Wardens in Big Battles

[Datheor]

Has anyone been very successful with a Warden in the Big Battles? I played around a bit last night (going straight yellow line while staying in Assailment stance, Old fashion tanking (I know, but it had to be tried)) But nothing seemed to help. The mobs are always on the move, so gambits are difficult in melee, and javelin gambits seem awkward. This is on the first 3 HD battles. Any advice? I am an 85 Warden, if that makes much of a difference.

[Wymiatacz]

Yeah spec the right tree's, Get to 95 and feel the difference. I arleady did some and it feels great, you just need to get use to the changes.

[Datheor]

Yeah spec the right tree's, Get to 95 and feel the difference. I arleady did some and it feels great, you just need to get use to the changes.

Could you elaborate a bit? For instance, what are the "right tree's" in your opinion? Also, and let me make sure I understand, you have already reached 95 AND tried the battles?

[Darlgon]

Has anyone been very successful with a Warden in the Big Battles? I played around a bit last night (going straight yellow line while staying in Assailment stance, Old fashion tanking (I know, but it had to be tried)) But nothing seemed to help. The mobs are always on the move, so gambits are difficult in melee, and javelin gambits seem awkward. This is on the first 3 HD battles. Any advice? I am an 85 Warden, if that makes much of a difference.

Ok. From what I have seen and from the people who played it in Beta..

ALL CLASSES can check your class ID at the door. You go in there and either build and tweak stuff (Engineer), order Rohirrim around (Officer) or go cut ropes and stuff off the wall (Vangaurd). From what I saw last night, you maybe can do all 3 and swap roles.

The player is on the bottom of the mobs aggro priority list; 1.) Their objective which is your quest 2.)The Rohirrim who are gaurding said objective 3.) you, if you get in the way. The more you do that, the more reward you get. The more YOU try to fight the mobs, the less of the other stuff you do and the less rewards you get.

[Vilda]

It is horrible, HORRIBLE!!! you cant tank - mobs just ignore you. Doing damage is almost not possible - i hit mob with gambit builder and i leave combat, i jump in and out of combat every second. It makes me mad.

I tell you we will with love remember skirmish farming.

- not happy warden

[Datheor]

Interesting. Thank you Darlgon and Vilda. I guess I will play around with the sub skills and go from there. Too bad. I was looking forward to some epic tank battles.

[gelleg]

I messed around with EB's in the beta exclusively on a warden. I used a determination build running assailment stance and mostly just chucked javelins and contributed what dps I could. I used tanking in the secondaries though a lot and it really helps. When I get to 95 I am going to try using battle prep to setup gambits with the constant in and out of combat to see if it makes it possible to really be a factor. I suspect though there will be some threat bugs fixed which will hopefully allow to be the tanks we are in EB's for now we do what we can. I think I spent one duo hornburg hurling rocks at the approaching enemies for example.

[Wymiatacz]

Yeah, I reached 95 few hours after servers were up. I arleady got 5 pieces of jewellery, cloak and 2 pieces of new armor from random drops in instances. Got my jewellery from big battles, cloak from skraid and armor from sambrog, all of them have 217 vit and 188 agil and some other bonuses. In total now im about 3000 vitality and 2850 agil, Evade is capped at 25% and parry 18%. Most of the time im evading the attacks, and every time i evade or parry im healed for about 140 morale, which is nice. Had a fight in ettens lately, i was fighting reaver and warg and didnt even drop below 15k morale very nice dps as well, ive got a hybrid build for ettens with blue and yellow trees works very well.

Big battles are so much easier to do in fellowship and 3 man, that's how I got mine jewellery.

What I do and my fellows is basically focusing on main objective, then if you get a side mission, everyone does side and then go back to main objective and repeat. This way you get a lot more points and even platinum sometimes.

We tried the Deeping Wall raid recently as well, Its hard but we almost done it. for completing side objectives you get 900 marks and about 230 medallions lol.

[Darlgon]

Yeah, I reached 95 few hours after servers were up.

Wow.. what are you going to do for the year plus until the next expansion?

[furtim]

This is one place where you and I actually agree, Darlgon. I don't really understand that kind of power-level mentality, either. It's probably going to take me two weeks or so to reach level 95 on my Captain, if last year's expansion is any indication.

Anyway, I feel like there's a piece of info about mob AI in the Epic Battles that's missing from this discussion. This info comes from beta, and it's admittedly kind of hard to notice if you haven't been outright told to look for it.

You get periodic mob spawns which consist of W Commanders, X Sappers, Y Recruits (Warriors and Archers), and Z Soldiers (Berserkers). Out of those, the Commanders and Sappers spawn with a designated target. Uruk Commanders will attack Rohirrim Commanders. Sappers will attack banners and supply crates. They will always go for those targets, ignoring aggro tables (definitely) and forced attacks (less sure) completely. Recruit and Soldier enemies spawn without a designated target, and they basically pick a Rohirrim NPC at random.

However, there are a couple of wrinkles to the Recruit and Soldier enemies. Unlike Commanders and Sappers, they do obey aggro tables and do respond to force taunts. Now, while they do obey threat, they start with a rather high initial threat rating aimed at whatever target they randomly picked. Pulling them off their target normally is not impossible, but they'll usually die before you manage it. But there's another piece to the puzzle here. If a player with a tank spec -- e.g., Determination -- equipped is nearby, Recruits and Soldiers have a chance (IIRC, 20-25%) to target that player instead of a Rohirrim NPC.

So, what does that mean? Well, first of all, traditional tanking is definitely downplayed. You will never be able to pull aggro on all the enemies in an Epic Battle, and that's by design. Maybe there will be one later where we get to play as the Stamford Bridge Viking and go mano-a-legio, but that's not the case in any of the existing battles.

That said, there is a role for tanks to play. Protecting Rohirrim NPCs is vital to success, and keeping 20% of an enemy wave from going after those NPCs is a deceptively huge contribution to the battle's outcome. Furthermore, the Deeping Wall raid (not solo) space actually does add in some raid-style minibosses who do need a traditional tank approach. They spawn with certain side objectives and can wreak a fair bit of havoc on NPCs if not controlled. Off the top of my head: There are a pair of trolls who appear in the culvert and have a proximity buff mechanic (think Forgotten Treasury), which obviously benefits from having two tanks to keep them separate. There's also a boss Uruk who will spawn and start attacking the named NPC in a section of the wall; nothing too special about him that I recall, but it's still an example of a more familiar raid mechanic within the Epic Battle space.

[Deviled_Egg]

There's a known issue with Defiant Challenge not properly pinging targets in Big Battles. A fix is going in for 12.1.

[gelleg]

Dc is only working on your current target as far as the force taunt goes at least in my experience while leveling. I have tried several times to use DC in instance quests and it only gives me agro on my target not the whole group. I am not sure if that is intentional but the description seems to imply it works on groups not just your current target.

[thunderchickn]

Gambits are a mess in Big Battles. I don't know why we are pulled out of combat every two seconds even if we're actively trying to attack stuff. I guess I can partly understand that it's a measure to make sure we're not stuck in combat? IMO it does way more harm than good. With the new changes to out of combat holding of Gambits it is pretty awful to actually play with.

I believe I see what is going on with the two biggest problems I've noticed (outside of the mechanic that pulls us out of combat... seriously someone fix that please). These are likely issues in the rest of the game as well but nearly never come into play because you don't keep getting sucked out of combat. 1) If a Gambit builder KOs your target, it will NOT be added to your Gambit queue. If I have a Spear symbol loaded up and I try to add a Shield, if that Shield KOs my target (or it is KO'd in that time I'm using it I guess) I do not get Spear-Shield I'm still stuck with just Spear. This makes it very difficult to just build a Gambit, let alone proceed with combat. 2) I mentioned this before, but if you KO a target with a Gambit (or it dies while you use the Gambit) it will stay queued up. If I kill an enemy with Warden's Triumph, Warden's Triumph remains my active Gambit. Sounds cool, but it's frustrating as heck because you can't really predict it and it really ruins chains of Gambits you try to make.

This doesn't hit me as hard as others I can imagine who want to be Vanguards, as I want to try the Engineer spec first anyway. Still, the times that I have nothing better to do but attack enemies I'm relegated to sitting in Assailment stance, spamming the Spear builder over and over. Anything else I do results in completely screwed up Gambits.

[Cunaith]

I did my first big battles today and the issue with constantly coming out of combat was a significant issue. It was extremely frustrating to be uildong a gambit and then have it get nullified by going out of combat. If you haven't rried it yet, you'll see. When I was only doing ladders/grappling hooks or building amd shooting siege machines it didn't matter, but when engaging enemies, it is a problem. If there is a solution or suggestion, I am happy to hear it, as long as it isn't tab to the next enemy well before you current target is close to death, because that doesn't really cut it. I tried this, and it often resulted in tabbing to another target that was about to die or died while building a gambit. Meh....

[Sanctuary_1]

Definitely something needs be done here. Lots of bugs atm. Big Battles included.

Most gambit builder buffs are not long enough to reap its advantage in the first place.
Recovery and quick recovery don't work 100% of the time. (clearing the gambit means using it or letting it expire)
Assailment still feels sluggish and the dps underwhelming. (bump up the adroit maneuver duration or bring back the old version, consider adding more beneficial buffs in Assailment - I can build twice as many buffs in Recklessness vs Assailment in the same amount of time)
Spear gambits need a BIG boost in base damage.
It would be nice to see Recklessness trait benefits usable at range. (spear sweep aoe for example)

[Darlgon]

Gambits are a mess in Big Battles. I don't know why we are pulled out of combat every two seconds even if we're actively trying to attack stuff. I guess I can partly understand that it's a measure to make sure we're not stuck in combat? IMO it does way more harm than good. With the new changes to out of combat holding of Gambits it is pretty awful to actually play with.

I believe I see what is going on with the two biggest problems I've noticed (outside of the mechanic that pulls us out of combat... seriously someone fix that please). These are likely issues in the rest of the game as well but nearly never come into play because you don't keep getting sucked out of combat. 1) If a Gambit builder KOs your target, it will NOT be added to your Gambit queue. If I have a Spear symbol loaded up and I try to add a Shield, if that Shield KOs my target (or it is KO'd in that time I'm using it I guess) I do not get Spear-Shield I'm still stuck with just Spear. This makes it very difficult to just build a Gambit, let alone proceed with combat. 2) I mentioned this before, but if you KO a target with a Gambit (or it dies while you use the Gambit) it will stay queued up. If I kill an enemy with Warden's Triumph, Warden's Triumph remains my active Gambit. Sounds cool, but it's frustrating as heck because you can't really predict it and it really ruins chains of Gambits you try to make.

This doesn't hit me as hard as others I can imagine who want to be Vanguards, as I want to try the Engineer spec first anyway. Still, the times that I have nothing better to do but attack enemies I'm relegated to sitting in Assailment stance, spamming the Spear builder over and over. Anything else I do results in completely screwed up Gambits.

Other classes need the time to eat food, go to the potty, take a nap instead of trying to tank like you guys keep trying to do. No need to even get into combat.

Just go boss the NPCS around instead. Its how a level 10 can do the work of a level 95.

[thunderchickn]

Other classes need the time to eat food, go to the potty, take a nap instead of trying to tank like you guys keep trying to do. No need to even get into combat.

Just go boss the NPCS around instead. Its how a level 10 can do the work of a level 95.

Who said I was trying to tank? Try doing the second BB without getting into combat. Good luck.