There’s been a bunch of good discussions as usual up on the warden live boards. These include some good tactics ideas, gear discussions, and sadly a bug confirmation that hits us pretty hard.
I’ll start right off the bat with the bad news 🙂 It appears that Perceived threat is currently broken as mentioned on this thread, and confirmed by Graalx2. However, the silver lining is it has been identified and targeted to be fixed – but just sadly not in today’s patch. What this really means for us is that traiting down the fist line doesn’t help us at all currently. So, I’m probably going to keep my current 5 Shield spec with the other 2 masteries until this bug has been fixed.
If you’re having problems keeping all your gambits straight, Medouneu from the forums put together a pretty good compilation of all the gambits. It is a good one-page chart that shows all of them, their respective damages, buffs, threat components, etc in a visual fashion. For those of you just starting off, I highly recommend it as it is a good visual way of explaining and comparing things.
As you hit level 50 as a warden you unlock the deeds to obtain the gambit masteries which allow you to add two builders to your gambits with one button. These are incredibly handy as our real strength comes from our gambits, not the builders. Rainyman on the live forums has posted a good breakdown of how they can be used most effectively. Not only does he help with how they can be put together, but there’s also some good thoughts in there for opening pulls, DPS rotations, and agro retention.
Every warden who’s done any significant playing has run into our ability to consume power in massive quantities. DcDistrubed947 on the live boards raises the question and there’s a ton of good info in this 4-page thread. I’ll try to summarize as best as possible:
- pace yourself and don’t go all out (this is hard for me at times)
- use the appropriate carvings
- they’ll reduce gambit cost by 10%, swap out depending on which line you’re using most
- Stack ICPR gear, and boosting your will helps your power pool
- user power pots 🙂 with all the barter/quest options in Moria and Mirkwood they’re really cheap.
- don’t be afraid to auto-attack every now and then
- Food is also handy, roll a cook or make friends with one 🙂
Similar to my comparisons of the various armor sets, there has been some activity regarding jewelry. Hakon_Stormbrow posted on the live boards his spreadsheet listing out all the available jewelry. It is a heck of a resource and a great way to compare items. Also on the live boards in some discussion on those items from a warden’s perspective. A lot of folks like the critted Turtle bracelets, but I much prefer the Aureate ones personally. However, I do also have a SM jeweler with kindred Lorien and guild reputation so it is quite easy for me to get those. I also am looking at a couple items from the Mirkwood reputation sets, but haven’t really checked them out as my minnie is still working on his reputation there. Tanis posted his thoughts, and I really respect his input as he’s put in tons of effort to study and analyze things – if you remember he’s the one who’s done all the analysis on which virtues are best.
The last part here is all about threat and tanking. I’ll start with the potential “troll” post which luckily started on the warden boards and got some serious responses (ok, there’s some de-railment, but nothing mean). The topic of discussion is why all the talk about tanks being useless, essentially just let the DPS classes tank and out-heal everything. This was certainly the preferred method in Moria as most groups were tanking with champs or even hunters! But with Mirkwood the combination of meaner bosses and trickier instances have brought back the need for a tank. Yes once you understand things and are running with the same group you can probably run content without a tank and do it faster. However, my opinion is that while running with a tank may be a bit slower, it will be smoother and more repeatable as well as more flexible in regards to group members.
One of the trickier aspects of tanking is how to handle mobs that you can’t damage – like the brutes in Sammath Gul (SG). Basically the way the pulls in there work is you’ll get a brute who you can’t damage for a while but still needs to be controlled as he does some nasty damage. You then need to burn everything else down and before finishing off the brute. The general idea is to use a combination of war-cry and threat leaches and those will pretty well stick the brutes to you. Worst case a precise blow or two will guarantee it 😉
And finally, I’m adding a link to the Guard boards as there is some good general information in there with regards to general terms, threat stealing, and group dynamics. It is from a guard’s perspective so the skills will be a bit different but a lot of the concepts remain the same.
Happy tanking, and enjoy the reads!