Thread: How do you use Battle Preparation and Battle Memory?

I've been playing my warden on and off for a year now, but only solo until update 6. With the changes I decided to give her a try again and found I enjoy playing her much more than I expected and am on the way to make her my second character to 75. She's at 65 right now, has already got some grouping/tanking experience with kin and friends (although they had to seriously hold off on damage since the chars I play with are mostly 75 and well-geared already ) and I'm starting to get a feeling for the threat, self-buffing and healing that I'm putting out with different gambits and how I'm using masteries to get the most out of what I'm doing.

One thing I have so far failed to get a feeling for is how to utilize battle preparation and battle memory. With battle preparation I can fire off shield up, shield mastery and possibly conviction (in determination) before starting the pull, then preparing an Exultation of Battle to fire off as soon as I run into the mobs. It does feel weird though and seems to take quite some time while the group is just standing around scratching their heads, watching the crazy hobbit going through all kinds of weird moves before actually starting the action.

Battle memory on the other hand seems to be useful for so many things I can't decide which is the best way to go. I am tempted to put a wall of steel in there for the interrupt (since I never seem to get the boot loaded up and fired in time if an interrupt is required), but using it to duplicate the 4- and 5-part-gambits continuously (mostly alternating between a double builder and two shots of the same longer gambit) seems helpful, too. Are there any other ways to use this that I haven't thought of yet? How are you using battle memory (and are you using it at all)?

A side-question about battle memory: If I put a gambit into battle memory and change stance before firing it off, does the memorized gambit use the effects of the original state or of the new state?

Any tips for using both in solo/dps mode (determination or recklessness) are apprecitated, too, although I find that I get along questing without putting too much thought or effort into an optimized rotation.

Here is what I use battle memory for. When I have my defenses up , I use deft strike, I go potent , then I fire off a high damage skill, and then I use battle memory. It becomes like doing the high damage skill 2x.

For Battle Prep yo kinda answered yourself and you seem to be doing it right. Get your defences up before the pull and prep an EoB or something to start the pull. Start doing it on the run between one pull and the next. Dont wait until you get there and you can save some standing around time.

For Battle Memory there are as many uses as there are Gambits. I also started off thinking I should leave an interrupt there for rainy days but that tends to take up the spot unnecessarily most of the time. The Champ or Burg is plenty capable to interrupt.

Doubling up on a gambit is a nice use.

2xEoB to get more threat or hit more targets or counter any resits is great.

Also getting up your strong, long defensive buffs is very easy with BM. In determination ofc

Potency => Celebration of Skill + BM CoS
Potency => Surety of Death + BM SoD
Potency => Dance of War + BM DoW

Would each give you both the highest tier of self buff and the longest duration of the associated set of defences.

in short I would recommend to keep using battle memory instead of saving something for a rainy day.

I mostly use it to double fire DoW, SoD and sometimes CoS in order to get the longest stackable buffs possible as fast as possible.

Also great for doubling up on all your threat skills, like double SoV (12k threat x 2), followed by double EoB (15k x 2) should give you around 25-30 seconds of up front/ToT aggro.

Also double up on DBtD for extra power if needed. I find that if I try to store an interupt it almost never gets used before I want to use BM for something else, so I stopped trying.

Originally Posted by Bramor

With battle preparation I can fire off shield up, shield mastery and possibly conviction (in determination) before starting the pull, then preparing an Exultation of Battle to fire off as soon as I run into the mobs. It does feel weird though and seems to take quite some time while the group is just standing around scratching their heads, watching the crazy hobbit going through all kinds of weird moves before actually starting the action.

In response to the highlighted part- There are alot of wardens Ive spoken to who did not realize that the masteries have no cooldown in battle prep. They were using the single builder skills with horribly long animations. If this is what your doing it will cutback on the time you spend buffing considerably to build with masteries only. you can hit [sh-fi][sh-fi] back to back with no negative side effects. When using battle prep masteries are your friend. Use them liberally. Hope this saves some time

I have masteries & builders mapped to numpad , makes it very easy pre combat using Battle Prep on the run

e.g. on Number Pad

0 = Battle Prep
5 = [ Sh,Sp ]
9 = [ Fi,Sh ]
8 = [ Sh,Fi ]
Enter = Execute
+ = Execute Battle Memory

as an example I can do the following in about 10-12 secs
Running to next combat encounter 0,5,9,Enter [ Shield Mastery ] - 0 ,8,8, Enter [ DoW ] - 0 ,8, 8, 8 [ Conviction ] - throw Javelin JoDF '1' (above Q) to start combat , then 'Enter' to execute Conviction

If enough time can throw a 2nd Dow before Conviction - then got full duration Dance Evade Buff up as well (doing this out of combat gets rid of the dicso dance animation therefore saves some build time )

Then its Goad [ Fi,Fi ] , followed by EoB and then the Battle memoried EoB

After that it is dependant on the situation, as a previous post said using Battle Memory is a nice quick way to get all long defensive buffs up.

If anything is left in BM now it is usually a threat generating gambit SoV, EoB or Conviction

its just practise and finding a key map that you are happy with - It took me 4 attempts at key mapping to find what i was happy with, now, in combat most of my masteries are on cd most of the time, if I am firing the right gambits I assume I am getting better firing off more gambits over a time period

Originally Posted by Erasluindor

In response to the highlighted part- There are alot of wardens Ive spoken to who did not realize that the masteries have no cooldown in battle prep. They were using the single builder skills with horribly long animations. If this is what your doing it will cutback on the time you spend buffing considerably to build with masteries only. you can hit [sh-fi][sh-fi] back to back with no negative side effects. When using battle prep masteries are your friend. Use them liberally. Hope this saves some time

Also, something I didn't realize until a day or two ago, not sure if it's common knowledge:

If you ready something in battle prep (for example, EoB) but the group still needs a few seconds before starting the fight, you don't have to worry about BP expiring and having to hit it again and rebuild EoB. While the gambit is waiting to be fired, you can hit BP as many times as you want and it will refresh the 15 second timer without wiping the gambit. So once you get your long duration buffs up, you can ready your first in-combat gambit and just keep refreshing the timer until combat actually starts.

For fast instances like Foundry, Roots, 3 mans, skirms, whatever, before the first pull I'll do DoW, SM, DoW, shield tactics, prepare EoB and fire it off as I run into mobs, goad, then EoB again + BM. 212 2121 and do normal tanky stuff (keeping up the extra buff from DoW and CoS) as we fight and when there's like 1-2 mobs left in the current pull, I'll go ahead and manually build EoB and run into the next group, goad, EoB + BM, etc (I am not a fan of staying out of combat to regen power and stuff unless it's right before a boss fight, or someone important has really low power... for the most part you will be fine if you have like <40% power... and it helps RKs maintain attunement, lets other people take advantage of crit/defeat/parry responses, and just makes things go much faster in general).

If I have a good lead on threat and it's a fight where interrupts are really helpful, I like to keep WoS in BM for those times. But it's not very often that is the case.

Anyone having trouble with the spear-shield mastery skill in battle prep? It only gives me a single spear gambit when I use it in battle prep, not sp-shi like it should. It works fine outside of battle prep.

Yeah the [12] mastery is a known bug in battle prep. But its easy enough to work around....ie if you're trying to build Shield Tactics in Battle Prep, just go [23][12][21]. Likewise, DBTD can be built [12][21][31] with the bug. And I guess if you wanted to open with an US, that'd be [12][23][12][23]