Primary Role

[Metafour]

<p>I'm fairly new to this game, and I'm a bit confused about this class. I'd like to see some people's descriptions of the warden and their primary class role as of the current state of the game. Most info I've found for the class is old and outdated and doesn't have correct spell lists and does not include RoK info. I'd like to know from experienced warden players what I could expect from this class if I were to make one.</p><p>Is this a healer class? Do wardens get stuck healing when they are in instance groups and raids? is this more of a dps class? Do wardens spend more time nuking? Do wardens buff or debuff much? Are they a support class?</p><p>Basically, I want to know on average what the typical duties of a warden are in a party, either an instance party or a raid party. I'm talking about all level ranges, since obvioiusly I'll be starting from level 1 and working my way up.</p>

[Skivley101]

<p>WoW (no pun intended) you asked the hugest question ive seen so far from my meager amount of posting.</p><p>Wardens are Tanks .... lol joking , but they can tank in odd ball groups with the mele spec and some high physical mitigation gear.</p><p>A Warden is a healer primarily</p><p>Instead of going into details , cuz more will chime in to fill in the gaps.</p><p>Given the options from AA and the nature of the way the devs built wardens , They are very adaptive to many situations (jack of all trades so to speak) , but not exceptional at the end game raiding content.</p><p>Many find the warden very fun ... which is the main reason for playing this game imho .... <img src="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/images/smilies/49869fe8223507d7223db3451e5321aa.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" width="15" height="15" /></p>

[Eugam]

<cite>Metafour wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>I'm fairly new to this game, and I'm a bit confused about this class. I'd like to see some people's descriptions of the warden and their primary class role as of the current state of the game. Most info I've found for the class is old and outdated and doesn't have correct spell lists and does not include RoK info. I'd like to know from experienced warden players what I could expect from this class if I were to make one.</p><p>Is this a healer class? Do wardens get stuck healing when they are in instance groups and raids? is this more of a dps class? Do wardens spend more time nuking? Do wardens buff or debuff much? Are they a support class?</p><p>Basically, I want to know on average what the typical duties of a warden are in a party, either an instance party or a raid party. I'm talking about all level ranges, since obvioiusly I'll be starting from level 1 and working my way up.</p></blockquote>Wardens are a priest class. They are mainly healers. Wardens are HoT (heal over time) healers.Do Wardens get stuck to heal in dungeons ? Yes and no. See below...Wardens are casters at the beginning. BUT wardens are able to change their casts into melee combat arts with AA. Those who choose this AA tree are able to cast or do melee combat. Part of the melee tree is, that your melee attacks may proc group heals.Wardens have a lot of buffs, but only one debuff to lower resists against cold damage. Wardens utillities are portals all over Norrath and (if AA spec'ed) a huge increase in runspeed, water breathe and they have an evac. Wardens are power effective. A good warden is able to heal for a very, very long time. Wardens got with their different shapeshifts form the first AA point sort of stances. A form to heal, a form to fight. Somewhere in the 50ies wardens get a healing tree. Everyone hates this tree. Better learn to place is right. The tree is a huge HoT without any real powercost.A well played melee warden doesnt get stuck to healing. The nature of HoT healing and the fact that the melee attacks proc heals (boostet by some heal proc'ing items) allows the warden to fight and heal at the same time. It takes some skill though. After all you have to watch your heals first and your dps second. At some point wardens get a pack of wolves. Those are a DoT basically.In a raid a warden usually is the MT druid due to their mitigation buff. Classic MT group has a shaman to ward, a templar to catch the spikes and a warden as HP filler over time. It is absolutely possible to melee heal on raid trash and even on some of the nameds. On real tough nameds the wardens get stuck healing and cure.I hope this helps..

[xandez]

<p>with the help of AA the warden also has very nice roots... this makes the spellcasting warden also a good option. Its more down to what you prefer, melee or caster?</p><p>Both of em can heal. You can do a melee warden and spec it to do max healing also while of course losing some damage, but... what do YOU want?Its a fun class to play for sure, teleports, evac & runspeed nicely compliment that aspect (and the nice healing ability <img src="/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />).</p><p>++Xan</p>

[RpTheHotrod]

<p>Here are two different roles a warden often chooses</p><p>1. The melee warden    Secondary healer/Secondary tank</p><p>With AAs, he converts his spells to melee attacks. These do more damage and auto-upgrade as you level instead of buying new ones. These are very nice. Also, he would go down the STR line, giving him some very handy abilities (like chance to group heal per hit, and a high chance of double attacking per hit). In the Warden EoF tree, you have the combat art conversion abilities. At the end of it, you can choose an ability that causes you to crit on 75% of your melee attacks. This mean's some SERIOUS damage output (especially if you get the other melee attacks in other druid lines). Also, the warden would use the Warden EoF mitigation bonus (maxed out, it increases your SELF mitigation buff effect by 50%). With the extra druid AA points,  he normally maxes out melee attacks from other lines.</p><p>IN GENERAL: He is a pretty good healer, but not as good as he could be since he's using tank stat gear and not WIS stuff. He makes an AWESOME solo player and secondary "tank" (I was able to take on ^^^ heroic even con mobs without dying all within melee range). Unfortunatly, he has a lower mana pool.</p><p>2. The healer/caster warden   Primary healer, support</p><p> This warden generally maxes out the AGIL/STA/INT lines the best he can. He also goes down the movement line in the Warden EoF tree. He can't taken much beating, but he has maximized his healing ability, along with giving him good DPS in the INT line. Not as good DPS as a melee warden...but he's a lot better at heals...which is what is expected of a warden in higher end tiers. Sure, you cannot solo as good in tight areas with no room to root/nuke things, but you can make your GROUP survive longer and get into places you couldn't as a solo player. You can also solo better (not quicker!) than a melee warden if there's a lot of room to move around (root/nuke). However, if there's little room, a melee warden would be the best.</p><p>In general...I'd say a solo player would definetly want melee warden...and a groupie player would want the healer/caster warden.</p>

[dpsman]

<cite>RpTheHotrod wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>Here are two different roles a warden often chooses</p><p>1. The melee warden    Secondary healer/Secondary tank</p><p>With AAs, he converts his spells to melee attacks. These do more damage and auto-upgrade as you level instead of buying new ones. These are very nice. Also, he would go down the STR line, giving him some very handy abilities (like chance to group heal per hit, and a high chance of double attacking per hit). In the Warden EoF tree, you have the combat art conversion abilities. At the end of it, you can choose an ability that causes you to crit on 75% of your melee attacks. This mean's some SERIOUS damage output (especially if you get the other melee attacks in other druid lines). Also, the warden would use the Warden EoF mitigation bonus (maxed out, it increases your SELF mitigation buff effect by 50%). With the extra druid AA points,  he normally maxes out melee attacks from other lines.</p><p><b><span style="color: #0099ff;">Completely false, melee Warden can be and is just as good as being main healer.</span></b></p><p>IN GENERAL: He is a pretty good healer, but not as good as he could be since he's using tank stat gear and not WIS stuff. He makes an AWESOME solo player and secondary "tank" (I was able to take on ^^^ heroic even con mobs without dying all within melee range). Unfortunatly, he has a lower mana pool.</p><p><b><span style="color: #0099ff;">Misleading, melee Wardens usually have 2 sets of gear 1 for solo/grouping and 1 for raiding and hard instances. So we are great at both worlds.</span></b></p><p>2. The healer/caster warden   Primary healer, support</p><p> This warden generally maxes out the AGIL/STA/INT lines the best he can. He also goes down the movement line in the Warden EoF tree. He can't taken much beating, but he has maximized his healing ability, along with giving him good DPS in the INT line. Not as good DPS as a melee warden...but he's a lot better at heals...which is what is expected of a warden in higher end tiers. Sure, you cannot solo as good in tight areas with no room to root/nuke things, but you can make your GROUP survive longer and get into places you couldn't as a solo player. You can also solo better (not quicker!) than a melee warden if there's a lot of room to move around (root/nuke). However, if there's little room, a melee warden would be the best.</p><p><b><span style="color: #0099ff;">Extremely misleading a Warden going down the agi line vs str line does not heal for anymore, if anyone he uses more mana from overcasting on fast ticking hots, I have yet to see any raid encounters where faster hots are required. Faster hots just tick faster they do not heal for more, although a str Warden can and will in some situations actually heal for more.</span></b></p><p>In general...I'd say a solo player would definetly want melee warden...and a groupie player would want the healer/caster warden.</p><p><b><span style="color: #0099ff;">With the caster Warden casts times are much longer than with the melee Warden, a melee specced warden can do more damage and spend less time casting ca's, in fact cast times are so fast on CA's the normaly a melee warden can get off all CA's between heal casts. and have the advantage of healing entire group with boon proc.</span></b></p></blockquote>

[janmystique]

<p>A healing specc'd warden is slow and steady. I raid so am specc'd for healing. On raids, I can keep going a long time as my power doesn't run out particualy quickly. Think someone said wardens are in raids to make things safe! On the other hand, I can't heal spike damage. Don't expect to be top of the healing parser if the fights are fairly comfortable as I think it is more on the long fights that we really shine.</p><p>Groups are great as here I can really mix the healing with some dps. Brace yourself though for those rude pickup tanks who ask why you are not doing dps when actually, you are doing your best ones!</p><p>Soloing is slow but I can take on higher level single targets if I root - and the roots are good and hold quite well - perhaps because my dps is lowish and I don't "wake them up" over much!</p><p>Things I would miss about most about my warden are the portals (how tedious to have to wait for the boat!), and Spirit of the Wolf (gives good run speed increase particularly useful if you haven't got a good horse). I really like my warden.</p><p>A warden is a healer whichever way you look at it so if you don't want to heal as a priority when grouping, perhaps another choice? I don't think that I would be very popular in groups if I concentrated on dps and let everyone die! <img src="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/images/smilies/97ada74b88049a6d50a6ed40898a03d7.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" width="15" height="15" /> Other classes can heal well too. My main experience is with the necromancer who can keep going pretty well doing a nice mix of things like dps, healing, moving the power around etc! </p>

[RpTheHotrod]

<cite>Grainer@Crushbone wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>RpTheHotrod wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>Here are two different roles a warden often chooses</p><p>1. The melee warden    Secondary healer/Secondary tank</p><p>With AAs, he converts his spells to melee attacks. These do more damage and auto-upgrade as you level instead of buying new ones. These are very nice. Also, he would go down the STR line, giving him some very handy abilities (like chance to group heal per hit, and a high chance of double attacking per hit). In the Warden EoF tree, you have the combat art conversion abilities. At the end of it, you can choose an ability that causes you to crit on 75% of your melee attacks. This mean's some SERIOUS damage output (especially if you get the other melee attacks in other druid lines). Also, the warden would use the Warden EoF mitigation bonus (maxed out, it increases your SELF mitigation buff effect by 50%). With the extra druid AA points,  he normally maxes out melee attacks from other lines.</p><p><b><span style="color: #0099ff;">Completely false, melee Warden can be and is just as good as being main healer.</span></b></p><p>IN GENERAL: He is a pretty good healer, but not as good as he could be since he's using tank stat gear and not WIS stuff. He makes an AWESOME solo player and secondary "tank" (I was able to take on ^^^ heroic even con mobs without dying all within melee range). Unfortunatly, he has a lower mana pool.</p><p><b><span style="color: #0099ff;">Misleading, melee Wardens usually have 2 sets of gear 1 for solo/grouping and 1 for raiding and hard instances. So we are great at both worlds.</span></b></p><p>2. The healer/caster warden   Primary healer, support</p><p> This warden generally maxes out the AGIL/STA/INT lines the best he can. He also goes down the movement line in the Warden EoF tree. He can't taken much beating, but he has maximized his healing ability, along with giving him good DPS in the INT line. Not as good DPS as a melee warden...but he's a lot better at heals...which is what is expected of a warden in higher end tiers. Sure, you cannot solo as good in tight areas with no room to root/nuke things, but you can make your GROUP survive longer and get into places you couldn't as a solo player. You can also solo better (not quicker!) than a melee warden if there's a lot of room to move around (root/nuke). However, if there's little room, a melee warden would be the best.</p><p><b><span style="color: #0099ff;">Extremely misleading a Warden going down the agi line vs str line does not heal for anymore, if anyone he uses more mana from overcasting on fast ticking hots, I have yet to see any raid encounters where faster hots are required. Faster hots just tick faster they do not heal for more, although a str Warden can and will in some situations actually heal for more.</span></b></p><p>In general...I'd say a solo player would definetly want melee warden...and a groupie player would want the healer/caster warden.</p><p><b><span style="color: #0099ff;">With the caster Warden casts times are much longer than with the melee Warden, a melee specced warden can do more damage and spend less time casting ca's, in fact cast times are so fast on CA's the normaly a melee warden can get off all CA's between heal casts. and have the advantage of healing entire group with boon proc.</span></b></p></blockquote></blockquote><p>Always a troll in any forum, no worries on what he's saying.</p><p>A melee specced warden will be having much less power...which means much less heals. He would also have much less of a heal crit. Also, the agil line does more than make you heal tick more often...it also increases the initial heal, as well. Time to do some research, buddy.  If you're in a raid beating down on the boss...well, you've got problems. You should be concentrating on heals...which means more WIS gear and less tank gear. Leave DPS to DPS classes, and let healers heal.</p><p> In normal groups, both builds are viable. It just depends on your playstyle. Would you prefer to heal less but have more tankage and go more solo, or would you prefer to heal better and have better survivability for your group?</p>

[dpsman]

<cite>RpTheHotrod wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Grainer@Crushbone wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>RpTheHotrod wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>Here are two different roles a warden often chooses</p><p>1. The melee warden    Secondary healer/Secondary tank</p><p>With AAs, he converts his spells to melee attacks. These do more damage and auto-upgrade as you level instead of buying new ones. These are very nice. Also, he would go down the STR line, giving him some very handy abilities (like chance to group heal per hit, and a high chance of double attacking per hit). In the Warden EoF tree, you have the combat art conversion abilities. At the end of it, you can choose an ability that causes you to crit on 75% of your melee attacks. This mean's some SERIOUS damage output (especially if you get the other melee attacks in other druid lines). Also, the warden would use the Warden EoF mitigation bonus (maxed out, it increases your SELF mitigation buff effect by 50%). With the extra druid AA points,  he normally maxes out melee attacks from other lines.</p><p><b><span style="color: #0099ff;">Completely false, melee Warden can be and is just as good as being main healer.</span></b></p><p>IN GENERAL: He is a pretty good healer, but not as good as he could be since he's using tank stat gear and not WIS stuff. He makes an AWESOME solo player and secondary "tank" (I was able to take on ^^^ heroic even con mobs without dying all within melee range). Unfortunatly, he has a lower mana pool.</p><p><b><span style="color: #0099ff;">Misleading, melee Wardens usually have 2 sets of gear 1 for solo/grouping and 1 for raiding and hard instances. So we are great at both worlds.</span></b></p><p>2. The healer/caster warden   Primary healer, support</p><p> This warden generally maxes out the AGIL/STA/INT lines the best he can. He also goes down the movement line in the Warden EoF tree. He can't taken much beating, but he has maximized his healing ability, along with giving him good DPS in the INT line. Not as good DPS as a melee warden...but he's a lot better at heals...which is what is expected of a warden in higher end tiers. Sure, you cannot solo as good in tight areas with no room to root/nuke things, but you can make your GROUP survive longer and get into places you couldn't as a solo player. You can also solo better (not quicker!) than a melee warden if there's a lot of room to move around (root/nuke). However, if there's little room, a melee warden would be the best.</p><p><b><span style="color: #0099ff;">Extremely misleading a Warden going down the agi line vs str line does not heal for anymore, if anyone he uses more mana from overcasting on fast ticking hots, I have yet to see any raid encounters where faster hots are required. Faster hots just tick faster they do not heal for more, although a str Warden can and will in some situations actually heal for more.</span></b></p><p>In general...I'd say a solo player would definetly want melee warden...and a groupie player would want the healer/caster warden.</p><p><b><span style="color: #0099ff;">With the caster Warden casts times are much longer than with the melee Warden, a melee specced warden can do more damage and spend less time casting ca's, in fact cast times are so fast on CA's the normaly a melee warden can get off all CA's between heal casts. and have the advantage of healing entire group with boon proc.</span></b></p></blockquote></blockquote><p>Always a troll in any forum, no worries on what he's saying.</p><p>A melee specced warden will be having much less power...which means much less heals. He would also have much less of a heal crit. Also, the agil line does more than make you heal tick more often...it also increases the initial heal, as well. Time to do some research, buddy.  If you're in a raid beating down on the boss...well, you've got problems. You should be concentrating on heals...which means more WIS gear and less tank gear. Leave DPS to DPS classes, and let healers heal.</p><p> In normal groups, both builds are viable. It just depends on your playstyle. Would you prefer to heal less but have more tankage and go more solo, or would you prefer to heal better and have better survivability for your group?</p></blockquote><p>Not a troll, I'm just trying to make sure that when peeps ask for advice that they don't get mislead with false information. For some reason.</p><p>I have no idea why most non melee Warden's are under the impression that us melee Warden's only have melee gear. Most of us melee Wardens have a second set of melee gear for solo. So no we do not have less power and less ehals when needed. With my melee gear on I'm over 600 STR now and with my healing gear on I'm at 859 Wis with over 8200 power.</p><p>I had 2 lvl 70 Warden's one melee specced and AGI/STA I'm retired from Raiding now;but have killed all raid content in game except some of the Avatar's so I really dont think I need to do much research.</p>

[Tallo]

I'm going to support with grainer on this one. I've got a little over 500'ish wis and 500'ish str at level 69.I swap a few small pieces of gear, but mainly look for str/wis gear, and seem to both main heal and dps fine. I root like gangbusters. My dps isn't what a scout's would be or anything, but I like it fine as I'm a healer.The root/nuking method's are still useful, and with maxed root aa's, you still can do if necessary. It's not like all of a sudden you forget how to cast spells. I keep em on another hotbar, and use the abilities all the time as needed. Melee is just more fun.Melee Warden is the only way to live, for me. Otherwise, I'd be a furry.

[Arielle Nightshade]

^^^  LDL!!???

[Eugam]

<cite>Talloak@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote>I'm going to support with grainer on this one. I've got a little over 500'ish wis and 500'ish str at level 69.I swap a few small pieces of gear, but mainly look for str/wis gear, and seem to both main heal and dps fine. I root like gangbusters. My dps isn't what a scout's would be or anything, but I like it fine as I'm a healer.The root/nuking method's are still useful, and with maxed root aa's, you still can do if necessary. It's not like all of a sudden you forget how to cast spells. I keep em on another hotbar, and use the abilities all the time as needed. Melee is just more fun.Melee Warden is the only way to live, for me. Otherwise, I'd be a furry.</blockquote>Me too. Grainer is abolutely right. Its not only min/max. Its also everything inbetween. At some point the dimishing returns kick in anyways. Usually i only swap jewels and weapon. On short fights i use a damage procing weapon, on long fights a FT weapon. I even have a power leeching sword. <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />The warden is my first alt. Playing her since 2+ years and the melee tree was the best SOE gave the warden. Even with healer gear, sitting only on something like 120 STR, i do parse while healing. I never parsed before AA was introduced.

[dpsman]

<p>I'm posting 2 screenshots of my stats, to show exactly what a melee warden can do by just switching out a some gear.</p><p>As you can see, the false theorys that some peeps have that Melee Warden's have less power and healing ability are hogwash.</p><p><img src="http://img219.imageshack.us/img219/3653/eq2000031ek3.jpg" alt="" width="403" height="565" border="0" />    <img src="http://img81.imageshack.us/img81/8840/eq2000032ue6.jpg" alt="" width="415" height="565" border="0" /></p>

[dpsman]

<p>Wanted to ad that the above pics of stats are self buffed not in a group and that going melee specc dosn't mean you are a better healer or an inferior one, just a diff flavor. With the ROK aa's you either go str/agi/sta or agi/sta/int or at least I would. As you can see with both sets of gear, Warden definately has the avoidance and mitigation to go toe to toe with a mob.</p>

[civilgeek]

<p>The MeleeCaster vs Heals debate is really not valid anymore with the extra AA's we get from ROK. </p><p>I am melee spec'ed and have all the important aspects of the Str, Agi, and Sta lines maxed out including the end abilities in the agi and sta lines. In addition, I have all of the Class specific end abilities except for the 50% cure save of the cure line. I just can't justify putting that many points into the line for the end ability, although, when all is said and done I believe all my extra points will end up in the traumagroup cure lines for the increased mitigation buffs (The rest of the cures are fairly useless for raiders). The warden can have the best of both worlds now without picking and choosing between heals and dps.</p><p>I get a kick out anyone who says healers should not ever dps in raid... that is a sure way to drop a good 4-6k dps right off the raid parse. As the individual your parse may not seem like much but with 5-7 healers in a raid the group can pack a punch together. On top of that when melee spec'ed I can blow my entire arsenal of attacks in about 5 seconds and keep healing the rest of the time. The debate is really dead with the launch of ROK. I just wish they would give us some STRWISSTA gear so I didn't need two sets of gear all the time!</p>

[Skivley101]

<p>Id like to add  my $27.50 .... For the umpteen time , The mele caster hybrid is the best spec period , As long as you have atleast adept3 heals ... The power of infusion with the minimum mele spec and a 3 int/4 str ratio , is awesome , and yes have good roots . With the addition of more AA's per tree , I can add pet charm for solo/small group , or pick some healing augment for heavy group/raid content.</p><p>And yes i have many peices of gear to fine tune for the situation.</p>

[Leemeg]

Just want to add a couple of things.1. Defence/Tankage. I can't really see the big difference between a casting warden or a melee warden.  It is most likely that both builds has the self mitigation buff AA setup. The difference may be in the equipment, but the amount of defence/avoidance is not in the STR tree or the melee CA's boxes. I have played both, and I really haven't seen that much difference between these two builds when it comes to survivalability.  When I leveled up with the caster build, I rarely bothered to root the mobs, since keeping myself alive wasn't a issue with any solomobs, or those heroics that didn't hit too hard. I only used root when I needed to thin a multiple encounter situations, or equal level heroics. The defence and avoidance of a Warden are impressive. Combine that with heal procs, means it is real hard to die.2. Agi line HoT enhancement. This one don't necessarily heal for more per cast (except the 24% on the first tick), chain use it, and you get a real nice buff to the hps it gives.Non enhanced (my M1 G.Chloroplast): 433-530 (avg. 482). Ticks every 2nd second for 10 seconds. I.e. 6 ticks. With a 2sec cast, and 6sec recast, a warden can chain cast this with a double tick every 10th second. This makes an average HPS of <b>289</b>.Enhanced: 433-530 + 24% on first tick, ticks every 1.5 second for total 8 second. It is still possible to chain heal with this spell, including a double tick every 8th seconds. This makes an average HPS of <b>376</b>. Which are an 30% enhancement on the possible HPS on the HoT.Of course we can discuss the actual need of this enhancement in the different situations, since in 95% of the fights where the damage taken in the group/raid is low/moderate, it has not that big effect. But, in the situation where you need to push out as much HPS as possible, this enhancement helps quite a bit. The backdraw with the enhancement, is that it uses a bit more power overall (roughly 25% more power usage per second), due to the shorter duration. <b>IF </b>it is chain casted.

[Skivley101]

<cite>Creub@Splitpaw wrote:</cite><blockquote>Just want to add a couple of things.1. Defence/Tankage. I can't really see the big difference between a casting warden or a melee warden.  It is most likely that both builds has the self mitigation buff AA setup. The difference may be in the equipment, but the amount of defence/avoidance is not in the STR tree or the melee CA's boxes. I have played both, and I really haven't seen that much difference between these two builds when it comes to survivalability.  When I leveled up with the caster build, I rarely bothered to root the mobs, since keeping myself alive wasn't a issue with any solomobs, or those heroics that didn't hit too hard. I only used root when I needed to thin a multiple encounter situations, or equal level heroics. </blockquote>well as far as tankage , meaning you hold the agro , the mele warden wins hands down , the ability to deal the damge fast, and the aoe , are far superior to the slow casting warden. Its true the cloth wearer's need to hold back a little in the beginning , and some times pulling with roots helps for agro also. Infusion will help with holding agro a little better too, by standing on one target while targeting another.

[Melli]

<cite></cite><blockquote>A melee specced warden will be having much less power...which means much less heals. He would also have much less of a heal crit. Also, the agil line does more than make you heal tick more often...it also increases the initial heal, as well. Time to do some research, buddy.  If you're in a raid beating down on the boss...well, you've got problems. You should be concentrating on heals...which means more WIS gear and less tank gear. Leave DPS to DPS classes, and let healers heal.<p> In normal groups, both builds are viable. It just depends on your playstyle. Would you prefer to heal less but have more tankage and go more solo, or would you prefer to heal better and have better survivability for your group?</p></blockquote>Not necessarily true.  With the increase in the number of AAs you can get, you can spec both melee and healing just fine.  Also, gear isn't an issue because you can always swap pieces out when you need to.  I still have 800 wisdom and all my heal AAs, including max heal crits.  I solo great, group great and am always at the top of the heal parse on raids. The biggest benefit as a melee warden for healing is that CAs are almost instant.  I never have to worry about interrupting a cast because the wizard got trigger happy and pulled aggro.  Combine that with boon and some heal proc items - makes for a great group combo.  If you are a good multi-tasker, you can probably heal better while meleeing than most int/nuke wardens.

[MullenSkywatcher]

<cite>Metafour wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>I'm fairly new to this game, and I'm a bit confused about this class. I'd like to see some people's descriptions of the warden and their primary class role as of the current state of the game. Most info I've found for the class is old and outdated and doesn't have correct spell lists and does not include RoK info. I'd like to know from experienced warden players what I could expect from this class if I were to make one.</p><p>Is this a healer class? Do wardens get stuck healing when they are in instance groups and raids? is this more of a dps class? Do wardens spend more time nuking? Do wardens buff or debuff much? Are they a support class?</p><p>Basically, I want to know on average what the typical duties of a warden are in a party, either an instance party or a raid party. I'm talking about all level ranges, since obvioiusly I'll be starting from level 1 and working my way up.</p></blockquote>I guess the FAQ isn't useful anymore for the first 1-70 levels because it doesn't have RoK spell lists?!  /boggleWardens are straight forward healers with excellent non combat utility (ports, run speed) and moderate dps.  While you have the option to melee, you are not a primary, secondary, or tertiary tank, as you don't have taunts, the aggression skill, or enough dps to hold a mob against most of the other classes (i.e. in a defiler - warden duo, you can tank, otherwise...).  RoK content is significantly harder than previous expansion, don't expect to take on a even con ^^^ toe to toe, it will smoke you, raid gear or not.