Thread: After Much Waiting...

Originally Posted by Feybobiam

If this is true, why would anyone use Assailment? Recklessness deals more damage, and both stances offer ICPR. It'd get left behind and be Ardour 2.0.

Because Assailment gives buffs to the group's ranged and tactical dps, Recklessness doesn't. Like I said, it'll depend on the group make up. That's how I'm reading it at least.

Originally Posted by thunderchickn

A couple of your concerns seem to be shared by Orion and are being addressed already. There are quite a few Gambits just in the Fist line ones that we have seen that lower threat when in Assailment. I'm sure this is to deter any prevalent form of ranged tanking.

The other thing is the buffs. We are getting new stuff not just relying on what we have now. Ranged DPS is not just coming from the current javelin skills we have. We are able to buff our group (up to at least +3% ranged/tactical damage, and we've only seen less than 1/3 of our Gambits!).

I think Recklessness = pure DPS and Assailment = DPS/support. I don't think either will step on the other's toes too much, at least from this preliminary information they don't look like they will.

I skimmed through it on my first pass, which was probably not smart of me, and didn't notice the threat down or low-threat stuff. Regardless, I did see the buffs, and not sure what that'll do. It'll be cute, I guess, but if you bring a Warden and already have tank filled, you're going to bring him as DPS. Are you really going to want to bring him as little +1%s and +3%s of damage for the group when he could just deal better DPS in melee? Don't get me wrong, it's an interesting idea, and better tied to ranged than to melee, I'm just not convinced it'll be all okay. It's like giving little Johnny five bucks but giving little Davey two bucks. And a stick of gum. That stick of gum better be the best gum in the world. Doesn't look like it will be. It really comes down to this question: Which one will do more DPS, and why should I care about whichever has the least DPS? It's not as simple as the RK's "lightning is burst + mobility vs fire's power and threat management", or the Hunter's "more crits and bigger crits vs faster shots and more precise shots". That we can see.

But! That most important part of all this: we only have part of the details. We'll see more and perhaps be able to make a better assessment. I just strongly encourage some caution and careful balance/testing on this one. Wardens really don't need it worse than they already have it.

Originally Posted by horus418

Because Assailment gives buffs to the group's ranged and tactical dps, Recklessness doesn't. Like I said, it'll depend on the group make up. That's how I'm reading it at least.

Will that buff to damage be worth more or less than the disparity between Assailment and Recklessness, though? We have zero numbers to tell at this point, but when you break it down, if you have a tank, a healer and a Captain, that "+3% Ranged/Tactical" is only going to Hunter, RK or Lore-master, and even the Lore-master won't be doing what Hunter or RK can do, whether red traited or focused on CC/debuffs. Let's not forget we'll have Champs and Burgs competing for that bit as well. Is 3% for a Hunter worth losing DPS by dropping to Assailment? Of course, we increase the odds by dropping a Captain, or adding a secondary War-speech Minstrel, but... at that point the group is already sub-optimal, isn't it? I stress optimization here because Wardens need help there more than anything - that is to say, raids. Wardens already run around in skirmishes or Foundry no problem, that's not the issue. Not to make a dig at the class or whatever, but let's face it: This is to make Wardens useful again, and that doesn't mean easy stuff that people can blow through, that means highly optimized groups. Of course, I suppose that also means Wardens just have to tank well, and a raid wouldn't have a Warden not-tanking as much as it wouldn't have a Guardian not-tanking.

It comes down to what the other buffs are, so we'll see. Isn't looking too interesting though. But we'll see.

Any chance that in assailment the wardens aim skill could also boost accuracy a bit?

Originally Posted by Orion

Battle Preparation

The skill will enable use of Gambit Builders and Masteries for 30 seconds. Any Gambit Builders or Masteries used while under the effects of Battle Preparation WILL NOT apply boosts or bonuses. Battle Preparation has a short cooldown, can only be used out of combat and upon executing a Gambit Battle Preparation is dispelled. Additionally, if Battle Preparation expires before you execute the Gambit you have built it will be removed from the Gambit UI. (This may not end up this way.)

One gambit use and then a cooldown? ya... next to useless. Making wardens enter combat with zero, one, or two (if your lucky enough that the pug even lets you take that much time) gambits up is like telling guardians and champs that they have to start pulls with half their armor off.

If you make it a toggle that auto-dispels upon entering combat, THEN we have something. Let the warden run to the next mob group constantly keeping he defenses up (his armor on), and use a javelin clicky skill or manually dispel it to pull the next group.


And while while we're talking out of combat skills... can we talk about the uselessness of Forced March? Between mount speed, availability, and animation shortening; Forced Marched is useless outside of festival play time. That 80% power use is just too much.

Originally Posted by Lazlo_Hollyfeld

One gambit use and then a cooldown? ya... next to useless. Making wardens enter combat with zero, one, or two (if your lucky enough that the pug even lets you take that much time) gambits up is like telling guardians and champs that they have to start pulls with half their armor off.

If you make it a toggle that auto-dispels upon entering combat, THEN we have something. Let the warden run to the next mob group constantly keeping he defenses up (his armor on), and use a javelin clicky skill or manually dispel it to pull the next group.


And while while we're talking out of combat skills... can we talk about the uselessness of Forced March? Between mount speed, availability, and animation shortening; Forced Marched is useless outside of festival play time. That 80% power use is just too much.

All fantastic points.

Orion, I only have one request right now. Please fix gambit progression!

Example:

Type: AoE DoT
X2: War Cry
X3: Brink of Victory
X4: ??? Surety of Death ???
X5: Desolation

Also, I'm just curious how this is going to work out; will there be any point using fist gambits when running in recklessness? For example, if my main goal is to DPS with my spear, why would I ever use Spear of Virtue to DPS when Mighty Blow will do more damage, even on a critical.


BTW, did anyone else notice the tactical damage buff? Are they going to split us into physical damage + tactical damage?

Originally Posted by Orion

Gambit Builders

BPE bonuses are still partials only. They will now allow for +6% for each of Block, Parry and Evade.

...


Stances

Assailment damage buff is on you. Assailment name is not changing. Assailment skills are always at range - now, this is something that I have not nailed down but unlike Hunter ranged skills I might impose a min distance on Javelin-based skills, this would be 100% based on where the DPS ends up.

Way of the Warden != Stance it will now enhance each stance for a period of time.

-Aww boo for it being partials. Are we getting some form of alternative mitigation that will make up for the 166% damage we take compared to Guardians? Considering Finesse wipes out our intended main line of defense?

-Fine, fine, I just wish you would have gone with a name whose abbreviation wont be censored by the forums. We'll have Det, Reck, and ### stance. (Any Shin Chan fans out there? @ss stance, @ss stance...!) We can talk about how hard we shoot things whenever we're in ###. That's not going to become a bad joke at all.

Min distance for ranged spear gambits I can get behind. I'd rather have the better DPS with the range restriction. Min distance for "classic" Jav skills is something to be avoided, at least while not in ###...they're still an important part of melee rotations.

And WotW sounds good like that. We'll have NS as an "oh cr@p" skill and WotW as an "I have a bad feeling about this..." skill. And you wont have the problem of WotW not inheriting legacy bonuses then, either. If you're still tweaking it though, could you bring the cooldown down to 5 mins or so, even if it reduces the overall efficacy? Something like what Hunters got with Needful Haste, where its not so long that you're afraid to "waste" it, but not so short that you "always" have it active. A 15m cooldown, its only going to be for boss fights. At 5m, its worth it for "tough" midlevel enemies as well.

Originally Posted by Lazlo_Hollyfeld

And while while we're talking out of combat skills... can we talk about the uselessness of Forced March? Between mount speed, availability, and animation shortening; Forced Marched is useless outside of festival play time. That 80% power use is just too much.

Uh I use FM all the time...its not Find the Path, but its hardly "useless". I use it whenever I'm collecting resources in grey-mob areas. Sometimes its not worth it to mount back up if another node is close by. I use it in instances where you cant call mounts, whenever I know there's no danger of combat (there's a lot of that in Moria, for example; the crafting instances, for one, especially with the non-aggro Deep Claws). I use it a lot in town too, when im popping in and out of crafting and auction halls.

Its a utility skill, thats what its supposed to do. What do you want him to do, just get rid of it entirely?

I love this.
I love this.
Oh boy this is too cool.

There are two reasons why I love this.
1. I love the vision of the New Warden.
2. Serious nerd moment: possibly only other systems designers can see the incredible cleverness of this design. Regardless of the actual result, the technical design is just too cool.

I am going to hunt through my house for cookys and cooky crumbs and cooky wrappers and cooky recipes and give them all to Orion. RESPECT!

Originally Posted by droid

Uh I use FM all the time...its not Find the Path, but its hardly "useless". I use it whenever I'm collecting resources in grey-mob areas. Sometimes its not worth it to mount back up if another node is close by. I use it in instances where you cant call mounts, whenever I know there's no danger of combat (there's a lot of that in Moria, for example; the crafting instances, for one, especially with the non-aggro Deep Claws). I use it a lot in town too, when im popping in and out of crafting and auction halls.

Its a utility skill, thats what its supposed to do. What do you want him to do, just get rid of it entirely?

Lets look at the description for Forced March:

"Wardens are used to hard marching to reach threatened towns in time." The crippling power cost makes that use for the skill impossible.

Perhaps a change in description? "Wardens are used to sprinting around town, but must stand and watch a fight happen in the distance if they've been sprinting lately."

For a non-joking answer? Perhaps change it so rather than an 80% off the top debuff, it's a "greatly decreased icpr" on expiration debuff.

Just give them the Exhaustion portion of the Fight On skill that Champions get.

In fact, you can keep it!

Forced march is awesome for running through Moria cause I don't have a goat, and also to race Mazog in the swamps during that epic quest.

Battle Preparation definitely sounds like a solid start to one of Warden tank's current weaknesses, initial squishyness. Almost everything else we've seen about this revamp seems to be headed in the opposite direction, however. When balancing the class for tanking, the dev's aren't going base things off a warden with no (or 1) buff up, it will be based on how much damage they take with most if not all buffs up, otherwise they'd be OP once they are up and running. By adding more potential buffs to keep up, and more complex and time consuming ways to build these buffs (i'm not complaining about this increased complexity in the least), there is the potential that while Wardens may become much more competent tanks in protracted encounters, they will become even more squishy in large pulls or heavily front-loaded damage encounters. To me, while battle preparation is a step in addressing a current weakness, the other proposed changes may re-balance the class in such a way that many situations will become even more troublesome. Why not make battle preparation something that isn't tied to gambits, and just be an out-of-combat skill. If a warden is in determination stance, and hits battle preparation, they enter combat with 60% of their potential avoidance buff ratings for 10 seconds (semi-random numbers I made up). Let the other stances provide a relevant buff, like an auto-crit for the first attack in melee dps spec to start the DoTs rolling, or automatically granting a minor group buff while in ranged dps spec.

On another note, I'm interested in some clarification on how the tiering up of buffs and DoTs and the like will work. Please don't make it like the current bleed stacking system where you have to follow a specific order of gambits in order to actually realize the benefits. If these buff tiering systems work where for example; War-Cry must precede Brink of Victory, which must then be followed by Surety of Death in order to receive the top buff, it will reduce a warden's ability to be adaptive, innovative, and force largely pre-set rotations. By all means require that WC, BoV, and SoD be active at once for the buff to activate, just don't force the order in which they must be applied.

Originally Posted by Lazlo_Hollyfeld

One gambit use and then a cooldown? ya... next to useless. Making wardens enter combat with zero, one, or two (if your lucky enough that the pug even lets you take that much time) gambits up is like telling guardians and champs that they have to start pulls with half their armor off.

If you make it a toggle that auto-dispels upon entering combat, THEN we have something. Let the warden run to the next mob group constantly keeping he defenses up (his armor on), and use a javelin clicky skill or manually dispel it to pull the next group.

As it currently stands now, I have to be in combat before I can fire off a gambit. This skill will allow me to get one off before combat begins -- that's a plus in my book. I'll use it to fire off SM so I don't have to worry about that for the first minute of the fight. I also try to fire off SM near the end of the fight so I'll have some defensive buff up at the start of the next trash pull. The skill will be far from useless. Are you seriously asking for the ability to fire off three or more gambits before combat even begins? I ask this becuase your comment above suggests that you think even being able to get off two gambits before the rest of the group joins in is insufficent.

@spelunker

I don't think this will be a problem with the tiering of buffs. Orion has clarified that we can start a fight with the full power of the buff (evade specifically, I assume it's the same with others) by using the longest applicable Gambit. The buff will be shorter, but we can refresh it to get the full duration. Alternatively you can work up from the smaller buffs to retain the full duration.

At least that's how I interpreted it.

<sadpanda-mode>The Forum software goes into death spin when I try to read user blogs/pages/profiles.</sadpanda-mode> At least I can view the page if I log out of the forum...

so here is one more article of concern orion, the new tower of orthanc raid armour as you know has sets based of of trait line, if the yellow set is now dps set does that mean the set is changing? if so could we get a preview of it and any other sets that are being changes as part of this? i don't want to purchase somehting now that i won't want in a month or two especially at the price the TO armour is. thanks for hearing my concern.

First I'd like to say I like the looks of these upgrades. The people wondering about the added complexity haven't really thought it through the basic skills are on the whole remaining unchanged the only difference is in the details and bonuses, the fierce resolve line is still AOE leeches, the power attack line still does damage, and the persevere line is still self heals.

The only thing I was wondering is if you considered making the fierce resolve line AOE in Assailment stance center on the target instead of the warden. The range is to low for it to be effective in ranged it would mean that you have to run into the middle of the group to use it. I would even be ok with removing or toning down the AOE part if it was ranged I'm just somewhat iffy on having a main line that is not really desirable in one of the stances.

All in all I'm pretty excited by what I've seen so far. It looks as though each stance is going to fundamentally change how the class plays - it will be like learning the class again with even more complexity with gambits being context sensitive to stances. That's a good thing IMO

Originally Posted by Erasluindor

Any chance that in assailment the wardens aim skill could also boost accuracy a bit?

I second this. As a PvP Warden I already rely on my javelin skills a lot, and the loss of the accuracy passives with RoI has hurt us (even ambush from stealth can miss whereas it was a guaranteed hit before). Increasing the to hit % via gambits in assailment would be good.

Originally Posted by Feraxks

As it currently stands now, I have to be in combat before I can fire off a gambit. This skill will allow me to get one off before combat begins -- that's a plus in my book. I'll use it to fire off SM so I don't have to worry about that for the first minute of the fight. I also try to fire off SM near the end of the fight so I'll have some defensive buff up at the start of the next trash pull. The skill will be far from useless. Are you seriously asking for the ability to fire off three or more gambits before combat even begins? I ask this becuase your comment above suggests that you think even being able to get off two gambits before the rest of the group joins in is insufficent.

The official party line on how warden is supposed to work is NOT that we bpe damage rather than mitigate it. It's that the mitigation gap is covered primarily by self heals and leaches. Leaches before combat starts obviously won't work at all, so that leaves the self heals as our "armor". So, yes, telling wardens that they get to go into combat with no self heals running is like telling guards or champs they need to spend the first moments of the fight with half their armor off.

Yes, being able to reliably start every fight with Shield Mastery up is nicer than what we have now, which is nothing. But being able to go into fights with bpe AND self heals would put us on par with other tanks in the first moments of the fight.

As for what I'm "seriously" asking for... Getting two gambits out before a pull, say, Shield Mastery and then Restoration, still does not put warden at the same level of damage cancelation as the other tanks. It would still be a Guardian starting combat without his helmet, gloves and cuirass. Warden is the "active" tank. Well, I'm "seriously asking" to be allowed to be more active.

Of course, this comes down to what Orion considers to be a "short" cooldown. One second? Annoying that I have to keep hitting it, but workable. 3-5 seconds? Not very often will I get the chance to have more than 2 gambits running. AKA, my armor won't be on at the start of the fight. More than 5 seconds? OK, well I guess a permanent Shield Mastery is better than nothing, but I have to wonder if all this coding infrastructure is worth it. At that point, why not just make Shield Mastery a clicky skill and call it a day.

im really looking forward to the other blog post

As far as this thread goes, i'm happy your working hard on the wardens orion.
However in the changes iv'e seen i can't look over what droid said.

In raids we tend to have 2 tanks, i recall very well that at some point with the guards protection on me, as well as the parry boost from the captain alongside my self-buffs i had:
25% block chance
20% parry chance
20% evade chance

However with finesse in play i barely B/P/E'd any attack
And now we're getting more B/P/E? i mean if with my current self-buffs i get very close to the cap, what will more B/P/E mean?
Also, in case the attacks are tactical and can't be B/P/E'd what then? we just die as easely?

I would rather have the defensive gambits increase my current mitigations, or reduce my incomming damage

Our mitigations aren't addressed, and that's our main problem, i'm happy to see there are some nice changes, but i'm afraid that this will make our tanking role to be the same thing as it is now, unless we get a system to defend ourselfs against finesse.....

Like you stated orion, you said a revamp in between champs and mini's
The champions skills allows them to survive very well, and even tough people call champions off tanks, if a champ is built for tanking as in getting to 12K morale forsaking all might their tanking is BETTER then what a warden currently has to offer.

I mean Invincible, reducing their incomming damage up to 40% common and 20% tactical with 1M cooldown and 10S duration wich can be increased by their legacy
A bubble with SD for over 4K morale wich can have a 1M cooldown, and traited said cooldown can be reduced by 5S per wild attack you use.
Dire need wich can potencially restore 75%-100% of your morale having a minimum of 4M cooldown
Then you still have bracing attack wich traited heals you and increased your incomming healing by 15% for 10seconds
What about hedge? increasing your armour for a rediculous ammount of time and traited it can be active all the fight.

I mean seriosly, champs can do the job, guards can do the job, what do they have in common? they don't tend to concentrate on B/P/E's

I'm thrilled your work, but at the same time i fear the outcome that U6 may bring, as it is the last chance for my warden, and i'm not considering taking a secondary role when my primary is tanking

MT

I'm thrilled your work, but at the same time i fear the outcome that U6 may bring, as it is the last chance for my warden, and i'm not considering taking a secondary role when my primary is tanking

I completely agree with Exeons post THIS is the last chance I'm giving to my warden as well ,I switched over from a hunter so that I could survive...it was all fun and game till it started to matter in Isengard instances ...We get wasted so quickly that we have no time to think...no time to pull off anything ...Battle preparedness may address a little of this but seriously I just want to justify the 700 TP that I spent buying this class

I WANT TO TANK IN PEACE AND NOT BE BROKEN INTO PIECES!

Originally Posted by MTminas

Our mitigations aren't addressed, and that's our main problem, i'm happy to see there are some nice changes, but i'm afraid that this will make our tanking role to be the same thing as it is now, unless we get a system to defend ourselfs against finesse.....

We have to wait for rest of blogs. Orion didn't really touched tankning in this blog. Shield gambits. He mentioned, for example, changes in Conviction. Then I light a torch .

ORION I love my class and now I am fighting for it please understand the core issue here, we need to be able to tank well ,we don't need mitigations or anything fancy, just boost us up in your own way so that we can tank again and compete with the best ......I know you are one of the best class mods around just because you made this amazing class ,but please please the class needs you to stand up for it once again.........

Orion while we're talking about and reworking recklessness and determination is there any possibility you can address something that has frustrated me as a warden: our complete lack of viable AOE dps.

Gambits like Wall of Steel and Onslaught are perfectly good candidates for modification to AOE melee dps. While we may in future be able to compete with Hunters as viable ranged dps I just don't see us fairly competing with a Champ as AOE dps.

Please if you're able to, give it some thought as we near Update 6.

So far I only really like the Battle Preparation change.

- Another series of many changes to make people relearn portions of the class. It is good to try different approaches, except that it is annoying to always have a few weeks or a month of learning before being on your top game again.
- Melee dps seems to be fine as it is, but the problem has always been the need to farm might gear instead of vitality gear, which means a whole new approach to the class. I presume agility will be needed for a ranged build, so that is even more farming. Not good to have basically 3 classes in one. I foresee myself making a ton of macros to switch gear when I'm dps'ing in ranged, melee, or if I'm tanking....
- The combination between tanking and dps is therefore a lot less effective. I don't know why these roles seem to be this-or-that kind of things, like the Runekeeper... It would be a lot better if I had the option of tanking with selfhealing, tanking with groupbuffing or tanking with dps.
- There are always going to be sub-par gambits for tanking, self-healing, or dps'ing. I'm sure with the upcoming changes, it will just lead to other gambits being used less.

So far, it looks really fun, and I'm still trying to wrap my head around fist gambits being tied to ranged damage. Love the group damage buffs. Like battle prep. (and a few other things beside)

I'll save any reservations about damage/crit reduction I have until I see the blue line changes.

So it's going to be in Update 6 =( Not 5.2 ...... Looks great though. Sth new about the set changes....? If the blue set is going to be the ranged dps set I want an option to exchange it!

So we are becoming awesome damage dealer in excuse to our inferior tanking?

Some great stuff here. I particularly look forward to seeing all of the preview blogs before trying to wrap my mind around this new complex being, the Warden 2.0.

I don't really see much here to address how we cope with the basic mitigation gap (hope and expect more is coming in follow-up blog posts), though being able to start out a fight with a buff up will help initial squishiness. For instance, I didn't see anything here on the temporary crit/dev immunity feature Orion mentioned in his teaser.

Just finished fleshing out my new lvl75 champ and am now beginning the end-game grind with him. May hold off on leveling my Guard for now and resume working on my Cappy.

Originally Posted by Acidburn_32

I switched over from a hunter so that I could survive...

Small world i did exactly the same thing, i switched and also hoped wardens could give a nice secondary ranged DPS wich compared to guards/champs secondary weapon is amazing.

Will deflection have different effects depending on which stance you're in?

This all looks nice, if i wanted to play a damage dealer. What would be much better would be a stance for main tank, one for offtank and one for damage dealer. This class is supposed to be a tank, right?

Nice work as usual Orion

Try to remember Creepside if at all possible?

Thanks

Originally Posted by Kelsan

I will be working alongside Orion on PvMP updates.

-JP

Orion, if you have the time to do that, how about improving the Shield Spikes consumables? That is something that could benefit all classes who use a shield and they sure need some reviewing and improvement.

Originally Posted by Kaikas

This all looks nice, if i wanted to play a damage dealer. What would be much better would be a stance for main tank, one for offtank and one for damage dealer. This class is supposed to be a tank, right?

You're being too rash :P

Let him post the rest of the update so we can judge this matter

What is an off tank? Why would I need an off tank stance?

To you guys complaining about tanking being neglected, do you realize the impact of crit immunity?

Originally Posted by horus418

What is an off tank? Why would I need an off tank stance?

yeah i'm wondering about that too

why would i need an off tank stance if i have a ... tank... stance... what could possibly be the benefits Oo

that's like asking for a stance to be .. less.. awesome.. sounds like a plan

So much to take in, but on the whole I'm looking forward to having three clear, distinct roles, a ranged attack mode to enjoy and the ability to really tailor some weapons to those roles. I do feel, though, that having to relearn the class is going to be another hit to my tanking confidence; I genuinely feel it's unlikely at this stage I'll tank again. The warden 'reputation', crit number crunching and now this? Wardenning's like a full time job!