THIS POST IS OUT OF DATE AS OF THE RELEASE OF SENTINEL'S FATE, BUT I HAVE LEFT THE POST UP BECAUSE SOME OF THE INFOMATION IS STILL RELEVANT. I WILL BE UPDATING IT AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. There are several varying setups you can take that really depend on your play style and whether you want to have a little more dps and how you wish to gain your dps (from spell casting or melee or both). WARNING INCOMING WALL OF TEXT / INFORMATION Please forgive the length but writing out a good AA outline is something Ive meant to do for a while and you have only prompted me to finally write one out. I will start by outlining the basics of the Druid tree. For healing the 2 most important trees in the druid line are Agility and Stamina. The popular heal spec is Agility 6 4 4 8 1 , Stamina 4 4 6 8 1. The remaining points can be used for dps down Int line or Strength line depending whether you nuke or melee. Agility line has a lot of fluff at the beginning (base agility increase, mez animal, and charm animal which can be fun when soloing). The most important two blocks are the Wild Regeneration and Tortoise Shell (4th and 5th down). Wild Regeneration It is recommended for ANY SPEC you choose to have 8 points in Wild Regeneration at all times. If you max this AA it reduces the time between your HOT ticks from 2 seconds to 1.5s and front loads the initial tick with +24% base which is AWESOME for that first heal tick which is often times the only one that really matters. This block is a huge increase to overall healing effectiveness on the Regrowth and Winds of Renewal spell lines. It is worth noting the 24% increase to the first tick is included in the base of the spell when doing calculations for various caps to + healing on specific spells. Increasing the base heal amount means the spell subsequently has a higher cap for its + to heals amount Tortoise Shell This ability is more situational and is optional from a heroic instance stand point. It can really shine in raids however. The benefits of it is that it gives your group AOE immunity which is great to avoid some of those big raid AEs. It also includes a GREAT increase to shield effectiveness so it can boost your tanks avoidance by a rather substantial amount. The negatives to it is that it has an extremely small radius so your group members have to be very near by to gain its effects. It will also root and stifle you when in effect which means you can not heal or move or do anything really besides use auto attack. A lot of guilds use Tortoise Shell as part of their strategies and a lot of guilds do not. This is one ability that I personally don't have. Its almost completely useless in heroic instances especially if you are solo healing because it removes you from the fight for the most part. It is most effective when the mobs abilities can be timed and you can toggle it on / off. Stamina line is pretty solid on the whole and if it weren't for the existence of Wild Regeneration would be the only line really necessary for healing. Base stamina increase in the first block is always good for more hp. Serene Symbol is highly situational and rarely used, but nice to have when its needed to dispel a damage shield or a reflect from a mob. The most important blocks in Stamina line however are Serene Knowledge, Serene Focus and Serenity (3rd, 4th, and 5th blocks down). Serene Knowledge Serene knowledge will add a proc to your heals that will make your target immune to stuns and interrupts for 3 seconds. This proc is 2% per point so 16% chance to proc at max. This might not sound like much and its hard to tell when its really working, but as you get higher levels and get into the harder T7 and T8 heroic zones you will find a lot of mobs that stun. If you ever get a chance to watch you will notice that this proc goes off a LOT so its actually rather nice especially for your tanks or fellow healers who might be able to get off that taunt or heal when they would otherwise not. Serene Focus This block is pretty self explanatory. With 8 points in it you gain 16% chance to critical heal. At lower levels where heal crit gear itemization is few or non existent this is HUGE. Even as you get into higher level zones and find heal crit gear more abundant 16% is still huge. Without the absolute best gear in the game its impossible to cap your heal crit without this AA and even then focusing on SOLELY heal crit is bad gear choice because balancing various mods is the most effective way to go. Maxing this block is a good idea for most all wardens. Serenity This is a self stun and interrupt immunity ability that has a .5s cast and can be used while stunned. This is basically a free Freedom of Mind potion with a 30s duration instead of 10 and a 5 minute recast instead of 15. As mentioned earlier a LOT of mobs in the higher level zones have forms of AOE or frontal stun abilities. The capability to break this stun on yourself and continue healing is often time the difference between wiping and not. The immunity to interrupt is a nice added bonus and has several applications in higher level raiding as well as soloing when you have too many mobs on you to get that heal off The rest of the druid tree is fluff from a pure healers perspective. Int line is nice for casting DPS. In my personal spec I use Int line for the spell crits and Infusion. Infusion is a nice little boost to DPS and even as a pure healer is nice because you dps THROUGH healing. Every time you cast a heal a mob nearby gets nuked for a small amount and every time you group heal a mob nearby gets nuked once for every person your heal landed on. So really it doesn't require you to change your play style at all as a pure healer. Its FREE dps. Who can argue with doing 800dps when all your doing is casting heals? A good alternate heal spec that includes Infusion would be Agi 4 4 4 8 Sta 4 4 6 8 1 Int 4 4 8 6 1 This is my healing spec. It keeps Wild Regeneration at max, heal crits at max, gives me Serenity and Serene Knowledge for added stun / interrupt immunities, and I get max spell crits (28% extra spell crit with 8 points into the 3rd block on Int, Stormcaller's Control) along with Infusion. You lose Tortoise Shell but as mentioned earlier its rather situational and not really necessary unless your guild requires it for some raid. Strength line is the melee line. If you wanted a melee alternative to the casting alternative above you could run Str 4 4 8 8 Agi 4 4 4 8 Sta 4 4 6 8 1 It maintains the same basic healing principles outlined earlier but adds 40% double attack for melee (3rd block on Str, Wild Ferocity) and a very nice group heal proc off melee attacks which goes off a lot as long as you keep swinging (this would be 4th block on Str, Natural Boon). You also gain base strength increase which is good for melee as well as another combat art that adds temporary haste (2nd block on Str, Nature Blade). Strength line is best when combined with melee line in the Warden tree. I do not recommend taking Strength line unless you take the melee line in the other tree as you simply wont get as much out of it otherwise. Strength line is really good for soloing and for dps when coupled with the melee line in warden tree and in my opinion is one of the funner specs to run. Wisdom line is in my opinion completely worthless outside of MAYBE a PVP perspective (I dunno maybe a PVP guy can comment on this). Some people SWEAR by the wisdom end line rebirth but I find it to be completely unnecessary and often times just results in more deaths for you especially if you are solo healing. Nothing besides rebirth in the entire line is really worth putting points into and wasting that many points JUST for rebirth is huge mismanagement of available AA.
Ok. So now that we have covered druid tree lets talk about Warden tree. The most important portion of this tree from a healers perspective is Renewal. It is recommended to max the following blocks Enhance: Resurrections (5 points) This will make your resurrect spells resurrect your allies with 30% health and power instead of 15%. Its always nice to resurrect with more power. Health can always be healed back to full rather quickly, but power doesn't always come as quick. Enhance: Spores (4 points) This will raise the trigger chance on spores from 8% (base) to 12%. This AA is not required if you have 2 pieces of Veeshan Peak set gear as the 2 set bonus alone will CAP the spores trigger at 16%, but from a non raiders point of view this block is great to take because there are few other ways to increase trigger chance on this line of spells. Enhance: Spirit of the Bat (5 points) This adds 10 in combat regen and 50% more agility to your Spirit of the Bat spell. This isn't a particularly impressive or game changing increase but is required however to reach the end of the line ability and is far more useful than the alternative (Enhance: Healing Grove). Enhance: Death Interventions (5 points) Probably one of our few class defining abilities is within this block and the Renewal end line. This will reduce the reuse timers on both death intervention spells by 50%. This takes Tunare's Watch down to 3 minute 20 second reuse and Nature's Reprieve line of spells down to 6 minute 40 second reuse. Considering the other healers in the game only have one death intervention spell at a 10 minute base reuse ours are significant better and used more often. Wardens in raids are traditionally known for the saves. Learning when to effectively use your death intervention spells can really show the difference between a truly good warden and one who just spams heals. These spells WILL save your tanks and subsequently your groups. Learn to snap to these spells. Learn to love these spells. Sadly, they are really all we have left to cling onto as far as something we offer over the other healers. Enhance: Healing Grove (1 point at least) In order to get the end line you need 20 points in Renewal so you will have to put at least one point into Enhance: Healing Grove. If you get 2 pieces of Veeshan's Peak set gear you can eventually drop Enhance: Spores and just put 5 into the Healing Grove block. This AA will reduce the reuse on that line of spells by 3s per point so 15s at max. That line of healing spells is rather useless though given the the amount of HP the tree has so this block is rather fluff unless you like putting up trees more often to annoy your group / raid Reformation (1 point) Renewal end line is the best single AA on the entire Wardens tree and is a must have. Reformation will increase the amount of triggers on our two death intervention spells by 1. This means between Tunare's Watch and Nature's Reprieve spell lines you can save your tank from 4 hits that would otherwise have meant death. Go see for yourself sometime. Run down to Naggy drop these 2 on you and have a go at him. Haha, but in all seriousness this block as said earlier is one of the few blocks that defines us as a class at the moment as far as something we offer over the other healers. I'm not going to preach on the importance of using death interventions as a Warden anymore I think I covered that earlier. The other line worth mentioning for usefulness is Movement line. The enhancement to our various roots is nice from a soloing perspective, and can even be nice in a heroic zone. It really doesn't help from a pure healing stand point but it is nice for various reasons. Wardens have the best root spells in the game and with AAs they can be even more effective forms of crowd control. When things get messy you can always root the bunch of mobs and step back to regroup. The enhancement to SoW is also a really nice extra for getting around the game quickly (at least until you can get epic crafter earring). The basic reason you take this line though is to get to the end line. In my spec I do so by maxing Enhance: Holding Vines, Enhance: Spirit of the Wolf, Enhance: Underbrush, and Enhance: Willow Wisp. This will spend 20 points and unlock the movement end line. Nature Walk This is a permanent group buff that requires no concentration slot. This will give the wardens group immunity to root effects and reduce snaring effects by 50%. This is great for training to different places as well for a variety of other situational raid mobs and heroic mobs. This means that annoyance of the ever present PIN on almost every mob in game will once and for all become absolutely nothing (I know a poor attempt at humor but I used to have a tank who whined about pin cures all the time even though I had Nature Walk so I joke about it a lot). This ability is just an overall good thing to have because it is warden specific and expected by most group or raid leaders who know the warden class. Outside of Renewal line and Movement line (just for Nature Walk) the other AAs are mostly fluff in my opinion. The cure line used to be good, but after a nerf and then another nerf via cure consolidation it has come down to a useless line. To begin with, at higher levels resists start to climb high on even heroic legendary gear. It is very easy to reach suitable magic resist levels where additional resists provided via cure line are unnecessary and wasted. Plus, given the the way it currently works it seems sort of backwards. The resists aren't applied until after you have cured a type of effect, so you are basically buffing the resist after the damage for it has already occurred. The only block on cure tree still worth anything would be trauma cure because the little extra mitigation it provides can be nice. Some people swear by Shatter Infection (cure end line) but Ive never found it to save or help me or my group in any way. In fact it almost seemed bugged for me and never triggered, but others claim it works fine so I trust them. It is basically a temporary group buff you put up and the first person in your group to drop below 50% consumes the buff and is cured of all effects. It will only trigger once on one person so once the first person drops below 50% it has been used. Even still, if it does work as intended its a lot like Rebirth to me. You just have to spend so many points on abilities that are nearly completely worthless. I don't see Shatter Infection warranting wasting all those points to get to it. However, from a pure healing perspective this line would be the one to take after completing Renewal and getting Nature walk. In my opinion a solid alternative to the Cure line (since its mostly obsolete or useless now) is the melee line. One block on this tree that is great even for a healing spec is Enhance: Defender of the Forest. This will add 50% more mitigation to our wolf form self buff. At master 1 this will bump you up to be about as good as most chain wearers which is a significant increase given where we normally sit on the mitigation curve. Going down the melee line will convert all our hostile nuke spells into combat arts. You will still retain access to your spells so you can nuke or melee depending on the situation. The end of line grants 75% melee crit as well. When you combo all the combat arts and melee crit with Strength line in the druid tree you have a pretty nice set of melee mods. With 40% double attack and 75% melee crit you will be able to do decent damage. The benefits of melee line in my opinion are that you can do consistent and decent damage while weaving in your heals. All our main nukes cast in 2 seconds or more while the majority of our combat arts cast in .5s and the one AOE combat art casts in 1s. Our multiple target nuke is an encounter based spell which means the mobs must be linked while the combat art version (Whirl of Frost) is blue AOE. Our combat arts can be used while moving and generally flow pretty quickly. It is much more fluid to dps in melee spec while healing. The quicker casts and ability to move and reposition while getting your CAs in between is great, plus our auto attack can be beefy at 75% crit and 40% double attack. Auto attacks will almost always land between spell casts even if you are spamming healing so its free dps, plus if you spec down Strength line you have natural boon, so its free heals too. Its win / win In closing, the only MUST HAVE AAs for healing are. Wild Regeneration (4th block of Agi line) Serene Focus (4th block of Sta line) Enhance: Spores (near the beginning of Renewal line) Enhance: Death Interventions (near end of Renewal line) Reformation (Renewal end line) Everything else is just a way to get those abilities, nice things to have, or different ways to enhance our personal dps. The best spec is one that suits your play style the best. So play around a bit until you find the right combination (nuking, melee, healing, or a mixture of the 3). Here are various setups that I have used in the past and suggestions for certain play styles. This is a popular 'full healing' setup. This spec includes Tortoise Shell and cure line. This spec used the left over points to include a small dps boost for spell based dps by taking spell crits on int line. *Note* I didnt spend many points into boosting elemental resists as we naturally buff that and gain more from boosting the other resistances. This also includes the mitigation boost from Enhance: Defender of the Forest. This is an alternate full healing spec that takes Infusion instead of Tortoise Shell since Tortoise Shell is largely a matter of opinion and guild preference and is completely optional for heroic content. This spec is great for people who wish to take cure line and Shatter Infection but still want to retain some small amount of dps. Taking full int line like this basically gives all the AA enhancements to spell based dps we have available so this could be considered a full spell dps spec as well. This is my personal healing setup. It is a hybrid spec in every form. It allows for decent spell damage (Int line, max crit with infusion), decent melee damage (Warden melee line), and all the blocks to provide maximum healing potential. Since I feel that cure line is largely a waste of AA points I invest my points elsewhere for a little extra dps (melee line). *NOTE* I have Veeshan's Peak 2 set bonus otherwise Enhance: Spores would be max at 4 points and there would only be 1 in Enhance: Healing Grove. The next spec suggestion would be for FULL DPS. This is my normal setup. I always run this in group heroic zones and I raid with this spec the majority of the time (I only swap to Stamina line for the really hard mobs and a few special mobs that require Serenity). Full dps spec means full Int spec (spell crits and Infusion) and full Str spec (double attack and Natural Boon). This is setup is only advised if you can achieve very high heal crit without the 16% you gain from Stamina tree, but if you can get a really high heal crit without the Sta AA then is probably the most efficient use of our points. *NOTE* I have Veeshan's Peak 2 set bonus otherwise Enhance: Spores would be max at 4 points and there would only be 1 in Enhance: Healing Grove.
Shadows AA Above is a picture of a warden Shadows AA tree with zero points spent in any tree. As you can see there are AA spent requirements on the Priest, Druid, and Warden lines so this will be a limiting factor for those wardens who are leveling or are starting TSO not at the previous AA cap of 140. Progression through the Shadows tree requires 10 points spent in the previous line to unlock the following. So you have to put 10 in general to put anything in priest, 10 in priest to put anything in druid, and so on. Each AA on the General, Priest, Druid, and Warden tree can take a maximum of 5 points. The end line abilities unlock and become available for purchase once you have spent 10 points in the tree it is in. The Priest and Druid end line abilities cost one point a piece to get and the Warden end line stance abilities cost two points a piece to get. General General tree is available to every character in the game so the AAs here are well... Very general and generic. 10 points MUST BE spent in General to unlock priest tree so you basically have to max at least 2 blocks in general or spread 10 points around the general AAs. The pictures above show each general AA at rank one. Below are brief descriptions of each AA in general. Pet of the Gods - This AA enhances your deity pet. 5 points gives 50% casting speed and 50% more attribute bonus. This is pretty worthless on the whole and not recommended. Bountiful Feast - This AA improves the duration of food / drink. 5 points gives 12.5% longer duration on food / drink. This AA will basically only save you coin in the long run and is not recommended. Ample Harvest - This is a harvester's AA. This gives you a chance to double harvest. 5 points gives 15% chance to double harvest. I'm not quite sure exactly how this AA works because I haven't tried it but it seems it could be nice for tradeskillers / harvesters / alternate spec on mirror. Hearty Constitution - This AA increases your characters maximum health. 5 points will increase your maximum health by 2.5%. This is one of the few general AAs that is useful for actual combat in game and is recommended on every spec. Swift Journey - This AA increases your speed while on mount. 5 points will increase your mount speed by 10.0 (or 10% faster while mounted). This AA is not recommended due to the restriction on zones mounts are useful in. I would suggest taking the general out of combat run speed AA if you wanted to take some type of speed increaser from general. Enhanced Mind - This AA increases your characters maximum power. 5 points will increase your maximum power by 2.5%. This is one of the few general AAs that is useful for actual combat in game, but wardens have no need for maximum power once we get our epic so you can opt to spend these 5 points elsewhere in general. Swift Strides - This AA increases your out of combat runspeed. 5 points will increase your run speed by 5%. This AA is useful for general moving around in the game and stacks with spirit of the wolf fine so is a good alternative to Enhanced Mind once you get your epic weapon. Swift Creation - This is a crafter's AA. 5 points will increase progress by 10%. I have no idea what that means or how this AA works. If anyone has had a chance to test it your feedback here would be appreciated. This AA looks like it would be a good choice for a mirror spec or for crafters. Priest Priest End Line Priest tree is a tree that is available to all priest classes and has a good mix of defensive, healing, dps, and solo type of AA abilities. Pictured above are the priest line AAs at rank one. Casting Expertise, Battle Prowess, and Sacred Follower are all given to you when you take the Litany of Combat AA so they are pictured seperately to show you what Litany of Combat is exactly. Below are brief descriptions of each AA. Litany of Combat - Is a DPS type AA. Taking Litany of Combat will grant you 3 new buffs. You can only run one of these buffs at a time. Each of the buffs is designed to buff a different type of dps. Casting Expertise gives base spell damage, extra critical spell damage, and hostile casting / reuse speed. Battle Prowess gives weapon damage bonus, double attack, and base combat art damage. Sacred Follower is mainly a buff for shaman dogs that give increases Str and Sta, weapon accuracy, and DPS to their dogs. This AA is great because it is flexible in allowing us to choose how we wish to buff our DPS and it allows to do so with casting or melee. With maxed Litany of Combat the buffs it gives are almost an entirely second DPS stance and can be extremely powerful when run combined with the DPS stance given at the warden end line. This is in my opinion an essential AA in every build because it gives the priest a way to run a full heal stance, a medium heal / dps stance, and a full dps stance and allows for better optimization of heals / dps mix. At 5 points in Litany of Combat Casting Expertise gives 15% casting / reuse on hostile spells, 5% base spell damage, and 5% critical spell multiplier. Battle Prowess gives 20 weapon damage bonus, 25% double attack, and 15% base combat art damage. Ally Revivification - This reduces the reuse of in combat resurrect spells by 12s per rank. This AA will change the reuse on Reincarnation, Nature's Touch, and Equinox. With 5 points into this AA you can reduce the reuse by 1 minute on each of those spells. This AA isnt really suggested to take because on most raids priests don't do very much rezzing. Prayer of Healing - This AA directly enhances the Minor Bloom line of spells (the t8 version of this spell is Sylvan Bloom). At 5 points this will improve the base heal amount of the spell by 10% and the critical heal amount by 15%. This means the spell heals for 10% more all the time and an extra 15% more when it criticals. Combined with a high heal crit this AA becomes very powerful and will significantly increase the amount you see from this heal. This AA is recommended in every spec because it directly enhances one of our primary heals. Protective Prayer - This AA enhances our group physical mitigation buff. With 5 points spent it will increase the mitigation provided by the buff by 15%. This AA is alright for solo players and for players who rarely have another priest in group but is not recommended for any regular raider or a warden who is regularly grouped with other priests. The warden group mitigation buff is weak compared to other classes who will basically ALWAYS run theirs so if the other priests take this AA then there is no need for us to take it also since the buffs do not stack and we will probably drop ours to run another wisdom buff anyways. Secular Protection - This AA enhances our group heat / cold resistances buff. With 5 points spent it will increase the heat / cold resistances by 25%. This AA is not really recommended for anyone because extra spell resists amount to little or no gain on the average geared player. Seal of Faith - This AA increases our shield effectiveness by 10% with 5 points spent. It is a good option for solo players who find themselves tanking a lot of content and needing that extra bit of avoidance. It is completely useless for most every other warden. Supplication of the Fallen (Priest End Line) - It is basically what it says. It is an out of combat 24 man raid resurrect that will bring them back up with 100% health and 100% power. The spell has a ridiculously large effect radius so it is good for pulling dead people out from under mobs that are aggro. This ability costs one point and can be achieved once you have put 10 points into the priest line. It is not worth taking in my personal opinion because it applies revive sickness. Your raid still has to stand around and wait for the sickness to wear off and by the time it does you would have been able to regenerate to 100% health and power anyways. It saves relatively little time and is mainly just a fluff AA. If anything, it is only good for one priest in the raid and then there are much better things for us to put our points into so that one priest probably wouldn't be a warden.
Druid Druid End Line Druid tree is shared between wardens and furies. It is a little more druid specific as far as some of the bonuses and spell enhancements it offers. Like the other lines, it has a mix of both damage enhancements and healing enhancements. Pictured above are the druid line AAs at rank one. I included a picture of an examine of an enhanced Aspect of the Forest (Minor Vigor spell line) to show you how many hit points are added to the spell per rank at level 80. The amount of hit points gained on the spell does not seem to scale by spell quality level meaning you will gain the same amount of hit points with the AA whether you have a master of the buff or not. The screen shot of Nature's Wrath was taken on my main in full healing gear with no base damage modifiers on so the damage values shown should be approximate for a raid / legendary geared warden. Below are brief descriptions of each AA. Elemental Mastery - This AA increases our heat and cold damage by 10% with 5 points spent. This AA does not seem to be profession based meaning it will affect literally EVERYTHING that does any heat or cold spell damage, spells, combat arts, and procs included. One thing worth nothing about this AA is the base cold damage does affect the cold damage portion of our dps stance Glacial Assault so it combos well in that regard. Hierophant's Protection - This AA adds hit points to the Minor Vigor line (the t8 version is called Aspect of the Forest) of buff spells. The spell quality of the buff seems to have no impact on the amount of hit points gained so it doesn't matter if you have the master 1 or adept 1 version all that matters is which level of the spell you are using (i.e. the t8 buff will gain more hit points per rank than the t7 version). It will add 141 hit points per rank on the t8 variant of the spell so with 5 points spent the spell has 705 hit points added. This AA is really neither good or bad. If you are the kind to say, 'Forget dps I'm a healer' then this is probably an AA you will take. However, in my opinion, given the dps increases we have been allowed and the AAs we are given to do so with there are much better choices to invest points into. 705 hit points is not going to save anybody really so I feel points are best used elsewhere. Nature's Storm - This AA enhances directly the Cold Snap (t8 version called Velium Frost) line of spells. With 5 points spent it increases the base damage of the entire spell by 20% and adds an extra 8% damage more when you critical the spell. This AA also enhances the CA version Cold Slice properly. It is a sizeable and nice increase to our DOT but unless you are building a spec purely for DPS you probably will not take this AA. There are better AAs to put points into that affect many more spells than just one and offer more overall damage increase. Untamed Winds - This AA directly enhances the Sylvan Wind line of spells (the t8 version of this spell is Tide of Healing). At 5 points this will improve the base instant heal amount of the spell by 15% and the critical heal amount by 20%. This means the spell heals for 15% more on the first tick and an extra 20% more across the entire heal when it criticals. Combined with a high heal crit this AA becomes very powerful and will significantly increase the amount you see from this heal. This AA is recommended in every spec because it directly enhances one of our primary heals. Harmony of the Grove - This AA directly enhances the Regrowth line of spells (the t8 version of this spell is Photosynthesis). At 5 points this will improve the base heal amount of the spell by 15% and the critical heal amount by 10%. This means the spell heals for 15% more all the time and an extra 10% more when it criticals. Combined with a high heal crit this AA becomes very powerful and will significantly increase the amount you see from this heal. This AA is recommended in every spec because it directly enhances one of our primary heals. Bladed Expertise - This AA is straight forward. It increases our melee double attack by 4% per rank. With 5 points spent you will gain 20% double attack. This AA goes well with the melee build and if you spec right using this AA and Litany of Combat you can reach 85% double attack without any gear or buffs. Nature's Wrath (Druid End Line) - This is the druid end line. You must spend 10 points in the druid line to be able to purchase this. This ability costs only one point. Is it basically a new nuke / dot. It is an encounter based dot and will hit 6 mobs and given all the group encounters that I have seen in TSO it is a sizeable increase to our dps. One thing worth noting about this ability is it has a 50m casting range so can be cast from very far away and this ability can be cast while moving so its excellent for getting that little bit of damage going and getting a dot ticking while people are positioning and moving around. I recommend taking it because its an easy way to up our dps and a great increase given all the multiple mob encounters present in TSO. Warden Warden End Lines Warden tree is the portion of the Shadow AAs that is obviously available exclusively to wardens. These AAs are supposed to further help define and shape the primary role of our class. This like all the other lines has a good mix of healing increases and dps increases. You must spend at least 10 points into the warden line to be able to purchase the two end line abilities. Each of them costs 2 points a piece to purchase so they cost more than the other end lines. Below are brief descriptions of the warden line AAs and the end lines. Elemental Storm - This AA enhances the debuff component of our Cold Snap (t8 version is called Velium Frost) line of spells. This AA correctly enhances the combat art variant Cold Slice as well. With 5 points invested it will increase the mitigation decrease applied by the spell by 25%. This AA really isn't worth taking for anyone. You will see little damage increase from your spells while soloing because of the extra debuff and on raids the mobs are already at or near debuff cap so that little bit of extra heat / cold we can debuff is negligable. Critical Debilitation - This AA grants us a new buff that we can apply to one target in the group. The buff grants our target additional critical mitigation. Critical mitigation is a new statistic introduced in TSO to allow players to mitigate the also newly introduced mob crit mechanics. Basically, mobs can crit in TSO and this buff will help our target take less damage from the crits. We are the only priest in game that can buff this new statistic and it will be pretty key in learning new content that your raid force is not properly geared for yet. This is an AA I recommend to every warden as it is a new class defining type of ability. Chilling Winds - This AA increases all of our profession based cold damage spells. It will affect Cold Snap (t8 Velium Frost), Cold (t8 Icefall), and Winds of Frost (t8 Winds of Permafrost) spell lines as well as the combat art variants of those spells (Cold Slice, Cold Strike, Whirl of Frost). With 5 points invested it will increase the base damage of all these abilities by 10%, it will increase the critical damage inflicted by these abilities by 15%, and it adds 15% extra chance to critically strike with these abilities. This AA is probably the best value per points invested as far as the DPS AAs are concerned and is suggested for any hybrid heal / dps spec and for every pure dps spec. Elemental Barrier - This AA enhanced our Favor of the Untamed spell line (heat / cold ward). With 5 points invested it will increase the base ward about by 20% and increase the resistances bonus by 25%. This AA is neither really good or really bad. If you are the type of warden to not want to dps then this will definitely be one of the AAs you end up taking. I have seen a lot of elemental damage in TSO so this spell line will get use this expansion. I suggest this AA in any pure healing spec but it would probably get cut for any hybrid heal / dps spec. Blissful Healing - This AA directly enhances the Minor Florescence line of spells (the t8 version of this spell is Grand Florescence). At 5 points this will improve the base heal amount of the spell by 10% and the critical heal amount by 20%. This means the spell heals for 10% more all the time and an extra 20% more when it criticals. Combined with a high heal crit this AA becomes very powerful and will significantly increase the amount you see from this heal. This AA is recommended in every spec because it directly enhances one of our primary heals. Healing Winds - This AA directly enhances the Winds of Renewal line of spells (the t8 version of this spell is Healstorm). At 5 points this will improve the overtime heal amount of the spell by 20% and the critical heal amount by 15%. This means the spell heals for 20% more on all ticks after the big front loaded first tick and an extra 15% more across the entire spell when it criticals. Combined with a high heal crit this AA becomes very powerful and will significantly increase the amount you see from this heal. This AA is recommended in every spec because it directly enhances one of our primary heals. Glacial Assault (Warden End Line) - This is the warden dps stance. This AA can not be run with Nature's Aura. Only one of our warden end line stances can be active at once. The screen shot of the ability shown in this thread was taken on my main in full heal gear so the damage shown in the screen shot is pretty close to what it would be for the average warden. The stance does 3 things for us basically. It increases our weapon damage bonus by 25, melee crit bonus by 10, and gives us an every time cold proc. Weapon damage bonus is basically a DPS mod on crack. It affects the base weapon damage and will simply make us hit much harder. When you combine the 25 weapon damage bonus from Glacial Assault with the 20 from Litany of Combat you will be hitting much much harder. The melee crit bonus means that our critical melee attacks will critical for more. 10 melee crit bonus basically makes our crit attacks are 10% bigger. The cold damage portion basically works just like dirge COB does. On every melee autoattack or combat art it will deal that damage. The Glacial Assault cold damage is considered a spell so the damage portion can be modified by items like the choker or mayong orb that affect base spell damage as well as the druid line Elemental Mastery AA. Also since it is a considered a spell attack, it will critical based on your spell crit and spell crit bonus mods so we still need to try to stay loaded up on spell crit. This stance, like the heal stance, has a penalty for being active. When you turn on Glacial Assault your heals lose 15% base heal amount and cast 15% slower. Overall this stance is a huge increase to our outgoing damage but due to the penalties it has you have to learn when you can and can not use it. Learn to adjust and alter your stance and buff setups mid fight as it will be common to do so in the new expansion. Nature's Aura (Warden End Line) - This is the warden heal stance. This AA can not be run with Glacial Assault. Only one warden end line stances can be active at once. Also, while Nature's Aura is active the bonuses gained from any of the Litany of Combat buffs will suspend. This basically means that when you turn on Nature's Aura you are essentially engaging a pure heal mode. Most of the other key dps enhancing AAs suspend or can not be active at the same time as Nature's Aura. Nature's Aura increases the base heal of all healing spells (procs included) by 10% when active. It also increased your heal crit bonus by 5% which means you will critical for another extra 5% everytime you critical a heal. The stance also included 50% beneficial recovery speed which should help you spam heals faster when you are chain casting. It will take a tiny bit of time off between casts during that .5s that your spells are greyed out and can not cast. Its not a very great bonus (the recovery speed that is) but it is what the developers gave us. Hopefully we can get this changed in the future. The heal stance like the dps stance has penalties. While active Nature's Aura will decrease our base spell damage by 20% and increase our spell casting and reuse times by 15%. In case you were wondering, the penalty does not affect the damage on our combat arts but it does still affect the casting time and reuse time of the combat arts. This stance like the dps stance isnt meant to be run all the time. It is meant to be turned on during those pulls or fights where you just need that little extra bit of healing. Shadow AA SummarySo you made it through all that information and perhaps you find yourself asking, well where does that leave us now? Well it leaves us with a whole variety of choices and options. The new AAs further define our DPS as predominantly melee, yet we still need some spell crit and spell mods because of the proc damage. They give us options and varying setups for differing situations. For a pure dps when you dont have to heal setup you could easily run Litany of Combat along with Glacial Assault. For applications where you want some dps, but still need to do some healing you can opt to run just Litany of Combat and run no stance. You will have zero penalties from either of the stances but yet retain all the base healing and other dps increases you gained from the other new AA. For applications where the damage is just too much you can swap to full heal stance and throw all dps out the window. The new AAs like the old AAs really depend on how you play your character and how you want to play the game. They are best used in conjunction with the old AAs though. I haven't had time to do so yet, but here in the near future I will post up some new AA setups and templates including the new Shadow AAs to give you all some ideas of how to combine the AAs between all 3 trees to get the most out of your character. Here are my two current AA specs adjusted for the new TSO AAs, gear, and raiding. One is a pure healing spec and the other that I use the majority of the time is a hybrid spec. The first spec here is my regular setup. This is the hybrid spec. I use this for more than 95% of the content in game. There are some things I could take that are better for healing and some things I could take that are better for DPS but I think that I have the best of both on this spec. DRUID *NOTE* I will use the last 5 remaining AA for this tree in the Natural Boon AA on the Strength line. WARDEN *NOTE* I will use the last 2 remaining AA for this tree in the Trauma Cure AA on the Remedies line. SHADOWS The next spec is my healing setup. There are very few fights in game that require me to swap to this spec, but I keep it on hand just in case. I decided to just ignore all DPS on this build completely and focus purely on healing related AAs. DRUID *NOTE* I will use the last 5 remaining AA for this tree to max the Stormcaller's Control AA (spell crit) on the Intelligence line. The remaining 3 points will be placed into the Stormcaller's Intelligence AA (base Int increase) also on Intelligence line. WARDEN *NOTE* I will use the last 2 remaining AA for this tree in the Arcane Cure AA on the Remedies line. SHADOWS
If a moderator could sticky this thread please that would be very helpful. I will update / change this information as needed.
Here are my two current AA specs adjusted for the new TSO AAs, gear, and raiding. One is a pure healing spec and the other that I use the majority of the time is a hybrid spec. The first spec here is my regular setup. This is the hybrid spec. I use this for more than 95% of the content in game. There are some things I could take that are better for healing and some things I could take that are better for DPS but I think that I have the best of both on this spec. DRUID *NOTE* I will use the last 5 remaining AA for this tree in the Natural Boon AA on the Strength line. WARDEN *NOTE* I will use the last 2 remaining AA for this tree in the Trauma Cure AA on the Remedies line. SHADOWS The next spec is my healing setup. There are very few fights in game that require me to swap to this spec, but I keep it on hand just in case. I decided to just ignore all DPS on this build completely and focus purely on healing related AAs. DRUID *NOTE* I will use the last 5 remaining AA for this tree to max the Stormcaller's Control AA (spell crit) on the Intelligence line. The remaining 3 points will be placed into the Stormcaller's Intelligence AA (base Int increase) also on Intelligence line. WARDEN *NOTE* I will use the last 2 remaining AA for this tree in the Arcane Cure AA on the Remedies line. SHADOWS
Recently got to 80 as awarden (my other character is a monk) and this is very useful, however you don't need 20 points in movement to get nature walk.
I currently have an 80 Fury which I plan on making into a Warden. Not that I don't like Fury's... I experimented with a Warden and got him up to T6 and loved playing him. Mainly in a melee dps spec. I saw this thread so decided to look for any random pointers or guides or whatnot. At first I questioned it a little but looking it over again saw that it should work rather well for me. When I have the things I need to become a Warden I will use this guide to help position the aa's. Thank you for the time you put into this and sharing it with us.
I could not have written any better guide, and i agree on almost all. Two exeptions : i use my two anti death but they never seem to work, or if they do no real emote is shown, i never saw a tank flappiing down and them back uo due to tunare watch. I still use it when things get bad, but i wonder if it really saves life. The lack of upgrade on our group anti-deaht is also annoying, i had to buy the recipe and to offer it to our sage to get the expert version of this low level spell. I usually take the raid ressurection, 1 point over 198 is not much. ItÅ› i know only convenient but i like it.
So..is this ever going to get an update with the new trees and specs and stuff? As a "new" warden returned to the game - this thread was awesome for me a year ago and I reread it upon my return but I know that several key things have changed and point-abilities have been moved around. I'm speccing Melee and the "warden" tab is the one I'm hoping for more advice on as far as what to do after the "STR" stuff and such. Some of this is still good of course; but I keep returning hoping for that actual update since Febuary. Any other thread/site I could go that would have something this helpful/comprehensive or are we still hoping the OP returns to update this?!
The op is playing a templar now and theres no sight or sound of him updating with his thoughts on warden in sf. Id love it if he did, i found him very helpful and knowledgeable. goto eq2flames.com. some updated aa threads there, from other people some good some bad. mostly good.
lol aww, our intrepid guide jumped classes! Oh well - thanks for the forum link - I had that but hadn't thought to check there .
