Nature's Bounty - Warden Tank/DPS Hybrid PVE Build

This is the new PVE tank build for the Warden class. He is built to do everything a tank should be able to do…It can taunt, hold agro, survive, control the enemy in mass numbers, heal, stun, immobilize, buff the group if needed with Warhorns, and protect them with shields and protection buffs (including a group resistance buff)… BUT with a MASSIVE twist!

The tank has the usual traditional traits, high health, high magicka recovery (for buffs and/or application of magicka costing skills) but of course, you must heavy attack for sustain occasionally so be sure you do that between mechanics.

The high magicka recovery is primarily to keep up the vital warden buffs and have the freedom to throw out crowd control AND a bit of damage over time (usually that is not important on a tank but this one IS). However, we utilize our weapon trait and passive bonuses to allow recovery while we cannot recover normally! With the ice staff, you BLOCK with the magicka bar, so recovery is no good unless you are not blocking. BUT we allow ourselves to take advantage of a return glyph on the back bar along with the Betty Netch to constantly gain back resources even while blocking. IF you heavy attack between mechanics too, this is very easy to manage. Sustain is only an issue if you do too much spamming and not enough focusing on what you are doing!

Our healing passives/buffs grant minor toughness to whoever is healed by you (10% max HP) and also our ground-based ice attacks are amazing for pinning adds/mobs on the spot to control them while you get all the agro.

The main method of tanking is similar to other tanks and that is that you heavy attack for sustain and taunt of course to keep agro, while keeping a close eye on your buffs. Heavy attacks are VITAL but of course, they do come with a price. While heavy attacking, your shield is DOWN, so you take full damage. With this in mind, you must TIME your attacks. The fact you are taking more damage than if you were blocking means you need more health to take the punch to the face, hence why we have so much HP…BUT the trick with timing is, you MUST block the heavy attacks from a boss. Heavy attack through normal passive attacks etc and then block anything that would one-shot, knockdown, count as a heavy, etc.

The main abilities we use to tank, debuff, etc. on this build are generally damage over time abilities with a major bonus to them on top. They all apply small damage over time per ability BUT, the combination of them all adds a huge amount of damage reduction, crowd control and each tick from EACH dot pushes Azureblight to explode! With update 32 and the Deadlands DLC Azureblight Reaper is so much STRONGER because ALL proc sets based on spell and weapon damage can now CRIT!

Every tick of damage adds a stack…when you reach 20, the target explodes in damage hitting surrounding targets. And this can happen PER enemy! That’s right, you are creating AOE BOMBS! (demonstrated towards the end of the video)… All you have to do, is stack the adds…who better to do that than the TANK?

With this particular variation of the build we have finally introduced a monster set since the “procs don’t proc procs” rule has been adapted. Generally speaking, a proc condition cannot fire another one, however, a proc condition that fires a damage over time ability, while it could not FIRE azure blight, COULD in fact still contribute to the stacks. That is no longer the case. NOW no proc damage/application/rule set whatsoever will contribute to the stacks. So we dumped the arena weapons and optimized it with something even better! We are now using the Baron monster set allowing for 4 ultimate every time we fire of up to 3 status effects. With us having MASSIVE status activation because of our setup and charged traits (plus cp choices etc) we actually can almost guarantee full ulti control.

Also while stacked with Arkasis we can basically build permafrost (or warhorn) 2x faster than anyone else in the game! It is NUTS! And if we were to use trees on our back bar? (Warden healing ultimate see below) we can basically have almost 100% uptime on it!

Some valuable points for the build:-

• Your taunt counts also as an immobilization AND provides MAJOR maim (10% reduction to damage from target).

• Heavy attack to keep your magicka up AND a nice damage shield!

• Insanely HIGH uptime on Minor Brittle (10% critical damage taken for applying chilled)

• Block the big stuff and time your heavies between mechanics if need be.

• Really fast ultimate regeneration to fire off those buffs, bonuses, and protection skills 2x faster than anyone else!

• Keep your buffs up. Your buffs protect you, the group, AND your heals from these keep up minor toughness, 10% max hps.

• Almost caped resists with no effort

• ICE Wall of elements was changed to bow apply MINOR BREACH to all CHILLED targets in the area of effect. So we have an AOE Penetration debuff now for free!
  
  

• Lots of CC with the ground-based ice AOEs which immobilize and stun normal enemies and apply minor main reducing their damage done.

• ALL of your damage over time effects that PUSH for cc, reduction to damage, and all-around tanking roles for this build, ADD to the Azureblight proc which can DEVASTATE enemies with damage!

• MINOR BRITTLE! – Very simple. IF you are HOLDING an ICE STAFF…when you apply a CHILLED status effect. You will affect the target with Minor Brittle, causing all crit damage on that target to be 10% stronger!

  This is VITAL!. You can NOT apply minor brittle UNLESS you apply CHILLED status effects while HOLDING a staff (ice staff) on your current active bar.

  ^^^ pay very close attention to this.

  All ice damage you do from your whole build can apply chilled. With 200% more chance with winter’s embrace skills and 100% more chance with destruction staff skills IF HOLDING an ice staff at the time, 480% chance from our trait, and 60% from champion points!.

  We can have 100% uptime on minor brittle boosting your entire group’s DPS!

• Taunt it, hold it…and you will boost your group AND make explosions all at once! Making this one of the MOST desirable tanks available for control, damage mitigation, DPS boosting, damage application itself, and overall toughness all in one package 😉