Thread: Would you rather

Hey minis! Ive been kinda curious lately about a topic. One that has been hashed out about a million times already but on the guard and warden forums. Guards and Wards have a pretty bad tendency of just unzipping and comparing mindlessly with lots of hatred on both sides so i figured id ask you guys since you probably know best. Do you find it easier to heal a guard or a warden? Or have they been made pretty competitive now??

Id like to know your answer for the above question in raid context and fellowship context. Thanks in advance and dont let the tanks know this discussion is happening or war will break out

I would say that the differencing in gear levels and player skill far outweighs any intrinsic class differences. I've healed Gaurdian, Warden and Champion tanks in all the level cap content with the exception of orthanc tier 2, where I'm yet to make any real headway with any flavour of tank. Can't seem to get a captain to put the effort into optimising for tanking, but that's another story.

Edit forgot the actual point. I haven't noticed any correlation between perceived difficulty of healing and the designated tanks. One of the smoothest runs I've had through ToO was when we had a champion tank.

As someone who played a warden in endgame content when level cap was 65 and having a minstrel as a main char I rather have a guardian as a tank. The problem is that a mediocre played guardian is often easier on the group than a good played warden. This has not changed with ROI.

Exceptional warden players are really fun to have in your group. The problem is they are few and far between. I the last 2 years there were only 2 or 3 I came to know. I think I was never in a ToO T2 raid where a warden was main tank and we never had one as a raid main tank in any of the kins I was in the last 3 years.

Nowadays I'm as comfortable healing a Warden tank as I am a Guardian, everything else being equal. However what makes the difference is whether the player has taken the time to learn their class, slot the correct traits, and equip themselves appropriate to the content they're facing.

From what I have seen, I agree with Ayalinda. It really depends on player skill and equipment.

I would like to add however that in certain situations there can be differences due to the different playstyles. A guardian's survivability stems from reducing incoming damage, a wardens simply evades a lot of damage.

So when grouping with a warden, if the warden lacks moral, he may find himself one or twohitted by a boss crit he did not manage to evade (especially in foundry I have seen this happen). But outside these intense boss fights, I believe that healing him is a bit more relaxing than with a similarly equipped guardian.
When looking for a random tank and I don't know the player, I don't really care whether it's a guardian or a tank, both classes have their advantages, but I do the following:
1. If it's a warden, I check their moral to see if they run the risk of being one hitted if there is a hard-hitting boss in the instance
2. If it's a guardian I am a bit suspicious if he runs with more moral than usual, because, especially if he is not that well equipped, it often means that he runs low on block/parry chance and incoming damage reduction and may be impossible to heal in spite of his unbuffed 20k+ moral ^^.

However, I have done orthanc t2 raids with both guardians and wardens who were perfectly equipped and excellent players - I haven't noticed a real difference for me as a healer and was left simply admiring their tanking abilities


PS: @ Ayalinda: There is a captain on my server who regularly tanks foundry (and with only one healer). He's the only captain tank I know, but it really seems doable. Don't know about Orthanc tanking, but who knows... sometimes I get the feeling that a great captain can do nearly anything

I am not to much of an endgame raider, just leveled up my mini to help my kinship out and help people learn their class in groups and such. For me there is a difference in how to heal between a guardian and a warden and a champ to boot. But in the end its the player and how well they learned their class that truly makes a difference.

I have only had the chance to heal wardens in ToO a few times since the groups I'm running with usually go in with double guardians, but two of the wardens I did heal have stuck in my mind as being especially easy, relaxed runs healing-wise. Both times it felt like I didn't have to heal nearly as much as I normally do. On the other hand, I also remember a particular warden that was extremely hard to heal since she seemed to drop morale just by looking at the mobs, but then she was fairly new to raid-tanking post Isengard and it was probably just a question of not enough experience and no top-end equipment (yet).

Guardians, on the other hand, I have healed many with varying results, some super easy to heal (with loads of morale and loads of incoming healing), some almost impossible to heal (low mitigations and low incoming healing). So I'll agree with those posting before me: Difficulty of healing does not depend on the class of the tank, but rather on equipment and (especially) skill.

Thanks for the replies guys! Im glad to hear the consensus say that skill and gear matter more than class. Despite my signature im a secret warden and it makes me pretty happy to know the healers opinion is that no class is intrinsically better.

Gear and skill being equal....guardian any day.

I play a Mini when raiding and a Warden when grouping. I can say without a doubt raiding a Guard is easier to heal.

6 mans and easy raids a warden can be easier to heal in some situations. Like when they are tanking 5+ mobs, a wardens EoB can make up for the mit gap between the two. Also tanking 1 boss in anything other than a raid a warden can be easier to heal because the warden can spam EoB x5 for the first half of the fight, then self heals for the last half. Wardens self HoTs stack up to about 1400/3 sec not including crits. This effectively makes up for about 500 incoming dps, or depending on gear 1 bolster every 3.5 seconds for an entire fight. I highly doubt the mitigation difference and armor difference between a high end Warden and a high end Guard is the same as having 1 minstrel spamming bolster on them the entire fight.

On hard hitting boss fights like Sarumon I have had a guard and ward in the raid, then swap the ward out for another guard. The difference in how much I healed was amazing. This is mostly attributed to the warden doing aggro skills and "tanking" skills instead of focusing on self heals. The reasoning for this is their #1 job is to get aggro, and without dpsmeter there is no way to know when someone will pull it, so you keep doing aggro skills the whole fight.

In small 6 man boss fights I know when I can stop aggroing and start self healing, and if for some reason I lose aggro its not the end of the world, one prepped EoB and 4 more in the next 10 seconds has the boss back on me with a quickness.

Originally Posted by Daec

Gear and skill being equal....guardian any day.

Yes and no, a well geared guardian and warden are not equal when skill levels are equal.

Any button-mashing 12 year old can play a guard and hold aggro. It takes a skilled warden to do the same.

A great guardian will always be my choice over a great warden, and that sucks to say because I play a warden.

I prefer Guardians for tank-swap situations. I prefer Wardens for fights with lots of adds. I prefer Guardians for when the group may have a lower ability-level or is learning the fight for the first time. I prefer Wardens for DPS-race full-throttle-burn-the-boss fights.

As a healer, the preferences are only partly based on which tank is "easier to heal." Tanks are also responsible for lessening the damage of the REST of the group, too, so a good tank isn't just easy to heal herself, a good tank also makes the whole group easy to heal. In my observations, in tank-swap fights, it is harder for Wardens to maintain the appropriate balance of threat, thus it is more likely for the boss to turn and hit a DPS class. However, Wardens are much better at picking up multiple adds than a Guardian is, simply because of Conviction, and so I am less likely to get healing aggro when adds spawn than with a Guardian. When learning new content, the cooldowns that Guardians have to help their survivability can really help lengthen a fight situation where a wipe is inevitable, and this is a good thing so you can figure out the mechanics of a fight to help you formulate your strategy. For DPS-race fights, I've observed that Wardens can better hold threat under the full onslaught of all the DPS classes burning the boss as fast as possible, no holding back -- Guardians have a much harder time of it, and thus the boss is likely to turn and smack the group down.

I've had good luck with Captain tanking, too (they can easily tank single-target bosses like one of the giants in Orthanc Frost & Fire T1), although of course they are not quite as easy as the two main-tank classes. I have yet to run with a true Champion tank since ROI, though, so I can't comment on them.

My main is a minstrel and I am one of the primary healers on nearly all our raids including T2 (we have several good healers in our kin and good thoughtful players as well).

IMHO I think a mediocre Guardian (gear & skill) is approximately equal to a good Warden (gear & skill). I believe the warden has to be a better player than the guardian to be a main tank in end game raid content. Between threat management and damage avoidance/mitigation I believe the guardian has a greater chance of being successful. If your warden is not good at what they do, there is not much chance of success. I believe this is the nature of the classes. To play the warden well you have to be good, if you are not it will be obvious.

Having said that, when you have a good warden tank, life is a dream for the healer. I know because we have a couple in our kin.

PS: I also have a guard and warden alts at sub 75 (and a 75 champ). I'm, admittedly, not the greatest player by any means, but I don't want the tank job on my warden. It would take more skill than I believe I possess.

PSS: No class can be successful with bad players behind the wheel. All have to know their roles and play to them, so skill is always a factor. Gear is only a factor as the content grows more difficult.

It really depends on content as much as the player and gear. There are some places I find punish a warden more than a guard... but there are other places where the wardens additional abilities (group heals, leeches, etc.) make things super easy over a guard. I've known plenty of folks who roll both and will voluntarily claim, "I need to get my other tank for this" -- depending on the situation.

This is separate and apart from the basic "abilities" issue.

Depends on the fight. Wardens are better when mass damage is going out imo, Defiant Challenge > Pledge any day.

I've healed on both Rune Keeper and Minstrel to both Wardens and Guardians. It's pretty much my main role in almost every group I end up in. I would have to say no preference based on class. I've seen Guardians lose agro constantly and Wardens face roll the group by being traited red-lined. On the flip side I've also seen Guardians act like a magnet from across the room and Wardens solo Dhar in Foundry 200k morale down to zero (true story).

To me this is a pretty aimless question because Guardians do grab agro more easily but at the same time Wardens (good ones) self heal and stack blocks unlike any other class. This is a given--and the advantages are pretty clear. Each has their own specific strength and like many other players before had mentioned it's the player behind the screen that's puppeteering the toon. In the end, depending on whether it's a Warden or Guardian, I adjust myself as a healer to the tank. Of course, in some cases it's just a horrible lost cause no matter the number of healers you have at hand also irregardless if it's a Guardian or Warden.

It's guardian for me , always have been and always will be.

Obviously, it all comes to player skill and gearing in the end , but in general ? Guardians are far more trustworthy.
I think the biggest reason is the higher passive mitigations the guardians have because of armor.

Yes , wardens get healed , they have defiant challenge ( which makes them almost immune to pain ) , i get that.
BUT, most of the times i go to a hard fight with a warden , they might look just fine at first sight and on the next second they can get TOTALLY destroyed, and you can barely get them back up.
Guardians on the other hand ? They die like... slowly and steadily ??? It feels like they give the healer more time to respond.

There is no way for me to explain it properly , but i always seem to trust my heals more on a guardian, it just feels safer : D

There is another aspect to this argument imo , its harder to find a good warden than a good guardian.

Did duo's with warden regularly for a while- how i learned to heal. I PUG with guards mostly and am sometimes lucky enough to do kin runs these days with a really great guard tank. (Our kin has some really good raid geared and capped minstrels so I get taken on learner runs while I learn the instance and get geared.) I have also healed random champ tanks in small fellowships from 50 to level cap. The easiest? The ones who have high incoming healing.
I did tell a champ, whom i pugged school or library with, ages ago that he was easier to heal than any guard I'd grouped with. He was!
He said: "Why, cause i stand still?" LOL Well that was some of it-no line of sight issues (this was also when more minstrel skills required no moving while casting.) But it was also his general awareness- like waiting until i'd eaten between pulling rooms and turning aoe effects from mobs away from me, and chasing stragglers -cause i was very newbie and not that situationally aware (I still tend to green bar focus, forget to protect myself, and get lost easily)..................and his high incoming healing, of course.

[BTW: The easiest player I've ever healed was a dual box level 75 champ with a 75 healing RK on follow who took me through my first RoF- my combat log showed Peralda was completely redundant The second easiest was dual box guard with Minstrel on follow, in Moria... ]

So, for me, it depends on the player, their style and their set up rather than their class-guards do go down more slowly so are easier to 'catch' and hence keep alive. Wardens can suddenly plummet while your heals are animating-esp with my random skill lag atm- but they can emergency self heal a bit. I just let them get lots of threat early and watch their awesomeness before i start my healing rotation

Actually, for small group stuff I still like champ tanks-everything goes quicker (shing shing).

Originally Posted by Iorareth

PS: @ Ayalinda: There is a captain on my server who regularly tanks foundry (and with only one healer). He's the only captain tank I know, but it really seems doable. Don't know about Orthanc tanking, but who knows... sometimes I get the feeling that a great captain can do nearly anything

Well my captain hit 75 recently, and I'm gearing her up as a tank. I'm about 90% there, I've got the LI's (although I still need a few more tiers on the legacies), 3 pieces of the orthanc tanking set (with access to a 4th when I get the seals), and some tanking jewellery, although not nearly enough. I tanked LL pre-quests without issue, although that is nearly all single target. Think I'll put myself forward for a tanking role in foundry soon, and then put myself as a tank on day 1 of our next orthanc raid. Anyway really enjoying it so far, and sorry for the slight thread hijack.

Originally Posted by BotLike

It's guardian for me , always have been and always will be.

Obviously, it all comes to player skill and gearing in the end , but in general ? Guardians are far more trustworthy.
I think the biggest reason is the higher passive mitigations the guardians have because of armor.

Yes , wardens get healed , they have defiant challenge ( which makes them almost immune to pain ) , i get that.
BUT, most of the times i go to a hard fight with a warden , they might look just fine at first sight and on the next second they can get TOTALLY destroyed, and you can barely get them back up.
Guardians on the other hand ? They die like... slowly and steadily ??? It feels like they give the healer more time to respond.

There is no way for me to explain it properly , but i always seem to trust my heals more on a guardian, it just feels safer : D

There is another aspect to this argument imo , its harder to find a good warden than a good guardian.

Same here. I enjoy partying with both, but I feel safer with a guardian in a group and the damage does not seem to go to the group as much, although I've often thought this was folks in the group not assisting properly with a warden. It seems the guard can grab the hate better when someone does pull it.

Duoing, I'd say it's about equal to me. It 'can' be a lot faster/easier with warden, but when bad things happen, I don't feel I have as much time to react as with guard.