Loraq's Guide to Wardens

Wardens? WTF is a warden?

Think of them as Celtic Paladins - Warrior Poets of legend weilding the sword in one hand and magic in the other. They are a mix of healer bard and fighter. They have high hits, wear the best armour and may spec in weapons and parry, they also can heal and buff similar to druids and have chants akin to the bards songs.

Starting out:

Your first choice is Celt or Firbolg.

Easy choice for me, Firbolgs are fat ugly and take up half the screen, but then i care about that kinda thing - on paper firbolgs stats make the best wardens. Stats wise it's a choice between hitting harder or more often. Firbolgs have a 10 point lead on empathy in terms of power, tho when dex begins to affect casting times this may give celts the edge.

Stat points - Celts should save 10pts for extra empathy, and 100 str is nice on a firbolg, both races can then spread the rest amongst str dex con and quick.

As always save your spec points till level 5 if you are not comfortable with the early choices

Spellcaster or Tank:

It's best to strike a balance here, you get 1.5 spec points per level so can afford to put them into both combat and spell lines, although it is theorectically possible to put them all into the spells or all into weapon and parry just leaving you the base lines. However...

If you wanna be a pure tank, they are called hero's, they do more damage have more hits and get all the nice protection, guard, intercept skills that you as a warden, do not.

. If you wanna be a pure naturalist caster/healer pick a druid or a bard they are better at it.

So with that out of the way you need to look to strike a balance between combat skills and your spell lines. Wardens only get two spell lines, Nurture and regrowth, and may pick from blunt or blades as weapon skills, and also recieve shortbow at 7th, parry at 15th and scale at 20th

The Unique stuff - Nurture Spec line

This is the spell-line that sets wardens apart from the other naturalists and the standard heal/buff lines that all three advanced classes get. Well worth putting the points in here.

Bubbles - blade-turns you can cast on yourself, others, groups and at later levels as reccuring chants - these are awesome, and they are they are lovely in RvR too, since they turn that 500dam 50th level troll hit into a miss and break the mezz you were under giving you a chance to do a runner.

Damage Add Chant - Ooo this is soo nice, and it affects the entire group from the day you first get it, every hit from every physical blow gets this bonus added to it, and you need this for solo-ing too.

You also get a group speed buff - which is not nearly as fast as the bard but a lot quicker than normal walking speed - i hear a rumour that it will be speeded up soon

Regrowth Spec Line

This is a standard continuation of the healing spells - higher your skill, the more hit points you heal.

Self only regen hits - This is not nearly as nice as the mentalist version, but it does get better as you level.

Improved Ressurect - At 16th level you get an improved version of the standard ress, giving your target enough hits back to run at full speed after a ress and enough mana to cast somthing too.

Improved heals - as expected with a regrowth spec there are some bigger heals here too

Groups:

There are two roles you can take in a group Tanking or Supporting.

Tanking as a warden - You need good equipment here, armour shield and weaponry. You CAN take aggro, you have high hits, parry and shield-use + the best armor, scale, and personal health regens and buffs. The problem is holding onto the aggro - even taunting every strike your damage output is not high, and the group damage add chant you do adds to every-one else's damage as well as yours making it harder to keep hold of the aggro, esp since you are relying on others in your group to put the majority of the damage in. Additionally if you are tanking you are not healing - this means you will end the fight on full mana - so make sure u let the other healers know that you can do the after-battle healing to save on their mana and minimise downtime.

Supporting - Here a warden shines. You can sit at the back, watching for that stray add sneaking past the tanks while you have everyone buffed, all healers and nukers protected by a blade-turn, and all the tanks at the front hitting with your damage bonus on each and every one of thier blows. You may then pick your role and change it during the fight - assist the tanks, with side & rear special moves, with little risk of drawing aggro yourself, allowing you to step back and heal as required, or take on the dedicated healer / blade turner role, warden is the only class that can use preventative medicine - your blade turn will make a hit, miss - and if it cons purple, a missed hit can save a lot more damage than you could heal after the fact. Also in this role you can always step into melee when out of mana, taunting aggro off other hard-pressed group members.

Solo

Like clockwork - Put your damage chant up, cast a bubble on yourself, dont forget the personal health regen, pull your target with your shortbow, duke it out, heal up after, and onto the next one - yellows are easy with the right equipment, and blues should be a walk in the park. Your healing means very little downtime, and if you pick monsters vulnerable to your weapon spec soloing should be easy and fast. Just remember like any solo'er you will need top equipment to take the yellows aggro.

RvR

If its Blue you can kill it, and if its in a robe and orange you can also kill it, you can also take the aggro from enemy tanks, just that you wont win the boxing match without friends to help you.. When none of those are about you can heal, buff, ress, and save the robed casters of hibernia from certain death over and over again with your bubble chants - esp usefull on people who are mezzed - the blow turned by your bubble still breaks the mez.

H.H.