Runes of Magic US / AU

I am so glad you asked this question, as many other players are asking this too! Before you start reading, grab a cup of coffee or some popcorn. This is gonna be a long response....

I am a level 52/41 Warden/Warrior on Reni. I can't tell you very much about gear and instances (at the moment, I can't do Kalin's Shrine yet), but for the majority of your questions, I have a good amount of booksmarts to answer them thoroughly.

Before asking any questions, the first thing to do is to forget about the Warden combos and their Elite Skills for the moment and ask the question: "What is the Warden's purpose as a primary class?" That's an easy question; we are a DPS class like the Rouge, Scout, and Warrior.

With that in mind, you can easily predict what your role is going to be in a party if you're NOT a Warden/Warrior (I'll explain the Wrd/W's role later). You'll be doing DPS.

To answer your question, "Which Warden combo is better: the Wrd/S or the Wrd/R," I would say that they are locked in a pretty tight competition against each other for the title of having the highest physical DPS out of the Warden combos, and they've been that way for a long time. According to players like Xeph (aka "earthenleaf" on the Warden forums), the Wrd/R is the best single-target DPS Warden. But also keep in mind that the Wrd/S has a ranged pet (which should be pretty handy in SW) and both its pet and the Wrd/S can put up a very good fight, so it's still a win/win situation no matter which way you go.

Now it's time to discuss the Warden/Warrior:

Because of the changes to the Wrd/W's elite skills, we now have a totally different role for us and there are many ways that you can set up the Warden/Warrior for tanking/off-tanking (which I will touch on later). The fact that Runewaker gave us some aggro skills and the ability to wear plate armor screams loudly of your new role as a tanking Warden, but you still have the choice to go either off-tanking or DPS if you wish (I will also touch on that later). For this topic, I am treating the Wrd/W as a tank/off-tank. If you're a Wrd/W, I advise you take advantage of your new Elite Skills and go with the tanking route and drop the role of DPS. I will learn much more when I can eventually get into instances like HoS, HotO, Grafu's Castle, and stuff like that.

In your post, you said: "the thing we dont have with as a warrden is a crowd contro abbility like the knights and i would like to know if that plays a big role? or is will attack with the pulse mastery buff enough?"

That is slightly incorrect. We do in fact have a few Crowd Control skills at the Wrd/W's disposal. Remember: we have a root called "Movement Restriction." Depending on your skill's level, it can hold the target long enough for you to re-summon your pet if you need to and it also does good damage after the effect ends. We have two physical dps AoE's: "Frantic Briar," and "Whirlwind" from the Warrior's general skills. I think the amount of aggro you can pull with those 2 skills depends on how well you're geared, but I'm not totally sure. Another Crowd Control skill is "Banish." What it does is that it makes the target unable to attack or receive damage for a duration of time. Banish can be handy in certain situations as it can completely take a mob out of the fight for 5 seconds (if Banish is at level 1). You can also use "Cross Chop" as a ranged-pull to pull a mob off of your healer. Not only that, but you must also never forget that you're a WARDEN. Lol. We were meant for taking on mutiple targets! > The Spirit of the Oak has been the Wrd/W's signature pet, since it is our tanking pet. It has higher stamina and physical defense than all the other pets. Also, the SotO's pet skill "Punch" is an aggro skill. You can use that to your advantage when your party is in combat by keeping the SotO focused on your primary target while you take care of the mobs attacking your weaker allies. All of those skills do play a big role in a fight; it just depends on your strategy and how you will use them. So that answers your Crowd Control questions.

As far as whether Pulse Mastery and Will Attack are enough, I do not have the Talent Points to level up both Beast Chop and Pulse Mastery and I have not obtained my level 45/45 elites yet. Also, I'm still waiting on the Advanced Skill Reset stone that Frogster or Runewaker is going to send us to reset our TP. So I can't really know for sure since I don't have the instance knowledge to test the aggro limits of Double Chop, Beast Chop, Pulse Mastery, and Will Attack yet.

To answer your question about going dps or tanking with the Wrd/W, I have a few things to day about it. If you look at our elite skills, you can see that they do very nice physical dps damage---especially when you look at Pulse Mastery when it's maxed out (the dps percentage is like 552.2%).

I.) For high burst dps damage:
You have these attack skills at your disposal: Power of the Wood Spirit (Edit: I replaced Charged Chop with POTWS due to obvious reasons -- 8/19/2011), Slash, Double Chop, Beast Chop, Pulse Mastery, and Will Attack. In my opinion, I wouldn't max out Power of the Wood Spirit but keep it at a high level to help out leveling your Warrior's side. Aslo, you and your pet also have attack buffs you can use to increase your physical attack power: Savage Power, Berserk, Energy Absorb, and Explosion of Power (for your pet). You'll want to use chain armor, a 2h sword (Annelia's Blade when you have the gold for one), and the SotO's buff and the Oak Walker as your primary pet.

II.) For tanking: ***NOTE: Updated as of (8/19/2011)***
This is where things get pretty flexible as far as your weapon set up, and your Pet Buff and Pet Choice go. You'll be using plate armor, so that's a given. I have some ideas on how you can go for tanking including tips on skill strategies.

NOTE: Use skills that only increase your survival and physical defense (like Immortal Power, Defensive Formation, Damage Transfer, Elven Amulet, and Coat of Arms), and use Explosion of Power to increase your SotO's attack damage (and aggro?).

1.) Independent Tanking Style: Use a 2h weapon (try to get it to Tier 8 or 10, plus it high enough, and put a Hatred VIII rune on it (also get the rune that raises your physical attack speed). Use the SotO's buff and the Nature Crystal as your primary pet. This is the truly the only practical way of tanking as a Warden/Warrior, since the NC gives you a party buff that allows you to take 10% of your maximum health in damage. This will be the most popular style of tanking.

2.) Off-Tanking Style: Use a 2h axe or sword. Use the Oak Walker's buff and the Spirit of the Oak as your primary pet.

3.) Tank's "Damage Assistant" Style: Use either a 2h sword. Use the SotO's buff and the Oak Walker as your primary pet. **Use skills that increase your own physical defence when needed (like Defensive Formation and Elven Amulet) and skills that increase your Oak Walker's physical attack (like Explosion of Power).**
----> Until the Oak Walker's bug is fixed, this tanking style won't be available. I'd advise not using Damage Transfer so that you don't hurt your Oak Walker.


***IMPORTANT: I've heard reports from other Wrd/W's that using Defensive Formation [B]decreases your aggro, so be careful out there!***[/B]

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About the Wrd/W being a "better tank" than the Knight and the coming Knight patch:

I believe that Knights will always be the real tanks for RoM. There's no escaping that. Especially since they're going to get their class fixed some time in the future. If you read the 4.0.1 Patch Notes, you can tell that the Warden/Warrior was intended to be an "off-tank," like a 2nd place tank (I think the Wrd/W and the W/K are now in competition for 2nd place). But I have indeed heard reports and arguments from a higher leveled Wrd/W that the Wrd/W can tank better than the Knight at the moment (but there are too few end-game Wrd/W's to prove that to the rest of the player community). We certainly do higher physical dps damage than the Knight, we've got our pets to help us out, we have better physical defense skills than the rest of the Warden combos, AND our pets now have better chance of survival---pets now get a 100% AoE damage reduction, instead of an 80% reduction like it was in Chapter 3!!! The underlying question here is: "CAN the Warden/Warrior tank and tank well?" I certainly hope so.

Wow. That took a while to type. < I hope that answers all of your questions! The rest of the Wardens with high leveled instance experience can fill in the holes that I left out.

dps stat:
stam/patt x 3
str/patt x 3
at highest level possible. you can throw in patt/hp, str/hp, str/stam depending on availability of stats at your gear level. i'd try to have at least 4 patt, 3-4 stam or hp, and then the rest depends on where you want the balance between damage and survivability.

NOTE: I heard pets do not get increase in attributes from raw stats (patt, pdef, hp) but on main stats (stam, dex, str, etc). I'm not sure if things got changed.

tank:
stam/pattx2
stam/pdefx2
stam/hp
stam/dex or stam/wis

you can alternate between stam/dex and stam/wis depending on whether you have mana issues and whether you can hits mobs.

Quoted from "MagnusDeus;453018"

I.) For high burst dps damage:
You have these attack skills at your disposal: Charged Chop, Slash, Double Chop, Beast Chop, Pulse Mastery, and Will Attack. I wouldn't even bother to max out Power of the Wood Spirit, but keep it at a high level to help out leveling your Warrior's side. Aslo, you and your pet also have attack buffs you can use to increase your physical attack power: Savage Power, Berserk, Energy Absorb, and Explosion of Power (for your pet). You'll want to use chain armor, a 2h sword (Annelia's Blade when you have the gold for one), and the SotO's buff and the Oak Walker as your primary pet.

Can you help me saying which skills i have to max, plz??? And the stats build too. THX!!!!!!

Quoted from "MagnusDeus;453018"

I wouldn't even bother to max out Power of the Wood Spirit, but keep it at a high level to help out leveling your Warrior's side.

This is the only part that I might disagree with. PotWS is a great thing to spam while building rage. It's a spamable, instant-cast, no-CD, rotation filler that can provide some very decent DPS while other skills are on cooldown. But, I'm a Wd/S, not a Wd/W, so I defer to your opinion on the topic.

Wd/W is mainly a tank, but it still can put up a good amount of DPS. Here's MY set-up for Tank and DPS

Tanking:Heart of the Oak + Oak Walker (you HAVE to summon it right after using Berserk AND Savage Power)

Skill rotation(for boss fights): mainly Explosion of power ->Will Attack-> Double Chop -> Energy Absorb -> Thorny Vine -> Beast Chop -> Pulse Mastery -> Dance of Confusion -> PotWS -> then repeat without dance of confusion, Explosion of Power and Energy Abosrb. DO NOT USE CHARGED CHOP if you know your warden class well there's no reason to use it in PvP.(Whatever people may say, or even though Oak Walker is suicidal for now, it's adds up a hell of a lot of DPS.)
For adds: Will Attack-> Frantic Briarx2 -> Will Attack-> Whirlwind->Frantic Briar->repeat.

Immortal Power, Coats of Arms, Elven Amulet will save your ass. Defensive Formation is really usefull but you really need to already be far from your DPSers in Aggro or it's a wipe. Damage Transfer is more a last resort skill since pets really are usefull.

DPSing:Nature Power(Heart of the Oak if you're far from the HP reqs, or scared ) + Oak Walker (yes again , i'd rather have a pet that's close or better than my dps than 15% pdam[which wont double my dps, unlike my pet])
Skill Rotation : same as tanking, but you might want to get a Recon and use Tranquil Wave .

Statting:(this is more about opinion than anything there's more than one way to stat)
Stam/Pattack crimson
Pattack/Defense crimson
Pattack/Defense bunker
Stam/Defense crimson
Pattack/HP tomb
Dex/Pattack crimson

Obviously im not rich enough to get a Stam/Pattack bunker on every piece of gear I have. (I'm also using the Phirius Shell Plate set + Skeletal Hand Guards for now, im still regearing completely because i had a set of gear for Warrior). Also, the Dex is for Accuracy since I hate missing.

P.S. Get the scrut that shows Pet Damage, or people will tell you that your DPS output is crap (Yes, close to half, sometimes even more than half my DPS is coming from my Pet.)
P.P.S. If someone recomands you to use a 1-H sword after ch4, he obviously doesnt know Wardens and is putting hypotetical ideas. Even passive Aggro from a Yawaka Guard is not worth the huge loss in DPS (Aggro, yes most aggro comes from DPS and Skills with aggro multipliers)
P.P.P.S PETS CAN NOT TANK, tanking doesnt mean getting hit, it also means aggro, thus pets cant tank. Also, Pet's Pdef does not scale with the Warden's
P.P.P.P.S To answer MagneusDeus Wd/W can tank, but Knights still have some advantages over them. But it's not about the class most of the time, it's about the way you play it.

All depends if you'Re dpsing or tanking, also there's no point in using Power of the Oak buff if you read what i just posted you should understand why.

Quoted from "gdzis;453299"

Can you help me saying which skills i have to max, plz??? And the stats build too. THX!!!!!!

Although I don't like POTWS too much, I must change my mind because I agree with jtanner28 on this one. POTWS is indeed the Warden's first spammable dps attack that you get at the beginning of the game. Sooooooo..... Yeah, I guess you should keep that one maxed out.

A.D.D. Moment: Now, there have been a few people who have said that Charged Chop is worthless and that you shouldn't max it out because it doesn't dish out as much physical dps as POTWS does during Charged Chop's casting time. This I must totally disagree on, and I'll tell you why. Charged Chop is AMAZING when you're playing your flipside of Warrior/Warden!!! Think about it! When you've got a full 100 points of Rage, IT'S KILLING TIME!!!!!!!! \m/ >.< \m/ This is the skill line-up that I have set (in order) when I commence my full-scale brootal assault on a boss (I tend to crank up the metal music when I do this): Aggressiveness, Savage Power, Berserk, Frenzy, Surprise Attack (with the buff from Savage Strike), Energy Absorb, Savage Whirlwind, and for the overture.....WAIT FOR IT......Charged Chop o' death. Then you just keep burning your Rage using Slash as you alternate between Charged Chop and Savage Whirlwind's cool-downs.

So keep Charged Chop at least at a high level for when you ever want to take a break from tanking on your Warden and own up on a couple of bosses with your Warrior side! Other than that, for a high burst damage dps Warden/Warrior you want to keep these skills maxed out: POTWS, Slash, Beast Chop, Pulse Mastery, Will Attack (I haven't got this one yet, but it looks really good!), Cross Chop (a really handy ranged attack that uses main hand weapon dps), Berserk, Savage Power, and Explosion of Power (don't forget about your pet!). Don't forget to use Energy Absorb when you enter "Full Epic Warden Chaos" mode. You might also want to keep Thorny Vine at a high level too so it can help you do damage over time while you dish out da paaaaiiiiiiiinnn. XD If you want to also do physical AoE damage, keep Whirlwind and Frantic Briar maxed out.

Well, there ya have it!

Quoted from "Pizzoof;453313"

P.P.P.S PETS CAN NOT TANK, tanking doesnt mean getting hit, it also means aggro, thus pets cant tank. Also, Pet's Pdef does not scale with the Warden's.

Awww. I guess I can't use my original idea of 1h knight's sword + statted talisman and ask my Spirit of the Oak to tank the harder bosses in HoS for me? Dang. *cries* Lol. What if I were like...UBER end-endgame geared? Could it work then? Or have you tried it already yourself? Haha.

Quoted from "Pizzoof;453313"

P.S. Get the scrut that shows Pet Damage, or people will tell you that your DPS output is crap (Yes, close to half, sometimes even more than half my DPS is coming from my Pet.)

Which Scrutinizer is this? O:

To MagnusDeus and gdzis :
Skills to max : Heart of the Oak, Vitality Explosion, Savage Power, Protection of Nature, Briar Shield, Enhanced Accuracy, Banish.
If able, max : Double Chop, Beast Chop, Pulse Mastery, Will Attack.
To bring at 50 or a little bit past 50 if wanted: Frantic Briar, PotWS, Thorny Vine, Movement Restriction, Cross Chop.
(All more or less posted from the most important to the less important.)
P.S. Charge Chop(Charged Cleave) sucks, there's absolutely no point in using it.
P.P.S. Energy Absorb is Warden Primary, thus cant be used as a warrior.

To HerHeartMyFate : http://forum.us.runesofmagic.com/showthread.php?t=62009

Thx again!!!!

Quoted from "MagnusDeus;454334"

Awww. I guess I can't use my original idea of 1h knight's sword + statted talisman and ask my Spirit of the Oak to tank the harder bosses in HoS for me? Dang. *cries* Lol. What if I were like...UBER end-endgame geared? Could it work then? Or have you tried it already yourself? Haha.

Don't try it, you'll really hurt your dps (remember wardens now get a passive damage boost to 2h weapons) which in turn hurts your aggro. I agree with Pizzoof on pretty much everything else, although if they fix charged chop it can be very useful. Heart of the Oak is also much more worth it then using your Spirit of the Oak.

Quoted from "potato221;454463"

Don't try it, you'll really hurt your dps (remember wardens now get a passive damage boost to 2h weapons) which in turn hurts your aggro. I agree with Pizzoof on pretty much everything else, although if they fix charged chop it can be very useful. Heart of the Oak is also much more worth it then using your Spirit of the Oak.

Hmm. You know, I use Heart of Oak and Nature Crystal with damage reduction buff active if I'm going to tank. Pet DPS is meaningless when tanking since it doesn't add to your agro, and when Oak Walker dies, what than? Nature Crystal is immune to damage and can't die.

Want to DPS and a wd/w? Than have oak walker out, or use nature crystal with speed buff...than your dps goes up, along with everybody in the party.

That is just my input.

Quoted from "sleepypill;454541"

Hmm. You know, I use Heart of Oak and Nature Crystal with damage reduction buff active if I'm going to tank. Pet DPS is meaningless when tanking since it doesn't add to your agro, and when Oak Walker dies, what than? Nature Crystal is immune to damage and can't die.

Want to DPS and a wd/w? Than have oak walker out, or use nature crystal with speed buff...than your dps goes up, along with everybody in the party.

That is just my input.

I use nature crystal with damage reduction buff for trash mobs, but the attack speed buff on top of fire training results in a large increase in dps for the entire party rather then just yourself. Damage Reduction is nice, but taking the boss down faster can be much more worth it. Oak Walker just doesn't have the survivability to really be worth it (less then 10k vs my 40k or Spirit of the Oaks 39k). And sometimes you really do need the extra dps to be able to hold aggro.

Quoted from "sleepypill;454541"

Hmm. You know, I use Heart of Oak and Nature Crystal with damage reduction buff active if I'm going to tank. Pet DPS is meaningless when tanking since it doesn't add to your agro
Shows you're a lazy tank lol, if you dont need the small damage absorb than why not max out your dps to kill the boss faster
and when Oak Walker dies, what than?
barely ever dies during boss fights for me, does die on some specific bosses only
Nature Crystal is immune to damage and can't die.
ok

Want to DPS and a wd/w? Than have oak walker out, or use nature crystal with speed buff...than your dps goes up, along with everybody in the party.
Shows you've never seen the max damage your pet can output, the 15% pdam + 5% attack speed can make a smaller diffenrence than your pet if you actually have some crit and know how and when to summon your pet.(specially on long boss fights)
That is just my input.

Here's mine (in bold)

Quoted from "potato221;454610"

I use nature crystal with damage reduction buff for trash mobs, but the attack speed buff on top of fire training results in a large increase in dps for the entire party rather then just yourself.That's mostly because of Fire Training, the 5% in itself is actually not really big, it's a boost, but not a big one Damage Reduction is nice, but taking the boss down faster can be much more worth it. Agreed. Oak Walker just doesn't have the survivability to really be worth it (less then 10k vs my 40k or Spirit of the Oaks 39k).Pets are immune to ALL AoE based attacks, so there's not really a point in having more hp as a pet, if it gets hit it's pretty much dead. And sometimes you really do need the extra dps to be able to hold aggro.That 5% attack speed only affects white attack, and since you have a 2-H with a slow attack speed, white attacks are not a huge part of your dps. Might make a slight difference in rage generation but that's pretty much it (5% = 21 hit instead of 20 over the amount of time that 20 hits take

comments in bold

I have yet to see any pet besides crystal survive a jump from first boss DOD, which is what I'm running most right now, so that's the major reason I use crystal. As for the rest of your comments I see what you're saying.

Yeah, here's a short list of the bosses that can kill pets ( at least the ones i do remember) : DoD 1st, WA 2nd, RT last (I'm not sure if 3rd too, i'd have to retry it), KT 2nd. And that's only when you'Re not able to burn them.

@pizzof

Doesn't 5% attack speed also affect the attack speed part of damage/speed=dps?