New LIs

[whitering]

Well, I am here to say that every other character I have done the new LIs on has had a better experience that my Warden.

Mostly we have dumpier versions of the old LIs, but not Light damage, you have to get that from Words of Craft. However, were I used to have 3 items, 1 for tanking, one for DPS/Solo, and my javs, I now find, due to Words of Power, needing 3 main weapons, instead of two and 2 Javs

When I look at my old Javs, with Fist Crit at 83, I am getting 870000% chance to crit on Fist gambits, which is crazy and probably a tooltip error.

I am not thrilled with our choice of Traceries, except for the Mastery cooldown one it feels like we received fewer choices than we used to have. There are good stat boosts, so I am pretty sure our power level will be similar but I will have to try a T2 instance tonight to find out and I will run it a couple times, my old LIs v. the New to double check.

I am guessing at the 131 level, I would hope those surpass the old LIs for sure.

In any case, I am disappointed by the new Traceries. As for Words of Power for my Tanking set up, I will want to see what others thing, there are straight boosts to evade/parry/block and partials, a morale boost and others, but I will wait until 131 to make my tanking set up.

[Halphast]

I've found the new LIs are much better for my (DPS) Warden than the old ones. I'm curious why you need three spears and 2 javelins with the new system- the new ones certainly don't seem "dumpier" to me. On my old weapons I had the best Legacies possible, but still about half of them were trash. The new ones we have a lot more to choose from; what legacies/traceries are now missing for you?

[LagunaD2]

The class legacies are a disaster for Blue line.

I ended up having to take the two idiotic (a Blue Warden doesn't sneak past anything!) Careful Step legacies, because they have Evade Rating. There was literally nothing better to use in the last two slots.

Incredibly, there are only three class legacies directly relevant to our survival abilities: the two healing buffs, and the Shield Tactics one.

[Fordarb]

After seeing the new LI setup I'm convinced SSI doesn't want Warden's to tank at all now.

Guess I'll get rid of my tanking gear set and just be a DPS warden....which is pretty much all I've done the past few years anyway.

[LagunaD2]

After seeing the new LI setup I'm convinced SSI doesn't want Warden's to tank at all now.

We have 3 defensive class legacies.

Beornings have 4.
Brawlers have 4 (not counting a threat-related one).
Captains have 8 (not counting the useless Noble Mark one).
Champions have 5.
Guardians have 9 (not counting threat-related).

Pretty clear separation into "haves" and "have-nots".

And we are at the bottom of the "have-nots"...

[whitering]

3 Defensive legacies only 1 of which is actually good. What kind of Tank uses Careful step? Who?

Actually, what kind of Warden uses that? Maybe if you are sneaking past a high level mob trying to farm a node or something? I have never used it.

As to why I am making 2 Swords and 1 Spear, 1 is for tanking, and that is epically bad, and 1 for DPS and 1 for Ranged, which I do use sometimes, mostly when I am out farming, I run in Assailment because I don't need then to be running up to whatever walking hides I am farming at the same time.

So, the Spear is just unimportant really, but it's for the Ranged Words of Power

The Javs, one is for DPS, that has by Single Target on it, my DPS Sword has AOE, and one will be for tanking. There are a lot of good tanking Words of Power, so a Sword and and Jav set for that is necessary. But the sword and Jav are going to be laughable from a tanking set up.

Still running some T2s on the weekend, nobody was explicitly tanking, but I was pulling all the aggro, so ya, our DPS is fine, really good actually, we lost some Light % but gained so much tactical and physical mastery that we are much higher. I am not even sure I will have to change anything at 131, there aren't any more traceries I want. Words of Power make it so I need a different Sword and Jav for Tanking regardless.

[Vilda]

3 Defensive legacies only 1 of which is actually good. What kind of Tank uses Careful step? Who?

Actually, what kind of Warden uses that? Maybe if you are sneaking past a high level mob trying to farm a node or something? I have never used it.

...

These traceries are for PvMP, actually is seems like half of wardens traceries are for pvmp

[bohbashum]

These traceries are for PvMP, actually is seems like half of wardens traceries are for pvmp

Are wardens seriously using those skills so much ambush and careful step has 3 traceries?

Run speed + Duration is great tbh. That makes sense in my opinion.

Ambush tracery is aweful in my opinion. The damage is just not that important. It's the fact it stuns and you can close gap very fast.

The cooldown and stealth level are basically pointless in PvP from my knowledge.

[RazorsKiss]

I'm not sure how much this will help anyone, given how... weird... our blue line is - but here goes.

For my LIs, I have them set up this way on my 124 Warden - Note: I was able to overlevel most of my traceries before the patch, so many of the stat levels shown are at either 440 or 430 of the 415 upgrade levels I should have:

Sword:

Heraldry:
Sparrow

WoP:
Incoming Heal Bonus

WoM:
Shield Tactics TM buff
Mastery Cooldown
Resolution Target Resist Chance
Gambit Lifetap Damage
Heal Bonus for Conviction
Shield Gambit Line Healing

WoC:
Ascendant Light
Exemplary Evasion

Javelin:

Heraldry:
Serpent

WoP:
Area Effect Target Count
Healing Over Time

WoM:
Resolution Damage
Spear-Shield Gambit Damage
Surety of Death DoT
Fist Gambit Dmg and Crit Chance
Defiant Challenge Dmg Return
Careful Step CD and Stealth Lvl

WoC:
Perfect Recovery
Perfect Healing

Granted, some of these are useless - especially into my jav WoM traceries - but there really are a good bit of somewhat useful ones in there for blue line. Combined, the two LIs add 12,370 Agility, 8801 Vit, 129,595 PhysMast, 18,246 TactMast, 127,502 IncHeal, 90,102 OutHeal, 33,502 TactMit, 49,988 Finesse, 40,392 Crit, 1038.7 TactHeal, and 47,520 Evade, as far as straight stats go. For percentages and skill modifiers, they give me +50% Shield Tactics Mit, -3 Mastery Cooldown (I have teal slotted), -10% Resolution target resist, +35% Gambit Lifetap Dmg, +35% Heal Bonus for Conviction, +50% Shield Line healing,+2 AoE target (I need to slot a teal of this!), +18% HoT, +35% Resolution Dmg, +25% Sp-Sh Dmg, +35% SoD DoT, +5% Fist Crit chance, +50% Fist dmg, 85% DC dmg, -40 Careful Step cooldown, and +2 Careful Step stealth.

As you can see, I weighted extremely heavily toward blue line traceries - especially the shield heals and lifetaps. What I found surprising was just how much they pushed Inc/Out Heal stats in the traceries. While they are still lagging behind what we should be getting from them to keep up with stat bloat, I did some crunching in another post. For the lifetaps, I'm looking at a 286k initial burst from triggering the whole lifetap chain, with 86,428/4s from the FR/EoB lifetap ticks at my current stats. Given my morale pool of roughly 190k, that's giving me some old school numbers for Warden self-heals. Just the initial bursts on my full lifetap chain with max targets can once again outheal my morale pool. I haven't seen that in a *long* while. On the other hand, I can only get a total of 29k or so from the shield line's initial bursts, with another 31k or so every 3s for 18s. Now, that's ST, so we're still looking at 16% (or thereabouts) of my morale pool every 3s.

If we're not talking raid tanking, that will keep you up against just about anything in landscape or solo instances - and feels a lot more like the old Warden to me, at least. Granted, a few changes I've seen multiple folks suggest when it comes to surviving burst damage and fixing NS would put us in a better position when it comes to burst damage - and once my morale pool goes through the ceiling closer to cap, that heal-to-morale-pool starts to fall off precipitously. It is interesting, though, that at this stage in my character's progression, I actually feel like a Warden again. If someone wanted to crunch the numbers on what it would take to keep a similar progression going into cap, I'd be interested to see it. Again - I'm aware that this doesn't fix Warden taking in raids. However, it does seem to grant more of the feel of mass-mob-pull dance with death that we used to have, at very least. When you're pulling 12 mobs at a time, those huge clumps of baddies don't feel like quite as much of a chore as they used to. If I didn't know better, I'd say that they were trying to get us back up to par - but that they're stuck an expansion or so back in keeping us up with stat bloat, because they still haven't quite figured out what to do with us, or what an actual fix for our blue line would entail. That's just the impression I'm getting from what the current crop of traceries are actually resulting in. I can definitely do full-on mass pulls on just about anything within 5 levels of me - but it's still just not *quite* Wadenish, as long as they keep the base numbers for our heals so crufty, no matter what workarounds they use to stack Inc/OutHeal boosts and TactHeal/Mastery - which seems an indicator that they are at least shooting at *a* target for Warden blue line.

[Eadondryt]

I'm not sure how much this will help anyone, given how... weird... our blue line is - but here goes.

For my LIs, I have them set up this way on my 124 Warden - Note: I was able to overlevel most of my traceries before the patch, so many of the stat levels shown are at either 440 or 430 of the 415 upgrade levels I should have:

Sword:

Heraldry:
Sparrow

WoP:
Incoming Heal Bonus

WoM:
Shield Tactics TM buff
Mastery Cooldown
Resolution Target Resist Chance
Gambit Lifetap Damage
Heal Bonus for Conviction
Shield Gambit Line Healing

WoC:
Ascendant Light
Exemplary Evasion

Javelin:

Heraldry:
Serpent

WoP:
Area Effect Target Count
Healing Over Time

WoM:
Resolution Damage
Spear-Shield Gambit Damage
Surety of Death DoT
Fist Gambit Dmg and Crit Chance
Defiant Challenge Dmg Return
Careful Step CD and Stealth Lvl

WoC:
Perfect Recovery
Perfect Healing

Granted, some of these are useless - especially into my jav WoM traceries - but there really are a good bit of somewhat useful ones in there for blue line. Combined, the two LIs add 12,370 Agility, 8801 Vit, 129,595 PhysMast, 18,246 TactMast, 127,502 IncHeal, 90,102 OutHeal, 33,502 TactMit, 49,988 Finesse, 40,392 Crit, 1038.7 TactHeal, and 47,520 Evade, as far as straight stats go. For percentages and skill modifiers, they give me +50% Shield Tactics Mit, -3 Mastery Cooldown (I have teal slotted), -10% Resolution target resist, +35% Gambit Lifetap Dmg, +35% Heal Bonus for Conviction, +50% Shield Line healing,+2 AoE target (I need to slot a teal of this!), +18% HoT, +35% Resolution Dmg, +25% Sp-Sh Dmg, +35% SoD DoT, +5% Fist Crit chance, +50% Fist dmg, 85% DC dmg, -40 Careful Step cooldown, and +2 Careful Step stealth.

As you can see, I weighted extremely heavily toward blue line traceries - especially the shield heals and lifetaps. What I found surprising was just how much they pushed Inc/Out Heal stats in the traceries. While they are still lagging behind what we should be getting from them to keep up with stat bloat, I did some crunching in another post. For the lifetaps, I'm looking at a 286k initial burst from triggering the whole lifetap chain, with 86,428/4s from the FR/EoB lifetap ticks at my current stats. Given my morale pool of roughly 190k, that's giving me some old school numbers for Warden self-heals. Just the initial bursts on my full lifetap chain with max targets can once again outheal my morale pool. I haven't seen that in a *long* while. On the other hand, I can only get a total of 29k or so from the shield line's initial bursts, with another 31k or so every 3s for 18s. Now, that's ST, so we're still looking at 16% (or thereabouts) of my morale pool every 3s.

If we're not talking raid tanking, that will keep you up against just about anything in landscape or solo instances - and feels a lot more like the old Warden to me, at least. Granted, a few changes I've seen multiple folks suggest when it comes to surviving burst damage and fixing NS would put us in a better position when it comes to burst damage - and once my morale pool goes through the ceiling closer to cap, that heal-to-morale-pool starts to fall off precipitously. It is interesting, though, that at this stage in my character's progression, I actually feel like a Warden again. If someone wanted to crunch the numbers on what it would take to keep a similar progression going into cap, I'd be interested to see it. Again - I'm aware that this doesn't fix Warden taking in raids. However, it does seem to grant more of the feel of mass-mob-pull dance with death that we used to have, at very least. When you're pulling 12 mobs at a time, those huge clumps of baddies don't feel like quite as much of a chore as they used to. If I didn't know better, I'd say that they were trying to get us back up to par - but that they're stuck an expansion or so back in keeping us up with stat bloat, because they still haven't quite figured out what to do with us, or what an actual fix for our blue line would entail. That's just the impression I'm getting from what the current crop of traceries are actually resulting in. I can definitely do full-on mass pulls on just about anything within 5 levels of me - but it's still just not *quite* Wadenish, as long as they keep the base numbers for our heals so crufty, no matter what workarounds they use to stack Inc/OutHeal boosts and TactHeal/Mastery - which seems an indicator that they are at least shooting at *a* target for Warden blue line.

You can improve your selection for sure if you want to tank:

Heraldry -> Boar for the outgoing healing and Block/Party from might
WoC -> 4x ardent light, the set bonus gets you 60k outgoing healing and the added crit rates help aggro generation and means your heals crit more often with a net gain in average HPS. (Tested on dummy vs 4x incoming healing WoP)

In the same vain the WoP healing over time crit chance/magnitude is also a better bet gain than the base 20% heal. But I use both for max effect.

A Max level blue warden is rocking over 1 million morale so the more Healy you are the better.

[bohbashum]

Shield Tactics TM buff
Mastery Cooldown
Resolution Target Resist Chance
Gambit Lifetap Damage
Heal Bonus for Conviction
Shield Gambit Line Healing
Resolution Damage
Spear-Shield Gambit Damage
Surety of Death DoT
Fist Gambit Dmg and Crit Chance
Defiant Challenge Dmg Return
Careful Step CD and Stealth Lvl

I'd swap out the bold ones for...

Marked target double cast
Javalin crit chance
Javalin damage

I like blue+yellow preferably deep in yellow to aoe debuffs.

I seriously need to test, but I have a feeling Javelin crit chance MIGHT affects the javelin heals which I find myself applying a lot kiting after core buffs.

[LagunaD2]

You can improve your selection for sure if you want to tank:

Heraldry -> Boar for the outgoing healing and Block/Party from might
WoC -> 4x ardent light, the set bonus gets you 60k outgoing healing and the added crit rates help aggro generation and means your heals crit more often with a net gain in average HPS. (Tested on dummy vs 4x incoming healing WoP)

In the same vain the WoP healing over time crit chance/magnitude is also a better bet gain than the base 20% heal. But I use both for max effect.

A Max level blue warden is rocking over 1 million morale so the more Healy you are the better.

Not sure I agree with the 4xArdent Light or the Crit Word of Power.

60k Outgoing Healing is less than 6%, and it only affects your self-heals. I think it's also 6% *base* healing (before any bonuses from traits, traceries, etc); I experimented with Outgoing Healing and wasn't impressed.

Going two Ascendent Light and two Perfect Recovery gives about 56K Incoming Healing, which is about +2%, affects ALL heals (after all bonuses).

It may depend on your build, but I certainly don't stack Critical Rating as a tank. I have 11% Crit Chance/Magnitude.

Without the Crit HoT Word of Power, my HoTs are

0.11 * (1.20 + 0.11) + 0.89 * 1 = 1.034 of base thanks to criticals.

With the teal 121 HoT Word of Power, they would be

0.16 * (1.20 + 0.11 + 0.20) + 0.84 * 1 = 1.082 of base, only a 5% improvement.

The teal 20% HoT magnitude looks a lot better to me; because of SSG math, it increases my HoT tooltips by 10%, rather than 20%, but still about double the effect of the critical WoP.