Player Guide: Class Changes Summary: Warden

[Redit]

MOST OF THIS IS MOST LIKELY OUT OF DATE, I'VE SINCE STOPPED PLAYING IN FAVOR OF OTHER INTERESTS... PLEASE REFER TO THE OTHER THREADS FOR CHANGES ON WARDENS. GOOD DAY.

Warden

Text in red indicate changes i have made since this went live
text in yellow indicate changes I have made November 8th and later

Finishers

Finishers are a new type of gambit that has increased potency if you use the 2-icon then 3-icon gambits in the same gambit line. If you use 21(persevere) then 212(safeguard) you will get a buff that gives greater potency for 2121(celebration of skill) and 21212(restoration).

The finishers are celebration of skill, Restoration, surety of death, conviction, dance of war, and desolation.

after you complete the 2 icon and 3 icon gambits you'll have about 10 seconds to complete a 4 or 5 icon gambit to take advantage of the bonuses.

After combat gambits

When you leave combat, gambits stay "prepared" for 9 seconds after combat ends. much like a gambit stored in battle memory.

Minimum range

there is no longer a minimum range for ANY gambit while in assailment stance, however when you do this you will have a chance to gain a debuff every time you are hit. -5% ranged damage for 4 seconds, stacks to a max of -25% ranged damage.

Determination

Spec bonus

+5% spear gambit damage
+25% healing potency (and more)

Significant Set bonuses

tier 1 - +20% morale-tap damage
tier 5 - when you evade you heal 1% of your maximum morale
tier 6 - +2 pulses to AOE morale taps over time
tier 7 - all gambit builders apply morale-tap (~60 at 85)

Traits of Special Mention

Tier 3 - improves Defiant Challenge – increase mitigation depending on how many enemies are affected by defiant challenge
Tier 4 - when you evade your gambit masteries' cooldowns are reset, only applies once every 15 seconds
Tier 5 - +1/2/3 HoT pulses
Tier 6 - cooldown of never surrender reduced by 5 minutes
Tier 6 - +4/8/12/16/20% increase in morale tap damage


Recklessness

Spec Bonuses

+5% DoT
-10% attack duration (and more!)

Significant Set Bonuses

tier 1 - +5% spear gambit damage
tier 5 - +10% spear gambit damage
tier 6 - +5% melee damage (This is where your grand master weapons training trait is at.)
tier 7 - gambits in power attack (123) and precise blow (31) gambit lines have 15% chance to apply a second bleed.

Traits of Special Mention

tier 1 - +4/8/12/16/20% bleed damage
tier 2 - allows onslaught and wall of steel to consume the bleeds of power attack and mighty blow (respectively) to deal AoE damage
tier 3 - +3/6/9/12/15% offensive strike morale-tap damage +1/2/3/4/5% morale-tap damage
tier 4 - +2/4/6/8/10% DoT crit chance
tier 5 - +4/8/12/16/20% DoT crit damage
tier 6 - +4/8/12% adroit maneuver attack duration, +3/6/9% warden’s triumph damage bonus.


Assailment

Spec bonuses

+5% ranged damage
+340 critical rating (and more!)

Significant Set Bonuses

tier 1 - +10% ranged damage
tier 2 - hampering javelin slows 5 enemies around target
tier 6 - -10% attack duration in assailment stance

Traits of Special Mention

Tier 2 - +3/6/9/12/15% ranged damage
Tier 4 - Javelin gambits have 10/20/30/40/50% chance to bleed, the more icons in gambit the more bleed damage.
Tier 4 - marked target and diminished target(new skills see below) affect 4 more targets.
Tier 5 - trying to stack a bleed of the same tier will consume the bleed to create an AoE damage burst.

Skills

Removed Skills

• Javelin toss

Removed Gambits

• Shield up
• Aggression
• Call for Battle
• Deflection

Skills Not Tied to Tree's

• all gambit builders
• all gambit masteries
• quick recovery
• recovery
• ambush
• wages of fear
• hampering javelin
• all travel skills
• critical strike
• careful step
• forced march
• battle preparation
• battle memory
• never surrender

Changes to Old Skills/Gambits

fist-spear gambit line: (31 313 3131)

• bleeds

shield-spear gambit line: (21 212 2121)

• HoT only (no bleeds)
• celebration of skill has no HoT, increases incoming healing by 5.5%.

Adroit maneuver:

• -4% attack duration
• see above, traits can increase to -16%

Warden’s Triumph:

• +3% melee damage
• +5% ranged damage in assailment stance
• see above, traits can increase to +12% and +14% respectively

Force march

• no longer has power penalty

never surrender

• no longer has a duration (it stays on until used or log out)

Defiant challenge

• obtained in tier 2 of determination trait line
• 20 second cooldown

Javelin of deadly force:

• Obtained in tier 7 of assailment trait line

shield mastery:

• obtained as a set bonus in tier 2 of determination trait line

shield tactics:

• obtained as a set bonus in tier 4 of determination trait line

shield piercer:

• obtained by specing into the recklessness trait line

Improved hampering javelin:

• obtained by specing into the assailment trait line

Precise blow:

• bleeds

War-cry:

• no longer heals
• buffs last 20 secs (down from 30)

Brink of victory:

• evade rating duration 20 secs (up from 10)

Piercing strike:

• bleeds

Spear of virtue:

• bleeds

Surety of death: (finisher)

• also increases block and parry,
• duration 12 seconds (up from 10)

Desolation: (finisher)

• adds -5% miss chance for 12 secs

Resounding challenge:

• does damage

Defensive strike:

• block rating duration 10 secs (down from 20) and only 10% chance to apply.

Persevere:

• buffs for 20 secs (down from 30)

Impressive flourish:

• no longer heals, buffs duration 20 secs (down from 30)

Safe guard:

• buff duration 20 secs (up from 10)

Dance of war: (finisher)

• no longer increases evade rating or tactical mitigation
• buff duration 12 secs (down from 30),
• also increases physical mitigation by 2%

Conviction:

• adds critical defence and tactical mitigation to allies within 30 meters for 12 seconds
• base HoT duration 6 seconds (down from 12)

Offensive strike:

• morale-tap with in the fray stance
• -2% outgoing damage for 12 seconds debuff on target with assailment stance

power attack:

• bleeds

mighty blow

• bleeds

boar's rush:

• no longer has chance to fear or knockout, but can still daze on critical.

bleeds: when I say "bleeds" I usually mean light damage every 4 seconds for 16 seconds, only power attack, and mighty blow does regular damage.

changes to warden gambits are complete.

New Skills

First Aid:

• removes 1 disease, fear, poison, or wound from you
• 5 second cooldown

Steadfast:

• recover from daze, stun, knockdown
• 2 minute cooldown

Marked target:

• javelin skill
• debuffs target’s physical mitigation by 5% for 10 seconds
• 18 second cooldown

Diminished target:

• Javelin skill, obtained in tier 3 of assailment trait line
• debuffs target’s tactical mitigation by 5% for 10 seconds
• 18 second cooldown

For the free peoples:

• 15 second duration
• every gambit you use increases the fellowship’s physical/tactical mitigations
• obtained in tier 7 of determination trait line
• 1 min, 30 sec cooldown

Recklessness:

• 20 sec duration
• -10% B/P/E, +50% damage, +1224 crit rating
• 1 min 30 sec cooldown
• obtained in tier 7 of recklessness trait line

Fire at will:

• 10 second duration
• fellowship gets +680 physical/tactical mastery
• 45 sec cooldown
• obtained in tier 4 as a set bonus in assailment trait line

Dodge this:

• javelin skill used after enemy evades your attack
• 10 second cooldown
• obtained in tier 5 as a set bonus in assailment trait line

Snap shot:

• 5 skills have been made snap shot skills: shield piercer, hampering javelin, wages of fear, ambush, and javelin of deadly force.
• each gambit builder has a chance to unlock a free use of a snap shot skill whether or not the original skill is on cooldown.
• can be obtained in tier 7 as a set bonus in the assailment trait line

Warning Shot:

• Javelin skill
• 8 second cooldown
• debuff’s target’s outgoing damage by 5% for 10 seconds
• obtained by specing into the determination trait line

Legendary item legaciesThanks to Gilean-EU for researching and formatting these


Weapon Major

Name	Min	Max
Fist-Spear Gambit power cost	-1%	-10%
Gambit Lifetap damage	+1%	+10%
In The Fray attack duration	-1%	-10%
Light Skill damage	+1%	+5%
Marked and Diminished Tgt debuff	-0.5%	-2.5%
Shield Gambit buff duration	+1	+10
Spear Gambit damage	+1%	+10%
Spear Gambit parry rating	+359	+511
Wages of Fear positional damage	+1%	+10%

Weapon Minor

Name	Min	Max
Ambush critical multiplier	+3%	+25%
Boar's Rush critical rating	+359	+511
Critical Strike critical multiplier	+3%	+25%
Hampering Javelin duration	+1%	+15%
Javelin Skills Max Range	+1	+15
Resolution damage	+1%	+10%
Shield-Spear Gambit power cost	-1%	-10%
Shield Tactics Tactical Mitigation rating	+359	+511
Surety of Death damage over time	+1%	+10%

Javelin Major

Name	Min	Max
Fist Gambit buff duration	+1	+10
Fist Gambit critical rating	+1360	+1520
Fist Gambit evade rating	+207	+359
Heal Bonus for Conviction	+1%	+10%
In Combat Power Regeneration	+48.36	+94.8
In The Fray morale regen	+102.06	+200.1
Shield Gambit Line healing	+1%	+15%
Spear-Shield Gambit damage	+1%	+10%

Javelin Minor

Name	Min	Max
Adroit Maneuver duration	+1	+10
Ambush and Careful Step Induction	-0.3	-3
Careful Step duration	+3	+30
DC Mitigations Per Target	0.2%	1.8%
Forced March Movement Speed	+1%	+13%
Javelin Skills Movement Miss Penalty	-2%	-10%
Shield Gambit Line Healing	+1%	+15%
Shield Piercer duration	+1%	+15%
Target Resist rating (Resolution)	+264	+416

Edit list
dance of war and surety of death used to have their icons switched, this is no longer the case.

celebration of skill, safeguard, persevere has always given +block rating and +partial block chance.

restoration never had a +block rating.

added more changes to gambits, completed.

When you leave combat, gambits stay "prepared" for 9 seconds after combat ends.

added some new legacies, found out which legacies they replace.

you will have 10 seconds to complete a finisher in order to gain a bonus.

dodge and counter skill has been removed. replaced with a trait in determination line.

spear sweep/heavy sweep skills has been removed. replaced by a series of related traits in recklessness line.

change to tier 4 and tier 5 traits of special mention in assailment line.

Added minimum range change. Thanks to skinnymac7 and spelunker for bringing that up.

Tier 5 set bonus in determination heal 1% max morale on every evade

In recklessness traits DoT crit chance and damage traits have been reconfigured.

Snap shot applies on each gambit builder attack

added Legacies ---thanks again to Gilean-EU for doing these

[rannion]

Addendum/update: DoW/SoD were switched back to their original gambits.

Additionally, it is important to note that, as it stands, all defensive buffs are their own buffs with their own duration; they can only be refreshed by reapplying the same gambit again, and they no longer tier up as they do on live. The duration of most buffs is ~20s, and can be extended by 10s via the appropriate legacies. (As such, keeping up buffs is a lot harder than it used to be. This has been mentioned by quite a few beta testers, but it is currently unknown whether the durations will be extended.) Similarly, there is only a 10-12s window during which you can build and execute finisher-enhanced gambits, which is so short that it forces you to stick to very rigid rotations, because if you deviate from them you will lose out on the bonuses.

@Mysterion, other: is it really necessary to add those junk images?

[donworth]

So how did things end up w/re to threat? Are the threat leeches still gone?

[CM-Amenophis]

All leeches are gone. But i could hold aggro (beta 4.1 and 5) against Damage Dealers.
We still have a few issues in each Tree, but we hope Deviled_Egg fix them

[Krazus]

I don't bring good news for non-beta testers.
So I won't say anything.

[Laire]

I don't play a warden. My friend who was beta testing with me who has played a warden as her main since Moria said she's not playing him through the game anymore and moving back to her original main in SoA, the hunter.

So, take that as you will.

[Ballaorf]

That bad? It doesn't seem like the changes are all that drastic to me. What is so bad?

[spelunker]

That bad? It doesn't seem like the changes are all that drastic to me. What is so bad?

Main points of contention amongst BETA testers with what we've seen thus far with the warden.

Tanking:
You will no longer be able to keep up all of your buffs and HoTs, or even close to it. 4 and 5 length buffing gambits (the new finishers) last 12 seconds, or 22s if you have the shield/fist duration legacies. Each of your block, evade, mit/crit D buffs are completely separate from each other. These last 20 seconds each (30 with the shield/fist duration legacies). Using persevere gives a small block bonus for 20 seconds, and applying safeguard after this gives a separate buff and the persevere buff remains unaltered. The values of these buffs currently also means that at 85, with every buff that grants block active, your block rating will be lower after helms deep than right now. Considering the sheer volume of gambits that provide these buffs, it will be impossible to keep more than 2/3rds of them active at a time even with no consideration given to threat or DPS.

No more threat leaches (DoW, Conviction, Aggression)

No more non-DPS forms of threat (Resounding Challenge, Call to Battle), which is especially irksome, since Guardians after initially losing shield taunt, had it returned to them as their Dev citing the importance of having access to a non-damage source of threat.

Lack of choice in skills to use in AoE tanking situations. Some have likely done more tanking than me, but AoE situations pretty much require 1 EoB and then spamming Resolution for your threat needs.

Threat matches. Wardens have a single threat copy skill, which is also their most powerful self-buffing skill Defiant Challenge. Changes to the threat system are supposedly going to require more use of threat copy skills, and having our only source of a threat copy on a skill that is extremely important for an entirely seperate use is frustrating. Also, the threat copy on DC is very unreliable, it frequently does not hit enemies theoretically in range, has a relatively small max targets number, and when the max has been reached, you have no way of ensuring the target you have selected will actually be hit with the threat catch up.

The Capstone for the Blue line is absolutely horrendous and probably not even worth investing the single point required to unlock it. This is supposed to be the signature skill or ability of the line, and its a waste.

Spear line:

The no respite trait initially had an overpowered incoming healing potency (25%, stackable 3 times for -75% inc healing on a target), this further still stacked with the moors set, allowing for -125% inc healing, and both the -75% and -125% were quite obviously over the top. No respite was reduced to -10% per stack, and the moors set to -12.5% per stack, now maxing at -55%, a fair figure. However the duration on No respite is so short (10s), and the gambits that apply it are otherwise pretty poor, so a warden will end up probably doing more than 30% less dps to a target maintaining the debuffs, than simply going max dps.

Not specific to spear line but Boar's Rush has lost its inherent 25% chance to proc a stun/fear/daze. It still stuns on a crit, but even for people with decent crit ratings, boar's rush is 50% less useful for CC/using Crit strike, and still does poor dps, even compared to the other sp-fi line gambits, which are generally weaker to begin with.

Spear line is generally in the best shape of the three.

Assailment Line:

Rather than a point by point analysis... Basically the debuffs added to this line are on otherwise ###### ranged gambits, and their duration and potency is too low to justify their use compared to just straight DPS on this line, the Snap-shot mechanic is clunky and highly redundant (though easily fixable), and raw dps has been significantly gated by the RNG in ways we have absolutely no control of through skill use or gear choices.



There is more to talk about within each tree and the class as a whole, but I've written my share of essays on the topic already and it feels like a waste at this point.

Other notes:

Only a couple legacies were changed, meaning we still have a number of pretty weak ones.

Bugs have persisted from the start of BETA without being fixed, some longstanding ones from before the revamp.

Ultimately it feels like the original vision of our Dev was completely out of line with the spirit of the class, a decent number of things were rolled back (which hasn't meshed well with other changes that have not been rolled back), but much remains in disarray and it feels like this class is lagging behind within the BETA cycle compared to many others.

[CM-Amenophis]

Bad things are:
Assailment is our new Support-Ranged-Dps Tree: But Damage is so far from a RKs, Hunters or LMs Dps you cant compare it, even with your new Support Skills.
Speaking of them: Your Buffs for the grps are: Faster Casting, a kinda Reveal Weakness (Burg skill) Skill which only works for few seconds and you can Buff 760 Mastery!
All that for the Price of 3k Dps (which Hunters do easily!)

Recklessness, plays ok but again: Compared to other Melees: Nope not good enough, and a few things are broken. You can consume a Bleed with Onslaught or WoS, but not if you use them from Battlememory.
Hopefully we see that fixed.

Determination
To Short Buffdurations, to short HoT duration, Compared to Live: We lose Block and Parry, but reach cap on evade w/o Buffs.
This beeing said. We get alot of Evade Rating Bonuses in our Tree (Useless since we are already on Cap with Crafted Equip)
Defiant Challenge gone as we knew it.
No more aggro leeches and ToT.
DPS=Aggro.

We got many new Click-Skills and not ONE new Gambit. In Assailment you have a crapload of Skills you can Press now. More then any other Class.
Dev Diary aimed for around 20 Skills (w/o stances, ports). Well we have over 30 ;D

But dont Panic. Till Beta 4.0 Warden was so awfull i thought Deviled_Egg was kidding. Since Beta 4.1 there are improvments. Many Warden provided good Feedback. All we can do now is hope that Deviled_Egg
polishes our Class. If now: We can Play Engineer in BigBattles ^^

[Elrohasra]

Disclaimer: I based this all on testing in PvP, no tanking or PvE.

Recklessness: The mighty blow line has gained an even higher damage threshold with the combination of powerful bleeds, increased DoT crit chance and damage, and the ability to stack the bleed upon consuming the mark left by the previous gambit. Spear sweep is an interesting concept. Quick way to apply bleeds if it works, waste of time if it doesn't apply. Adding decreased incoming healing to the boar's rush line was an interesting decision. Morale taps to offensive strike was a little neat, though ot really impressive. Oh, healing gambits are back. Just less HoT. So uh, burn-hot-for-wardens capstone? It looked pretty nice. My question: Does it effect the damage from consuming mighty blow etc.?

Assailment: I like the bleeds, really powerful if you apply it. Again, the spear sweep is a good notion that can work but can backfire, cleverly disguised as "shattering javelins." Suppression was a nice little addition. The fellowship-helper addition to adroit manoeuvre is helpful. Diminished target and marked target will be great in combination to help the group too.

Determination: So, heals are significantly more powerful. I enjoyed the change to DC. Interesting that the Mighty blow line is still about as strong as in recklessness. For the Free Peoples is going to be an interesting capstone. The idea of having gambit builders apply a morale-tap is going to be an interesting and fairly substantial threat to moors 1v1'ing. Determination is also extremely volatile in the moors as a DPS source now. The conventional morale taps have become fairly overpowered, one resolution on the maximum amount of targets can heal around 20k with crits (does the heal crit? I didn't use my combat tab. Just judged off of what it listed max targets and morale restored).

Conclusion: Assailment is going to be a big threat still, the bleeds that have a chance to be applied are brutal. Determination is extremely powerful, I really can't see many creeps being able to 1v1 and win in that situation. After testing, even warleaders can't out heal the bleeds mixed with the consumption bonuses etc. Recklessness: Still very good DPS, though at this point i would say that if you are going to melee then go determination. This would be more useful for PvE. Though in terms of playing fair and no going full invincibility, recklessness would probably be fairest. Nerfs expected... many of them.

Comparisons: After watching guards in beta, I would say that recklessness is about equal to guard DPS. Determination is incomparable to any other class, if you play well then you will take much longer to kill than any other class.

[Darlgon]

I don't bring good news for non-beta testers.
So I won't say anything.

Between this post, Laire and spelunker I am afraid.. VERY AFRAID.

We need REAL, DETAILED OFFICIAL dev diaries IMMEDIATELY. Not the fluffy promo junk to sell new players on our class, we got a few weeks ago. SIGH.. and know that will not happen.

[Edit] No, on second thought, half-way through reading the LM class changes. Turbine, change release to December and really figure out what you did to the game and all classes, stabilize your build, since you appear to be making major changes with less than two weeks til launch THEN come at us with a playable game.

[Buraq]

Apologies if this has been addressed elsewhere. Have the three stances been reduced to two as the dev diary stated? And is stance dancing allowed in combat?

[bohbashum]

Apologies if this has been addressed elsewhere. Have the three stances been reduced to two as the dev diary stated? And is stance dancing allowed in combat?

yes.

melee and ranged stance. there called "in the fray" and "assailment"

assailment gambits can now be used melee though

[PGR]

I don't play a warden. My friend who was beta testing with me who has played a warden as her main since Moria said she's not playing him through the game anymore and moving back to her original main in SoA, the hunter.

So, take that as you will.

I hear you. The Wa(r)den is not something you just screw with.

[PGR]

Main points of contention amongst BETA testers with what we've seen thus far with the warden.
Ultimately it feels like the original vision of our Dev was completely out of line with the spirit of the class, a decent number of things were rolled back (which hasn't meshed well with other changes that have not been rolled back), but much remains in disarray and it feels like this class is lagging behind within the BETA cycle compared to many others.

That's usually what happens. The put someone in charge of something that they don't understand. Either they try to make it like another class that they understand or they make it like they think it should have been.

Again, the warden is not something you can just mess with. It's not just clicking on different icons to launch different skills. It takes a lot of studying and practicing and you can't just un-learn all that and relearn completely new stuff. You have to start at lvl 1 and learn the base gambit and then modify it as you get higher gambits. Now, we have to jump in at lvl 65 with almost no explaination of what is new. What they should have done is go back and fix what is broken and add ideas from the forms.

If it was too strong or too weak, make adjustments but, don't revamp.

[PGR]

I am afraid.. VERY AFRAID.

I may have to cancel both my VIP accounts. Let them go back to living in their moms' basements, eating pizza all day and not having a girlfriend.

[Zetsubousensei]

Somewhat indicative of the problems in the warden HD revamp process were the dev notes in early beta build that had accidentally leaked into several tooltips. They basically asked "what does this skill do" and called at least one "confusing" ...so take that as you may.

Not to mention the idea to rip out a bunch of gambits, make them separate skill clickies and call them Finishers. That one fortunately did not last longer than one beta revision.

[rannion]

Between this post, Laire and spelunker I am afraid.. VERY AFRAID.

We need REAL, DETAILED OFFICIAL dev diaries IMMEDIATELY. Not the fluffy promo junk to sell new players on our class, we got a few weeks ago. SIGH.. and know that will not happen.

[Edit] No, on second thought, half-way through reading the LM class changes. Turbine, change release to December and really figure out what you did to the game and all classes, stabilize your build, since you appear to be making major changes with less than two weeks til launch THEN come at us with a playable game.

Your fear is not unjustified. To my mind, the most frustrating experience was not knowing whether, and how, DE valued our input at all, since she stopped replying to the warden feedback thread about 15 pages back, either because she is overworked (she also has lm and a third class), or for different reasons; as such, we don't really have any idea if and which of our requested changes will be taken up.

edited addendum: DE has put up an apparent boilerplate 'thanks for your feedback we really do read it' post, in which she admits that she has been given too little time to seriously look at the class, and in which she suggests that we should use this forum after HD launch to say how we want the warden to be fixed. Hurray? In any case, we can only hope that the development process post-HD launch will be more interactive, and more fruitful. But it will require further investment by us, again.

[Redit]

This is exactly why I wanted to do these player diaries because I didn't want the negative posts to explode all over the forums. "this is the end" posts.

I love the warden and yes in the beginning I was very scared about the changes, but they changed them back, we got our finishers made into gambits we got never surrender turned back into a skill, we got our quick recovery skill back, etc. I can learn to live with the 'negative changes'* it's really not that bad. with all the complaints about how over powered our characters are and how easy our game is I'm surprised more people aren't positive about a little nerf. in fact as a warden I wanted a little nerf but when I played a warden on beta I was still able to easily handle 20+ on-level mobs without dying. resolution and exaltation of battle are still insane powerful in fact they are even more potent than on live.

*main negative changes I was talking about is celebration of skill not being a HoT, javelin of deadly force at the bottom of the yellow line, shield mastery being gated in determination.

Defiant challenge still affects 10 enemies, still force taunts for 5 seconds, and it still can give mitigations, AND its cooldown is only 20 seconds. what I heard about threat was never DPS = threat. it was, if you do damage to this guy he's attacking you. but we'll see. I'll admit I never tested tanking but I sure can survive.

[rannion]

This is exactly why I wanted to do these player diaries because I didn't want the negative posts to explode all over the forums. "this is the end" posts.

I love the warden and yes in the beginning I was very scared about the changes, but they changed them back, we got our finishers made into gambits we got never surrender turned back into a skill, we got our quick recovery skill back, etc. I can learn to live with the 'negative changes'* it's really not that bad. with all the complaints about how over powered our characters are and how easy our game is I'm surprised more people aren't positive about a little nerf. in fact as a warden I wanted a little nerf but when I played a warden on beta I was still able to easily handle 20+ on-level mobs without dying. resolution and exaltation of battle are still insane powerful in fact they are even more potent than on live.

1. I do appreciate that you've tried to summarize the changes, but a lot of things apply to beta 1/2, while you have seem to have missed the changes made in beta 4-4.1-(5). Also, you should probably at least add the info about buff durations being extremely short compared to how they are on live to your summary, as it is certainly notable.

2. In that vein, please don't do the people posting here the injustice of suggesting we're all doomsayers; if you had actually read the replies in the thread you would have seen our responses are quite substantive; it saddens me that you are so dismissive of the additional information provided by us.

3. if you want to compare survivability, please do so by doing something like pulling all the mobs up to the first boss in sth, or in fornost earth wing, and see how you fare; landscape mobs are not very interesting to me from a survivability PoV. Once you feel you can survive a few of those mobs, bring a few DDs and see if you can balance keeping aggro with surviving. Certainly you might argue that being able to pull 20-30 mobs like we can on live is a tad silly, but I think it would be helpful to determine a baseline number of mobs/pulls before talking about how survivability+tanking is working as it should.

Defiant challenge still affects 10 enemies, still force taunts for 5 seconds, and it still can give mitigations, AND its cooldown is only 20 seconds. what I heard about threat was never DPS = threat. it was, if you do damage to this guy he's attacking you. but we'll see. I'll admit I never tested tanking but I sure can survive.

Sorta. DC as it stands is behaving quirkily at best, and it is unclear whether the threat copy is indeed working as it should. The mitigations were bugged for 2 builds; and you sort of skate over the question whether it is desirable to have the lowest mit boost in the hardest (i.e., boss) fights, while this is at the very least an open question.

[Redit]

1. I do appreciate that you've tried to summarize the changes, but a lot of things apply to beta 1/2, while you have seem to have missed the changes made in beta 4-4.1-(5). Also, you should probably at least add the info about buff durations being extremely short compared to how they are on live to your summary, as it is certainly notable.

2. In that vein, please don't do the people posting here the injustice of suggesting we're all doomsayers; if you had actually read the replies in the thread you would have seen our responses are quite substantive; it saddens me that you are so dismissive of the additional information provided by us.

1. I did notice that my buffs never could last as long as they did. I'll make the change... [ edit: actually shield mastery still lasts 1 minute, the HoT durations have not changed, and the HoTs have increased in potency.]

2. I have been extremely busy this last week and didn't really have time to read or do much, I apologize for that. I've just seen so many "this is the end" posts, and "I'll quit playing after HD goes live" posts. not all of them were like that but a lot, even I was a doomsayer at first and said I would go back to my hunter as a main.

I will make a detailed list of gambit changes and post them in the OP.

[Darlgon]

I'll admit I never tested tanking but I sure can survive.

You just lost a TON of cred. Tanking and wadening is NOT ONLY about solo survival. Its about keeping the group alive.

Thanks for playing. Guess we can see what gets popped up once this sh##-storm goes live.

[Edit] More negative than I really feel to you as a person. I do appreciate the write-up but.. sigh.. it really is far from what is needed. It is a preview of what bad things will come in a few days and reminds me of the 18 months of uselessness we had back with ROI. I finally shelved my warden after he became unplayable.

The comments about DE are.. not surprising. Last I checked, she had 3 classes and a post count of like five. She is supposedly a reader, not a poster, leaving that to Sapience.

Sadly, please realize she is NOT the only person working on this class and two others. She has to have an entire support team working with her, so to hear she is overloaded.. Sorry hun.. that is what Turbine pays your group to do, and has been for since Katy Patz introduced these changes in her Producer Letter last.. was it December?

[Edit #2}

I will make a detailed list of gambit changes and post them in the OP.

Please, please.. PLEASE just make a new thread or post and a LINK to it noting changes in the original post, so I dont have to read through that again, hoping to catch changes.

[Darlgon]

Sorta. DC as it stands is behaving quirkily at best, and it is unclear whether the threat copy is indeed working as it should. The mitigations were bugged for 2 builds; and you sort of skate over the question whether it is desirable to have the lowest mit boost in the hardest (i.e., boss) fights, while this is at the very least an open question.

Since you appear to have tested DC, is it still 5 seconds of mobs running at you and then they run back to whoever they were headed to? Somewhere a long while back a poster (pretty sure it was a blue) stated that the base mechanic was, it put you at +1 in threat to your group for those five seconds, but then dropped you back down to where you were before after those 5 seconds. Which is why it never was called a forced taunt. A true forced taunt would move you to plus one and you could build from there. Theoretically, you should be able to tell the group stop DPS and healling, fire it off and the mobs stick to you. Mind you.. with the horribly SHORT buffs and lack of heal I keep reading about, I doubt you could survive that..

Speaking of which.. from what omissions I read, healing does not generate threat any more? Just DPS? Where the heck is THAT promised Dev Diary?

[bohbashum]

Since you appear to have tested DC, is it still 5 seconds of mobs running at you and then they run back to whoever they were headed to?

DC has had a huge change, tbh, all taunts have.

there are no longer any "force taunts" in there old form so just ignore any before thought now.

Taunts have 2 parts to them.
A) if you don't have aggro, you will match up aggro from that other person +20%
B) if you have aggro for a short time you will be generating more aggro from skills.

however, we never saw B, this was just told to us by the developers and wasn't implemented so lets ignore that for now.

you don't want to use a taunt at the beginning or even shortly after that as your competition will pull after it quite quickly. 120% on 1k damage is a lot less than 100k damage. so as the fight goes on the potency of a taunt will increase a lot. so for the first ~20secs of a fight you want to just being using aggro/dps gambits to try and compete with the other players until you have enough down to match-up effectively later.

match-ups are extremely effective for off-tanks and tank swapping. it's as easy as one button on all tanks to tank swap now. the interesting bit is off-tanks can take aggro off you, for you to then take off them and effectively make 144% of the aggro you had before in an extremely short time. this is probably going to be the way to go for raid content so dps classes NEVER pull from you.

a lot of dps balancing is being done we're told to make sure tanks will be doing enough competitive dps to generate enough aggro to hold targets on them in tanking stats. so taunts *shouldn't* be needed as offen as the cooldown is now (20s). also, DC has a new quicker animation. spamming it is stupid and so un-wardenly but it's pretty much a tanks bread and butter for the most part. this is where most wardens are seriously upset

you can effectively hold aggro however. you might lose it a lot more than RoR and RoI days but so will everyone else too. the huge issue is how demanding this actually is currently and how much focus on aggro'ing/dps'ing instead of survival (which we need being the medium armor tanks) gambits that we need to do to be effective tanks at surviving.

Speaking of which.. from what omissions I read, healing does not generate threat any more? Just DPS? Where the heck is THAT promised Dev Diary?

healing still generates aggro like before, but like before, once you start going under the hood it's actually not a lot of aggro.

additional aggro from the tank line passive doesn't triple aggro generated from healing like it does to dps, I'm pretty sure of that but testing it was tough.

[Mysterion]

@Mysterion, other: is it really necessary to add those junk images?

I read the beta forums. I tried some of the betas (on my guard). The warden class thread is 35 pages and counting (second only to captain 71 pages). To me the NDA being lifted is definitely a grab some popcorn and watch situation. With regards to wardens I think once the beta is opened the real fireworks of people being vocal. To me it seems like the spirit of the warden that I loved @65 is almost completely gone. Can't wait to hear everyone's opinions of the procs/clickies/finishers/threat when this goes live.