I would like some advice on how to tank properly as a Warden at low levels. Looking at the different guides on the net, most seem to focus on tanking at level 60, and there are several comments how it is hard to tank as a warden before level 41 (when the gambit Dance of War become available). Well, it doesn't help that much to know it is hard before 41, I would really like to know how to make it less hard
Anyway, I thought I'd write a bit of what I did yesterday, and would be delighted to recieve feedback. Towards the end of the instance run I felt it was quite possible to tank several targets, but it just takes a few seconds to build up the aggro, but to do that I had to forgo all the defensive gambits. The healing I recieved last night was absolutely great, and thus not using the various avoidance boosting gambits wasn't crucial, altough I do not know how Beo felt about seeing my warden take loads of damage
Anyway, during trash where there were at most one elite present I simply chucked the spear, ran in and did Goad (if the trait is slotted, like Tracer has it, it is an AoE taunt that does also applies a dot on 3 targets nearby)
. That seemed to be ok, altough I wasn't able to hold aggro on the main target (I guess those RK skills deal a helluvalot of damage, as it was to them I always lost aggro
), but after having frantically ran around a couple times and still wasn't able to grab aggro back before the mob died, I did let the target go after the RK :p Instead after the AoE Goad I tried to hit as many mobs as possible with War Cry (a single target drain that also builds up aggro a bit; as it is a drain the healing recieved from it builds aggro on all opponents)
; I felt I held aggro firmly on several mobs after I got a few War Cries going. The only problem was that it takes a while to get several War Cries up and running.
Where there was more elites present, I opened up with Ambush (sometimes preceeded by Careful Step) + Critical Strike, then War Cry on the secondary targets. If either Ambush or Critical strike did crit, I did hold aggro well on the first target, if neither did crit I lost the aggro pretty soon (but then again, that mob usually died very fast anyway), and War Cry glued the secondary targets to me, with Keggis Warden usually holding firm aggro on the elite the DPS concentrated on. These fights felt less chaotic, and I actually had time to use Shield Up
to make life even easier (gives a very nice block and evade boost) and Fierce Resolve
(an instant AoE life-drain) to build up some more AoE threat. In all, I felt these fights went well, as Keggi held the target focused on, and I had time to build up nice aggro on the rest while hiding behind the shield.
On Bosses holding aggro was quite easy actually. That was mostly because people actually gave me a few seconds to build aggro
I did open up with Precise Blow
to build instant aggro, then applied War Cry and Shields up. When there were adds spawning I tried to use Maddening Strikes
to transfer aggro to me, but I didn't feel it was very effective; in the end Goad and War Cry did seem to do much better when grabbing the attention of adds. When I noticed the bosses were attempting some spell-casting, I tried to get off a Boot
for interrupting, but usally either the Burglar had already interrupted or the boss had already done his thing, so I didn't actually care about interrupting towards the end.
I would be most pleased to recieve comments on how to improve my tanking, and especially if there were some glaring mistakes (yeah yeah, I know now one is not supposed to corner pull the Callers to the clothies
). I noticed Jon's minstrel burning power like mad during some fights, so I guess he would have prefered to see me use some of the avoidance buffs, but when I tried those earlier in the instance, I didn't hold aggro on anything (so I had all those nifty buffs for nothing as nobody was interested in hitting me
), but I really do not know how I should do that *and* keep the aggro on all the mobs running around.
