Thread: Utterly Bewildered on Gambit effects

Recently I have created a warden, and so far I love it! However, I have become quite confused on the function of gambits. The tooltips don't seem to include all the effects of each, whic makes it difficult to know which one to use. For example I have noticed a DOT debuff on enemies called Lifetap, and a corresponding HOT buff on me. What triggers this? Should it be a priority to accumulate them? And where are all these other bleeds on the enemies coming from?

It is not an issue now since I have not begun group content, but I have a feeling it will be.

Have fun finding out. When i was leveling my warden back in the days i would spam the same skill to understand what it does and also for deeds. Your not the 1st person having issues with skills and tool tip so your not alone.

Im assuming your warden is running in recklessness if he is new and at low lvl. the DoT+HoT you are seeing is likely a product of the gambit offensive strike. In recklessness it puts a lifetap on a mob (the DoT+HoT your seeing). It could also possibly be a product of war cry which i believe also has a lifetap (chance?) associated with it. Hopefully the tooltip issues will be cleared up soon. I dont think i could give an exhaustive list of things not showing off the top of my head but any other specific questions you have about gambit effects i can try to answer. gl playing your warden!

The other bleeds you mentioned may be from the shield spear line as well. Persevere give a bleed in recklessness. If your using a spear it has a random proc chance for a bleed. If you have safegard (sh-sp-sh) or Power Attack (sp-sh-fi) it will cause a bleed but i dont think those two stack. At low lvl i cant think of any other possible bleeds that could be happening.

There are a couple of problems. First, your gambit effect will change depending on what stance you're in (or not in -- "no stance" has different effects also, although as far as I can tell they're uniformly weaker, so you'd never use them). For example: Shield + Shield (Defensive Strike) gives a +Physical Mastery buff when in Recklessness (your level 10 DPS stance), but a +Block buff when in Determination (your level 20 tanking stance). This means you have to learn not only all the gambits, but all their permutations. I'll direct you to the most excellent listing by Asto, here: http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.p...-Comprehensive ...note that, to complicate things, some gambits' DoTs and HoTs will stack, while others will not.

Second, tooltips on gambits are occasionally incorrectly labelled. The gambit that lifetaps is Spear + Fist (Offensive Strike) in Recklessness stance, BUT, the tooltip neglects to mention the lifetap. Note: this is a money gambit for levels 10-20, and very helpful for the level 15 class quest.

As far as extraneous bleeds, you may be seeing one from your spear's weapon-specific proc. Or, you may be seeing an "on-critical" effect from a gambit, which can proc all sorts of different things...Life as a warden: not simple!

I just started a warden and i'm ever so slightly confused about the gambits and indeed the skills I got at level 20.. ie I didn't know what exactly they did, how to use them and whether I should slot them or not? But after reading the above posts i'm not sure i'll ever be able to understand! The warden is definately a complicated character (at the minute anyway) hopefully by the time I reach 75...(or will it be 85 by then??) I'll have a bit more understanding :-)

Ahh Level 20 , you will have got 'Determination' Stance our Tanking stance and access to all the Masteries. Depending on which traits you have slotted depends which masteries are available.

This is one of the changes with Warden post U6 , masteries are available much earlier, most of us did not see masteries until all the gambits were burned into our reflexes as combo's of 1,2,3 (Sp, Sh, Fi) and we had to go through a massive relearning process , probably took me several weeks to relearn the gambit combos etc.

For Example : Now you are Level 20 lets assume you have completed the class deeds 'Strike with Quick Thrust 200 times' and Completed the class quest 'A Spear at the Southern March' , You now have 2 class Traits 'Efficient Thrust' and 'Veteran'. By Traiting both of these you have 2 active Red Line Traits, this actives the Spear Masteries, now at one keystroke you can build [Spear, Spear] , [Spear , Shield ] or [Spear , Fist ]. Therefore Deft Strike , Boot and Offensive Strike can all be built with 1 key stroke.

Likewise Power Attack which you learnt at lvl18 - Sp,Sh,Fi now can become [Sp,Sh], Fi - 2 keystrokes instead of 3.

The benefits of Masteries will become more apparant as you level and the gambits become 4 and 5 in length

Remember as well, that some gambit effects only occur when you hit with a 'devastating blow'.

You will hear a lot of talk on here about rotations and the like. Your bleeds and lifetaps are part of those. If I'm solo'ing say an Elite I will go in with my recklessness stance on, hit it with 21, 212, 2121 (2 being shield, 1 being spear) so that's a small bleed, medium bleed and a large bleed. Once I have those on, depending on my morale, I'll switch to determination stance and hit my healing gambits (21, 212, 2121, 23, etc) until my morale is back up. If the monster is still alive, I switch back and repeat the bleeds

You just need to work out what works for you. Also, it's a different game when your playing with a group......