Warden Changes and Feedback

[OnnMacMahal]

Gambit Chains and Advanced Technique

Gambit Chains
Gambit Chains will be staying with the class, but they will become a little more flexible.
Gambit chains are now a sequence of 4 gambits. Any gambit other than a potency gambit will count, and neither the gambit's type nor length matters.
Gambit chains are now unlocked automatically at level 30, at which point you will also earn 'The Way of the Spear' which allows you to cash out Advanced Technique earned from completing chains.
The only exception to this rule will be potency gambits (Deft Strike, Defensive Strike, and Goad) which will not contribute towards gambit chains. Gambits cast from Battle Memory do count, however.


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, some will have their potency driven by Advanced Technique. Both Desperate Combat and For the Free Peoples will 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.

Gambits

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.




Spear Gambits
¤ Gambit Sequence: Offensive Strike through Unseen Strikes
Gambits in this sequence have improved initial skill damage, and deal damage to multiple targets in front of you.

Offensive Strike
Offensive Strike no longer has a morale-tap. It is now a frontal AoE dealing moderate direct damage.

Combination Strike
Combination Strike is now a frontal AoE dealing moderate direct damage.

Boar’s Rush
Boar’s Rush is now a frontal AoE dealing moderate direct damage.

New: Unseen Strikes
Unseen Strikes is now a targeted attack, striking your current target and two nearby enemies, while consuming all damaging effects from War Cry, Brink of Victory, Surety of Death, or Desolation on each target to deal bonus damage. This will effectively ‘cash out’ most of your AoE light-damage DoTs.


¤ Gambit Sequence: The Boot through Cauterizing Steel
Gambits in this sequence have greatly improved initial skill damage and will only deal damage to your current target.

Onslaught
Onslaught deals strong damage to a single target. It will no longer interrupt your target.

Wall of Steel
Wall of Steel deals strong damage to a single target. It will no longer interrupt your target. It will no longer give you a parry buff.

Cauterizing Steel
Cauterizing Steel deals strong damage to a single target and consumes any physical bleeds from the Power Attack - Unerring Strike gambit sequence to deal bonus damage.

¤ Gambit Sequence: Power Attack through Unerring Strike
Gambits in this sequence apply physical (Wound type) bleeds which match the damage type of your main-hand weapon. These bleeds are strong, and have a longer base duration than your other Damage over Time effects. These gambits will no longer act as a discrete gambit chain. That is, Power Attack will no longer make your target temporarily weak to Mighty Blow, and Mighty Blow will no longer make your target temporarily weak to Unerring Strike.


Adroit Manoeuvre
The buff from Adroit Manoeuvre will also give you a small amount of Finesse rating.

Warden’s Triumph
The buff from Warden’s Triumph will increase both Melee and Ranged Damage, and will also add +1 pulse to all of your damage over time effects.



Shield Gambits
¤ Gambit Sequence: Persevere through Restoration
Persevere will give you a minor buff, but otherwise this sequence is entirely focused on personal healing.

Persevere
Persevere’s buff no longer gives Block and Partial Block rating, and now gives 2.5% Incoming Healing instead. It retains its heal over time.

Safeguard
Safeguard has lsot its Block and Partial Block buff. It will retain its heal over time.

Celebration of Skill
Celebration of Skill has lost its Block, Partial Block, and Incoming Healing buff. It will gain an instant morale heal (stronger initial healing than your other HoT-based gambits, but with less overall healing value.

New: Shield Up
Shield Up will give you a buff with Block rating and -2% Incoming Ranged and Tactical Damage.

Shield Mastery
Shield Mastery will give you a Block rating buff.

Impressive Flourish
Impressive Flourish has lost its DoT effect. The buff from Impressive Flourish no longer gives its old stats; instead, it now gives a Parry rating buff.

Maddening Strike
Maddening Strike will give you an Evade rating buff.

Dance of War
Dance of War will give you a buff with Physical Mitigation rating and Evade rating.

Conviction
Conviction will give you a buff with Tactical Mitigation rating and Evade rating. Conviction will still apply a HoT to you and your fellows.

Readied Blade
Readied Blade will give you a buff with Parry rating and -2% Incoming Melee Damage.

Shield Tactics
Shield Tactics will give you a buff with Critical Defence rating and Tactical Mitigation rating. It will also still give you temporary Stun Immunity.
This skill will have a 1s cooldown, like other gambit skills. The Stun Immunity effect already has a cooldown, so there’s no reason for this gambit to have a cooldown as well.



Fist Gambits
Goad
Goad has lost its damage over time effect.

¤ Gambit Sequence: Precise Blow through Spear of Fate
Gambits in this sequence will apply Light-damage DoTs to your current target. These DoT effects will pulse at a slightly faster rate than your other DoTs, and will not be cleansable, so monster players will not be able to remove them by using potions or skills.

New: Spear of Fate
Spear of Fate will apply a short, potent damage over time effect, dealing light damage to your target. This DoT have a weaker pulse and shorter overall duration than the DoT applied by Spear of Virtue, but will pulse at a higher frequency, doing greater damage in a shorter period.

¤ Gambit Sequence: War Cry through Desolation
Gambits in this sequence will apply Light-damage DoTs to a group of enemies. These effects will be weaker than your single-target effects. These DoT effects will be the ‘Cry’ resistance type, so monster players will be able to remove them.

War Cry
War Cry no longer gives you an Evade rating buff.

Brink of Victory
Brink of Victory no longer gives you an Evade rating buff.

Surety of Death
Surety of Death no longer gives you an Evade rating buff.

Desolation
Desolation no longer applies a Miss Chance debuff or a Fear effect to targets.

New: Deflection
Deflection will reduce how threatening you are to a group of enemies immediately.

Resounding Challenge
Resounding Challenge has adopted the effect it currently has in Assailment, dealing AoE damage and applying a DoT to any enemies hit. When specialized in the Determination tree, it will also increase your threat over time.
In Assailment, this gambit hits enemies in a 10m radius around your target. While 'In the Fray' it applies to targets within 20m of you.

Skills

Blue (Skills)
Restorative Shield-work
This skill no longer requires Advanced Technique. When used, it's potency will be equivalent to what was formerly achieved by using the skill with max AT.
When used, this skill gives 5 charges. While you have at least one tier remaining, you will gain +50% Partial Block chance and +25% Partial Block Mitigation. 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. Desperate Combat would have 3 possible versions (spear, shield, or fist) depending on your last gambit-type used. You could 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 the target’s incoming damage. This is a 5% incoming damage effect, and its duration stacks, so using Desperate Spear multiple times in a row will increase the duration of the effect considerably.
Desperate Shield: Weak AoE frontal damage, which applies a force taunt enemies in front of you and heals you for each target hit.
Desperate Fist: Moderate AoE damage, which stuns enemies in front of you.

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.

Never Surrender
Never Surrender is now a limited-time skill. Using it will give you the Never Surrender effect you know and love, but with a few changes: the effect only lasts for 20 seconds, its health restoration will only trigger if you fall below 5% morale, and it gives you a short mitigation buff for a period after the heal is triggered.
Its base cooldown has been reduced to 5 minutes, and the blue-line trait reduces it a further 3 minutes (to a 2m expected cooldown for tanks) meaning you'll be able to use it much more frequently (though not back to back).

Red (Skills)
Shield Piercer
The Shield Piercer skill has been removed.

Recklessness
This skill no longer consumes Advanced Technique. It gives you a slightly stronger buff than the zero-AT version in Bullroarers 1 & 2.

Yellow (Skills)
Javelin of Deadly Force
Javelin of Deadly Force would be essentially unchanged, except that it would also apply the Marked and Diminished debuffs to any enemies hit. This would give you an infrequent way to apply both debuffs immediately to clusters of mobs.

Snap Shot: Javelins
Rather than give copies of every javelin skill, this effect will reset your javelin skill cooldowns. The list of affected skills will also be a bit slimmer, due to having fewer javelin skills overall: Ambush, Hampering Javelin, Javelin of Deadly Force, and Warning Shot (if specialized in Determination).

The Way of the Spear
The Way of the Spear is a self-buff skill with a 10-second cooldown. The skill will be one of three variants depending on the type of your last gambit used (Spear, Shield, or Fist). All three variants will consume all of your Advanced Technique, granting you a buff for 10 seconds, the potency of which depends on the number of Advanced Technique consumed. This skill now requires at least one Advanced Technique to be used. When consuming the maximum of 3, the buffs granted will be:
The Way of the Spear: +24% Initial Gambit Damage
The Way of the Shield: +12% Gambit Healing
The Way of the Fist: +6% Damage over Time

Rapid Techniques
Rapid Techniques is a self-buff skill which gives your masteries zero cooldown for 6 seconds and reduces your power costs during that period. The skill has a 90-second cooldown.



Javelin Skills
Ambush
Ambush no longer requires you to be out of combat to use. It still retains its induction, unless you have the Adroit Ambush trait and have used Adroit Manoeuvre in combat before using Ambush.

Marked Target, Diminished Target, Shield Piercer, Critical Strike, Wages of Fear, and Dodge This!
These javelin skills will all be removed. With so many gambits having Assailment versions, there’s simply no need to have so many instant javelin skills, which generally do insignificant damage and whose significant secondary effects will now be delivered through gambits.

Traits

Blue (Traits)
Gambit builders will no longer give stacking, partial BPE buffs. Gambits will no longer have a 10% chance for applying minor buffs.
Specializing in the Determination tree will grant the ‘Restorative Shield-work’ skill, in addition to ‘Warning Shot.’

Thrill of Battle
This trait will increase both morale-tap damage and morale-tap healing.

Shield Mastery
This trait will add 5% Physical Mitigation to the Shield Mastery buff and 5% Tactical Mitigation to the Shield Tactics buff. Both gambits will be available without specializing in the Determination tree.

Elegant Finish
Rather than adding specific bonuses to individual gambits, this trait now gives you a -Incoming Damage buff when tiering up or cashing out Advanced Technique.

Shield Tactics
This trait will give each of your Shield gambit buffs improved or additional bonuses.
+5% Incoming Healing from Persevere
+5% Partial Parry from Impressive Flourish
+5% Partial Evade and +5% Threat Generation from Maddening Strike
+5% Damage Reduction from Shield Up and Readied Blade
+3% Mitigations from Dance of War and Conviction

Revel in Combat
This trait effect has been replaced by the new skill ‘Desperate Combat.’
______________________________ __________
War Cry
This trait gives 2-10% fist gambit damage.

Careful Shield-work
This trait gives 1-5% ranged damage reduction to the Shield Up gambit buff.

Redirect Ire
The first rank of this new trait will cause Deflection to generate, rather than reduce, threat. Subsequent ranks will increase your overall threat modifier.

Undeniable Challenge
This trait gives 1-5% ranged damage reduction to the Shield Up gambit buff.
This new trait will cause Resounding Challenge to generate additional threat rather than deal Damage over Time.

Careful Blade-work
This trait gives 1-5% melee damage reduction to the Readied Blade gambit buff.

Defiance
This trait has been removed. The 5% mitigations formerly gained by using Defiant Challenge with this trait are effectively moving to Shield Mastery and Shield tactics while you are specialized in the Determination tree.

Impressive Flourish
This trait has been removed.

Unassailable
This trait’s effect has been replaced by 3 ranks giving you +2-10 seconds of extra duration for your buffs.

Counter-attack
This trait has been removed.

Indefatigable
This trait has been replaced by 5 ranks giving +5-25% Shield-gambit healing.

Thick Skin
This trait has been replaced by 4 ranks which improve the potency of your 2-length gambits.

Fear No Darkness
This trait would improve both morale-tap damage and morale-tap healing.

Fellowship Protector
This trait now causes you to pulse a fellowship-wide damage reduction effect when you spend a maximum-tier (3) Advanced Technique.


Red (Traits)
Gambit builders will no longer give a stacking melee damage buff. Gambits will no longer have a 10% chance for applying minor buffs.
The specialization effect with reduces your Outgoing Healing by 50% has become an effect which reduces your gambit-skill healing specifically, rather than your base Outgoing Healing stat.
Recklessness no longer grants you the Shield Piercer javelin skill.

Unconventional Strikes
This trait would improve the initial-damage bonus from gambit chains.

Taking Advantage
This trait gives you a chance to deal a little bit of damage to enemies who block, parry, or evade one of your attacks.

Martial Fury
This trait gives you one additional pulse to your gambit Damage over Time effects, +10% Damage over Time, and +10% Initial Skill Damage
______________________________ __________
On the Offence
This trait gives 2-10% morale-tap damage and healing (Offensive Strike no longer has a morale-tap).

Spear Sweep, Quick Sweep, and No Mercy
These traits have been consolidated into a single trait improving the damage from your physical spear bleeds by 5-25%.

No Respite for the Wicked
The effect from this trait would be changed to the Wall of Steel gambit line. With the Offensive Strike gambit line now AoE, applying such a strong debuff with AoE skills would make it too easy to apply this effect.

Warden’s Triumph
This trait will also add 10-30 seconds of duration to the associated buffs, in addition to its former/current effects.

Muscle Memory
This trait causes any skill used from Battle Memory to restore a small amount of power.


Yellow (Traits)
As yellow will no longer allow specialization, it will no longer have specialization bonuses. Some of its current specialization bonuses are being moved into the trait tree.
Endurance Training
This trait has 5 ranks, giving -2% attack duration in Assailment per rank.

New: Movement Training
This trait has 5 ranks, increasing shield-gambit ratings buffs from 2-10%.

Lasting Mark
This trait has been split into two traits: ‘Marked Targets’ and ‘Diminished Targets.’ The first rank in each gives the corresponding effect to certain gambits. Marked Target will be applied by any skills in the Boot – Cauterizing Steel gambit sequence, and Diminished Target would be applied by and skills in the Precise Blow - Spear of Fate gambit sequence. Subsequent ranks of both trait increase the durations of their corresponding debuffs.

Ranged Damage
This trait increases Ranged Damage from 3%-15%.

Throwing Arm
This trait now has 5 ranks, increasing your javelin range from 2-10m.

Momentum and Shield’s Up
These traits have been removed. The stances should stand on their own, and these bonuses mostly encourage quickly toggling between stances without meaningfully changing your gameplay.

Strong Foundations
This trait causes your gambit builder skills to reduce the active cooldowns of their related mastery skills (up to -2s at max rank). For example, using Quick Thrust will reduce the active cooldowns of your Spear and Spear, Spear and Shield, and Spear
and Fist mastery skills.

Piercing Javelins
Rather than giving armour penetration, this trait now reduces the chances that your javelin skills and gambits will be blocked, parried, evaded, or resisted.

Barbed Javelins, Shattered Javelins, Area Targeting, and Hurry Up with That!
These traits have been removed. This is part of the greater effect consolidation between melee and ranged gambits.
With Marked and Diminished debuffs being applied by gambits, Area Targeting doesn’t have a place in the warden’s kit.
‘Hurry Up with That’ frankly gives too strong a buff, and it affects very few roles. Notably, it didn’t improve anything for the warden who actually used Adroit Manoeuvre.

Adroit Ambush
This trait causes Adroit Manoeuvre to remove the induction from your next use of Ambush. Combined with Ambush being usable in combat, this allows wardens to ‘prime’ Ambush by using Adroit, giving access to Ambush (and its run speed bonus) without being forced through a lengthy induction.

Fire at Will
The Fire at Will skill no longer gives Mastery rating; instead, it gives +5% Ranged Damage, +5% Tactical Damage, and -10% Attack Duration.

Battering Strikes
The first rank of this trait adds a Critical Defence debuff to gambits in the Offensive Strike sequence. Subsequent ranks increase the potency of this debuff.

Suppression
The first rank of this trait adds an Outgoing Damage debuff to gambits in the War Cry-Desolation line (rather than the Offensive Strike line).

Javelin of Deadly Force
This skill now deals considerably more damage, and will apply Marked and Diminished Target debuffs (if those traits have been earned) to any enemies hit.

Snap Shot (requires Javelin of Deadly Force as a prerequisite)
Rather than give copies of every javelin skill, this effect will reset your javelin skill cooldowns. The list of affected skills will also be a bit slimmer, due to having fewer javelin skills overall: Ambush, Hampering Javelin, Javelin of Deadly Force, and Warning Shot (if specialized in Determination).

Seize the Moment
This trait has been removed. While Seize the Moment is a strong effect, it is not always a reliable proc, and when it does proc, the fact that it removes all mastery skill cooldowns for 10 seconds completely upends the flow of mastery and gambit usage. Some of you love Seize the Moment, but the whole class is designed around builders and masteries gating your rate of gambit skill use; removing that gate almost entirely by virtue of an unreliable proc has had some negative consequences for gameplay. We’re counteracting the loss of this trait with ‘Strong Foundations,’ the mechanic that causes gambit builders to reduce some active mastery cooldowns and ‘Rapid Techniques,’ which gives you periodic mastery resets for a brief time.

Rapid Techniques
This trait grants the Rapid Techniques skill.



Traceries
A few traceries have had their values adjusted slightly or their passive stat changed. Some traceries have been made obsolete by the changes above, and a few new ones have been added.
No existing traceries will be removed. Please do not delete your existing traceries. Obsolete traceries will automatically change according to the list below:


Adroit Manoeuvre Damage will become Spear-Fist Gambit Damage

Ambush Critical Chance will become Ambush Runspeed Bonus

Careful Step Cooldown & Stealth Level will become Never Surrender Duration and Incoming Healing

Gambit Lifetap Damage will become Gambit Lifetap Damage and Healing

Marked Target Double Cast will become Marked and Diminished Target Potency

Recklessness Critical Rating will become Recklessness Duration

Resolution Damage will become Resolution Damage and Healing

Resolution Target Resist Chance will become Morale-tap Resistance Reduction

Shield Piercer Duration & Evade Debuff Chance will become Gambit Debuff Duration

Shield Tactics Tactical Mitigation Rating will become Shield Tactics Immunity Duration

Surety of Death Damage over Time will become Fist-Shield Gambit Damage over Time

Wages of Fear Positional Damage will become Fist-Spear Gambit Damage over Time


New: Way of the Spear Bonuses

New: Restorative Shield-work Cooldown

New: Shield Gambit Buff Duration

[OnnMacMahal]

(Bullroarer 4) Known Issues:
(I'll be updating this to the best of my ability)

The trait 'Undeniable Challenge' currently suggests that it gives you the skill 'Defiant Challenge.' This is incorrect, and has been fixed (so go ahead and ignore it on Bullroarer).

[thymos]

Counter-attack
This trait has been removed.

Rapid Techniques
Rapid Techniques is a self-buff skill which gives your masteries zero cooldown for 6 seconds, after which it resets your mastery cooldowns every 2 seconds for 6 seconds (think of this as a short burst with no cooldown, then a periodic reset). The skill has a 90-second cooldown.

Strong Foundations
This trait causes your gambit builder skills to reduce the active cooldowns of their related mastery skills (up to -2s at max rank). For example, using Quick Thrust will reduce the active cooldowns of your Spear and Spear, Spear and Shield, and Spear
and Fist mastery skills.

Do you guys have an estimate of how often a person uses Masteries on live compared to the new version? This....will completely upend and change how rotations work. It's exciting because this might be much more nuanced but it's also really changing the "tactile" experience of rapidly using Masteries which has been the playstyle for years now. I can't even begin to think what the first gambit I'm going to use out of Battle Prep now should be in light of this and the other changes.

EDIT:
Also I don't see anything about the Fierce Resolve Chain, is it basically the same? Because apart from Resolution the chain is basically unused on live.

And if Goad no longer has a DoT, what does it do other than open up Battle Memory?

[OnnMacMahal]

Do you guys have an estimate of how often a person uses Masteries on live compared to the new version? This....will completely upend and change how rotations work. It's exciting because this might be much more nuanced but it's also really changing the "tactile" experience of rapidly using Masteries which has been the playstyle for years now. I can't even begin to think what the first gambit I'm going to use out of Battle Prep now should be in light of this and the other changes.

In my opinion, Strong Foundations makes things feel a lot better overall, though I'm far from the best warden player. If you're used to relying heavily upon Seize the Moment, this will definitely require an adjustment period. Overall though, the snappier builders and the fact that they help bring your masteries up again should make both feel better to use throughout your rotation (as opposed to feeling great when StM is up and painfully slow otherwise).

Also I don't see anything about the Fierce Resolve Chain, is it basically the same? Because apart from Resolution the chain is basically unused on live.

The healing values have been adjusted, but the skill effects have not changed.

And if Goad no longer has a DoT, what does it do other than open up Battle Memory?

It gives you potency/makes Battle Memory available; nothing more.

[thymos]

I see...I for one like the less RNG approach, everything certainly seems much more streamlined and consolidated now, can't wait to try it out.

[Skoch]

1. GOAD: What about having this as a minor threat generator in Blue and be a minor threat decrease in Red?
2. Will animations like War Cry, Impressive Flourish, Dance of War, etc. be speed up? On live they're clunky and not fun to use even if it looks kinda cool.
3. Do Utility Gambits used in a chain do nothing, or can they also help build a gambit chains (ie: Darkness before Dawn power restore skill)
4. Please don't forget about our skill specific legendary weapon changes, like Marked and Diminished Target Recast Chance. Give us really useful "legacies" pweeez.

Still holding my breath and looking forward (with clenched cheeks) to testing on BR!
Thank you for taking on such a colossal task!

[auximenes]

/saved

Love this gambit wheel, thanks.

[Thurallor]

Could you post the original document for this graphic, so I can modify it for my own evil purposes?

[LagunaD2]

Please give us class-specific legendary item traceries that are useful for tanking.

Otherwise, an impressive first iteration on a long-overdue update...

[Krissy]

I mentioned this in the other thread but worth mentioning here.

Can the Warden Corruption removal ability (Reversal) be an instant cast ability or atleast or on of the double same skill (Mastery abilities like Goad etc) so we can cast it faster.

Its alot of work for a basic ability other classes have as an instant cast ability.
This is more true if the game is going in to harder content that has corruptions that need removed (damage reflects etc).

In fact, Goad looks kinda weak now, just remove Reversal and give the corruption removal to Goad instead. Thins down abilities that dont require specing to get so no harm done and gives another ability a dual purpose.

[Krissy]

Everything's already set in stone anyway; I can't tell where any feedback was taken on board. (I can see changes, but they miss the point, as SSG class reworks usually do.)

Looking at the Dev Diary thread that proceeding these notes i would agree with this statement.( https://forums.lotro.com/forums/show...om-OnnMacMahal )

I am waiting on the final patch notes before seeing how my Blue Warden will play going forward as the numbers for healing etc are missing and just hinted at.

I would note that post 14 on the other thread had OnnMacMahal state "sure, why not." to making Forced Match not need to be put back on exiting combat but not in notes either.

Sindhol, you are very passionate about the Warden, dont stop posting just becuase your not getting the changes you want, you may come up with an amazing idea that is taken onboard at a later date.

[thymos]

I've already explained why I think you're going in the wrong direction with this. Since none of that hasn't been taken on board, I guess this is the last feedback I'll provide. Everything's already set in stone anyway; I can't tell where any feedback was taken on board. (I can see changes, but they miss the point, as SSG class reworks usually do.)

Bullroarer isn't even up yet, pretty silly to be so dramatic. We have no idea what the actual values are going to look like for things like Shield Mastery. And I'd gladly trade things like high Partial BPE for fewer but more meaningful and manageable buffs from Conviction and Dance of War that give us raw mitigation instead. A reasonable person is going to hold off judgement until they actually try such a sweeping list of changes.

As for Gambit Chains...I'm interested to see if they apply out of combat. I really hope we aren't going to be casting War Cry Brink of Victory etc before pulls now on top of Goad and everything else.

[olimaxnik]

So I jumped on BR for a few minutes now (will do more tests tomorrow) but things I experienced so far:

- Battle Prep: I´m not 100% sure if I remember correct but didn´t you say that while you use gambits in Battleprep they shouldn´t have animations? Thats not the case at the moment.

- The overall standing of the warden (at least as tank) seems based on my short expierence so far a lot better compared to live servers. (Tried Tier 10 delvings and also the first add groups HoA T2 which is doable solo). However since I don´t have any other tank classes I can´t compare the standing in regard to those. And I also haven´t tried any Tier 4/5 Content with a group so far. And since i now also read that the healing values are way to high atm I have to try later again.

- The Gambit chains are not as annoying as I would have expected, but you sure have to adapt your playstyle a bit and I also have to see how it works out with the cd of masteries if I have more time to test. However since the buffduration of many buffs have increased significantly I´m not sure if it has much of an impact if the rotation is now a bit slower.

- The AT abilities seem to work properly however wasn´t really able to test them in any appropriate situation.

All in all I´m really satisfied for the moment, it sure is an improvement compared to the live build, although I personally from my short testing have the feeling that the class has become more easier to play compared to earlier days arround Lvl 75.

[flipmanrjjr]

Running Blue line warden and running out of power in ~30 seconds with only using self heals rotation 21 - 212 - 2121 - 21212. Character panel says I have 1,040 power per second regen in combat and I am currently at 64k power (18k fate). Granted, it looks like the self heals cost the most power of all the gambits which doesn't quite make sense. My understanding was that tanks wouldn't have to power manage.

Each mastery is about 1k power cost and gambit builders are ~500 each, so just building up the gambits alone will counter the in-combat regen. Then using the gambits themselves means you will run out very fast. Unless the goal was to force dark before the dawn to be required in the rotation. For an extreme example, Celebration of Skill looks to be the biggest power cost skill at 9,360 power but if you add in the cost of just building the gambit it can cost upwards of 12,049 (shield bash + spear and shield + spear and spear). With the masteries you can use this skill in ~1 second. So net loss of 11k power on 1 gambit.

Maybe make masteries and gambit builders not cost power to use considering the skills themselves already cost power, it just adds to it unnecessarily.

[thymos]

Is it working as intended that traits in the yellow tree cost so much? For example "Piercing Javelins" acts as though it is a new skill, and the first rank costs 2 points. It's remarkable because a lot of the traits in this tree act this way and it seems very different compared to say Minstrel where it's only a handful of traits in Yellow that cost 2 or 3 points. And many of these aren't new skills at all but rather added effects to existing skills, which do not function like this for Minstrel or Brawler either afaik.

Also I will point out that spending 2 or 3 trait points on 1 rank of 1 trait only contributes 1 point into the branch. Is this also intended? Because with respect to all of the aforementioned, it seems very hard to get to the bottom of the yellow tree without giving up something essential.

[LagunaD2]

Have not fought anything yet, so I can't speak to the tuning (which will be critical to viability) but from looking at the talents and new gambits from a tanking perspective, I like the changes a lot.

I think Defensive Strike, Deft Strike and Goad should be distinguished. Right now there is nothing different about them, other than the damage, which makes one strictly better and the other two useless. Maybe make them add a small buff to the next gambit used (the one that will go into battle memory) if it's the same type (Shield, Spear/Javelin or Fist).

Similarly, Brink of Victory and Desolation are practically identical, with almost no difference. Desolation should be different (and better) to reflect the greater gambit length.

In most other gambit sequences, the length 4 and 5 gambits are generally distinguished such that there's a real choice.

Why do we need two buttons for Desperate Combat? Why can't it morph into the Desperate Spear/Shield/Fist ability while active?

Likewise, why not make Battle Prep always active when out of combat, and get rid of the button?

The tooltip for Movement Training is wrong - it says +102%, +104%, etc but the effect is only +2%, +4%, etc.

It would save confusion if the new gambits were granted to players of the appropriate level, rather than needing to visit a trainer.

[thymos]

Is this working as intended?

You cannot have more than a single Gambit Chain concurrent with another one of the same rank it seems. For example I cannot start another Chain directly after having started one, but once you take the initial Chain to 2 you can then initialize a new one.

[Elwha]

Pretty interesting revamp. Since these BR loads/wipes seems to happen & end before you know it, I'll just mention a few things.

Wants

• Please bring back Critical Strike in some form. This is an OG Warden skill. Boring name, but fun to use.
• Spear Gambits should have more burst, main hand/melee, less DoT DPS. Push DoT DPS to Fist Gambits.
• Recklessness Skill: Critical Rating needs a boost for each AT level, especially at tier 3. x2 perhaps
• Rapid Techniques: Duration needs a slight increase for each AT level, especially at tier 3(something like 25-30 seconds total) to allow for the engagement of other AT skills and rotation.
• Desolation Gambit: Why not bring the fear component back to either line? (do you even know how many lone freeps I save from certain death because of this back in the day )
• Shield Tactics Gambit: Why not bring the stun immunity component back to either line? (it's not like we have an in-combat sprint )

Some happy observations

• The AT mech is fun. Bravo on its dev.
• Rapid Techniques is fun. I like it.
• The new Adroit Manoeuvre & Warden’s Triumph is nice. Much improved.

[Trapsinger]

Hi! Long time listener first time caller as it were. Logged into the test server for the first time ever to look at the warden changes.

Lots of typos in changed skills, like "Offensive Strike" still thinks it's a morale-tap, and "The Boot" still thinks it's an interrupt.

I think, if I'm understanding it correctly, there are two different traits in Blue Line that do exactly the same thing? "Persevere" gives +15% Persevere line healing, and "Indefatigable" gives +20% Shield Line healing. But aren't the "Persevere Line" and the "Shield Line" the same thing? At the very least could you make the name of the line the same in both traits, so it's more obvious that they do the same thing and don't leave us wondering? But preferably could you combine them and put some other more interesting trait in place of one of them? I don't have something specific in mind, but maybe bring back a single target morale-tap? The one attached to the gambit builders before would be nice, and wouldn't add a gambit to a single spec. Or an in-combat movement speed skill, like charge? Really anything other than two different traits that do exactly the same thing.

Overall the changes seem good. The gambits make more sense, the advanced techniques are a great addition, it looks like it will be easier to maintain the right buffs and debuffs. I do miss the single target morale-taps though. I know they weren't *great* but they were flavorful, if that makes sense?

I'd also love it if the aoe-taunt, and the damage reflect, on Defiant Challenge were divorced from each other, maybe stick the damage reflect buff on to something that doesn't require the taunt. Could make the damage reflect the replacement for the second +healing trait. And add it to...the...other...skill...? Completing any gambit gives 5 seconds of reflect? something like that?

[LagunaD2]

Shield line healing also buffs Conviction.

[thymos]

After playing around with it Advanced Techniques feel out of place in red line. Building up chains feel quite unnatural because there's very few size 2 Gambits and they are all generally lackluster, you'd almost never want to use them except when all of your other DoTs are already out, but you need to use them before other gambits, and use them 3 times along with 6 other gambits in order to maximize your DPS buff effects in Recklessness and The Way of the Spear. But to maximize DPS in general you want to use them dead last!

So what does this actually look like? Do you not use Recklessness while applying all of your DoTs and only use it like a minute later when you could have used it to start with and had it cooled down about halfway? Do you start off DPSing with your weakest skills instead for 60 seconds to get the maximum effect on Recklessness? Or do you start with Recklessness and just DPS while completely ignoring Advanced Techniques to instead get as many of your strongest gambits out as possible? I think it is probably the latter...The whole thing seems completely ### backwards imo. Especially when you factor in that The Way of the Spear is just another version of Recklessness! Except unlike Recklessness it is almost useless without Advanced Techniques to consume, which are in short supply and are also consumed by Recklessness! So it is in fact just a worse and more expensive version of Recklessness that you need to go all the way to to the bottom of the yellow trait tree for!

I do not think this design paradigm works. It makes your DPS constantly feel unnatural and "mistaken" because there is no right answer, regardless of how you proceed you are doing something "backwards". If it were me I would change The Way of the Spear to do something else, maybe have it give you the effects of Adroit Maneuver and Warden's Triumph instantly, or have it extend the duration of all of your DoTs, the more AT it consumes the longer they are extended.

[gaara908776]

I’ll give my two cents on both Blue line and Red line regarding these changes.

Blue Line: These changes seem to be a pretty decent overall outcome.
1. Healing could use some extra fine tuning to scaling, aside from outlier skills that are obviously broken. The self sustain spread over a variety of gambit types is pretty decent and seems like a nice bridge between Warden and tanks with higher passive Mits.
2. AT seems to work pretty intuitively with Blue Warden as there is little to no drawback in using shorter gambits followed by longer ones to build AT outside of burst self healing scenarios.
3. For the Free People looks decent. I think the buff to incoming damage reduction on self should be slightly higher when used with 3 AT(reduction to incoming damage to group is fine at 12.5%)
4. This is my only gripe so far. Restorative shield work is pretty awful. The skill basically has zero duration, even when used at 3 AT. I don’t think the duration of the skill should be based on hits taken. It would be much more impactful if the skill had a set duration based on AT used. You could reduce the % heal per hit significantly, but extend the duration to 10-15 seconds at full AT and it would become much more useful. As it is currently implemented, I don’t see many Blue Wardens wasting AT on this skill.

Red Line: This line feels like something is missing. I’m not entirely sure what it is but I’ll do my best to point out some of the less enjoyable aspects and where I think improvements could be made.
1. There is a huge disparity between the value of consuming Power Attack line DoT’s and consuming Surety of Death line DoT’s. Using Cauterizing steel feels pretty impactful and offers pretty nice single target spike damage. Consuming the AoE light DoT’s feels pretty worthless.
2. Spear of Fate seems like a really interesting way to incorporate high mastery cost sustained damage into a rotation. I imagine this gambit will have the potential to be incredibly valuable on targets with lower morale. However, for the mastery cost this skill incurs, the damage should be scaled up a bit IMO. It’s a gambit that is incredibly costly to maintain and it should be a bit more rewarding to do so.
3. Recklessness should be reverted to a cooldown that is separate from AT. It fit well as the singular on demand DPS cooldown Warden had and it doesn’t feel enjoyable to have to delay using the skill 20-30 seconds into a fight to obtain its full effect.
4. The single target “burst” damage problem that red warden has still doesn’t seem solved at all. When parsing, it still took nearly a full minute to reach comparable DPS to what Hunter/Champ/RK/Brawler/Burg can reach in less than 10 seconds. I.E. in a ~450k parse(highest I could reach in my limited parsing today) my first minute was only 370k. The 2nd and 3rd minutes were between 460k-500k. The amount of ramp up time it takes Red warden to reach comparable numbers to other DPS classes still takes significantly too long. If this isn’t improved, we’re not really in any better of a position as a DPS than we were prior to this class rework.
5. Personally I think Warden should be able to reach the sweet spot in their DPS around 30 seconds into a parse, considering most other DPS classes are at their “sweet spot” from the get-go. I won’t make suggestions on how to achieve this outcome but it really feels like red warden is still lacking in this update.

Thanks for your hard work and I hope the feedback helps!

[Sindhol]

After playing around with it Advanced Techniques feel out of place in red line.

I do not think this design paradigm works. It makes your DPS constantly feel unnatural and "mistaken" because there is no right answer, regardless of how you proceed you are doing something "backwards".

I agree.


[s]A lot of gambits are still missing, including Shield Mastery, Shield Tactics, and all the new gambits. As such, the following is very preliminary, and testing tanking is difficult (missing buffs include +5% mits and all the incoming damage, so the current version has worse base defences than live).[/s]

Okay, having located and trained the new gambits, this post has now been updated--please disregard the tiny text (this forum does not do strikethrough). The conclusion is unchanged.

I think the new DPS rotation is a lot trickier. You are maintaining a lot of buffs and bleeds with different durations:
- Fist-spear bleeds, 8-9 pulses @ 3 seconds per pulse.
- Fist-shield bleeds, 8-9 pulses @ 4 seconds per pulse.
- Power Attack bleeds, 10-11 pulses @ 4 seconds per pulse.
- Marked/Diminished Target, 30 + 30 second debuff.
- Possibly Adroit Maneuver/Warden's Triumph, 25 + 30 second buff.

As you can see, a lot of durations are longer, and in general, the rotation has a much longer ramp-up time. That's exacerbated if you use chains.

Gambit chains increase damage for the second gambit by about 5% and the final gambit by about 10% (as per Vastin's post, I'm going off tooltips, not actually observed hits). That means the effective damage of throwing a War-Cry in before your Desolation is about 5% of Brink and 10% of Desolation (plus its own damage), giving War-Cry roughly the same damage as Brink overall. That's not strong enough to warrant an early War-Cry; I think that in the interest of ramp-ups, you'd want to get all your bigger bleeds up first, then move to the smaller bleeds, and on subsequent rotations, use the smaller bleeds at the end of your previous rotation to bump the damage on your 5-icon bleeds (but not Warden's Triumph, because that still hits like a wet noodle).

I'm not quite used to Strong Foundations yet, but it feels weird. For example, in my mind, Shield-Fist is primarily for building Surety of Death and Desolation, but it's not affected by my fist builder. I'll need to do more testing to get used to this. Initial impressions are that building gambits is really easy, and frankly a bit too easy. But with the new five-icon gambits on the way, it's possible that more masteries will be used, and it won't be so bad. I'll note that I do prefer masteries as something of a check on how many (and which) gambits you can build, not an APM requirement on playing a warden.


A few more notes:
Shorter gambit animations are nice. It's really noticable when going back to live.

Javelin gambits pull from javelin DPS, giving them much higher overall damage. This is not necessarily a problem, it just means wardens may want to DPS from assailment full-time (while in melee range still, because Deso/Surety). Assailment gambit building is still a bit sluggish, though. That could be a trade-off.

The new "burst" gambits are so weak as to be nearly useless. They do less damage than an equal-length bleed gambit's initial damage plus a single bleed pulse. This also applies to the new, higher-tier gambits (Cauterizing Steel and Unseen Strikes).

Two-icon gambits are still really weak. There are only about three you'd ever want to hit in a DPS rotation, and not that often: the Boot, Precise Strike, and War-Cry. The former comes up once a minute for Marked Target, the latter two every 32-36 seconds for the bleed.

Wardens can no longer apply Marked/Diminished Target in an AoE, except through Javelin of Deadly Force. That's a bit of a nerf, but I may just have to learn to aim JoDF (annoying skill, that one).

Ranged Resounding Challenge lacks the initial hit.

Celebration of Skill has a smaller initial heal than Restoration.

Spear of Fate doesn't scale properly. Neither does Javelin of Fate.

The cash-out damage on Cauterizing Steel is quite low, lower than the final pulse of a bleed and lower than Lasting Impression rank 2, and way lower than both. So as-is, CS is only useful as a way to end bleeds you no longer want/need, and not as a way to increase DPS. As a spam rotation to do burst DPS, it's not very good, either. Actually, it's terrible.

The cash-out damage on Unseen Strikes seems better, although it's still weaker than the final pulse of a bleed, so you wouldn't use this in a DPS rotation. I don't think US spam or (for example) Deso - Unseen Strikes is going to make for an AoE burst rotation either, so this is mainly useful for clearing bleeds before a reflect goes up (doing it after is suicide). One more thing: it seems that if the initial hit (or maybe the first cashout) crits, all cashouts crit? At least, I'm getting a lot of all-crit cashouts. Nothing wrong with that, per se, but worth noting.

The cooldown on Shield Tactics has not been removed. I know that this is intentional, but it still contradicts what was promised in the developer diary, and it's just kinda stupid. The duration doesn't scale with gambit buff duration, either.

Recklessness is worse for initial burst, which wardens were already bad at.

Rapid Techniques is worse than Seize the Moment and Counter-Attack. The whole point of StM/CA is that you never quite know when you're going to get it, so you have to be quick on your feet to make good use of it. Rapid Techniques, on the other hand, is just an excuse to ignore the gambit system for a bit.

Way of the Spear/Shield/Fist seem pretty okay. Not great, but okay. The healing buff is really powerful when used on Perservere.

The heal on Desperate Combat (shield) is okay, but not really a cooldown. It's more or less Resolution spam. Which we could already do. And is a gambit, which we're supposed to be about, right?

Keeping track of all different bleeds is still a bit of a pain, especially for spear gambits. This wasn't a problem in the past, because all bleeds had the same duration; it'd be nice to have a better view now that we actually need to think about what to refresh. Plugins are a thing, but I like to think they shouldn't be required.

All the rating (de)buffs are really low. They are apparently not increased by gambit chains. This also applies to Piercing Javelins.

Having to trait javelin range to get crit chance makes no sense. Idem for Snap Shot requiring Javelin of Deadly Force and Marked Target requiring Diminished Target.

Marked Target and No Respite for the Wicked apply to the same gambit chain. The Offensive Strike chain has nothing going for it, maybe move one of the two there?

Desolation fear and Boar's Rush daze are gone, so wardens are now extremely bad at CC, down from merely being bad at CC. It won't come up much, but I don't want to solo Fire & Ice wing now.

Persevere heals a lot, but the rest of the heals haven't been touched. Morale-taps are way weaker than Perservere right now. You need to hit 32 targets with Exultation of Battle to equal Perservere (for HPS--EoB pulses slower). You need to hit 5 targets with Resolution to equal Persevere's initial heal. Also, my Resolution hits for 34567 now. Nice.

For the Free Peoples has been nerfed significantly. It's now at best -15% damage taken for the fellowship and -27.5% for the warden. We did already mention that the existing -25% wasn't strong enough even if it was instant. This should be increased to at least -25% and -50%.

Wardens still don't get outgoing healing from agility (or vitality or anything else). If we have heals based on OGH, we should get some rating points from our main stat.

As predicted, warden block chance is nerfed, due to Persevere line block buffs and the gambit builder bonuses being dropped. Parry and evade aren't affected that much.
- I'm comparing level 130 wardens in tank raid gear of that level, with all seven gambit buffs on BR (with the new +rating trait), and all eight on live (no shield builder proc). I do not have BPE Word of Craft traceries.
- On live, I have 39.4% full BPE and 91.5% partial BPE with 87.4% total partial mitigations (I realize this is a funky stat, but bear with me).
- On BR, I have 37.3% full BPE and 66.1% partial BPE with 80.3% total partial mitigations. That's a lot (25%!) less partial BPE, mainly due to the loss of Perserevere, and a bit less in other departments, mainly due to lower rating buffs.
- It is easier to maintain all buffs on BR, so in terms of defence-per-unit-time-spent it's probably not worse, but if we consider what sped-up gambits and +buff duration would've done on live, it's still a pretty big nerf.

Live (full chance/partial chance/partial migitation)
14.5/43.7/34.6 block
13.7/21.6/22.4 parry
11.2/27.2/30.4 evade

BR (full chance/partial chance/partial migitation)
12.2/19.0/27.2 block
14.6/22.6/25.2 parry
10.5/24.5/27.9 evade

Pre-buffing is more important now than it was before. You still spend like 10+ seconds getting ready to pull. It's a bit of a pain.

The loss of Momentum, Shield's Up, Seize the Moment, Critical Strike, and javelin debuffs in general has basically removed the concept of the warden as ambusher. Might as well remove the Ambush skill and just add a sprint at this point.

I think the loss of non-gambit ranged attacks makes it a little bit more annoying to pull things from range while in In the Fray. Resounding Challenge is excellent, but it's a bit of a pain to build it in Battle Preparation each time. Stance-swapping is similarly annoying. Ranged auto-attacks aren't affected by javelin range. This is not really a big deal, but it'd be nice to have that last part changed, just for convenience.

With Quick Sweep gone, wardens have significantly fewer options for full AoE DPS. Since bleeds are also significantly longer (+2 pulses total), a full AoE rotation is likely going to involve stacking single-target bleeds (especially spear-bleeds) on multiple targets. Cashouts are universally not worth it.

A lot of traits are really boring and overlap.
- Bane of Shadow and Foe of Darkness both boost light damage by 20%.
- Vital Points and Tempered Spear Tips both boost bleed damage, the first by 20% and the second by 25%. Since Barbed Javelins is no more, there is no difference between these two.
- Persevere and Indefatigable both boost healing. The only difference is that Persevere doesn't apply to Conviction. However, Conviction is by far the weakest heal. Safeguard heals twice as much, Restoration three times as much, and Persevere about nine times as much (since it's the only one that got buffed). So basically, these traits are the same.
- On the Offence and Fear Not Darkness both boost morale-tap damage and healing. The latter is just twice as powerful.
- Close Quarters Combatant boosts melee damage, Ranged Damage boosts ranged damage, Physical Mastery boosts... you guessed it. These are all really boring straight damage buffs.
- War-Cry and Way of the Spear boost fist gambit initial damage and spear gambit initial damage by 10% each. So basically, you get 10% initial damage. Very interesting. The War-Cry description does not correctly state that it only applies to initial damage.
- Critical Protection has somehow not been touched. How do these traits keep surviving every rework? Every tank has them, and they suck.

---

Conclusion
I don't think this update achieved the goal of giving wardens a burst DPS alternative. I think it made warden DPS slower (even as gambits got faster!) and with a longer ramp-up, instead. I'm okay with that, actually, but I do think that having more useless gambits (e.g. Onslaught/Wall of Steel/Offensive Strike/Combination Strike/Boar's Rush/new 5-icon gambit in that chain) is not great. I mean, Boar's Rush was rarely (~never) actually worth using, but it was always something you could do, y'know? Now it's just a pointless gambit. In general, all gambits feel a lot more one-dimensional and "samey".

I'm not sure on tanking performance. I don't think warden base defenses are on par with the guardian's (guardian mits are still 10% higher, which is stronger than -12% incoming damage, and guardians have better BPE, plus Redirect). However, the Perservere heal buff is doing a lot of work right now, and if that's a preview of what warden healing is going to be like, it's a real hope spot in a pretty meh update, and possibly makes up for the lower base defence, as it should (the power cost is going to matter here, too). I do miss that chunk of partial block chance, though. It's a much more unique thing to build a class around than -incoming damage, even if it doesn't always work.

As it stands, For the Free Peoples cannot fill the same niche as Juggernaut or Thickened Hide. The idea that Restorative Shield-Work or Desperate Combat could bridge that gap is... hilarious, and with their 90-second cooldowns, they're pretty much just a poor Catch a Breath/Thrill of Danger equivalent (for the former), or an easier Resolution spam (for the latter). Way of the Shield does really help healing, though.

I'm sorry to see yellow line go. It would've been much more exciting to see yellow line reworked to make its concept shine, because it had a great concept (debuffing out-fighter who can transition to bursty melee brute for a short while). It could even have brought some of the burst damage that the warden supposedly needed. Not really anything good to say about this, I'm afraid.

[thymos]

I agree.


A lot of gambits are still missing, including Shield Mastery, Shield Tactics, and all the new gambits. As such, the following is very preliminary, and testing tanking is difficult (missing buffs include +5% mits and all the incoming damage, so the current version has worse base defences than live).

I think they are available at the Warden trainer for whatever reason.

[Sindhol]

I think they are available at the Warden trainer for whatever reason.

Right, I'll go ahead and check them out, then update the post above.

Edit: Post appropriately updated.