Thread: My Poor Wrist

My main is a Captain and I have always loved playing more complex characters in any MMO i've played so when I decided to make a skirmish alt, the Warden seemed like an excellent choice for me. The plan was to just have something I could skirmish on when I was in the mood to be alone. The plan failed because i've come to really enjoy the character and now plan to level her up as a regular character (although I will still use her for my skirmish fun). I'm only 32 currently but i've come across a slight problem...

She is really bad for my wrist lol so many skills to be used and gambits to build.

I just have a few questions

Is there a stale period for levelling the Warden that i'll just need to grit my teeth and get stuck in until I unlock a particular skill? I don't mind but it helps to be prepared.

Are we wanted in groups? I see from reading that we can be a little misunderstood by other classes. I do have a very nice group of friends/kin but timezone differences mean that we aren't always on together to do stuff.

I currently have a spear but would it be worth getting a good club to use for tanking now or should I be good to wait until the higher levels?

ICPR - I seem to suck the blue stuff down like it's a really good cup of tea. Would it be wise to go for jewellery with direct ICPR and/or fate rather than focusing on my Vitality/Might/Agility?

Thankyou in advance for any replies and I guess while the game is still down I should take some more time to read up more on this wonderful class, I could of course go out in to the real world but that place has really bad loot.

Wrist damage is an intentional mechanism to weed out those not meant for Wardenism early on. If you learn to master the pain you will also learn to dish it out.

Masteries are now available at level 20 if i understand things right so learn what is required to unlock them (basically combination of traits). They will help cut down on the number of buttons you have to press.

ICPR does seem to be an issue early on. I did invest heavily in Fate / ICPR while leveling. Your damage comes from bleeds and your survivability from bpe and self heals. Dont be afraid to sacrifice some Might / Vitality for something that would look good on a caster type class. One or two items could really help but don't go overboard. Once you get Dark before the Dawn power pots will be a thing of the past.

the whole spear / club / sword thing is largely irrelevant at your stage. Just go with what you like stat wise as leveling is so quick things become obsolete very quick. At end game i do go Club for Tanking and Spear for DPS.

hope some of this helps.

P.S keep your shield up

There are some of the skills that once you get them make your warden very powerful (and arguably even more fun than they already are), but with the huge revamp recently and not having (yet!) played through another warden from baby to max level, I couldn't really say if it now has doldrum levels. I do know that of the three wardens I've levelled so far (75, 65, and 60-something... the latter two haven't been played in a while since I've only recently returned to regular playing and am sticking to just one server for now) that there was never a time when I wasn't enjoying playing them.

I'd say wardens are actually one of the few classes that are enjoyable pretty much all the time, as I can recall having massive doldrums on all my other characters (a lot of whom were levelled to 30-35 for the Esteldin swift travel from West Bree, and/or the riding skill at it's old level, and have been there ever since). For example my loremaster went through a long period where the only reason she was levelling was for things like the horse riding skill and the sparrow vanity pet. Then I decided I might as well get her to 45 for the class legendary quests and unholy hells but was she suddenly a lot of fun once she got her sword and eagle, so I levelled her enough for the rep-gated Galadhrim baking recipes before they finally raised the level cap and my wardens kidnapped my attention again. She's now 74 and about to unlock the rep-locked Rohirrim cooking recipes.

But I digress.

I've never had any particular problem finding a group when I was in the mood to actually PUG (rare, since we're minor deities against most landscape mobs, and I've never much cared about instance play). As far as weapons go, while there are minor benefits to using one weapon over another based on weapon effects and racial/class DPS boosts and so on, they are minor, not game-changing. So unless you're a dedicated min/maxer, pick the weapon whose effects/look you like and go with it. Which may mean having one weapon for tanking and another for landscape soloing, or one weapon you use for everything, but basically go with what you want to.

And yes, at least until you get the Dark Before Dawn gambit, anything with ICPR on it is your friend. Warden gambits aren't as insanely power-hungry as they used to be, but we still go through it at a fair clip. So shield, jewellery, gear, anything you can get some form of ICPR on, grab it, even if it means a few less points of might/agil/AC/whatever. Including eating food for additional ICPR in long fights, and yes it's worth the extra money to get the crit foods that last twice as long. By high level you'll almost never need the bit of extra regen that foods give you, but it doesn't hurt to carry them for those occasions when you decide to try a Stupid Warden Tricks 101 sort of encounter.

Hello.

I'll chime in and give my two copper on your issues at hand.

First of all you may need to find a better layout for your skills. You may have smaller hands then I but when I am playing my Warden I usually don't need to move my hand much at all unless I am going for a skill at the far right of my keyboard. At level 32 though you don't really have that many skills. The majority of a Warden's skills come from the Gambit system as you know which is used through four buttons. Three builders and the execute button. Try arranging your skills so that they are all near your four fingers. The popular layout is "1-2-3-4" with '1' being used for the Spear Builder, '2' being used for the Shield Builder, '3' being used for the Fist Builder, and '4' being used for the Execute Gambit Skill. If you use "WASD" for your characters movement then this layout will be easily accessible.

Now onto your questions. "Is there a stale period for levelling the Warden...". Yes and no. The Warden is a very fun class to level. There are some things that make it difficult at lower levels though. The biggest one I found was lack of power. You acquire the Gambit "The Dark Before Dawn" at level 64. This Gambit will allow you to regenerate power with an instant +Power portion as well as a +Power Over Time effect. Until then I suggest looking for at least a few pieces of gear that give you either raw In Combat Power Regeneration or at least some extra Fate. I think the Bracelet or Ring slots are usually good for these kind of pieces. Besides the power issues I'd say the Warden class usually takes off in terms of good survivability, tanking, etc., at around level 50. This is usually when you're about to start your adventure through Moria. Just keep on trucking though until then. Upgrade your gear as often as you can. Work on your class deeds and it should go by pretty quick. Remember to try and stay in Recklessness Stance when solo grinding. It will make killing enemies go alot quicker.

"Are we wanted in groups?" Of coarse. You may need to 'prove' yourself to some people, but we excel at what we do best: tanking. Practice using your Threat/Agro Generating Gambits even when solo'ing. Obviously they won't do much alone, but get used to using them. Our main role in a group is tanking. We have some amazing threat generating tools that will allow you to hold agro even against the hardest hitting DPS classes in the game. "Goad", "Precise Blow", "War Cry", "Piercing Strike", and "Maddening Strike" are going to be your most used threat Gambits at your level. "Maddening Strike" is a threat transfer skill. It is better to use this one after the other members of your group have created threat of their own. Obviously if you use it at the start when no one else has done anything then there will not be any threat to steal from them! You could also fill the role as a DPS class if you use the Recklessness Stance and stack more Might in your build. You will mainly be filling the Tanking role though so group often and practice as much as you can.

"I currently have a spear but would it be worth getting a good club to use for tanking now or should I be good to wait until the higher levels?" This is usually personal preference. Obviously there are things which make one better then the other. If you're a Hobbit then I would suggest a club mainly for the inherent bonus that Hobbit's get when using clubs. The Spear is nice because of the bleed which will periodically be placed on the enemy. I like it for this and the looks mainly. I think Elves get a bonus when using swords. Weapons recently had a change (maybe not that recent actually, he he) that made the DPS pretty much equal. You can use whichever one you'd like and not really be hindering yourself with the choice.

I already talked about ICPR before. To reiterate, be sure to use Cooked Food as often as you can. This will give you a bonus to your ICPR as well as OCPR. You shouldn't need to stack too much Fate. Stick with raw ICPR where you can. Otherwise hang in there until level 64 when you acquire "The Dark Before Dawn" Gambit. After that you should have no issues with power.

Good luck!

Try using this:

http://www.lotrointerface.com/downlo...TonicBars.html

It makes it very easy to set up gambit bars Also you might look into getting a mouse with a couple extra buttons, doesn't have to be anything fancy but I have buttons on my mouse set as Shout, Shield, and Spear. Normally people use their dominant hand with the mouse, which will leave most fingers sitting there idly during combat with a standard mouse, but with a couple buttons on it you can program your muscle memory very easily. I kind of think of this job like playing a instrument and tried set up everything accordingly, I mean, think about trying to play a piano if the keys were spread everywhere and you didn't have foot pedals.

Also, going back to tonic bars, I have a few masteries setup to perform full gambits but try to never use them all except for the start of a fight. Like for instance Exultation of Battle would look like:



But I might manually with mouse buttons make [Fi-Sp] then click on tonic [Sh-Fi] and manually use Shield bash to make the gambit. This way I'm never waiting on full mastery cooldowns. Another good reason I do this too is that I also use that same EoB bar to start multiple other gambits, for instance I could use the mastery [Fi-Sp] on it to start Precise Blow, Piercing Strike, or Spear of Virtue. I'm not sure how much, if any, time is saved this way but the flexibility of options is quite welcome to me.

I may be wierd to most of you, but my gambit builders and the gambit execution are as follows:

NumPad
4: Spear
5: Fist
6: Shield
8: Gambit Execution

so i can kite with WASD and do my gambits xD

Originally Posted by Barney1119

I may be wierd to most of you, but my gambit builders and the gambit execution are as follows:

NumPad
4: Spear
5: Fist
6: Shield
8: Gambit Execution

so i can kite with WASD and do my gambits xD

I use a similar layout

Numpad 1:Spear 2:Shield 3:Fist
then the Masteries Mapped above them
4:[Sp,Sh] ....9:[Fi,Sh], / [Sp,Sp], * [Sh,Sh], - [Fi,Fi]
+ 'Battle Memory' , Enter 'Execute Gambit'
0: Battle Prep . 'Remove last Builder'

Javelin Skills on 'normal' 1,2,3,4 pots on 7,8,9,0

with this layout I can Kite using WASD (left hand) and fire gambits using right hand , there is not very much wrist movement required, I have suffered from mild RSI (too many years of point and click healing in a departed galaxy far far away) and this works for me


Conviction Kiting is easy
Goad : - Enter
Conviction: 8 * . 9 Enter [Sh,Fi] [Sh,Sh] [Remove 1 shield Builder] [Fi Sh]

My warden broke his first keyboard due to key-mashing at level 13. A year or two later, he's happily standing around in a field, growing crops. Now a staggering level 15.

Originally Posted by Macroscian

My warden broke his first keyboard due to key-mashing at level 13. A year or two later, he's happily standing around in a field, growing crops. Now a staggering level 15.

have you got sledgehammers for fingers , I guess as a system architect / software developer I have a 'soft touch' on a keyboard mine is 7 yrs old and survived WoW,SWG,LOTRO and ToR - LOL you now have me listening in office at colleagues mashing their keyboards doing their normal work.

Originally Posted by Aidlywo

have you got sledgehammers for fingers , I guess as a system architect / software developer I have a 'soft touch' on a keyboard mine is 7 yrs old and survived WoW,SWG,LOTRO and ToR - LOL you now have me listening in office at colleagues mashing their keyboards doing their normal work.

Haha yeah it has to do with a rather Heavy Hand. I changed from EU services to US ones some time before the Migration, here I average 125-225 ping, there I had 25. The slight delay makes it a very awkward class to play without hurting my wrist =)) A shame really, love the stylish spear moves.