Developer's Diary – Warden Updates from OnnMacMahal

[Strider5548]

Unfortunately, Battle-preparation is necessary in order to make things work correctly. While it is a slightly annoying extra step, it doesn't hurt your combat performance (given it's only available out of combat).

If battle prep isn't going away maybe we could remove the long animation? It's annoying to have to hit the skill but I think it would be a lot better if the animation wasn't so long.

[Hadrigar]

I have been reading your responses today, and I feel much better about the direction of the warden changes. I am still reserved because of the "quirks" I am used to as blue warden, such as prepping 6 pre combat gambits. Each with 2-5 keystrokes minimum, along with animation times, lagging and gambit not going off ect. OnnMacMahal keep up the good work and please keep up the communication, also send me a private link so I can test these changes!! Can't wait for the bullroarer lol. First time in almost 16 years I am downloading the Bullroarer client, just to see what you have cooking up for us.

[Thorondir]

Thanks for your work on the warden class.

There is another big problem with wardens (and champions) that is not mentioned here: Stats.

Hunter's, which are a ranged class, will get 1 tactical mitigation for each point of vitality they have, but both wardens and champions, both classes that have to be close to enemies, do not. This results in the effect that Hunters have it much easier to cap their mitigations while still being able to cap their offensive stats - a situations both wardens and champions can only dream of. They have to sacrifice their offensive to have a chance at surviving, while the hunters, that have range to their advantage can have both without sacrifices...

I hope there are some changes planned in that regard .. at least give wardens and champions also one tactical mitigation per vitality. For even better balancing, removing the tactical mitigation bonus from the hunters on top of it would have an even better effect on game balance.

[papaganoush]

I am regretting buying additional spec tree slots.

I purchased a third tree for Minstrel, Warden, and Captain. I fear those purchases are wasted. While I know it's still possible to want a second tree for the same colour it is not why I bought the additional trees and im unlikely to buy another slot for a y other characters.

I understand a refund is not viable but an option to transfer the tree slot to another character would be appreciated. But as more classes move to only 2 trees even the transfer is less valuable.

[Kaeneth]

Yes, warden animations are a bit disparate. One goal (not stated in the original post) is to make warden animation times more consistent with one another. That will mean shortening some of the excessively-long animations (looking at you, Dance of War).

Gambit builders out of combat (with battle-prep) will no longer have animations at all: they'll basically be identical to masteries now. In combat, builders should feel a bit snappier.

Fantastic, thanks for the response.

[Helhest]

Are there any plans to give wardens a bonus for using spears?
Right now, many people use sword because of the racial bonus.
Would be nice to see a +5% spear damage for the warden class or something like that.

[JFDCamara]

Are there any plans to give wardens a bonus for using spears?
Right now, many people use sword because of the racial bonus.
Would be nice to see a +5% spear damage for the warden class or something like that.

It's not just the racial damage, for tanking the sword is a better too because of the % parry change.

At least they finally updated the bleed damage from spear although it isn't really important. Given the small effect the racial has on damage I wonder if the spear with the updated bleed damage is still worse than sword for dps. Has anyone tested?

The warden concept is constructed about javelins and spears so it is indeed weird that there is another weapon that is better than the spear for both dps and tanking.
Maybe give a % parry to spear as a passive trait in blue line to make it on par with sword?

[Sindhol]

In general, I feel that OnnMacMahal has hit some points, but missed the main point. The proposed changes feel like another classic SSG overhaul: some random tidying-up, erase some of the obviously good stuff, ignore systemic issues.

The systemic issues that most affect the warden are the following:
- Block, Parry, and Evade have been repeatedly nerfed and the rating-to-percentage conversion offers really bad value.
- Likewise, Outgoing Healing offers really bad value, and wardens don't get any from their main stats. Warden healing is a bit underwhelming in general.
- Warden DPS rotations are very monotonous and quite inflexible, apart from Seize the Moment.
- It's not viable to cover multiple roles in the same fight, even to a very limited extent. For example, it's not worth speccing or gearing to do even a little DPS on a tank, and it's not worth holding even a single add on a DPS.
- The warden is a slow class by design, but it doesn't have adequate tools to be successfully slow, if you will. For example, wardens were terrible at interrupting for the longest time, and the tool they got was a bog-standard immediate interrupt on a separate skill, instead of, say, an interrupt-over-time on Wall of Steel.
- Trait trees are badly designed and don't allow for many different builds. Warden trait trees are especially badly designed. Nearly all the trait ranks in red line are boring increases to damage.

I don't think any of these issues are identified, much less addressed, in this pretty sizable developer diary. And yes, that's partially due to SSG's approach to developer diaries, which are more "general musings" and less "specific solutions", but you get credit for what you write, not for what you may be designing behind the scenes.

Current State Overview

So what headwinds are wardens currently facing?

Arguably the biggest issue facing wardens is a lack of defensive cooldown abilities for Determination wardens.

Yes, it is. But you don't say much about it. Nothing specific at all, in fact. We need details, or we can't provide useful feedback.

Also: No, For the Free Peoples is not a "strong effect". As cooldowns go, it's decidedly poor. So is Never Surrender, actually. NS gets mentioned a lot because it's unusual, not because it's strong; it works very well against a few very specific effects, and it can occasionally save a raid, but it's nowhere near the level of Juggernaut, or Last Stand, or Thickened Hide, or any of the brawler stuff.

Gambit chains are an underutilized tool.

No, they're really not. Gambit chains are stupid. You don't ever want to use gambits from shortest to longest, and you shouldn't encourage that. It runs counter to the whole concept of gambits.

The idea of gambits is that your biggest gambits are highly efficient (in terms of effect over cast time, including build time (but not effect time)), and your smaller gambits in the same class are progressively less efficient.

If you want to do a bit of damage, you can do so very efficiently--hit three big DPS gambits and you're done. That leaves you with 20+ seconds of spare time in you rotation; you can use that time to heal, or move, or debuff, or whatever. But if you don't want to do any of that, if you want to do a lot of damage, you can fill that time with more DPS gambits. Since your bleeds don't stack, you don't get to use those highly efficient gambits again (if you could, you would have too much DPS). You have to use smaller gambits, instead. So you go down the list, casting weaker and weaker gambits, until you're reduced to Precise Blow or whatever. (In practice, of course, people work out the smallest gambit they're going to get to, then order their gambits for efficient mastery use, which isn't necessarily largest-to-smallest.)

Because of this natural progression of gambits, wardens are most efficient when combining different types of gambits--a few big healing gambits for very efficient healing, a few big damage gambits for very efficient damage/aggro, and so on (this was the basis of warden solo performance, as well--this, old DC, and 100% partial BPEs). In theory, anyway. In practice, healing gambits on DPS wardens are so weak you might as well not bother, and vice versa for tank wardens. That is something that could do with a change, but not through gambit chains. Gambit chains suck.

(Now, if you want to re-tool gambit chains into a "set bonus" for using different gambits in the same class in a short amount of time, that could be a thing. But ordering them from small to large is stupid.)

For damage-oriented wardens, Seize the Moment looms too large over all other class mechanics [...]

I agree. It's quite fun, though, and about the only thing that breaks the deterministic warden DPS rotations. There is no need to change Seize the Moment, unless you have a really fun substitute ready. Strong Foundations does not sound that fun. It sounds like it will, in practice, work out to a pretty generic mastery cooldown reduction, which will sometimes line up well with what you want to do, and sometimes not. *Shrug*.

For what it's worth, Recklessness (the skill) isn't fun either. It's boring.

Damage-dealing wardens also have a distinct lack of instant damage.

Yes, they do. We should have appropriately massive long-term damage to compensate (which we don't), not a ####ty version of burst damage so that we can pretend to play the burst damage game while the champions/burglars/hunters smile condescendingly. It's a damage-over-time class. The one thing it's not supposed to have is instant damage. It's supposed to have so much damage over time that you'll bring a warden to a fight even if you lose burst, just because you gain so much damage in the long run.

While it isn’t a major issue facing wardens, the class also has a considerable amount of effect clutter.

I mean... yes, but touch this last, please. As you say, it's not a major issue at all.

Non-specialization Assailment

This is fine. It's not good by itself, mind--it still needs to be done well. But it's fine. You can also just remove half the traits. Warden trait trees have far too many traits, and most don't change the way you play the class.

Goals

Wardens specializing in Determination should be able to stand side by side with Guardians, Captains, Brawlers, and other main tanks with confidence. In addition to your defensive gambits, you should have a few normal tanking skills, bound by cooldowns rather than being gambits, which still interact with the gambit system. This should help you deal with brief moments of significant spike damage like other meta tanks do, but without fundamentally altering your skill flow.

Yes. Unspecific, but yes.

Wardens specializing in Recklessness should still be versatile damage dealers with a wide range of gambits for dealing with different situations. In a pinch, offensive wardens should be able to line up some skills and gambits to deal meaningful instant damage during encounters. While damage-over-time effects should still be your most reliable and consistent damage, we don’t want wardens to feel completely shut out in encounters with a greater emphasis on groups of mobs that have smaller morale pools.

No. You misunderstand the class. Wardens are not versatile and should not be versatile. Wardens do one damn thing, and it's indiscriminately delivering lots of damage while indiscriminately taking (healing) a lot of damage. It's unwieldly, slow, late damage/healing, but there is lots of it. Well, should be lots of it. Ought to be. We'd like it to be. Can we finally get our "lots"?

It's worth noting that you've consistently nerfed and removed versatility in the game. It's now virtually impossible to cover multiple roles with the same build or to change builds in combat. Consequently, covering multiple roles in the same fight, even to a limited extent, is not really done anymore. Lore-masters come closest to being versatile, with all their different tricks. Wardens are nothing like lore-masters.

Gambit effects should be cleaned up a little bit across the board. This will be covered in greater detail later on, but the general principle is that there are a lot of different gambits, so no individual gambit needs to have more than one or two effects.

That doesn't follow, but in practice, I don't think you need to do any work here.

Gambits already do only one thing you care about, and some do nothing (Combination Strike), or have a beneficial secondary effect (Desolation). Only Persevere/Safeguard really have two noticable effects, but those effects are individually pretty weak.

Different gambit classes are already associated with specific effects. It's not on the level of spear/shield/fist gambits, because those classifications are mostly meaningless (wardens have more than three kinds of gambits), but SP-SH interrupts, SP-SH-FI bleeds, SH-SP heals/blocks, and so on.

Also: spear gambits don't naturally make sense for instant damage at all. Spear gambits have the lowest instant damage of all--it's fist gambits that have significant up-front damage. Spears have a bleed as a weapon passive, for crying out loud!

Finally, a note about wardens leveling up for the first time. We’re planning to reinstate the leveling paradigm for wardens in which you start off with access to only 2-length gambits, later unlocking 3-length, then 4-length, then 5-length gambits. This will have no impact on any warden already over level 50, but will hopefully help make learning the class a little more manageable for those stepping into it with little prior knowledge of the class or specific gambits.

I don't think this works at all. Early wardens are easy to play because they have a one-size-fits-all solution to combat: Surety > Restoration. And since these are long gambits, you either have to be really really slow, or you learn to use masteries. But you only have to use the two masteries that are obviously relevant to Surety, and the two that are obviously relevant to Restoration, which is a nice easy starter.

What we do need is a better class tutorial. For example, something that explains the paragraph above. But then all LOTRO classes have terrible tutorials (insofar the game contains tutorials at all), and I haven't seen any efforts towards improving those at all.

Gambit Chains
Gambit Chains will be staying with the class, but they will become a little more flexible. Completing a gambit chain will require using a three-gambit sequence: a 2-length gambit, followed by a 3-length gambit, and then completed by subsequently using a 4- or 5-length gambit. After beginning a gambit chain with a 2-length gambit, the following gambits in the chain will gain improved damage, healing, and buff durations.

Okay. I don't really care for gambit chains, as mentioned above, but this is fine. Not really necessary, and doesn't fix any problems with the class, but fine.

Advanced Technique
Several new Warden skills will be ‘normal’ skills bound by cooldowns, rather than gambit skills requiring builders. These skills will have short, strong effects and moderate cooldown times. However, rather than being freely available at full strength, their potency will be driven by Advanced Technique. Each skill will require at least one Advanced Technique, consume all of your Advanced Technique when used, and will become stronger with each additional Advanced Technique consumed when the skill fires.

And how will you earn Advanced Technique? You’ll receive one count every time you complete a gambit chain, up to three maximum, until they are either consumed by a skill or you leave combat.

This sounds like a nightmare. Gambit chains are stupid. Nearly all two-icon gambits are useless. You'd be deliberately using gambits you don't need just to earn Cooldown Points so you can survive what guardians and brawlers can already survive for free.

We hope this has been a helpful primer on some of our plans and goals for the upcoming warden changes. A few core mechanics will change, augmenting the inherent power and flexibility of the gambit system. We’re excited to share more information with you soon, including a closer look at specific changes and some actual gameplay.

Based on this information, I'm not looking forward to the changes.

[martin93]

Questions for the Q&A today:

Can you speak to effect and buff consolidation?

Will it require fewer gambits for me to maintain my defensive buffs, and can you show us where those buffs have moved or changed?

Can we see the Advanced Technique spenders?

Can we see the new or changed gambit animations?

Can we see the new or changed traceries?

What group support has been added to Determination? Aside from Warden's survivability troubles, we also can't offer the same group support that other tanks have.

Thanks OnnMM!

[EU-Mardil]

One question for todays Warden Q & A

Thanks for the developer dairy about the Warden and the coming changes which all sounds very interesting. I do have one question for todays Warden Q & A. In past develops made one change to Wardens vitality system that i find is wrong. The change they made was so that 1 point of vitality now counted for 4.8 vitality, not 5 points as it was before. The changes was reasoned with that a Wardens uses medium armor. Is there a plan for correct this one point vitality again will count for 5 on Wardens ?.

As you wrote in the developer dairy " Wardens specializing in Determination should be able to stand side by side with Guardians, Captains, Brawlers, and other main tanks with confidence " in that case one point of vitality should then of course be equal for 5 points of vitality for the Warden like on other Tank classes.

[Hartten]

Thank you for this thread and your responses.

So far no one has asked this question and maybe I am jumping the gun because it deals with number crunching, if so I am sorry.

On my Warden in Blue and Red line Trait Tree, Marked Target and Diminished Target both give a -5% (Phy or Tact) Mitigated debuff. While in Combat if I switch to the Assailment Stance those number and my damage output do not change.

When I go into my virtues and change to the Yellow Assailment Trait Tree, then Marked Target and Diminished Target both jump up to a -10% (Phy or Tact) Mitigated debuff. This percentage is the same weather I am in combat using "In The Fray" or "Assailment" stance. But more important is that in Yellow line both of these skills do more damage.

So my question is in regards to eliminating the Yellow Trait Tree.

After the changes will MT and DT still give just a -5% mitigation debuffs or will they be bumped up to -10%?

Or are you planning something like MT and DT will be -5% if tossed while "In The Fray" melee stance and then be boosted up to -10% when you switch to "Assailment" stance, while in combat?

If so maybe make Assailment a toggle skill instead of a Stance.

Lastely, how many of the Traceries for Range will become obsolete after the changes?

The Tracery - Marked Target Double Cast Chance - gives a app 35% chance that the -5% Phy Mitigation will double stack I assume giving a total of -10%? In Yellow line this double stack could boost the mitigation up to -20%. Does this debuff only stack twice or can we go higher?

It is probably from my lack of knowledge, but currently either I do not know the functions of some of the Wardens Traceries or many of them are just deadwood and should be upgraded or eliminated. Recently a couple of changes to my other classes made in my opinion a couple of Traceries obsolete. For example Purge Corruption for a Burg, and Cry of Chorus for a Mini.

So my final question is:

Are you also going to be making changes to Warden's Traceries at the same time to streamline everything?

Thank you in advance for any response.

[OnnMacMahal]

Keep the questions coming! I've also updated the second post in this thread with some more details.

[Sindhol]

Keep the questions coming! I've also updated the second post in this thread with some more details.

I'm wondering what happened to asking for feedback. Because you haven't been present on the forums to talk about the warden from opening the Muster in the Warden Subforums thread until you posted this thread, and in the meantime, you have created a design, but you've not asked for or replied to any further feedback.

This update seems almost done--it seems like it's too late to get rid of Advanced Techniques, for example. I don't like Advanced Techniques. I think it's a bad mechanic for a number of reasons (read up if you want to know more). But looking at your post, it's definitely coming to the game. Now, I don't know whether you had a lot of enthusiastic feedback on Advanced Techniques or gambit chains or annoying-to-use cooldowns anywhere else, but if the forum feedback I've read is even slightly representative, you haven't. So where did this come from? Because it can go back there.

From my perspective, there's no point providing any feedback to you at all, because you'll "read" things, and then go off and design in private, and whatever comes out is pretty much what we're getting. SSG has never retracted a design once it'd been presented in a developer diary or on Bullroarer. There is no iterative development, no taking aboard of ideas--there's not even an accurate statement of the problem, or of the question you want feedback on.

So yeah, I'm wondering why you even bother with feedback.

P.S. As written, your tank cooldowns don't seem powerful enough to solve the warden's problems even if you provide maximum stacks of Advanced Technique for free.

[yloollo]

Tanking Cooldowns
Restorative Shield-work
This skill will require at least one Advanced Technique, and will convert all of your tiers of Advanced Technique into tiers of restorative shield-work (+2 baseline, so 2-5 tiers depending on AT consumed) for 10 seconds. While you have at least one tier remaining, you will gain +30% Partial Block chance. Each time you’re hit (up to once per second) one tier will be removed, healing you for 10% of your morale.

Desperate Combat
This skill will consume all of your Advanced Technique, transforming this skill for 30 seconds, and giving you a number of skill uses equal to the number of Advanced Technique consumed plus one. Desperate Combat has 3 possible versions (spear, shield, or fist) depending on your last gambit-type used. You can use more than one type of Desperate Combat skill by using different gambit types in between uses of Desperate Combat.
Desperate Spear: Strong AoE frontal damage, which applies a short debuff increasing your target’s incoming damage.
Desperate Shield: Weak AoE frontal damage, which heals you for each target hit.
Desperate Fist: Moderate AoE damage, which applies a force taunt (not a threat copy) to each target hit.

For the Free Peoples
For the Free Peoples will no longer require you to use gambit builders to tier up its effect. Instead, it will immediately consume all of your Advanced Technique, instantly giving you and your fellowship a buff reducing incoming damage. Your personal damage reduction will be stronger than the group-wide effect, and the potency of both will scale depending on the number of Advanced Technique consumed.

My main concern is that all other tanks have multiple skills that actively mitigate damage. In these skills mentioned here 2/3 seem to be mainly healing skills with FtFP giving the only major defensive buff. Even a major healing skill like the Guardians Warriors Heart has a morale bubble attached to it.
Are we going to see any other significant damage mitigating skills/effects added? Because otherwise I would still be quite concerned how Warden Tanking is going to fit in the meta.

[Rayner_Lute]

Hello. I am very glad that you have finally addressed the problems of the warden and I really like these changes. I still have a few questions that may not have been asked here yet or you haven't had time to answer them.
1. How exactly will the 4-5 gambits be strengthened when they complete the chain?
2. I think you want to reduce the number of buffs available to the defender by systematizing the gambits. I hope they will also become stronger due to their smaller number.
3. "Conviction". I am very interested in whether you will leave mass healing to this gambit? This gambit was very useful when I could simultaneously tanking, support my allies in a small group.

[Beltharas]

Sorry if this is a repeat, I haven't been able to read everything.

1. Will ranged gambits overwrite the effects of melee gambits or will they stack? For example, can we still apply unerring strike bleed twice? What about self heals? Can I still get HoTs from both versions of Restoration?

2. The tanking buffs sound interesting but very focused on tanking groups of adds. I'm not seeing how we will be viable raid tanks if we can't get comparable tools to deal with a single boss who bypasses BPE and hits like a truck.

[Jakreal]

T


Tanking Cooldowns
Restorative Shield-work
This skill will require at least one Advanced Technique, and will convert all of your tiers of Advanced Technique into tiers of restorative shield-work (+2 baseline, so 2-5 tiers depending on AT consumed) for 10 seconds. While you have at least one tier remaining, you will gain +30% Partial Block chance. Each time you’re hit (up to once per second) one tier will be removed, healing you for 10% of your morale.

Desperate Combat
This skill will consume all of your Advanced Technique, transforming this skill for 30 seconds, and giving you a number of skill uses equal to the number of Advanced Technique consumed plus one. Desperate Combat has 3 possible versions (spear, shield, or fist) depending on your last gambit-type used. You can use more than one type of Desperate Combat skill by using different gambit types in between uses of Desperate Combat.
Desperate Spear: Strong AoE frontal damage, which applies a short debuff increasing your target’s incoming damage.
Desperate Shield: Weak AoE frontal damage, which heals you for each target hit.
Desperate Fist: Moderate AoE damage, which applies a force taunt (not a threat copy) to each target hit.

For the Free Peoples
For the Free Peoples will no longer require you to use gambit builders to tier up its effect. Instead, it will immediately consume all of your Advanced Technique, instantly giving you and your fellowship a buff reducing incoming damage. Your personal damage reduction will be stronger than the group-wide effect, and the potency of both will scale depending on the number of Advanced Technique consumed.

Just will compare Guardian because I play that as well.

Defensive tank cooldowns
Our defensive tank cooldowns here dont seem good enough or even appropriate. Nothing on this list is as powerful as pledge, juggernaut or guardians ward.

A partial block cooldown? really? So my tank cooldown doesn't even prevent damage but only SOME damage? And I have less mitigations than other tanks.

Restorative shield is just the same skill as guardians thrill of danger. But with us still being more squishy as a guardian.

Mitigations
Why is it required for us to buff our mitigations to get to our baseline cap mitigations (60% in tank with defiant challenge and the shield fist line). But other tanks dont need to do anything to reach cap mitigations.?
Why cant we get extra damage source prevention while not having to buff our mitigations??? (Guardian fortification)

Cooldowns
Why do our cooldowns require conditions to get the full effect/duration? How does this help us stand side by side other tanks with confidence? I can just hit juggernaut and boom I have the full effect. I can just hit pledge and boom full effect. I just hit warriors heart and boom full effect.

Healing
The healing thing with us.... All these heals that are being incorporated.
You can give warden self healing infinite and silly numbers all you want, have restoration tick for 2million every 3 seconds if you feel like it. The bottom line is our passive mitigations are so low compared to other tanks that we will just get one shot in the end. While other tanks just live through it.

[thymos]

A note about gambits:
In general, we’ve done away with the notion of gambits having different effects in Assailment. Assailment will make all the usual gambits work at range like you’re used to, but there’s no reason for a melee gambit to have a DoT while its ranged version doesn’t. Especially in cases like Unerring Strike, which currently applies nearly-identical (but stacking, because they are technically different) DoTs in its two versions, this is needlessly confusing for players. In the future, if a gambit has an effect while ‘In the Fray’ it should have the same effect while ‘Assailment’ is active.
Additionally, to maintain parity, no gambits will be locked behind a specific specialization, and no gambits will have longer-than normal cooldowns. That means Shield Mastery and Shield Tactics will always be available, and Shield Tactics will no longer have a 10-second cooldown.

Wait. Does this mean you've removed the DoT version of Resounding Challenge? What About Ranged Adroit Maneuver and its Induction buff for your group? The latter was one of THE strongest reasons to bring a Warden at all.

Is the only reason to use Assailment now for the extra range? I'm holding off judgement until trying it but this sounds a bit...boring.

Just will compare Guardian because I play that as well.

Defensive tank cooldowns
Our defensive tank cooldowns here dont seem good enough or even appropriate. Nothing on this list is as powerful as pledge, juggernaut or guardians ward.

A partial block cooldown? really? So my tank cooldown doesn't even prevent damage but only SOME damage? And I have less mitigations than other tanks.

Restorative shield is just the same skill as guardians thrill of danger. But with us still being more squishy as a guardian.

Mitigations
Why is it required for us to buff our mitigations to get to our baseline cap mitigations (60% in tank with defiant challenge and the shield fist line). But other tanks dont need to do anything to reach cap mitigations.?
Why cant we get extra damage source prevention while not having to buff our mitigations??? (Guardian fortification)

Cooldowns
Why do our cooldowns require conditions to get the full effect/duration? How does this help us stand side by side other tanks with confidence? I can just hit juggernaut and boom I have the full effect. I can just hit pledge and boom full effect. I just hit warriors heart and boom full effect.

Healing
The healing thing with us.... All these heals that are being incorporated.
You can give warden self healing infinite and silly numbers all you want, have restoration tick for 2million every 3 seconds if you feel like it. The bottom line is our passive mitigations are so low compared to other tanks that we will just get one shot in the end. While other tanks just live through it.

This is a good post. Blue Warden will never be viable if it can't compete with other tanks in mitigations and emergency cooldowns. If you need a build up while a Guardian needs nothing, guess which is the more effective option that WILL be preferential? Just having to use something like Conviction is far more demanding than the popular tanks because it is so cumbersome and has high opportunity cost. Classes like Guard have Pledge which is Immediate and Warrior's Heart which is Fast which are both far stronger than anything in the Warden toolkit.

[Palentian]

Thanks for reading! One quick heads up: I'm going to update this second post as soon as I can with more detailed information about some of the specific changes we've got in store, so keep an eye on this thread. In the meantime, I'll be responding to as many questions and comments as I can below.

Updated (Friday, Jan 27)

A note about gambits:
In general, we’ve done away with the notion of gambits having different effects in Assailment. Assailment will make all the usual gambits work at range like you’re used to, but there’s no reason for a melee gambit to have a DoT while its ranged version doesn’t. Especially in cases like Unerring Strike, which currently applies nearly-identical (but stacking, because they are technically different) DoTs in its two versions, this is needlessly confusing for players. In the future, if a gambit has an effect while ‘In the Fray’ it should have the same effect while ‘Assailment’ is active.
Additionally, to maintain parity, no gambits will be locked behind a specific specialization, and no gambits will have longer-than normal cooldowns. That means Shield Mastery and Shield Tactics will always be available, and Shield Tactics will no longer have a 10-second cooldown.

I'm reading this as we won't have ranged and melee gambits anymore, yes? Does this mean we won't drop a gambit or get stuck on one swapping between into and out of Assailment stance??

[Elwha]

I'm speechless. If the intended changes from the first few posts are refined and deployed in a positive and meaningful way, without non-class playing influence nerfing it to the ground, this may be the most significant update to the Warden in history. Someone did their homework.

[Daugon]

I'm wondering what happened to asking for feedback. Because you haven't been present on the forums to talk about the warden from opening the Muster in the Warden Subforums thread until you posted this thread, and in the meantime, you have created a design, but you've not asked for or replied to any further feedback.

This update seems almost done--it seems like it's too late to get rid of Advanced Techniques, for example. I don't like Advanced Techniques. I think it's a bad mechanic for a number of reasons (read up if you want to know more). But looking at your post, it's definitely coming to the game. Now, I don't know whether you had a lot of enthusiastic feedback on Advanced Techniques or gambit chains or annoying-to-use cooldowns anywhere else, but if the forum feedback I've read is even slightly representative, you haven't. So where did this come from? Because it can go back there.

From my perspective, there's no point providing any feedback to you at all, because you'll "read" things, and then go off and design in private, and whatever comes out is pretty much what we're getting. SSG has never retracted a design once it'd been presented in a developer diary or on Bullroarer. There is no iterative development, no taking aboard of ideas--there's not even an accurate statement of the problem, or of the question you want feedback on.

So yeah, I'm wondering why you even bother with feedback.

P.S. As written, your tank cooldowns don't seem powerful enough to solve the warden's problems even if you provide maximum stacks of Advanced Technique for free.

That first thread was never about dev/user discussion. It was about getting feedback from the community about what we thought about the current state of the Warden. However, in this thread, they've responded to a HUGE majority of questions, more than I feel like I've ever seen. And personally, I like the sound of Advanced Techniques, but I need more information before I draw a conclusion one way or the other. You're stating "your tank cooldowns don't seem powerful enough to solve the warden's problems," when we don't have the whole picture of how gambits and skills will be updated, nor the CDs of these tanking skills. You'd rather just insult devs on the forums, who are actually attempting to have a discourse with the community, than provide a shred of constructive criticism. Saying "thing bad" without any reasoning is not constructive. Personally, I'm liking pretty much every single change I'm seeing so far. Can't wait to get in and start testing.

[Hartten]

I think Forced March should be changed slightly.

As it is now if any NPC mob just targets us because we enter its agro range we are dropped back down to normal speed. This is very fustrating when you are trying to avoid mobs agro range to transverse the landscape.

I would suggest am alternative, if we enter the agro range of a mob then we only drop from 38% run speed boost to 20% run speed boost. If we attack the mob and hit we drop to 0% run speed boost. But if we out run the mob we automatically go back to 38% run speed boost.

[Jakreal]

I appreciate working on warden but we are just way off still. Thank you for working on the class but nothing here is solving anything wrong about Warden.

>>>From a raid/6 man perspective. Mostly from big hits or large pulls. Given how hard mechanics and mobs now hit in current lotro<<<

There are three problems for thinking of bringing a tank warden over other tanks. Ill use a guardian and captain as references for these as they are the usual picks for tank options.

Problem 1
1. We take more damage than both captain and guardian and have nothing to protect ourselves from this disadvantage

There are two solutions. One easy and straightforward. The other with a lot of work and exponential problems down the road.

Solutions
Mitigation solution 1:
Give us heavy armor baseline maximum mitigations in blue line, no required gambit chains or silly abilities we have to hit to reach that. Whether it be tied to specific traits or on the passive blue tree bonuses so you cant get it in DPS line. And then balance and make the class unique from there.

The gambits we use for mitigations should be extra just like fortification and redirect.

Or...

Mitigation solution 2:
When specializing in blue give us a % health that will make up for our lower mitigation cap comparative to other tanks. And then buff the hell out of our self heals to where we can be self reliant on them (WoW players think of the Tank DK class). You would have to give us a substantially higher % morale than a captain can achieve with motivate up.

Problem 2
2. We bring no utility comparative with other tanks

Wardens have the two javelins that increase mob incoming damage. But you would just take a DPS warden because you get more %. So you wouldnt want that from a tank warden.
So...

Warden has
1: For the peoples (our only mitigation cooldown)***
2: Conviction

Guardian has
1: Shield the people (passive mit buff for the fellowship)
2: Litany of defiance
3: Shield wall
4: Smashing stab (FM)
5: Break ranks

Captain has
1: Motivate
2: IDOME
3: Battle Rez
4: Make haste
5: Shield of the Dunedain
6: Hope banner
7: Muster courage
8: Shield Brother
9: Any of the Marks
10: WoC
11: In harms way
12: Rallying Cry

Problem 3
3. Our tank cooldowns are still terrible

Never Surrender:
Just a second morale potion. A worse version of warriors heart I have to not get one shot to utilize.
One and a half catch a breaths in power.


For the people: ***
You created a cooldown that has utility potential for the group. But at the cost of the Warden possibly needing its only overall damage reduction cooldown at some point for personal use. A worse version of litany of defiance, because now I cant protect myself outside of never surrender.

Desperate shield:
See Problem 1 on mitigations. You can give us as much healing as you want. Nothing heals a one shot on a warden that is restricted in either.
1: How much we can pull compared to other tanks
2: How many boss mechanic stacks we can take compared to other tanks.

Restorative Shieldwork:
This should be evade. Our passive trait tree gives us evade on heal and most essences that came out for warden were all evasion based.

This is where I just dont understand. How are we going to give a partial block cooldown to the one tank that takes more damage than any of the other tanks in the game??? Why are we so against wardens being able to protect themselves????
This is just a worse version of thrill of danger.

Why is guardian allowed juggernaut (100% block chance for 15 seconds and his passive tree heals him for all blocks) But warden gets this mismatched partial block of 30% for 5 hits??? Why is a weaker tank getting a weaker cooldown???

Every other tank class can just use their cooldowns and not have to worry about missing out on their duration or effects. I dont know why warden has to get all these stacks of advanced technique just to get the full duration especially given how disadvantaged we are from problem 1.

[LagunaD2]

Yes, warden animations are a bit disparate. One goal (not stated in the original post) is to make warden animation times more consistent with one another. That will mean shortening some of the excessively-long animations (looking at you, Dance of War).

Gambit builders out of combat (with battle-prep) will no longer have animations at all: they'll basically be identical to masteries now. In combat, builders should feel a bit snappier.

Why not just make builders castable out of combat as if Battle Prep was always on, and get rid of the button?

My compliments, though. While viability will depend heavily on the tuning, you've come up with some good ideas.

[OnnMacMahal]

Just determination? One thing that gets overlooked because of the tank comparisons, is as things stand now, non-Determination Wardens currently suffer from less mitigation than the other medium classes as well as the heavy armour melee DPS specs. Hunters and Burglars both have easy access to extra mitigation that the Warden does not. Then naturally the heavy classes have more mitigation when specced for dps (or healing) too. As such, a dps Warden has worse mitigation than all other melee dps specs, and even hunters. Being squishier than hunters and champions is particularly galling. I think some people just assume that a Warden must be tougher, when in reality they aren't at all in red/yellow lines.

While wardens do have lower base damage mitigation/reduction than many other classes (including hunters and burglars right now, when spec'd red) their shield gambits improve their passive DR considerably, as well as provide a lot of BPE potential that other (especially non-tank) classes lack, and also have access to heals and morale taps at all times, with no fear of mistiming those cooldowns.