As part of my general thoughts on the various roles for the classes i wanted to go over tanks; how they compare to each other, which are strongest, and why that is. From there I wanted to suggest a general outline for some common role expectations that could become a framework for the classes to fit to so that there is parity between the class options of a specific role.
I want to iterate, and likely will reiterate repeatedly that I don't want to just call for nerfs to the strongest performers, but rather think that pulling up the under performing classes while only nerfing a few outlier aspects so that a level playing field is established. Ideally this would result in any tank, or combinations of tanks regardless of which class it is, would be viable for the majority of content while leaving a little room for optimization for the highest difficulty content.
For starters I think just looking at what is necessary for a Tank to perform the role effectively as there are some key places where classes are just falling short.
Overall Role Necessities
Self healing
It's hard to say exactly how much self healing a tank should have, but I think that right now things feel pretty balanced overall as all of the tanks are able to be self sufficient for a reasonable amount of time. I would be curious to see how Brawler’s self healing feels once the current raid set falls out of use but at least for the time being this requirement is met by all tanks. I want to add that Warden Life Taps have not scaled for 150 content, and as such they are much more reliant on their other HoTs. Lastly I can not personally speak on how Champion feels as that is a class I have the least amount of experience in at this time.
Aggro Grab (not taunts)
Force Taunts
Interrupts
While it still makes my skin crawl that most interrupts in the game are used less for their intended function and more as an animation canceller, for the most part tanks are responsible for many interrupts in many fights. This leads to situations where one class is just overly better at interrupting inductions than any other and while I feel as though its ok to have outliers, the current state is supremely unbalanced.
Cure Skills
Overall the general balance of Cure skills for tanks is pretty good and while there are still obvious winners such as Ignore the Pain for guardians those at least now come with a cost. The only outlier of the subset I think is Fear Nothing which at best only removes 1 effect every 9.5s, putting it behind every other tank in the game.
Fellowship Maneuvers
While this isn't really a “tanking” role identity I do want to point out that only the Guardian can reliably produce these mechanics. This wasn't really an issue pre-Umbar as Fellowship Maneuvers have not scaled at all for the last 100 levels but with the rising frequency of “use FM to counter X mechanic” in MK and Dun Shuma I want to point out that Smashing Stab single handedly makes Guardians the best class at reliably initiating Fellowship Maneuvers. It has a 30s cooldown, which can be reduced to just over 15s with a few War-chants, and its set up is to just use skills the guardian would already be using. For comparison yLM and yMariner have a single Fellowship Maneuver starting effect every 60s, and Burglar’s Exploit Opening has a 120s cooldown. The only skill that is even close to Smashing Stab in this regard is Exposed Throat, which while it only has a 5s cooldown it also only has a 20% chance to initiate the maneuver. This is only a real balance shifter if instance design continues to require the initiation of maneuver as means of counter play, and in those situations guardians reign so far ahead of every other class that there is almost no contest.
Class Rent
I just wanted to point out that Tanking Brawler does not have access to any form of a Class Rent.
Overall Role Utility
It has been stated multiple times that balancing damage dealing classes is hard and I firmly believe that disparities in offensive support is one of the main reasons.
I also want to retort that in the current means of lotro balancing it seems a bit like you are trying to balance a series of outputs based solely on the ending product wherein the individual variable in that equation can swing wildly. Thus I suggest an overall template of what each role would be able to provide so that when it comes time for class balance passes they could be snapped to the framework. This style of work is already in its infancy implementation with the Defensive and Offensive Support roles, and while I believe those still have some outliers that could use adjusting I believe that over time this would allow expectations to be set and assess whether or not a class was meeting/exceeding those expectations. This is not meant to make every tank play the same way, but rather standardize the toolbox that all tanks can utilize and such how they reach into that toolbox would remain true to the identity of the class.
Major Offensive Effect
This would include a +15% outgoing damage effect that is raid wide for 15s, and applying skills/effects cooldown set to 90s. On expiration a Minor Exertion effect is placed on the player where they can not gain a similar effect from any class for 30s. This allows multiple tanks the ability to rotate their group buffs much like an Offensive Support class but would limit the ability to just stack everything for a massive burst window.
Minor Offensive Debuff
This would be an incoming damage effect, either 10% single target or 5% AoE, that could be maintained with near 100% uptime. Only one of these effects could be on any given target at a time, and would prioritize the higher magnitude.
Major Defensive Effect
This should be some form of fellowship wide damage mitigation on a 1-2min cooldown.
Passive/Minor Defensive Effect
This would be some sort of higher uptime but lower powered effect or directly passive defensive effect.
Warden
First and foremost Warden sits in an awkward place as the “X Tank”; Captain has its group heals, versatility, and rez, guardian is the “Block Tank”, and once upon a time warden was the “Avoidance Tank” and its self healing would make up the difference in damage taken but the current game just doesn't support that philosophy. Avoidances are a shell of their former selves (pre-U18) where the full avoids happen far less often and while partials happen more often the mitigation is still tied to the stat rating, and the curve for which is abysmal so at most you’re only avoiding 10-20% of the hit on a partial while halving the amount of full avoids. Other classes can skew these numbers by having cooldowns that grant direct percentage increases to Avoidances (Pledge, Hammer Stroke, Counter) or in the case of Champ/Brawler just having passive Parry/Evade baked into the traits or class mechanics. Warden has no such cooldowns and such a giant bear is better at evading attacks than a warden wearing agility gear.
Warden’s and Evades
Warden’s only have gambits which give +11-26k rating to a specific avoidance and its only trait that increases its avoidances by any percentage amount directly reduces Evade by 15k, meaning it takes both Dance of War and Conviction to even be net positive Evade rating on warden. In addition there is no main stat that actually gives evade rating, so unless you actively gear for evade rating wardens have very little of the stat and why would you build for it when items that give avoidances are typically the worst option for gear. On top of it all wardens have a core trait that gives a 1% max moral heal on evade/partial evade with a 3s cooldown, which is next to useless as you just dont have evade in the kit. In a 5min fight against 3 targets (t2 fane, 3 brawlers) a higher than average geared warden tank only evaded a total of 11 times 0.9% (6 full .9%; 7 partials 1.1%) whereas in that same fight there were 123 Blocks 19.3% (56 full 8.8%; 67 partials 10.5%) and 113 parries 17.7% (60 full 9.4%; 53 partial 8.3%).
To give a comparison to another tank class, using the same mobs as a testing ground I ran the fight with a y/b captain. Over the course of the 12min fight the captain blocked 7.8% (4.8% full, 3% partial), parried 24.9% ( 17.2% full, 7.7% partial), and evaded 7.2% (4.8% full, 2.4% partial). Overall the total number of avoids were very similar, (warden 39% to captain’s 40%) but captain has an active skill that gives +30% Parry and a passive proc of 8% evade whereas Warden just gets the passive +2% Block/Parry and some active avoidance ratings.
Looking at warden’s only active avoidance skill Restorative Shield-work I’ve got to say this just seems exceptionally lacking in comparison to the other active defensive skills of other tanks. This is just a worst version of guardian’s Juggernaut or Pledge, and while it does come with a heal it only increases the partial block chance and even then doesnt increase the mitigation even high enough to turn those partials into a full to compensate. The duration is pretty short as well considering
Life Taps
From what I have heard Life Taps were in a really good place at the end of the 140 cap after the warden rework, but then when the level cap increased to 150 these effects did not scale at all. So now they are just under powered effects that aren't keeping up with the state of the game.
Never Surrender
It's a bit funny that the Dragon armor set bonus does a better job at protecting against instant death effects than one of the warden’s class defining skills. Never Surrender has had its fair share of changes over the years and its current incarnation just doesn't seem to really hit the mark in my opinion. Firstly it's an active skill, like that of captain’s Last Stand, but unlike last stand where you can't be defeated for the duration and then are healed, Never Surrender only heals you if you fall below 5% moral. So if you spend the entire duration getting whittled down, or the boss runs off to do some other mechanic near the end of the duration the cooldown is nearly useless and you are left with low moral.
Fire At Will
Currently this skill is pretty lackluster considering its a utility cap stone. The duration is just super short and typically there's just other things wardens need to be doing than to hit this skill outside of maybe as a fight is starting.
Power Management
Since wardens tend to take much more damage than any other tank, they also have to constantly keep their self heal gambits ticking and those are rather expensive power wise. This leads to them also having to keep Dark Before Dawn ticking just to keep themselves power neutral. This makes them one of the worst tanks at power management.
For the Free People
This skill is just a bit clunky and given that Advanced Techniques are already being consumed by Desperate Combat it means that there's now multiple spenders for a resource that can only be realistically built up so fast. In addition its magnitude is directly tied to the number of Advanced Techniques consumed so at the start of a fight, when damage spikes are typically the highest a warden does not have access to their strongest damage reduction cooldown.
Personally I do not like that of the 5 tank classes in the game its only really viable to take guard and brawler into mid-tier content as they offer the strongest offensive support. I know that there are some extreme edge cases where an off-meta choice is used but in general player why would you take a yCaptain if you have access to a bBrawler, and where does a warden fit anywhere in the equation? I think that by taking the time to establish exactly what tanks are expected to be able to do, building rules into what utility they should be able to provide, and then blending all that into the identity of the class to create a unique play experience rather than just unique effects would greatly help with overall class and instance balance moving forward.
I want to iterate, and likely will reiterate repeatedly that I don't want to just call for nerfs to the strongest performers, but rather think that pulling up the under performing classes while only nerfing a few outlier aspects so that a level playing field is established. Ideally this would result in any tank, or combinations of tanks regardless of which class it is, would be viable for the majority of content while leaving a little room for optimization for the highest difficulty content.
For starters I think just looking at what is necessary for a Tank to perform the role effectively as there are some key places where classes are just falling short.
Overall Role Necessities
Self healing
It's hard to say exactly how much self healing a tank should have, but I think that right now things feel pretty balanced overall as all of the tanks are able to be self sufficient for a reasonable amount of time. I would be curious to see how Brawler’s self healing feels once the current raid set falls out of use but at least for the time being this requirement is met by all tanks. I want to add that Warden Life Taps have not scaled for 150 content, and as such they are much more reliant on their other HoTs. Lastly I can not personally speak on how Champion feels as that is a class I have the least amount of experience in at this time.
Aggro Grab (not taunts)
- Guard has this in the bag as it has War Chant and Bastion which both are excellent means of picking up and establishing aggro without the need of a force taunt.
- Brawler has some solid aggro generation in the form of its Finisher skills, but it lacks any reliable means of picking up a group of spread out enemies. Backhand Clout almost fills this niche, but it's a frontal effect rather than an AoE centered on the player and such the targeting can be unreliable, not to mention it is a much smaller radius of effect.
- Captain has some of this in the form of its heals, but frankly there just isn't enough threat modifiers nor time for newly spawned enemies to have the captain be high enough in the threat table at this time. From what I have heard the Ikorbani jewelry 2set helps with this, but is a bandaid over a hole in the class fundamentally.
- Suggestion: change Standard of Honour to function similar to Bastion and remove the incoming healing buff (maybe put this on another effect like In Harm’s Way or just a reduced magnitude on To Arms?), reduce the cooldown to 30s with a 15s duration, and decouple it from the shared cooldown of the other captain Standards. Then a yellow captain could toss its standard out preemptively where they know enemies would be coming from so that as enemies ran through it, threat would be built for the captain.
- Beorning lacks any means of grabbing aggro without the use of a force taunt, but it almost compensates for this by having 2 infinite target AoE force taunts in its kit.
- Suggestion:create another Roar skill that, like War Chant, would be an AoE around the player with a large radius (10-15m?)
- Change the Roar Damage tracery to Roar Damage and Threat Modifier
- Warden in theory already has this style of effect, though I can’t speak on how effective it is or how often it's used. Resounding Challenge should be filling this need.
- Champion is lacking a skill that fills this niche within the Martial Champion trait line, however it is possible to pick up Raging Blades via cross-traiting and it fills the need pretty well. I don't know if making Raging Blades (and maybe Brutal Strike) universal skills for the champion class, with their respective traits just increasing their damage would be on the table for a short term overhaul but it might make champion feel less forced to trait a specific way just to pick up a skill to be able to fill the role effectively.
Force Taunts
- Guard has 3
- Fray the Edge: ranged single target (10.5s duration/10s cd)
- Engage: melee single target (10.5s duration/30s cd)
- Challenge: AoE centered on the player (10.5s duration/30s cd)
- Brawler has 2
- Brash Invitation: ranged single target (5s duration/10s cd)
- Come At Me: AoE centered on the player (10s duration/29s cd).
- Captain has 3
- Threatening Shout: ranged single target (5s duration/15s cd)
- Grave Wound: melee single target (5s duration/10-15s cd) *10s cooldown requires deep cross-traiting
- Elendil’s Roar: AoE centered on the target (5s duration/30s cd)
- Beorning has 3
- Vigilant Roar: ranged single target (5s duration/10s cd)
- Thunderous Roar: AoE centered on the player (5s duration/28.5s cd)
- Menacing Maul: AoE hot spot effect in front of the player (5-13s duration/30s cd)
- Warden has 3*
- Warning Shot: ranged single target (5s duration/10s cd)
- Defiant Challenge: AoE centered on the player (5s duration/30s cd)
- Desperate Shield*: AoE centered on the player (5s duration/2s cd), can be used up to 4 times every 90s. Ive also been told that this taunt does not also threat copy, which it probably should, though I have not personally tested this.
- Champion has 3
- Champion’s Challenge: ranged single target (5s duration/30s cd), also applies a x0.7 outgoing damage debuff to target for 5s
- Horn of Champions: AoE centered on the player (5s duration/30s cd), also applies a -20% outgoing damage debuff to targets for 10s
- True Heroics: AoE centered on the player (5s duration/120s cd)
- Guard has the Force Taunt Duration tracery which doubles the duration of the force taunts, easily letting Fray the Edge have a 99% uptime of being taunted. I don't know why this is only available for guardians, likely a vestige of the old legendary item systems that has been dragged along all these years but it just feels unfair to other tanks that guardian just gets double the duration for the cost of 1 word of mastery.
- Suggestion: let all tank classes have access to this tracery. Either just leave it as a Word of Mastery or it could become a new Word of Power as those tend to be more role specific anyways.
- Champion’s taunts come with additional damage debuffs that, while make sense for a tank that is all about getting and giving hits would want to reduce the damage of such effects, the skills are set up in a way that they are able to be used by non-Martial Champions. Predominantly Champion’s Challenge is often used as a last minute debuff for effects that are unavoidable, telegraphed, and hard hitting (Azagath’s Execute in MK b1, Rhukor’s Blood Surge in Remmorchant b3) to reduce the damage. This effectively lets a dps class have access to a stronger damage reduction debuff than any of the defensive support classes have access to on a relatively short cooldown.
- Suggestion: Change Champion’s Challenge so that the damage debuff is only applied if traited Martial Champion
- Ask players which effects are most often “Champ Challenged” in the current game, and reduce the damage of those effects by ~25%
- Brawler has less force taunts than any other tank class.
- Suggestion: a new melee skill with a 15-20s cooldown that has a 5s force taunt.
Interrupts
While it still makes my skin crawl that most interrupts in the game are used less for their intended function and more as an animation canceller, for the most part tanks are responsible for many interrupts in many fights. This leads to situations where one class is just overly better at interrupting inductions than any other and while I feel as though its ok to have outliers, the current state is supremely unbalanced.
- Guards have 3 interrupts all on a cooldown of less than 10s, and on top of that one of them with a 5s cooldown is an AoE skill hitting up to 11 targets in a cone in front of the player, and it stuns. For comparison the only other AoE interrupt skill in the game that can hit that many targets is Smoking Stones, which has a 2min cooldown; looking at the stun its direct comparison would be Startling Twist (12-20s cooldown), Routing Cry (defeat response, 15s cooldown) or Horn of Gondor (20s). This makes Shield-smash one of the best Interrupts and Stun skills in the game, in a class that can already interrupt better than anyone else in the game. Oh, and not to forget to mention, but the cooldown can be instantly reset by using War-chant, so its only limiting factor is how fast you can move through your block chain.
- Suggestion: Increase the cooldown to 40s, and increase the threat generated by this skill to ‘Greatly’. It is frankly too good in its current state and should at the very least require a bit more strategy on when to use it and how often its cooldown can be sped up with War-chant.
- Brawler only has the one interrupt which has a 30s base cooldown. There is a tracery that can bring that down by 4.4s and a trait that reduces that by up to 10s, however that trait is very deep within the red line tree. Even with all of that investment it would still put Brawler at having one of the worst interrupts of all of the tank classes.
- Suggestion: either move the Fulgurant Strike Cooldown higher in the red tree, or move it to the yellow tree where all of the other utility choices are.
- Reduce the base cooldown to 25s.
Cure Skills
Overall the general balance of Cure skills for tanks is pretty good and while there are still obvious winners such as Ignore the Pain for guardians those at least now come with a cost. The only outlier of the subset I think is Fear Nothing which at best only removes 1 effect every 9.5s, putting it behind every other tank in the game.
- Suggestion: Adding a +1 effect removed modifier to the Fear Nothing Cooldown % Incoming Healing tracery would allow up to 2 effects every 9.5s, putting it at least in line with Brawler in terms of efficiency.
Fellowship Maneuvers
While this isn't really a “tanking” role identity I do want to point out that only the Guardian can reliably produce these mechanics. This wasn't really an issue pre-Umbar as Fellowship Maneuvers have not scaled at all for the last 100 levels but with the rising frequency of “use FM to counter X mechanic” in MK and Dun Shuma I want to point out that Smashing Stab single handedly makes Guardians the best class at reliably initiating Fellowship Maneuvers. It has a 30s cooldown, which can be reduced to just over 15s with a few War-chants, and its set up is to just use skills the guardian would already be using. For comparison yLM and yMariner have a single Fellowship Maneuver starting effect every 60s, and Burglar’s Exploit Opening has a 120s cooldown. The only skill that is even close to Smashing Stab in this regard is Exposed Throat, which while it only has a 5s cooldown it also only has a 20% chance to initiate the maneuver. This is only a real balance shifter if instance design continues to require the initiation of maneuver as means of counter play, and in those situations guardians reign so far ahead of every other class that there is almost no contest.
- Suggestions: Smashing Stab’s cooldown becomes contingent on which effect it applies. Since there are multiple outputs of this skill based on which set up skills are used I think that the non-Maneuver starting variants (the stun and the DoT) can retain the 30s cooldown, but if the skill is used to initiate a Maneuver then the cooldown should then be increased to 90s. This would still let the guardian be good at creating Fellowship Maneuvers, and still the only tank who could reliably start one, and with War-chant would bring the cooldown in line with all of the other classes who can produce this effect as well rather than overshadowing them.
- Burglar’s Exploit Opening cooldown reduced to 60s. This just feels like a skill change that hasn't caught up with the current state of the game. Trip and Marbles unchanged and can serve as back ups or additional initiators.
Class Rent
I just wanted to point out that Tanking Brawler does not have access to any form of a Class Rent.
- Suggestion: Make Shattering Fist a trait line agnostic skill. Perhaps have Maelstrom trait line gain an additional effect if desired but overall I don't think making all brawlers have access to this skill would be a problem.
Overall Role Utility
It has been stated multiple times that balancing damage dealing classes is hard and I firmly believe that disparities in offensive support is one of the main reasons.
I also want to retort that in the current means of lotro balancing it seems a bit like you are trying to balance a series of outputs based solely on the ending product wherein the individual variable in that equation can swing wildly. Thus I suggest an overall template of what each role would be able to provide so that when it comes time for class balance passes they could be snapped to the framework. This style of work is already in its infancy implementation with the Defensive and Offensive Support roles, and while I believe those still have some outliers that could use adjusting I believe that over time this would allow expectations to be set and assess whether or not a class was meeting/exceeding those expectations. This is not meant to make every tank play the same way, but rather standardize the toolbox that all tanks can utilize and such how they reach into that toolbox would remain true to the identity of the class.
Major Offensive Effect
This would include a +15% outgoing damage effect that is raid wide for 15s, and applying skills/effects cooldown set to 90s. On expiration a Minor Exertion effect is placed on the player where they can not gain a similar effect from any class for 30s. This allows multiple tanks the ability to rotate their group buffs much like an Offensive Support class but would limit the ability to just stack everything for a massive burst window.
- Guardian: Break Ranks
- Brawler: The Best Defense
- Captain: Standard of War (would require y/r traiting). This would change the function of Standard of War if traited while in yellow line, and only apply the damage buff if a player is in the standard’s area of effect and doesn't have Minor Exertion effect.
- Beorning: would need a new effect.
- Suggestion: A new Roar skill that deals higher single target damage and grants nearby allies +15% outgoing damage. Should be affected by Roar Damage tracery (see above)
- Warden: Fire At Will (see warden section for skill changes)
- Champion: would need a new effect.
- Suggestion: New Skill: War Horn (likely added in as one of the capstone effects) that would cost 6 Fervour, deal moderate AoE damage, and increase allied damage by 15%.
- Suggestion: New Skill: War Horn (likely added in as one of the capstone effects) that would cost 6 Fervour, deal moderate AoE damage, and increase allied damage by 15%.
Minor Offensive Debuff
This would be an incoming damage effect, either 10% single target or 5% AoE, that could be maintained with near 100% uptime. Only one of these effects could be on any given target at a time, and would prioritize the higher magnitude.
- Guard: would need a new effect.
- Suggestion: Change Disorientation trait as it currently is useless. Have it grant +10% incoming damage on crits with Bash for 20s. This may need to get reduced in magnitude to 5% depending on how much the Radiate and Insult to Injury could maintain an AoE uptime.
- Brawler: Gut Punch, remove the Wary effect so that this could be maintained repeatedly, but increase the cooldown to match the duration so that players couldn't just apply to as many targets as possible. Brawler also has Strike As One and Vulnerability.
- Captain: would need a new effect.
- Suggestion: adding a yellow passive where using Routing Cry against a target that has any ‘Mark’ effect on it would grant 5% inc dmg for 20s.
- This would make the captain rather weaker at single target debuffing, but group composition (multiple captains, or a bMariner) would increase its strength. Captains are best in groups, and I think this leans into that identity.
- Beorning: Armour Crush, changed to be exclusive to Blue line, base skill is 2% inc dmg for 16s with a 12s cooldown. The Armour Crush trait remaining the same (at max 10% inc dmg with 16s cooldown)
- I realize that making Armour Crush a blue exclusive skill would greatly reduce the utility of both red and yellow beornings, but I also think that they should get some form of utility exclusive to their lines to compensate but this is not the thread for that.
- Warden: Desperate Spear, duration increased to 30s per use at base. This keeps Desperate Combat at its current level of utility and flexibility.
- Champion: would need a new effect.
- Suggestion: Masochism reflects a 5% inc dmg effect for 10s in addition to its current effects.
Major Defensive Effect
This should be some form of fellowship wide damage mitigation on a 1-2min cooldown.
- Guard: Litany of Defiance
- Brawler: One for All
- Captain: In Harm’s Way, Standard of Honour (would require y/b traiting) would also fall here as a group wide healing option.
- Beorning: would need a new effect.
- Suggestion: a blue exclusive alteration to Sacrifice wherein it gives x0.8 inc dmg to Sacrifice target and all within 10m.
- Warden: For The Free People (see warden section for skill changes)
- Champion: would need a new effect.
- Suggestion: Maybe something added to Adamant, giving a lesser effect to allies within 10m?
Passive/Minor Defensive Effect
This would be some sort of higher uptime but lower powered effect or directly passive defensive effect.
- Guard: Fortification raid wide effect, Protection by the Shield
- Brawler: ‘Share’ skills would fill this niche, though I think having less power here would be the cost of also having Strike As One/Vulnerability as an additional offensive effect.
- Captain: On Guard, To Arms, Noble Mark
- Beorning: would need a new effect.
- Suggestion: allow Guarded to apply to nearby allies at half efficiency (2% max). This would put it on par with Fortifications raid wide effect, though I think that these should also then not stack with each other.
- Warden: would need a new effect.
- Suggestion: Tweak the Proactive Defense core trait so that it no longer gives increased effects when cashing out Advanced Techniques (so maximum -6% incoming damage when gaining/repeating a tier 3) but this is applied to the fellowship.
- Suggestion: Conviction also applies Protection by the Shield to nearby allies. This would not stack with the same effect from a guardian.
- Champion: would need a new effect.
- Suggestions: I think that having a small offensive effect instead would be a bit more fitting. Maybe changing the Good Defense/Strong Offense core trait to also grant the 5% damage buff to nearby allies for 15-20s when the champion uses Sudden Defense?
Warden
First and foremost Warden sits in an awkward place as the “X Tank”; Captain has its group heals, versatility, and rez, guardian is the “Block Tank”, and once upon a time warden was the “Avoidance Tank” and its self healing would make up the difference in damage taken but the current game just doesn't support that philosophy. Avoidances are a shell of their former selves (pre-U18) where the full avoids happen far less often and while partials happen more often the mitigation is still tied to the stat rating, and the curve for which is abysmal so at most you’re only avoiding 10-20% of the hit on a partial while halving the amount of full avoids. Other classes can skew these numbers by having cooldowns that grant direct percentage increases to Avoidances (Pledge, Hammer Stroke, Counter) or in the case of Champ/Brawler just having passive Parry/Evade baked into the traits or class mechanics. Warden has no such cooldowns and such a giant bear is better at evading attacks than a warden wearing agility gear.
Warden’s and Evades
Warden’s only have gambits which give +11-26k rating to a specific avoidance and its only trait that increases its avoidances by any percentage amount directly reduces Evade by 15k, meaning it takes both Dance of War and Conviction to even be net positive Evade rating on warden. In addition there is no main stat that actually gives evade rating, so unless you actively gear for evade rating wardens have very little of the stat and why would you build for it when items that give avoidances are typically the worst option for gear. On top of it all wardens have a core trait that gives a 1% max moral heal on evade/partial evade with a 3s cooldown, which is next to useless as you just dont have evade in the kit. In a 5min fight against 3 targets (t2 fane, 3 brawlers) a higher than average geared warden tank only evaded a total of 11 times 0.9% (6 full .9%; 7 partials 1.1%) whereas in that same fight there were 123 Blocks 19.3% (56 full 8.8%; 67 partials 10.5%) and 113 parries 17.7% (60 full 9.4%; 53 partial 8.3%).
To give a comparison to another tank class, using the same mobs as a testing ground I ran the fight with a y/b captain. Over the course of the 12min fight the captain blocked 7.8% (4.8% full, 3% partial), parried 24.9% ( 17.2% full, 7.7% partial), and evaded 7.2% (4.8% full, 2.4% partial). Overall the total number of avoids were very similar, (warden 39% to captain’s 40%) but captain has an active skill that gives +30% Parry and a passive proc of 8% evade whereas Warden just gets the passive +2% Block/Parry and some active avoidance ratings.
- Suggestion: Either give warden Evade from Agility at 1:1 (same as parry) or shift the effect from the Close Call core trait over to Block.
Looking at warden’s only active avoidance skill Restorative Shield-work I’ve got to say this just seems exceptionally lacking in comparison to the other active defensive skills of other tanks. This is just a worst version of guardian’s Juggernaut or Pledge, and while it does come with a heal it only increases the partial block chance and even then doesnt increase the mitigation even high enough to turn those partials into a full to compensate. The duration is pretty short as well considering
- Suggestion: Change Restorative Shield-work to 2.5min cooldown, last for 15s, and have it increase all partial avoidances by 25% and all partial mitigations by +75% and grant combat stat immunity for the duration. This would put this skill on par with Pledge as a major cooldown which would allow the damage effects to either be blocked or partially avoided, and those that are partially avoided the damage is reduced significantly so that the self heal could likely keep up with the damage. I would also remove the limit on the self heal, and instead just add a cooldown of 1s per instance.
Life Taps
From what I have heard Life Taps were in a really good place at the end of the 140 cap after the warden rework, but then when the level cap increased to 150 these effects did not scale at all. So now they are just under powered effects that aren't keeping up with the state of the game.
Never Surrender
It's a bit funny that the Dragon armor set bonus does a better job at protecting against instant death effects than one of the warden’s class defining skills. Never Surrender has had its fair share of changes over the years and its current incarnation just doesn't seem to really hit the mark in my opinion. Firstly it's an active skill, like that of captain’s Last Stand, but unlike last stand where you can't be defeated for the duration and then are healed, Never Surrender only heals you if you fall below 5% moral. So if you spend the entire duration getting whittled down, or the boss runs off to do some other mechanic near the end of the duration the cooldown is nearly useless and you are left with low moral.
- Suggestion: If Never Surrender is to remain an active cooldown effect, then it should heal you regardless if the moral threshold is proc-ed or not. Maybe have the threshold remain and proc but then can't proc at the end, or simply have it proc at the end. Also remove the shield gambit healing reduction penalty for the heal procing. It doesnt make sense for a tank to be penalized for using one of its cooldowns and saving them.
- I personally think this effect should just be a passive effect just like the Dragon Armor set bonus, or even Exalted Combatant/Down But Not Out for other classes, with traiting into Determination giving it a reduced cooldown on the effect.
Fire At Will
Currently this skill is pretty lackluster considering its a utility cap stone. The duration is just super short and typically there's just other things wardens need to be doing than to hit this skill outside of maybe as a fight is starting.
- Suggestion: Fire At Will gets split into two effects based on the trait line.
- Determination: magnitude is increased to 15%, duration increased to 15s, and cooldown increased to 90s. This would then fill the niche of the Major Offensive Effect for tanking wardens.
- Recklessness: magnitude reduced to 5% and there is not actually an active skill to use. Instead this becomes a passive effect granted to the warden and nearby allies whenever Cauterizing Steel or Unseen Strike consume their respective DoTs.
Power Management
Since wardens tend to take much more damage than any other tank, they also have to constantly keep their self heal gambits ticking and those are rather expensive power wise. This leads to them also having to keep Dark Before Dawn ticking just to keep themselves power neutral. This makes them one of the worst tanks at power management.
- Suggestion: reduce power cost of healing gambits and/or buff the strength of Dark Before Dawn.
For the Free People
This skill is just a bit clunky and given that Advanced Techniques are already being consumed by Desperate Combat it means that there's now multiple spenders for a resource that can only be realistically built up so fast. In addition its magnitude is directly tied to the number of Advanced Techniques consumed so at the start of a fight, when damage spikes are typically the highest a warden does not have access to their strongest damage reduction cooldown.
- Suggestion: Rethink this skill into the warden’s Major Defensive effect (strong fellowship-wide defensive skill) and such keep the cooldown the same, but remove the Advanced Technique requirement and have the skill always grant its strongest effect (-27.5% incoming damage on the warden, -15% incoming damage to allies). In addition as means of compensating for its reduced magnitude this effect should be raid wide. This would put it in approximate comparison to Brawler’s One For All and while the latter is mechanically stronger, it does have a much smaller radius and a slightly longer cooldown. This would also allow Warden’s to use this skill on fight start as means of taking reduced damage while establishing aggro, setting up HoTs, and setting up Life Taps.
Personally I do not like that of the 5 tank classes in the game its only really viable to take guard and brawler into mid-tier content as they offer the strongest offensive support. I know that there are some extreme edge cases where an off-meta choice is used but in general player why would you take a yCaptain if you have access to a bBrawler, and where does a warden fit anywhere in the equation? I think that by taking the time to establish exactly what tanks are expected to be able to do, building rules into what utility they should be able to provide, and then blending all that into the identity of the class to create a unique play experience rather than just unique effects would greatly help with overall class and instance balance moving forward.
