg gank squad, but I also have zero chance of actually killing any of them. On the other hand, in Assailment and Reckless, I have a pretty good chance of killing one warg, but in numbers they eat me alive. In fact, even with a solid DPS build and traits, we still don't do significant damage most of the time. I was out last night with a DPS build and Yellow traits (Assailment ftw, haters gonna hate) and despite having 75% ranged physical mastery with a 15% crit chance, I didn't notice that I was doing anything appreciable. I was also, of course, horrible squishy.

The infinite Battle Prep issue will be fixed (Battle Prep will not allow the builders to be used infinitely while active.)

Also, why? The only time this is an issue is when Battle Prep lasts into combat, then it allows for some nasty spamming. Out of combat though it's a nice way to rack up buffs. And is it intended that Battle Prep have no cooldown?

Unfortunately, some of the clunkiness with Assailment is likely to stay for a while.

What about some of Assailments other issues? Are the builders for example supposed to be limited to 25m? Is there supposed to be a ranged limit of the Spear-Fist gambits, with no minimum range? And are we supposed to have to run into melee in order to buff our group?

On that note by the way, can we tweak the buffs a bit? 3% is so small, and 10 seconds is so short, it would be nice if one or the other could have some love. Assailment is a fairly slow stance to build gambits in because of the longer builder animations, having to refresh something every 10 seconds is a much bigger deal in this stance than any other.

As are the tooltip issues with lifetaps. (I wish I could fix this sooner.)

S'cool brah. But are these skills themselves currently broken, or is it just the tooltips that are wonky?

Also: Ferrets. When?

[JuanD]

We cannot recopy characters without a wipe and reset due to the way the automation tech works. I'd love to see a wipe and fresh copy with the next build.

Can someone explain me how does character recopy works? I can test it with my cappy which is also copied on BR and I'm not testing U6 with him, but some extra information about this procces would be very nice too