parmenion

The short version:

I'd like advice on what proc types to look for, and/or any specific 80's gear suggestions to allow a warden to improve it's ability at tanking? What to look out for as heal on damage items, and other items that help more easily survive stuns, stifles & mezzes where you can't heal.

The long version:

I duo with my girlfriend's coercer. Generally I tank & heal, she CC's (in the stun stifle sense to lower their DPS output aswell as mezz sense). Harder stuff we might triple root (2x warden and 1x coercer) and back off and nuke, encounter root can be very handy in that respect - especially since the taunt changes mean mezzed mobs now often taunt us or pets and therefore break mezzes with target switched autoattack etc. Also sometimes we pet tank stuff with charms, but heal agro can be an issue, unless we find a really good tank/taunt pet so it often invovles rooting anyway.

We're currently 78 and we really enjoy finding stuff we can do together, for us it's more fun to try and duo a dugeon with a bunch of deaths than hire a full group and find it easy. Unrest was a lot of fun for example, obelisk of blight and so on.

Tanking with the warden is getting harder and harder as we go along, even with gale, and purity to remove some stifles/stuns etc to keep heals going. Mana of course isn't really an issue with a coercer, it's more spike damage and the regen nature versus reactives or wards which effectively increase HP in a way regens don't.

TSO tanking looks like it's going to get quite hard for a leather healer, perhaps impossible in shard instances, at least without uber raid gear.

I really like warden, love the double root, melee and nuke variety, ports & evac and runspeed buff that means you don't need imho enormous ugly mounts taking up loads of the screen and so on, but fighting everything ranged/rooted isn't always an option.

Alot of posters here are probably more towards the hardcore raider category, and will think in terms of optimal group setups with raid buffs, or optimal grind groups for speedily gaining AA's and shards, and having gear that we simply won't have access to anytime soon (mastercrafted, ROK quest drops & adeptIII's is what we're working with basically), but we aren't interested in commiting to a rigid raiding schedule in EQ2 in the near future, we did that in Vanguard, although we might do more casual raiding in the future.



I was wondering what advice posters might have for gear to go after to improve the survivability of the warden when it's tanking. I know hiring a tank and full group would be more efficient, but I'm after ways of improving what we enjoy working with, not sacrificing our comfortable sitting next to each other, not communication problems, not needing to always do everything at maximum speed, and often enjoying some dungeons being really hard within our limitations, playstyle.


Crown of the Enlightened is one example of an item that helps with the stun proc on attackers damaging, I'll make a proper linky later.


Suggestions welcome, although "reroll!" with 115aa's already done sounds a bit like a waste!

Buffrat

Look around the monk/bruiser forums for gear.

Half the gear they use can be used by wardens as well.

Obviously go for defense, parry, and shield effectiveness. Get gear with the best miti you can without sacrificing too much in the heal department, like the bracelet from the final named in ooa that adds 200ish miti, and your t2 shard gear (for starters). (If you can't get the shards duo by running scion/df, then just buy them from other crafters.)

Just some suggestions, but you really should read the brawler forums. ;)

Laurial

no need for parry gear, healers can't parry, defense, shield effectiveness, agi, and uncontested avoidance gear/adornments are gonna be your best best for avoidance, oh and get the best buckler possible.

mc lvl 77 danak essence vial(necklace) gives 2% uncontested riposte chance
uncontested parry adornment(balanced fastening i think) for your bracelets t7 is 2% and much cheaper t8 is 3% and a little costly just to duo a lil better
uncontested riposte adorn for your weapon if you're using slashing, balanced ayr stone or something like that
put 5 points into nyour self mit buff and 5 points into your group mit buff in shadows tree for mit
you could also add a bit of mit to your forearms(and bracelets if you can't afford any form of fabled adornments)


oh and if you have a mirror you could setup an alternate tanking aa spec, prolly str/agi/int get infusion in int line as it will help your dps even when you're just concentrating on keeping yourself alive

str max double attack and possibly heal proc

agi max your hot tic speed

warden tree makes sure you do your combat arts and get the 75% melee crit increase

shadows tree also toss 5 points into the priest dps buffs, the melee one will help you when you're tanking mobs, can always switch to casting one if you wanna root and nuke
you definitely won't have much heal crit in this setup with melee gear though

Buffrat

If healers can't parry, why would uncontested parry/riposte adorns work, since riposte is based off parry, and parry is obviously parry.


I don't know how wardens work well enough to make any official comments I guess

Laurial

well i've actually never tried the uncontested adorn's on my warden, but the drink/food with the uncontested +%parry did effect his avoidance

healers just don't have the skill parry doesn't seem to effect the uncontested parry chance though

i could be wrong, never tanked with my warden much lol, thats why i have a guard and sk

Prrasha

No priest has the parry skill, but Templars/Inqs have an AA that allows them to block/parry for others (Shield Ally), and the +%parry crafted necklace, +%parry wrist adorns, and +%parry food/drink are standard equipment for SA-spec clerics. They don't all affect your Persona window defensive stats, but they certainly do work; the avoidance report in ACT shows my templar parrying for her SA target. (Obviously, things like the forearm +parry skill adornment will do jack. Only uncontested % parry works.)

And, to the OP: you're going to find tanking as a warden to be very tough in RoK/TSO. You're certainly not going to stand toe-to-toe with any TSO-instance Named mobs. Many are entirely immune to crowd-control effects, so you can't count on stifle/stun from your Coercer friend helping, nor on triple-rooting the mobs.

Eminaria

The thing is... a warden CAN stand up against really tough mobs, but only with really good heal gear / spec and spam healing yourself. But you'll do squat when it comes to dps.

I once tanked a group of orange cons for 1-2 minutes solo (without spores and other defensive buffs on myself as others had died...) but I was only doing a few hundred dps because I had to constantly spam heal myself.

So the problem becomes, how do you keep yourself up, AND keep agro from a dps class. Duoing with a coercer will help because they will buff your hate gain and transfer hate to you... but on really hard fights, if your going to just duo, well... expect the coercer to not be able to do much at all, heh.

It's an intresting cocenpt however, and should work fine for the easier stuff, and certainly for leveling up ect. If you can get your hands on a stoneskin ring that'd help alot with power and staying alive... but probly not as its raid gear.

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ntommyb

Melee spec for fast damage inbetween heal rotations and lots of reactive damage is my guess but I'm a lowbie noob I just started my warden. Its fun though I like it alot more than melee classes.

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parmenion

We've just finished our fabled version of epics, but we've been grouping for the first time finish some of the steps it was just way more efficient. We can duo in some of the group RoK content, (e.g. did a few of the names in chelsith) but mostly it has to be done via root & nuke, it can be fun, but it's pretty risky and root immune names become a problem.

I have ranged (roots, spell crit) and melee (natural boon, CA abilities) specs on mirror both have healing aa's of course, the difference is where the "rest" of the aa's go. Provided I pull and am melee specced I don't have much issues with agro holding, coercer buffs certainly help, as does the massive amounts of healing, which is another good way of getting agro. Yes tanking is certainly via enormous amounts of selfhealing.

The info about uncontested parry/riposte adornments was really useful I was looking at them and wondering. Things like weighing up which benefits more a balanced ayr stone for the 3% uncontested riposte/parry or an extra 45+ heals is tough. I still need a lot of +heal, however warden HPS output is good, and avoiding a hit or interrupt can be very helpful.

Survivability is an important factor, even in groups, especially if solo healing and we still like to duo, although the RoK quest/solo content isn't really a problem whichever spec or gear, it's the dungeons like chardok, chelsith, sebilis, maidens chamber etc where things get "interesting" as a duo.

The shield mitigation AA in tso page seemed really weak, it gave 0.1 avoidance per aa which just seemed a crappy investment, am I missing something or does it do more than the stat changes display etc?

Prrasha

The shield bonus is a % of your current block, so depending on which buckler you're using, it might be worth it. Probably better off with the quick heal & litany of combat lines. 0.5% avoid means maybe one more miss per eight or ten pulls, especially with a coercer stun-machine behind you.

That AA is pretty much just for shield-ally spec templars/inquisitors, really.

My 80 warden runs melee-damage spec and wields a 2H even when he's soloing (or "tanking", heh). My 80 templar does use the shield AA for the extra "free healing" from Shield Ally, but she never tanks anything.