Why are trained masteries "not happening"?

[Krazus]

As a 20 year old young adult, i'm really trying to stop myself from throwing a hissy fit but.
HOLY !!!! Just FIX the damn class!?! How about THAT! You got creep damage fixed in less than a week. Do you -REALLY- think that more Hots are gonna change the fact that we take 66% MORE DAMAGE THAN A GUARD on a hit per hit basis?

And then, when we ask for something completely not-game-breaking and actually pretty cool, a QUALITY OF LIFE improvement such as trained masteries you go ahead and say "Nope, because nope man. You'd be too strong"...

We. Suck.

A LOT.

Throw us a goddamn bone.

/hissy fit over.

[geoboy]

Has the warden poopstorm hit critical mass yet?

[tikt]

Wardens? Almost nobody plays them and we've gotten our Return On Investment (intentional there), so sod them.

Haha, you're the only person besides me I've seen mention the other common reading of that acronym.

[Chanah]

Has the warden poopstorm hit critical mass yet?

I don't think so. We need to wait for the arrival of a Turbine Defender in the thread.

But I do think it comes down to money, and WB's insatiable greed for it. The problems were known in beta. Not a lot of people play wardens. We could make a mint if we made creep skills pay to win.

And so it went.

I honestly don't think Orion is a bad guy, or the one to blame for this, and if WB isn't a decent employer I hope he finds a good job elsewhere. I do think horrible things happen to games when game shops dictate game development. And I think that's what's happening to us. It just isn't cost-effective to really fix us. Well, that and I'm not sure Turbine knew what it was doing when it created wardens in the first place. That doesn't help, either.

[Aloro]

To be very candid... I'm distressed and unhappy with the state of my Warden.

I'm generally a Turbine defender, in that I enjoy the game and believe that the devs are doing their best to make a good game. I don't argue that it's perfect, but generally I have good things to say about LotRO.

Since RoI though, my favorite class has gone BADLY downhill. Well, that's not really true. I should say, rather, that the class that used to be my favorite has gone badly downhill, and isn't my favorite anymore.

My key complaint is mitigations, and my main concern in these discussions is that I don't see any robust upcoming solution to my key complaint. Simply put, my Warden takes FAR more damage from foes at level than he did before. This results in increased difficulty across the board. It's my belief that the issue comes from the introduction of finesse, which reduces Wardens' ability to mitigate damage more than it does any other class' ability to mitigate damage. Regardless of the reason though, the effect is clear - my Warden used to be a tank, and now he feels like a squishy with a fake shield.

Now, to be fair, the Warden was in a great state re: soloing and small fellowship content before RoI, and so by extension, when the class' effectiveness in those types of content dropped, it remained... passable. I can still solo stuff, and I can still get by in small fellowship content. I feel like I have one arm tied behind my back, but I can get by.

The problem though, for me, lies in content designed for larger groups. If my ability to mitigate incoming damage remains as pathetic as it is now, then scaling up my HoTs won't solve the problem. Rather, there are two possible outcomes:

1) HoTs don't scale enough to offset incoming damage in raids, or
2) HoTs do scale enough to offset incoming damage in raids, in which case they'll be vastly overscaled for smaller group content.

When the brunt of the focus is on fixing our HoTs... I'm concerned. Don't get me wrong; our HoTs need to scale up a lot. But fixing this problem will still leave me as a second-rate raid tank.

Wardens don't do anything but tank. Now though, it seems that Wardens are less qualified to be tanks than the #1 single-target AND AoE damage dealer. It's not like I have class envy; I play a Champ too. The problem though is that right now, the Champ is effective at a job that the Warden was designed for, while the Warden is effective at very little.

So, given the above, I admit to some consternation when I read that the Warden class isn't getting any significant overhaul anytime soon. I feel strongly that the class was broken with RoI, and I'm not seeing a good indication that the class will be fixed any time soon. Oh, I do look forward to Update 5, don't get me wrong... but I don't have reason to believe that the proposed changes will address the deep concerns that make my Warden a burden to groups.

Fixing our HoTs, or our incoming healing, or our outgoing healing, are all nice things. But none of them address the underlying problem - we lack mitigations.

Partial mitigations are good, sure. But that's a tiny band-aid over a gaping wound.

[Regero]

Has the warden poopstorm hit critical mass yet?

Nope, but it seems to be getting close to it. At this point we aren't really doing anything productive, just being sad and complaining. When the sad turns to rage and threads start getting moderated hardcore, than we'll know we are at critical mass.

[Aloro]

Nope, but it seems to be getting close to it. At this point we aren't really doing anything productive, just being sad and complaining. When the sad turns to rage and threads start getting moderated hardcore, than we'll know we are at critical mass.

Occupy Isengard!

I agree; right now this is sadness combined with a slow migration away from the class. If things don't show meaningful improvement with U5, the sadness might shift to anger and frustration, resulting in many Wardens shelving their chars. We'll see.

[Chanah]

Wardens make good high-level crafting alts. Other than that, anybody got anything?

[Cebra]

Pinnata, not sure how you spell, but I can show you how it looks when you hit it...

[Chanah]

Se dice 'piñata'.

Owing to circumstances beyond my control (largely the heinous price and taxes related to all things technological in my country) I am using a Pentium 4 with 1 gig of RAM.

I just found out that I am to be the recipient of a quad core with 6 gigs of RAM next week.

A whole new world of games is about to open up...and I'm planning to take full advantage.