style="width: 640px; height: 242px;" alt="LotRO Warden Guide"
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href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/lotro/guides/classes/warden/overview">OVERVIEW
| href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/lotro/guides/classes/warden/solo">SOLO
| href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/lotro/guides/classes/warden/group">GROUP
| href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/lotro/guides/classes/warden/pvmp">PvMP
| href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/lotro/guides/classes/warden/endgame">LEGENDARY
ITEMS | href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/92663/page/2">TRAITS
| VIRTUES
| href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/lotro/guides/classes/warden/skills">SKILLS

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GROUP
PLAY AS A WARDEN


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alt="A Warden in a group"
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It's
not the shouting or the shield-bashing that draws the enemy's
attention: it's the aerobatics....

Wardens will want to start running with groups early on and as
often as possible, as there is a gulf of difference between soloing and
grouping. Learning how to be effective with this class takes a
lot of practice and patience, and working with a group can be difficult
at first, particularly if the player has a poor memory for the most
effective Gambits. When a Warden tanks well, he is nearly unmatched in
his ability to grab and hold aggro. When a Warden tanks poorly, he is
just another body at best, and a
liability to the group at worst.

Start off by rearranging class traits. When running with
groups, the Warden is usually tanking, and to tank effectively, the
Warden needs to be able to generate loads and loads of threat. While
Guardians and Champions can do this instantly with massive,
instantaneous threat and forced-attack skills, the Warden has to build
threat over time, and the faster he can do this, the better he will be
at his job. Slotting lots of Way of the Fist traits will help with
this, and adding a few Way of the Shield traits will help with
survivability.

Start fights loudly with area-effect threat-building skills
right off the bat.
It helps to start with shorter Gambits like Goad and build up to the
longer ones; get the threat out there right away and start building it
up, then run with it and let it snowball. One of the biggest challenges
that a Warden will face is not the tough mobs beating on him, but
aggressive Hunters and Champions that want to charge into every fight
guns a-blazing. If other players do not ramp their damage by starting
slow and gradually building to bigger, hard-hitting attacks, it can be
difficult for the Warden to establish aggro. This is particularly true
at lower levels when the Fist-based Gambits are less powerful and
players are less experienced and more likely to be too aggressive. Be
patient and it pays out.

A
word of warning: at lower levels, when players are just learning the
ins and outs of their classes, Wardens will have a difficult time
getting and holding aggro. Warden tanking requires a lot of patience
and cooperation from all other members of the group, since they all
have to hold off for a bit while the Warden builds up a good,
sustainable amount of threat. A lot of "casual" players do not have
this kind of patience and will not understand how the Warden works, and
will want to charge into the fight as soon as the enemies are aggroed.
There is really nothing that can be done about this. You can try to
educate new people well in advance, but even then you will likely meet
with only limited success.
All you can really do is bear down and try not to die, and understand
that you're playing an advanced class that many players do not fully
comprehend.

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alt="A Warden in a group"
src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/92647">

...
or the flaming disemobodied spears floating overhead.

Once a good head of steam has been built up and aggro has been
solidly established, the Warden can start using big damaging attacks
and using self-heals. At higher levels, the Warden will probably want
to use Conviction as quickly and as often as possible. Conviction is
one of the chief Gambits of the group-spec Warden; not only does it
leech threat off of all fellowship members and transfer it to the
Warden, it also heals the whole group over time. A solid fight-starting
rotation (though there are many variations) is to open with Conviction,
followed by Exhultation of Battle,
followed by Spear of Virtue. This dishes out a lot of threat in a short
about of time, leeches threat off of (possibly over-eager) group
members, sets up 2 heals-over-time and applies a sizable DOT to the
enemy. If other players are being aggressive, mix in some quick
threat-building skills like Goad and War Cry. This sequence can be
repeated several times and can make it
quite difficult for fellowship members to pull aggro off the Warden.
Some players will find
this strategy to be rather repetetive, but it is not really any more
repetetive than playing (for example) a Hunter or Minstrel. Figuring
out a good Gambit rotation is not all that different from figuring out
a good shot rotation for Hunters, or a good healing rotation for
Minstrels. You just do
what works.

When situations become really hairy and the Warden needs to
force instant aggro, his sole recourse is the legendary skill Defiant
Challenge. This skill will force enemies to attack the Warden for 5
seconds and will "moderately" increase threat. The Warden will need to
make those 5 seconds count: spam Goad, Dance of War and other quick
threat-building Gambits and caution the other fellowship members to
hold off a bit while you re-establish control. If the Warden doesn't
build up a lot of threat, or reduce the threat of his fellows, the mobs
will return to whoever they were attacking before when the 5-second
forced-aggro wears off. 

Further
caution is required for using Defiant Challenge: it is best used on
bosses and single targets. When used against big groups, the Warden can
end up taking massive amounts of damage in a very short period of time.
Wardens do not have the same heavy-armor damage mitigation that
Guardians have, and self-HOTs can only account for so much. 

Power can be a real issue during prolonged fights, and a
powerless
Warden is potential doom for the group. Running in Conservation stance
will help offset power issues somewhat, with its big in-combat power
regeneration bonus, but the wise Warden will still have lots of power
potions at the ready. Ironically, in a good group with a good healer,
the Warden will not often be able to use The Dark Before the Dawn to
restore his power; if his power stays consistently above 50%, the
Gambit will be unavailable, and if the healer is unable to keep the
Warden's health in check, the Warden will likely be spamming self-HOTs
to keep himself standing.

One thing in particular to watch out for when running with a
group is mob-kiting.
If the Warden is the group's main tank, kiting mobs simply doesn't
work. The Warden has to be attacking a mob to get its aggro, and
building threat Gambits (or any other kind of Gambits, for that matter)
requires the Warden to be in more or less constant melee range. It is
very, very difficult for a Warden to pull a kited mob off a fleeing
fellowship member. It is equally difficult for a Warden to kite
multiple mobs for a group, and for the same reasons. The Warden has to
be in melee range long enough to build up any sort of Gambit, and
running in circles prevents that. Slotting Master of... traits can help
with this a bit, but it is usually better for the Warden to stand
toe-to-toe against his enemies than turn his back to them.

Learning to tank well on a Warden takes time, practice and
dedication. With many other classes, the player can walk away from it
for a few weeks and come back later without missing a beat. This is
more difficult with Wardens, who must memorize lists of commonly-used
Gambits for different situations. When the player is skilled and
well-practiced with the class, Warden tanking is difficult for other
classes to match. When the player falls out of practice and forgets all
the juicy Gambits, the group suffers.

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href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/lotro/guides/classes/warden/overview">OVERVIEW
| href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/lotro/guides/classes/warden/solo">SOLO
| href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/lotro/guides/classes/warden/group">GROUP
| href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/lotro/guides/classes/warden/pvmp">PvMP
| href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/lotro/guides/classes/warden/endgame">LEGENDARY
ITEMS | href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/92663/page/2">TRAITS
| VIRTUES
| href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/lotro/guides/classes/warden/skills">SKILLS

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Last Updated: Mar 13, 2016

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