Oakmiser

So is the warden community short sighted? Do major(Avatar killing/RoK t3+) guilds consistently use wardens as a temp, inq, or fury would be used for their obvious gains given to their group?

Is their room for us in a raid past a filler spot because a more needed/valued class didn't show up?

Discuss, or support us all by demanding a fix that will make us more valued on a raid.

Trubs I see have gotten a fix to POTM by demanding it...maybe something can be done for wardens.

Calbiyum

In my opinion you should have picked your group cure.

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aduros

I just rolled a warden recently, It's fun for grouping/soloing but from what I remember raiding on my Assassin, 1 warden on raid was enough, and even that was pushing it sometimes. Only time warden was in MT was for learning an encounter or Woushi, and eventually it got phase out of MT group on Woushi. Once you have a mob on farm status, theres no point in using the Warden. You can throw a Swash/Assassin in their place for more aggro, since the raid will be going full burn now that the encounter is a joke.

I would love to see some quality melee buffs that we could hand out, so even if not in MT a Warden would still have a spot in the melee or OT group. This would also take advantage of our Melee specs, the same way the mage group benefits a Fury. Atm a Warden is the last healer I want in my group, since they have nothing to offer me DPS wise.

For being the most efficient healers in the game, we're the least actively recruited, simply because theres healers than can do what we do, yet have more to bring to a raid and their groups.

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TANGARTH

Accuracy buff needs to add a few hundred mit or something, they're great group healers, but at the same time they just don't give enough to the raid where you wouldn't just take a fury instead

ps. I've played a warden a lot, in raids and in groups, they're powerful healers for heroic content, but that's about it

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MysidiaDrakkenbane

Being that they were trying to push us this way towards the end of EoF, melee wise, why they didn't give us melee buffs is still a mystery to me. Then again, our set gear went in the opposite direction of melee. Don't you just LOVE it when different departments don't communicate with one another concerning classes?

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Oakmiser

Yes it's very obvious to me that the EQII Dev department is very confused about what exactly they want to do with the Warden class. The itemization alone of the warden fabled set gear for RoK asserts this confusion to me. The Mystic and Inquisitor classes both have melee routes in their AA that give them other benefits. Both Mystic and Inquisitor fabled item sets have benefits to melee damage output, Wardens simply don't.

This though is slightly beside the point, melee damage isn't exactly what I think the warden community is after, nor the fabled item benefits to it. Though it shows the confused nature or lack of communication before the people who do itemization and people who design AAs and classes. We need a stable reliable reason to be on a raid other then being the break through content people.

MysidiaDrakkenbane

What we're after is simple. Utility and Itemization to match. Period.

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tomthumb

that confused nature extends to the entire company, with content, item and class designers.

kyros

first of all, the troubadour thing is totally irrelevant to your case. they were dealing with a daze which affected their performance to the point that some of them weren't casting it as often as they could, while the dirge counterpart spell had no drawbacks. the troubadour spell was originally different and needed the effect to create balance. when it was changed, however, the daze was not removed.

wardens, on the other hand, have been broken for years as a class. to compare this to the troubadour issue would be to say that if the root was removed from sandstorm, you would be fine. that is not the case. wardens have major and deep-rooted issues. everything about the class is in conflict, and without massive changes that would throw off whatever balance the devs believe they have you are not going to see a fix.

for example, the fact that one of the more popular warden AA specs gives melee abilities. then, every piece of raided warden gear has loads of int and wis, but no str. min/maxing wardens end up having to find brawler pieces to wear to increase their effectiveness. AA specs are a problem in themselves because there aren't really any viable "healing" choices or the class abilities being enhanced are just that useless. (warden death prevention? probably the most useless spell ever. hey, let's make it trigger twice... now it's useless twice in a row, assuming it even triggers.) if the role of a warden on a raid is to heal, cure, and do some damage (since they have no debuffs to speak of) and the only sensible damage augmenting choices affect melee attacks, then why should warden gear have int, +spell damage, and enhance: damage spell characteristics?

some issues are even more intrinsic to the class. the only time that a warden can attempt to pull ahead of another class is in raw healing power. however, ward and reactive healing is often more effective, and those classes have more potent protective buffs, which makes the competition for raw healing almost pointless. yes, the warden's heals count and can be really useful, but the overall effectiveness is not even close to that of the other "MT" healers. while offering little to no actual protection with buffs, wardens also have a limited damage output because of low-damage spells and the aforementioned conflict between viable AA specs and gear. new spells, additionally, have been lame and extremely situational abilities that don't really add anything to the warden's spell list. group death prevention (which doesn't even work), a tree that dies if you look at it the wrong way, a multi-cure that heals, and a summoned fairy that heals. the pack of wolves was the only new spell that i could call useful. take a look at what these spells effectively do... heal! does a warden really need more heals? no! wardens need some love in the buffing or damage area. because of their limited overall effectiveness (aka one-dimensional strength), wardens get the short end of the stick when it comes to raiding.

can wardens be useful? yes. if you want to see tons of green numbers, wardens are the way to go. sadly, they don't do anything else for your group or raid that another class couldn't do better.

unfortunately, the warden class was annihilated a long time ago. there are, honestly, no small fixes that are going to make it better. everything that made wardens great has been oversimplified; the warden's strength was in the complexities.

so, in conclusion, unless you want another massive combat revamp, you will most likely never see a satisfactory answer to the warden question.

kyros

an addendum to my post...
i really didn't think this was appropriate given the tone of my post, but i think this needs to be stated as well.

this is not the first time that this has been discussed. this is not the first time that these points have been made. what would be a first would be to see a response from someone behind the scenes giving any sort of justification for the situation or recognizing that there is a problem.
(hint: there is no justification.)