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Click here to go to the previous page – Stat Priority

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Traits – Virtues and Racial

I will add a video later covering the basics of racial traiting to give a better idea of what they are like. This part also works for any class.

This part of the guide will cover two topics. Both dealing with traits – virtue traits and racial traits. For the third part of character traits, check out the specs part of this guide (it goes over class traits). These traits act as passive bonuses you get for “equipping” them. Equipping them is free, and they are free to replace. Once slotted/equipped, you now have the bonus.

First, we will cover racial since it will be shorter, then move on to virtues.

Racial Traits

Racial traits are not class based and are race based. For Wardens, we want:

• Increase our main (or even off) stats
• Increase damage of a weapon type we use

All others are up to you! Even ones like Fate and Will are better than some others and usually are worth slotting. Things like increased sword damage are definitely useful (if you plan on using a sword!).

Well, this part was short… Onto the main part, virtue traits!

 

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Virtue Traits (Virtues)

You can get by at max level without virtues. While they are preferred, you may be turned off by the grind and shouldn’t be turned down for not farming them to max. It is still good to equip your best ones!

Virtue Traits, or virtues for short, are traits that give you a passive boost to your stats. You can have a total of 5 virtues. Virtue ranks are currently capped at 19. We want virtues that work well with stats high up in our priority. But, some virtues are worse and better than others, so we also need to look into that.

This info applies to any class

What you look for on any class in virtues:

• Main Stat
• Secondary Stat
• Mitigations
• Resistance
• Max Morale
• Critical Defense
• Tertiary Stat

These are the things you want to look for in virtues. With the essence system, we need to keep in mind what are stats are at to see if a virtue is worth slotting, as well. For now, here is the priority.

General Virtue Priority

1. Resistance
2. Main Stat
3. Vitality
4. Max Morale
5. Mitigations
6. Secondary Stat

Now, when looking for virtues, we want to find ones that fill multiple parts of our priority. Here, I will list virtues that can apply to any virtue build

This is now more focused on Wardens!

List of Matching Virtues

• Honour – Ideal
• Determination – Great-Ideal
• Loyalty – Good
• Charity – Ideal
• Discipline – Great (used to be ideal+ when might was a main stat)
• Fidelity – Great
• Innocence – Great
• Tolerance – Great

Keep in mind that gear can alter what you want. If you are mitigation capped without any virtue mitigations, you want to avoid those. If your gear is built around the mitigation gain from virtues, keep those in. So, we will start by looking at virtues that are independent of gear.

From this, we can assume we will use the “ideal” ones. We will also look at the great ones. So, right now, we have 3 out of 5 ready to be equipped without looking at mitigations.

• Honour – Resist/TMi/Vit
• Charity – Resist/PMi/NCPR

These all work well together, too. Now, the 4^th and 5^th one –

Discpline vs Mitigations vs Loyalty (Vitality)

• Tolerance – 1539 TMi + Agility + ICMR
• Innocence – 1539 PMi + Resistance + Power
• Determination – Agility (1368 PMa) + ICMR + Morale
• Discipline – 855 PMa (~400 less, 5/8) + 1638 resist (decent) + 513 PMi (surprisingly not too bad)
• Loyalty – 570 Morale + Power + Armour (tiny Mits)

Your choice here is based on what is needed. Determination and Discipline are by far the best if you do not need a small amount of mitigation to reach the cap. Mitigation is much better gained through essences. Loyalty isn’t great, but next best option.

So, the final virtues are…

• Honour
• Charity
• Determination
• Discipline
• Loyalty
• Innocence – If small PMi needed
• Tolerance – If small TMi needed

Of course, you want to equip which on the first list you have the largest rank of (sometimes by a large margin). Also, while leveling, you want to equip the highest level one, usually. More on that is covered in the leveling part of the guide. Anyway, you end goal should be towards those five virtues!

 

 

Closing

That is it on racial and virtue traits! They aren’t too complex once you break them down a bit. Now, you are more ready to build your Warden!

At the very end, I want to cover:

Are Racial and Virtue Treats Needed?

The most necessary racial trait is a weapon-type damage increasing one.

Virtues are not necessarily necessary, but definitely do help and for hard content (T2/C) are generally preferred. They are definitely not needed for any content, especially while leveling and T1. Although, at low levels, virtues provide a much relatively stronger boost.

Have fun farming the virtues, if you do desire them…

 

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Gear

1. Armour
   1. Pieces/Sets
   2. Essences
   3. Filler Gear
   4. Examples
2. Legendary Item
   

1. About
2. Legacies
3. Builds
4. Examples

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Armour

Gearing up as a Warden is just like other classes. I follow this general list for how I gear (in order from earliest to last pieces/sets):

1. Crafted level 100 Essence armour
2. Featured Instance armour (2-slot essence)
3. Ithilien Flora armour
   1. Includes BIS Rings and Bracelets
4. Pelennor Fields instance cluster set (4-slot essence)
   1. Not necessarily better than Flora armour individually
   2. Usually better than Flora armour with the set bonus
      1. Can be thought of as requiring a full set for it to be better
   3. Contains no jewellery
5. Throne of the Dread Terror raid armour (TotDT/TDT/”raid”/”Throne”)
   1. Contains class items (carving for us)
6. Ithilien Flora raid armour upgrade pieces
7. The Wastes/U20/Host of the West amrmour
   1. Contains Throne upgrade pieces – BIS
   2. Contains jewellery – Necklace, Pocket, Rings – BIS
   3. Contains off-hands (shield for Wardens) – BIS

1 being the earliest and 7 being the last… It generally follows worst-best, as well.

Some sets are much easier to get than others and more worth your time. I find the Ithilien Flora pieces to be easier to get than raid pieces. FI armour just comes naturally from running them for the dailies. Pelennor Fields and raid pieces you have to run the specific instances to get your pieces.

Pocket, Cloak, and Warden’s Shield

These items were a bit harder to get/different. The pocket and cloak you can get essence versions later (from raid). Warden’s Shield does not have that ability, but in Update 20, they added this as a barter from Hosts of the West to get a good starter shield and with higher rep/more barter tokens the BIS shield. The same goes for pocket, you can now get HotW for BIS pocket. You can get the BIS cloak by completing deeds in the Wastes (U20 zone), as well. Otherwise random drops are your best options for all 3 until then.

Random drops are tradable! You can buy them on the AH!

Warden’s Carving

This is also a bit trickier. You can get them from the barter vendor for TotDT, and is currently the best option. The next best is level 100 crafted ones (teal>purple). We also have to choose between 3 type:

• Spear – Usually benefit spear gambits. Also usually “DPS” stats.
• Shield – Usually benefit shield gambits. Also usually “Tank” stats.
• Fist – Usually benefit fist gambits. Also usually “DPS” stats.

So, that is simple. It doesn’t quite work that way for higher level ones (including the 100 crafted). They are more unified with what they do. In addition, there are two types, Heart and Guardian.

All: Max morale and max power increase. Reduce cost of their respective gambit association (fist-fist, etc.)

“Heart” – Tactical Mitigation

“Guardian“ – Physical Mitigation

Typically, Heart is better due to tactical mitigation being generally harder to come by.

As you can see, we have quite of few options for gearing. Like other classes, we also utilize the essence system.

Essences

All Specs

• Calculate essence gear requirements after you factor in ALL other stat sources
  • Virtues
  • Other gear pieces
  • LIs
  • Stat tomes
  • Etc.
• Crit cap
  • 25% crit
• Finesse cap
  • 25%
• Mitigations cap
  • 50%
  • T2 has a higher artificial cap
• 20-25k+ morale
  • Usually go for closer to 25k
  • Some content requires more even if not tank
    • Usually 30-35k

Find more details on these stats and “caps” in the stats section of the guide!

Red and Yellow Lines

1. Agility
   1. Can be used to get secondaries higher (crit)
2. Physical Mastery (should be avoided at cap, useful at lower levels/tiers)

Blue Line

1. Morale
2. Vitality
   1. Morale essences are much preferred! Vitality is just a cheap alternative
   1. Can be used to help get secondaries higher (resistance)

Hybrid (my favorite)

1. Morale/Vitality
   1. Until comfortable enough to tank whatever content you want with your hybrid
   2. Morale essences are much preferred! Vitality is just a cheap alternative
2. Physical Mastery/Agility
   1. Filler for more damage
   2. Agility is preferred, PMa provides a cheap alternative

Filling Gaps

Fortunately, if you are missing pieces, there are easy ways to fill these gaps!

Crafted Gear – Covers all pieces at level 100. This gear is easily available and abundant. Since it is easy to acquire, it is the minimum your gear should be. Here are some other points:

• Our carving fits in here
  • Better to get essence (raid) version
• Can be crafted by yourself
• Teal not required, but preferred
• Cheap for someone else to craft
• You can get the gold to buy from someone else in about an hour-couple hours for a full (teal) set.
• Pocket and cloak are not essence pieces

Loot Drop Gear – These pieces are often just stats, no essences. While they are simple, they are inferior to the customizable essence pieces. This gear is often best for pocket and cloak until you get essence gear! It is also our best shield option. Some key points:

• Best option for our shield
• Weaker than essence gear
• Best pocket and cloak pieces available until you can get essence gear
• Decent if you do not have the actual essences for your crafted (or better) gear

Skirmish Gear – These pieces are not that good… But…

• Very easy to get
• “Worst” gearing option available (at max level)
• Somewhat decent for temporary replacement of quest/leveling gear
  • Sometimes worse than leveling gear

With these options, you should have a minimum amount of gear ready to go before you even run max level content! Gear in this section is enough for T1 Pelennor Fields, Featured Instances, and more. Depending on your exact gear/skill level, you may be able to get into Throne of the Dread Terror T1 (you definitely can/should with crafted gear).

Gear Examples

These are examples of pieces of gear I have equipped. I also want to mention these are not the best pieces… I play too many alts and spend too much time writing this guide to gear my Warden! But, they are still mostly optimized for what I do and provide a good example for what you can do with your gear. Spending a bit of gold (at most ~1k (Arkenstone), and mostly on essences which you can get by other means) and maybe a couple weeks of dailies, plus some small amount of farming, should be enough to get gear equivalent or better to what I have (NI flora gear making this much easier)…

In my pieces, I added:

• Finesse – to get to cap
• Crit rating – to get to cap
• Physical Mit – to get to cap
• Morale – Filler (/to get to morale min, ‘lower’ cap)

As you can see, most of my building is based off “getting to the cap”… Based on other pieces of gear I have, I chose morale as a filler. I could have put agility in for more of a DPS build (and still had almost 30k morale), but decided I wanted more morale, since my build is mostly solo/hybrid and my gear pieces actually have more agility built in than morale. When building your gear for your own character, you need to think in terms like this.

• Do you want more morale to solo stuff easier?
• Do you want more agility to provide more DPS for your fellowship or solo stuff quicker?
• Do you want a mix of both?
• Do you want a bunch of fate for no reason?
• Do you want to ignore caps and go “glass cannon”, Warden version?

Answering these questions can give you an idea how you want to build your character, and therefore what essences you want. And then you have some followup questions…

• Is this your main character – will you spend most time on it?
• Do you want to spend a lot of time building your gear collection and essences?
• Do you want to spend a lot of gold on those?
• Do you want to spend almost no gold and time on those?
• Do you want to just naturally get gear from dailies?
  • Save gold from dailies?
  • Spend gold on gear from dailies?

And some more questions on what types of gear you want to get for your character. Here are some of my answers:

• Yes
• Yes
• Yes
• Not now
• Maybe later

and the others…

• No – I have too many alts
  • But yes I spend a lot of time on it
• No
• A moderate amount
• More gold, less time
• Yes
  • Yes
  • Small amounts
    • For essences

And my answers reflect in my gear pieces. I don’t spend much time farming gear, rather I spend more time doing dailies on my alts and playing a mixture of characters and just let my gear naturally progress from that. Essences I usually don’t spend much on (<100g each so far), depending on the quality. I don’t want bad gear, but I want enough to be comfortable with the content I want to do. Most of the gear farming I have done has been on my Warden, though! (Which also reflects in the Juggernaut (Pelennor) gear I have).

That is it on gear! We have some more gear stuff to cover, but this is it for armour and jewellery, class items, etc. type gear… LIs are next!

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Legendary Items

This part assumes you are somewhat familiar with the imbuement system. Most will still be explained!

Before we get into what you want on your LI for what you want it for… Let’s go over the basics of the process we want to go for when imbuing:

1. Preferably, acquire a 1st age LI
   1. We will go over what type of melee weapon you want later
2. Level it to max
3. Use Scroll of Delving to increase max level
   1. Level it again
4. Acquire the legacies you want
   1. We will go over which you (probably) want later
   2. You get 7 total legacies, eventually
5. Use Scrolls of Empowerement on your legacies
   1. Until you can’t use any more
6. Imbue!

This is the most efficient method, but also most time consuming and requires the most work. You can skip to imbue and spend Mithril Coins and a lot more gold on “catch-up”, but end up with the same results, just a lot quicker and easier.

What Melee Weapon Should I Get For My LI? 

You should get one that matches this condition…

• That weapons type has a racial trait bonus damage for your race
  • e.g. Sword for Elves

Otherwise, get any! Personally, I prefer a Spear. Next, we will cover legacies, which will be the bulk of this part!

Legacies

I use this site: https://lotrotools.pw/legacies.php for a quick reference for legacies and how they change with imbuement.

Before we get into the most optimal legacies, let’s cover what we want to look for in them…

• % Increases
  • Flat number increases are typically inferior due to stat caps and simply being too little numbers sometimes
• Add new effects to skills
• Increase effect already present on skill
• “Buff” a wide variety of skills
  • either increased effect(s) or new effect(s)
• Increases damage of frequently used skills
• Increases damage type our skills use
• Increases damage by some other means
• Increases secondary stats/stats
• Increases speed/speed of skills/reduced attack duration/etc.
• Increase morale healed
• Increase defenses

It’s a lot to think about when choosing what legacies you want! Fortunately there are not a whole lot to choose from (but still quite a few). We also want different legacies for different specs to be most optimal, meaning… To be optimized, you want a set of LIs (2) for each spec. Now we will look at some legacies…

Immediately Seen as “Bad” Legacies:

Melee Weapon

• Ambush Critical Damage
  • A skill we don’t use
• Boar’s Rush Critical Rating
  • A skill we don’t use
• Critical Strike Critical Rating
  • A skill we DO NOT EVER use
• Hampering Javelin Reset Chance
  • Not used
• Persevere Block Rating
  • “Rating”, small amount
• Shield Tactics Tactical Mitigation Rating
  • “Rating”, mostly unused skill
• Spear Gambit Parry Rating
  • “Rating”, generally useless
• Fate
  • Not a stat we strive for
• Will
  • Not a stat we strive for

Ranged Weapon

• Careful Step Movement Speed Penalty
  • Generally useless
• Target Resist Rating (Resolution)
  • One skill, pointless when we have finesse
• In combat power regen (ICPR)
  • We have other means to gain power
• Ambush Critical Rating
  • A skill we don’t use
• Spear-Shield Gambit Power Cost
  • Used anyway as Assailment
  • Less frequent use of (R)12131
  • But! (R)12131 is used anyway and we don’t have power problems as Assailment
  • Useless in melee
• Shield Mastery Block Rating
  • Only applicable to Blue Line
  • “Rating”
  • More useful stuff other than this
• Shield Piercer Evade Debuff
  • Generally useless and a skill we don’t use
• Fate
  • See above
• Will
  • See above 

Questionable Legacies

Melee

• Fist-Spear Gambit Power Cost
  • “31-3131”
  • Skills we use anyway
  • Means less use of 12131
  • Useless for ranged spec)
• Marked Target Double-cast chance
  • Very interesting even if not useful, casting a skill twice!
  • Only provides a chance at double cast
  • More interesting for Assailment
  • Not useful for ITF
• Resolution Damage
  • Sometimes, but infrequently used skill
  • Maybe this could push it to be used?
  • Most interesting for tank
• Shield-spear Gambit Power Cost
  • “21-21212”
  • Skills we use anyway
  • Means less use of (R)12131
  • Useless for both DPS specs
• Wages of Fear Positional Damage
  • Only a small amount of increase
  • Most interesting for Assailment where Wages of Fear is in the rotation priority, although low in the list and not used too often
  • Useless for ITF
  • Also, fun!
• Might
  • Not as useful as Agility
  • Filler
  • Better than bad legacies and possibly some questionable ones

Ranged

• Android Manoeuver Damage
  • Not used skill in ITF
  • Not used in Assailment
  • ???
  • Might make it enough to be used in Assailment, gives moderate % increase
• Fist Gambit Critical Rating
  • Use a bunch of fist gambits
  • Should already be crit capped
    • Still increases devastate damage and straight crit chance (small amount)
  • Large rating increase
• Fist Gambit Evade Rating
  • While we don’t really need the evade…
  • These gambits are used anyway
  • Large amount of evade increase (equal to crit amount above)
  • Much less useful for DPS specs
  • Most interesting as tank
• In the Fray Morale Regen
  • Small amount
  • May have nothing better to use?
  • Still morale regen
  • With my current stats (hybrid build), at max rank it gives 1% morale every 6 seconds
  • Most useful and interesting as tank
• Javelin of Deadly Force Damage
  • Only applies to yellow line
  • Worth considering for yellow line if no other better options
  • Large increase!
• Javelin Skills Critical Rating
  • Useless as ITF
  • More interesting as Assailment
  • Use these anyway
  • But, like the fist one, we are crit capped anyway
    • Still increases devastate damage and straight crit chance (small amount)
  • Large rating increase
• Heal Bonus for Conviction
  • Useless as DPS specs
  • Might be worth considering as tank
  • Gambit is fairly infrequent use as tank, but could push it to more use
• Might
  • See above

Now we know some bad legacies to avoid and some questionable ones… That leaves the good ones left. Once we get through these, we can truly evaluate the questionable ones to even see if there is room for them! Remember, some specs/roles may not want a certain legacy that is listed here, it may be for another spec. This will be noted.

Useful Legacies

 Melee Weapon

• Light Damage
  • A damage type we use a lot
  • ^
  • Less useful for tank, but considerable
  • Still useful for Ranged DPS since we apply Light Oil to our Javelin
• Surety of Death Damage Over Time
  • Questionable for Tank
    • If there is nothing better
  • Definitely useful for melee DPS
  • Less useful for ranged DPS
    • Unless you plan to melee as ranged DPS?
• Spear Gambit Damage
  • Useless for tank and ranged DPS
  • Strong for melee DPS
• Gambit Lifetap Damage
  • Great for solo
  • Most effective as tank
  • More survivability
  • Increased damage
    • In combo with Resolution legacy for legitimate use?
  • Not as useful for DPS specs, but not necessarily useless
• Ranged Damage
  • Simple damage increase
  • Useless as ITF
  • While a small amount, increasing damage by a % is very strong
    • 10k hit turns into 12k with just 20%
• Agility
  • Stats are used as fillers when there is no better alternative
  • This is the strongest stat
  • Small amount (~ 1 essence + a tiny bit)
• Vitality
  • Stats are used as fillers when there is no better alternative
  • This is the second strongest stat
  • Small amount (~ 1 essence + a tiny bit)

Ranged Weapon

• Defiant Challenge Damage Return
  • Only applies if you have the trait in the blue line
  • Great for tanking multiple mobs
  • Not useless as DPS if you use this skill since it force-taunts
    • Probably don’t want to force-taunt and tank as DPS, but sometimes you do
    • I use it in my hybrid build for just this reason
      • And there is no better alternative trait in the blue line
    • Useless as Assailment
• Fist Gambit Skill Damage
  • By now it should be obvious…
  • We use these skills a lot as melee damage and tank
  • Mostly useless as Assailment
• Spear-Shield Gambit Damage
  • We use R121 and R1212 in ranged DPS rotation
  • Large increase
  • Helps scale crits better as well
    • (A large part in Ranged DPS)
  • Useless as tank and melee DPS
• Shield Gambit Line Healing
  • More useful if you are tank
  • Very useful as tank for healing
  • Otherwise, as DPS, much less useful, but questionable at most
• Agility
  • See above
• Vitality
  • See above

Well, that is all the legacies! We have a lot, but most are easy throwaways and easy additions. Then the last couple-few can get tough. With all these we will build a few weapons and see how they turn out and find the best ones for the best situations. Here are LI builds we will cover:

• Red Line
• Yellow Line
• Blue Line
• Versatile Hybrid Ranged-Melee-Tank-DPS Warden
• Red-Yellow DPS Hybrid
• Red-Blue In the Fray Hybrid
• Yellow-Blue Ranged Tank? Hybrid
• The Weapons of a Poor Legacy

My favorites are the hybrid builds since you can get the most out of single LI sets. Another option for hybrid building is one weapon = one spec, another weapon = another and just use both until you get replacements. That one is more efficient for the long term. The hybrid ones require the least work to be most moderately effective. So, let’s start with some example builds…

LI Legacy Builds

Remember that you can always build how you like to fit your playstyle! I consider these builds just guide-lines based on what is usually most effective and sometimes most fun. Maybe in your situation you like to solo more (or less) than me so may alter your legacies to fit some situations for that… Anyway, onto some builds…

1. Red Line

Melee Weapon:

• Light Damage
• Surety of Death (3232) DoT
• Spear Gambit Damage
• Gambit Lifetap Damage
• Agility
• Vitality
• Might

Ranged Weapon:

• Fist Gambit Skill Damage
• Agility
• Vitality
• Might
• Fist Gambit Critical Rating

Those are the only 5 good ones. The rest are entirely up to what you want to do. I use the following:

• Defiant Challenge Damage Return
  • For solo/hybrid with tank
• Shield Gambit Line Healing
  • Only other worthwhile one?
  • For solo/hybrid with tank

2. Yellow Line

Melee Weapon:

• Light Damage
• Ranged Damage
• Marked Target Double-cast chance
  • Only useful if specced into yellow line
• Wages of Fear Positional Damage
• Agility
• Vitality
• Might

Ranged Weapon:

• Spear-Shield Gambit Damage
• Agility
• Vitality
• Might
• Javelin Skills Crit Rating
• Javelin of Deadly Force Damage

Those are the only 6 good ones. The last is entirely up to what you want to do… I use this:

• Shield Gambit Line Healing
  • More ranged healing/hybrid

3. Blue Line

Melee Weapon:

• Light Damage
• Agility
• Vitality
• Might
• Gambit Lifetap Damage
• Surety of Death DoT
• Resolution Damage
  • 3123

Ranged Weapon:

• Defiant Challenge Damage Return
• Fist Gambit Skill Damage
• Shield Gambit Line Healing
• ITF Morale Regen
• Agility
• Vitality
• Heal Bonus for Conviction
  • 212

4. Hybrid Build #1 “Determined to be Reckless”

Melee Weapon:

• Light Damage
• Agility
• Vitality
• Might
• Gambit Lifetap Damage
• Surety of Death DoT
• Spear Gambit Damage

Ranged Weapon:

• Defiant Challenge Damage Return
• Fist Gambit Skill Damage
• Shield Gambit Line Healing
• ITF Morale Regen
• Agility
• Vitality
• Fist Gambit Crit Rating

Almost the exact same as Red Line!

5. Hybrid Build #2 “Rainbow Warden”

Melee Weapon:

• Light Damage
• Agility
• Vitality
• Ranged Damage
• Gambit Lifetap Damage
• Surety of Death DoT
• Spear Gambit Damage

Ranged Weapon:

• Defiant Challenge Damage Return
• Fist Gambit Skill Damage
• Shield Gambit Line Healing
• Spear-Shield Gambit Damage
• Agility
• Vitality
• Fist Gambit Crit Rating

6. Bad Build “Bad Warden! Bad!”

Melee Weapon:

• Critical Strike Crit Rating
• Spear Gambit Parry Rating
• Boar’s Rush Crit Rating
• Ambush Crit Damage
• Will
• Hampering Javelin Reset Chance
• Fate

Ranged Weapon:

• Target Resist Rating (Resolution)
• Ambush Crit Rating
  • Synergy with our crit damage on melee weapon!
• Shield Mastery Block Rating
• Shield Piecer Evade Debuff
• Spear-Shield Gambit Power Cost
• Fate
• Will

Now you can have a bad set of LIs for your Wardening needs…

Relics

Here we will go over each slot and “decent” ones, and then best-in-slot (BIS).

Decent – Tier 5/6 Relics

BIS – Eastemnet “Melded” Relics

“Crafted” slot – Westemnet crafted (actually crafted from a vocation). Can buy off AH or get somebody to craft for you, or craft yourself!

Note: Relics for each LI are the same. You can mix the “options” listed below for a mix/hybrid build.

“Decent Relics”

These are cheap relics that are really easy to get. They are good enough to last until you get a BIS relic.

Tier 5/6 Relics. These are very easy to get and very efficient to use in the mean-time of getting your BIS relics. They are also not very inferior compared to even T10 relics!

So, let’s get to what we want:

• Setting
  • “of Morale”
  • “of Might” for slightly higher DPS at the cost of morale
• Gem
  • “of Dexterity”
  • “of Endurance” for slightly higher morale as tank at the cost of DPS
• Rune
  • “of Defence” (all of these options aren’t great)

“BIS Relics”

There are the ‘best-in-slot‘ relics possible for LIs. It is a bit of a grind to get to, but should be an end goal relic wise.

All of these are “Eastemnet (Level 90)” melded relics:

• True Setting of the Three Hunters
• True Gem of the Rising Moon
• True Rune of the White Mountains – This one you want to work on getting first!
• Crafted
  • Sealed Westemnet Device of Accuracy if you can craft it.
  • If you can’t, Sealed Westemnet Device of Agility

Examples LIs of Mine:

Please note again that these are not yet completely maxed — My legacies still aren’t max level. Other than that everything is at or near ideal!

Spear left, Javelin on top

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Closing

Now you know how to become a geared Warden! And, now, you just need to get the gear…

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Character Enhancements

1. “Enchants” – LOTRO version
2. Food
3. Scrolls
4. Potions
5. Stat Tomes
6. Destiny/Store/Other

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“Enchants”

We actually only have two enchants. And only one is important, the other is seemingly non-existent any more.

Oil

I recommend Light Oil for all situations. This should be applied and maintained at all times. It improves yellow line damage.

Shield Spikes

These change the type of our shield damage in addition to increasing shield crit chance. They are not too useful and rare to find, but do exist and do benefit us still!

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Food

Not only does food satiate your hunger, but it does give you some extra boosts! While leveling, go for what gives you good stats. At max level, prioritize:

1. Superior/Purple Versions
2. Regular/Yellow Versions

And here are the foods we want:

• Trail – Feasts of Anorien
• Fortifying – Bean and Tater Soup
• Cooked – Seven-star Stews

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Scrolls

While leveling, use what is most useful. While at max level, use whenever needed/desired:

• Scrolls of Anorien Warding Lore
• Scrolls of Anorien Battle Lore
  • Factor this into your mitigation calculations if you plan to always have it applied.

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Potions

Use as needed:

• Morale (Anfalas)
• Power (Anfalas)
• Debuff Curing (Anfalas)

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Stat Tomes

You can get various stat tomes for the store, hobbit gifts, lootboxes, and other players. We want in this order:

1. Agility/Vitality
2. Vitality/Agility
3. Might
4. Fate
5. Will

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Destiny/Store/Other

There are various items that increase damage, decrease damage taken, increase morale/power, and so on. Use any you can get whenever needed. For tough content, I recommend

• +5% Attack Damage
• Tome of Defense
• +10% Run Speed Boost
• All other buffs from store as you see fit/desired/wanted.
  • Some are cheaper, some aren’t.
  • Some are more beneficial, some less.
  • Follow stat priority/etc. when deciding.
• Destiny boosts as desired/wanted/as you see fit.

You can get these from hobbit gifts, lootboxes, etc.

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Closing

Those are the character enhancements we can get. There are many to choose from when thinking about destiny/store/lootboxes.  No content requires anything to be bought with real money for you to be competitive. They are just “nice” boosts you can get if you want. Other ones like oil, foods, and scrolls are often expected or required (others may supply scrolls).

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If you would like to support Dadi’s LOTRO Guides, or maybe just buy him a beer, click the donate button below 🙂

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Click here to go to the next page – Leveling

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