I’m a little behind in working on my warden as I have lots of things I need to take a more in-depth look at.  However, there are quite a few of these that are debated on the forums.  I’m gong to paraphrase them with my own thoughts, but also provide the threads for you to read and digest yourselves.

I’ll start off with a neat chart from a fellow blogger, who I didn’t realize even had a warden 🙂  But once again, Harparelle has come up with another great post graphically breaking down the various gambits. I’ve seen a few of these around, and each one helps reinforce the gambit progression for me as they’re all from a slightly different point of view.

For those of you like me who were a bit concerned by the double spear at the end of our new gambit, graalx2 has posted that it is indeed fixed and should end with a shield.  There’s some debate in the rest of the thread as to whether it should be fist or shield and while fist would be nicer from a mastery perspective I don’t think it matters all that much as there are a number of ways to build it with masteries no matter what the last builder is.

Continuing on the gambit execution thread, one of the biggest complaints about some of our gambits (Defiant Challenge being the worst) is the duration of the animation.  Some gambits/skills really aren’t practical as the animation just takes forever.  Well, if you take the advice of Rainyman from the forums, if you use one of our recovery skills immediately after the long animation gambit you will interrupt that animation and be able to proceed with another gambit.  So essentially using any skill that has a “fast” or immediate execution time as per the new combat re-vamp interrupts any current animation and lets you progress with something new.  So this also works with critical strike too, but it just isn’t as readily available like the recovery skills. I’ve tried this a few times and it does work, now granted I’m not sure this is quite the outcome these skills were built around, but it can be quite effective 🙂

Switching gears to equipment, the legacy debate continues on the live boards with some good breakdowns and discussion on the merits of the respective legacies.  The second post in the thread does have the full pool breakout if you’re curious as well.  For me, I’m mainly going for one or 2 of the threat increase legacies, power reductions, increased healing and increased damage.  I’m still not sure the threat ones matter all that much, but being a tank anything that helps me get more agro is a good thing.  And as a tank, increased damage output isn’t all that high on my list.  I still haven’t found any items that I think are great, but I do have a handful that I do like and am progressing to see how they turn out.

The other applicable legendary item discussion of late has been regarding the best rune/relic combiation to use.  I’m still grinding up to get tier 8s and 9s but there is some interesting ideas in there.  The main discussion point is how much melee defense to stack versus other areas, which I’m also looking at as lots of the end-game instances do quite a bit of tactical damage.  So, if you’re already close to the melee defense cap (not hard to do) increasing your tactical damage mitigation may be more valuable.  However, it is also mentioned that Graalx2 has posted that higher level mobs (like those in end-game instances) do have higher mitigation caps so going above the cap isn’t a total waste.  I’m still not sure which way I’m going, but it is something I”m kicking around.

Along those same lines, there’s a similar discussion with regards to our various carvings, which again basically discusses the same idea – which is better over-capping melee, or boosting tactical.

Wrapping up my news updates are a couple posts on traits.  This is another area I”m still toying with but I wanted to share some of the ideas I was kicking around.  This first post is regarding which virtues to slot and what the benefits of them are.  I still think I’m pretty well set on my top 3 or 4 slots, but those last couple are the ones I’m toying with the most.

I’m still slotted full way of the shied as a bit of an experiment which I’m still on the fence about.  I like the added healing, but I do know I’m losing some damage output and I’m not sure I like that for soloing.  But anyway, an interesting build has been kicked around which I thought I’d post as it does have some interesting applications.  The idea behind it is to slow full fist line for the added fears and interrupt opportunities.  Certainly helpful in some instances, but I can also see it helping out in soloing as well.  Check out the thread on the

forums as it is worth a read.

I should have another post out today as a more general update, but figured I”d get some of these thoughts and ideas out to share.