I like my Warden and though I have absolutely nothing against Furies, I won't be betraying because I like being a more defensively minded healer. The Warden community is usually pretty positive, we are just a little riled up at the moment over an unexpected nerf--seems SOE thinks that being defensive is just having sub-par offense, not having exceptional defensive traits. That and there is a certain Fury who trolls our boards that seems to enjoy to stirring us up even more.... you know who you are
Its funny how the tieds turn on each expansion ................ I think KOS wardens were the obvious better choice, but with EOF Furies have a root finally and increased damage AA's are looking better. I did the betryal quest night and I'm one click away from becoming a Warden. I thought I would browse the boards 1st befor eI made my final decision. Dredful 70 Fury UNREST Message Edited by mr23sgte on 12-14-2006 05:06 PM
If you like being a wolf form, go with a warden. If you prefer being a lion, go with a fury. Seriously, they play very similarly. SOE should have just made a druid class and not even bothered with fury vs warden.
i forgot to say....furies have those options too.....But seriously the wolf form is far superior because you can sit down (LOL) And the utility for swimming under water is great....seems to move much better than that pesky swimming that humaniods do. And we all know that if you jump in water in a cat form....youll run screaming to the waters edge to lick your paws.
LOL all this bickering made me do one thing only. ( 2yrs AGO) 1. I rolled both classes and I heal/DPS just fine with either one but who am I to say any thing :smileyindifferent: ~Odio <Sabotage> venekor
Both fury's and wardens heal equally although fury's do heal spike damage better with their non HOT heals. Fury's do more dps but wardens with a single and group root can safely kill higher lvl solo named mobs. Fury's are the preferred druid healer class at the moment but that leads to less available masters for them. The warden being more defensive and the fury being more offensive, IMO, really apply's mainly to the self buffs only. The group buffs, while slightly different, do not make the warden more of a "defensive" healer then the fury's are, especially when you consider the very nice buff that urchin is with 36 sec big mit for the mt. Since the first 36 seconds of a fight even a raid fight are the most pivotal until a mob gets debuffed, it is a very "defensive" buff.
Well I tested urchin with the combat revamp. The spell absolutely blows because of diminishing returns of mitigation past 6k. It's great on a brawler but that's about it. I know the warden class is supposed to be the defensive druid. But think about it, what do we get that's actually more defensive? The answer is spores and duststorm, that's it. Duststorm costs too much power to cast in a raid. Spores is good but it's not good enough to really make a difference. So really there's an offensive druid - fury and another druid - warden without the offensive buffs but has spores.
the fury buffs intelligence (offensive spellcasting) while the warden buffs wisdom (spell resists) that seems to be what sony means by "defensive" vs "offensive"... unfortunately, wisdom bonuses don't translate into huge resist bonuses, and resists are kind of lame in the game right now. stuff that hits you is either too weak for it to matter if your resists is decent or maxed, or so strong that it's gonna hit you like a truck anyway. both classes buff agility which helps avoidance. furys also get little things like that melee proc (fae pyre or something?) and the agitate buff and their starstorm and circle of fire abilities, while wardens get the spores buff, sandstorm, and the ever-loved tree. when a warden is in group with the tank, he should be able to capitalize on group-only healing and protective abilities... while it's true that urchin is a huge mit buff - and especially with diminishing returns added in - the added healing from spores, the tree, group heal, defense from sandstorm, the heat / cold ward (when needed) makes the warden a better class to have with your tank for survivability. also remember that warden heals are all regenerative, so even if the heal puts the tank back up to 100% hp, if he gets hit again before your heal is up, you've got a jump on healing him in the meantime because it's still ticking. now none of that says furys can't heal, and that they don't have good buffs and heals, but the wardens do have some extra abilities that they can use in group to increase their potency. in my opinion, a warden outside of the MT group on a raid is almost a wasted spot simply because they can do so much more when they are in the tank group. unfortunately, there are more popular choices for the tank group than a third healer most of the time.
Well I might be an unusual case as I started life as a Fury and at lvl 62 I switched to a Warden and at lvl 70 I switched back to a Fury lol. So I have seen both sides of the Warden/Fury arguement intimately. I have solo'd, duo'd, group'd, raid'd (nothing super hardcore) with both. I prefer the solo/duo/grp game play to raiding for my play style. I found healing with the Warden a bit easier and healing with the Fury is acceptable just a bit more hectic and more button mashing but still ok. The reason I switched back is I found the Fury EoF aa's just far more superior to the warden ones with more options for my game play style. Fury's dps was a tad better before EoF aa's and now with them its not even close as Wardens had no real viable option to increase their dps. In truth the warden has 3 bad aa lines (2 if you like the melee line which I don't). I was so disgusted by their aa's I switched back to a Fury and I'm happy there. I duo with my wife's wiz (fae) alot and we can burn down a lot of things very fast. Either I tank or we root and nuke, both work well depending on the mob. The Fury just meshed better with my wife's wizard with all the int buffs the Fury has so the switch back to the Fury was a no brainer for me. The only spells I miss as a warden is the extra root, the wolf pack and maybe the healing tree and evac (wife's wiz has evac now). In reality they play pretty much the same except the fury can do a crap load more damage now with EoF aa's if he wants to. I like that option. Options are good. Message Edited by Omegarhino on 12-15-2006 02:39 PM
interesting that you say that, yet you didn't like the melee line. :smileytongue: i look at that as a solid alternative to casting, because it goes so much faster and can allow me to solo heal and get a few hits in. with the heal procs from the druid strength line, it ends up being a pretty solid choice. a guildmate of mine regularly parses around 500 dps while healing and using melee. as a level 69 warden with mostly treasured gear, that's not bad. Message Edited by Crimson Dragon on 12-15-2006 01:09 PM
The warden has a great DPS option. Unfortunately, it involves becoming melee. Melee + leather is not a good idea, it's not like you have a brawler's defensive bonuses. At least on raids. Looking at the lines, if you combine the KOS melee line and the EOF melee line with decent STR gear, you could be pretty darn good at DPS. Unfortunately you would lose all your ability to fight at range decently. Healing also gets ugly at close range. Honestly, I can't really think of a better way to play the warden right now than that direction, how sad is that? It's the only way to get anything from 100 AA. Furies get a similar option in terms of dps increase to their *spells*. how FUBAR is that? Thanks SOE. Message Edited by Xney on 12-15-2006 01:20 PM
I did'nt say the melee line was bad, I said I did'nt like it. Thats doesn't mean its not a viable option for some one else. I was in the EoF beta so played around with the melee lines alot. I did'nt like the melee line because.... -The long recast timers were just to much for ME to deal with. -Was a large lack of str/wis equipment that I saw. -Wardens lack any kind of str buffs. Melee lines seemed more suited to the shamans and clerics or so it seems to me. -Melee lines seemed to play against the wardens solo/grp strengths which would be his roots -In raids I found it extremely hard to melee and heal. There was to much chaos going about. Maybe I just wasn't used to it having never played a melee character before. -I was getting a lot of parrys and ripostes and block off of mobs, alot more than resists on spells in proportion. Plus if a spell gets resisted it cycles back extra quick. If you get riposted/blocked/parryed/miss your stuck with the full recast timer. This part I hated the most. (beta buffed chars were not geared to melee at all so more str would have helped this perhaps) -Having to spend fist fulls of cash to reequip my character in new str/wis/high mit items. You would have to cast alot on raids in those situations which is a option but its not optimal I guess. Only thing I liked about the whole melee thing was the heal procs in the druid line, that was kinda cool. I think they adjusted some of the melee damage up near the end of beta so maybe things are better than when I tried it. Melee on a warden just felt wrong, in truth to me Fury's should have gotten the melee line. It makes more sense with the whole ferocity of nature thing they have going. The whole melee thing was not for me. Message Edited by Omegarhino on 12-15-2006 02:45 PM
The melee junk is fluff at best, at worst it's junk. I parsed out the difference. With no melee line and just the int AA line from KoS I parse 600-650. With the melee line maxed out combined with the str line from KoS I averaged a consistent 450. So you lose 1/3 of your dps if you switch to the melee line. That's not just bad, that's pathetic. The melee line is absolute garbage. Some might like it for fluff to add some character to their toon, but that's the only positive thing you can say about it.
Mike you should test it some more.. I posted some screens of me giving this setup a real go.. decent gear for it, changed diety to zek, as much str as I can get and really just trying very hard with it.. not even trying to prove it's better or worse than nuking.. just trying to give a fair shot and honestly it's not as bad as it seems and a few ppl in my guild who were kinda like "...huh?" when I did it seem to be accepting it as viable as well. I'd still prefer I had something better than this to go with but I think if you give it a fair shot and really try it, it's at least comparable to the traditional route.
imo to make the melee line work and a viable damage option you would have to make the spell and ca recast timers the same for me to even think about it. Sure your doing good auto attack damage between ca's with 2x attacks and crits but when your ca gets blocked/parried/riposted/miss your down for the whole recast and not a fraction of it with spells. Plus you have to be in the thick of melee taking aoe's and the whole bit. Casting and healing is easier than melee and healing no doubt about that. So more risk/skill should = more reward! Thats what the devs keep telling us eq2 is about no? There shouldn't even be a discussion on whether a priests melee line does more dps than the caster line... it just SHOULD. However right now I don't think thats the case, its probably pretty comparable at best to traditional casting. I don't begrudge people for going the melee line because usually people would say you're stealing aa's that would be better spent on better things but there is nothing good in the warden aa line anyways. Hopefully they will change it but I'm not holding my breath. Message Edited by Omegarhino on 12-15-2006 02:55 PM
In addition to a high STR, you also need some melee skills like crushing. DPS classes get bonuses from their stances and a lot of their gear. Then your to-hit ratio would be acceptable. And you of course need a decent weapon and maybe some buffs I'm not saying it's a GOOD idea, but that's how you could make it work. I suspect if you did it all right, you could get in the ballpark of fury dps now. You'd sacrifice far too much for it, but there you go. I have an assassin as a main and there's no way I could do melee dps and heal at the same time. Too much chaos.
Well how high did you parse? Did you lose healing strength to gain comparable dps? I mean I understand the appeal of going rallos zek and getting his cloak, but you'd lose out on the tunare cloak. I wouldn't sacrifice power or heals for dps. I can see getting a couple of str adornments because we're already pretty high in wisdom but that's it. What was your highest parse so far for the melee line? I think iirc I hit ~850 dps with spell crits. Have you surpassed this number?
I've hit over 1k several times and I sacrificed no healing power for it because I don't have access to tunare anyway
