4th beta in a row: Warden healing gambits STILL ~10% of Live server

[gaara908776]

I've been giving my suggestion for quite a lot of time towards cooldown abilities:
- We had one (back at lvl 75-85 iirc). Defiant challenge had a 20-30s (don't remember) +40% mits (so 90% effective mits) with around 3 minutes cooldown. That's totally what we should get back, simply on another different skill as defiant challenge should be just a taunt, no buffs and nothing else.
- For the Free peoples is a great idea that fits so well within the warden playstyle and general feel of the class, just need to get rid of that ridiculously useless +8k mit buff it builds and make it a % inc damage reduction to you + fellowship that stacks up to 30-40% or something significant like that. Skill exist, mechanic exist, current skill is totally useless and that change is barely swapping the +rating with a fixed % which in the long run is easier for scaling after level cap raises, it got a cooldown and a short duration so it's not OP. It's a skill that could be great as a secondary emergency skill, not as great as the other I suggested for the tank but great for group damage and usable more often.

Those 2 things are the only emergency skills we need. Make HoT a % and give us something like those 2 skills and class is competitive again and fixed.
And fix NS to avoid oneshots as it used to and maybe replace the heal on trigger for a bubble equal to that morale %, if the skill triggers when you have inc healing debuffs it barely heals 10% morale.

Those are the band-aid suggestions, a more comprehensive work on class traits, legacies, mechanics, buffs, skills, gambits and virtually everything would be what would give life to the class again, but those changes I suggested are easy to implement, test and adjust if necessary as it's changing a % number in the skill code if it ends up being too good.

Yeah, I remember hearing your suggestions when I still mained Blue Warden back in Mordor. I agree with pretty much all of them. I think “for the free people” is kind of screwed even if it got changed. Forcing the buff around gambit builders is bad design. Using Gambit Builders over masteries intentionally is bad game play. Rewarding bad gameplay IMO would be bad design.

The changes they did back in Mordor didn’t help us at all. Putting us at the same level of % mitigation as a Guardian was a nice addition but in order to actually maintain that mitigation takes like 3/4 of our rotation time. Now, we have to choose between DPS/Aggro gambits or Mitigation gambits or Heal Gambits or BPE gambits. A good Warden can now do 2/4 of those per rotation but we can never really maximize all of our strengths because of the way it’s set up.

Defiant Challenge needs to have it’s Mitigation % given passively so that we can use our main forced taunt when we need to. No reason a Guardian should get an extra 10% mitigation passively by using shield skills and Warden has to maintain 100% uptime on Never Surrender, Defiant Challenge, and 4 separate Gambits to match that without even having any of a Guardian’s defensive cooldowns.

Our self heals can be outmatched even by a Blue Champ, our B/P/E is matched by Guardian(sometimes even surpassed), our Aggro management is worse than a Captain, our DPS is the lowest of any tank class(unless you completely ignore defensive gambits). So many problems with the class have just added up over time and the Dev’s refuse to do anything about it.

Honestly at this point I just wish they would change the class purpose on character creation to “DPS”. They obviously don’t give a damn about the fact that it is a “tank” class and just continue to focus on the DPS lines(which need significant rework as well). It’s amazing that the “premium” classes in this game that you have to pay extra for get so little love from the Dev team.

[Treadstone87]

It's very sad to see Warden in such a state of disrepair. I'm not aware of any other class that has become so completely divorced from its original form. It used to excel at tanking and was often considered a small fellowship unto themselves, able to survive against odds that would overwhelm other classes. Today it's just a melee DPS class. Was it a dev decision to change the class so fundamentally? Or were elements of the class phased out over the years due to a lack of developer time and manpower to maintain them, and their conversion to a DPS class a band-aid fix to give them at least one role in groups?

[LagunaD2]

It's very sad to see Warden in such a state of disrepair. I'm not aware of any other class that has become so completely divorced from its original form. It used to excel at tanking and was often considered a small fellowship unto themselves, able to survive against odds that would overwhelm other classes. Today it's just a melee DPS class. Was it a dev decision to change the class so fundamentally? Or were elements of the class phased out over the years due to a lack of developer time and manpower to maintain them, and their conversion to a DPS class a band-aid fix to give them at least one role in groups?

The long laments above for the new Producer's benefit tell the story.

They don't understand the class. Nobody with any influence in the class development plays the class at the level of a Tier 1 raider, it seems.

They have a new legacy for an ability that can't even be used in combat. They have another new legacy that increases the completely negligible damage reflect from Defiant Challenge. And the list goes on.

Back in Helm's Deep beta, we found skill tooltips where the clueless devs at the time left themselves little notes ("What does this do?").

[Strider5548]

They have a new legacy for an ability that can't even be used in combat. They have another new legacy that increases the completely negligible damage reflect from Defiant Challenge. And the list goes on.

lol you know I completely forgot Defiant Challenge had a reflect until I rolled a new Warden tank on Treebeard. It's so negligible I forgot about it entirely.

Blue Wardens need a lot more work than just legacy fixes though. I'm too tired to go through all of the great suggestions posted throughout the BR class forums, the warden class forums, general forums, etc. One thing I will say is that we have been asking for changes to Defiant Challenge for a LONG time, a tracery that affects the negligible reflect amount does absolutely nothing for anyone, unless it literally changes the reflect do scale meaningfully (i.e. return 50% of all incoming damage).

[Vilda]

The long laments above for the new Producer's benefit tell the story.

They don't understand the class. Nobody with any influence in the class development plays the class at the level of a Tier 1 raider, it seems.

They have a new legacy for an ability that can't even be used in combat. They have another new legacy that increases the completely negligible damage reflect from Defiant Challenge. And the list goes on.

Back in Helm's Deep beta, we found skill tooltips where the clueless devs at the time left themselves little notes ("What does this do?").

I dont get that either, I would like to see some "developer manifesto", where will be some explanation of this and how they see position and role of the warden in LOTRO.

[LagunaD2]

I would like to see some "developer manifesto", where will be some explanation of this and how they see position and role of the warden in LOTRO.

"A premium class that we will continue to milk for revenue without investing any resources to maintain."

[Vilda]

Like common, look at hunters legacies - hunters have like 10 nice legacies, which are so good they had to use at least two bows to use them all. We get bull#### like this

(copy pasta from Laguna )
Careful Step (2 legacies!) - not usable in combat
Ambush - not usable in combat
Defiant Challenge - buff to irrelevant amount of damage is irrelevant
Wages of Fear, Hampering Javelin, Resolution legacies - all terrible


I think they (devs) are doing it on purpose, but i dont know why and thats the worst

[Strider5548]

Like common, look at hunters legacies - hunters have like 10 nice legacies, which are so good they had to use at least two bows to use them all. We get bull#### like this

(copy pasta from Laguna )
Careful Step (2 legacies!) - not usable in combat
Ambush - not usable in combat
Defiant Challenge - buff to irrelevant amount of damage is irrelevant
Wages of Fear, Hampering Javelin, Resolution legacies - all terrible


I think they (devs) are doing it on purpose, but i dont know why and thats the worst

Hunters have a lot of #### legacies too, it's just they're all on melee while good ones are on bow, hence why (good) hunters run with 3 bows.

Don't get me wrong, hunters are in a really good spot. They have a great rotation that leverages pretty much every skill, and with traceries spread across both LI's they will have one of the best options for LI set-ups.

No class should have useless/outdated legacies/traceries, but yea Warden is pretty bad when it comes to this.

[Kander]

Like common, look at hunters legacies - hunters have like 10 nice legacies, which are so good they had to use at least two bows to use them all. We get bull#### like this

(copy pasta from Laguna )
Careful Step (2 legacies!) - not usable in combat
Ambush - not usable in combat
Defiant Challenge - buff to irrelevant amount of damage is irrelevant
Wages of Fear, Hampering Javelin, Resolution legacies - all terrible


I think they (devs) are doing it on purpose, but i dont know why and thats the worst

I think devs are not even aware of the magnitude of this issue with warden legacies. It's sad that wardens would gladly exchange 3 class traceries per weapon for 1 single role tracery (not per weapon, 6 class traceries for total 1 role tracery like + aoe damage) and still be a total improvement. In fact I think I would even go as to 4 class traceries per weapon, not just 3, for a single role tracery and I would take that deal.