With the changes to skills you removed my favorite skill. You play god, and yes you have the right to change..

but it really IRKS me when a favorite skill is REMOVED!!!

Dude. Really!? You removed my favorite skill in the last patch. It's the two yellow boxes that lets you hit 2-mobs in front of you at the same time. (I don't know the official name).
I know you have the right to add or change the game and play god, but it really sucks that you removed the two coolest things that were fun as a Warden.

Just let me know if you ADD any cool stuff instead of just removing something and not saying anything about it.
I may be way off, and if I am I'll risk the egg on my face because that was just not cool as a game-maker to change our skills setup.

Here is my link on the Warden page if you want to read more..
https://forums.lotro.com/forums/show...-where-d-it-go

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Originally Posted by Guidorocker

Just let me know if you ADD any cool stuff instead of just removing something and not saying anything about it.

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They did, there was whole feedback thread on Warden changes and more, so they did say something they told us what was being removed here Warden Changes and Feedback and more feedback here Developer's Diary – Warden Updates from OnnMacMahal

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Originally Posted by Guidorocker

but it really IRKS me when a favorite skill is REMOVED!!!

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I'm curious- what was your favorite skill?

As someone who was very apprehensive and even negative about the changes, I encourage you to explore the new Warden. Get to know the trait trees and gambits (many are changed, a few are new)- while I miss some of what's been removed, and not everything that's been added is good or effective, overall I think it's a lot more fun playing Warden now after the update.

The skills I miss are 'Critical Strike', and 'Wages of Fear' primarily. I also miss the AOE effect of 'Goad'.

Overall, I miss the Javelin skills we had before the changes. The Javelin LI does effect gambits if in Assailment Stance, but for all intent and purpose the Javelin LI is now just a stat gear item.

All that has changed for me playing landscape is it is harder to round up widely spaced mobs. It was easier with the many different Javelin skills we had before the changes. After rounding them up before the changes I would spam DOT/AOE them with 'Surety of Death', now I spam 'Offensive Strike'. If a single target 'Onslaught' mows them down fast just like it did many years ago.

Critical Strike was literally the worst single-target damage skill in the game. The only time I ever used it was when I had to complete the two (2!) deeds which required it to be used a ridiculous number of times in order to then complete a couple of meta deeds for a pair of class trait points. All class trait points now come from basic level-ups and I can live without the 10 LOTRO Points for using that terrible skill too many times. So good riddance.

But I am right there with you on the removal of multiple non-Gambit ranged skills. They were very useful for, as you said, gathering up mobs while in melee stance. And golly, I miss the way I could mark multiple targets with Marked and Diminished.

There are two things to keep in mind, though:

1- Ranged stance no longer debuffs you with Harried if you are hit by a melee attack while in ranged stance.
2- In ranged stance you can pull different mobs from range as fast as you can press your keybinds by using the basic gambit builder skills which, as a bonus, don’t even cost any Power.

So start in ranged stance, use your basic builders to do your pulls, then switch to melee stance when you’re ready to start AoEing them down. Or don’t switch, the only benefit to being in melee stance is a -10% attack speed boost and that mainly affects your autoattacks which barely matter.

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Originally Posted by Halphast

I'm curious- what was your favorite skill?

As someone who was very apprehensive and even negative about the changes, I encourage you to explore the new Warden. Get to know the trait trees and gambits (many are changed, a few are new)- while I miss some of what's been removed, and not everything that's been added is good or effective, overall I think it's a lot more fun playing Warden now after the update.

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My favorite skill was the two yellow boxes that lets you hit 2-mobs in front of you at the same time. (I don't know the official name).

Yes. Certain skills were removed but their effects were not.
Certain skills were even added, and warden is much more versatile now.

The debuffs from Marked and Diminished target are now part of gambits.
Any fist+spear gambit will apply tactical mitigation debuff.
Any spear+shield gambit will apply physical mitigation debuff.

You also have javelin of deadly force which acts as the AOE version of marked and diminished both. This is basically like using both of those skills at once now.

You can also trait battering strikes for the critical rating debuff from previous assailment stance. Fist+spear
You can also trait suppression for an outgoing damage debuff. fist+shield.

And for those that miss critical strike (why would you?). Ambush can be used in combat now and traited Adroit will allow you to use ambush instantly. Wardens finally have an in combat run speed boost!

I highly recommend you read the tooltips of your traits and skills as it was a significant update to warden. They're in most ways better. You haven't lost anything significant when you look at it.

As for aoe... I don't know what you're talking about really, you have an entire gambit system and many skills will be aoe. In fact your entire fist+shield and spear+fist chain are aoe, one for DOTs. Another for initial damage and bleed cashouts.

I mean, I can understand missing Goad if you use it regularly and then you keep using it out of habit and it's not there anymore, but there are way better moves than Goad. The whole fist-shield gambit line is better than Goad for AoE. As I levelled up (before the update), I didn't really even use Goad after I got War Cry and the Flourishing something move.