Thread: Warden Leveling strategies/skirmish soldier

Hello. I am playing a Warden and have read almost every guide in the forum. But I see that the majority of them are outdated and also there are for tanking and high level wardens. I have just hit level 20 and I am about to start skirmishes too. I have some questions :P

First of all what are your favorite gambits for leveling?I mean when you fight single mobs, it is impossible to use a lot of gambits..what is your favorite/best attack with a spear gambit?Since there is no cooldown in gambits you can use the best damage one right? Best damage/induction of course. I am not planning to gather mobs and aoe them cause I still haven't find a quest that mobs are too close to each other to be able to gather 4+.Anyway, how you fight a single mob, how you fight an elite one and how you fight in skirmishes multiple mobs and with what soldier?

Originally Posted by Ampalaea

First of all what are your favorite gambits for leveling?I mean when you fight single mobs, it is impossible to use a lot of gambits..what is your favorite/best attack with a spear gambit?Since there is no cooldown in gambits you can use the best damage one right? Best damage/induction of course. I am not planning to gather mobs and aoe them cause I still haven't find a quest that mobs are too close to each other to be able to gather 4+.Anyway, how you fight a single mob, how you fight an elite one and how you fight in skirmishes multiple mobs and with what soldier?

It now depends on what stance you are in though if you get good at stance dancing it will help. The normal way for a warden to play especially if tanking or against a single powerful mob is to be in determination stance and make your Defense Buffs then run the Persevere self heal line that sh-sp repeated. Once you have all of your availible heals switch to recklessness and run the same gambits to create bleeds then switch stance and do some self buffs shield up is the only one you have now and start the self heals again at 20 i think you only have perservere so you might want to augment your bleeds with Precise Blow and Offensive Strike and maybe use Power Attack instead of Perservere in Recklessness. There is not much besides War Cry to augment your heals but you shouldn't really need them at that level. Against multiple Mobs War Cry is your friend at low levels at least until you get Fierce Resolve at 26 thow in goad and single target dps and heals while War Cry ticks and do it again. Usually for multiple targets at that level I just stay in Determination there is not much difference on the limited AoEs you have and Determination is more balanced for most of them.

The main thing is to plan out what works for you and practice it until it is second nature including finding the correct timing. You have to allow a fraction of a second between builders longer for Determination then Recklessness and longer still if you are debuffed. This doesn't matter as much when you are making 2 and 3 build gambits where a mistake means another gambit and not much wasted time but it can be wipe causeing if you are going for Resolution or EoB and end up with War Cry or Piercing Strike.

For Wardens I always recomend either Herbalist or Bannerguard. You should not be squishy enough to need a Protector I have never been fond of the warrior and the archer always seems to either not aggro on the mobs or selects the one I don't have aggroed and pull it away before dying. With the Sage I don't find the debuffs to be all that good.

Hi and welcome to the elite class of lotro.

Since i played my Warden before Moria i'm not up to date with the available gambits on lower lvl's, since they changed the order you get them and so on.

First to say you are a high flexible class and that's why you should not rely on one gambit to spam over and over again. That is not the way how we work.
When i was in leveling up stage and soloed i already relied on tanking traits, since i preferred to stay alive longer than any enemy. Even if it takes some more time. So while our Trait lines have changed, i probably would go green (mixture of red and blue) to get some masteries and still do some proper damage.
The way i played should still work now or even better, i simply tried to get as many dots as possible onto my enemies.
No matter if bleeds or light, while they ticked i decided if i should go for some defenses or some direct damage gambits.
That way i played almost all the time till lvl 75, getting stronger and stronger with each new gambit you achieve.
Always try new rotations or include new gambits in the current rotation, so you learn what is effective and how we work.

Hope it helps you at least a bit, even so i'm not saying which gambits you should use, because i don't think it's helpful to play the most flexible class in a specific way.

Originally Posted by Ampalaea

Hello. I am playing a Warden and have read almost every guide in the forum. But I see that the majority of them are outdated and also there are for tanking and high level wardens. I have just hit level 20 and I am about to start skirmishes too. I have some questions :P

First of all what are your favorite gambits for leveling?I mean when you fight single mobs, it is impossible to use a lot of gambits..what is your favorite/best attack with a spear gambit?Since there is no cooldown in gambits you can use the best damage one right? Best damage/induction of course. I am not planning to gather mobs and aoe them cause I still haven't find a quest that mobs are too close to each other to be able to gather 4+.Anyway, how you fight a single mob, how you fight an elite one and how you fight in skirmishes multiple mobs and with what soldier?

Ok.. first off. yeah.. pretty much every guide in the forums got thrown out the window by Orion when he revamped how the class works and when you get skills. Because of that, what used to be favorite gambits for low levels disappeared about three weeks ago. Stance dancing is hard at your level because you only have Null, Recklessness and just got Determination. Also at your level, you are too small to gather mobs and AE them to death.. Think level 26 at the earliest for that, when you get Fierce Resolve, and that is just a teaser. When that really starts is when you get EoB and Resolution which are in the 60s and 70s now.

Good thing you are asking at 20, because you just got your Determination stance that allows you to self heal and build threat. Soo.. if solo or your group is willing to wait for you to open with the most aggro, which most are not, open with Ambush and Crit Strike. Use WarCry and Goad if you are trying to tank, which now build threat if you are in Det, does not matter if solo. Build your defenses with the new skill Shield Up you got at 20. Again, if you are in Det, Impressive Flourish now builds your defenses, Persevere now builds a HoT. If you are grouped, maybe throw in a Maddening Strike to transfer threat to you. By this time, Shields Up has failed, so rebuild it. If you are doing well, swap stances to Recklessness, which will increase your damage out, but at the cost of your survivability. Hit an Offensive Strike and/or Power Attack, in that order if both, as bleeds stack, becoming more powerful as a lower level one is replaced with a higher. Swap back to Det and rebuild your defenses. Remember, a warden is not a DPS machine, he is basically a tank. You outlast the mob, not expect him to drop at your feet in a few seconds, no matter if what his level, trash or elite, so dont expect to use a lot of spear gambits.

In skirmishes, you will get a lot of different preferences. Myself, I like to .. wow.. tank so I have a healer soldier. She keeps me alive and I keep aggro off of her. I can concentrate on more threat and DPS than healing myself that way. Some people will say a sage. Cant comment on that, but.. you just now got your self-heals and not very great ones, so keep that in mind. The sage, at end game, might be a better choice when you get LOTS better heals and defenses.

See if this chart helps you on your gambits, but, remember you dont get the Assailment ones until level 30.

http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.p...t=#post6058782

Back when I leveled, I tried to stick to offensive class traits - except the +hot pulses. There used to be two traits for that, now I think it is only one.

My rotations usually involved spear gambits until 3 or more mobs showed up, and then it was morale leeches for awhile. If things got dicey I'd usually start to turtle up using HoTs.

I was almost always working one 1-2 class deeds as well. So even if it didn't make sense I'd be burning through my daily counts of whatever skill the deed asked for. I found it handy to add them to the quest tracker.

Don't worry about fighting small counts of mobs early on. You don't get the gambits to handle 3-10 mobs til later in the game (or at least it used to be that way, fierce resolve, resolution and EoB).

As for skirmish soldier, I usually just ran t1 solos. Archer made it go faster. When I hit level cap post RoI I leveled an herbalist because of the amount of skraids that you had to run to get jewelry pre-U6.

Good luck.

Leveling warden is all about spamming skills for the deeds.
check what gambits and builders you need and get a rotation to get those deeds done...

after you finish your daily limit for deeds you can work out some better rotations.

for solo you can just go all out dps on most situations...
try to learn to use the bleed removals and lifetaps.

on harder situations you can go on determination and build up some buffs and heals, then switch to reck and finish off mobs...

skirmishes go quite easy with warden...
I usually use a archer to lvl up. good dps and no path problems...
I also have a herbalist to harder skirms, but you can solo t2 skirms with an archer...

Most of the time I duo with a hunter friend and we both use archer... nothing last really long, even on t3...

Dont try to go all crazy at lower lvls and solo fellowship and small fellowship instances... even some quests might be too much on lower lvls...
It takes a while for the warden to get his full soloing capacity... just keep testing yourself and adjusting to the situation...

Thank you all for the replies :P they were all very helpful! I forgot about the class deeds, so I think I need to use various skills to get the class deeds instead of focusing on some "favorite" gambits. Also I just noticed that Gambits which don't have the same builder twice in a row execute faster. For example a Gambit Spear-Shield is executed faster than a gambit Spear-Spear or Shield - Shield. Does every builder have a separate hidden cooldown or is it just my imagination :P ?

Thank again

Originally Posted by Ampalaea

Thank you all for the replies :P they were all very helpful! I forgot about the class deeds, so I think I need to use various skills to get the class deeds instead of focusing on some "favorite" gambits. Also I just noticed that Gambits which don't have the same builder twice in a row execute faster. For example a Gambit Spear-Shield is executed faster than a gambit Spear-Spear or Shield - Shield. Does every builder have a separate hidden cooldown or is it just my imagination :P ?

Thank again

They all have the same length cooldown, but you don't have to wait for it if you're not using the same builder back to back. So yep, using different builders in a row will be faster.

When you get enough traits in the same trait line you will unlock "masteries" which add 2 builders at the same time, so for example you will be able to add Spear-Spear, Spear-Shield, or Spear-Fist instantly.

The revamp of Warden was supposed to help new Wardens learn the profession more fluidly...before, you'd get Masteries around L50 and have to completely relearn the class.

Skirms are a great way to practice combat, especially the offensive skirms since you can control the pace and flow better, and since Encounters in offensive skirms present a little more challenge.

You'll find that, as you level up, you mostly just get gambits that are just "better" versions of gambits you already have, so practicing your current gambits will help you work the improved versions into your rotations.

You have two stances - Recklessness is more offense, Determination is more defense, and in skirms you can switch between the two depending how hard any given part of a skirm is. I'll often run Reck when I'm advancing through trash mobs, then Det for counterattacks and encounters and lieutenants.

Within each stance, look at the gambits you have. They'll all fall into one of five broad categories: single target damage (both direct and DOT), AOE damage (again, direct and DOT), heals, buffs, and threat tools. Most skills will fall into one of those categories as a "main" effect, even if they also do other "secondary" effects. Ie, Precise Blow does some damage, but its main effect is its Threat component; you wouldnt use it when you just want to do damage, you use it when you need to generate Threat.

Figure out what the "use value" is for your gambits, figure out what the best gambits you have available are for each situation, then you can use them accordingly in battle, as they're needed.

Among the two-length gambits, I'd say the real highlights are 1-3 in Reck (decent damage and heals you), and 2-1, 2-3, and 3-2 in Det (all of them heal and buff you, and 3-2 does an AOE DOT and threat effect as well).

For skirmishes i went with archer on my warden back when it was 20. I have really liked it and it has bern good practise for grouping. I early on started to think "tanking" try to focus on holding mobs of the archer. So i always ran in picked up mobs and turned them around so my archer could pew from the back. Works really good in my opionion skirmishes has never been so easy on any of my toons as on my warden/archer combo.

Now at 75 i have started to work on a herbalist to try the difference.

I started in the game a few months ago as a RK and rolled my first Warden a little before the U6 update. So I learned a little, and then had to unlearn it all.....


I've had decent luck so far, my Warden survives a LOT more than my RK ever did. I can usually do missions 4 or 5 levels above my own (whereas RK I had to be at least 4 levels over in some instances). The one thing I will add here, that helped me out is to try out each of the skills and see what they do. It's great to read "this increases thread" or "hot" but that means junk if you don't know how it works in the game. Go do some skirmishes at 20, I recommend the Trouble in Tuckborough one. That way to can play around with the different gambits that you have.