Rally Up!

[Boogey383]

Bump for Fixing EoB/Fierce Resolve/Reso line in-line with our other heals.

[Fenaril]

There's not enough time in a given timespan to maintain every single HoT and every single avoidance buff (and maintain aggro too for that matter).

In a magical time/place where we could somehow maintain every single HoT and buff gambit in our arsenal all the time and still hold aggro... we would still be at the mercy of the random number generator to ensure that we don't get two-shotted. The sole reason why avoidance tanks will never be desired over mitigation tanks (in large sample sets of course) is the random number generator, or RNG.

QFT +Rep

The good news is Orion is boosting our Partials, which is Mitigation-by-other-means (which I'm totally cool with)

If it's true that the check for Partials comes before the check for Crit/Devastate, the change will also reduce our chances of being 2-shot (*crosses fingers*)

[horus418]

Bump for Fixing EoB/Fierce Resolve/Reso line in-line with our other heals.

You mean like what was supposed to happen anyway?

Was there a reason that idea got ditched? EoB is just about useless these days when you can fire off another quick WC or a Goad.

[Solyaris]

QFT +Rep

The good news is Orion is boosting our Partials, which is Mitigation-by-other-means (which I'm totally cool with)

If it's true that the check for Partials comes before the check for Crit/Devastate, the change will also reduce our chances of being 2-shot (*crosses fingers*)

However, partials is multiplitive with eachother, which greatly reduce its use. And yes, a partial b/p/e will never crit/dev-crit.

There's not enough time in a given timespan to maintain every single HoT and every single avoidance buff (and maintain aggro too for that matter).

In a magical time/place where we could somehow maintain every single HoT and buff gambit in our arsenal all the time and still hold aggro... we would still be at the mercy of the random number generator to ensure that we don't get two-shotted. The sole reason why avoidance tanks will never be desired over mitigation tanks (in large sample sets of course) is the random number generator, or RNG.

Its far from impossible to make avoidance tanks as good as mitrigation cap, with its pro and cons! In the end thought, avoidance tanks need to take less dmg (by a fair amount) then mitrigation tanks (trought pure avoidance/HoTs or a combination), to make up for some of the cons (higher spike dmg, stuns, mobs attacking from behind). Atm, its acutaly opposite, which is not only confusing, but it makes me worried about the math/logical knowledge for some of the turbine staff!

I mean, this was not like an unforseen bug, people were pointing out this issue as soon as beta screen-shots/numbers where out. Why nothing was changed is beyond my understanding.

[Faithbringer]

Its far from impossible to make avoidance tanks as good as mitrigation cap, with its pro and cons!

....

The post you are quoting never stated anything regarding how "good" different tank types are. It simply stated that good raid strategists will typically prefer mitigation tanks over pure avoidance tanks. And the world being referenced is a world in which two devastating critical hits can kill an avoidance tank but not a mitigation tank. This is very much the world of LotRO right now. Due to these facts, an avoidance tank always has a higher chance of prematurely 'explodiation' when compared to a mitigation tank.

Fenaril's "mitigation-by-other-means" is the solution I see to this issue as well (as detailed in another thread).

[ANewMachine]

Good news

This sounds great. The one question I have, though, is this: are there any plans to make it easier for us to keep up our BPE buffs while we're spamming out heals? As I see it, here's how a minute's worth of Warden play will work, once a fight has been established (initial aggro grabbed, etc.).

Aggression: As needed, probably once per Mastery rotation though, or 4 gambits/minute.
SM: 1/minute
DoW/DS/Shield Tactics: 6 gambits/minute [presumes traited DS/DoW]
WoS: 3/minute
Conviction/Restoration: 4/minute (ish)

That's a lot of gambits, and gives you about 4.3 seconds per gambit, on average. If you're using DoW and Conviction, there's no way you can pull that off, as they share masteries, and if you hand-build one, you're up against DoW's long animation, and you can't alternate them unless you want to lose one. WoS and Restoration also share masteries (and WoS needs re-upping every 20s, or roughly 3 out of every 4 rotations), and Shield Tactics and Aggression walk all over everybody's toes. DS is the only one without any conflicts in there.

So... yeah. Any hopes of either longer HoTs or longer BPE buffs?

[HairyLegs]

Some news,

I will be making some changes to the HoTs. This is going to be a pretty significant boost. The HoTs did not scale at the same rate that the damage did and this is causing a lot of the issue that you are seeing so far. (As you have pointed out, as well.) This change will be going live with Update 5.

I will also be making some changes to skills to enable them to contribute to partial mitigation. This should help to reduce the amount of damage incoming. This is not going to put you on the same level as guardians in terms of damage reduction, but couple with the previous mentioned change, the two should be significant. Update 5 time frame.

I am also considering moving the tactical contribution from Will to Might. This will really only affect two skills and out-going healing, but it seems that this is a logical choice. Update 5, if it happens.

The other bugs listed in the original post here, should all be addressed in Update 5, as well.

That is all for now.

Am I the only one who isn't all that impressed by plans for changes being listed here?

The whole increase in partial avoidance MITIGATIONS to me seems a wee bit pointless. Unless its actually an increase in partial avoidance CHANCE, you will still be seeing the same BIG numbers (from crits and devastates) just as often as RIGHT NOW. Finesse will still hurt just as much as currently also. All increasing partial avoidance MITIGATION does is reduce those already pretty small non-crit hits to be a little smaller again. YAY?

What about the scenarios dealing with tactical bosses? There are no ways to BPE tactical attacks other than resistance (talking about attacks, not damage, which IS affected by partial BPE, here just to be clear); how will this partial avoidance buff (mitigations OR chance) help in this situation? (Rhetorical question; it won't)

HoTs on the other hand have the potential to either be good or bad. Unless they are going to get a REALLY BIG boost to their size (length is meh if you take two big hits in a row), then you are still not going to see a big (and appropriate) increase in Warden survivability over where they are now (a couple of your HoTs ticking for 50% more isn't going to prevent a Warden from being squashed by a couple of hard hitting devastating attacks).

However, Orion, if you are actually talking about partial BPE CHANCE and a BIG boost in HoT magnitudes then all I ask is that you be a little more clear in the future (I'd still like a little explanation on how the plan is to deal with heavy tactical attacks) :P

[Dradous]

Am I the only one who isn't all that impressed by plans for changes being listed here?

The whole increase in partial avoidance MITIGATIONS to me seems a wee bit pointless. Unless its actually an increase in partial avoidance CHANCE, you will still be seeing the same BIG numbers (from crits and devastates) just as often as RIGHT NOW. Finesse will still hurt just as much as currently also. All increasing partial avoidance MITIGATION does is reduce those already pretty small non-crit hits to be a little smaller again. YAY?

:P

Agreed. Here what I experienced a few weeks ago.

I have tanked Matúrz-olog and Ivar a few times on level with no problems. Not too long ago I tanked Matúrz-olog troll at level 75 and had trouble staying up with a mini healing. My combat log from that fight shows that I was hit 37 times from which I BPEed 8 attacks and partially blocked/parried 4. Two of the attacks I partially blocked hit me for 400 damage (week melee) and the other two attacks I partially parried hit me for 1200-1500 (Massive Melee). All this change will do is reduce the damage of these partially BPEed attacks. But this would have a significant impact in the outcome of the fight because the bulk of the problem is in the other 25 attacks which landed between 500 and 3500 damage.

I feel that Partial BPE mits will only help if their CHANCE is increased as well.

[Rouan]

If this is how we have to tank everything then the long animations for shield mastery and dance of war really need to be removed and/or wall of steel and dance of war need their duration bumped significantly.

[Kirkdog]

Agreed. Here what I experienced a few weeks ago.

I have tanked Matúrz-olog and Ivar a few times on level with no problems. Not too long ago I tanked Matúrz-olog troll at level 75 and had trouble staying up with a mini healing. My combat log from that fight shows that I was hit 37 times from which I BPEed 8 attacks and partially blocked/parried 4. Two of the attacks I partially blocked hit me for 400 damage (week melee) and the other two attacks I partially parried hit me for 1200-1500 (Massive Melee). All this change will do is reduce the damage of these partially BPEed attacks. But this would have a significant impact in the outcome of the fight because the bulk of the problem is in the other 25 attacks which landed between 500 and 3500 damage.

I feel that Partial BPE mits will only help if their CHANCE is increased as well.

Yup.

This partial mitigation buff will be nice, but will not bridge the gap. How about since Guardians get more bang for their buck from physical mitigation ratings we get more bang for our buck from BPE ratings? Especially since mobs with Finesse can go right thru them. And for that matter how about all medium/light armor wearers? It makes sense from a physics standpoint too. Who's going to be the more agile defender and be able to BPE stuff? The guy in full plate mail or the guy in leather/cloth armor? I've heard a ton of medium/light armor classes complaining about how hard they get hit. It doesn't have to be much to help, especially since we can buff our BPE ratings extremely high.

[Amickson]

there's stil a lot of design flaws in current evasive tank incarnation
- crits/devs against evades just don't work. I play evade tank in another MMO and as such I have immunity against critical hits. In LOTRO it's totally wrong - mitigation tanks got crit defense, evade tanks almost none, it has to be other way around.
- squishiness at start of fight. The tank role at start of fight is to grab aggro, not to build defenses.
- finesse harms evades, not mitigations. So guardian, champ, captain have not to worry about evades anymore.
- mitigations work on everything 100% of time. Evades work only part of this time (fallen damage, stuns, finesse again). There's no balance for this ingame.
- different rating to percent curves on physical/tactical mitigations between heavy/medium/light. That's just simply stupid. Heavy armor already got more rating from armor itself, why it's getting more mitigations from the same rating? And in tactical mitigation there's no sense at all for this.

[Ravenstride]

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.

Please, please, please do not change Aggression. I do not want clickys and cool downs on my warden.

As you mention, we now have tools to catch up after defeat as well as being better positioned (skills wise, once back-end learns to accommodate wardens ) to stave off being defeated in the first place.

Aggression is a single target aggro leech. I.e. it pulls aggro off your fellowship from a single mob. In 95% of situations I now find myself I am surrounded by enough mobs that Aggression on 1 of them is meaningless. Therefore it is not overpowered. Conviction and Dance of War are AoE leeches and Aggression is single target leech. good tools that need to be used correctly to maintain aggro lead in different situations.

[HolyGigi]

I had some fun with a guard friend yesterday. We went to School instance, and did some tests at the last boss.
We never interrupted any of his attacks to see how hard they hit.

Both of us had 4 pieces of the last set, similar jewelery. Both of us had about 13-14K morale. I used Lothlorien shield and Threads pocket item to get my physical mitigation to about 41%. Also, we used the same Virtues for the fight to make sure only the class is what influences the results.

Average auto attack damage against the warden was about 500-700. About 300-370 against the guard.
The average induction attack did about 2k-2.5k damage to my warden, and about 1.2-1.4k to the guard. The biggest hit my warden took was 8.2k! The biggest crit the guard took was about 2.5K.
The highest non crit attack against the guard was way under the lowest non crit attack against the warden. At least a 30% difference.
We did this for about 1h, resetting the boss every time we were close to dieing.

While Orion said he will fix the bugs present with our self-heals and add partial b/p/e, in my opinion, this wont fix us.
-- The first 10 seconds of the fight we will still be the equivalent of a hunter with shield.
-- We dont have any crit defences. 300 or so really doesnt cut it.
-- Things will be even worse (or the same as they are now) against tactical damage where our b/p/e (and partials) are equal to 0.
-- Its impossible to do the 3 things in combat right now: buff, aggro, self-heal. We can do 2, and half of the 3rd. But cant do all three at max efficiency.

[MordecaiKell]

Agreed overall with Amickson but have some comments.

there's stil a lot of design flaws in current evasive tank incarnation
- crits/devs against evades just don't work. I play evade tank in another MMO and as such I have immunity against critical hits. In LOTRO it's totally wrong - mitigation tanks got crit defense, evade tanks almost none, it has to be other way around.

To compound the problem, critical defense only reduces the chance to receive critical hits and not critical magnitude.

Guard gets more defense to try to have guard and warden in the same values of average damage, totally forgetting the big impact of a string of bad luck.

- finesse harms evades, not mitigations. So guardian, champ, captain have not to worry about evades anymore.

A bit exagerated in the conclussions, but true in concept. Wardens are much more affected by finesse.
To give some numbers from simulation. Having 15% finesse made Champion to receive 15% more damage, made Guardian to receive 40% more damage and Warden 70% more damage.

Remember also that Guardian is not a "mitigation tank" but heavily relies both in mitigation and avoidances.

[Chanah]

So it looks to be that Turbine wants only heavy classes to tank. I'm glad our HoTs will scale some, but I don't see how upping our partial BPE (or even HoT scaling) is going to help when we get hit with 7-8k crits.

We have no secondary role in the game - we were made to tank. Obviously, that's changed, and it doesn't look like it's going to be fixed (I don't blame you for this, Orion, it doesn't look like it was your decision).

What does Turbine envision wardens doing as a class? Or are we supposed to just fade out? I'm honestly perplexed.

[Smugmug]

Aggression is a single target aggro leech. I.e. it pulls aggro off your fellowship from a single mob. In 95% of situations I now find myself I am surrounded by enough mobs that Aggression on 1 of them is meaningless. Therefore it is not overpowered. Conviction and Dance of War are AoE leeches and Aggression is single target leech. good tools that need to be used correctly to maintain aggro lead in different situations.

That is incorrect. Aggression transfers a fairly high amount of all your fellows aggro to you. It does the same Conviction /DoW does, only better and without a secondary effect.

[Freanor]

If you're not going to consider a "free" upgrade to the durations of DoW and WoS please consider at least adding WoS to Wary Blocks bonus to duration.

[Aeronth]

Thank you Orion.

I will be making some changes to the HoTs. This is going to be a pretty significant boost. The HoTs did not scale at the same rate that the damage did and this is causing a lot of the issue that you are seeing so far. (As you have pointed out, as well.) This change will be going live with Update 5.

Will HoTs scale with the damage we're taking without avoidance buffs ? (They don't last long enough to keep everything up at the same time)

We will truly become Defilers then. Well, I'm not against that though...

[Mikuma]

Building on the potency idea, why not give wardens a skill that allows 3 gambits to be stored ooc that could be fired off instantly as soon as combat starts? This at least would be proactive and not reactive in nature. It would also give some versatility to which gambits to fire off depending on the encounter and account for the all important opening seconds of the fight. It would of course have to be on a longish cd to prevent op. Anyway just an idea.

[Chanah]

Thank you Orion.



Will HoTs scale with the damage we're taking without avoidance buffs ? (They don't last long enough to keep everything up at the same time)

We will truly become Defilers then. Well, I'm not against that though...

Oh, that would just ROCK, wouldn't it? I'd love it. I'm sure it's not going to happen, though. If we're lucky, maybe we'll heal for 200 or 400 when that 8k crit hits us. When the RNG isn't on our side and we get hit with another 8k crit right after, then we fold.

Orion - please understand I am not blaming you for the mess that was made when passives were taken away, stat caps were taken away, and finesse was brought into the picture. I know that wasn't your decision. But what I can't tell is if the ungodly amount of damage wardens take compared to guards, champs, and captains is the way it's supposed to be - are we supposed to be being one or two-shotted, and have no sturdiness going into a fight? You aren't addressing those issues in the fixes, what I don't know if it's because they're back-end mechanics that aren't working properly (or perhaps they are working as intended, which is a bit scarier), or if it's because wardens aren't supposed to tank anymore because we aren't heavies.

I'm so confused....

[Aeronth]

Oh, that would just ROCK, wouldn't it? I'd love it. I'm sure it's not going to happen, though. If we're lucky, maybe we'll heal for 200 or 400 when that 8k crit hits us.

Oh no no no.
"Scaling with the damage received" means Conviction or Restoration would heal for over 750 each tick, I'd say.

That's what you meant, Orion, right ?

[Protoss360]

Oh, that would just ROCK, wouldn't it? I'd love it. I'm sure it's not going to happen, though. If we're lucky, maybe we'll heal for 200 or 400 when that 8k crit hits us. When the RNG isn't on our side and we get hit with another 8k crit right after, then we fold.

Orion - please understand I am not blaming you for the mess that was made when passives were taken away, stat caps were taken away, and finesse was brought into the picture. I know that wasn't your decision. But what I can't tell is if the ungodly amount of damage wardens take compared to guards, champs, and captains is the way it's supposed to be - are we supposed to be being one or two-shotted, and have no sturdiness going into a fight? You aren't addressing those issues in the fixes, what I don't know if it's because they're back-end mechanics that aren't working properly (or perhaps they are working as intended, which is a bit scarier), or if it's because wardens aren't supposed to tank anymore because we aren't heavies.

I'm so confused....

I think you are going over the top. no warden gets 8k crits or 1 or 2shotted. The only time this happens is against some mobs in skirmish and even if you are a guard you cannot stand there and tank them cuz you will die. Yes there is a big difference between medium and heavy but the difference will never be the same as pre ROI. The new changes for update 5 are a start and if our healing is tied to might like cappies and skills improving our partial mitigation i feel will the gap will be closer.

[Faithbringer]

I think you are going over the top. no warden gets 8k crits or 1 or 2shotted. The only time this happens is against some mobs in skirmish and even if you are a guard you cannot stand there and tank them cuz you will die. Yes there is a big difference between medium and heavy but the difference will never be the same as pre ROI. The new changes for update 5 are a start and if our healing is tied to might like cappies and skills improving our partial mitigation i feel will the gap will be closer.

I disagree. In fact our kin Guardian now that he is geared up has been able to straight up tank alot of different raid skirmish Lieutenants which are not supposed to be tankable simply because his gear is good enough (not to mention he is skilled enough to know how to use the tools he has at the right times to keep himself alive). Those tools don't currently exist for us. Whether he is broken or WE are broken would be the question ... and the answer would be the latter.

[Araelinnis]

there's stil a lot of design flaws in current evasive tank incarnation
- crits/devs against evades just don't work. I play evade tank in another MMO and as such I have immunity against critical hits. In LOTRO it's totally wrong - mitigation tanks got crit defense, evade tanks almost none, it has to be other way around.
- squishiness at start of fight. The tank role at start of fight is to grab aggro, not to build defenses.

We have about 9% crit defense and guardians have about 10% as far as I know, the exact numbers depend on relics and shield used. That's not too bad, but I agree that crits are a much bigger threat to us with the new bigger mitigation gap. It does no longer make sense that we have a lower crit defense.

Regarding the squishiness at the start of a battle: What's again the reason we can't use our masteries out of battle? It's not like we could do a lot of things without a target. But we could start fights with shield mastery up, which would be a big help.

Apart from these things, I'd like to express that I'm very happy that Orion answered to our concerns so quickly. That changes sound promising. I just hope partial mitigation means an increase in partial avoidance chance. That would offer some additional protection from damage spikes and bring them closer to the damage guardians receive.

An increase in partial avoidance damage reduction would be less useful. It would be noticeable if it was big enough, e. g. it would be nice to partially block für 1.5k damage instead of 2k. But what really hurts is the >4k dev. crit that goes through our defenses, and that would happen with the same frequency as it does now.

[Snipergoat]

The main point that I have is that we need to have a role in the post game. As it stands now the only thing I can add to a raid is mass, and fairly useless mass at that.

If Turbine doesn't want us as main tanks, I'm ok with that, really I am. Just give me something, like DPS that is actually reasonable. I'm not asking to be a champ or hunter here but enough to contribute to the group. I for one would love to see the cooldowns reduced on the javelin skills. Give us a reason to actually use our lovely pointed sticks.

I don't think the proposed fixes are going to do the trick. Partial BPE has never been worth much and the kind of HoTs it would take to make up for the damage we are taking would make us way OP in solo and small fellowship situations. Also trying to fit heals into an already crowded tanking rotation is going to be difficult at best.

Maybe wardens need to be rethought. The class is advertised as sort of a jack of all trades but we quickly got put in the tank role because it was the only thing we could actually do. We already have a useless and unused trait/gambit line. That should give them a lot of leeway to experiment with ideas.

So main point, we need a post game role. Suggestions 1. Reduce javelin cooldowns to improve our ranged DPS. 2. Use the currently worthless fist line to give us some real CC. I've seen some excellent suggestions about a dread style fear mechanic that could be looked into.

Thanks, and hopefully I can take my much beloved warden of the bench with the next update. Untill then she will hanging out a the Pony, drinking heavily and reminiscing of past glory to anyone that will listen to her.