Rally Up!

[Orion]

It is clear that the changes made to the back-end have impacted Wardens. That said, I am seeing a lot of mention of other bugs that people are perceiving and I want to get a handle on those. They are a lot easier for me to get a handle on as I have direct control over those. The back-end is not something that I am directly involved in, though I will be discussing with those who are to see what we can potentially do to rectify the issues that you are seeing.

For this thread, I want to get a handle on bugs. These are the bugs that I am aware of and tracking:

Never Surrender: Duration on the debuff is incorrect; should be 2 minutes and is currently 5 minutes.

Never Surrender: Heal does not trigger immediately upon crossing threshold is unaffected by DoTs. (It is actually triggered by DoT's, but there are some wonky race conditions happening.)

Never Surrender Iconography: Currently uses the captain's last stand iconography.

Aggression: Tooltip information is misleading. This is not longer a percentage, it is now a flat rate.

Aggression (Potent): Tooltip references Conviction's information.

Shield Tactics: Adds rating points to Defence not Mitigation. (This is the only bug associated with Shield Tactics right now. It was not intended to stop a Stun/Knockdown used to open Fellowship Maneouvers. It was only meant to stop stuns, which it does.)

Shield Tactics: Applies immunity at the end of animation.

Way of the Warden: Does not give any measure of Critical Defence.

Deflection: Places a threat up FX on the target instead of a threat down FX.

What others am I missing, or do you feel are bugs?

Double Gambit Builders: Animation are equivalent to the base gambit builders.

[Zohal]

Passive Sword hit bonuses as well as GMWT do not seem to work. I base this on extensive testing I have done with a number of weapons. It is unfortunately not possible to auto-attack the training dummies for more than 15s at a time but even so I have 4-digit whacks at the dummies with several types of weapons and there is no perceivable difference in the number of hits/misses. At my current Agility level I miss with approx 8% of all blows, regardless of weapon.

I don't have my data any longer (Galtrev crashes...) so I can't test for binomial distribution.

[Finthorn]

Shield Tactics: Adds rating points to Defence not Mitigation. (This is the only bug associated with Shield Tactics right now. It was not intended to stop a Stun/Knockdown used to open Fellowship Maneouvers. It was only meant to stop stuns, which it does.)

Stun immunity starts at the end of the animation, not at the beginning.... not sure this is a bug or WAI...

[AltariasEU]

Do I really need to refer you to this thread?

http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?422255-RoI-Bugs.

EDIT:
I was gonna keep it in, because you said you dont have a handle on it, but I will still throw it in there. Simply because I think you shouldve taken into account the back changes and not been so stubborn to just give nothing and then claim its all for the better.

The only thing that makes us stand out is keeping aggro with Agression and you nerfed it?

Potency is a joke in its usefullness, you have to use a worthless gambit with the slowest mastery ever, then you have to actually hit that skill, then you also need to hit the gambit you want stored. With our miss chance you have a 10% chance to miss Deft strike etc. then a 10% chance to miss the gambit you want in it and then 10% chance to miss (and still use morale?) the gambit you stored.

We are freaking squishy, lower mitigations and diminishing returns hit us hard and so does enemy finesse. What do you do? Make a class not fun to play for freaking months untill there MIGHT be a tiny fix.

[AltariasEU]

I haven't even read one word of your post Orion, but thank you for this. I'll be the first to say the Warden community is greatly appreciative to have our issues addressed.

I dont appreciate it, there is a clear thread with our bugs up and he hasnt bothered to put the bugs on his list. This is a nice way of saying he is on it, while the REAL issues will not be fixed untill weeks from now...

[geoboy]

Edited Oct. 10th

-- Wardens get less mitigation % per mitigation point than other tank classes.

-- Medium armor was supposed to have 55% common mitigation not 50%

--Adroit Maneuver and Reversal don't apply buff/debuffs and remain in the Battle Memory panel. This also might be true when using other gambits.

--Bleed Removals apply common damage instead of weapon damage type.

--Lack of crit defense on Way of the Warden stance.

--DoTs do not trigger the heal from using Never Surrender which can result in defeat.

--Deflection puts a red aggro symbol over the mob instead of blue.

--Debuff from Never Surrender is 5 minutes instead of 2.

--Shield Tactics applies +1500 tactical defense instead of mitigation.

--Shiled Tactics stun immunity does not work with knockouts.

--Warden HoTs have not been scaled.

--Legacy Costs do not seem consistent.

--Never Surrender does not always seem to apply the debuff.

--Sheild Tactics applies the stun immunity after the animation.

--The bleed from Javelin-Toss has no type of dmg, it always does the same amount of dmg, no matter what mitigations the enemy has (bug or intended?).

--Warden only get 4 points of outgoing healing per point of will. Other non healing classes (my champ and burg), get 5.

For the benefit of not having to leave thread. The legacy points ARE waaay out of whack. does anyone have the link to this thread?

[Tartartart]

I am not sure if this is a bug, WAI, or just a perception thing on my end, but it seems like the Double-Gambit builders take longer to build than the other masteries. It seems like the Double-Gambit builders need to cycle through the attack animation (Deft Strike, Goad, Defensive Strike) before the gambits appear on the builder, while the other Masteries you get a shiney glowy ghosty symbol above your head and you are good to go nearly instantly.

The timing might be the same, i haven't tested it, but it sure seems off as I am building up combos using those double-builders.

[Mysterion]

Thanks for responding. Your list sums up most of the skill specific problems. I'd like to see our skills hit more often, especially ambush. I have been happy with our new gambits and potency. If you fix the tactical defense issue with shield tactics I will add it to my defensive rotation for sure. I haven't had time to test Deflection, but when I've accidentally used it I didn't even notice it. It was probably just me going overboard on threat though.

My main concerns are about our survivability while tanking. I have not found a combination of gear, virtues, skill rotation that works for raid trash mob skirmish pulls. I am using traits and relics to push my b/p/e and incoming healing to high levels. I'm using 3/6 of the new armor set and decent jewelry, and I am just not able to take the damage that other tanking classes are mitigating.

I understand that we will always be squishy early in a fight because it takes time to build threat, stack avoidances and then may be get conviction running. Even after those are up and running I'm still a burden on the healer and the group as a whole. Never surrender has been very helpful in those situations especially early in the fight when my morale drops from 15k to 0 in mere moments. With the penalties and CD I'm less effective for 5 minutes though (I know you intend to fix it).

I am not sure what you can do to help us survive better with the current limitations put on medium armor. A 20% gap between heavy armor and medium armor just seems too much considering our HoTs have all been pushed out of defensive rotations in order to stack avoidances. Stacking avoidances seems to be less effective as well. I'm not sure if that is the effect of a mobs finesse or a broken game mechanic. So I either stack HoTs that haven't scaled well with our morale pools or stack avoidances that are countered by a mobs finesse rating. At least threat isn't an issue. Although I noticed last night that agression wasn't as effective, was that a stealth update to wardens yesterday?

Above all else I haven't found it very fun to tank with the warden. This boils down to not being able to survive and being a burden on the group (PUG or Kin run). I am not sure how you can fix a tanking warden without making it over powered in solo play. I do not want wardens to be the OP tank in LOTRO. As fun as it would be to run around as a king for the day it wouldn't be good for the game. However, I would like to be interchangeable with guardians or champions in my capacity to fill a tanking spot. Right now, I definitely do not feel that way. I would concede to guard the MT spot on almost any raid. I rarely did that in the past.

What can be done to make wardens more survivable? Are we not using the right traits? Should we be stacking agility?

http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?422255-RoI-Bugs.

TL;DR;
Mitigation inequalities
Non-Scaling HoTs/Leaches
Effects of mob Finesse
Too many "Miss" when using our skills
Basically we're too squishy and die really fast

[Mysterion]

For the benefit of not having to leave thread. The legacy points ARE waaay out of whack. does anyone have the link to this thread?

http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?422255-RoI-Bugs.&p=5734434#post5734434

[Minyacairwen]

The back-end is not something that I am directly involved in, though I will be discussing with those who are to see what we can potentially do to rectify the issues that you are seeing.

Not sure what's part o the back-end and what's part of your control, so I'll just shoot away...

- Medium armor mitigation caps at 50.0% (deliberatly trying not to comment on the unbalance vs heavy armor right now, as you'll just have bugs listed in this thread XD)
- Never surrender does not always work when you are stunned. I can't reproduce it regularily/100% of the time, but I have died at least a dozen times in the Moors while Never surrender was active, but I got stunned and then killed. As this normally happens when 3+ Creeps attack you, I doubt that DoT's were the sole reason for all of those deaths.
- Not sure if WAI or bugged: double builders take approx. 1 second to build. I.e. they are alot slower to use than the "regular" masteries.
- Also, not sure if WAI or bugged: If Deft strike or Goad misses / get resisted by all opponents, no Potency is applied. Shield-shield on the other hand applies potency even if you miss your opponent.
- passive Sword bonus and GMWT does not seem to work. Analyzed 2x15 fights with autoattacks vs lvl 75 opponents (approx 500 total attacks each sample, it's rahter low, I know); one sample with Sword and GMWT, one with a spear and w/o GMWT, and in both cases I was stuck at ~7% miss chance. (7.0 and 7.2% actually)
- Also regarding misses: not sure if it's WAI or a bug either: are we supposed to miss that much vs on-level monsters ? 7% seems quite high

Also, there were 1 or 2 bug collection threads in these forums, might be worthwhile to check those, too.

[Minyacairwen]

Oh, also:

- Never surrender is affected by incoming healing. While this might look like a buff (b/c normally you get "healed" by more then 75% of your max morale) , I'm sure it's a bug. At least I understand the skill description in that way, that it should be a fixed amount not being affected by outside factors like willpower, Bard's field ...or debuffs like Ivar, Trolls in OD or some Creeps in the moors. Being affected by those factors makes it quite unreliable/alot less useful as a panic button.

[greendragoon100]

I would like to mention that our HoTs aren't doing so hot right now. They don't seem to scale properly.

[Antrius]

I dont appreciate it, there is a clear thread with our bugs up and he hasnt bothered to put the bugs on his list. This is a nice way of saying he is on it, while the REAL issues will not be fixed untill weeks from now...

Lay off will ya?
This forum has turned into the Guard forum lately. We are better than this guys.
Am I unhappy with the sacking of wadenism. ABSOLUTELY!
Do I agree with most of the issues that have crept up? Yes.
Do I want my kin tank spot back? Heck YES!
Do I agree that changes will not come quickly enough? Yes.
Should they have noticed this back end problem for wardens during beta and fixed it before release? YES!

Do we need to be all over our dev the first time he posts after ROI like flies on .....? No... Well ok just a little. LOL

Take heart at least that they are acknowledging the problem and are working to fix the problem.
Negative posts are not helping. Constructive post only please! Lets get wardens fixed!

That is all!

[Mysterion]

Should they have noticed this back end problem for wardens during beta and fixed it before release? YES!

Many things were reported in beta, including wardens being squishy. I read the posts and figured it was because they weren't geared out. I didn't have time to gear out a warden on the test server and find raid groups. Mainly because of time and the availability of groups So I'm probably partly to blame. After being in the beta I was very optimistic about playing warden in RoI. Sadly we have some problems right now. While being disappointed with our current issues, I'm optimistic they'll get fixed so I can carry on my warden tanking torch.

The beta was a stress test and store test probably not much more. I'm glad they finally fixed the pit of iron though and some other issues reported from beta in the patch yesterday.

Edit: I geared out as best I could to get b/p/e screenshots - which at the time was Moors gear and what I could craft. Just didn't have time to grind out 96 marks for raid set.

[Mysterion]

Aggression: Tooltip information is misleading. This is not longer a percentage, it is now a flat rate.

How does a flat rate help us recover from a death? I am confused by this skill now. Is it more of a threat leach than Dance of War or Conviction? Can its potency be increased when we recover from a death? I felt like it was less potent last night. May be it is just psychology at work.

Edit: Sorry for double post

[Sheilyn]

It is clear that the changes made to the back-end have impacted Wardens. That said, I am seeing a lot of mention of other bugs that people are perceiving and I want to get a handle on those. They are a lot easier for me to get a handle on as I have direct control over those. The back-end is not something that I am directly involved in, though I will be discussing with those who are to see what we can potentially do to rectify the issues that you are seeing.

So first of all let me thank you that we finally get some dev attention.
But to be honest that's not what I have hoped for. Yes bugs should be adressed but 'till now I've not seen any gamebreaking bugs other than maybe the 5min debuff on Never Surrender. What really gives us headaches is our squishyness which is not caused by bugs as far as I understand. Therefore I think we all would appreciate it more if this gets adressed before altering the iconography of some skills. Gamebreaking issues should always have higher priority than fancy stuff

[Solyaris]

Thanks for finaly saying hello again^^

First, send whoever has controll of mitrigation/avoidance - balance to a 2 week math course. Its just embarrassing when half the warden community sees the imbalance long before the update, without any actions taken. And while on it, send those which came up with the finesse idea to the same course. Its almost hilarious to experiance all the nerfs wardens has got with this update. HoTs, finesse, mitrigation, less %-value pr point of physical/tactical rating then heavies (which, btw, makes virtues worse for us then heavies) to name a few.

Bug:
- Pricise blow got stuck in battle memory (might be an one time thing)
[- My signature says im lvl 65 even tho Ive been 75 for 3 weeks^^]

[Mysterion]

It is a better threat leech than DoQ and Conviction. It is not meant to help you recover from death, rather it is meant to help you grab aggro quickly, from your fellowship.

Thanks for clearing that up.

DoQ = Dancing Queen?

[geoboy]

It is a better threat leech than DoQ and Conviction. It is not meant to help you recover from death, rather it is meant to help you grab aggro quickly, from your fellowship.

I have no doubts of it's effectiveness. It works great.


EDIT: Forums are funny. IT used to do this, then they fixed it.

[Orion]

Not sure what's part o the back-end and what's part of your control, so I'll just shoot away...

- Medium armor mitigation caps at 50.0% (deliberatly trying not to comment on the unbalance vs heavy armor right now, as you'll just have bugs listed in this thread XD)

Back-end, will be discussed.

- Never surrender does not always work when you are stunned. I can't reproduce it regularily/100% of the time, but I have died at least a dozen times in the Moors while Never surrender was active, but I got stunned and then killed. As this normally happens when 3+ Creeps attack you, I doubt that DoT's were the sole reason for all of those deaths.

Likely related to the other Never Surrender Bug.

- Not sure if WAI or bugged: double builders take approx. 1 second to build. I.e. they are alot slower to use than the "regular" masteries.

Added to lead of thread.

- Also, not sure if WAI or bugged: If Deft strike or Goad misses / get resisted by all opponents, no Potency is applied. Shield-shield on the other hand applies potency even if you miss your opponent.

WAI.

- passive Sword bonus and GMWT does not seem to work. Analyzed 2x15 fights with autoattacks vs lvl 75 opponents (approx 500 total attacks each sample, it's rahter low, I know); one sample with Sword and GMWT, one with a spear and w/o GMWT, and in both cases I was stuck at ~7% miss chance. (7.0 and 7.2% actually)

Back-end will be discussed.

- Also regarding misses: not sure if it's WAI or a bug either: are we supposed to miss that much vs on-level monsters ? 7% seems quite high

Back-end will be discussed.

Also, there were 1 or 2 bug collection threads in these forums, might be worthwhile to check those, too.

I have and distilled them into the leader for this thread. Anything not mentioned is either outside of my direct area of influence - punted to the appropriate folks - or WAI.

[Orion]

How does a flat rate help us recover from a death? I am confused by this skill now. Is it more of a threat leach than Dance of War or Conviction? Can its potency be increased when we recover from a death? I felt like it was less potent last night. May be it is just psychology at work.

Edit: Sorry for double post

It is a better threat leech than DoQ and Conviction. It is not meant to help you recover from death, rather it is meant to help you grab aggro quickly, from your fellowship.

[geoboy]

So how do Wardens recover from death now, when even the hypothetically working old NS has changed? Wasn't that the point of Aggression?

Tanks should be capable of that, especially if they drop like flies now.

Don't die, lol. But seriously, I've died and used aggression to get aggro back. Now, these were short fights and I haven't tried it on Draigoch yet.

[grinko.at]

So how do Wardens recover from death now, when even the hypothetically working old NS has changed? Wasn't that the point of Aggression?

Tanks should be capable of that, especially if they drop like flies now.

[Solyaris]

It is a better threat leech than DoQ and Conviction. It is not meant to help you recover from death, rather it is meant to help you grab aggro quickly, from your fellowship.

I find it strange that you nerf one things that was fixing one of our (few) issues before RoI. This means we are not only extremely squizy, we now have no way of getting aggro back after death (again). Cant wait to tell our raid leader that if I die, its a wipe (again).

[polishexpres]

It has not been altered from release, so there has been no nerf.

The changes to NS, should make it so that dying happens less often. If it does, the tools are there to recover they are just not expressly meant for recovering from death.

I am already considering, due to confusion and response, removing the gambit aspect of Aggression and making it into a threat catch-up skill on a fair cool-down. I would prefer not to do this, because I believe that the skill is multi-purposed and handles situation where you may have recently been defeated well. You simply need to use it a few times to get back to the top.

If my group is going all out dps (champions) I need the current aggresion to hold aggro. That is what I like about it. If you change it I think the champs will hold aggro the whole time. They hit ridculously hard now. Pre Isen I had no troubles holding aggro off any class. Isen was a whole different story until I used aggresion in my rotation.