Orion has been busy over the holiday with some changes to the Warden Class that are coming in the future. And although some people might tense up at the thought of Orion touching another class, he assures us that his intention is to enhance the Warden, not to wreck it.
There are some significant changes coming to the Warden. These changes are being made to enhance the overall role of the Warden. "Oh great, Orion is <expletive deleted> another class!" Well…I certainly hope that this is not the sentiment that people have when they get their hands on the updated Warden. In fact, what I want you all to say is: "The soul of the class is intact, we just have more choices in how we want to play now."
His overall intent is to provide the Warden with three “viable” roles within a group:
- Tank (as the Primary role)
- Melee DPS (as one secondary option)
- Ranged DPS (as another secondary option)
And it appears that he’ll be doing this through the use of the current Warden stances, although two of those stances will be changing (Salvation replaces Conservation and Assailment replaces Determination) . Salvation will be focused on on keeping the warden alive while Assailment will be focused on the Warden’s ranged capability. Recklessness will remain and focus on Melee DPS.
Other Highlights to the post include:
- Battle Preparation will be a new skill that will allow for Wardens to build a Gambit while they are out of combat.
- The Gambit will last for 30 seconds or until it is used.
- “This will allow the Warden to get some preemptive defenses up at the beginning of a fight.”
- Defiant Challenge will no longer unlock a Gambit. Instead it will unlock a skill that will be a “force taunt” and reduce incoming damage from those targets under the effect.
- Gambit Builders’ partial mitigation will remain, but will now be increased to a 6% maximum.
- Gambits …will drive their beneficial and detrimental effects off of the stance you are in.”
Masteries will be staying, but will be moving into trait lines.
There has been a lot of discussion on the masteries, they will be staying. They will be moving into trait lines and allowing you gain access to all of them by specializing 5 deep in any one trait line, or 4/2, 3/3 or 2/2/2. In fact, the Master of X traits will be allowing the benefits granted by the normal builders more over to the masteries.
And last, but not least, Orion leaves us with the possibility that Wardens may be receiving a possible Trait Line bonus to the tanking line. This bonus would allow Wardens who are traited 4 or 5 deep into the tanking line to become immune to critical strikes for a short amount of time after they have received an initial critical strike. However, he is very cautious of this skill as it may require some tweaking so that it is not too overpowered. He does believe that it will make it into the update, though.
Overall I think that these changes should go a long way to make up for the deficiencies that a lot of Wardens feel that they currently experience. What do you think?
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January 11, 2012 at 12:19 pm
Now I have not played warden for long and only to 49 so far but it sure looks promising. Can’t wait for more possible update 6 changes!
January 11, 2012 at 12:19 pm
I think that addressing crits instead of mitigations is the right path to decreasing (or at least normalizing) incoming damage, I’d much prefer a blanket -crit magnitude buff via an existing gambit. As soon as devs start introducing things like ‘immune’ and ‘instant’, things get quickly unbalanced. Providing a way to reduce the size of crits is a lot easier to balance going forward.
January 11, 2012 at 12:35 pm
When I read “ranged dps upgrade” there was suddenly a image in my head I would love to share with you …
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSStFZUDqu8
Now that would be a nice ranged gambit skill, don’t you think?
January 11, 2012 at 12:38 pm
Greeeaaat. More ranged DPS for Wardens is totally unnecessary and unwanted, considering all of the ranged dps out there in other classes. Feh.
January 11, 2012 at 12:51 pm
Is Orion some sort of super human? I know everyone at Turbine is busy, but this guy seems exceptional lol
I am hoping someday he returns to old area revamps, though. He definitely spearheaded some awesome changes before that was put on hiatus.
January 11, 2012 at 3:08 pm
Orion isn’t superhuman in any way. The Warden has had some severe issues post-ROI, mostly due to blatant neglect by the devs (aka Orion) in the rush to push the new expansion out the door before a certain game in a Galaxy Far, Far Away launched. The issues have been so severe that they have had to do not one (Update 5), but now two updates (Update 6) to fix things.
Of course, there are those that will always say that everything’s been fine with Wardens the whole time. Don’t believe it.
January 11, 2012 at 10:11 pm
I was referring more to the sheer amount of stuff he seems to do there, not whether people like all of his adjustments.
January 11, 2012 at 1:11 pm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNdW9_iHfJk
That’s the video that came to mind when I read about improved ranged DPS and stances. Start in ranged DPS stance and quickly close the distance while switching to melee DPS!
January 11, 2012 at 1:18 pm
Is there an ETA for update 6?
January 11, 2012 at 2:13 pm
No date has been announced.
January 11, 2012 at 1:36 pm
“Gambits …will drive their beneficial and detrimental effects off of the stance you are in.”
Great. So, in addition to memorizing 37 unique gambits (and their skill combo to open), we will now have to learn multi-output effects for each to use while in different stances. /le sigh
P.S. Recklessness as DPS stance. bwahahahahahaha! Thanks for the laugh, Orion. You crack me up!
January 11, 2012 at 3:28 pm
who cares ,none plays a warden after ROI
January 12, 2012 at 4:18 pm
(Small voice:) I’m leveling a warden.
On topic (kind of): Since I’m still pretty early in the game, I can’t say I understand much of this update. I’ll trust most other commenters in that this is an improvement. So far the warden looks like a really fun class to play, though that’s probably because I only need to remember a few gambits to survive when playing solo. X)
January 11, 2012 at 4:12 pm
Well, a Warden kinnie of mine says these changes look decent, and from my limited point of view I think they do as well.
And frankly Orion’s track record is superb, so I have no doubts he’ll bring the Warden back up to snuff.
January 11, 2012 at 4:19 pm
the crit immunitiy could just mean the crits hit like normal attacks (unfair when sparring burglars or lightning rune-keepers)
January 11, 2012 at 4:34 pm
the way I read it, ‘Tanking wardens will now be immune to damage from critical hits (and devastating hits) for X seconds after getting hit by a critical hit’
maybe a debuff after the duration, ‘You must recover your strength before you can block crits’ it could last for the same duration and expire if out of combat for 3/9 seconds
just hope this goes thru, want an excuse to use my warden (lvl 22)
As I understand it, the warden traitlines are DPS, Tanking and threat. which to go for if tanking? the line that lets you block or the line that lets you hold aggro, or are tanks hybrid Blue and Yellow? the instance finder only lets us use tanking role
P.S. ranged stance – woot
January 11, 2012 at 7:12 pm
Orion’s changes to the Minstrel were excellent, and I’m glad to hear that Wardens may get the same amount of love. I’m not glad that rune-keepers weren’t next to keep parity with new-and-improved Minstrels, however.
January 11, 2012 at 8:22 pm
Ranged DPS? Not needed. Other classes are there for this role. Immunity to critical hits is a nice thought, but I would rather see a gambit that does this instead of needing to get hit hard and potentially lose a ton of health first. The Warden is arguably the most difficult class to play, and I assert that it should be VERY powerful, consistent with the effort that is required to play it. What we have now is a class that has mediocre DPS, and while it can build agrro well, cannot handle hits nearly as well as a guardian. So we can get threat, but we cannot deal with it as easily as a guardian once we do. Oh yeah, I can heal myself, but if I do, I may lose aggro. WARDENS SHOULD DESIGNED TO BE BETTER TANKS THAN GUARDIANS because of the complexity in managing the gambit system. This is NOT how it currently is. The warden is a tanking class. It is also a class that FTP players have to buy, but who would? If you want to DPS, you should not get a warden and if you want to tank a guardian is easier and probably more effective. So Turbine, if you want more people to pay to play Wardens (i.e. make more money), you need to make them more attractive then they currently are.
January 12, 2012 at 4:17 am
Nice Caps
Although I agree with you that the Warden should be a viable tank and able to hold – and survive! – aggro, I disagree with your opinion that the warden should be the “better” tank because “it is more difficult to play”.
January 16, 2012 at 5:19 pm
Warden are one of the most difficult classes, yes. They can be Very powerful if the person legitimately knows what they are doing. For example, people complain about warden self heals getting needed but why not swap out some jewellry for caster/will jewellry?
And any class can be considered hard to play. Some people consider the warden easy to handle while others have a lot of trouble with it. So giving them special skills and treatment because of your opinion on the difficulty would not be fair.
January 11, 2012 at 11:56 pm
I think a lot of MMOs use the “agile” form of development rather than the “waterfall” form of development. Turbine seems to use it… I thought the instance finder was a likely example of that (assuming they do follow up with improvements each update).
So for example, with a lot of these classes it seems like Turbine makes changes based upon user and developer input and then releases an iteration to users to see how it plays out. This happens a lot in software and web development, I deal with it at my own job.
The key there is that the next round of iterations should get to things they wanted to do previously, but that it would also include fixes and adjustments based upon even more new user and developer feedback and experiences. It’s a constant, organic process.
Keeping this stuff in mind, I don’t really care when it takes a few passes to “fix” something… largely because the alternative is so-called waterfall development. This is the style where everything depends on the completion of something else and once all of that is “completed” it is then released.
I the waterfall approach sounds more attractive to players in theory, but in practice it’s time consuming, dated and hard to manage. It takes much longer, there’s less room for iterative changes and user input is barely considered after launch (or even months prior to launch, as everything has to be more or less “in stone”).
So I don’t know, I definitely understand why people are tired of change after change that doesn’t seem to be the “definitive!” version, but from a development perspective I think there’s a lot more to say about this process than a “set it and forget it” one.
Waterfall development leads to stagnant classes that are never touched again, but it also is far more likely to lead to situations where hard dates are set and then not adequately met because so many things are dependent on the creation and “completion” of so many other things. I think the release of ROI (which did seem rushed) is possibly an example of a more “waterfall” approach.
None of that is a replacement for good management, solid stories (“User X wants Y to do Z” type stuff) or smart goals… but personally I think Turbine seems to be handling that pretty well overall, even if there are those that disagree.
January 12, 2012 at 12:17 am
There is a difference between working towards a polished design goal with incremental updates, and trying to salvage what you can from a trainwreck of bad design decisions that have piled up over time. I’ve played a Warden for over a year. I think Update 6 is the latter.
January 12, 2012 at 12:07 pm
Fair enough. I can’t claim to disagree with the approach to this class specifically… This method doesn’t replace good decisions, as you note
I guess in this case that I’m more hopeful that, in general, they can salvage classes people are disappointed with and continually update them to a solid state. Given the differences in approach we’ve seen, I am not under the impression they use the same development style for everything… but I’m no insider lol
January 16, 2012 at 10:01 pm
What, a sensible perspective on how MMOs are actually developed?
No, no, wrong. Turbine hates Wardens, probably for some reason somehow related to bilking us out of money with the store.
January 12, 2012 at 9:03 am
As long as we don’t hear that Zombie Columbus is taking over the warden, I think we are all set. That guy has some serious credibility issues after he “improved” the hunter for RoI.
January 13, 2012 at 5:25 pm
I’ll second that. All ZC demonstrated is that he obviously hasn’t leveled a hunter and that he’d rather be developing for Guild Wars. I feel like class mechanics are always held hostage to whims of the PvP crowd, which is odd since otherwise PvP seems to get very little attention from the Devs.
January 16, 2012 at 5:22 pm
I’m actually very content with my hunter even with the changes. The gear needs more vitality/fate balance and I am terribly squishy what seems like a lot of the time, so I’m not quite sure how our changes are geared toward PvP.
But hey, I’m all for more TLC given to the PvP zones. For example, fixing creep mits…
January 12, 2012 at 9:31 am
To be honest I don’t see any of this as changing much of anything. I’ll still play with exactly the same style, will continue to ignore the lines that aren’t shield, and will be fine with it. What I’m sick of is the endless whining about how wardens are broken and virtually unplayable. I believe that if you have the determination and SKILL you can still play one and be better than most guards out there.
January 12, 2012 at 2:01 pm
I play a solo warden and a healing (i.e. grouping) minstrel. Regardless of the skill of the warden, they take soooo much damage in comparison to guards that I get twitchy when my tank — or one of the tanks — is a warden. I am saying this as one whose main is a warden, who in fact plays three wardens, and who has lots of arguments in defense of the class.
I really like the look of the proposed changes. I just hope Orion remembers to scale the leeches.
January 12, 2012 at 3:35 pm
“To be honest I don’t see any of this as changing much of anything…What I’m sick of is the endless whining about how wardens are broken and virtually unplayable.”
I agree. I have played every class except Hunter and honestly, I find my Warden to be the most fun to play. I can solo, tank, and support. Most of my attacks come with a buff. Plus, with the SpSh mastery, you have one of the fastest interrupts in the game. There is nothing quite as satisfying as watching Yet Another Moria Magician get shin-kicked to death by a Fallohide with spear.
My only complaint about playing a Warden, especially after playing the other classes, is the power issue. I go through power like a Mini nursing a lost cause. But, I also know I could fix a lot of that via different legacies and getting better at using Dark Before the Dawn.
January 12, 2012 at 4:19 pm
I don’t have any power problems on my level 75 warden — I increased her power pool and ICPR through virtues, and decreased power consumption through a trait. Dark Before the Dawn doesn’t scale. Most annoying.
BTW the twitchy feeling my mini gets when healing a warden tank is in the tougher level 75 content –like, I’m solo healing a raid, or I can’t trust the other healer. Or it’s just plain tough content.
January 13, 2012 at 11:43 am
Crit immunity, to my mind, is something that all tanks should be able to achieve with relative ease. If anything is likely to squish a tank it’ll be a crit hit. Not a big fan of the one talent/trait/whatever to become immune as I reckon it should be something the player needs to work on. I remember in wow a couple of times when my warrior was below the now defunct def cap and was taking near fatal blows from bosses. Became a bit boring once popping into tanking stance gave the same effect.
I’ve always considered the warden a melee class so not too sure what need they have for getting buffs to something used for pulls or a filler between mobs outwith melee range.
If it’s broken, fix it; if it’s not then don’t start poking it until it does break!
January 13, 2012 at 8:25 pm
Do you play a warden in LOTRO, Andy? You don’t say, specifically…
January 13, 2012 at 8:26 pm
Do you play a warden in LOTRO, Andy? You don’t say, specifically.
January 16, 2012 at 5:36 am
Think the best solution is leave them as they are now, but give them a trait line which means they can equip heavy armour (thus solving the mitigations issues and bringing them back into line with the other tanks) and back into the tanking role. But making the trait line such that it comes at the price of ranged dps.
Buffed up high in all three area’s seems to be nothing but calling for a nerf further down the line due to balance issues. The games only recently got RK’s put back in balance so we don’t need another all empowered insane profession. Yes fix them, but I do hope they don’t do total over kill like it seems as though they are planning.
January 16, 2012 at 5:26 pm
Too many people don’t realize that wardens ARE NOT guardians. They are a kiting and BPE class not solid mits. There are situations where wardens are better for a situation than a guard is and vice versa – which is why the two are separate.
January 20, 2012 at 10:43 pm
Kiting? Kiting? Bite your tongue! We are a B/P/E and self-healing class, NOT a kiting class. Any kitie-ness that happens is purely situational. It’s not class-related. I’ve healed a lot of guards who used kiting techniques in certain situations and against certain bosses. The simplest version of the difference between the two classes is — or was — guards are better against bosses with spike damage; wardens are better against multiple mobs. That being said, the warden could handle the big bosses, and the guard can take multiple mobs. At least, that was the case until Saruman took over at Turbine.
January 21, 2012 at 3:59 pm
While I agree with you that wardens are a B/P/E class and a self-heal class I think you are quite mistaken on the side of kiting. If wardens aren’t a “kiting class” as you say then who is?!? Conviction through masteries anyone? A fellowship heal and threat leech that requires no target or any hitting of a target. I don’t know about you, but that rings kiting to me…
January 22, 2012 at 2:17 pm
I would like to see a warden sit in place and ‘sit-tank’ like a guard does. The majority of the raids I have at least lead have been best if the warden kites a little bit, and if it’s not a raid where the warden can kite or have lots of immediate heals, then I usually ask for or prefer a guardian.
Especially with the current failing of self-heals (again, gotta get the will up), wardens CAN’T sit in place and plop down and tank very much because they are so squishy compared to guardians.