Warden Class Guide (U19.3)
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Stat Priority
This part will temporarily assume you know the general idea behind character statistics, or stats. I will have something added at a later time to cover the basics.
Stat Targets
For more info, read on past this! This is a quick reference list that contains all needed info.
These are the target stats we want to go for. These consist of secondary stats, and are often considered caps. Some are soft-caps, some hard-caps, and others have no cap. These apply to all specs!
- Critical Rating – 10% Devastate Chance minimum
- Finesse – 20% minimum, 25% recommended (At cap: 3 maxed T8 essences works perfectly)
- Morale – 20k-25k, or more. Depends on the content run, 20k minimum is a good start – I practice this on all my characters and specs (more for tanking or hybrids)
- Physical Mitigation – 50% on all sources
- More for T2’s artificial cap increase
- Tactical Mitigation – 50% on all sources
- More for T2’s artificial cap increase
Tank Priorities:
- 50% Critical Defense
- 30k-40k+ Morale
- Morale Filler
- 25% crit chance (30% depending on race!) –> Either way, cap the %.
- Agility (or PMa) Filler as necessary for additional damage – Not recommended for hard content. Can be useful to increase DPS as tank only when you don’t need more defensive stats.
DPS Priorities (red or yellow line)
- Agility (or PMa) Filler
- 25% crit chance (30% depending on race!) –> Either way, cap the %.
Primary Stats
- Agility/Vitality
- Vitality/Agility
- Might (weaker version of Agility)
- Fate (less useful)
- Will (useless)
Agility vs Vitality
Go for agility if you want more damage, and vitality if you want more survivability/morale. Generally this applies to lower levels (under 100, mainly). At higher levels, with essences, we will see “morale” become priority for morale instead of vitality, and therefore leaves agility as priority, anyway.
Stat Effectiveness
- Agility
- 8 Physical Mastery Rating (PMa)
- 1 Critical Rating (Crit)
- 2 Parry
- 3 Evade
- Vitality
- 5 Morale
- 2 Resistance
- 7 Non-Combat Morale Regen (NCMR)
- Might
- 5 PMa
- 3 Block
- 2 Parry
We shoot to build these as high as possible when they provide more secondary stats than the next best alternative. For a morale essence that contains more morale than a vitality essence, we would go for the morale essence since vitality provides insignificant extra secondary stats. With Agility, you have to weigh the additional crit to PMa essences and compare total stats gained. Usually the one with more PMa wins.
Secondary Stats
- Crit – 10% devestate, 25% crit (or 30% depending on race)
- Finesse – 25% (20-25% range is good, anything above 25% is not useful)
- Tactical and Physical Mitigations (TMi, PMi, respectively) – 50%
- Morale – Filler – 20k+ (depending on content)
- PMa – Filler
- Crit Defense – 50% as tank
- Resistance – Only worth from virtues!
Closing
That is it on our stat priorities. The next part covers virtue and racial traits, then we can move onto gear!
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Awesome stuff I am going to camp on it a while. Thanks for posting
Noob question When you say the Javelin skills (hampering target et al) “Generally this skill is not used.” do you mean at all, or just for the buff or debuff, I find marked target has a longer cool time I use them
If you are not playing as yellow line, it is only used on pull (while running up to mob/boss), when you have to be ranged for some reason (like a ground effect in melee range will kill you, or something similar), or when you want to target a ranged mob.
So in general combat (again, not in yellow line), it is generally not used. Those cases are pretty rare, most commonly I use it will running up to a mob/boss.
Thanks for a great guide!
Please clarify what are the top virtue traits for a warden. You start by saying that Honour and Innocence are ideal, while Zeal and Fidelity are great.
But then you say:
So, the final virtues are…
Zeal
Fidelity
Charity
Determination
Discipline
Thinking more about virtue traits I have another question for you:
If General Virtue Priority is listed as:
1 Resistance
2 Mitigations
3 Main Stat
4 Vitality
5 Max Morale
6 Secondary Stat
Why is Fidelity classified as ‘great’ – having +76 vitality (4th on list)
+56 power (Not on list)
+1539 TMi (2nd on list)
while Tolerance is entirely skipped – having +1539 TMi (2nd on list)
+114 agility (3rd on list)
+107 ICMR (not on list)
They have equal TMi, and forgetting not so important power and ICMR, I’d have thought that +114 agility beats +76 vitality?
Just trying to understand how this works.
Sorry for the confusion, I have fixed that part and made it correct. Here is what the list was meant to be:
Honour
Charity
Determination
Discipline
Loyalty
Agility is definitely better than vitality in this context.
I know this is not relevant to the Warden Class, but I just saw all these beautiful guides and I’m really impressed.
I’m searching for a complete guide for the Captain but I struggle to find a complete one: on Youtube there are only very old videos, on the official forum only few post very contraddictory and not well reviewed. On Reddit I found some info, but scattered and not complete.
In the future, can I hope for a Captain guide amazing like these one? 😀
Thanks so much!
I intend to have guides for every class. I have a lower level Captain, so I am not qualified to write a guide on them. I am still searching for the right person to author it.
I have some experience with the Captain (not enough to write a guide at the moment), but if you need help anything specific, I may be able to help.
Thank you! I will wait for that 😀
I appreciate greatly this website and the guides you provide. My Warden 105 is my “main alt” and so I need guidance from others how best to gear. Follow up -> why +agility crafted relics rather than the more popular +agility +physical mastery +critical?
The Agility crafted relics are only if you are not able to get the better ones.
Hello there,
first i want to say: amazing guide. i have been gone quite a while and this guide eased my way back into the game. the warden IS a complicated class afterall.
i wonder wether you will update this guide with the Mordor Expansion one day? The additional levels, new relics and such and gear. would be great!
Keep up the good work!
We will definitely look to get it (and the other class guides) updated to reflect the changes in Mordor.
You mentioned, I’m not sure where, that we want to use our longest gambits ASAP. Also, your USE priorities reinforce this, for example:
21212
2121
212
21
….but it would seem that the class is designed to go the other way in chains, or are you saying that the chain-buffs aren’t worth chasing in most cases?