Thread: Epic warden survival in PVP

Originally Posted by Priestetute

Consider the situational aspect. If you are planning to damage creeps (the situation), then you stance dance and are not in determination the whole time, which is his point. Claiming that a shield traited cannot kill any creeps in determination doesn't make any sense. A decent warden should be stance dancing to fit the situation.

I don't know why I bother. 0/10 reading comprehension, see me after class.

All snark aside, the point of those arguing against determination remains the same. If a group of creeps let's you roll hots then "dance" to do some damage, those creeps deserve to die. By and large, you will not do sufficient damage in determination to kill any decently sized group and changing stances will not allow you to keep up on the healing and smart creeps will take advantage of this. There will always be exceptions to the rule. The fact remains that the majority of folks saying "shield" mean "determination."

Originally Posted by cmal

changing stances will not allow you to keep up on the healing

Depends on how good a warden you are, and how much audacity you have.

But if that is your claim, no wonder we don't see eye to eye.

This is true and a wardne can solo the entire of lug/tir downstairs in one pull. In fact because the more mobs around the more health the warden can sap if you wnat to kill one take just 2 people. if you take say 8 he will live for freaking ages nerfs badly needed

Originally Posted by Priestetute

Depends on how good a warden you are, and how much audacity you have.

But if that is your claim, no wonder we don't see eye to eye.

I get the feeling that I just think more highly of creeps than you do. Perhaps a server difference. I don't see the better creeps on Elendilmir letting you get away with it and have seen them shut down this very thing. Smart creeps WON'T let you get in range without a silence or a disarm. They WON'T let you start rolling your heals. Who cares if you killed a bunch of greenies? Any warden using masteries could do the same.

en.Wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect

Way to quote out of context, by the way. I noticed you left off the bit about smart creeps.

I wasn't the guy bragging about 1v6ing greenies, and the creeps in the group fights I am referencing in this thread are high ranked and "smart".

You can continue to think that while 1v3+ the only thing a shield traited warden can do is spam hots and pray someone else comes to help. I'll believe differently though.

Originally Posted by Priestetute

I wasn't the guy bragging about 1v6ing greenies, and the creeps in the group fights I am referencing in this thread are high ranked and "smart".

You can continue to think that while 1v3+ the only thing a shield traited warden can do is spam hots and pray someone else comes to help. I'll believe differently though.

I'm sorry, the you in that post wasn't referencing you specifically but was more of an in general point. Poor use of pronoun on my part.

I don't think one warden (or really one freep for that matter) taking on three ranked creeps and winning as impossible or even improbable, but let's theory craft for a bit, shall we?

Say you are in full tanking gear, either full 7 moors set/mix match (which is most likely since you tout your audacity) or a mix of moors/Orthanc set. With proper builds you will probably sit at what, 25 b 20+ p and maybe 12ish evade? Morale probably sitting around 16k, conservatively (you will need might, after all) lets say 14k. Power, I imagine, will be between 2k and 2.6k and if you trait for keen response power will not be an issue with your parry. With that much morale and the desire to roll hots/leaches, it is safe to assume that you will have higher incoming healing. What this tells me, as a creep, is that you are unlikely to have very much might or agility. You are counting on the ability to be able to heal yourself. For the sake of your high ranked (8+?...over 3k finesse btw) and smart creeps, this doesn't seem to be much of a leap to make these conclusions. Yadda yadda yadda we could go on about gear and options for an eternity.

Now then, what composition are we talking here? 3 wargs? One uses pack flayer, one silences. You pot silence. Third uses the disarm which will:
1. Prevent ANY gambit
2. Knock a healthy chunk out of your morale and stats (anything on your shield and LIs.)
3. Lock you in place and provide a nice stationary target.

You sit there like an npc while two wargs just go to town and stack their bleeds. Disarm ends, warg topples, and we just pray you had your brand or never surrender up.

Any healing class in here? So much for your dps. Warg uses flayer or knockdown again, blight, ouch I don't see this ending well. Or maybe it is a warleader? Sucks to be slowed and go against instant heals, doesn't it?

Weaver? Web the earth. Root. Disarm. Fear. Daze. Stun. Need I go on?

Perhaps there is a reaver in there. Disarm. You pot disarm. Oh no dust! 20% miss chance added on top of your already higher miss chance from not having that nice padding of agility and the reaver can just hamstring and rofl kite while you try and dance. No heals here. Go go slow assailment animations, hope you don't miss.

*What, you used your handy dandy turbine point purchased store brand to win? Oh, you agree that it was the consumable that won the fight then.


I could go on and on with how any particular group of 3+ skilled creeps would approach a situation of a known healing warden. In all of these situations, unless you are a god and none of your gambits/slows miss I do not see the warden getting more than one kill after blowing NS and creeps don't use a cooldown. Again, maybe I have just had the experience of fighting better creeps. I hope this isn't the case.

TL: DR. Nope, I won't believe you until you do a little more than say "I can totally do it." Hell, I could say that I am the king of the world. It's the internet, who will know the difference? I do know that it can happen, that it can be done, but the fact remains that (and I am going to emphasize this again) GOOD CREEPS WON'T GIVE YOU THE OPPORTUNITIES TO MAKE IT HAPPEN. Perhaps you would be willing to actually share what happened? Class distribution and all that jazz?

But I digress. I think we all agree that a warden who stays in determination won't get kills, yes? How did this turn into an e-peen "but I trait shield" conversation?

*Disclaimer: I am not saying this is what happened, merely illustrating a point.

Edit: I also want to point out that this has nothing to do with you personally. I do not intend to be a reflection of you or your skill. I don't dislike you. What I do dislike is people making unsupported claims and people saying something is overpowered. I apologize if this comes off as a personal attack as that was not what I intended.

Originally Posted by Priestetute

I wasn't the guy bragging about 1v6ing greenies, and the creeps in the group fights I am referencing in this thread are high ranked and "smart".

You can continue to think that while 1v3+ the only thing a shield traited warden can do is spam hots and pray someone else comes to help. I'll believe differently though.

Despite the fact that they couldn't really be classified as typical greenies (They had a rank 5 average among them, as well as some having bought a few skills) I would consider it a more justifiable boast than bragging the ability to 3v1 select creeps in Shield-line.

Originally Posted by cmal

Ah, the old buy stuff win fights argument.

As I have always maintained, I take more joy from a well matched and close fight, be it 1v1 or RvR, than I do from winning. Who cares if I got a kill or six if I am not having fun. If I get sick of being zerged or dying, alt+f4 is a convenient keyboard away. Of course there are those who say I am a fool for not using everything to my advantage but with that attitude I might as well just sit in keeps and zerg. Thrilling pvp, I tells ya.

Note: Play how you want to play and enjoy yourself out there. I, for one, choose not to exacerbate the already poor pvp situation by using the store or sitting in the middle of a zerg. No individual is right or wrong in a situation like this and that is the joy of mmos. If it works for you and you are having fun, more power to you. BUT do not say that a class is OP (you didn't, I know. This is more in general) or that changes need to be made simply because the opposing side chooses not to respond appropriately.

On a side note, I see Kio out in the moors all the time. He gets a huge kick out of running shield and irritating creeps. That said, any creep worth his weight will stay out of range or run so I haven't seen Kio get many solo kills out of it. Good at getting them riled, not so good at doing the deed.

I don't use the store myself, and take pleasure in close fights also. I mentioned the usage of the store, because that is in fact part of the overall capabilities that players can use to their advantage(Turbine would tell us convenience LOL).

I consider it a little silly to say that there is not an imbalance with the determination traitline for moors purposes right now. We heal ourselves just as well, if not better than a defiler can heal a raid. Both going uninterrupted of course. If you don't believe this statement, compare your max possible HPS with a defilers max possible HPS. You might be surprised at your findings! I sure was.

With the amount of tooltip damage a shield warden should take from all sources, it is immediately halved. Then all you have to do is include audacity and you can see how ridiculous the healing output we are capable of is versus the amount of damage taken is. Not to include anything from our BPE either.

And I say this without hostility.
For those who have grasped the class, it's never been overly hard to play a shield warden in the ettenmoors, especially now.

Originally Posted by Untg99

And I say this without hostility.
For those who have grasped the class, it's never been overly hard to play a shield warden in the ettenmoors, especially now.

Oh I agree 100%. I wouldn't say that playing any type of warden in the moors is difficult with the recent changes. As a tanking class we are ignored for a longer period in a group v group situation and we get to do all kinds of fun things. Solo we do quite well, especially if we take advantage of determination. Sure, things won't always go in our favor but we are quite capable.

The beautiful thing about audacity (and I am surprised more creeps haven't caught on to this) is that it allows you to drop a lot of the active or equipped defense in favor of offense. That extra free mitigation from gear allows everyone to focus on more damage, be it from traits or skills used. I would like to see more creeps drop their power for health and swap to power for damage, especially once they are maxed on audacity.

As for a current imbalance in determination, again I don't disagree. The change from having the leaches potentially resisted to them just applying a hot effect is huge and it is obvious enough that the single nerf we received was just not enough (another band-aid instead of a fix, surprise surprise.) I am not certain how difficult it is to code changes to the skills while the monster play effect is present but I look forward to this being addressed. I don't, however, see the sh-sp line as being too much as it is just too easy to overcome. I play creepside as well and have had the joy of stomping wardens just trying to roll their hot effects. Granted, they weren't the best wardens out there but I am far from the best creep out there.

All i know guys is that I'm having fun, i love stance dancing and i can have a fair 1 vs 1 fights without using heals if the creep fights fair too. If not i wouldn't got to rank 10 and i keep a constant 5k renown a day, which means that YES shield trait wardens in the right hands can kill more that enough to rank up and get full audacity in less than a week. That being said anyone that hates or doesn't like shield wardens can suck it up because I'm staying immortal in the moors :P. have a good day guys.

Originally Posted by Esegar

Is it really ok for a warden to outheal the damage of 5 wargs?

Yes. Yes they can. I had a graveyard ganking pack on me. Kept spamming self heals, EoB and Resolution. Almost got r6 warg down but he Sprinted away. Some r11, r10 and r8 remained, cause the r1 ran too. Then some grd and a minstrel came to my rescue and it was some nice renown. I healed for 70k lol xD

Originally Posted by Hodaran

All i know guys is that I'm having fun, i love stance dancing and i can have a fair 1 vs 1 fights without using heals if the creep fights fair too. If not i wouldn't got to rank 10 and i keep a constant 5k renown a day, which means that YES shield trait wardens in the right hands can kill more that enough to rank up and get full audacity in less than a week. That being said anyone that hates or doesn't like shield wardens can suck it up because I'm staying immortal in the moors :P. have a good day guys.

I've also been trying to find fair fights in shield line if the creep fights fair (I assume use everything). I've been wondering if I should try to 1v1 some of my shadow warg buddies with blue traits, no slots of armour and agility jewellery and auto attack them to death in recklessness while my crit immunity eats their entire DPS capability. The idea sounds plausible, but I thought I'd just post it here to get some constructive criticism.

Thinking perhaps this is also a viable way to have fair 2v1's with shadow wargs in shield line?

If not, I appreciate any strategies that I can use, that others may have toyed with, to make way for the obviousness of the overpowered shield warden.
Thanks.


(Disclaimer: Don't take it personally or anything anyone! Just poking fun around the 'suck it up' comment . )

See, your problem Constrictions is assuming that the wargs will stick around or that the freep/creep zerg won't roll in. Not that you couldn't pop NS+DC, throw on some armor, and tank the craid.

No need to think too much on the issue. Problem is only caused by the way audacity is done and low DPS for creeps.

Audacity adds a 30% damage mitigation, so Warden is out there with more defenses than a Guardian in PVE and full heals.

There should be a blanket healing reduction while in the moors up to 50% to counter audacity.

I personally run shield line. Yes my base DPS is low.. But, where my dps lags, DoTs cover. yesterday, i fought 2 rank 10 or 11 wargs, both in flayer, back to back, and beat them both. TBH im suprised they didnt hips before they died, but they fought till the end. Just for info, i have 13 aud, and im r7. i used resolution and celebration of skill, then i used quick toss, unerring strike, and the fist-shield-fist, fist-shield-fist-shield, and fist-shield-fist-shield-fist, on top of that, spear bleeds, repeat process and i pull wargs out quick. both of the 2 were under a minute. Anyways, ive fought r12 ba, and ate him quick, only problem i hit is spiders and defilers, both of which are hard to kill for me. i can kill r5 defilers fairly simple, and spiders. Ive fought a taskmaster spider and won(1v1). As far as craids go, i die within minutes, but depending on numbers, and skill, i can last long enough for help to arrive. for instance i took a 12 man craid(inside EC) using buffs, leeches, and HoTs and survive for around 45s-1minute until a fraid arrived and wiped the creeps. My point is, shield line has low DPS and can survive, but if you learn warden good enough, you are able to kill creeps. Not saying everyone likes this, nor that it works for everyone, but it works for me, and i like it.

Originally Posted by Spasmistic

In my opinion since update 6 wardens have become op. The changes to the determination stance make it by for the best stance (for survivability at least), and coupled with the wardens self heals make them nearly impossible to kill. They just block, parry and evade too much. I sparred a level 50 blue line Warden with 5k morale with my level 50 guardian (similar morale). The spar took the whole of the 3 minutes and I was left standing there with 1k morale while he was still on full. Due to the fact that he blocked, parried or evaded more than half of my attacks and just healed whatever damage i did do.

We tried again with him not having determination stance on and the battle went a lot more evenly. While it still looked like he would have won had we had more time, I had at least done about 3.5k damage to him by the end of the battle. So yeh, seems like determination stance is what makes the warden so op.

The reason is because wardens dont get any heals in any other stance, they only have leeches but no shield spear heals in any other stance unless your lvl 74

Originally Posted by community23

The reason is because wardens dont get any heals in any other stance, they only have leeches but no shield spear heals in any other stance unless your lvl 74

The thing is you can be so much more powerful if you Stance Dance. You get the best of both worlds: the bleeds of Recklessness and the HoTs of Determination. It really isn't one or the other. Now you do have to learn two very different sets of gambits but IMO it's worth it. For doing this I trait 5 blue and 2 red (sometimes 2 yellow). I like to focus on defense a little more than DPS. When you are SDing you get your bleeds up, switch to Determination, then heal up. Sometimes it isn't as easy as that, though. Just be creative. I like the Warden because you can be as good as you want to, if that makes any sense. It's the one class, IMO, that has the largest range of skill out of any class. You can be really bad, or, with enough practice, be INSANELY good. I've seen Wardens that can only take 3 or 4 NPCs and I've seen others that can take 15-20 NPCs. Wardens or bosses. Like really.

Ferrets and Cookys for everyone!

Wardens are not OP, and people who cite examples in the Moors are talking about green or really bad creeps versus a good warden. Can a warden with full audacity take on 4-5 creeps? Yes, if they are rank 3 or 4. But so can a burg, rk, Minnie, etc. Examples of a warden running into 6 or more creeps and killing a few before being taken down seem to excite people, but I have seen other classes do the same thing. A few months back, someone posted a video of a warden fighting a bunch of creeps on STAB and chasing the, all the way to the ruins while killing 3 or 4 out of a group of maybe 8. If you actually looked at the video, you saw no more than one creep actually hitting the warden at any time, as they were killing NPcs. When the warden killed a BA in the ruins, the BA didn't slow and kite, but just stood there and let himself be meleed to death. And the truth of the matter is that if you have a warden versus 2 high ranked creeps (rank 9 or higher)' the warden is toast unless the creeps are just bad. And against a single defiler with flies, a warden has no chance.

Originally Posted by Cunaith

Wardens are not OP, and people who cite examples in the Moors are talking about green or really bad creeps versus a good warden. Can a warden with full audacity take on 4-5 creeps? Yes, if they are rank 3 or 4. But so can a burg, rk, Minnie, etc. Examples of a warden running into 6 or more creeps and killing a few before being taken down seem to excite people, but I have seen other classes do the same thing. A few months back, someone posted a video of a warden fighting a bunch of creeps on STAB and chasing the, all the way to the ruins while killing 3 or 4 out of a group of maybe 8. If you actually looked at the video, you saw no more than one creep actually hitting the warden at any time, as they were killing NPcs. When the warden killed a BA in the ruins, the BA didn't slow and kite, but just stood there and let himself be meleed to death. And the truth of the matter is that if you have a warden versus 2 high ranked creeps (rank 9 or higher)' the warden is toast unless the creeps are just bad. And against a single defiler with flies, a warden has no chance.

I see you are a worshiper of the Chicken, Warrrden. No cookys or ferrets for you!

Actually, my travel mount is a sled pulled by a team of ferrets, a la Radagast.

But to the original discussion, if wardens were OP, one would expect the leaderboard of each server to be heavily weighted towards this class and 5 or 6 of the top 10 in each world would be wardens. To settle this once and for all, take a look at the leaderboards. You will be hard pressed to find a single warden in the #1 spot. You will in fact find few wardens anywhere in the top 10 on any server, for that matter. Not what you would expect for an OP class.

I run the Moors with 5 blues, 1 yellow (jav cd) and 1 red (+2 dot pulses).
I use Spear Lord armour, which makes me a good asset to any raid, since I can debuff 50% incoming healing from the T.A.
I stack up might as much as I can, having around 1.8k might and 1k vit (tactical mitigation suffers, leaving me with 7.5k)
Usually run in reck or assailment, using determination only when zerged and I think I can manage to escape.

My devs can go from 2-4k on creeps, depending on audacity (over 6.5k on npcs). That's traitted blue.

I'm sorry to say, but if you think blue line wardens take forever to kill anything, you're pretty much wrong...

Originally Posted by Herja

I run the Moors with 5 blues, 1 yellow (jav cd) and 1 red (+2 dot pulses).
I use Spear Lord armour, which makes me a good asset to any raid, since I can debuff 50% incoming healing from the T.A.
I stack up might as much as I can, having around 1.8k might and 1k vit (tactical mitigation suffers, leaving me with 7.5k)
Usually run in reck or assailment, using determination only when zerged and I think I can manage to escape.

This is exactly what i do also and it works perfectly fine. Granted i wont be killing creeps as fast as if i was 5 deep into red line, but iv yet to find a creep i couldn't kill solo, and do so in a timely fashion, except high rank, well played defilers. Warden dps is much more dependent on how much might and mastery you have, then what trait line your in.