Thread: Warden Threat

Had a chance to experiment more last night. Really liking many
of the changes. (yes bugs exist, but will get fixed.)
I think Battle Prep is a great idea and a very Warden-esque way
of helping solve defense issues.


BUT, as others have said, THREAT is a problem now.


I do not think that Aggression was too good. Of course if you spam
any good threat tool you SHOULD be a threat monster. But, doing that
alone is neglecting defenses, and heals, etc.

The real issue is the openness (that we all love) of the gambit
system which allows us to pick from our tool set without cool-downs.
That is what a Warden is -- a bunch of options all readily available.

So, yes, someone can spam just one skill. We just need to accept that
as a possibility in the warden mechanics.

The attempt to control those who would just spam Aggression by nerfing
it results in the following:

1. We have to spend too much time to try to keep threat.
2. We have less time to use the other gambits we should use.
3. Game-play feels like a busy, annoying mess tying to keep
aggro - not so fun anymore.

So, here is my MAIN point considering the two tank classes in Lotro the
following should be true:

GUARDS GET GREAT DEFENSES WITH LITTLE EFFORT (HEAVY ARMOR) SO
THEY CAN SPEND MORE TIME WORKING ON THREAT.

WARDENS *SHOULD* GET GREAT THREAT WITH LITTLE EFFORT SO THEY
CAN SPEND TIME WORKING ON DEFENSES, HEALS, BUFFS.

We need these threat tools working effectively:

PB - for single target.
WC - for quick AOE threat.
EOB - for general sustaining threat.
AGG - for managing threat against strong contenders (high DPS).


Orion, please consider that nerfing skills to control spammers
will result in #3 above happening due to our mechanics.

I agree with the premise. I have yet to test it out, so I don't know how hard it will be to keep aggro once I get a new rotation down, but if it's difficult to maintain aggro, survivability can take a bit of a hit.

As an aside, what did they do to WC? I've heard some talk about how it's broken or worthless or being fixed, but I haven't pored over the Warden forums to try and figure out what has really happened.

It gives 0 threat right now (besides any damage it does), but Orion says its going to get some back later.

Agreement x 10.

I am not liking the aggro changes at all. Frankly they make little sense to me, Orion tells us he will fix the class, but all Im doing is spamming aggro (battle prep eob, goad , activate memory, eob x 2, this is just the start, THIS may not enough to hold aggro).

Aggression was nerfed to much, as such its not a skill you can reasonable justify using.

War Cry IS A needed upfront initial aggro holder.

By forcing us to continually spam eob, we are in just as bad as a spot as before. Great, we can hold one boss with the aggro skills you gave us, what about 80% of the rest of the instance that I have to hold 5-6 at a time, Gondor forbid, if you know something bad happens, like I die now, or if I have to swap , OR if the hunter pulls a second group without me having time to hit a battle prep, and masteries are down ect.

Ive mostly been pleased with the changes, but not this, it went to far, having to spam that much aggro is just a mess AND more importantly, ITS not fun. I used to be able to do a odd onslought to help with damage, but if aggro remains like that.. its all aggro, conviction, aggro, aggro, aggro. PHEW good think I built shield mastery before the pull I guess.. =(.

Break out your "PLEASE dont touch anything for 5 -6 seconds guys, I just cant hold aggro until then"

Oh, my favorite, defiant challenge cooldown LOL a AGGRO, AGGROOO!!!! tool thats on a massively long cooldown. Its not traitable, its a slap in the face. No legendary , regarless of class should be higher then 5 mins , thats maximum. I would think Defiant on a 3 min cooldown would be usable. Its just a LOL legendary.

My plus rep for some of the work on u6 has been nullified with the - rep on this one!

I absolutely agree with the frustrations about the changes to threat generation. If am not mistaken, spear of virtue and surety of death both have been given greatly increased threat? Although having been very excited about the ideas for the update and then extremely disappointed, I still love my little warden and am determined to make the best of it. Would love to hear suggestions about how we can better handle our current situation and make it work for us. It is my understanding that our skills were changed to stack more than before, but am a little unsure about the best way to grab a large group quickly now that aggression is fairly ineffective and defiant challenge has been all but taken away.

Originally Posted by bullseyeqt3.14

I absolutely agree with the frustrations about the changes to threat generation. If am not mistaken, spear of virtue and surety of death both have been given greatly increased threat? Although having been very excited about the ideas for the update and then extremely disappointed, I still love my little warden and am determined to make the best of it. Would love to hear suggestions about how we can better handle our current situation and make it work for us. It is my understanding that our skills were changed to stack more than before, but am a little unsure about the best way to grab a large group quickly now that aggression is fairly ineffective and defiant challenge has been all but taken away.

Exultation of battle. The range is short but battle memory it and start with double EoB and you should be okay. And the new SoD and SoV is still worse than the old PB... and even the current PB except i think SoD has some decent defensive buffs associated with it.

In truth, I'm not finding SoV/SoD spam, or even EoB, coming close to some good (old) PBs and warcrys. Now we have to worry about *everything*. And we're just not able to hold aggro. Holding aggro and doing defensive buffs? Close to impossible. Throwing in a DbD (which seems to be our big hit in DPS these days, at least from what I could tell yesterday, I could be wrong) whilst trying to hold aggro and self-buff/heal?

LOLOL. Or would be if it wasn't such a mess of a failure, and frustrating, too.

I can't wait to hear if we can still kite using only conviction. That was [is] truly the warden's best role in a raid.

Double EoB and Double SoD seem to do a pretty good job of sticking aggro. Something like:

Goad
EoB
EoB
Defensive Strike
SoD
SoD

If you are still worried, double up SoV after that:
Deft Strike
SoV
SoV

Its different, but effective. Plus, EoB and SoD give you benefits you never got with PB/WC/Aggression. The new mechanic is to proactively put threat out there while building and maintaining buffs. The old mechanic was to spam PB or aggression. EoB and SoD are the new bread and butter.

--Harper

Haven't been able to test the threat changes yet, but came with an idea xD

If our avoidances, partials and crit defence are buffed when tiering up gambits, why not tier aggro as well? if PB isn't as powerul as before and SoV or SoD doesn't seem to be enough (again, I haven't tanked again, this is merely a perception) why not increase aggro generation when doing SoV or SoD after PB or WC? It seems to me very in the line of all the tiering buffs we have now.

Just an idea (again, based in mere speculation, don't know how much wrong can I be xD)

Pre update 6 I never had a need to spam AGG. I used it
periodically as needed.

Now, in a round-about way what we have nearly arrived
at is that if we spam EOB we may offset the loss of AGG.

Hmm... Two things:

1. Nerfing A so that we must spam B is a non sequitur.
2. EOB does seem to handle heavy DPSers as well.

Originally Posted by JLotro

Pre update 6 I never had a need to spam AGG. I used it
periodically as needed.

Now, in a round-about way what we have nearly arrived
at is that if we spam EOB we may offset the loss of AGG.

Hmm... Two things:

1. Nerfing A so that we must spam B is a non sequitur.
2. EOB does seem to handle heavy DPSers as well.

Lets not forget that agression is CC friendly and EoB is defiantly not CC friendly.

Originally Posted by Mysterion

Lets not forget that agression is CC friendly and EoB is defiantly not CC friendly.

Ah... True! - Point Mysterion!

Originally Posted by JLotro

1. We have to spend too much time to try to keep threat.
2. We have less time to use the other gambits we should use.
3. Game-play feels like a busy, annoying mess tying to keep
aggro - not so fun anymore.



PB - for single target.
WC - for quick AOE threat.
EOB - for general sustaining threat.
AGG - for managing threat against strong contenders (high DPS).


Orion, please consider that nerfing skills to control spammers
will result in #3 above happening due to our mechanics.

you can do all if you knbow how to play your warden.

we can do really well without aggression and war cry.

Originally Posted by Mysterion

Lets not forget that agression is CC friendly and EoB is defiantly not CC friendly.

I think that a tool for aggro CC friendly is not need.

Thisd beacuse if a mob "in raids" if you a have CC'ed mob near you is not your fault but the LM or the brg's one.

In ToO there are so wide places that you can spam aggro aoe with a minimum of intelling positioning and helping by all the raid.

Originally Posted by baranhir

I think that a tool for aggro CC friendly is not need.

Thisd beacuse if a mob "in raids" if you a have CC'ed mob near you is not your fault but the LM or the brg's one.

In ToO there are so wide places that you can spam aggro aoe with a minimum of intelling positioning and helping by all the raid.

While I appreciate your bravado, I think that tanks should have a threat building skill that is non-damaging. Like we used to have with DC (and I'm guessing champs and guards have). If we never get another raid again your point might stand, but I'm guessing we'll see a new raid someday where the corridors aren't as wide or the CC is just too close for comfort. OD was a raid that I was particularly careful with my aoe threat gen, so EoB wasn't used very often - at least not by me. Sometimes that mez is the difference between a wipe and success, I'd rather have the correct tool.

Originally Posted by Mysterion

While I appreciate your bravado, I think that tanks should have a threat building skill that is non-damaging. Like we used to have with DC (and I'm guessing champs and guards have). If we never get another raid again your point might stand, but I'm guessing we'll see a new raid someday where the corridors aren't as wide or the CC is just too close for comfort. OD was a raid that I was particularly careful with my aoe threat gen, so EoB wasn't used very often - at least not by me. Sometimes that mez is the difference between a wipe and success, I'd rather have the correct tool.

Seconded. There's any amount of content in the game where CC matters. If you are only interested in the current end-game, you may be okay. If you want to do old content, or content-yet-to-come, you're really going to wish you had the kind of aggro tools a real tank has.

You're also going to wish that you had some crit immunity of some sort the day the RNG is not on your side and you get blasted for 20k, which is going to happen no matter how good you think you are.

It happened to me so routinely that it was pretty much like lightning striking for the fourth time in the same place, which is why I don't try to tank anything serious on my warden anymore. U6 has done nothing to mitigate that.

I've been grouped up all day.

Aggro is NOT an issue. Just give me WC back for a quick though gimpy 10 target AoE taunt. For CC mobs, we'll do it just like we've always done it. Me thinks people with aggro problems are probably in the wrong stance or none at all.

Originally Posted by horus418

Aggro is NOT an issue. Just give me WC back for a quick though gimpy 10 target AoE taunt.

Good to know. I'm going to miss my PB, but maybe it was more of a crutch than it needed to be. I never really used WC much, so I don't care if we get it back or not.

Part of the Warden threat picture, though, is recovering aggro on a death. What is your take on that?

Originally Posted by horus418

I've been grouped up all day.

Aggro is NOT an issue. Just give me WC back for a quick though gimpy 10 target AoE taunt. For CC mobs, we'll do it just like we've always done it. Me thinks people with aggro problems are probably in the wrong stance or none at all.

Try it without Terrible Visage

Originally Posted by baranhir

I think that a tool for aggro CC friendly is not need.

Thisd beacuse if a mob "in raids" if you a have CC'ed mob near you is not your fault but the LM or the brg's one.

In ToO there are so wide places that you can spam aggro aoe with a minimum of intelling positioning and helping by all the raid.

Is this like saying that IF you really know how to use a butter knife
you do not need a screwdriver? It might be true - but the right tool is better.

Originally Posted by JLotro

Is this like saying that IF you really know how to use a warden
you do not need a guardian? It might be true - but the right tool is better.

I thought you meant this before reading what you were responding to

Originally Posted by MrKeks

Try it without Terrible Visage

give me a clue to not slot terrible visage

Originally Posted by horus418

I've been grouped up all day.

Aggro is NOT an issue. Just give me WC back for a quick though gimpy 10 target AoE taunt. For CC mobs, we'll do it just like we've always done it. Me thinks people with aggro problems are probably in the wrong stance or none at all.

No, it's not a stance issue. It used to be that strong DPSers could
pour-it-on more. If they did pull something then Aggression got it back
better.

I don't know if you can try a longish fight with a really geared DPS friend
who crits often and see if you/they think it is not what it used to be.

I think that the occasional Agg used to allow us to support stronger DPS.

But... I guess we can always inform the group up front that there
may be new limitations. Many already have this view of the Warden and
I would like to see that diminish.

(btw: I miss WC too)

Originally Posted by Beornded

I thought you meant this before reading what you were responding to

LOL - Um.... NO!

Originally Posted by horus418

Aggro is NOT an issue. Just give me WC back for a quick though gimpy 10 target AoE taunt. For CC mobs, we'll do it just like we've always done it. Me thinks people with aggro problems are probably in the wrong stance or none at all.

I disagree. If DPS lays into it like they need to for most raid situations aggro and threat become a real issue. Grouping and raiding are two completely different things and grouping has never been an issue for me, only raids.

Originally Posted by horus418

I've been grouped up all day.

Aggro is NOT an issue. Just give me WC back for a quick though gimpy 10 target AoE taunt. For CC mobs, we'll do it just like we've always done it. Me thinks people with aggro problems are probably in the wrong stance or none at all.

Haven't had the chance to group yet and just been speculating based on the new numbers for the threat skills and as such am wondering, is this lack of issue with aggro against top tier DPS or just your average PuG? Reason I am asking is that in most PuGs, threat was never an issue and could do just about anything and keep agro. Against top tier DPS (think Shadow T2 or Fire and Frost T2 where there is a bit of a DPS race involved ... or where your top end DPS is cranking out around 2k DPS), agro was definitely more of an issue where aggression was a necesity for me to stay ahead. Wonder what our max threat gen is now and how that is going to limit the DPS involved. Time to try and crank out some numbers and hopefully sucker in my guard friend to get a bit of a comparison.

For informal kinds of grouping, I usually run with a champ friend and a guard - they're in one of the raiding kins on my server, I'm in another.

Yesterday was...beyond sad. At least for the warden here. Still, I haven't quite topped off my Loth and Malledrim reps, and hey - that much I can handle. Get the pretty horsie, and..uh...

Go back to the champ twins, I guess. One to DPS, one to tank. Somebody give me a call if they fix wardens, eh?

I can't answer a bunch of what ifs and speculation about groups. I read mostly about aggro failure in groups yesterday and got slightly worried. As usual with the forums, there tends to be quite a bit of exaggeration. Aggro is aggro, it doesn't matter if it's in a raid or in a 6 man, our threat leaches only work in our own group. Besides, just look at exactly what was nerfed and what was buffed. Looking at that it seems to me like there were a LOT of people that were nothing but Aggression monkeys, I'm glad I wasn't.

Just ask this rather simple question, can wardens generate more aggro than guardians?

Originally Posted by Jeger_Wulf

Good to know. I'm going to miss my PB, but maybe it was more of a crutch than it needed to be. I never really used WC much, so I don't care if we get it back or not.

Part of the Warden threat picture, though, is recovering aggro on a death. What is your take on that?

Meh, I don't think you'll miss PB at all. You'll still use it, just not as much for single target because that's all it is, threat. SoD gets used a lot more than PB now by me as it has much more threat than before plus it provides a great evade bonus, 2 birds, one gambit.

Aggro after death is the same IMO, if a fight goes on long enough we are still going to be in the same bad situation. Aggression was only so good, it didn't work miracles.

So, here is my MAIN point considering the two tank classes in Lotro the
following should be true:

GUARDS GET GREAT DEFENSES WITH LITTLE EFFORT (HEAVY ARMOR) SO
THEY CAN SPEND MORE TIME WORKING ON THREAT.

WARDENS *SHOULD* GET GREAT THREAT WITH LITTLE EFFORT SO THEY
CAN SPEND TIME WORKING ON DEFENSES, HEALS, BUFFS.

This is the most perfect description of how Wardens should be (how they used to be prior to U6 in fact) However I can't see Orion suddenly seeing the light and reversing the changes that have been inflicted to our threat.

Long gambits should produce more threat, that's logical right? Sure, but think about what that does to potency. Short gambits are used to trigger potency, and short gambits have had their threat nerfed to hell. So you run into a group and goad to trigger potency, then you begin building EoB, only thing is that goad now does 0.5x threat, so your RK's healing stone is gonna peel all your mobs just by sitting there, you're not gonna have time to build EoB even if you use masteries. Best solution now is just to ignore battle memory completely. Start combat with a throw, build EoB with masteries and then hang on for dear life and hope you don't lose agro, then ask everyone to stop dpsing so you can put up some defensive buffs and heals.

I don't see it as especially logical that longer gambits should produce more threat - that works against gameplay mechanics. If mobs just stood around waiting for the bus - sure. But in raids and instances you usually get hit pretty fast and you need to get and keep the bad guys off your squishies.

As far as the advanced class concept goes, I always thought it was that wardens worked pretty much without safety nets. Nobody had NS on a quickslot before RoI. You probably didn't even recognise it in your skill list without stopping to read the tooltip.

But we had pretty good tools to tank then - yes, aggro has historically been a problem aside from the few months when we had aggression, but we managed.

Then we lost a significant part of our mitigation, accuracy passives, and stat caps, and the class simply broke. Now we have odd stances, clickies, gambits that aren't remotely intuitive (the whole 'is this fist or is it spear?' stuff), buffs attached to random gambits, and the problem remains.

The biggest thing for me is that it's just not fun to play a warden anymore. I didn't have problems adjusting to the champ or mini changes, but those both made sense. Ours don't, it seems like the class takes one step forward and three steps back, I still can't think of any reason to bring a warden instead of a guard to a raid, and - like I said - the class isn't fun now. It seems to be for some people, so I hope they continue to enjoy it, but I honestly can't at this point. I feel like all this complication and obfuscation has gone on to try to work around the big problems instead of dealing with them, and it's very clunky.

i have been kicked now from fs i tried aggresion, morale leeches, war cry nope i couldnt hold any aggro at fangorn at 1st boss.

War-cry is 0 threat now, and aggression is just as bad/good as DoW/Conviction so try using those. EoB morale leech is good, is that the one you were using? If you're fighting one dude precise blow is still good to throw in.

I've done t2 fangorns since u6 with no healers, only had an issue with aggro when the ents came cause I didn't want to aggro them..

Originally Posted by ELROTHIL

i have been kicked now from fs i tried aggresion, morale leeches, war cry nope i couldnt hold any aggro at fangorn at 1st boss.

Well, for one thing WC doesn't have a threat component. For another, were you in the proper stance. I had a ### moment yesterday when nothing I did gave me aggro, then I realized that I wasn't in Determination (or any stance for that matter), once in the proper stance, aggro was a non issue. EoB is the new go to gambit for AoE pulls.

I have yet to test out Warden Threat myself, but I have grouped with several Wardens since Update 6 and I feel I can comfortably comment on the issues. I am trying to gear my Hunter so my Warden is taking a small break. . I grouped up with a Warden on the first day of Update 6 and we went to do Foundary T2. Group makeup was myself (on my Hunter), Warden tank, Mini, Captain, Champ, and another Hunter. I noticed that when we gave the Warden a couple of seconds at the start of a pull then agro was alright. Pulls in this instance are usually between 3-5 enemies if I'm not mistaken. It looked like he was using EoB quite often (which is fine obviously) to grab the groups and maintain agro. The only issues I saw were when there were any ranged mobs. IE, Flame Arrows. Since they generally aren't anywhere near the group (unless the tank were to pull the group over to the ranged mob) I found that agro was pulled from them the most either by the healer or one of the hunters. Other then that he did a fine job holding agro with just EoB and whatever else he was using. Bosses were fine. I tested it by going into Str. Stance and unloading from time to time and he was able to hold them no problem. Warden's have always been decent at single target agro management though so I wasn't worried about this. I think generally we just have a new learning curve in terms of rotations for agro. I won't touch on survivability. It is insane now. Our mini died from a bad series of fire crits on the first boss and the Warden was able to heal himself throughout until she returned. Second boss the Warden's morale didn't drop at all except on crits. I think I saw one Devestating hit that got him for about 4-5k but that was pretty much it. It's kind of neat seeing how little the morale bar drops. On a side note I tested Determination solo'ing in the School of Tham Mirdain. Ran in, battle prep'd a couple defensive buffs and then grabbed 4 groups of mobs (about... 5 elites and 8 normals) and just sat there for a while leaching and self healing. The only issue was DPS here... takes quite a bit longer to kill things when in tanking stance. Oh well. Starting to ramble so I'll leave it at that!

Originally Posted by horus418

Well, for one thing WC doesn't have a threat component. For another, were you in the proper stance. I had a ### moment yesterday when nothing I did gave me aggro, then I realized that I wasn't in Determination (or any stance for that matter), once in the proper stance, aggro was a non issue. EoB is the new go to gambit for AoE pulls.

Are you using EoB for threat maintenance too? Pretty much what I used in the past (for group pulls), want to make sure it's the same. Going to be tanking for a couple of Foundary runs with some friends on the weekend so want to be prepared.

Originally Posted by Elrendos

Are you using EoB for threat maintenance too? Pretty much what I used in the past, want to make sure it's the same. Going to be tanking for a couple of Foundary runs with some friends on the weekend so want to be prepared.

I still always use threat transfers, along with EoB which is better now. I all but abandoned EoB between RoI and U6 because it was really lackluster.

Originally Posted by horus418

I still always use threat transfers, along with EoB which is better now. I all but abandoned EoB between RoI and U6 because it was really lackluster.

Cool. Yeah I generally would use the Maddening Strike Gambit line for transferring the threat. I'll give it a shot. Kind of hard to test threat without grouping though. As fun as solo'ing stuff is again now I guess I just have to jump back into things and give it a whirl. Thanks Horus.

I’d actually rather not have Aggression go back to being the super-leech.

U6 has moved us towards gambit lines that increase the potency of their effects the farther along the line we go. This is not something I agree with in theory, but it seems to be working, so I’ll leave that for another discussion. The Conviction line has always been about threat transfers, so what makes sense to me is to have Maddening Strike, Dance of War, and Conviction each leech an increasing amount of threat. Maybe have Conviction’s leech be about where Aggression is now. Since Deflection and Aggression are not connected to the Conviction line, and Deflection doesn’t dump aggro onto the whole fellowship, it has never made sense to me to have Aggression be a threat leech at all. I’d much rather it be a true aggro-swap/after-death-aggro-recovery tool, than an overpowered leech that reduces the usefulness of DoW and Conviction.

Originally Posted by baranhir

give me a clue to not slot terrible visage

Can someone tell me if the bug with the resistance on this trait is making a difference, or if the aggro buff in determination is.

It seems like this trait is a must in tanking, just wated to double check with the community xD