@Devs/Vastin - Warden Balancing/Scaling/Bugs

[Krindel]

I disagree. I mean, clearly, it's completely nuts, but it also creates some very interesting tension between the two uses of the skill. Rather than saying "it's bad design", say: "it's a powerful skill that has a big tactical drawback, maybe we should add something to compensate?".

I like older-style (100 to 115 cap) warden tanking for two things: the flow created by pull-DC-do things while you're hard to kill-squish (okay, the last part a bit less), and gambits that both affect morale (heals, damage) and grant defensive buffs (block, evade). You could tank on a warden by maintaining heals and dots and only a couple of boring defensive gambits. Of course, block and evade got nerfed big, and now boring gambits are the main source of defence--gambits that you only ever cast to get a lousy 1% buff. Somehow, casting Maddening Strike isn't as fun as maintaining a self-healing rotation.


So, rather than making DC a simple, boring skill, and emphasizing the boring gambit buffs by improving SM/ST, how about this:
- DC provides +4% mitigations for 12 seconds, one stack per target hit (up to five stacks).
- Warning Shot now has a 20s cd. WS tiers up a debuff that makes the target count as multiple targets for the purpose of the DC mit buff. That is, you can, over time, get a full +20% mitigation from one target, but you'd need to hit it with WS four times, first.
- For the Free Peoples is replaced with a second DC, with a 90 second cooldown (or 2 minutes -30s w/ legacy). Maybe it also hits more targets/has a bigger aoe, or something. That's your emergency taunt or emergency mit buff (though different DC buffs wouldn't stack). With a second DC, you can have your +20% mits (80% total before buffs) for 36 seconds straight, which should be enough to survive most nasty things.

I am sorry, I won't be happy, if warden will receive this type of changes. Lvl 95 to 115 was most boring period of warden tanking for me. There were no need to use defensive gambits other than self heals, so you were able to dps in tank spec most of the time. I mean, why warden had whole gambit system with Battle Memory and Battle Preparation, if most of survivability and aggro went from one clicky skill – Defiant Challenge? I had immortality 60% of the time, whyle I was ultra squishy rest of the time. For me, warden design was most flawed in that period of the time. Back at level 85, Defiant Challenge was at least proper panic skill, with 40% mitigation buff, 30s duration and 210s cooldown (Old Defiant Challenge), so nothing you could spam. Back then we had our morale taps and threat transfer gambits to hold aggro, we even had gambit 231 for aggro drop – Deflection

Warden class is build around gambit system, main source of warden survivability and threat should be from gambits, not from clickable skills with cooldowns. I agree, that 1% mitigation buff from IF and MS is joke, especially if other classes can reach higher mitigations passively or easily by maintaing their basic skill rotation.
I think buffs from defensive gambits are too weak and we have to use them too often. I would like to see design, where I won't have to rotate impressive flourish gambits too often to keep mitigation up, so I will have more time to focus on threat and utility.

If we will get rid of mitigation buff from Defiant Challenge, then I would like to see some buffs on gambits

• Against physical and tactical damage type: Impressive Flourish +2%pm and tm, Maddening Strike +3%pm and tm. Buff duration of IF and MS 60s
• Against physical damage type: Shield Mastery +5% pm, Dance of War +5% pm. Buff duration of SM and DW 60s
• Against tactical damage type: Shield Tactics +5% tm, Conviction +5% tm. Buff duration of ST and Conv. 60s, heal duration of Conv. 60s
• Against avoidable attacks: War-cry +2% evade, Brink of Victory +3% evade, Surety of Death +5% evade, Wall of Steel +5% parry, buff duration 30s.
• Persevere line for healing, incomming healing and partial block chance, can stay same, buff duration 30s.

So we will be able to buff yourself through Battle preparation by 10% mitigations and in combat we will be able to buff additional +5%mitigations by using IF and MS. So we will have 55% passive mitigation, 65% at the start of fight if well prepared and maximum of 70% mitigation in combat, which is comparable with guardian and beorning. Warden will have no panic skill, just Never Surrender, but will be able to keep up avoidance and partial avoidance buffs and use persevere line and morale taps heals to compensate this lack of panic skill.

[Sindhol]

Warden class is build around gambit system, main source of warden survivability and threat should be from gambits, not from clickable skills with cooldowns.

Some reasons why I think this isn't the way forward for the warden, and why I'd focus on cooldowns instead:
(1) Taunts will likely remain the most important way to grab aggro. Going back to the pre-HD threat leeches isn't going to mesh well with how the rest of the game has evolved. In particular, snap aggro changes and solid secondary aggro are important in raids (and I quite like them, myself).
(2) The gambit system is great, but gambits with cooldowns are kind of self-defeating. Taunts arguably need cooldowns to be balanced.
Because of (1) and (2), I don't see main threat coming from a gambit. Threat maintenance, through DPS, heals, or multipliers, sure, but not the initial grab.
(3) All tanks (and many other classes) have small-scale stuff (rotations) that they do all the time, and large-scale stuff (cooldowns) that allow instant response to the environment. Wardens don't have defensive cooldowns, just taunts, which is (a) not good in raids, and (b) a bit boring.

Returning to the 95-115 cap DC would address (3) and respect (1) and (2). And, in my opinion, surviving from DC to DC is fun. It breaks up the flow of gambits, and adds schwung and variety to the fairly monotonous warden-with-only-gambit-buffs. With big skills to respond to the environment--which require limited uptime to be balanced, and therefore wouldn't be gambits--there's more large-scale stuff going on, and tanking is more interesting.

With the +4%/target variant, you wouldn't be crazy high mitted with DC up as you were at 95-115 caps (with raid buffs, you'd hit 89/88 mits, or 91/90 with a guard co-tank), which was a bit overdone, I agree. High mit buffs, however, enhance the value of the small % mit buffs from the Flourish chain, which meshes nicely with the desire to encourage a solid self-buff rotation. Having mit buffs on the taunt and little in the way of alternative cooldowns means that you won't always have a taunt immediately, requiring an alternative strategy based on DPS and heal threat. Meanwhile, this setup of having a rhythm of big upswings in survivability would set the warden apart from all other tanks (as it did in the past). You grab a bunch of things, you DC and harden, and then you kite for a bit. Tanking entirely without a cooldown isn't viable in raids, however, so adding a second DC (or even a DC cooldown reset, similar to skill resets on the burglar and lore-master) would be an easy and effective way to address that.

Also, I really want to throw the Thirteen Dwarves back and forth between wardens and have them beating on those 89% pmits the entire fight, but okay, that's a personal thing :P.

[Kander]

Some reasons why I think this isn't the way forward for the warden, and why I'd focus on cooldowns instead:
(1) Taunts will likely remain the most important way to grab aggro. Going back to the pre-HD threat leeches isn't going to mesh well with how the rest of the game has evolved. In particular, snap aggro changes and solid secondary aggro are important in raids (and I quite like them, myself).
(2) The gambit system is great, but gambits with cooldowns are kind of self-defeating. Taunts arguably need cooldowns to be balanced.
Because of (1) and (2), I don't see main threat coming from a gambit. Threat maintenance, through DPS, heals, or multipliers, sure, but not the initial grab.
(3) All tanks (and many other classes) have small-scale stuff (rotations) that they do all the time, and large-scale stuff (cooldowns) that allow instant response to the environment. Wardens don't have defensive cooldowns, just taunts, which is (a) not good in raids, and (b) a bit boring.

Returning to the 95-115 cap DC would address (3) and respect (1) and (2). And, in my opinion, surviving from DC to DC is fun. It breaks up the flow of gambits, and adds schwung and variety to the fairly monotonous warden-with-only-gambit-buffs. With big skills to respond to the environment--which require limited uptime to be balanced, and therefore wouldn't be gambits--there's more large-scale stuff going on, and tanking is more interesting.

With the +4%/target variant, you wouldn't be crazy high mitted with DC up as you were at 95-115 caps (with raid buffs, you'd hit 89/88 mits, or 91/90 with a guard co-tank), which was a bit overdone, I agree. High mit buffs, however, enhance the value of the small % mit buffs from the Flourish chain, which meshes nicely with the desire to encourage a solid self-buff rotation. Having mit buffs on the taunt and little in the way of alternative cooldowns means that you won't always have a taunt immediately, requiring an alternative strategy based on DPS and heal threat. Meanwhile, this setup of having a rhythm of big upswings in survivability would set the warden apart from all other tanks (as it did in the past). You grab a bunch of things, you DC and harden, and then you kite for a bit. Tanking entirely without a cooldown isn't viable in raids, however, so adding a second DC (or even a DC cooldown reset, similar to skill resets on the burglar and lore-master) would be an easy and effective way to address that.

Also, I really want to throw the Thirteen Dwarves back and forth between wardens and have them beating on those 89% pmits the entire fight, but okay, that's a personal thing :P.

TBH Old DC was better and fulfilled its purpose, a deffensive skill with a moderate duration and moderate cooldown that allowed you to survive in similar cases a guard uses juggernaut/pledge. The 50% uptime completely invincible vs 50% getting destroyed should never have been a thing. And yeah, in fights with 5 enemies you could just coordinate 2 warden tanks and basically have only 1 healer just in case a dps needs a rezz. It was broken and shouldn't be like that, either extremely OP or extremely useless. Just keep the following in mind, you were 56% mits half of the time (cappy banner + mini soliloquy). And rest of the time you were on 96% mits (just to put into perspective a 300k hit with 56% mit would only be 21k hit with 96% mit). I mean if that's for an emergency skill with a solid cooldown then yeah, it could work, but 50% uptime...there's no way to balance around that, you either get oneshot when off or be undefeatable in aoe fights.

[Sindhol]

TBH Old DC was better and fulfilled its purpose, a deffensive skill with a moderate duration and moderate cooldown that allowed you to survive in similar cases a guard uses juggernaut/pledge. The 50% uptime completely invincible vs 50% getting destroyed should never have been a thing.

Agreed on both counts; that's why I suggest having old DC, but at half strength (+4% per target), which would allow the warden to cycle between 69/68 mits and 89/88 mits (or 91/90 with a guard co-tanking), which is comparable to a guard's Redirect cycling (81/80 mits at all times, but with a 35% absorb about half the time), although with a higher uptime on the peak, and bigger dip during off-time.

If having a second DC is too powerful (because it allows 36 seconds of uptime on the mit buff), you could instead have a DC cooldown reset, which allows the same kind of emergency taunt/mit buff, but only two consecutive mit buffs, for 24 seconds of uptime.

[Krindel]

Agreed on both counts; that's why I suggest having old DC, but at half strength (+4% per target), which would allow the warden to cycle between 69/68 mits and 89/88 mits (or 91/90 with a guard co-tanking), which is comparable to a guard's Redirect cycling (81/80 mits at all times, but with a 35% absorb about half the time), although with a higher uptime on the peak, and bigger dip during off-time.

If having a second DC is too powerful (because it allows 36 seconds of uptime on the mit buff), you could instead have a DC cooldown reset, which allows the same kind of emergency taunt/mit buff, but only two consecutive mit buffs, for 24 seconds of uptime.

I think, Kander had in mind this old Defiant Challenge, from level 85, not that 12/20s DC from post Helm's Deep warden tank fiasco.

[Kander]

I think, Kander had in mind this old Defiant Challenge, from level 85, not that 12/20s DC from post Helm's Deep warden tank fiasco.

Yes I meant that one. I think cooldown would need to be reduced to something like 2 mins or 2 mins 30 given nearly all deffensive skills got its cooldown reduced. The 12s/20s one was and will always be a terrible design. But at this point the problem is we need a forced aoe taunt as DC right now in order to keep aggro after the aggro changes in lvl 95. So definitely we would need that effect from the old DC put into one of these useless skills we have right now.

[Sindhol]

The 12s/20s one was and will always be a terrible design.

It wasn't and isn't. It was and always will be the most interesting taunt the game has ever seen, and for that reason, it should be returned (appropriately rebalanced). Why add a boring panic skill when you can add an interesting mechanic?

[Lews_Therin_T]

What do you think of changing Ambush insta-cast and make used in combat, only in blue spec?
What are your thoughts on removing the debuff after using Shield tactics?

[Krindel]

Ambush useable in-combat is great idea, 5s sprint duration with skill cooldown 30s won't be that powerful. Guardian, Beorning and Champion has available in-combat sprint skills and they are heavy classes, warden is medium class, mobile combatant and don't have sprint usable in-combat, this doesn't make sense. This change should be made for every warden trait line.

Shield Tactics stun immunity duration should be increased from 10s to 20s, so maximum possible uptime will be 50%. Also stun immunity should appear immediately in moment when you use gambit and not like now, when gambit animation ends. Now you can get stun while skill is already executing. Also Steadfast cooldown should be cut to half.

[Lews_Therin_T]

Ambush useable in-combat is great idea, 5s sprint duration with skill cooldown 30s won't be that powerful. Guardian, Beorning and Champion has available in-combat sprint skills and they are heavy classes, warden is medium class, mobile combatant and don't have sprint usable in-combat, this doesn't make sense. This change should be made for every warden trait line.

Shield Tactics stun immunity duration should be increased from 10s to 20s, so maximum possible uptime will be 50%. Also stun immunity should appear immediately in moment when you use gambit and not like now, when gambit animation ends. Now you can get stun while skill is already executing. Also Steadfast cooldown should be cut to half.

Increasing the duration of Shield tactics will be a good change. I like it.
Changing Ambush will allow the warden to finally get combat sprint without introducing additional mechanics.
I would also like to see the old version of Adroit anoeuvre, with -20% attack duration, in all specs, without red trait.

[Elwha]

What do you think of changing Ambush insta-cast and make used in combat, only in blue spec?

I would support this for red line but not in blue line. Blue line is in a better spot than red or yellow by a far margin. Give blue line a panic button and increased HoT/DoT/Buff duration and it's done. There could even be a case made that blue line needs to be nerfed to bring red/yellow line more in line with blue's capabilities. Everytime I respec my trees I'm always amazed at how OP the dev made blue line passives.

I would also like to see the old version of Adroit manoeuvre, with -20% attack duration, in all specs, without red trait.

@DEV ---> Agree 100%. However, in red line this should be a fellowship buff to help add utility and give a legit reason why at least one Warden should be in every fellow/raid group. Nerfing this years ago was one of the biggest mistakes the devs made. This class lives and dies on gambits that rely on speedy reaction/attack duration. Too often gambit execution can lag due to shoddy coding and poor server performance.

[Lews_Therin_T]

I would support this for red line but not in blue line. Blue line is in a better spot than red or yellow by a far margin. Give blue line a panic button and increased HoT/DoT/Buff duration and it's done. There could even be a case made that blue line needs to be nerfed to bring red/yellow line more in line with blue's capabilities. Everytime I respec my trees I'm always amazed at how OP the dev made blue line passives.

This change is necessary so that the warden is not worse than other tanks in situations when it is necessary to break the distance between the tank and the boss.

P.S. How about adding an additional 5-10% Partial B / P / E Mitigations to Shield Mastery's gambit?

[Lews_Therin_T]

Just my vision of Fist-Shield line changes

[Krindel]

I too would like to see more +% buffs on defensive gambits. Blue traits and legendary legacies, which have block, evade and mitigation rating buffs are very weak now, there is space to improve warden’s defence by changing these traits and legacies.

I would like to see buffs to partial block, parry and evade mitigation with increased buff duration on shield, spear and fist defensive gambits. I would like to see +x% partial evade and parry chance on fist and spear gambits.

I would like to see Shield Mastery and Shield Tactics gambits with meaningful buffs, because these two gambits are available only in blue line and they should increase survivability greatly, but currently they have very weak rating buffs.

I would like to see increased heal over time duration on persevere line gambits and Conviction, so there will be same duration of buffs and heals.

I would like to see properly scaled life taps, because lot of our set bonuses and traits are focused around life taps. Capstone set bonus with gambit builders morale-tap is useless now, healing almost nothing.

I would like to see meaningful blue line cap stone traits.

I would like to see wardens dealing better with unavoidable attacks.

I would like to see Defiant Challenge without mitigation buff, so force taunt will not be part of mitigation buff rotation.

I would like to see improved stun immunity duration on Shield Tactics and shorter cooldown on Steadfast skill.

I would like to see ambush useable in-combat, so warden will have useable in-combat run speed buff.

I like idea of shorter skill animation on Dance of War.

[Lews_Therin_T]

I too would like to see more +% buffs on defensive gambits. Blue traits and legendary legacies, which have block, evade and mitigation rating buffs are very weak now, there is space to improve warden’s defence by changing these traits and legacies.

I would like to see buffs to partial block, parry and evade mitigation with increased buff duration on shield, spear and fist defensive gambits. I would like to see +x% partial evade and parry chance on fist and spear gambits.

I would like to see Shield Mastery and Shield Tactics gambits with meaningful buffs, because these two gambits are available only in blue line and they should increase survivability greatly, but currently they have very weak rating buffs.

I would like to see increased heal over time duration on persevere line gambits and Conviction, so there will be same duration of buffs and heals.

I would like to see properly scaled life taps, because lot of our set bonuses and traits are focused around life taps. Capstone set bonus with gambit builders morale-tap is useless now, healing almost nothing.

I would like to see meaningful blue line cap stone traits.

I would like to see wardens dealing better with unavoidable attacks.

I would like to see Defiant Challenge without mitigation buff, so force taunt will not be part of your mitigation buff rotation.

I would like to see improved stun immunity duration on Shield Tactics and shorter cooldown on Steadfast skill.

I would like to see ambush useable in-combat, so warden will have useable in-combat run speed buff.

I like idea of shorter skill animation on Dance of War.

I approve of all these changes. Any ideas on warden enhancement against unavoidance attacks? I have no idea.

[Caanwick]

A few of the things I'd like to see done is:

1) Remove Mit buffs from all Gambits/Skills and combine them all on Shield Mastery (Phys Mit) and Shield Tactics (Tac Mit), and increase their buff duration. I just think this would make it easier to organize and manage our Mits while handling everything that's going on in combat, especially bigger fights.

2) Give us a real SHTF skill! My idea would be to adjust Never Surrender to fit this role. Increase the Morale and Power regen to +75%. Add a 15 second 75% reduction of all incoming damage. Make the 15% Morale threshold a hard line, so there is no chance of being one-shot while its active. Lastly, set the CD to 2-3 min and have CD timer not start until the 15% Morale threshold is triggered.

3) Properly scale/increase the HoTs from Morale Tap skills and Persevere Line/Conviction. My preference would be a small buff to Persevere Line/Conviction and then put a good Morale Tap HoT increase in the blue line trait tree, possibly in place of For the Free Peoples.

4) Move the +3 DoT pulse bonus from Abyss/Throne armor to the Lasting Impression trait in our red line. Maybe move Lasting Impression to be a second cap trait where each extra DoT pulse costs an additional Trait Point. So by spending 4 points in that trait, we'd get the 4 extra DoT pulses we currently need Lasting Impression and old armor bonuses to get. Also, possibly add a 5th tier to that trait which would add a 5%-10% damage buff to the final DoT pulse of our DoT gambits.

5) Change First Aid so it removes two DWFP.

Oh, one last thing: As many others have stated, make Forced March automatically reactivate after you leave combat, like Find the Path for Hunters! Its just a QOL change and its really a pain in the butt how it currently is.

[Lews_Therin_T]

I want to see old version of Defiant Challenge, when it was a gambit. Now, Guard and Beo have too many forced taunt skills, and this gambit will not be so powerful. We can use this gambit, when it will be required, or use Battle Memory for Oh sh*t! button. This will add more flexibility in battle planning and will return some uniqueness to the warden tank.
I would like to see old version of Androit Manoeuvre and Warden's Triumph. Red trait Warden's Triumph need a change to + duration of these gambits.
Additionally i would like to see AoE heal for ranged Shield-Spear gambit line. It's increase group survivability, when the group includes yellow warden and increase warden aggro generation in ranged tanking.

Also make a spear + 1% finesse bonus, instead of useless DoT. Change bonuses from warden traits for spears and add an additional + 5% damage for spears to compensate for racial talents.

[Magnumum]

I remember a warden at lvl 100, he was a god in the game ... now it's a broken class !

[WhimsicalPacifist]

I remember a warden at lvl 100, he was a god in the game ... now it's a broken class !

You missed out on the Golden Age at 75-85 (ignoring the rocky start of RoI). Relative balance between the tanks. Aggro leeches so you could actually focus on BPE, powerful heals and tack in a few fist gambits on bosses and really powerful health leeches for instance pulls. Defiant Challenge also could get interrupted via stuns but not go on cooldown (feel this could have been integrated as a mechanic, maybe with reduced mitigations or it refreshes Never Surrender?).

[Krindel]

Yellow trait Bulls-Eye, which should increase ranged critical damage by 25% at tier 6, does not increase critical damage of ranged gambits, javelin skills and autoattacks at all. This is one of the best yellow traits and is broken.



Suppression debuffs use wrong icons from Precise Throw line instead of Offensive Strike line. Also debuff is inferior compared to debuffs of other classes and cannot be renewed before its expiration.


Both were reported, so we will see.

[Jokeurthewise]

Personally I would settle for just an increase to our self-healing (morale leaches and shield-spear gambits) if it can be implemented quickly. I agree there is a bunch of bugs, useless traits and legacies, but I would rather see a smaller fix in the near future than have to wait for months for a bigger fix. Don't get me wrong, I still want the bigger fix. I would just be more patient if in the meantime people stopped making fun of me for saying Wardens are tank.

On that note, I would like to point out that blue line Wardens have quite the reputation (for being near useless) at the moment. Any fix the class gets should be significant enough to reverse that perception. If it's just something that raid leaders think makes us ALMOST as good as those other classes, then it's not gonna change our current situation... We still won't get accepted into the raids, we won't have access to that uber amour and we will remain subpar. Changing the Warden isn't enough, we also need to change the PERCEPTION about the warden.

[Thurallor]

We still won't get accepted into the raids, we won't have access to that uber amour and we will remain subpar.

Wardens shouldn't have to be carried through the hardest end-game content in order to be able to access half of our DoT / HoT pulses.

[Kander]

Wardens shouldn't have to be carried through the hardest end-game content in order to be able to access half of our DoT / HoT pulses.

He meant for tanking line, there is no longer viable tanking + heal pulses gear and self heals are so poor they barely make a difference. In all honesty warden needs a huge work and revamp, but certainly tanking and dps (giving those +3 pulses in traitline/legacies) are an immediate must, they need to do a quick fix by just scaling up what's needed as soon as possible and then start working in a deep rework of the class, it's been basically 100% broken since HD release.

[Archiemundo]

I really hope we get a rework before or at launch of the new expansion but I'm I realist and realise that they are all likely busy doing stuff for the actual expansion. What will really peeve me though is if they put a level cap on the Abyss gear & we loose our set bonus for DPS which is the only way we remain viable as DPS (4 piece thrones will be showing it's age by the next expansion).

[Osglinthor]

I really hope we get a rework before or at launch of the new expansion but I'm I realist and realise that they are all likely busy doing stuff for the actual expansion. What will really peeve me though is if they put a level cap on the Abyss gear & we loose our set bonus for DPS which is the only way we remain viable as DPS (4 piece thrones will be showing it's age by the next expansion).

4 piece throne will still be way to go as its better stat wise because you cant replace 25% bleed damage,only advantage of abbys set is bit more morale that can be easly replaced and 8-9k physical mitigation that will be irelevent at 130.Its quite sad that devs cant even reply to this problem that has been pointed out since mordor beta and even before that not to mention fix it.Even when fix would be quite simple.
There is this missconception that warden is somewhat intimidating and op class among those that dont play it.Even during throne this was problem but bit less as Osgiliath cluter or pelenor one were bit easier to do without bleed pulses compared to raid t2/t2c.Not to mention last rework dumbed down warden class by removing initial bleed and therefore extending rotation duration by 4 sec wich just serves to anoy those that can stack bleeds under 32-36 sec.Personaly ill not buy or play minas morgul if i am forced to use throne armor in expansion i pay 40$.To be honest at this point it doesnt matter what happens.It will be either use throne and maybe get comparable DPS in minas morgul or devs decide to add bleed damage and +3 pulses to trait and use it to justify hard nerf to dps to the point where its usless.