Thread: My view on the best legendary item set

Hello fellow Wardens!

Legendary weapons are becoming more important every patch and as a result of that I felt like making this thread. I'm not always sure whether my legacy choice is correct, but here is my view on Warden legendary weapons.

In this thread I'd like to discuss:

• Tanking spear and javelin
• Melee DPS spear and javelin
• Ranged DPS spear and javelin
• Ettenmoors spear and javelin

With every legacy I choose I will also explain why, but I think most picks have obvious reasons. I will also indicate which relics I prefer (including crafted ones).

To start, here is a list of the Warden legacies(Source: Lorebook):

Weapon Major	Weapon Minor
Fist-Spear Gambit Threat Up, Rating	Javelin Toss Range
Spear Gambit Damage (Melee)	Ambush Critical Multiplier
Wages of Fear Positional Damage	Critical Strike Critical Multiplier
Recklessness Attack Duration	Resolution Damage
Spear Gambit Parry Rating	Surety of Death Damage Over Time
Shield-Spear Gambit Threat Reduction	Hampering Javelin Duration
Gambit Lifetap Damage Up, Rating	Boar's Rush Critical Rating
Shield Gambit Buff Duration Up, Rating	Shield Tactics Tactical Mitigation
Power, Fist-Spear Gambit Line	Power, Shield-Spear Gambit Line
Javelin Major	Javelin Minor
In Combat Morale Regeneration	Shield Piercer Duration
In Combat Power Regeneration	Careful Step Duration
Fist Gambit Critical Rating	Forced March Movement Bonus
Warden Shield-Spear Gambit Line Heal Bonus	Shield Mastery Block Rating
Fist Gambit Buffs Duration, Rating	Resolution Resist Rating
Fist Gambit Evade Bonus	Ambush and Careful Step Induction
Spear-Shield Damage Bonus	Reduced To-Hit Movement penalty for Javelin Skills
Heal bonus for Conviction	Duration Adroit Maneuver
Power, Spear-Shield Gambit Line	Defiant Challenge Cooldown Modifier

Tanking

Tanking Spear

Weapon Major	Weapon Minor
Spear Gambit Parry Rating	Shield Tactics Tactical Mitigation
Fist-Spear Gambit Threat Up, Rating	Power, Shield-Spear Gambit Line
Shield Gambit Buff Duration Up, Rating	Vitality

As we progress into Middle-Earth our power consumption has gone down significantly and therefor I have stepped away from most power cost reducing legacies. The two most important things at this time for a Warden is Survivability and threat (obvious). I have chosen Shield Gambit Buff Duration Up, Rating because when you are tanking your main focus is obviously to keep aggro, so the little time you have to increase your surviveability has to be used as efficiently as possible. With recent changes to the Warden, the buffs to your surviveability tier up. This is where the legacy becomes important. For example, you will be tanking a boss and you used some gambits to hold aggro, you've got steady aggro and you want to pop some buffing gambits, your popping your buffing gambits and you see that your raid is going crazy on the dps and you want to make sure you hold aggro. So you switch back to aggro gambits and thanks to the legacy your buffs stay on longer than usual. If you didn't have the legacy and you would spend maybe 30 seconds to pop your aggro gambits, your buff would already be gone and you would have to start tiering from tier 1 again. With this legacy you would still have 10 seconds left and you could just continue tiering it up.

I have chosen Fist-Spear Gambit Threat Up, Rating because when you are popping aggro gambits, the higher the amount of aggro this one gambit produces is, the more time efficient your actions are and time is something a Warden has very little to spare of.

As third major legacy I have chosen Spear Gambit Parry Rating. The reasoning behind this is simple... Parry rating is the hardest avoidance to get for a Warden so every little bit helps. We have one gambit which buffs our parry rating and it's only for a very short duration, so the more the better!

Shield Tactics Tactical Mitigation is not a must have on your tanking spear, but I prefer having it so I have room to change my gear around a bit more. With the changes to how the mitigations stats work, this is a huge improvement to your overall surviveability in many situations. You should have Shields Tactics up as much as possible. If you do not feel like you need this legacy, you could consider taking a different legacy.

I'm not a huge fan of stat legacies, but I didn't feel like there were better legacies other than the 5 I mentioned above, so why not pick a vitality legacy.

Tanking Javelin

Weapon Major	Weapon Minor
Warden Shield-Spear Gambit Line Heal Bonus	Defiant Challenge Cooldown Modifier
Fist Gambit Evade Rating	Shield Mastery Block Rating
Fist Gambit Buff Duration, Rating	Vitality

In my opinion people underestimate the capability of Warden self heals. When I have popped a full healing rotation I heal up to 1.4k every 3 seconds, an increase of 10% with Warden Shield-Spear Gambit Line Heal Bonus and a 10% on conviction with Heal bonus for Conviction is always welcome! Though I have recently decided to step away from the conviction legacy, since I'm not using it as often as I used to. I've replaced it with Fist Gambit Evade Rating, which seems an obvious choice to me.

For the third major legacy I had to decide between ICPR, ICMR and increased buff duration on fist gambits. Before, I would have chosen for either ICPR or ICMR, but that has changed for me. My argumentation behind this choice was that I did not have allot of time to pop the evade buffing gambits. But that's the whole point of Fist Gambit Buff Duration, Rating, isn't it? The duration will be longer, therefor you have to spend less time on it.

Defiant challenge has defiantly grown into a very potent skill, with it's 3 min 30 seconds cool down it is worth taking when you go tanking. Defiant challenge together with Way of the Warden is a deadly mix and I feel like Defiant Challenge Cooldown Modifier would be a very good choice as a result of that.

I am sure people will question the choice of Shield Mastery Block Rating, because most Wardens have their block capped already. I did not find better legacies to put on the javelin than this one, because as I mentioned, I am not a fan of having too many stat legacies on your weapons.

Tanking Relics

I looked very closely into the choice of relics, it's the hardest part of the legendary weapons in my opinion and have come to the conclusion that the following relics suite tanking the best (the relics will be the same on both spear and javelin):

• Settings: True Setting of Continuance.
  • 250 Morale
  • 126 ICPR
  • 1300 Incoming Healing

• Gem: Westfold Gem of Faith
  • +10% Partial Block and Parry Mitigation
  • +560 Block Rating
  • +25 Might

• Rune: Westfold Rune of Courage.
  • +10% Partial Evade and Parry Mitigation
  • +25 Agility
  • +560 Parry Rating

• Crafted: Symbol of Vitality
  • 30 Vitality

I still reach 15k morale with these relics. As Ravenstride had mentioned in one of his posts, we should step away from morale enhancing relics and I completely agree with him. Therefor I have chosen the relics above.





DPS

DPS Spear

Weapon Major	Weapon Minor
Spear Gambit Damage (Melee)	Surety of Death Damage Over Time
Wages of Fear Positional Damage	Hampering Javelin Duration
Recklessness Attack Duration	Might

Preserved.

Preserved(2)

Shield Tactics legacy is not a must. Shield Tactics is a fail gambit nowadays IMO. It's better to cap tactical mitigation by stacking vitality + scrolls + food than wasting 2 CDs every minute.

I prefer ICPR over ICMR on my javelin. The reasons are 2:
1) I have more ICMR than ICPR.
2) I get WAY more heals to my morale than my power in any fight.

The buff duration on the javelin is a must for me. My normal buff rotation includes Surety of Death cause it is one of those gambits that helps you in two areas: buffing (+2k evade!) and keeping some aggro.

Originally Posted by Eldelcar

Shield Tactics legacy is not a must. Shield Tactics is a fail gambit nowadays IMO. It's better to cap tactical mitigation by stacking vitality + scrolls + food than wasting 2 CDs every minute.

I prefer ICPR over ICMR on my javelin. The reasons are 2:
1) I have more ICMR than ICPR.
2) I get WAY more heals to my morale than my power in any fight.

The buff duration on the javelin is a must for me. My normal buff rotation includes Surety of Death cause it is one of those gambits that helps you in two areas: buffing (+2k evade!) and keeping some aggro.

You have a point on using SoD, it is indeed a big buff to evade, but I would switch the ICMR/ICPR legacy with the fist gambit buff duration legacy and as I said in my post, I'm at a point where I don't even need a Lore-Master to give me power, so extra ICPR would be pointless, therefor extra ICMR. Pots and class items help.

Shield tactics can be popped using gambit preparation for 1 min 10 seconds if you have the buff duration legacy for it. And you get about 2k with the increase legacy.

Originally Posted by Indramen

You have a point on using SoD, it is indeed a big buff to evade, but I would switch the ICMR/ICPR legacy with the fist gambit buff duration legacy and as I said in my post, I'm at a point where I don't even need a Lore-Master to give me power, so extra ICPR would be pointless, therefor extra ICMR. Pots and class items help.

Shield tactics can be popped using gambit preparation for 1 min 10 seconds if you have the buff duration legacy for it. And you get about 2k with the increase legacy.

I don't need a lore-master either. Our power use when tanking is quite efficient nowadays, and captains with blade-brother make this so much easier.

About ST, I only use that gambit in roots for the stun inmunity. I am capping both common mitigation and tactical mitigation using Tolerance and Fidelity.

I'd have to check my javelin, but I know I don't use the +10% for conviction and I use the evade bonus for the SoD line. I use conviction very few in the hard content as I prefer DoW and SoD so the two masteries involved in these 3 gambits are locked up almost all the time. It's true that I could fit some convictions in the middle because the buffs are long enough to not use them on every rotation, but I find myself use more agression which also uses [fist & shield].

Welcome back Indra. Nice guide and well laid out.

I think a lot of it is down to personal choices. My perfect tanking weapons are shown here

I find that Power really is simply not an issue these days. DbtD + Capt + Pots means I never even look at my blue bar. The only -power legacy I go with is Fist Spear because we end up spamming EoB so much these days.

Shield Tactics is a waste but I left it on there for times when I mess about with my build a bit. In all likelihood I cap Tact Mit by the time scrolls are read. I don't even slot Tolerance and Fidelity and im at 15K tact mit in raid settings.

Shield Mastery block because there are fights where I dont want to waste time on the other block buffs and I just keep SM up.

Fist and Shield buff durations are great. I wont leave home without em. For this very reason I also have +Fist evade and +SoD damage.

In any really hard fight I will always have the SoD, CoS and DoW buffs up so I want to make the most of them. The beauty of those is that they give you a lot of Aggro (leach, upfront and over time), Huge survivability (+2400 Evade, +900Block + 4% Partial Block, +600 Crit Defence, +337.5 to both mitigations) and some Heals as well so finding the way to make them your rotation is beneficial. All of this from just 3 gambits. Its a bit of extra work to get the long duration versions but with BM it s a snap. Once they are up I use every other rotation to refresh them.

As for relics:

I honestly would recommend to shy away form Morale / Power ones. There is simply no need with all the Vitality and power restore options we have these days. As you can see I highly recommend the Partial Avoidances and Incoming healing ones. Relics is pretty much the only place to boost partials whereas power and morale are tweak-able everywhere.

For the rune i'd go great river rune of courage. It gives 564 parry, 26 agility and 10% extra mit on partial parry and evades. Also I saw you said the +20 crafted relic, there's plus 30 ones available now (if it wasn't just a typo).

Originally Posted by Ravenstride

Shield Tactics is a waste but I left it on there for times when I mess about with my build a bit. In all likelihood I cap Tact Mit by the time scrolls are read. I don't even slot Tolerance and Fidelity and im at 15K tact mit in raid settings.

Shield Mastery block because there are fights where I dont want to waste time on the other block buffs and I just keep SM up.

Fist and Shield buff durations are great. I wont leave home without em. For this very reason I also have +Fist evade and +SoD damage.

In any really hard fight I will always have the SoD, CoS and DoW buffs up so I want to make the most of them. The beauty of those is that they give you a lot of Aggro (leach, upfront and over time), Huge survivability (+2400 Evade, +900Block + 4% Partial Block, +600 Crit Defence, +337.5 to both mitigations) and some Heals as well so finding the way to make them your rotation is beneficial. All of this from just 3 gambits. Its a bit of extra work to get the long duration versions but with BM it s a snap. Once they are up I use every other rotation to refresh them.

It's so sad we have such a low mitigations cap... And I've actually started using those fist gambit buffs and it does indeed give a big buff. Our evade is also as far as I know the lowest of our avoidances so it would be good to buff those in a fight.

These are all valid points that I agree with, ill see to tweak my view a little bit ^^, that's what the thread is for.

As for relics:

I honestly would recommend to shy away form Morale / Power ones. There is simply no need with all the Vitality and power restore options we have these days. As you can see I highly recommend the Partial Avoidances and Incoming healing ones. Relics is pretty much the only place to boost partials whereas power and morale are tweak-able everywhere.

Well, I do actually have the partial rune on my weapon atm and you've got a point. As for the gem, I did choose it for the crit defense, but since we have that crit immunity 'skill', it would probably be better to switch it out now.

Originally Posted by Troj

For the rune i'd go great river rune of courage. It gives 564 parry, 26 agility and 10% extra mit on partial parry and evades. Also I saw you said the +20 crafted relic, there's plus 30 ones available now (if it wasn't just a typo).

It was indeed a typo, thanks for pointing it out!

I'm really not a fan of the -power legacies. Maxed out, these things save you 10% on a the gambit costs. The equivalent ICPR is very very low. Let's say you want to spam EoB:

[FiFi] Goad
Fi[SpSh][FiSh] EoB
Battle Mem: EoB
[ShSh] Defensive Strike
[FiSp][ShFi]Sh EoB
Battle Mem: EoB

Time: ~15s
Power savings: 24 power
ICPR equivalent: 96

If you want to get the absolute max, you could probably do this:
Fi[SpSh][FiSh] EoB
[FiSp][ShFi]Sh EoB
Fi[SpFi]Fi Spear of Virtue

Time: ~15s
Power Savings: 34
ICPR equivalent: 132

Basically, maxing this legacy out and making a rotation that specifically spams the gambits most affected will get you 96-132 power per minute. Putting no points into this legacy gets you just 9-13 power per minute. This just doesn't seem worth the Legendary points. The other legacy ends up being much lower. You'll be better investing in fate. Let's see what 30 points of fate gets you:

60 points of tactical crit
45 points of ICMR
~40 points of ICPR (assuming you had 140 fate to start)

I think that's a much better investment than 96-132 ICPR, you don't have to put a single point into it, and it scales with 3/2/1st age and star-lit crystals.

--Harper

Following up on the Javelin legacies. I choose the major legacies in this order:

Shield Buff Duration - Increases length of buffs by 25-50% when maxed. Less buff maintenance meanse more threat/HoT/DPS. Needs to be maxed for full benefit.
ICPR - This legacy gives 50% of its potential benefit just for having it on the item. Also scales with 3/2/1st age and star-lit crystals.
ICMR - This legacy gives 50% of its potential benefit just for having it on the item. Also scales with 3/2/1st age and star-lit crystals.
Sh-Sp healing bonus - I renew Safeguard/Celebration of Skill whenever CDs are up, so this is a great bonus. However, it needs to be maxed for full benefit.
Dance of War Evade - The extra evade is nice, and this is another legacy that works without any points pumped into it.

That's 5 majors, so I built up several javelins until I got one with 4 majors, then added another via the new legacy item. Conviction is no longer on my radar. An extra 10% healing only works out to be about +30-40 morale per tick, a total of +240-320 extra morale for an 8 pulse Conviction (before applying incoming healing and crits). That seems pretty underwhelming to me, especially since I'm using those masteries for SoD/DoW/MS/BoV/EoB. With update 6, I don't use conviction nearly as much as I used to.

The minors are pretty weak. The only one I grab for sure is Shield Mastery Block rating. Then it is a choice between a stat and possibly Defiant Challenge CD. DC CD seems like a good legacy, but it is kind of expensive and the CD is already pretty short on this skill as far as panic buttons go. Between Never Surrender and DC, we've got 2 good panic buttons. Use the DC one first and it should be off of CD by the time you need it again. The other minors are all very underwhelming.

I used to use an "bargain-hunter" strategy to ranking legacies, where I would buy the cheapest ranks to get the maximum number of total ranks on a legendary. That's fine with some other classes, but Warden has so many stinkers for legacies, it makes little sense to spend too much on many of the less useful ones.

I now use a min-max approach to legacies. Legacies are either ones you want to max or ones you want to min. Anything with a percentage or time bonus you want to crank to the max. Anything with a +rating increase you want to spend on last. The reason is that the +rating legacies give you 50% of the benefit just by having the legacy. The additional ranks yield an incremental bonus of 5% for each rank. The percent based legacies give a +10% incremental bonus at each rank. So a percentage based rank is worth twice a rating based rank. So I fill up the percentage ones first, then the rating based ones.

When using the min-max strategy, you start to value +rating based legacies more. Each +rating legacy frees up more points to pump up the +percentage legacies. But it also makes you drop +percentage legacies if you aren't prepared to invest heavily in it. For instance, the +% resolution damage legacy almost never gets put on a spear for me. But the +rating resolution resist will occasionally get put on a javelin, since it gives a passive benefit even without additional points.

--Harper

Originally Posted by Ravenstride

Welcome back Indra. Nice guide and well laid out.

I think a lot of it is down to personal choices. My perfect tanking weapons are shown here

I find that Power really is simply not an issue these days. DbtD + Capt + Pots means I never even look at my blue bar. The only -power legacy I go with is Fist Spear because we end up spamming EoB so much these days.

Shield Tactics is a waste but I left it on there for times when I mess about with my build a bit. In all likelihood I cap Tact Mit by the time scrolls are read. I don't even slot Tolerance and Fidelity and im at 15K tact mit in raid settings.

Shield Mastery block because there are fights where I dont want to waste time on the other block buffs and I just keep SM up.

Fist and Shield buff durations are great. I wont leave home without em. For this very reason I also have +Fist evade and +SoD damage.

In any really hard fight I will always have the SoD, CoS and DoW buffs up so I want to make the most of them. The beauty of those is that they give you a lot of Aggro (leach, upfront and over time), Huge survivability (+2400 Evade, +900Block + 4% Partial Block, +600 Crit Defence, +337.5 to both mitigations) and some Heals as well so finding the way to make them your rotation is beneficial. All of this from just 3 gambits. Its a bit of extra work to get the long duration versions but with BM it s a snap. Once they are up I use every other rotation to refresh them.

As for relics:

I honestly would recommend to shy away form Morale / Power ones. There is simply no need with all the Vitality and power restore options we have these days. As you can see I highly recommend the Partial Avoidances and Incoming healing ones. Relics is pretty much the only place to boost partials whereas power and morale are tweak-able everywhere.

Isn't it better to use a stat legacy instead of surety of death damage over time? Maybe i'm missing the advantage of using it but i don't see how 10% damage of SoD is going to improve my tanking. I think i wouldn't use that legacy in any build now that i'm thinking about it, its just a 10% increase to one gambit.

Originally Posted by AbandonShip

Isn't it better to use a stat legacy instead of surety of death damage over time? Maybe i'm missing the advantage of using it but i don't see how 10% damage of SoD is going to improve my tanking. I think i wouldn't use that legacy in any build now that i'm thinking about it, its just a 10% increase to one gambit.

Personally I dont find that I am lacking in any particular stat.

10% more damage on a skill I use regularly (because of defensive buffs) is still something to add to damage.

It affects Desolation as well which I do use in many tanking situations as a form of damage reduction. Or because I find it funny when stuff runs away with hands in the air.

For these reasons it bought itself a spot on my Club.

Thank you everyone that has replied and read the thread, it has been very helpful and educative. I'm always looking to improve my Warden and myself so keep the feedback coming!

Ill be looking to change some legacies and relics around according to feedback, some research I have conducted and my own opinion.

Ill also try and add the Melee DPS Spear and Javelin today.

- Indramen.