Warden Basics - With a Focus on Tanking

[Merowin]

The primary role of the warden is to tank. However, as a warden you only wear medium armor, same as a hunter, and unless you learn to use your gambits effectively, you will die as fast as a hunter. Using your gambits, you can generate threat, buff yourself and heal yourself. That is what makes you a tank.

Most of your gambits are over-time effects: heal-over-time, threat-over-time and buffs lasting a certain amount of time. Even your damage is centered on damage-over-time. That means you have to execute as many gambits as possible and renew them before they time out.

Simply punching in your gambits one color at a time is going to be slow (1 second per color) and very inefficient, and you will only be able to keep a few gambits active that way.

To execute your gambits faster, you need to use masteries, e.g. shield-shield, fist-fist, spear-spear, or the combos: shield-fist, shield-spear, first-shield, fist-spear, spear-shield and spear-first. Punching in Conviction (shield-fist-shield-fist-shield) one color at a time would take 5 seconds, but, since masteries take no time to use, it could be done in just 1 second using two masteries (e.g. shield-fist, shield, fist-shield).

However, masteries have a 15 second cooldown. Using shield-fist and fist-shield for Conviction would mean they would be unavailable for Maddening Strike (shield-fist-shield) or Dance of War (shield-fist-shield-fist). To use your masteries as effectively as possible, you will therefore need to careful plan when to execute which gambits and in which order, to avoid using masteries already on cooldown.

Some gambits also upgrade existing buffs. This is typically the case for four-color gambits if a three-color gambit is already active. As an example in Determination stance take Safeguard (shield-spear-shield) and Celebration of Skill (shield-spear-shield-spear). If used individually, both will give a 30 second block bonus, with Celebration of Skill giving the better bonus. However, if Celebration of Skill is used while a buff from either Safeguard or Celebration of Skill is active, the buff will be upgraded to the buff from Celebration of Skill and last 50 seconds, instead of 30 seconds. The same is true for Maddening Strike/Dance of War and Brink of Victory/Surety of Death. You will, therefore, typically want to use 3+4 gambit combinations, instead of just the four-color gambit.

Some gambit buffs will also not stack with the same buff from another gambit. A good example is your heals-over-time. Persevere (shield-spear) and Impressive Flourish (shield-fist) both gives a tier 1 heal-over-time effect, but the effects do not stack. However, either will stack with Safeguard (shield-spear-shield) which gives a tier 2 heal-over-time.

At this point you may have realized why wardens can be a headache to play. You don’t just have to remember twenty different gambits, but also the order to execute them in, the duration of each gambit and when to use which masteries to avoid conflicting cooldowns.

The solution I use is to have all the gambits I use on quickbars with some sort of system to it. These are some of the keybindings I use:

Q: shield-spear
W: shield
E: spear-shield
R: spear-spear

Q + W: Safeguard (shield-spear-shield)
W + E + R: Celebration of Skill (shield-spear-shield-spear)
Q + W + E: Restoration (shield-spear-shield-spear-shield)

A: shield-fist
S: shield
D: fist-shield
F: fist-fist

A + S: Maddening Strike (shield-fist-shield)
S + D + F: Dance of War (shield-fist-shield-fist)
A + S + D: Conviction (shield-fist-shield-fist-shield)

Z: fist-shield
X: fist
C: shield-fist
V: shield

Z + X: Brink of Victory (fist-shield-fist)
X + C + V: Surety of Death (fist-shield-fist-shield)
Z + C + C: Desolation (fist-shield-fist-shield-fist)

You should get the idea now. You will also notice that some masteries are used for several gambits. It’s therefore important that I remember the order in which I want to use the gambits. I can use Safeguard and Celebration of Skill immediately after each other, but I would have to wait 15 seconds before using Restoration. Figuring out a good rotation of gambits to use and how to combine your masteries to execute the rotation efficiently is slow and incremental work. Expect to be changing your rotation several times.

Another way to execute your gambits faster is to use battle memory. Using Deft Strike (spear-spear), Defensive Strike (shield-shield) or Goad (fist-fist) will proc a potency buff, which will store the next gambit you use in your battle memory for later use. This means that instead of punching e.g. Exultation of Battle in twice, with the use of masteries that involve, you could punch in Defensive Strike before Exultation of Battle, which would give you a second Exultation of Battle, in your battle memory, ready to use.

[Merowin]

The most critical part of almost any fight for a warden is the first few seconds of the fight.

The first thing to do is to quickly establish solid agro. A good way is to use a combination of battle preparation and battle memory to fire off three quick Exultations of Battle. I typically use battle preparation to set off Shield Mastery (shield-spear-fist-shield). I then load Exultation of Battle, run in, hit Exultation of Battle, then, using a mastery, Defensive Strike (shield-shield) to proc potency, another two masteries for a 2nd Exultation of Battle and finally a 3rd Exultation of Battle from battle memory. This can be done in just a few seconds and will give you very solid agro.

However, as mentioned above as a warden you only wear medium armor, same as a hunter, and without your gambit buffs, you will die as fast as a hunter. This is where Defiant Challenge comes in. Defiant Challenge will give you a 40% bonus to your mitigations, taking them to 90%, for 30 seconds. That makes you almost invulnerable, and gives you 30 seconds to get all your gambit buffs active before you start taking real damage. Furthermore with the right legacy you can reduce the cooldown of Defiant Challenge to just 2 min 30 seconds. That makes it available, maybe not for every single pull, but almost every second pull.

Use it as often as you can. If you know the instance and know the fights, you want to make sure Defiant Challenge is available for the hardest pulls, but with a 2 min 30 second cooldown you can use Defiant Challenge very often. Take advantage of it.

[Marithil]

Nice and succinct. Good write up Mero.

As a note, you can actually do 4 EoB quickly at the beginning with a second mastery combo. I only do this if I miss some mobs or more show up at the beginning.

[Marithil]

But without DC or a good healer, you'll die. Just fwi.

[Elaelin]

Thanks for this info. It actually helps since I've decided to try and figure out the warden.

[Galwimloth]

Thank you very much! My warden just turned 49 and I'll be looking to enter Moria soon. One question: how useful is Ambush in a tanking role? It seems like a good skill, you get a few seconds stun to build some aggro and run gambits up, but I suppose you have to worry about pulling other mobs too.

I guess I don't really understand aggro the way I do healing and dps. You can see how close someone is to dying or how much damage you're doing in numbers, but in tanking you don't know if you have all the aggro or if the hunter's about to pull it. Is it really just instinctive?

[Merowin]

Ambush is mostly a solo skill, Galwimloth. I never use it, except in very special circumstances. When you tank you want to get agro immediately and one, two or three Exultations of Battle works much better for that. Other skills generate threat, but Exultation of Battle is the best threat skill you have. Use it often. Before you get Exultation of Battle tanking is almost impossible on a warden, because you will not be able to hold agro on anything.

There is no threat meter you can use to measure how much threat you have compared to the dps. You have to get a feel for how much threat you need to generate, and that will of course depend on who the dps is. For a guardian it's easy, you simply need to generate as much threat as you possibly can. For a warden it's a little more complicated since you have to balance threat, buffs and self heals. You want to generate enough threat to hold agro, but no more, since you want to spend the rest of your time building up buffs and self heals.

[Daefarod]

Beautiful write-up, Merowin! Thank you for this.

[Galwimloth]

One more question: which LI weapon should I be looking to build for tanking? The sword? The axe? The club?

[Marithil]

A sword is best. The inherent bonus is better for tanking.

[Marithil]

About stats for tanking-- I'd like to share mine to see how they stack up to Mero's and other Wardens in the kin. I just want to see where other are doing things right, or to get a a different view on what is good. (Mero and I frequently have different ideas that are fun to swap around.)

Morale- 19548
Power- 5693

All avoidance are based on my warden buffs being active through my normal rotation.

Block %21.7 part. %13.4
Parry %19.2 part. %13.9
Evade %20.1 part. %11.1

Total= %61.0 part. %38.4 with %35 partial mits.

Mitigation- unbuffed

Physical- %50
Tactical- %50

Resistance- %16.6
Crit Defense- %42.4
Finesse- %11.5
Incoming Healing- %21.1

I'm happy to explain my ideas about this if people ask for specifics, but for now I am tired and want to sleep.

[Merowin]

Laeglaith is my 4th character and my lowest priority. He's functional, but far from fully optimized. He needs work on both his gear, his virtues and his rotation.

Morale: 16729
Power: 4666 (2009 ICPR)

I find ICPR more useful than power so I listed that number as well.

Without Active Gambits (Avoidance / Partial Avoid. / Partial Mit.)
Block: 16.1% / 5.6% / 55.0%
Parry: 18.7% / 5.4% / 75.0%
Evade: 12.2% / 4.0% / 52.2%

With Active Gambits (Avoidance / Partial Avoid. / Partial Mit.)
Block: 20.8% / 20.2% / 55.0%
Parry: 18.7% / 11.4% / 75.0%
Evade: 23.9% / 16.0% / 55.0%

Total Avoidance With Gambits: 63.4%
Total Partial Avoidance With Gambits: 47.6%

Mitigations Without Gambits
Physical: 48.4%
Tactical: 47.6%
(Capped with gambits and scrolls)

Resistance: 16.9%
Crit Defense (Without / With Gambits): 41.3% / 45.2%
Finesse: 8.9%
Incoming Healing: 15.8%

[Merowin]

Assuming that both Marithil and I get hit with a 10,000 damage attack every second:

Marithil blocks, parries or evades 61.0% of the time. I block, parry or evade 63.4% of the time.

When hit Marithil partially blocks, parries or evades mitigating 35% of the damage. I will mitigate 62% of the damage (55% + 55% + 75%)/3

We both mitigate 50% of the damage from our normal mitigations.

Marithil will take 10,000*(1-0.610)*(1-0.35)*0.5 = 1268 damage per second.

I will take 10,000*(1-0.634)*(1-0.62)*0.5 = 695 damage per second. Almost half the damage Marithil is taking.

This only considers damage that can be blocked, parried or evaded. When we get hit by tactical attacks, or when we are stunned or get hit in the back, we are both equally bad. I have also not considered bosses with finesse.

[Marithil]

I just made a couple adjustments to my gear.

My B/P/E/ is now sitting at

21.7%/21.1%/23.2%

Partials- B/P/E

13.4%/14.0%/13.5%

Partial Mits- B/P/E

45%/45%/50%

My physical and tactical mits are down, but still capped with scrolls. So far it has proven to be effective in reducing damage.

[the_phoenix]

thanks guys this one is proving really useful .......
My basic stats are :
Block : 6430
parry : 5788
evade 3809

With all buffs active :

B/P/E are 24.4/17.3/21.1

Partial B/P/E : 22/12.2/14.4

partial Mits B/P/E : 55/65/45.

Also wanted to get your opinions on resistance, as to how much a difference would it make as compared to BPE ?
My resistance stands at : 26.6% without food.

rest of stats,
Incoming healing : 16.3%
Crit defense without gambits : 39.9%.