Cordoftherings - Warden Update - Open letter to the developers

[Eadondryt]

Hi all,

I saw on cordoftherings that the devs are actively looking at wardens, and in particular warden tanking. They said in the stream that the devs were monitoring the forums for feedback as well as working with players on Palantir.

Bit of background about me: Ive been playing warden tank exclusively since 2010, I had a break after erebor for a while and came back half way through the MM update, to find wardens we no longer considered tanks.
I spent a lot of time building a workable tank spec, and was able to tank some raids, so I have a good idea about what the strengths and weaknesses are and how it can be improved - so Devs if you are listening, this one is for you.

1. Blue Traits: Many of these traits are almost entirely redundant or not scaled to be effective - we could cut out a bunch of these and replace them with something useful
1.1 Traits Warcry - Without this traited at all, I reach 1.4 million evade rating at level 140. 5 points would give just 20k rating or so, this is 100% useless at level cap.
1.2 Traits Impressive Flourish - This grants 5k mits and some crit defence - entirely useless
1.3 Traits Crit Defence - An extra 7% Crit defence from this trait line, is really not needed due to the obscene amount of crit defence we get from gambits, also that bosses generally don't crit. Completely skippable in practics
1.4 Traits For the free peoples - This is almost entirely useless in practice, it takes ages to ramp up to 20 stacks to get the full benefit, so you have to know in advance when to use it. Even when it is max stacked the effect is somewhat underwhelming. Very niche use for a capstone ability.

2. What are the main issues facing a warden tank in practice
2.1 We are a medium armour tank, adept at dodging ducking dipping and diving. But can we sprint? Nope, we are the slowest tank in the game with no in combat movement buff - so kiting is out unless you have a Beorning or a Cappy in your group. At this point you are building your group around the warden tank, when you could just take another tank.
2.2 We offer almost 0 group support. Our damage reduction skills, are warning shot and supression if traited. I tested this out in the new 6 man, and even with 14% buffs on it barely made a dent to the damage taken (it is additive and not multiplicative like Disable and LM debuffs). Conviction is healing about 13k per tick, which is a drop in the ocean of DPS toons that now have 1 million morale
2.3 We have really poor mitigations compared to the other tanks. We can enter the fight on 58% mits, then use impressive flourish and maddening to take it to 60%. We have Defiant Challenge, but this is often needed to be saved for add arrivals or to lock down aggro, so its an unreliable +5%. This means we take much more damage than other tanks, especially at the start of the fight, or if we have just been revived. A warden with no self-buffs on will melt. In the past we could counter this by having self-heals strong enough to bridge that gap, OK we take more damage but we also heal much more than any other tanks putting the pressure off the healers. This is no longer the case, if you read the other posts in this forums, the self-healing of a warden is in the 25-30k HPS range, while a cappy can smash out 60-75k in self heals.
2.4 Animation length - When doing battle prep to get all the self-buffs running before the fight (Conviction/Dance of War/Shield Mastery/Shield Tactics/War Cry/Brink of Victory/Surety of Death) The animation length for executing these means that the first buffs are almost falling off already by the time you are done. Also in the middle of the fight when you want to refresh your physical mits via dance of war, if you take a big hit while that is happening, well there is nothing you can do. Just have to wait it out and pray.
2.5 We do not have any way to buff our parry ratings, other than wall of steel. We get four evade and block buffs, but just one parry.



Those are my main points, there are probably subtle ones, but these are the most glaring issues. Now for the tricky part, how do you resolve these while keeping the class balanced for both PvE and PvMP?

Here are my suggestions, using the potentially freed up trait slots:

1. Resolve the parry issue by replacing the Evade buff from war cry to a 10/20/30/40/50% of the evade buffs from the war cry line to parry. Its percentage based so will scale, and adding a few more % to parry will help with the mitigations without being too OP.
2. Resolve the lack of group support with a couple of traits: Make warning shot multiplicative like burg/LM, and then give it 5 trait points to replace impressive flourish. Giving 5% per level of outgoing damage. This will also help with the wardens mitigations issues, especially for the unavoidable tactical damage that was prevalent in Remmo/AD. Replace for the free peoples rating with % mitigations. Which will allow people to go over the cap (otherwise that cap stone is wasted on those people and yourself). Make it also an instant skill, so you can drop it in an emergency, or actually respond to something happening - instead of having to think 20-30 seconds in advance if people MIGHT need it.

Here are some other suggestions on how to improve the overall balance, and future scalability in regards to healing

1. I removed my LIs to see what the base healing would be on restoration, arguably our most powerful heal from the Shield-Spear line. It was 1319 morale, on the tooltip WITH the 15% increase traited. So even with the +50% healing from the Lis the base number is so low, it just wont scale properly when you are running about with 1.5-1.7 million morale. This can be resolved by increasing the base healing significantly, or perhaps a more future proofed option would be to change it to % based, which will always scale with morale pools.

An alternative approach would be to make the morale taps more meaningful. Precise Strike will heal you for around 40k on a tier 1 gambit (which is more than the T2 and T4 healing line gambits combined), but then Fierce Resolve and Exultation of battle heal about 12-16k per mob. So you need at least 4 mobs on you, to be as effective as a single 2 builder gambit. Resolution is the exception, this is a great one time heal when you have many mobs on you and is really powerful - but using two masteries to get it off fast, in an emergency, usually leaves you vulnerable 5 seconds later because there is no over time component.

Buffing the strength of the heals on Fierce Resolve/EoB would allow the warden to do a large pull, get some strong heals up from the go while he is applying the rest of his self buffs and would really help the sustainability in longer fights.

2. Remove the mits tied to defiant challenge and move them to resounding challenge. Let the forced taunt, be a forced taunt, and let the gambit buff mits - you can pull with RC have your mits, then use the forced taunt to lock the aggro in.
3. To enhance group utility, allow never surrender to be applied to the whole fellowship - the first person to use it consumes the ability. So you can save a party member from potential death, but at the expense of losing your own protection. Perhaps reduce the cooldown from 5 minutes in this respect, to perhaps 3 mins.
4. Change the class essence Reckless Defender. It only has a 10% chance of working, IF you are the one to strike the killing blow. As a tank that is almost never, and even if you are soloing you kill 10-20 mobs and maybe it will proc once. It would be cool if it worked on any defeat event, but had an internal cooldown like the stalwart defender essence. Then you could get some burst healing that way if there are adds present - and is also an alternative take on tanking to heal by burning things quicker.

Those are my thoughts, I am sure the community will have some other comments.

[Shariva]

I rolled a warden about half a year after it was available. Up to that point, I was playing a hobbit guardian. I found warden tanking more interesting and, to be quite fair, a lot mor fun then guardian. The warden became my main character and I loved the avoidance based, AoE tanking of it. I was able to tank most raids and solo small fellowship content with relative ease. Landscape mobs were fun as I would pull three orc camps and still come out very much alive.

However, Turbine, the developer at that time, had other idea's. It started with the addition of ranged and melee DPS specs. No issue, I could still tank and be of worth to my group. Later, changes were made to our self-heals. EoB changed and only worked up to 10 mobs (before there was actually no limit), certain attacks became unavoidable and we got our threat transfers removed. Especially the latter presented a challenge; conviction (as an example) did not transfer threat to the warden anymore. But some gambits would generate more threat; EoB was our main threat generator at the time. But when things, in my opinion, realy started to go south, was when the decision was made to make DPS the main threat generator.

DPS being the primary source of generation meant that every DPS class would generate more threat then the warden tank. Hunters and champions at that time would be aggro magnets and that was exactly what happened. Luckily, that lasten for about two days until most tanking classes got their threat generators back. Save one class: warden. This happened about five to six years ago. And that was time I decided to not load the game anymore. This was such a slap in the face and the utter destruction of a once great class, I didn't want much to do with it anymore.

I came back halfway through this year and have been playing a high-elf warden on Treebeard. I still like the class, but it is even more worthless then it was when I left. On Treebeard, there is the difficulty "slider." It makes the landscape mobs more difficult and it throws in a fire-bombe every now and then (more now than then). This is an unavoidable attack that can be avoided but with high grass is difficult to spot. That means that you either need to move constantly or take is as it is. As an avoidance based tank, taking an unavoidable attack means you take it all.

I have read the above post and I kind of get the feeling that it is written from a level 140 point of view. I have noticed similar posts and all mention that in lower levels, the warden should be fine. As I am playing on Treebeard, in an environment where you can set the difficulty to resemble what it was in the old SoA days, I can say you will have a tough time. And this fire-bomb is adding a rediculous amount to it. If I stay on the normal level that it is now, it's a walk in the park. However, I think that Treebeard perfectly shows what is wrong with the warden.
As the first post mentions, the self-healing is far from sufficient. I have a few selfheals available, yet they are not enough to offset the unavoidable attacks. I do not yet have the possibility to obtain an LI just yet, so no way to enhance them other then traits. And with those, I just can't cut it. However, it does proove that the base self-heal is far sub-par. Same goes for mitigation. The fire-bomb on Treebeard does around 30% of your healthpool in damage. Which means in three hits you wake up in the rez circle. I rolled a lore-master and have a strong conviction that it has far better mitigations then my warden tank.
I managed tp get my high-elf warden to level 50 (cap on Treebeard) and through volume 1. I also ran with a group in Urugarth, and this where I noticed that threat generation was severely lacking as well. I wanted to build and fire off conviction, but then I realized it doesn't transfer threat anymore. It also wouldn't have made any difference, as I could barely get gambit off anyway; DPS was insane and I might as well have not been there. I kind of miss the threat generation thing in the first post.

I agree with the OP that base self-heals should be looked at and buffed to the point where they're viable. Warden is an avoidance based tank and the self-heals are an offset for unavoidable attacks. And give the threat transfers back. We have no gambits that generate enough threat. With it, I have seen more then my fair share of gambit builders not executing. This hampers threat generation even further and, to be fair, adds to insult. These theat transfers at least let us catch up. As last I completely agree with the OP regarding mitigations. As mentioned, it feels as if my lore-master has better mitigations then my warden tank.

[Eadondryt]

I rolled a warden about half a year after it was available. Up to that point, I was playing a hobbit guardian. I found warden tanking more interesting and, to be quite fair, a lot mor fun then guardian. The warden became my main character and I loved the avoidance based, AoE tanking of it. I was able to tank most raids and solo small fellowship content with relative ease. Landscape mobs were fun as I would pull three orc camps and still come out very much alive.

However, Turbine, the developer at that time, had other idea's. It started with the addition of ranged and melee DPS specs. No issue, I could still tank and be of worth to my group. Later, changes were made to our self-heals. EoB changed and only worked up to 10 mobs (before there was actually no limit), certain attacks became unavoidable and we got our threat transfers removed. Especially the latter presented a challenge; conviction (as an example) did not transfer threat to the warden anymore. But some gambits would generate more threat; EoB was our main threat generator at the time. But when things, in my opinion, realy started to go south, was when the decision was made to make DPS the main threat generator.

DPS being the primary source of generation meant that every DPS class would generate more threat then the warden tank. Hunters and champions at that time would be aggro magnets and that was exactly what happened. Luckily, that lasten for about two days until most tanking classes got their threat generators back. Save one class: warden. This happened about five to six years ago. And that was time I decided to not load the game anymore. This was such a slap in the face and the utter destruction of a once great class, I didn't want much to do with it anymore.

I came back halfway through this year and have been playing a high-elf warden on Treebeard. I still like the class, but it is even more worthless then it was when I left. On Treebeard, there is the difficulty "slider." It makes the landscape mobs more difficult and it throws in a fire-bombe every now and then (more now than then). This is an unavoidable attack that can be avoided but with high grass is difficult to spot. That means that you either need to move constantly or take is as it is. As an avoidance based tank, taking an unavoidable attack means you take it all.

I have read the above post and I kind of get the feeling that it is written from a level 140 point of view. I have noticed similar posts and all mention that in lower levels, the warden should be fine. As I am playing on Treebeard, in an environment where you can set the difficulty to resemble what it was in the old SoA days, I can say you will have a tough time. And this fire-bomb is adding a rediculous amount to it. If I stay on the normal level that it is now, it's a walk in the park. However, I think that Treebeard perfectly shows what is wrong with the warden.
As the first post mentions, the self-healing is far from sufficient. I have a few selfheals available, yet they are not enough to offset the unavoidable attacks. I do not yet have the possibility to obtain an LI just yet, so no way to enhance them other then traits. And with those, I just can't cut it. However, it does proove that the base self-heal is far sub-par. Same goes for mitigation. The fire-bomb on Treebeard does around 30% of your healthpool in damage. Which means in three hits you wake up in the rez circle. I rolled a lore-master and have a strong conviction that it has far better mitigations then my warden tank.
I managed tp get my high-elf warden to level 50 (cap on Treebeard) and through volume 1. I also ran with a group in Urugarth, and this where I noticed that threat generation was severely lacking as well. I wanted to build and fire off conviction, but then I realized it doesn't transfer threat anymore. It also wouldn't have made any difference, as I could barely get gambit off anyway; DPS was insane and I might as well have not been there. I kind of miss the threat generation thing in the first post.

I agree with the OP that base self-heals should be looked at and buffed to the point where they're viable. Warden is an avoidance based tank and the self-heals are an offset for unavoidable attacks. And give the threat transfers back. We have no gambits that generate enough threat. With it, I have seen more then my fair share of gambit builders not executing. This hampers threat generation even further and, to be fair, adds to insult. These theat transfers at least let us catch up. As last I completely agree with the OP regarding mitigations. As mentioned, it feels as if my lore-master has better mitigations then my warden tank.

If you are struggling with warden tanking in the current game, check out my warden tanking 101 YouTube playlist.
It will get you up to speed on how to use a warden now.

Your threat generators are your war-cry line, specifically surety of death. You need to trait for light type damage in red, and blue.
Then wardens are the strongest threat generators without using force taunts.

Also regarding threat transfers, this is now how Defiant Challenge (and forced taunts) in general work. It takes everyone’s threat and Copy’s it to yours. Do that one time and you won’t lose aggro for a good minute. As long as they have generated threat first.

You also have warning shot as a single target “threat copy” with a javelin.

You can find my yt channel under my name

[Shariva]

Your threat generators are your war-cry line, specifically surety of death. You need to trait for light type damage in red, and blue.
Then wardens are the strongest threat generators without using force taunts.

This is exactly what I was mentioning; generating threat by doing damage. The war-cry line is light damage and has a damage over time component. For a tank to be generating threat by doing damage, is always falling behind to the DPS classes. This never was corrected for warden tank like it was for guardian tank.

Also regarding threat transfers, this is now how Defiant Challenge (and forced taunts) in general work. It takes everyone’s threat and Copy’s it to yours. Do that one time and you won’t lose aggro for a good minute. As long as they have generated threat first. You also have warning shot as a single target “threat copy” with a javelin.

Call me an old-fashioned tank, but if you need forced taunts to be tanking ok-ish, there is something very, very wrong. Forced taunts are "oh ####" skills (yes it is a four letter word, but it starts with a 'c'). They should be available in an emergency, not being worked into any rotation in any form. With it, they copy threat, they do not transfer it from the rest of the group onto the warden. Since my threat transfers are gone and I have no threat generators to speak of, I will always fall behind. They entire point of the threat generators from the other tanking classes is to stay ahead of your DPS and healer.

I will check out your channel and I sincerely thank you for your advice, but you also just prooved the entire point of warden being a poor tank and deservant of developer love after all these years. I shouldn't need to work my forced taunts into any form of a rotation. I should be looking at my most threat generating gambits and execute those to keep the mobs on me. I should also worry about building some defenses and maybe some self-healing (which also should generate threat). And if I loose aggro to my healer, then, and only then, I should use a forced taunt. Otherwise, I need to be able to rely on my threat generating skill/gambits that are not forced taunts; like with every other tanking class in every other game.

[Eadondryt]

This is exactly what I was mentioning; generating threat by doing damage. The war-cry line is light damage and has a damage over time component. For a tank to be generating threat by doing damage, is always falling behind to the DPS classes. This never was corrected for warden tank like it was for guardian tank.



Call me an old-fashioned tank, but if you need forced taunts to be tanking ok-ish, there is something very, very wrong. Forced taunts are "oh ####" skills (yes it is a four letter word, but it starts with a 'c'). They should be available in an emergency, not being worked into any rotation in any form. With it, they copy threat, they do not transfer it from the rest of the group onto the warden. Since my threat transfers are gone and I have no threat generators to speak of, I will always fall behind. They entire point of the threat generators from the other tanking classes is to stay ahead of your DPS and healer.

I will check out your channel and I sincerely thank you for your advice, but you also just prooved the entire point of warden being a poor tank and deservant of developer love after all these years. I shouldn't need to work my forced taunts into any form of a rotation. I should be looking at my most threat generating gambits and execute those to keep the mobs on me. I should also worry about building some defenses and maybe some self-healing (which also should generate threat). And if I loose aggro to my healer, then, and only then, I should use a forced taunt. Otherwise, I need to be able to rely on my threat generating skill/gambits that are not forced taunts; like with every other tanking class in every other game.

I see you are a tanking purist much like myself! I was also upset about it at first, but unfortunately that is just the direction the game has gone, and after some initial grumbling, I think it is for the better.

Previously you had to warn your group, hey I am a warden I need some time to build threats, so the DPS had to either wait, or hold back. Then you give them the signal to go and they go. But in the meantime everyone else is twiddling their thumbs, or worse not waiting, pulling and wiping the group.

Now the DPS can go 100% from the get go, you throw your AoE forced taunt to gather everything, then you can play it like “old school” and use your war cry line to hold it. But this is how it is for every tank now. Yellow wardens used to have threat reduction for their group, that’s gone as well.

So my advice is either accept that’s the way it is now, because it’s not going back, or I’m sorry to say the alternative is misters or giving up.
Take it from me, acceptance is the best option, and it feels a lot like “old times” with managing your self buffs and aggro, and what not. You just have to give it a chance.

[Kander]

I see you are a tanking purist much like myself! I was also upset about it at first, but unfortunately that is just the direction the game has gone, and after some initial grumbling, I think it is for the better.

Previously you had to warn your group, hey I am a warden I need some time to build threats, so the DPS had to either wait, or hold back. Then you give them the signal to go and they go. But in the meantime everyone else is twiddling their thumbs, or worse not waiting, pulling and wiping the group.

Now the DPS can go 100% from the get go, you throw your AoE forced taunt to gather everything, then you can play it like “old school” and use your war cry line to hold it. But this is how it is for every tank now. Yellow wardens used to have threat reduction for their group, that’s gone as well.

So my advice is either accept that’s the way it is now, because it’s not going back, or I’m sorry to say the alternative is misters or giving up.
Take it from me, acceptance is the best option, and it feels a lot like “old times” with managing your self buffs and aggro, and what not. You just have to give it a chance.

It was a better and more interesting system for aggro management but it's totally pointless now, because a single frontal hit from boss means instant death for the whole raid in pretty much every raid, back in the time group could just pull aggro until you build enough, and good tanks, particularly wardens were great by spamming conviction and aggresion gambit (3-2-1-3) to keep aggro in dps races by stealing all aggro from the group, after 2x EoB to generate enough aggro for the whole start. That was clearly a better and more in depth system for aggro generation. Nowadays it's just use forced taunt at start of fight, 2nd forced taunt few secs in, and 3rd forced taunt few seconds after, meaning you get perma-aggro if you taunt every 1 minute or so. It's a way worse system today, as you can only lose aggro at the start of the fight, but it's needed as losing aggro for 5s means wipe in most raid environments, even in 6 man, it didn't use to, except some specific scenarios.

About your analysis I think it's on point, except a couple of details that I want to point out:

1.4 Traits For the free peoples - This is almost entirely useless in practice, it takes ages to ramp up to 20 stacks to get the full benefit, so you have to know in advance when to use it. Even when it is max stacked the effect is somewhat underwhelming. Very niche use for a capstone ability.

No, this is not niche use, it's totally useless. There was a bug for a long time in this skill (since it was created until 6 man instances in Minas Morgul were released and it was fixed), that basically allowed you to have its effect permanent on max stack on a fight. Triggering it was easy and doable in nearly 1 minute in any scenario and lasted forever, even after you die, until you log out. Well, even for hard fights in the end, you didn't want to waste 1 minute in doing just because it was pointless. Imagine any single buffing skill in the game with a short duration, and you could keep up 100% of the time in an uninteded way, and still decided not to use it, not because of morals, but because how useless it was. Just think if captains could do that with to arms, or rks with fates entwined, or any other temporary buff in any other class... And now, it was a capstone, a fricking capstone that not even exploiting it to be 7x better (7x duration) you would trait.

2. Remove the mits tied to defiant challenge and move them to resounding challenge. Let the forced taunt, be a forced taunt, and let the gambit buff mits - you can pull with RC have your mits, then use the forced taunt to lock the aggro in.

I would move them to shield tactics and shield mastery or conviction and dance of war, basically something you can use out of battle and that doesn't need to hit a target to apply.

3. To enhance group utility, allow never surrender to be applied to the whole fellowship - the first person to use it consumes the ability. So you can save a party member from potential death, but at the expense of losing your own protection. Perhaps reduce the cooldown from 5 minutes in this respect, to perhaps 3 mins.

it's not a terrible idea but it's wrong for current warden and game state. Doing it you would remove or nerf a self protection of warden in exchange of better group survival, but warden itself at the moment is the problem, it's simply too weak as a tank and struggles to survive hard fights, I wouldn't do this, I would in fact give NS a significant buff or fix to make it more viable as a self-sustaining skill on warden, like turning it into a Last stand. Also with your For the Free People's suggestion to give % mits to everyone for a short time, group support would be already improved. Edit: And also counting with the improvement of healing from conviction to a significant amount, comparable at least to captain aoe rallying cry heals while tanking.

I would like to add that maybe as a quality of life improvement, you could give battle preparation a buff, which is out of combat only and basically gives you all significant buffs instantly (so you don't spend tedious 20s casting and buffing them out of combat just delaying your group). That would include, shield mastery, shield tactics, conviction, dance of war buffs all at once. It's not gonna change survivability or anything, just save some silly time spamming those 4 gambits out of combat before starting the fight.

[hfe]

We need stout axe wardens :P

[Gladdis]

I think the first post covers the vast majority of it.

We don't really excel at anything therefore our place in raids and even some 6mans are tenuous at best.

Simply put we're expendable due to our mediocrity.

[Fresuvi]

Have been playing Warden since Christmas 2008 and I can confirm that the entire class needs serious work(not just Blue line, but especially blue line). Warden has always been less durable than Guard but always offered higher HPS and far superior B/P/E. Today, that isn't really the case as B/P/E is pretty worthless in most boss fights and our HPS is extraordinarily low unless we spam Offensive Strike.

In order to be a truly viable choice for Tanking, Warden needs a few major additions to their toolkit:

1. We need an in combat run speed boost. Without one, we can rarely kite when necessary. Guard/Captain/Beorn/Champ all have in combat run speed boosts. Warden is described as the "mobile combatant" tank class and is bar none the least "mobile" of any class with a tank line(aside from Brawler LOL).
2. We need at least two DCD's(one for the group and one for ourselves). Both Guardian and Captain are regularly chosen for group content because they can save the group with a well timed Litany/Shield Wall/In Harm's Way/To Arms. At the VERY LEAST we need one DCD for ourselves to mitigate spike damage in certain encounters. I'd prefer to see this in the form of new Gambits but I'll take whatever I can get.
3. We need our B/P/E and mitigation boosting traits rescaled to match current stat caps. Most of our Blue line traits aren't very useful because they offer mediocre stat increases. Either replace these with something completely different or rescale them to be ~10x their current value.
4. We need our healing completely rescaled. Restoration line(Shield-Spear gambits) should offer the bulk of our self healing. As it stands now, a 2 gambit builder morale-tap can pump out 5x the HPS of an entire core gambit chain. Skills like Exultation of Battle, which used to be a key part of our arsenal, now heal for dismal amounts(they also used to stack if you used them more than once on the same target). In order to reduce future work-load on scaling, Sh-Sp skills should be converted to % based values, Morale-Taps should scale with physical mastery, and Conviction should be changed to % healing as well.
5. Animations. I can't stress this one enough. Dance of War, War Cry, Goad, and Wall of Steel need their animation times cut in half at least. Unless you use an immediate skill to animation cancel, each of these animations delays your next skill by up to ~2.5 seconds. On a class that needs to quickly use 2-6 abilities to build their next skill, it's ridiculous to have animations that take so long to complete. It looks cool but in reality makes Warden feel clunky and slow.

[mrgiles]

I am also another Warden that tanks and wants to bring back our glory days of tanking. Based on the original post, I wouldn't add anything. I will disagree with Never Surrender being applied to the group. Instead, proposing that NS applies like Last Stand and the group gets a large 25% heal as well when NS pops. Which is half of the tooltips 50%.

Also, I would like to add that the 5% mits from Defiant Challenge need to be a trait instead of based on force taunt use.

Make the Self heals and more leeching % based and you won't have to worry about scaling again. Resolution is doing well surprisingly.

SSG, Please fix the most interesting class in all MMOs.

[Silver_ArrowWind]

Have been playing Warden since Christmas 2008 and I can confirm that the entire class needs serious work(not just Blue line, but especially blue line). Warden has always been less durable than Guard but always offered higher HPS and far superior B/P/E. Today, that isn't really the case as B/P/E is pretty worthless in most boss fights and our HPS is extraordinarily low unless we spam Offensive Strike.

In order to be a truly viable choice for Tanking, Warden needs a few major additions to their toolkit:

1. We need an in combat run speed boost. Without one, we can rarely kite when necessary. Guard/Captain/Beorn/Champ all have in combat run speed boosts. Warden is described as the "mobile combatant" tank class and is bar none the least "mobile" of any class with a tank line(aside from Brawler LOL).
2. We need at least two DCD's(one for the group and one for ourselves). Both Guardian and Captain are regularly chosen for group content because they can save the group with a well timed Litany/Shield Wall/In Harm's Way/To Arms. At the VERY LEAST we need one DCD for ourselves to mitigate spike damage in certain encounters. I'd prefer to see this in the form of new Gambits but I'll take whatever I can get.
3. We need our B/P/E and mitigation boosting traits rescaled to match current stat caps. Most of our Blue line traits aren't very useful because they offer mediocre stat increases. Either replace these with something completely different or rescale them to be ~10x their current value.
4. We need our healing completely rescaled. Restoration line(Shield-Spear gambits) should offer the bulk of our self healing. As it stands now, a 2 gambit builder morale-tap can pump out 5x the HPS of an entire core gambit chain. Skills like Exultation of Battle, which used to be a key part of our arsenal, now heal for dismal amounts(they also used to stack if you used them more than once on the same target). In order to reduce future work-load on scaling, Sh-Sp skills should be converted to % based values, Morale-Taps should scale with physical mastery, and Conviction should be changed to % healing as well.
5. Animations. I can't stress this one enough. Dance of War, War Cry, Goad, and Wall of Steel need their animation times cut in half at least. Unless you use an immediate skill to animation cancel, each of these animations delays your next skill by up to ~2.5 seconds. On a class that needs to quickly use 2-6 abilities to build their next skill, it's ridiculous to have animations that take so long to complete. It looks cool but in reality makes Warden feel clunky and slow.

Well, if you play warden static (like most wardens I see) that doesn't mean the class has to be that way. I learned to play my warden on the move, and while a run speed in combat would be nice to have for certain fights where you can't take any hits, it's not really what warden truly needs at the moment to be fixed. In fact due to the range stance warden is THE BEST mobile tank in the game (and you can kite in fray too by the way). It's other stuff which needs fixed like persevere line heals (both heals from melee and range versions are TINY at the moment).

Warden also excels at something else which no other tank (possibly blue champ? no idea) gets close to, which is DPS tank. Can also give a huge boost to induction-based classes if you play blue-yellow, which i do. So stop it with the gloomy view of warden, theres only 2 major issues at the moment: persevere line heals are a joke, and warden needs an incoming damage buff for hard hits(-inc damage %). Id argue shield mastery would be a good gambit to put that one on. ALSO, untie mits from defiant challenge. Make them passive or put them on the impressive flourish gambit chain. If +5% never surrender mits armor set comes again, warden can be really good actually assuming those things above are fixed.

Besides, BPE are NOT worthless in this endgame (at 140), you can reach 100% partials BPE quite easily which means reduced damage AND NO CRITS ON YOU (assuming the boss can be BPE-ed, which so far from what i've played seems to be the case overall in this expansion). I can reach 100% partial bpe in blueline without adding wall of steel or war cry at all, just from brink, surety, the persevere line (chained), shield mastery and gambit builder buffs - without slotting any kind of extra BPE on gear (even in DPS gear). The traits which increase BPE ratings should probably begone with and replaced with something else, since you dont really need them to reach 100% partials bpe anyway.

I agree with animation times for dance of war, war cry, etc.

I'm not saying warden tank doesn't need fixes, the contrary is true. But there's things some people suggest which would trivialise the class instead of keeping it a high skill - high reward class like it was intended.

[Osglinthor]

I agree with animation times for dance of war, war cry, etc.

I'm not saying warden tank doesn't need fixes, the contrary is true. But there's things some people suggest which would trivialise the class instead of keeping it a high skill - high reward class like it was intended.

There is simply no high skill > high reward on warden. Its something like mediocre skill > poor reward atm. Many people would disagree, but in order to increase both skill cap and reward
class would need to be sped in order to open room for some reactivity in rotaitons instead constant same #### over and over. Trough gambits with cooldown similar to shiled tactics.
Shaving time off animations would go a long way, esp if builders could be sped up aswell alongside masteries CD(wich many are against without taking everything else into consideration) to where we are reliably either one builder and combination of masteries per gambit or able to have masteries up faster for fast for example shiled tactics in order to react to incoming stun faster instead having to build it way sooner.

Ill just give quick example based on DPS lines but same thing can be applied to tank line also. Current rotation is ~30 sec long, constant #### on repeat similar to tanking, too long ramp up. You can have some variety like refreshing existing bleeds trying to react to something but more offten you will get punished for it near mirror image of blue line gameplay.
Where if you were to shorten rotation to 20 sec wich is btw easly doable provided they can manipulate animation times easly since there is so much time wasted on long animations properly rewarding reacting to bleed consumption as example considering its already built in mechanic and for example making wardens triumph cash out all DoT gambits on target for short dmg buff based on amount cashed out so you can play around it on nuke parts\target switches and so on where you have some trade of and variety in gameplay(or be able to stop DPS when needed).

Same thing can be added to blue line. Cooldowns that cash out current buffs for stronger effects, heal cash out proc here and there instead of a hurd dur press button for 0 dmg taken 2 min cd skill wich would just be additional spit in face to warden. But then again that is probablty the only thing they will be able to do, same way red/yellow will only see % dmg increase and ignoring all other faults, looking forward to being stay on boss marked diminished bot.

[Kander]

Well, if you play warden static (like most wardens I see) that doesn't mean the class has to be that way. I learned to play my warden on the move, and while a run speed in combat would be nice to have for certain fights where you can't take any hits, it's not really what warden truly needs at the moment to be fixed. In fact due to the range stance warden is THE BEST mobile tank in the game (and you can kite in fray too by the way). It's other stuff which needs fixed like persevere line heals (both heals from melee and range versions are TINY at the moment).

Static is sadly the way you should play, with all bosses in all recent raids and 6 man doing frontal damage constantly, steady positioning is required. Wardens are best tanks probably for constant kiting, as in spending a whole fight of 10 minutes running non stop, building all buffs and some self heals while never stopping and being able to survive quite decently, but that's barely ever useful. What we mean when we ask for sprint or kiting ability is basically what guardian/captain/beo does, something that outspeeds enemies for a short time so you don't get hit while running, during an enrage, a buffed boss phase... also a sprint is handy when you get knocked back or need to get to an enemy quite fast, tanks should be able to be the first reaching the position, not last.

There is simply no high skill > high reward on warden. Its something like mediocre skill > poor reward atm. Many people would disagree, but in order to increase both skill cap and reward
class would need to be sped in order to open room for some reactivity in rotaitons instead constant same #### over and over. Trough gambits with cooldown similar to shiled tactics.
Shaving time off animations would go a long way, esp if builders could be sped up aswell alongside masteries CD(wich many are against without taking everything else into consideration) to where we are reliably either one builder and combination of masteries per gambit or able to have masteries up faster for fast for example shiled tactics in order to react to incoming stun faster instead having to build it way sooner.

Ill just give quick example based on DPS lines but same thing can be applied to tank line also. Current rotation is ~30 sec long, constant #### on repeat similar to tanking, too long ramp up. You can have some variety like refreshing existing bleeds trying to react to something but more offten you will get punished for it near mirror image of blue line gameplay.
Where if you were to shorten rotation to 20 sec wich is btw easly doable provided they can manipulate animation times easly since there is so much time wasted on long animations properly rewarding reacting to bleed consumption as example considering its already built in mechanic and for example making wardens triumph cash out all DoT gambits on target for short dmg buff based on amount cashed out so you can play around it on nuke parts\target switches and so on where you have some trade of and variety in gameplay(or be able to stop DPS when needed).

Same thing can be added to blue line. Cooldowns that cash out current buffs for stronger effects, heal cash out proc here and there instead of a hurd dur press button for 0 dmg taken 2 min cd skill wich would just be additional spit in face to warden. But then again that is probablty the only thing they will be able to do, same way red/yellow will only see % dmg increase and ignoring all other faults, looking forward to being stay on boss marked diminished bot.

Cashout could give some depth to warden tank rotation indeed, if the effect is significant enough. For example, remove all the HoT (obviously after massively increasing the base value) for an instant heal of 50% its remaining pulses. Or remove all mit buffs for a -inc damage buff that lasts 20s. It could certainly work as a way to spice up the class.

I would honestly change the approach, instead of keeping a gazillion buffs all the time, I would make just 1-2 100% uptime buffs and other buffs that are much stronger but mean a sacrifice. For example, using mit buffs will greatly increase your mits (up to 70-80% total) but will remove your ability to BPE, or reduce your outgoing healing, while stacking heals will heal massively more but they will overwrite mit buffs, stacking BPE will increase a significant amount of BPE but will overwrite mits too, that way you will need to rotate through a fight between high mit vs high self sustain depending on what's happening. It's just a vague idea, this may be a bad way to implement it, but it would bring back some of the old essence of the class of preparing for the next moments of the fight instead of just having all buffs up in a fixed rotation and do nothing else, this way if a fight just require mits you can spam buffs, dps rotation... it allows for more freedom for the player and more variation in gameplay. Not sure if it's quite possible to implement as it would require heals to be incredibly massive to compensate for the lack of mits but still need to be somewhat worse than mits when you have a full raid and heals on a hard hitting boss that ignores BPE.

[Osglinthor]

Static is sadly the way you should play, with all bosses in all recent raids and 6 man doing frontal damage constantly, steady positioning is required. Wardens are best tanks probably for constant kiting, as in spending a whole fight of 10 minutes running non stop, building all buffs and some self heals while never stopping and being able to survive quite decently, but that's barely ever useful. What we mean when we ask for sprint or kiting ability is basically what guardian/captain/beo does, something that outspeeds enemies for a short time so you don't get hit while running, during an enrage, a buffed boss phase... also a sprint is handy when you get knocked back or need to get to an enemy quite fast, tanks should be able to be the first reaching the position, not last.



Cashout could give some depth to warden tank rotation indeed, if the effect is significant enough. For example, remove all the HoT (obviously after massively increasing the base value) for an instant heal of 50% its remaining pulses. Or remove all mit buffs for a -inc damage buff that lasts 20s. It could certainly work as a way to spice up the class.

I would honestly change the approach, instead of keeping a gazillion buffs all the time, I would make just 1-2 100% uptime buffs and other buffs that are much stronger but mean a sacrifice. For example, using mit buffs will greatly increase your mits (up to 70-80% total) but will remove your ability to BPE, or reduce your outgoing healing, while stacking heals will heal massively more but they will overwrite mit buffs, stacking BPE will increase a significant amount of BPE but will overwrite mits too, that way you will need to rotate through a fight between high mit vs high self sustain depending on what's happening. It's just a vague idea, this may be a bad way to implement it, but it would bring back some of the old essence of the class of preparing for the next moments of the fight instead of just having all buffs up in a fixed rotation and do nothing else, this way if a fight just require mits you can spam buffs, dps rotation... it allows for more freedom for the player and more variation in gameplay. Not sure if it's quite possible to implement as it would require heals to be incredibly massive to compensate for the lack of mits but still need to be somewhat worse than mits when you have a full raid and heals on a hard hitting boss that ignores BPE.

yea something like that could work also

[Beltharas]

Just keeping this on the radar, in case Warden is actually going to get some attention

[Halphast]

As others have said, the healing gambits still need improvement so they're actually functional. Another issue I'd like to see fixed is for Never Surrender to go back to protecting against one-hit kills. The window in which it will activate as opposed to just letting you die is too small.

[Baske]

While i'm still grinding my way up to 140 and my gear is nowhere near ready. While reading through this thread i've seen some interesting suggestions.
I also find it strange that our Healing line does less then our Resolution life steal, this however only works with groups.
i agree with the notion that heals need to scale with level, i have 300k hp, and the average red (heroic) mob hits me harder than the heals from Persevere line.

what i like to add to the discussion is the following:
*First Aid, only removes 1 status effect every 5 sec, for a tank class this seems a bit low. Beorning can remove three, in 20 sec, in the same time Warden could remove 4. Particularly nasty DOT's can still trigger a number of times before you remove them, one at a time.
*Steadfast, 2min cooldown seems a bit much and since when you're stunned you can't evade the main damage reduction in the blue line this doesn't help, most classes are at 1 min where the Guardian can reduce his to 30 sec's, Warden can reduce 2 min by 16.5 sec with top level tracery. Lower CD to 1 min with tracery not applied;
*Shield, The Warden's shield is modelled after Greek / Spartan shields, why is it that they have less armour then the LArge shield used by Guardian/Champion, the should be on par or slightly better since Warden uses medium armor which gives less mitigation.

i compared the:
Elite Vanguard's Defensive Shield of the Ithil Guardian;
Elite Vanguard's Defensive Shield of the Ithil Warden;
both item level 422, crafted shields

compared to the heavy shield, the Warden has:
* 34 k less raw armour;
* no ranged defense;
* 20k less block rating;
* 1k less Vitality;
* 50% less crit defense;
* 800 less agi compared to Str;
* 700 more tact mit.

Granted these can be somewhat augmented with the Impressive Flourish line, if the rest of the medium armour has similarly lower stats, this line will not compensate for the difference.
I get that Medium armour has lower stats, except the Warden shield should in my opinion have at least comparable stats to the heavy shield.

[Halphast]

*First Aid, only removes 1 status effect every 5 sec, for a tank class this seems a bit low.

This is a very good point. Many classes have heals that remove multiple status effects; Warden removing just one at a time is bad- especially when it seems random which status gets cured. Heaven help you if you get multiple status effects that include a disarm, or one of those timed countdowns that disable you when they expire.

[gaara908776]

This is a very good point. Many classes have heals that remove multiple status effects; Warden removing just one at a time is bad- especially when it seems random which status gets cured. Heaven help you if you get multiple status effects that include a disarm, or one of those timed countdowns that disable you when they expire.

This is actually a huge problem I’ve run into while tanking level 140 instances on Warden. For example, the storm dream in Pughlak, I’m regularly getting silenced + a huge wound. I’m able to use pots to clear the first few but after that I’m pretty much at the mercy of whoever is healing me. Even using first aid off cooldown, I can never seem to clear everything I need to. Silences/Disarms are absolutely horrible to deal with on Blue Warden. On the other hand, my Guard can remove multiple wound/fear/disease/poison on the same cooldown as first aid.