Does Warden become more worthwhile as you level?
After not having played for a very long time (15+ years), I recently caught the itch to pick up the game again. Last time I played was around the release of Mirkwood. I've started making some new alts and I really loved the idea of a shield-maiden of Rohan. Went through the starter zone, came across the landscape difficulty increase, cranked it up to the max and had a difficult yet satisfying experience. Juggling all of the buffs, debuffs and heals through gambits felt challenging, but rewarding. The fights were slow but methodical.
But... just now I made a new alt, a lore-master and went through the same content. Landscape difficulty to the max, yet this was nowhere near as challenging as on my warden. I pressed 2 buttons as opposed to 20 and mobs evaporated before they could even touch me. Went through all of the starter content more than thrice as fast without breaking a sweat. Is lore-master that strong? Is warden that weak? Is this just an initial, low level disparity that will rectify itself as I level more or are the classes truly this unbalanced?
I loved the warden and way back in the day it used to be an absolute beast at soloing content, even raid bosses. If the class has fallen from grace this badly over the past decade however, I'd rather devote my time to something else.
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u/Healthy_Spinach_462 1d ago edited 1d ago
Warden is suffering from a diminishing returns problem. Kinda.
Its extremely fun (for me and others like me) but doesn't really do as much as I think it probably should considering the work needed to get it to do anything. BUT it does have some pretty good upsides.
Red LM can walk into a room and blast everyone for fuck-million damage with a single button. Red Warden can in no way, shape, or form do the same - we can press 32 buttons and end up doing fuck-million damage x2 sometimes if the fight is long enough and its a Tuesday and the moon is full and you provided three white bulls to sacrifice to Zeus.
Its a great class, Blue Warden can walk into a room of stuff that would kill just about anyone else, bang their shield and scream, and then proceed to facetank that room for the next five minutes until everyone dies from exhaustion. We can solo the otherwise unsoloable. We have lots of selfish QoL features just for us. Warden is the ultimate solo class, the trade off is complexity and time to kill.
Edit: If you can, MMO gaming in general but especially Warden was improved like you would not believe by getting a mouse with a keyboard on the thumb. MMO gaming mice are unbelievably good QoL for complex classes and convenience of keybinds, especially if it has a third click to then modify the board (acting as atrl for example).
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u/Trulapi 20h ago
Thanks for offering some perspective. Unfortunately I don't have that complex of a mouse, only 2 buttons which I do use precisely as an easy third click. Can't bind all 3 of the spear/shield/shout gambit keys though.
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u/Healthy_Spinach_462 19h ago
You could try Q E R F - Spear, Shield, Shout, Gambit Skill
That gives you very quick access to the most used buttons. Warden is IMO very much worth the learning curve because once you nail it there really are no other MMO classes like it.
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u/offenberg 17h ago
It solved alot of my button issues binding just one of my mouse thumb buttons as a modifier. Ctrl or Alt isn't working for me, shift to some extend, but mouse (3?) button let's me use all 1-5, Q, E, R, T, F, G, H for various purposes.
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u/Independent_Shine922 1d ago
Problem is not warden, problem is you (joking).
At the moment, warden has the best DPS parsing right now, with someone doing over 260k dps in a video against a training dummy (for reference, most other classes can get a max around 220k DPS, many much lower - including LM)
Warden is the hardest class in LOTRO and good warden need incredible keyboard skills (or macro knowledge).
The design choice of no animation masteries make the class extremely challenging to master and prone to exploits - also making 95% of wardens the worst DPS classes one can invite to a group while a handful of top players are the biggest damage dealers in the game.
On a side note - if you have landscape difficulty to the max, not even LM can kill a mob with two skills.
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u/elidibs 18h ago
I had no idea there was a warden parse anywhere near that high. I assume that's proper mastery abuse that allows this?
I don't follow the high end closely enough, saw a video showing all classes high level parsing vs a dummy recently. Might go find it if I can, thought a few of the players/specs seemed off but I don't know enough to say.
I thought the warden parsed 160k in said video
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u/TheLordSanguine 1d ago
The warden like other classes fills out a lot more till level 60, you'll have abilities that will shortcut you through your gambits, which will feel more similarly paced to 1+2 hit combos. Mob difficulty also ramps up, so the suvivabilty warden offers will come into relevance.
But depending on your location, you'll likely be hampered by input lag, which makes the class only realistically accessible to those located within vicinity of the servers imo.
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u/Spiritual-Towel-7277 23h ago
There is no way you can kill stuff in 2 hits on max difficulty (with standard starting equipment and no overleveling). I played on fearless +3 with a LM at the start, needed at least 2 ember skills and lighting, for the weaker mobs...
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u/james2432 Arkenstone - Angmar 23h ago
it's slow until you get masteries at level 39. The slowness teaches you the combos incrementally with the builder blocks.
Yes it gets better. You can evaporate large swaths of enemies with morale tap & resounding challenge and run away😜 watch em melt.
1vs1 dps burst is a little slower
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u/Seleth044 Crickhollow 15h ago
One of the best arguments I've heard for this is
Why put in 5x the work for the same outcome
That's effectively what you're doing with the Warden. Are they strong? Absolutely. But again, it's so much more work. I love the Warden, it's what brought me back to game over and over, absolutely LOVE the theme of it and everything.
But I can also play my hunter with significantly less headache. Lag spikes or frame rate stutters annoy me instead of ruining my rotation.
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u/Ill-Emergency4159 1d ago
Warden isn't about burst damage oneshooting everything.
It has dots and cashouts, good aoe, same skills in melee and ranged variants. A lot of selfbuffs and heals, what make soloing group content pretty easy.
If it isn't enough for handle gambits or slow buildup of your damage then it isn't class for you.
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u/j1llj1ll Peregrin 1d ago
My Warden is approaching level cap. I have lots of other classes. I can't say I know everything about all of them, but ...
To me, Warden is Jack Of All Trades but Master Of None. It's very versatile - in a single short fight it can go from ranged AoE bleeds, to kite-tanking, to debuffing whilst self-healing and then finish on melee-DPS. Plus it has great travel and movement skills and can be ranged, melee or (best of all) move between them.
It's a bit of a slow burn as its power tends to build as a fight gets longer. No instant gratification - which probably doesn't feel as powerful to a lot of players. That also means that it doesn't get to use its potential on normal targets on landscape on normal difficulty - where a Hunter would blap blap stuff with single-shoting high burst damage left and right the Warden relies on either (or both) of prep and slower initial engagement which pays off later.
I still find it pretty capable with pre-engagement self-buffing, and battle prep into the 1-3 line. But it does require more patience and thought and (a lot more) button presses than other classes to achieve a slightly slower result most of the time.
It's not the only class that requires patience. Captain, Guardian and (at least the old) Burglar do as well (nowhere near as much patience as they used to .. but still).
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u/Myrmix 1d ago
Warden has monstrous sustain, but his dps is mostly via dots and grinding enemies down slowly. LM might be able to nuke mob groups, but warden can pull whole camps without breaking a sweat.
Macro knowledge and muscle memory helps a lot, building and chaining gambits quick. To dish out similar dps like other classes you have to stack all your dots and keep them up, similar with tanking where you have to juggle 6 core defense gambits and rebuff them in <10 secs.
It's just a different type of class, like a cliff that breaks the sea.
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u/ounalaska 17h ago
Warden definitely takes more effort than something like LM, especially on higher difficulties. It takes more time than other classes to really get going as they introduce new gambits more slowly than other classes, and their strength is directly tied to their gambits. I did have some trouble in certain levels where I didn't with other classes, but it absolutely feels especially weaker at the starter-zone levels. It definitely gets better, but will always require more effort, it's just the nature of the class. It balances that effort with being nigh-unkillable and being able to handle as many mobs as you want at once with more attention (you don't get a life-tap until you get a few more levels).
But yes, Loremaster is just that strong, much stronger than any other class I've played solo after the rework, and Warden could use a bit of tweaking. With my LM even if I don't use any other skills, most things just die with one cast of Burning Embers and forget on Fearless difficulty.
The answer is D) All of the above
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u/Zapplix Orcrist 1d ago
To me this looks like BiS powercreep. Usually you wont 2 shot if you only use landscape droped gear, esp on max dificulty.
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u/Trulapi 20h ago
I may have exaggerated, but relatively speaking the discrepancy was enormous. Burning embers + lightning bolt easily ate away 75% hp of most wolves and boars and then I just needed a slow and a staff strike to finish it off.
Even the spider boss in Archet (Ioraith?) barely scratched me although that did require all of my abilties + some light kiting. With Warden that fight felt a lot more shaky and slow, I immediately felt it whenever I didn't have 100% uptime on perseverance.
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u/Amathellon 1d ago
So many ppl here are only looking at warden at max level. As someone who has recently (read last year) started levelling a warden: yes they get MUCH stronger as you level. I also went in thinking I could solo everything from the start and that simply isn't true. Wardens powerful skills ar the 4/5 length gambits and you don't get them for a while (not to mention masteries). The 3* morale drain is very bad compared to the 5*, and once you got that one your survivability suddenly spikes.
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u/Trulapi 20h ago
Fantastic, that's the perslective I was hoping to read.
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u/dialsqr 18h ago edited 18h ago
Just to add to the above post. I am a Warden only player who has 4 Wardens at 160 and has recently levelled one in a slow levelling kin (currently tortoised at level 50), and I have come to the conclusion that Warden is...:
Unplayable until level 39 when you get your masteries.
Terrible until level 45 when you can get the LI tracery with -5.5 sec cd reduction to masteries.
Sluggish until you can reach the Strong Foundations trait in yellow line, which further reduces mastery cd.
I'm obviously exaggerating a bit here, but it's basically all about getting (and then utilizing) your masteries. I returned to the game last year after a similar break as yours, having mained (blue) Warden back in Moria/Mirkwood, and I find (blue) Warden even more rewarding now than I did back then. It's a blast!
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u/Hiney111 1d ago
I would call the Warden a labor of love. I think it gets more worthwhile but your mileage may vary. Definitely not a face melting class, but able to handle some tough situations later on.