Archive for May, 2011

I posted earlier about this, and I’ve had a chance now to go through the post and all of Orion’s follow up comments on the new changes for the Warden.

Orion starts his post reminding us that this is more of a tweak and not a full up revamp, but there are quite a few changes in store.  The main changes are as follows:

• Introducing a Potency System (more on that)
• Significant change to Never Surrender (more on that)
• Changes to the Spear Bleed line (more on that)
• Determination stance improved to boost power regeneration as well as critical defense
  • Makes this more of a tanking stance, aligned with the Fist line
• Boosting Fist morale taps
  • who can complain about this?
• Trait and Trait line changes
• Capstone Changes
  • Each capstone changes the default gambit to the appropriate double icon of that line making it easier to trigger potency
• Way of the Warden will include masteries!
  • Hopefully this will bring new traits to fill the void!
  • This will really alter the way many trait as the masteries were considered must haves and created traiting issues.
  • The problem I see here is that many will slot this and never use the ability, so why not make the ability useful?

It took me a while to figure out what Potency is, but I think I actually like it, although I will wait to see how it really plays out.  You will now have a chance (starting at 25% but traits can boost to 100%) of entering into potency mode when using either Deft Strike (spear-spear), Defensive Strike (shield-shield) or Goad (fist-fist).  Once in this mode, if you use Power Attack, Maddening Strike, or Fierce Resolve, it will fire that gambit and then copy that back into the gambit bar such that you can quickly kick off the next tier.  Essentially now you’ll want to work in one of the doubles into your rotation as you can then very quickly apply two tiers of our powerful gambits almost instantly.  I do actually find Goad useful, and when paired with the mastery trick, you can get the double off pretty quickly.  Again the idea here is to fire off our higher tier gambits quicker, and I like this idea.  The down side is that you need to use less desirable gambits – I think I’d prefer it if any of the gambits in that line would queue up the tier 3 it is built off of.  For instance, I could toss up a “potent” EoB and have Fierce Resolve queue such that I could fire that off or add another first to kick off Resolution.

The Never Surrender change is interesting and I’m not real sure what I think about it.  Using this skill will put a 5 minute buff on the Warden that once they drop under 5% morale, they’ll receive 75% of their morale and 50% of their power at the penalty currently applied to this in the form of the mastery removal and HoT pulse reduction for 5 minutes.  This certainly is more useful then the current implementation and falls in line with the developer stance of “don’t die” and you don’t need to worry about agro retention.  I think this fits more in line with the class and will give us an oh-poop button that we can use to prevent wipes when the group can’t handle the Warden grabbing everything   I’m actually pretty comfortable with building gambits manually and I think the potency introduction could make this de-buff less of an issue.

The Spear line is seeing a number of changes.  The Recklessness stance is being aligned with this line to boost the Potency chance as you trait deeper into that line.  Skill and Power is granting a 3 second cooldown on Shield Piercer after a spear line gambit is executed, and they’re adding a light DoT to Javelin Toss.  The other change is to the bleed line (Power Attack) such that when you apply a higher tier gambit, it swaps the lower DoT for an instant damage, while still applying that higher tier DoT.

Shield line isn’t changing too much other then the capstone and potency changes discussed above, as well as aligning the Conservation stance with this line.  Wary Blocks is being changed to increase the buff duration from Defensive Strike and Dance of War by 10 seconds.  Efficient shieldwork now reduces the power of the shield masteries as well.  Traiting 4 deep into the Shield line now give 2 more HoT pulses instead of the +10% HoT increase.  If I’m reading this right, it sounds like you’ll be able to now have shield HoTs lasting for a total of 8 pulses, which is pretty darn long.

Fist line is also getting the same potency and capstone changes but also some nice new trait additions as well as the above mentioned Determination changes.  3 deep in the line and Confidence now each add +1 pulse to the Warden leaches (if I’m reading this right) which will be HUGE for the leach line.  Couple that with the increased magnitude and we’ll be able to do some serious morale leaching in bigger groups of mobs!

I think there’s a lot of VERY good things in here for Wardens, however there’s one big issue I see that isn’t addressed at all.  A great majority of the end-game fights require some level of agro swapping and Wardens have zero capability in this area.  Now granted, they’ve made them even more into the “we’re going to grab it all and live” class which will work in some fights but I’m just worried that there will still be many fights where a Warden tank just won’t work.  It seems like when they’re designing some of the group content, they are building it with certain tanks in mind and that makes it even tougher for a class that’s already seen as a sub-standard tank.  We are the only tank class without any sort of agro management skills, and that’s becoming increasingly more important in end-game content.

Orion does make a number of posts in the comments thread on this subject:

• Masteries, Potency, and Never Surrender Penalty
• No ranged DPS/tanking role introduction for Wardens at this time
• Potency additions to the line are on top of existing bonuses
• Potency and Never Surrender Clarification

As a starting point, I really like where these changes are going I just think they could be tweaked a little bit.