Originally Posted by
Kander
Let's face it, lotro devs barely spend any time in class development, and when they do, they base their opinions mostly in a playerbase feedback that is, luckily average player skill level. That's one of the reasons of rk dps nerfs in the past (probably the dps class with lowest skill cap). Now paradoxically with wardens they get hit the other end, warden for so long (probably until mordor release), were a class that barely top 20% tanking warden players could compete with other tanks, but top 10% were taking all potential of the class and they were doing silly challenges that no other class could, like doing ruined city full run without heals, tanking silent street with no healer, soloing stuff like quays t2c, RC t2c, surviving for so long without heals in fights like dome of stars, or going further back in time, tanking full foundry without any heal with ease. Soloing add waves in stuff like Fires of Smaug, or solo tank draigoch's head (I mean without the positioning exploit)... stuff that basically only wardens could do but actually only a small % of wardens could do.
An uninformed dev considered that to be overpowered (when you looked at raids and hard challenging instances, that was never the case and wardens were always 2nd option after guard). So when wardens were left unbuffed (massively nerfed at lvl 95 with trait trees) and then forgotten for many years, devs just wanted something that broke the class further: Make skill cap lower so best wardens weren't so much better than average one, and turning warden skills into less impactful ones, by not scaling heals properly, not scaling avoids properly, not scaling legacies... So that way it didn't fix the class, it just took the top players of the class the chance to actually be great tanks despite class limitations, they made the limitations impossible to overcome, while making the best players not that extremely better than average player, I understand it's easier to balance this way but it hurts the class so bad. Just think right now, compare the tanking effectiveness of warden just spamming DC vs spamming DC + all mit chains + all avoid chains + heal chains all the time. Now think how that difference was at lvl 85 for example or at lvl 105. I remember at lvl 105 you would put self buffs and then spam self heals including ranged ones (which stack with melee) and it was a massive HPS boost, or you could fully buff avoids in fight for specific encounters and you had almost 100% avoids (most partials).
The fights nowadays are so one-sided with an only one correct way to complete that if they give wardens that versatility and strength in specific encounters they would break the intended mechanics.