Warden Feedback Thread

[gells]

Here is comparison between Warden and Guardian, if both of them gets 100k unavoidable hit

TL;DR

Wardens take waaay more damage than guards at tanking with current content. Wardens therefore are a lot harder to heal, and die more often. Making them not ideal tanks in the current state.

With the proposed updates, this situation remains unchanged. It also remains unchanged with respect to any viable DPS to make Warden on-par for a raid spot as DPS.

So what we're left with is a complicated class, which takes many gambits, to even begin to approach the tanking utility of a guard or the DPS viability of a hunter or even RK.

Leaving this class -- as it has been for some time -- a jack of all trades, and desirable for none.

[Arandigos]

TL;DR

Wardens take waaay more damage than guards at tanking with current content. Wardens therefore are a lot harder to heal, and die more often. Making them not ideal tanks in the current state.

With the proposed updates, this situation remains unchanged. It also remains unchanged with respect to any viable DPS to make Warden on-par for a raid spot as DPS.

So what we're left with is a complicated class, which takes many gambits, to even begin to approach the tanking utility of a guard or the DPS viability of a hunter or even RK.

Leaving this class -- as it has been for some time -- a jack of all trades, and desirable for none.

bear in mind that many of the gambits are useless atm since they give stats many mobs ignore as a warden you use few gambitsa atm so dont be fooled into thinking the warden is hard atm,i mean there is a guy on the forums that tanked the curent raid with warden and he barely uses any gambits..... its tragic.

[Kaeneth]

From Build 2:

Class Changes:

Warden
• Increasing Warden DoTs by ~20%
• Determination Specialization Bonus Changes:
* Removed Spear Damage Bonus
* +20% Max Morale
* +5% Mitigation
• Impressive Flourish now grants +1% Physical Mitigation and +1% Tactical Mitigation
• Maddening Strike now grants +1% Physical Mitigation and +1% Tactical Mitigation
• Dance of War now grants +1% Physical Mitigation and
• Conviction now grants +1% Tactical Mitigation
• Precise Blow damage-over-time now scales with weapon strength
• Piercing Strike damage-over-time now scales with weapon strength
• Spear of Virtue damage-over-time now scales with weapon strength
• Warden Damage-over-time increased in strength

Hopping into BR now, can't wait to see how my DoTs are looking.

[gaara908776]

Absolutely adore the tanking changes! Thank you so much for listening Dev's! You gave us a way to maintain equal mitigation with a captain, and similar morale pool.

-2 Bugs I've noticed so far on BR.
1. Defiant Challenge doesn't apply the mitigation buff it promises. Aka no 5% bonus to tactical or physical mitigation.
2. Grand Abyssal Rune of Striking isn't affecting Warden DoT's in Precise Blow or Unerring Strike line. I'm assuming it's supposed to affect both of these lines because it says they'll be linked to weapon damage now.


Again no complaints with blue line right now. You've given us all we've asked for in that regard. Increased mits through gambits, single target forced taunt, and increased morale. Well done

Haven't had any very reliable parses as of yet due to the fact that gambit masteries are incredibly laggy on BR. 2-3 second duration of server lag in between certain masteries. If you can find a way to fix this, the DC mit buff, and Striking rune bug, I think Warden changes will be ready for live.

[jomanjy]

i posted my feedback in the beta thread but i will post it here too.

for dps warden...

the initial damage on all ST bleeds are still very low and prob didn't get scaled at all.

aoe bleeds are low, i have no idea why it got nerfed, its kinda useless now.

I'd love to see martial fury trait proc get increased from 15% to 30 or 25% at least because 15% is very low.

morale taps are useless now, it needs a big buff imo.

the bonus damage of using mighty blow after power attack and unerring strike after mighty blow still didn't scaled and its extremely low.

it requires a crazy amount of finesse to actually use bleeds without getting resisted 50% of the time.

the blueline changes are very nice.

the DC is bugged on beta, you don't get the mit buff when you use it and the raid relic doesn't work on spear bleeds

[BotLike]

the DC is bugged on beta, you don't get the mit buff when you use it and the raid relic doesn't work on spear bleeds

You all know it , it's bugged because they are silently working on a nerf ^^

[Taldeen]

Changes look very good/promising.

The trait impressive flourish is currently bugging the skill. The physical mitigation is added as +%, meaning your mitigation is set to 1020%.
I would suggest removing the base +% mitigation from impressive flourish and let the trait add 0.5% per trait level while not providing other bonuses.
Alternatively you could just get a significant amount of critdef per trait level on use, effectively reducing devastates. Adding +phys/tact mitigation value as it currently does is not any good when capped. You have other skills to compensate for debuffs etc.

The trait for the free peoples needs changes as it is a traitlinefinisher which does not do anything currently. It should not stack mitigations but could for example stack -1% incoming damage per gambit builder, up to -10% i think.

I personally feel that Never Surrender should be a toggle skill. Once it has been triggered, I should go on a 240s cooldown. This way players can choose when to use Never Surrender but can’t use it twice in a row. The reduced cooldown should make it still useable 2-3 times in most bossfights.

Critical Strike and Wages of Fear still feel underwhelming, but I’m not sure what a good solution would be.

Otherwise would still shorten gambit builder animations.

[Me_the_Third]

Just returning after a long hiatus, so some of my info might be outdated.

General Stuff:
-Spear Cosmetics: I would love it if wardens could use spear cosmetics over sword cosmetics. Spears are iconic, but swords are just far better for tanking.
-Spear Bleeds: Echoing other posters.
-Gambit Buff Duration Legacies: These legacies are sorely missed, and I think they need to be either rolled into the baseline, or readded as legacies. Also, warden legacies as a whole need a look.

Tooltip Issues:
-Close Call Tooltip: I'd change "dodge" to "evade" for clarity of mechanics.
-War-Cry Trait: This skill also buffs Brink of Victory. If that's not a bug, it should be added to the tool-tip.
-Persevere Block Rating: This legacy buffs the persevere gambit line, and it would be helpful if the wording was changed to reflect such.
-Initial Damage vs. DoT Tooltips and Legacies: I'd add the word "initial" if a legacy/trait/etc. only affects the upfront damage of a gambit, for the sake of clarity. As things stand now, it's somewhat obtuse.
-Morale-Tap Damage: Tooltips are inconsistent here; the trait that improves morale-tap damage increases healing, but the legacy does not. For clarity, it would be great if things that also boosted morale-tap healing said so directly.

Gambit Levels:
-The Dark Before Dawn: This gambit has an associated deed with it, but isn't acquired until level 60. This is especially annoying for any players who cap themselves at level 50, since it means they simply cannot acquire all their class trait points.
-Resolution: This gambit isn't acquired until level 72, whereas before the changes it was available somewhere in the mid-40s. I had a lot of fun with it leveling up my first warden, and would like seeing its level reduced, as I consider it one of a warden's iconic tricks.

Yellow-Line:
-Marked and Diminished Target: I'd combine these skills into one. Warden game play focuses around the gambits, and these skills are an annoying distraction from that. Combining them means just using one javelin skill instead of two, which hardly makes a difference in the amount of gambits a warden can use, but makes game play smoother.
-Adroit Manoeuvre/Warden's Triumph: Gambits shouldn't be reliant on traits to have an appreciable effect, especially gambits not granted by a trait line. Restore the buffs they provide to their pre trait tree values. I'd also add a trait in yellow line to make the bonuses they grant apply to the entire fellowship.
-Debuffs: I'd add a way for the warden to spread the damage debuffs to nearby targets. With that and the buff changes, yellow warden would have a decent amount of buffing and debuffing, and would be closer to being in a good place.

Blue-Line:
-I think the changes made were great, but there are still a few things that could use improvement.
-Warning Shot: I'd lower the cd of Warning Shot to 30 seconds or even 20 seconds, to be more in keeping with the cds other tanking classes have on their single target force taunts.
-Avoidance Tanks: As is, captains are more of an avoidance tank than wardens are. Wardens can gain up to 7% (2% block and parry from traits, 3% parry from a sword) passive percentage, while captains can gain 12% (5% block and parry from traits, 2% from greatsword), with an additional 8% evade proc that can be kept up more than 50% of the time. Wardens can gain lots of rating and partial avoidance percentages, but those aren't nearly as useful as full avoid percentages. I'd propose changing the finisher skill bonuses to pure percentage ratings to counteract this, and to buff finisher skills somewhat.
-Defiant Challenge: I agree with other posters that the wildly fluctuating mitigations are poor design, and also say that having a survival skill tied to the only aoe force taunt is very annoying. I'd remove the mitigation bonus from Defiant Challenge, and give wardens one other survivability skill to compensate.
-Captains: Other posters have a better idea of what endgame looks like, but from extensively browsing the wiki and some play at level 50, I honestly think captains are just too good at tanking. Wardens and guardians will never bring anything like the utility a tanking captain can, and as such the two main tanking classes need to be clear winners when it comes to pure tanking. I don't mean nerf captains into the ground or anything like that, but some trimming may be in order.

[gaara908776]

DPS seems to be consistently around ~50k. Can definitely spike higher with some double procs. This parse was achieved with 65k crit and 223k Mastery.

I'd imagine if we're parsing this much on average solo, with full raid buffs we'll be the highest melee dps.

https://imgur.com/nfnJ1Ry

[Osglinthor]

DPS changes are so far in good direction

Slight increase to aoe dots would still be fine and return on initial DoT hits

Also I would sugest to remove double proc chance from martial fury and replace it with ~15-20% mitigation bypass that i would prefer working by each dot gambit giving 1.5% or 2% if its too hard to code just give flat out 15-20%.Or increase proc chance of double bleeds to 25 30% but i would prefer mitigation bypass since it would deliver more consistent dps and put us on even with fire dmg dealers if we were to use lvl 85 earring or FI set warden tank if those scaled sets go live.And finsse needs to be looked at.
Tanking changes are fine,with some work to few traits and DC mitigations and bit lower cd on st taunt.
Would be good if we got attack duration buff/or faster masteris/gambit builders cast to make gamepaly more fluid.
I will post some detalied parses later but so far it howers around ~52k with few lucky ones going few k above and unlucky few k under.

[Beltharas]

I have a few higher-level comments; I'll leave the number crunching and specific-skill suggestions to others, many of whom have already made very good suggestions in this thread.

BLUE LINE

In the greatest days of warden tanking we had three broad goals and a handful of gambits to pursue each one: 1. maintain maximum self-buffs (to BPE & mitigations); 2. maintain maximum self-heals; 3. maintain sufficient agro. What made the class so much fun was that you could only achieve 2 of those 3 goals at any one time. For example if you tried to maintain all your self-buffs and all your self heals and you would lose agro to your hunter or RK. This was interesting and situation-dependent because in certain raid settings you could neglect self heals (assuming you were getting plenty from the healers) in order to maximize self-buffs and keep solid agro. In other situations (raid trash or 6mans) you could keep heals up and sacrifice some BPE buffs in order to allow your healer to focus more on buffing the group and less on direct healing the tank. In 3mans you could forget buffs, use a few heals, and focus more on outputting significant DPS. You get the idea. If you are able to achieve this complexity again and make blue wardens viable in different situations by careful selection of which type of gambits to focus on, you'll have done something very good for the game.

I really like the 5% mit bonus in blue combined with the 20% morale boost. This is better than simply boosting mits because it gives wardens a style distinct from guards. We'll still take bigger hits, but with a larger morale pool to compensate and self-heals to help catch back up after a big hit, the whole tanking style will be unique and fun to play. Of course, to make this work we are also going to need some up-scaling of our HoTs.

RED LINE

Red wardens have always been the most fun when we could maximize DoT damage; and this also gives us a way of dealing damage that distinguishes us from other class. DoT has advantages and disadvantages: we don't have spike damage when its needed and it takes a while to ramp up to maximum DPS, making it less useful in short fights. But, DoTs keep ticking when a boss is unreachable by others, and once we do get them all up and ticking we can do terrifying damage. This is a fun playstyle and it really needs to be viable again. The overall boost to DoTs sounds awesome. If you get the chance I really hope you also look at the spear sweep trait line. It would be awesome if maximizing AOE DPS required getting the light DoTs up and then spreading bleeds around to the group with spear sweep. However it has always been more effective to just use the extra time to hit some targets with Spear of Virtue. Take a look at the uptime of AOE DoTs, figure out how much time we have to effectively use spear sweep, then boost bleed damage to make it the best way to deal AOE damage.

YELLOW LINE

When I thought the yellow buffs were all the attention wardens were going to get I wasn't even a little bit tempted to return to the game. It would be cool to have a viable ranged line, but as others have said this should be your last priority. One conceptual idea that might be cool is if yellow/blue (or blue/yellow) wards could be effective ranged tanks. But then of course we would need content where a ranged tank is necessary/useful...

[Krindel]

Thank you very much for this changes.
I have reworked chart with Wardens and Guardians incomming damage from 100k unavoidable hit. This chart apply only for full hits, it was created to compare maximum taken damage from big special attacks. On normal attacks, warden has more partial avoidance chance, so Guardian will receive more full hits than Warden and difference between total incomming damage will be smaller.

Damage comparison: Warden vs Guardian	Passive Mitigation	Buffed Mit. 100% uptime	+Minstrels SoS +3%Mit	+Captains Herald of Hope +3%Mit	+Tome of Defence	Grd Redirect 35% (10/30s uptime)	Wrd DC +5% (12/20s uptime)
Warden - Mitigation	55%	60% with all gambits	63%	66%	66% (-10% Damage)	66% (-10% Damage)	71% (-10% Damage)
Guardian - Mitigation	60%	70% with full fortification	73%	76%	76% (-10% Damage)	76% (-10% Damage, 35%absorb)	76% (-10% Damage)
Wrd damage from 100k hit	45k	40k	37k	34k	30,6k	30,6k	26,1k
Grd damage from 100k hit	40k	30k	27k	24k	21,6k	13,2k	21,6k
WRD dmg / GRD dmg	1,13x	1,33x	1,37x	1,42x	1,42x	2,32x	1,21x

Difference between Wardens and Guardians incomming damage from full hits looks much better than before. We have to take in account, that this is worst scenario for warden. We still have Never Surrender against big hits, also I still hope for NS rework to prevent double cast.

I think one more panic skill would be great, maybe rework "For the Free People" cap stone trait and skill to something like this: Enter a state in which every Gambit Builder builds a stacking -incomming damage buff. +3% absorb/gambit for Warden and +1% absorb/gambit for others, maximum will be 15% for warden and 5% for the rest of Fellowship. Duration: 15s, Cooldown: 1m 30s.

Finishing gambits now have 30s duration, up from 24s, thank you very much for this change. I still think, there is space for +10s buff duration.

Warden has now +20% morale buff, will Guardians get +20% morale bonus too? I am still convinced, that removing morale bonus from champion, captain and now warden tank traits is better solution.

There are still bugs and few things that need to be addressed:

• Deffiant Challenge mitigation buff is not working in this build.
• "Impressive Flourish" gambit now has terrible delay after animation.
• "Surety of Death" and "Piercing Strike" gambits have annoying delay after animation.
• Stun immunity from "Shield Tactics" should be immediate buff, currently this buff apply after animation.
• Increase morale tap heal, including gambit builders and "Offensive Strike" morale taps. Since we do not have 90% mitigation from Deffiant Challenge and we have no panic skill like Jugernaut and Pledge, we need more aoe heal from morale taps.
• Nerf "Never Surrender" double cast, start 5 minutes cooldown after NS heal proc. New: every "Shield-bash" builder use will reduce NS cooldown by 10s. This will prevent double NS use, but in combat cooldown will be shorter.
• Scale up instant heal from "Restoration" or make it % based. Instant heal is still at 1756 morale, that's joke. Now that we have more morale, all hots should be scaled up by 20%
• Buffs to finishing gambits from gambit chains should be higher.
• Please increase buff duration in blue line for 10s.
• AoE fist Gambits should have higher DoT or higher upfront damage, we need this gambits for generating threat.
• Secondary dots from red set bonus "Martial Fury" are different from normal dots.
• "Rune of Striking" (+76, +96, +125) do not increase damage over time.
• Increase buff duration of melee "Adroit Manoeuver" and "Warden's Triumph" to 25s and boost their damage, 4 and 5 long gambits should have much higher damage.
• Capstone traits "For the Free People" and "Honed Spikes" need some work.
• Scale up yellow trait set bonus skill "Fire at Will".

[siipperi]

Blue morale bonus should be removed, just like captain tank morale bonus should be removed. Only reason these were created in the first place was because less vitality. Now that everyone are about on same line no reason to have this free morale bs. Tanks should get their morale by getting tank armor, not for free with passive morale boosts. This is not fix for ###### itemization that you did for warden but horrid bandage fix. You also need to remove passive mitigation from tank line and distribute that (and why not few % higher total) into just created mitigation buffing gambits. 1% each is extremely underwhelming.

Dps seems to be broken as well, seems like nerf in order. Spear bleeds just out of this world.

edit. Imo both shield tactics and shield mastery both should award warden additional 5% mitigations to tact/phys sources. That way you can remove stupid passive mitigation from blue line. 1min duration buff means it's nice to keep up and it makes warden gameplay extremely more rewarding. I dont even mind 6% mitigations to both to compensate hardness of keep up all mitigation buffs compared to passive ezmode. No reasonable warden can say these gambits are overly exciting tbh.

[Grimlir83]

Warden has now +20% morale buff, will Guardians get +20% morale bonus too? I am still convinced, that removing morale bonus from champion, captain and now warden tank traits is better solution.

Guardians do not need this buff in order to be good and competitive tanks, in my opinion it's a way (perhaps a bad one, and we could fin another) to have more equality between tanks.

[siipperi]

Guardians do not need this buff in order to be good and competitive tanks, in my opinion it's a way (perhaps a bad one, and we could fin another) to have more equality between tanks.

Nor should wardens. Its horrid easy way out instead of designing class proper from ground up to have rewarding gambits.

[JiiPee]

DC cannot give +40% max mitigation anymore, I hope devs are working with that and is reason why DC is currently broken. If DC continue to work as before, we are in situation where warden absorb all damage half of the time with help of the cappy herald +2% mit buff or mini SoS mit buffs or guardian fortification mit group buff.
Now imagine what 2 wardens could do? Yes absorb all damage 100% of time unless damage is unmitigated. Warden can get currently on live already over 100% mits on landscape with help of thouse mentioned buffs and with some warsteed mitigation buff.

I think DC should be nerfed to 20% because it already is too strong on live. Also target requirement for DC mitigation buff must go. It should simply give it at full potential no matter how manhyh targets you are tanking because currently it's single target tanking what is issue with Warden.

So in summary, remove DC target requirement for mit buff and nerf max mit buff from DC to 20%. This should give warden enough buff to survive also single target boss tanking situations and nerf godlike trash tanking ability.

[RicoFTW]

Just want to know if removing force taunt from DC was intended or not ? Personally I do not mind tanking through aoe dps gambits but if champ's dps will be boosted, I am not quite sure if having no aoe force taunt won't be an issue for tanking wardens. Having 1 ST force taunt with 45 seconds cooldown and no aoe one/s on a tanking class is just silly.

[Imbrahil]

Thank you Devs for listening to the requests/feedback provided in the forums!

I appreciate the changes to the Red- and Blueline you did in this build. Here are my thoughts on it:

Redline: In my opinion the DPS is fine now. One could argue that its maybe a bit high when you phrase on the dummies. But you have to bear two things in mind: First, as a melee you have to take higher risks, so your damage output should be rewarding. And secondly that those phrases of ~50k DPS in this build are done on stationary dummies! In an instanced encounter you wont be able to maintain your DoTs in the same way as on dummies, therefore you will see a damageloss compared to those phrases. The current DPS values on BR seem to be just right in regards of the fact, that in a realistic instanced scenario you can only maintain around 3/4 of your DoTs. Also you have to consider that those dummies don't have the amount of resistance to our DoTs as bosses/mobs in a T2 encounter have. You still need around 200k Finesse to see no resists on them, compared to ~100k Finesse for no resists on dummies.
TL;DR: Given a realistic T2 instance/raid the DPS seems appropriate.

Regarding future work on the Traittree:

I would like to see you get rid of the trait Honed Spikes primarily. For any further suggestions I refer to my previous post.


Blueline: I like the direction these changes are going! Please keep up the good work. As requested, we now have more mitigations split into basemitigation and mitigation from gambits. In my opion, the flat +20% to moral are also justified given that Wardens still take lager hits than Guards/Cappys and that we have no real emergency skills. The bonus moral does compensate these circumstances.
However, I think, that there are still some issues with the concept of a Tank-Warden. Basically many of these aspects were pointed out in my previous post, but I'm gonna repeat it nevertheless:

The increase of the buffduration on shieldgambits from 24 to 30 seconds is appreciated, but it's not quite enough. On my tests I experienced that you reach the +5% to both mitigations via Impressive Flourish Gambitline in about 15 seconds. This means that you have only 15 seconds to spare for other Gambits, if you want to maintain 60% mitigation.
Please consider that we once hat +10 seconds to our Shield- and Fistgambits from our mainhand weapon and our javeline. If we could have 40 seconds duration on our defensive buffs again, it would greatly improve the fun of the gameplay and our possibilities to adapt to the flow of the battle. Yes, you said an imbued legendary item rework will take place some time after the classbalance has passed, as the balance is the foundation of such a rework. So I am aware, that you may consider bringing these +10 seconds back this way.
But given the utter uselessness of our both capstones in the Blueline, i suggest again, that you could bring +buffduration for Shield- and Fistgambits back this way. Or generally speaking, bring it back via the Traittree: The War-Cry Trait still yields only ~2700 Evasion for 5 Traitpoints. Change this Trait to give +2/4/6/8/10 second buffduration per Traitpoint for Fistgambits. Accordingly, change the (atm bugged) Trait "Impressive Flourish" to give +2/4/6/8/10 seconds buffduration per Traitpoint for Shieldgambits. This way you would get rid of 2 outdated/useless Traits and give us a meaningfull and very appreciated replacement.
(Defiant Challange is bugged and yields no +5% mitigations; others already pointed that out.)

Also, our selfheals are still outdated in reagards of our moralpools (now even more than before). Again, maybe you can tinker around with the blue capstones? I would really like to see a change to the HoTs. Same goes for the Moral-Leeches. They are outdated/underscaled in reagards of current encounters and playerstats. Please consider fix them, as they were and still are a core aspect of Warden gameplay!

Lastly, I would like to point out again, that flat +xxxx phys./tact. mitigation values on Gambits are a real downer. Players generally prefer to cap their mitigations via essences. Therefore, the bonuses these Gambits provide, yield no real benefit. Please consider a replacement or a rework. Again, regarding any further suggestions I refer to my previous post.



Thank you again for your efforts! Regarding the previous years and months you are finally on the right track fixing the Warden. Please just don't stop half way there

[Minis]

I really like idea of ST force taunt you have added and changes you have done in blue so far, but in my opinion to make warden a viable tank again only a few changes are needed.

1. Add trait in blue line (passive or which adds effect to a restoration/conviction/can be finisher skill) which allows warden to partial (ONLY PARTIAL) B/P/E hits that are meant to go through B/P/E like during the Sagrog t2c fight or like "A Cut" attack from Luthmil in RC t2c. This will make a mitigations change not necessary for warden we will keep old warden having 50% mitigations and they will be viable tank (if you cap patials you will not get oneshooted) and still need high skill cap.
2. Nerf Defiant Challange mitigations.
3. Fix HoT's values.

Maybe it would be way to fix warden tanking problems while it will remain low mits avoidances tank. Currently it's high hits that can't be B/P/E that make warden very bad compared to cpt or grd. If it was possible to partial them a warden that keeps all his buffs up would be a great tank that wouldn't get oneshot or twoshot in most of the situations he does now.

[gaara908776]

Blue morale bonus should be removed, just like captain tank morale bonus should be removed. Only reason these were created in the first place was because less vitality. Now that everyone are about on same line no reason to have this free morale bs. Tanks should get their morale by getting tank armor, not for free with passive morale boosts. This is not fix for ###### itemization that you did for warden but horrid bandage fix. You also need to remove passive mitigation from tank line and distribute that (and why not few % higher total) into just created mitigation buffing gambits. 1% each is extremely underwhelming.

Dps seems to be broken as well, seems like nerf in order. Spear bleeds just out of this world.

edit. Imo both shield tactics and shield mastery both should award warden additional 5% mitigations to tact/phys sources. That way you can remove stupid passive mitigation from blue line. 1min duration buff means it's nice to keep up and it makes warden gameplay extremely more rewarding. I dont even mind 6% mitigations to both to compensate hardness of keep up all mitigation buffs compared to passive ezmode. No reasonable warden can say these gambits are overly exciting tbh.

I'd suggest you look at Krindel's damage chart. It's pretty enlightening. Even with Warden mits capping out at 65% when using DC, a Warden will take 1.21x more damage than a Guard. So it looks to me like the 20% morale boost is right in line with where it should be. Yes, it would be nice if they would fix everything and make it ideal all at once but they've made it clear that they don't have the resources to do so. So, if a Warden has no way to equalize the damage and they'll always take AT LEAST 21% more damage than a Guardian, NO ONE IS GOING TO BRING A WARDEN AS A TANK UNLESS THEY HAVE A WAY TO MITIGATE DAMAGE VERY SIMILAR TO GUARDIAN. It's simple math, Warden with 20% more morale who takes 21% more damage than Guardian, will mitigate that damage equally as though a guardian were tanking. I always find simple math to be the hardest, don't you?

[Elwha]

• Increasing Warden DoTs by ~20%
Please stop using broad stroke DoT increases. This is a step in the wrong direction. If this goes live remember I wrote this because we'll be doing this balance act again one year from now. I disagree with this flat increase and believe it should be removed and distributed based on what's important for each trait-line.
Determination: Increases should apply to Shield Gambits, Fist Gambits, Light Damage & Light Bleeds.
Recklessness: Increases should apply to Spear Gambits & Spear Bleeds, Gambit Builders, Triumph Damage(which is garbage and should be replaced with a melee critical multiplier, at least give us a chance for more up front damage for the sake of PvE DPS), Melee Skill(critical strike)
Assailment: Increases should apply to Ranged Spear Gambits, Ranged Skills(wages of fear, ambush, marked target, javelin of deadly force)


• Determination Specialization Bonus Changes:
* Removed Spear Damage Bonus
* +20% Max Morale
* +5% Mitigation
This is probably a good change. With Recklessness already applying a large minus to outgoing healing, adding a morale boost to Determination seems appropriate.

• Impressive Flourish now grants +1% Physical Mitigation and +1% Tactical Mitigation
• Maddening Strike now grants +1% Physical Mitigation and +1% Tactical Mitigation
• Dance of War now grants +1% Physical Mitigation and
• Conviction now grants +1% Tactical Mitigation
I believe these are good changes but will it be enough to bridge the gap between tanks?

• Precise Blow damage-over-time now scales with weapon strength
• Piercing Strike damage-over-time now scales with weapon strength
• Spear of Virtue damage-over-time now scales with weapon strength
Appreciate this but it's not so much a balance pass as it is a bug fix.

• Warden Damage-over-time increased in strength
I wish a dev would come in here and explain why this is being applied. If this is being done for Determination why not just modify the passive threat gain it already applies and make that an over-time effect? Maybe it's time to rethink threat generation.

[HerpThatDerp]

Something I'm worried about with wardens going forward is the importance of finesse. The higher we go up in level, the more ridiculous our finesse needs to be to get consistent DOTs. I found this issue to be incredibly frustrating while I was leveling and my gear could not be itemized for finesse.

The way I see it, multiple classes suffer from this, but it definitely affects warden the most because of the amount of time it takes to apply each individual dot. Use two masteries and then the dot is resisted? That's a lot of wasted time.

This is even worse because resistance "double dips". You can resist both the application of a DOT and the subsequent ticks. If you have 30% resistance, you effectively take 49% damage from dots because they will fail to be applied to you 30% of the time and then you will resist the ones that ARE applied 30% of the time. You effectively take 30% less damage twice.

Would it be possible to make DOTs always apply (but keep resistance working against other, non-damaging debuffs, resisting on application) but then get resisted on ticks? I realize this is a system change but as it currently exists with double dipping it severely penalizes DOT users during the leveling process and any point at max level when they don't have a metric ton of finesse. It could be something built into player DOTs - or warden DOTs specifically - so as to not upset the rest of the game, but I think the system is just flawed to begin with.

Edit: If resistance penetration is added to the warden as a band-aid, as I have seen others suggest, please do not make it difficult for blue line to get. Penetrating those resistances is so incredibly important for morale taps as well.

[Imbrahil]

Something I'm worried about with wardens going forward is the importance of finesse. The higher we go up in level, the more ridiculous our finesse needs to be to get consistent DOTs. I found this issue to be incredibly frustrating while I was leveling and my gear could not be itemized for finesse.

The way I see it, multiple classes suffer from this, but it definitely affects warden the most because of the amount of time it takes to apply each individual dot. Use two masteries and then the dot is resisted? That's a lot of wasted time.

This is even worse because resistance "double dips". You can resist both the application of a DOT and the subsequent ticks. If you have 30% resistance, you effectively take 49% damage from dots because they will fail to be applied to you 30% of the time and then you will resist the ones that ARE applied 30% of the time. You effectively take 30% less damage twice.

Would it be possible to make DOTs always apply (but keep resistance working against other. non-damaging debuffs, resisting on application) but then get resisted on ticks? I realize this is a system change but as it currently exists with double dipping it severely penalizes DOT users during the leveling process and any point at max level when they don't have a metric ton of finesse. It could be something built into player DOTs - or warden DOTs specifically - so as to not upset the rest of the game, but I think the system is just flawed to begin with.

Exactly this! Very well said and a good proposed solution. I totally agree with these concerns and observations.

[Thurallor]

This is even worse because resistance "double dips". You can resist both the application of a DOT and the subsequent ticks. If you have 30% resistance, you effectively take 49% damage from dots because they will fail to be applied to you 30% of the time and then you will resist the ones that ARE applied 30% of the time. You effectively take 30% less damage twice.

Would it be possible to make DOTs always apply (but keep resistance working against other, non-damaging debuffs, resisting on application) but then get resisted on ticks? I realize this is a system change but as it currently exists with double dipping it severely penalizes DOT users during the leveling process and any point at max level when they don't have a metric ton of finesse. It could be something built into player DOTs - or warden DOTs specifically - so as to not upset the rest of the game, but I think the system is just flawed to begin with.

Edit: If resistance penetration is added to the warden as a band-aid, as I have seen others suggest, please do not make it difficult for blue line to get. Penetrating those resistances is so incredibly important for morale taps as well.

To me, after you fail to resist getting stabbed, it doesn't make sense for you to be able to resist bleeding from it. The resistance check should only occur on initial application.

[Osglinthor]

Here is couple of parses I did:

'DPS target dummy > DPS target dummy (2m 59.7s); Apexofinsanity - Dmg: 9.541M; DPS: 53,092;'

'DPS target dummy > DPS target dummy (3m 0.2s); Apexofinsanity - Dmg: 10.04M; DPS: 55,737;'

'DPS target dummy > DPS target dummy (3m 0.6s); Apexofinsanity - Dmg: 9.401M; DPS: 52,060;'

'DPS target dummy > DPS target dummy (2m 59.8s); Apexofinsanity - Dmg: 9.067M; DPS: 50,432;'

'DPS target dummy > DPS target dummy (3m 0.1s); Apexofinsanity - Dmg: 9.244M; DPS: 51,341;'

'DPS target dummy > DPS target dummy (3m 0.4s); Apexofinsanity - Dmg: 9.345M; DPS: 51,789;'


https://imgur.com/a/LMZ5qlF with CA breakdown

Some of the big bleed power should be spread over other gambits,and I feel like melee attack should be doing less dmg than 5builders gambit.

With less lag and no delay on masteris and getting more used to rotation avarage of 54-55k might be possible.

If someone is getting higher perhaps they can provide some insight.

I hope devs look into martial fury bleeds and like some have sugested to increase their proc chance as its far too random considering you dont use same DoT offten.Or preferably in my opinion replace it with 20-15% mitigation bypass considering most of other classes have similar traits.

And look into gold lvl 85 earring,as few lucky wardens that have it will have insane advantage over those that dont have it.

Add initial dot hit to every dot gambit to help with upfront damage,buff aoe dots a bit with slight nerfs to spear ones so overall value is not changes but ST ones are still left with more dmg than aoe.You can take that dmg from auto attacks.With 20-15% mitigation bypass instead martial fury,and if FI set gets scaled warden with warden tank that is debuffing could achive similar dps to hunters wich imo is fair considering its melee and dot based class,champ would be tiny bit behind.Without mitigation bypass other classes will still do 20% more dmg in raid but i guess even these changes are good and i could live with it till next balance pass.