Warden Changes - Feedback

[Eadondryt]

Hi Devs,

I submitted some feedback in the main sticky thread, but I think it got buried under all the comments on the reward track. So this is my feedback on the changes to warden in the last 2 bullroarers.

1. The patch notes in bullroarer say the For The Free Peoples Buff is -25% incoming damage at max stacks. It is actually -20%
2. The effect Determined has no Tier counter, so its impossible to see how many stack you have done without hovering over the buff. If you are trying to tank, you can't be doing this, especially as a warden when you already have to watch 10+ self buff durations.
3. Which brings me onto the next point - Building stacks is VERY cumbersome. You need to abandon all mastery use for 10-15 seconds, and then you are somewhat locked to using length 5 gambits (conviction/restoration/desolation) if you want to get to max stacks.
Other tanks have skills like to-arms, shield of the dunedain, juggernaught where they get all the buffs at the click of the button and no downsides. Why is it that wardens, if they want to provide utility have to make tough choices/sacrifices in other areas?

If you need to react to changes in situations, you are screwed. You either have to fire whatever gambit is half-built and react. Or finish what you were doing to get the buff and react late.

Proposed solutions: Enable triggering of stacks with mastery use - then we can continue to be dynamic, get the full stacks of the buff up faster and not have to sacrifice our ability to react to situations or be locked to using certain gambits.
That or remove the stacking component entirely and just make it a flat 20/25% reduction with a single click. As pointed out before, we already have a huge amount of self-buffs to maintain.

That being said, I love the utility it provides, it has already been useful in the new raid. It sure filled a much needed hole in the wardens toolkit.

4. Conviction group heals still seem to be somewhat underwhelming. I am healing for about 13k or something per tick, which is nothing when most of the DPS group have around 1 million morale now. Captains blue mark is doing 3% morale per hit, forever. When I tank alongside a cappy, he is doing something like 20k HPS on me, and I do 1/10th of that to him. The rest of the self-healing line is pretty nice, and puts me somewhere close to cappy self-healing, but still a little behind in that area if I am maintaining BPE buffs too and not just concentrating on heals.

[quiznoxious]

Other tanks have skills like to-arms, shield of the dunedain, juggernaught where they get all the buffs at the click of the button and no downsides. Why is it that wardens, if they want to provide utility have to make tough choices/sacrifices in other

...how is Juggernaut* a utility skill?

Also, Wardens aren't the only ones, look up Break Ranks when it comes to this utility "issue"

[Eadondryt]

...how is Juggernaut* a utility skill?

Also, Wardens aren't the only ones, look up Break Ranks when it comes to this utility "issue"

Feel free to make a thread about guardian issues then for the Devs to read. The title of this thread isn't Warden and Guardian feedback.

[gaara908776]

Hi Devs,

I submitted some feedback in the main sticky thread, but I think it got buried under all the comments on the reward track. So this is my feedback on the changes to warden in the last 2 bullroarers.

1. The patch notes in bullroarer say the For The Free Peoples Buff is -25% incoming damage at max stacks. It is actually -20%
2. The effect Determined has no Tier counter, so its impossible to see how many stack you have done without hovering over the buff. If you are trying to tank, you can't be doing this, especially as a warden when you already have to watch 10+ self buff durations.
3. Which brings me onto the next point - Building stacks is VERY cumbersome. You need to abandon all mastery use for 10-15 seconds, and then you are somewhat locked to using length 5 gambits (conviction/restoration/desolation) if you want to get to max stacks.
Other tanks have skills like to-arms, shield of the dunedain, juggernaught where they get all the buffs at the click of the button and no downsides. Why is it that wardens, if they want to provide utility have to make tough choices/sacrifices in other areas?

If you need to react to changes in situations, you are screwed. You either have to fire whatever gambit is half-built and react. Or finish what you were doing to get the buff and react late.

Proposed solutions: Enable triggering of stacks with mastery use - then we can continue to be dynamic, get the full stacks of the buff up faster and not have to sacrifice our ability to react to situations or be locked to using certain gambits.
That or remove the stacking component entirely and just make it a flat 20/25% reduction with a single click. As pointed out before, we already have a huge amount of self-buffs to maintain.

That being said, I love the utility it provides, it has already been useful in the new raid. It sure filled a much needed hole in the wardens toolkit.

4. Conviction group heals still seem to be somewhat underwhelming. I am healing for about 13k or something per tick, which is nothing when most of the DPS group have around 1 million morale now. Captains blue mark is doing 3% morale per hit, forever. When I tank alongside a cappy, he is doing something like 20k HPS on me, and I do 1/10th of that to him. The rest of the self-healing line is pretty nice, and puts me somewhere close to cappy self-healing, but still a little behind in that area if I am maintaining BPE buffs too and not just concentrating on heals.

I agree. For the free people should be either single click or use both masteries and builders to tier up. As is, it’s pretty clunky and screws over your rotation. It’s a good start and the first defensive cooldown we’ve had in years but it still won’t be enough to make Blue Warden a choice on par with Guard/Captain as we go into higher tiers of the raid.

Shield-Spear line Gambits feel like they are healing a good amount now but Conviction is still really low.

[Beltharas]

The other big change is an additional -2seconds to mastery CD on the leg. Beauty change, looking forward to that on live

[-Aran-]

Finally they did a good touch for the warden but still not enough as it deserves.

[gaara908776]

Finally they did a good touch for the warden but still not enough as it deserves.

I agree. These buffs are a good starting point but the For the Free People buff is still problematic. It takes way too long to build, and can’t be tiered up fully unless you’re standing still and spamming gambit builders. Unfortunately, in a raid that’s usually not ideal.

I’d say all of our heals except conviction are properly scaled with these increases. Ultimately, I think Blue Warden really could use better trait choices. Right now, most of our traits only offer raw stat increases(extremely small stat increases at that). It would be nice if some of the B/P/E stat traits were changed to partial B/P/E mitigation or chance increases.

The class could also really do with another single target forced taunt. Warning shot requires a good deal of finesse to guarantee that the taunt works. Defiant challenge is in line with other AoE taunts but our single target taunt is about as bad as they come.

I’m sure U32 won’t see everything fixed but it seems like a step in the right direction. IMO Warden still will be a pretty subpar choice for tanking raids but I’ll take what I can get after 4+ years of Blue Warden being completely unviable for higher tier content.

[strethis]

You hit it on the head with a lot of this.

+1 for "just make it a flat 20/25% reduction with a single click"

+1 for conviction healing needing a big bump

Make those two changes and people might actually not laugh at a warden tank. Still subpar, but at least not laughable.