|
Starting a Warden? Wardens are a
well-rounded melee class that also has
group buffs, self buffs, speed, healing, resurrect and most of all
blade turn. Playing a Warden is a lot of fun. If you're starting a
Warden, here's a plan for specing your character to be effective for
both PvE and RvR. As a caveat, there are more ways than one to
play a Warden; some people prefer to focus more on damage and others
prefer to focus on healing abilities. I fall
somewhere in the middle. I selected skills and abilities
that I believe can best benefit a group as a whole: |
Here's how I'm speced at Level 50 |
|
49 Nurture
39 Blades
16 Regrowth
12 Parry
0 Blunt
|
Spec Summary
|
|
The sections below detail a list of how to
spec a Warden over time. But to summarize, here's an overall view on the
most important lines in this spec. Nurture is the primary line. Spec this
high
as your key abilities are in this line. Spec a weapon second. Keep your
weapon spec as high as possible after Nurture. You'll want a little into Regrowth for some better heal spells, but not a lot. Later on you won't be
able to be both healer and hold the Blade Turn chant on the group
effectively with the mana you have.
Wardens can spec their healing line and can heal well, but those skills
are better suited to the Hibernian primary healing class, the Druid. Parry
comes last. You get 5% block by default. Every point you put into
parry gives you a half percent more chance to block. So putting a few points into parry is
cheap and increases your blocking chance some while specing higher uses points you could spec better other places.
Your role as a Warden will change over
time. How you spec and play your warden at the low levels will change
several times as you get some of your various key abilities. Detailed
below are some suggestions on how you can spec your Warden as you level to
maximize effectiveness. |
Levels 1-17 |
Early on you'll be a melee character.
You don't get any of your main character abilities until level 18 so
spec high into your weapon line. The higher your weapon spec is the more
overall damage you'll do. You'll do well soloing as a Warden. Pick
either blades or blunt. Both work well. I choose blades because there
just seem to be more blades in the game. Swing time with blades is
faster than blunt but you'll do more damage with a single blunt hit.
For more information on specing blades or blunts there is a discussion at the bottom of this page.
The
main thing you want to do is make sure is you plan to have Nurture
at your level when you hit level 18 so you
can get your first group Blade Turn spell. Here's how I'd recommend specing up to level 18:
|
|
18 Nurture
10 Blades/Blunt
5 Regrowth
|
Speced like this you'll do decent damage as
a tank, you'll have a decent heal spell, and you'll get Blade Turn (bubble)
for your group as early as possible. What you may notice early on is groups
asking you to perform different roles based on the group make up.
You may find yourself doing melee or being a healer. You'll do both well.
When you reach level 10 spec in Nurture you'll get Nature's Fend. This is a
single blade turn you can cast on any member of your party. Before battle
always bubble up your tanks and make sure your healers still have a bubble
on them too. Blade Turn blocks a single hit from a mob. If you don't take
damage, you don't need to be healed and Blade Turn does just that. This is
your most important spell line as a Warden. In situations where you don't
have enough healing power in a group you have two choices; you can stand
back and repeatedly cast Nature's Fend on the main tank, preventing a lot of
damage, or you can heal him/her as they take damage. Turn on your group zeal
chant (Nature's Revenge, Vendetta, Vengence) as soon as you get it. This
boosts the melee damage for all the members of your party. You'll use this a
lot up until level 26 and then you'll very rarely use it from then on out. Being speced highly in Nurture also gives you the Warden's speed spell. It's no
Bard speed, but it will get you around town faster. You have the ability to
have one "chant" on at a time. Speed and zeal are your two main
group chants
at this point. Use zeal in battle, and speed if you don't have a bard in
your group or are solo when not in battle. You've got buffs too! Cast those
on the members of your party to increase their stats. You have the same
buffs as bards and druids. Use them whenever possible. |
Levels 18-25 |
At level 18 you'll get your
first group Blade Turn. Your role will change the most dramatically
during levels 18-25. Much of the time you probably won't be meleeing,
but instead healing or casting bubble on the group. At this point in the game
you're probably heavily into the Parthenon farm or other area where in
groups you're being faced with mobs that come in groups instead of the
singles from earlier levels. With three mobs on three of your party
members, group Blade Turn (Nature's Shield) is your best friend. Stand
back and cast repeatedly on the entire party. This can use your mana
up quickly so
in some cases you may be casting just the single Blade Turn on your main
tank. Keep zeal on the group while in battle. As you level add the next
few levels put some more skill points into Regrowth for better heals. Here's how I'd recommend specing up to
level 26:
|
|
26 Nurture
15 Blades/Blunt
8 Regrowth
4 Parry
|
Levels 26-35 |
Ah... at level 26 spec in Nurture you
now have your group blade turn chant. Turn on Nature's Guard
whenever in battle. This negates a damage hit every 10 seconds for all
members of your party. This is, by far, the most useful feature Wardens
have. Forget zeal from here on out. If you have two Warden's in your
group, stack bubble. Cast them five seconds apart and now you have a
combined five second bubble. Very nice. You'll be able to go with much
less healing power if necessary simply because bubble will negate a lot
of damage. Get back into melee. You'll melee more and more from here on
out. You may be asked to be a healer. You're not a super healer, but not
a terrible one at this point either. Holding the bubble chant on takes mana, but not that much, so you can be a backup healer easy. Later on,
this won't be the case. Your days as a healer are numbered. Note that
your weapon spec is falling way behind here. That's okay, the Nurture
line is your most valuable asset. Your weapon spec will catch up later
and you'll eventually have your weapon at close to your level. One thing you may
have noticed at this point is that you're not holding aggro in most of
the battles and you're not doing nearly the damage those tanks and
casters keep talking about. A Warden is a hybrid class, don't ever
expect to do the damage a tank or caster will do. You've got other
assets that make you highly valuable. Here's how I'd recommend specing
up to level 36:
|
|
36 Nurture
21 Blades/Blunt
11 Regrowth
6 Parry
|
Levels 36-44 |
At level 36 Nurture spec you get a
better bubble chant, Nature's Barrier. This negates a hit on your party
members at eight seconds rather than ten. If you get this at level 36,
groups will love you. Definitely a must have over all other specs in my
opinion. With the eight second bubble chant on you're going to be using
a lot of mana just to hold the chant on. It may not look like it because
you'll have your mana maxed in battle all the time, but be assured,
you're using 157 mana every minute while it's active.
If you heal during battle and then don't sit after battle you'll notice
your power barely regens (unless you have the Bard mana song on or the
Mentalist's mana buff.) If you've been in the battlegrounds
and have some Realm Skill Points to spend get Mystic Crystal Lore and/or
Serenity. MCL will give you a 25% instant mana regen every three
minutes out of combat and Serenity helps you regenrate mana a bit faster
for each level. At this point you should be a last ditch healer
in groups. Getting your mana down to nothing every battle because you're
healing is bad for everyone's downtime. Most people know Wardens can
heal, but many don't realize the mana cost of keeping bubble on at the
higher levels. If you have to be a healer, take bubble off and on when meding so your mana will come back faster. For healing, spec regrowth a
little higher for better heal and resurrect spells. Here's how I'd recommend
specing up to level 45:
|
|
45 Nurture
32 Blades/Blunt
16 Regrowth
7 Parry
|
Levels 45-50 |
Finally, you have your key ability, six
second blade turn. Nature's Wall is the best feature Warden's have. You
will be a very desirable member of groups simply because of this
ability. You may be even asked to stay logged in for free XP when you
need to go because it will hurt the group if you leave. But the
six second bubble has a price. You're using 210 power every minute just
to keep on the blade turn chant. Over time your power bar will go down
if you don't have the mana buff, mana song or the Serenity realm ability. Let your mana drop, don't
worry about it. At some point take a med break with bubble off to get it
back up and/or cast MCL if you have it. It's well worth a little power being used for the benefit you
get from this ability. Because lots of your power is going to blade turn you
will be an emergency healer only. Stop meleeing if people are going to
die and heal heal heal. But, when you heal, make sure you keep a bit of
mana in reserve so blade turn will stay on. You're a melee class from here on out. Spec
your weapon as high as possible. At this point you should have weapons
with +skills to them and hopefully you've been in RvR and gotten a few
realm ranks. With that, you should be able to get your weapon close to your level. Here's how I'd recommend specing up to level 50:
|
|
49 Nurture
39 Blades/Blunt
16 Regrowth
12 Parry
|
Level 50 |
Why this final spec at level 50?
Several reasons. First, specing to 47 Nurture gets you a self
attack speed buff of 38%. You'll be swinging even a slow weapon
quickly with this buff. This buff is more than double what most
Druids can give you and definitely helps your damage over time.
Keep this buff on all the time. Second, specing to 49 in nurture
gets you the top three group resist buffs: body, energy and spirt all at
24%. In PvE situations, resists are important only if the
mob type you're killing uses that type of Damage. However, in RvR,
you group will be faced with all kinds of damage and effects thrown at you
all at once.
The higher the resists on your party, the better. You also
get the top group damage add spell specing this highly in Nurture as
well. There are some situations where you will still use zeal and
having the best helps your party.
|
High Nurture - Buffing Benefits |
One thing to mention that Wardens get by
default when specing high Nurture is better baseline buffs.
By going 49 in Nurture you will have better baseline buffs than Bards or
Druids who have selected to spec low in Nurture for other features of their
class. There is some very specific math behind how all this works but
the bottom line is that by specing almost to 50 in Nurture, you will be
handing out the best basesline buffs available (without ToA gear taken into
account.) If you're interested in the math on this here's a
page
written by Darcstar with all the specifics including Druid buffs.
|
Blades or Blunts - The Debate |
What is better, blades or blunt? At
the time I created Pharaoh there was really no difference between the two.
You just picked the one you liked the best and went for it. Mythic
has changed their damage tables several times and has tried to balance out
weapon damage across the board. When choosing what weapon to spec
consider the following:
Warden's have a self melee
speed buff (Ferocity of Nature through Reckoning of Nature.)
This buff significantly increases the swing time of your weapon. That
coupled with high quickness will get you swinging fast. The
minimum swing time for any weapon is 1.5 seconds. With faster blades,
self buffs, druid buffs and capped gear you can easily cap your swing time
and do less damage over time than you could with a slower weapon.
Because blunts in general swing more slowly you may have a better selection
of weapons from which to choose without overcapping your swing time.
From one test I did moving to a much slower weapon I found that over a 40
second time period I was doing close to 500 more damage. Go for slow
weapons where possible.
I personally use a slow blades weapons to cap my attack swing time at
1.5 seconds. I like blades for the great style
combination of Fire Blade / Spectrum Blade. Fire Blade is an anytime
style and Spectrum Blade is a follow-up to Fire Blade. Spectrum
blade adds an attack speed reduction on your enemy which is perfect with
your blade turn. A slower attacking enemy will hit you less often.
|
High or Low Parry - The Debate |
I've heard and read a lot of different
thoughts on how warden's should spec parry. I intentionally didn't
put many points into parry and I wanted to explain my rationale.
First, warden's only get 1.5 spec points per level and we've got to divide
those across four main lines (weapon, Nurture, Regrowth and Parry.) I
believe strongly in having the Nurture line highly speced. If you're
not specing in Nuture as a Warden you're most likely playing the wrong
character. At the higher levels you'll spend all your time meleeing
with bubble on, so specing highly in your weapon also makes sense.
Some points in regrowth will give you a better resurrect and lower mana cost spec
line heals. With those specs, you don't have much left over for
parry. However, is parry even that useful for a warden?
Parry is only useful if you're being attacked. From my experience as
a warden this happens a very small percentage of the time. When
you're XPing if you're pulling a single mob the most powerful tank will
have aggro. Parry isn't doing you a bit of good in these situations
unfortunately. Later on in higher level groups you may have
multiple mobs at once and you may be responsible for holding aggro on one
of those. Parry is useful in these cases but since Parry is only
helping you and your other lines help the group, I think Nurture is the
more important line. In RvR you will
be engaging the enemy. However, parry isn't nearly as effective
against styles as it is against mobs. Your chance of parrying against
a style is significantly lower. So, parry for a warden isn't nearly
as useful as it sounds like it could be simply because you're not in a
position to parry much of the time like a tank would be.
Overall, parry does have application in some cases as you XP and RvR, but
the price is far to high for the relative benefit you get. I would
much rather have a better group blade turn chant and higher resist buffs
for my group members in RvR than the possibility of parrying one or two
attacks. Bottom line, my advice is to spec low in parry to get
an inexpensive boost to your blocking percentage and spend the rest of your points in the
other lines.
|
Healing Wardens? |
What about a healing-based Warden?
More and more lately I'm seeing this from other Wardens I talk with.
While a Warden will never have the amazing healing powers of a Druid, you
can heal very well if you spec highly in Regrowth. The Warden's
I've seen do this usually still go to 49 in Nurture as preventing damage
with bubble is more desirable to having to heal for it.
However, in lieu of a weapon spec they go for as much healing as possible.
With this spec the Warden takes on a healing role in RvR groups primarily
and melees in PvE when there isn't as much danger of deaths.
This is a more difficult spec to manage well while you level as it requires
RAs that focus on mana pool and regeneration so that you have the power to
utilize those high heals such as Serenity, Augmented Acuity, Mystic Crystal
Lore and Raging Power.
With the release of 1.70 this became a bit easier as single target heals
take much less power to cost. As long as you're not using your
group heal repeatedly you can be a fairly effective. In RvR.
You won't do the damage a weapon speced Warden will but it's a good spec
for a Warden who wants to focus more on supporting their group. |
Realm Abilities |
I have speced my realm abilities to help the group and force I'm battling with in RvR.
Here are abilities I have and why I selected them:
|
Mystic Crystal Lore: At
level one you get a 25% instacast mana boost, recastable every three minutes. Great
in XP or RvR, Get this first and as soon as you can. MCL
will help you get in those extra heals or that resurrect you need when
you're low on power. I have MCL2 and use it in RvR all the time
to resurrect that third person or get more mana for healing, etc.
Thornweed Field III: This is your key RvR ability. It's
used all the time field RvR and keep/tower battle. Armor of the
Gods, the other Warden specific RA is nice but in my opinion there is no
way it can beat 255 points of damage plus snare every three seconds for
30 seconds no matter what kind of tank group you have. Level three is 30
points which is expensive. This would still be the second ability
I went for. While you're working on those 30 points and have an RA
respec, select other abilities and then respec for TWF III when you have
the total points.
Long Wind I: Sprint forever with your self endurance
regen buff. Great for getting away as needed RvR and very useful in some PvE
situations. Grab this when it's convenient. I don't use it
a lot but I'm glad I've got it when I need it. At one point
it's an easy RA to fit in.
Purge II: A must have for any Warden serious in RvR. If
you are mesmerized or stunned your blade turn is off and your entire
party suffers. Get this and cast it in any situation where it will
help you or your party. Bards will hopefully unmez you quickly if
possible but don't be afraid to use your purge. I rarely regret
casting it.
Ignore Pain II: Venehment Renewal and Fury of Nature are
great RA's a Warden has to heal their group. But if you're dead,
you can't heal anyone and since these RAs don't heal you, IP was a
requirement for me.
Serenity II: Better mana regeneration. Serenity two
would be even better but there are things I wanted more so I held off
until after Ignore Pain. MCL helps a lot in the meantime.
Vehement Renewal: A very nice group insta-heal ability.
I have level one and plan to eventually get level two. I use it
all time and it's a great health booster in the middle of battle.
It's also a great way to heal your group and not use any power.
Lifter: Being able to carry two diminutive siege weapons
and not be encumbered if I get debuffed is important to the play style I
have. For one point Lifter one was very economical and I would
consider higher than level one at a later point.
|
Wardens in RvR |
In RvR you have several things you
should focus on. First, remember, you're not a tank! Don't run straight
into battle and whack the first enemy you see. This is a sure recipe for
death. When you die it hurts your party. You will have buffs on people.
Losing those hurts them. You'll have bubble protecting them as well.
Your main job is to stick back a bit to let the tanks get into melee
first. I usually stick somewhere between the casters in the back and the
tanks in front so hopefully I can keep the bubble on as many as
possible. You will engage the enemy, just do so carefully. Assist
the person designated as the target picker or "Main Assist" where
possible. Remember that
it's better for you to stay alive than for you to do some damage on an
enemy and die straight up.
There are lots of things a Warden does in RvR that are tremendously
helpful for their group aside from running into battle and meleeing.
Here are the main things I find myself doing in RvR with the spec above:
|
Assist the Main Assist:
Assist, assist, assist. This is my pet peeve and a
requirement for players in the groups we run. The assist train works, it's very hard to counter
and an excellent tactic for single groups. You select a tank
Main Assist and when you encounter enemies you /assist that character
and help them take out the targets they select. Healers can't
keep a character alive when three or four people are all doing damage
on them at the same time.
Stay in Range: It's so tempting to run of and kill that
one weak caster that's running away. Think twice and
don't. Your bubble is ranged such that you need to stay in
proximity of your group. Let him get away, you'll get another
chance.
Resurrect: Druids are the main healing class and their
mana should be reserved to do those heals. Wardens, with a
melee spec have a full bar of mana a lot of the time in RvR.
With low Regrowth spec, let's be honest, you're not going to keep
someone alive most of the time. Let the Druids and Bards do
that. But, your mana is tremendously useful. You can rez
two people easily, cast MCL if you have it and get up a third person.
It's a great way to use your mana and it helps out your realm mates.
Not to mention that you get bonus realm points for the resurrect.
Siege: Wardens are great at working siege.
Because of the blade turn and scale armor usually a Warden can take
hits from oil or enemies and be able to survive and get out of the way
in time not to die. With capped strength and one Realm
Skill Point in Lifter a Warden can carry two diminutive siege pieces
easily. I always carry siege with me and how often it's
needed in battle.
Infinite Sprint: Need to get away? With your Attack
Unending instacast chant and the Long Wind I realm ability you can
sprint forever. But before you use this think about your party.
Sure you can get away, but you're leaving them and dropping the blade
turn chant from them as well. Appropriately used this can get
you away to resurrect your downed members after the battle.
Switching to this chant for a few seconds out of battle is also a
great way to quickly regenerate your endurance too.
Point Blank TWF to Escape: Overrun? Cast Thornwood Field
at point blank range after sprinting away a bit. The enemy will
get snared in it giving you a better chance to get away. But
make sure you're be a bit away before casting as the first tick of TWF
isn't instant.
|
Trials of Atlantis Master Levels |
|
I selected the Perfector line as the
choice for Pharaoh because of all the group beneficial master level
abilities in the line. I think it's a great compliment to the
skills and abilities a Warden has. I use the healing and
power fonts in PvE and RvR all the time. In RvR the Dissonance
Ward, or power penalty field is superb in tower and keep bottleneck
situations and is something many Perfiectors don't think to cast.
I also use the Determination Field, or croud control reduction field a
good bit when attacking on the edge of a keep or tower.
Cure nearsight and group cure disease are also great abilities in RvR
and the Restore the Soul resurrect sickness cure is very important when
getting that key damage dealer back up and in action after a death.
Overall, I am very pleased with the Perfector master level line for a
Warden. |
Artifacts and Gear |
I have a spec I like fairly well but it
is only one option when there are many many ways to outfit a Warden
well. I have a few artifacts I like very much like the Belt of the
Sun for weapons and Egg of Youth for AE resurrect in RvR. Here's a
link to the .xml file for
my current spec for Kort's Spellcrafting Calculator if you're
looking for a sample Warden spec to get started with.
|
|
Summary |
I've really enjoyed playing Pharaoh. I
hope you have as much fun as I've had playing your Warden. If you have
questions you can email me at
pharaoh@guardiansofvalor.com
Other Warden References
Natures Wall Discussion
Boards
The Warden Watch
Classes of Camelot
Hoode Wynk's
Warden Guide
|
|
Last revision:
9/11/2004 |
