Muster in the Wardens Subforum

[Halphast]

As for making the Yellow trait line an "Extra" line, I have no problem with going that route. Ranged and Melee are determined by what stance you are in, so it won't make a huge difference. The only catch is the Yellow set bonuses would be lost unless you added them in as traits. So we'd stand to lose some Mit debuffs, ranged damage bonus, ranged attack duration decrease, and a few javelin skills unless they are added somewhere else.

...which is exactly why they SHOULDN'T make yellow an "extra" line. Yellow wardens like our ranged bonuses, multi-target marked/diminished, and of course Seize the Moment, which red and blue also covet.

Honestly the only real reason people are saying "delete yellow" is because they want Seize the Moment while traited red or blue. The people who actually play yellow want to keep our line; the people who hate it so much don't play it! A more elegant solution would be to add a way for red and blue to reset their masteries. Don't throw out the ranged line.

[Osglinthor]

...which is exactly why they SHOULDN'T make yellow an "extra" line. Yellow wardens like our ranged bonuses, multi-target marked/diminished, and of course Seize the Moment, which red and blue also covet.

Honestly the only real reason people are saying "delete yellow" is because they want Seize the Moment while traited red or blue. The people who actually play yellow want to keep our line; the people who hate it so much don't play it! A more elegant solution would be to add a way for red and blue to reset their masteries. Don't throw out the ranged line.

There is simply 0 reason to not remove yellow line. All bonuses it offers can be merged to passive/red blue specs. Perhaps STM can be moved one row down so both red and blue can pick it up considering how good trait is and how much fun it provides. I play yellow 24 7 and best thing that can happen to ward is to merge it with other lines and then just balance 2 specs. And follow list of changes already posted. You would lose nothing that yellow has to offer atm in that case.

[Kander]

1. I'm putting this first because unfortunately until this changes, it'll be really hard to implement anything else. We currently have to spend all of our rotation to just barely stay alive, while the other tanks have time to manage threat, throw out group buffs, and be otherwise creative. It's not fun. The current Warden rotation is spend 30+ seconds getting HoT's, avoidances, and mitigations up, then rinse and repeat, while still being nowhere near as effective as the other tanks. This isn't fun, and is stressful because if we miss timing or lag breaks a gambit, we're dead, and not to mention trying to fit an emergency skill or two in there. Either shorten this rotation through the animations or increase the duration of buffs so we have time to be creative and explore the class. The current rotation is incredibly boring and does not reward skill.

2. Add a third stance devoted to tanking with a static mitigation buff. I'm empathetic to the difficulty of designing endgame content around avoidance tanks and mitigation tanks. That has to be tough. So give us mitigations in a passive way that I don't have to think about so I can play the Warden the way it was meant to be played. I don't want to spend so much of my rotations getting mitigations up when I'm not a mitigation tank. That time could be spent maintaining avoidances or heals.

Yes, this is something honestly people who haven't played back in lvl 60-85 don't know. Warden used to have 2-3 self buffs with long duration, that's it, rest was damage, aggro generation, heals and some situational buffs/debuffs that you only used when really needed, such as corruption removals, stun immunity... Mitigations were always up to the max passively, avoidances just needed 2 buffs, main focus was on dominating fight, managing enemies, etc. Basically my thought is to go back to that, same as you. Either make all those NEEDED buffs passive in blue line or make them be bound to the passive %partial avoid we get when attacking in blue, or bind them to long duration cooldowns such as shield mastery, so there's nothing else we have to do for buffing basic mits, avoids and crit defence. Then we would be focusing on actual tanking, using other skills we got, using our buffs, our heals, our aggro management... Seriously just clicking more skills in a boring rotational pattern is way more boring for a tank than it was using just 1 or 2 and then using buffs or debuffs or just damage depending on the fight, keeping us busy 100% of the time by just keeping ourself self buffed keeps us busy, but it's not really fun. Make gambits just have more significant effect but very specialized ones, as in remove avoids from SoD line, remove avoids from healing line too, but make healing line more powerful then put those avoids into Dance of war line, all of them combined (it fits the line style), Remove buffs from conviction, but give it a massive buff in group heal, maybe adding an initial group heal of like 20% morale, make self heals heal way more, but remove the buffs they give. Then give morale taps more heals and aggro generation per target but remove the initial heals except for resolution which would be kept the same. Basically don't make us repeat and repeat same rotation just to be buffed enough to survive, but let us choose what we want to focus on, healing, damage, aggro or avoids, as the class used to be.

4. Add threat generation back to morale taps and threat leeching back to Conviction. Currently we only have an AoE forced taunt in Defiant Challenge which is on a thirty second cooldown. Otherwise the only way to manage threat is through damage. As a tank, that's too unpredictable and unreliable. It's not fun and doesn't reward skill.

Yes, SoD line instant aggro + Morale taps over time aggro + aggro leeches should be totally back.

6. The introduction of Finesse hurt us in two ways: it made our builders regularly avoidable which definitely lowered DPS, and also destroyed the return on investment when building a long gambit. Imagine using five builders that are partially avoided and then having the gambit you spent time building be partially avoided or avoided entirely? Especially when it's an important buff you need to get up. It's just not fun. Make builders unavoidable or make the gambits unavoidable, or turn an underused gambit into a utility that facilitates that.

This could be mitigated by just making the aggro from SoD line, Morale taps and leeches not be resisted for blue line. Red and yellow line already have normally lots of finesse so it doesn't really affect after a while, though I would make DoT only go through either BPE or Resists as double checking through it is unfair.

[Strider5548]

Yes, this is something honestly people who haven't played back in lvl 60-85 don't know. Warden used to have 2-3 self buffs with long duration, that's it, rest was damage, aggro generation, heals and some situational buffs/debuffs that you only used when really needed, such as corruption removals, stun immunity... Mitigations were always up to the max passively, avoidances just needed 2 buffs, main focus was on dominating fight, managing enemies, etc. Basically my thought is to go back to that, same as you. Either make all those NEEDED buffs passive in blue line or make them be bound to the passive %partial avoid we get when attacking in blue, or bind them to long duration cooldowns such as shield mastery, so there's nothing else we have to do for buffing basic mits, avoids and crit defence. Then we would be focusing on actual tanking, using other skills we got, using our buffs, our heals, our aggro management... Seriously just clicking more skills in a boring rotational pattern is way more boring for a tank than it was using just 1 or 2 and then using buffs or debuffs or just damage depending on the fight, keeping us busy 100% of the time by just keeping ourself self buffed keeps us busy, but it's not really fun. Make gambits just have more significant effect but very specialized ones, as in remove avoids from SoD line, remove avoids from healing line too, but make healing line more powerful then put those avoids into Dance of war line, all of them combined (it fits the line style), Remove buffs from conviction, but give it a massive buff in group heal, maybe adding an initial group heal of like 20% morale, make self heals heal way more, but remove the buffs they give. Then give morale taps more heals and aggro generation per target but remove the initial heals except for resolution which would be kept the same. Basically don't make us repeat and repeat same rotation just to be buffed enough to survive, but let us choose what we want to focus on, healing, damage, aggro or avoids, as the class used to be.


Yes, SoD line instant aggro + Morale taps over time aggro + aggro leeches should be totally back.

This could be mitigated by just making the aggro from SoD line, Morale taps and leeches not be resisted for blue line. Red and yellow line already have normally lots of finesse so it doesn't really affect after a while, though I would make DoT only go through either BPE or Resists as double checking through it is unfair.

Pretty much agree all around. Regarding morale tap aggro, I haven't touched my blue warden since 130 but I'm assuming scaling is still messed up on self heals + morale taps, which should also be addressed.

Would love to see some of the defensive gambits have much longer uptime so wardens tanks can focus more on self healing (after scaled properly) and damage.

[Kander]

Pretty much agree all around. Regarding morale tap aggro, I haven't touched my blue warden since 130 but I'm assuming scaling is still messed up on self heals + morale taps, which should also be addressed.

Would love to see some of the defensive gambits have much longer uptime so wardens tanks can focus more on self healing (after scaled properly) and damage.

Yes that's what I mean, anyways I'm a mainly warden tank, I just play dps because it's only viable role now, but if tanking gets balanced and fixed, I wouldn't even get dps gear anymore for warden, so I'll let yellow/red advice or impressions to other people. For blue I think what was said here is exactly main issue of warden. You can't even kite because you lose all your buffs by interrupting your rotation which is boring itself. I see nothing wrong in having fixed rotation in dps or spamming damage gambits all the time to maximize it but tanking shouldn't be about it but rather preparing for big attacks, for example, you can use buffs, then you know a big hit is coming in 10s, and you load BM restoration + gambit restoration for a burst heal (after balancing heals), which takes like 10s min to prepare in total but allow you for a good burst heals, I don't want warden to be given skills that need to be constantly using for heals or emergency heals, I want warden to have simpler tanking rotation, making us being able to prepare better for certain events we know are coming, wardens usually excelled in the past when fight was already known, as they would know what's coming in each moment and would be able to prevent and prepare to damage incoming soon. It's how class worked fine in the past, an it's what was removed by class trait trees and never given back. Simply remove all buff chain rotations requirements and merge them all in basically 2-3 skills with long duration, don't worry, if we don't need to self heals we won't be bored, we would just dps a bit more, buff more, etc, we'll be 100% of the time doing stuff, difference is now that stuff is fixed to self buffing and that's it, no more time for anything else. And defiant challenge shouldn't have any mits tied, make them passive to the line spec.

So in short, no more skills or emergency skills, just put all gambit buffs in one single line (which would fit perfectly into dance of war line) and then make heals just % based or scale properly. This way wardens will use 2-3 gambits to keep buffs up and then focus on other interesting utilities wardens offer as tanks.

Give back Aggro over time to morale taps and scale its healing in blue massively (like 3-4x current value).

That should be the baseline for warden tank work, these few suggestions, which are the most impactful and thorough changes of the class mechanics reverting pretty much to times before lvl 95. Then after this, work could start to be done for balancing of values, heals, damage, buff duration, adding an extra utility or emergency skill, lowering cooldown on existing ones, adding sprint, etc. But these changes I suggested is what would make the class change completely the direction tanking has gone for wardens (which honestly has never worked since lvl 95). I know it's a deep change, but I think wardens could tank before the change of direction in warden tanking style, and after it, they just can't no matter how many fixes they do, I think up to this point doing a 180º turn and looking to the past is what's needed, then start over doing balancing, I think unsuccessfully trying to make class viable this way for 6-7 years is enough time already, these changes basically return to what was working and allow a fresh start with balancing it for the future updates. It would barely require a beta testing to adjust values of buffs or cooldown of certain emergency skills and rest would be just easily balanced as it's moving stuff from 10-12 gambits into just 3 and rest moved into passive.

[fealegwe2]

...which is exactly why they SHOULDN'T make yellow an "extra" line. Yellow wardens like our ranged bonuses, multi-target marked/diminished, and of course Seize the Moment, which red and blue also covet.

Honestly the only real reason people are saying "delete yellow" is because they want Seize the Moment while traited red or blue. The people who actually play yellow want to keep our line; the people who hate it so much don't play it! A more elegant solution would be to add a way for red and blue to reset their masteries. Don't throw out the ranged line.

+1

can't agree more. most people don't understand that yello is not about " being in ranged stance" all the time. we are in ranged to fire off RANGED resounding challenge and to proc Seize The Moment. the only other viable thing is Ranged adroit maneouver ( only in specific raid set-ups to reduce RK or Hunter inductions ) rest of the time we are in melee stance in the yello specc.

[martin93]

Yes that's what I mean, anyways I'm a mainly warden tank, I just play dps because it's only viable role now, but if tanking gets balanced and fixed, I wouldn't even get dps gear anymore for warden, so I'll let yellow/red advice or impressions to other people...

If blue line could be reverted back to where it was around Siege of Mirkwood, that would be greattt.

All jokes aside, these suggestions are awesome. Our avoidance and mit buffs are currently spread between fourteen (FOURTEEN!) gambits in three lines (War Cry, Impressive Flourish, Perservere lines with extras thrown in like Shield Mastery, Shield Tactics, and Wall of Steel). There's no organization to it. I suspect this had to do with making threat damage based, so evade buffs were condensed to the War Cry line. What would be great would be to organize these into their three lines like Kander said. Persevere line is self heals and only self heals. Impressive Flourish line is only avoidances and mits. War Cry line is damage and threat generation. This is basically how it was and it worked well. The single gambits like Shield Mastery and others can stay for the times when you absolutely need to maximize avoidances and mits. In a similar fashion, Conviction was always a tool to bring threat management up just a little higher if you had some well geared champs or hunters in the party. You weren't going to heal a whole party with it.

A rotation of fourteen gambits (60 clicks not counting masteries!) to maximize avoidances and mits is pretty crazy when you consider that achieves a fraction of what our contemporaries achieve passively and with a few skills.

[Caanwick]

Even if they bump the spear passive's damage they will be still be an inferior choice to Swords because 2% parry granted by swords is far and away the best option. Captains don't actually use Halberds either for this very reason.

No Warden I have ever met has said they chose sword for DPS because of the Parry bonus. Now if we ever get back to Wardens being the tanks they used to be, then I agree, the Parry bonus would be a major factor. What I'd like to see though, is maybe use the passive "Expert Spear Training" to even up spear damage with the racial bonuses of RoM and HE, and add a BPE bonus of some type to "Master Spear Training". This would make spear the preferred weapon for Wardens in both DPS and tanking. I know the devs have bigger fish to fry, so to speak, with our class, but if they are gonna do a big overhaul, why the heck not. Its not like these would be huge time-consuming changes.

[Halphast]

rest of the time we are in melee stance in the yello specc.

I know most yellows spend the majority of their time in melee, but not everyone does that. Some of us play 100% ranged- I don't even have melee stance slotted because I don't need it. Solo content is easy at range, and in group content I stay at range and occasionally run in to pop Surety/Desolation since I rarely get aggro. It's fun to sit back with the hunters and occasionally knock down enemies with a Snapshot Ambush or keep them down spamming Ranged Boar's Rush. It's not doing quite as much DPS as swapping to take advantage of some of the red gambits, but it's really fun to play 100% range if you know how.

For those of us who play exclusively ranged yellows, it's even more threatening to hear the suggestion of removing yellow- there's no guarantee we'd get all our ranged bonus traits in a combined version and might have to start playing melee or just... give up playing Wardens since range is why we play Wardens.

[gaara908776]

I know most yellows spend the majority of their time in melee, but not everyone does that. Some of us play 100% ranged- I don't even have melee stance slotted because I don't need it. Solo content is easy at range, and in group content I stay at range and occasionally run in to pop Surety/Desolation since I rarely get aggro. It's fun to sit back with the hunters and occasionally knock down enemies with a Snapshot Ambush or keep them down spamming Ranged Boar's Rush. It's not doing quite as much DPS as swapping to take advantage of some of the red gambits, but it's really fun to play 100% range if you know how.

For those of us who play exclusively ranged yellows, it's even more threatening to hear the suggestion of removing yellow- there's no guarantee we'd get all our ranged bonus traits in a combined version and might have to start playing melee or just... give up playing Wardens since range is why we play Wardens.

It’s basically an acceptable way to play if you want to be the lowest dps in a tier 1 group or do landscape but please don’t try to sell this as a viable way to play. Warden isn’t a ranged class. They have 2 ranged DoT skills and a trait that can give you a few extra dots from ranged gambits. If you’re staying ranged 100% of the time, “not quite as much DPS” isn’t really an accurate statement. It’s less than half the DPS you’d do while swapping into melee and primarily using melee gambits in yellow.

They could easily delete yellow line, offer STM to red and blue and start rebalancing around those two lines. The only thing that makes yellow not completely worthless is the mitigation debuff, ranged adroit, and STM.

[martin93]

It’s basically an acceptable way to play if you want to be the lowest dps in a tier 1 group or do landscape but please don’t try to sell this as a viable way to play. Warden isn’t a ranged class. They have 2 ranged DoT skills and a trait that can give you a few extra dots from ranged gambits. If you’re staying ranged 100% of the time, “not quite as much DPS” isn’t really an accurate statement. It’s less than half the DPS you’d do while swapping into melee and primarily using melee gambits in yellow.

They could easily delete yellow line, offer STM to red and blue and start rebalancing around those two lines. The only thing that makes yellow not completely worthless is the mitigation debuff, ranged adroit, and STM.

I think yellow should stick around but it's not a good thing that the ranged traitline requires you to be in melee most of the time for optimal DPS.

[Regero]

I don't think Yellow should be deleted by any means, but it needs to be differentiated. Most people are saying the raw DPS from Yellow could simply be integrated into the Red line, and what buff/debuff functionality Yellow currently offers could either be spread out amongst other trait lines, or simply put into the hypothetical new "Brawler-esque" line. Currently, I think they are correct in this assessment, but this only means that Yellow is not unique enough. I think the bleeds from Yellow could be deleted, the crit ratings and raw damage could be increased, and the debuffs could perhaps be expanded upon into other gambits that are currently useless. Doing this (while upping the DPS of Red in addition to these changes!) would allow the Warden to choose between a Red, melee and raw-DPS focused build which takes time to build up to full potential, or a Yellow burst DPS type build which is useful for supporting fellows, makes up for its lack of raw DPS with enchanced buffs and debuffs, and serves to give the Warden the burst DPS they need to burn down adds.

[Halphast]

They could easily delete yellow line, offer STM to red and blue and start rebalancing around those two lines. The only thing that makes yellow not completely worthless is the mitigation debuff, ranged adroit, and STM.

Edit- I wasted my time refuting all of the false statements you made- but scrap all of that because your whole argument comes down to this last line.

"Delete yellow and give STM to red and blue" = you play red or blue and you want STM- so you think saying "yellow is worthless" will somehow convince devs to scrap it and give you the trait you've been coveting.

"the only thing that makes yellow not worthless is mitigation debuff, ranged adroit..." = you've never played yellow if you believe this.

Yet again... just give red and blue a way to reset their masteries and leave yellow intact.

[Caanwick]

Taking into account what Orion said on stream the other day, concerning classes having a designated role (IE Hunters top ranged DPS, possibly Champs top melee DPS), I thought it pertinent to ask what the dev team considers Wardens' proper place. So, OnnMacMahal, what is the dev team's thinking as to what they want Wardens to be? It would probably help guide us on feedback if we knew what the general plan was. We don't need super detailed descriptions, just a basic idea of what you guys are looking to do.

[CasualActual]

I think the best improvement you could make to the class would be a lag detection algorithm that triggers when lag is detected and resets masteries. Caanwick has a good point though, what does SSG think the wardens need? Are you looking at changes to red and yellow or blue? Has never surrender been fixed so that it protects the warden from one-shot mechanics yet?

[Regero]

Taking into account what Orion said on stream the other day, concerning classes having a designated role (IE Hunters top ranged DPS, possibly Champs top melee DPS), I thought it pertinent to ask what the dev team considers Wardens' proper place. So, OnnMacMahal, what is the dev team's thinking as to what they want Wardens to be? It would probably help guide us on feedback if we knew what the general plan was. We don't need super detailed descriptions, just a basic idea of what you guys are looking to do.

I've been trying to think of this from the Devs' perspective since Orion mentioned it. He said 2 classes would be the best, and obviously one of those slots goes to the Guardian, but what about the other one? Who else do they have? Champions? Champs who actually rolled a champ to tank are probably the smallest minority of players in the game not to mention they are an almost guaranteed pick for top-tier melee DPS. Captains? They are good at everything and extremely desirable; do they really need tanking on top of that? Beornings? They have DPS, support, and great heals; do they need to be top-tier tanks in addition to everything else they can do? Brawlers, I'm not certain about. They seem like they would be just as hard to balance between end-game high tier raids and smaller content as Wardens, but they are also top-tier single-target burst DPS with awesome support on top of that. So that leaves Wardens, the kid in the back of the room jumping on his desk yelling "Pick me! Pick me!!!". The easiest class to transition to a top-tier tank to stand next to the Guard would certainly be the Captain, but they really don't need to be more mandatory for raids than they currently are. To make Wardens even a secondary tank would still take a significant bit of work, but I'm not sure what the alternatives really are. Not to mention that the only thing Wardens currently have going for them is decent (not top-tier) DPS coupled with a few debuffs. What Wardens actually currently contribute is currently rather minor and boring.

I, also, would be very interested in hearing the thoughts of the team on this... Though I would again throw in my two cents for Warden tanks. Either way, it's fun to think about.

[LagunaD2]

The "two favored DPS classes" model is likely based on the others (hybrids) having utility to balance lower throughput.

A similar trade-off for tanks would be a really dumb idea, since no amount of utility can balance a dead tank.

[CasualActual]

How about having multiple dps wardens in a group, do their bleeds still overwrite each other?

[Kander]

How about having multiple dps wardens in a group, do their bleeds still overwrite each other?

Only Spear sweep IIRC, but even if it didn't, reason wardens are taking one potential champion spot is marked and diminished target mit debuff. Second warden wouldn't offer that, so a champion or another class that could add a different debuff would be desired over 2nd dps warden anyways. I guess 2nd warden could increase the chance and potential %active time of double proc marked target but still... In fact I doubt if wardens get a decent tank role, dps warden would be desired. They will be viable, ofc, but certainly not the ideal choice.

[Eadondryt]

Hello Wardens! I'd like to kick off a discussion here about the current state of the warden class. There's been a lot of good information posted here and elsewhere over the years, but I'd like to hear your thoughts about the class as it stands right now. Do Sh-Sp gambit heals inspire you to accomplishing great feats? Do you travel with your companions in blue line to defend them against evil, or are your allies more interested in a couple particular javelins on your back? What excites you about defending the borders of the Free Peoples? What frustrates you about this unique class?

So... are the dev's going to actually participate in this discussion, or are we going to be left banging our heads against the wall for another year.

[LagunaD2]

So... are the dev's going to actually participate in this discussion, or are we going to be left banging our heads against the wall for another year.

The original post simply ignored the years and years of detailed feedback posted here, and in Bullroarer forums:

"Hey, thanks for all the great feedback for years and years, which we completely ignored when it was posted, and are going to continue to completely ignore now!

How about repeating it?"

The laziness and unprofessionalism are appalling. They could have invested a few hours (that's literally all it would have taken) to understand the state of the class, and posted intelligent questions and ideas to open the discussion.

Instead we get patronizing, uninformed dreck like "Do Sh-Sp gambit heals inspire you to accomplishing great feats?"

Yeah, this is gonna end well.

[hfe]

Throwing axes for the release of Dwarf wardens, yes please:P

[Gandolf_TheOld]

Throwing axes for the release of Dwarf wardens, yes please:P

Why? Throw your javelin, that is what it is made for – ranged attacks.

[Aeowulf]

Hi, right, um...

i've not played (properly) for a long time, we are talking back around Isenguard. By properly I am not talking about logging in every year or two, doing a bit of noodling on content, that's a given - i've been 'logging in an doing some content' every few years.

I've read this thread, and i will stand behind what everyone above has said, but some comments really stick in my mind. i'll reiterate a few in my own words, and add some thoughts.

1. Figure out where SSG want wardens to be. The description lists them as defence, so either update the description or make them more desired to tank than any 'non-defence as a description' class. And do whatever it takes to get them there, or fix the description. It seems daft to have a class listed as support that is more desired in a defence role than a class listed as defence.

2. They are a tank that relies primarily on BPE, and mit secondary. Boss mobs stun, ignore BPE, and all sorts of nasty stuff. You either need to give wardens compensatory measures, or even the playing field. where are the boss mobs that ignore mit and only look at BPE.

3. lag - not a class problem per se, but warden is by far the class most affected, and as a tank it could lead to a potential wipe. they should get more 'o-sh...' buttons than every other class because lag has a much larger impact on this class. even better - fix the lag.

4. from what I remember with some really nasty trolls, completing some instances was down to luck not skill. luck because shield tactics has a 20s cooldown on stun immunity, and stun = dead. predicting when this was going to happen came down to luck-ish. Just... remove the 20s cooldown on stun immunity, let a warden be immune to stun/daze knockdown, permanently, if they want to apply a 4 length gambit (this is 3-5 key presses every <10 seconds by itself) this also sorts #2. if a class will get stunned, either a) they need the mitigation to live with it, b) a way to remove it, or c) a way to prevent it. gambits are predictive by nature, option c would be the better in my mind

5. change all feasible gambits to %, otherwise you will have a lot of unhappy players with wardens being OP or UP on each expansion. it will lessen the impact of any changes the size of an expansion.

6. just reply to this thread, please. You asked, we answered, it's polite.

[Sindhol]

Hello Wardens! I'd like to kick off a discussion here about the current state of the warden class. There's been a lot of good information posted here and elsewhere over the years, but I'd like to hear your thoughts about the class as it stands right now. Do Sh-Sp gambit heals inspire you to accomplishing great feats? Do you travel with your companions in blue line to defend them against evil, or are your allies more interested in a couple particular javelins on your back? What excites you about defending the borders of the Free Peoples? What frustrates you about this unique class?

This is not a role-playing channel! We're all dead serious warden fans and we only dream in gambits. No fun allowed*.

The main problems are:
- The weakness of the blue warden. Mitigations and healing are too low, and gambits are generally a bit slow, which is intended (and not, in itself, a problem), but there's essentially no compensation for it.
- Successive updates that keep the warden weak. Nerfs to block/parry/evade, self-healing and morale-taps not scaling with today's high morale totals, and did you know wardens have no native outgoing healing at all? Yep, we don't get tactical mastery from agility anymore. Back when the class was last redesigned (that's U12, Helm's Deep, introduction of trait trees), it was 5 tactical mastery per agility, iirc.
- Lack of variety in rotations. Quick Sweep (No Mercy) is the only thing you can respond to in a DPS rotation. Tank rotations are all about those 1-minute buffs, of which you have... 14. Yay. Edit: Here I am forgetting about Seize the Moment. StM is the only thing that makes rotations different between red and yellow, and it's cool, but I wouldn't want it to be a red line thing. Red line can have its own thing, can't it?
- Your plan to have two "top-tier" DPS (hunter and champion) and others 10-15% behind that is... not great. Wardens already have the least tractable type of DPS there is (melee, which constrains your positioning and slows target swapping; over time, which requires a long on-ramp and slows target swapping; obligatory AoE, which makes you vulnerable to reflect or accidentally killing things). Hunters, by contrast, have the most tractable type of DPS (ranged single-target burst), and also do more raw DPS than anyone else. If you put wardens behind hunters in dummy parses, actual parses are going to be even further behind. What you should do instead is place wardens ahead of other DPS classes (in theory and on dummies), because you can be quite sure that (in practice) ideal circumstances for warden DPS never come up in raids anyway, so parses will be a fair bit lower and well in line with "top-tier" DPS. This is also preferable to making wardens more bursty, in my opinion. I don't mind being specialized in "bulk" long-run DPS and being bad at swapping, but I should get something in return!

Anyway, I'll just link the most recent suggestions I made, which are only some years old, so they should be current. Just read the discussions there, and you'll be off to a good start!

For blue warden:

(1) For the Free Peoples gets axed. New cooldown: every two minutes, bubble equal to max morale.
(2) Never Surrender cooldown reduced by five minutes. Never Surrender trait reduces the cooldown by three minutes (final cd with trait: two minutes). Best-case: NS applies Last Stand effect (for 4-6s) with the heal at the end.
(3) Revel in Combat and Exultation of Battle combined into one trait. New 30 rank set trait: +50% outgoing healing.
(4) Block, parry, evade legacies and traits changed to percent increases to the base value, around 50% each, stacking multiplicatively (i.e. 225% of current base values with trait and maxed legacy).
(5) Shield Mastery and Shield Tactics combined into one trait. New 20 rank set trait: First Aid clears two debuffs, -60s Steadfast cooldown.
(6) Warning Shot > Warning Shout, with shorter animation. Cooldown reduced to 20 seconds.
(7) -30% attack duration and shorter animations all around. Blue warden feels soooo sloooow.
(8) Conviction mit buff gets axed (or added to some other trait, I don't mind it, it's just not worth a capstone). New cooldown: every two minutes, +25% mits for 15s.

I think the problems with interrupts/corrupts (lack of quick-response ability) aren't simple fixes. But the attack duration helps a little, I guess.

(The thread title was "What would be required to make wardens desirable aa tanks". Do read the rest of the discussion, it's helpful.)
A bubble cooldown keeps your heals-over-time ticking underneath the bubble, which suits the class.

I disagree [that 95-115 era Defiant Challenge was bad design]. 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.

Defiant Challenge can and should be a double-edged sword. I like it that way.

Some reasons why I think this [i.e. more reliance on gambits over non-gambit skills] 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.

This is a bit of a contentious point amongst wardens, though.

For stats:

I fully support your goal, but you've not done nearly enough to make block/parry/evade/incoming healing viable.

[...]

If you really want to "encourage more variety of itemization in defensive builds"--that is, balance tank stats--you can do the following:

(1) Halve the partial block/parry/evade chance and mitigation caps. Reduce the full block/parry/evade/resist/inc heal caps by a third.
(2) Grant 5 points block from might/vitality, 5 points parry from might/agility, 5 points evade from agility/will, 5 points resist from vitality/will, 5 points inc heal from fate. This ensures a somewhat more solid base to add buffs and essences to.
(3) 50% of armour applied to tactical/orc-craft mitigation (instead of 20%) and critical defence (instead of nothing at all--crit def isn't affected by anything, though it's a bonus stat on shields, of course).

If you implement changes that big, we might actually start favouring block/parry/evade for some fights. It'd be a welcome change, for sure.

The stat system as a whole is pretty "tiered", that is, there are stats that are always great picks (morale/tmit or crit/mastery) and stats that are never worth it/you get as bonus stats on your raid sets anyway (resist, b/p/e, inc. heal).

For Quick Sweep:

I agree that this Quick Sweep change is just boring.

I think it'd be more fun if it was something like: "If you don't get the Quick Sweep bleed, your mastery cooldowns are reduced by 10 seconds". That way you get a good thing or another good thing, and your rotation can continue along two paths.

Quick Sweep was the only RNG part of our rotation that we could and did respond to, even build around. (Martial Fury bleeds and Barbed Javelins procs are RNG, but you don't adjust your rotation to them.) No Mercy without the RNG Quick Sweep is just a bit boring. Edit: And Seize the Moment is a thing you respond to, so yellow is in a better place here than red, applying the same bleeds, just with StM on top to keep things interesting. If redline had a way to reduce/reset masteries, as per the above, the lines would be more clearly defined.

For interrupts:

[...] Getting stunned while a javelin is in the air cancels that interrupt/taunt. Very annoying, and nothing guards ever have to deal with.

This got fixed for the interrupt, since it's now Immediate, but not for the taunt, I think. Incidentally, I much prefer the interrupt that Reavers got in the last PvmP update to the shield-slam skill: an interrupt that hits every 5 seconds, like a damage-over-time effect. Very warden. Add that to Onslaught/Wall of Steel and we're good.


* Okay, that's a joke, but it's a serious point--I don't think the "fun" talk is helpful here. One of the points I raised in the "Opening the Communication Lines" topic is actually that I'd want to see more specific, detailed, and serious communication. "What excites you about defending the borders of the Free Peoples?" We don't ever get to do that in this game. We get to pick up 12 driftwood for some random NPC, who will then monologue at us for 10 minutes as a reward. Don't pretend that this is a useful question.


Edit: Just noticed this is a month-old thread with no replies from the OP. Are you reading us, OnnMacMahal? Please come in, OnnMacMahal! Over.