The Maxed Warden - A guide for 5man content

[Sokanon]

Author: Paikis

Paikis said:

Introducing the Warden – Revolutionary Group Healing for 5-Man Group Content.

After toying around with my spec over the last 3 weeks I have found this build to be the most effective for healing 5man expert dungeons. I use Warden(51)/Sentinel(15)/Purifier(0). You may also consider Warden(51)/Sentinel(15)/Druid(0) for the Faerie Ally to provide a small amount of extra healing at the cost of a large self-ward. Also it dies a lot.

SummaryA healing focused cleric who uses the warden tree almost exclusively to provide healing through HoT spells and direct heals. The warden’s ‘orb’ spells are used to provide spike healing capability. And the cool downs from the warden/sentinel trees allow for the best group healing in the game.

Advantages
Consistent, steady tank healing through HoT spells.
High burst AoE healing, including the best AoE Heal currently in the game.
Good burst healing on the tank
MUCH bigger heals on your HoT spells than other warden builds.
Mobility. Because most of your HoTs are instant-cast you can cast them while running around
Good mana efficiency, including power regeneration ability on a 2 minute timer
Instant-cast large direct heal
45 second cooldown to make ANY heal instant cast.
45 second cooldown to increase ANY heal by 80%
45 second cooldown to make ANY of your single target heals affect the entire group.
Spell Synergy and Rotation
There are several good healing combinations I have found, as well as a ‘general’ casting order that I will use in most dungeons.

General Rotation:
Pre-pull load the tank with Tidal Surged single orbs and the person most likely to pull agro with the group orbs (optional). Cast Healing Spray before Soothing Stream stacks (if they aren’t still on the tank from last pull). Healing Spray heals for about the same as a 4-stack of Soothing Stream and uses only 1 GCD to get it ticking. Always cast this first. Then Deluge->Healing Current->Deluge, refresh SS and HS, Deluge->Healing Current->Deluge repeat as necessary.

In general your ‘oh-crap’ responses are not as powerful as a Sentinel/Purifier’s would be, however they can still do the job and I find that they are quite effective. They generally will use one of the three ‘enhancement’ buttons available for the Warden.

Tidal Surge – If you can spare the time, this is probably your best option. +80% on your next heal. If you cast this before your orbs, then all three triggers will get the bonus. If you cast it before you hit the 4th (or top-up) cast of Soothing Stream, then all 4 stacks will gain this benefit until you refresh the stacks. If you cast it before Downpour then your group has god-mode until it’s finished. I’ve had a deluge crit after casting this and it hit for 5k, that’s not a small number.
Touch the Light – Make your next heal instant-cast. This is not as huge as it is in other builds because Warden’s don’t have many long cast abilities. It is good for when you need an extra heal NOW though. I usually will use this to make Healing Cataract instant-cast if I need to top-up my group. It also works well on Deluge or orbs, as it gives you an extra 0.5seconds to cast things with. Use it three times in a fight and that’s an extra heal (GCD timer).
Ripple – This is probably the most powerful cool down available for the warden. It makes all your single-target spells cast on everyone in your group for 6 seconds. The best use I have found for this spell is to combine it with Touch the Light and cast Healing Current, then Healing Spray and a few stacks of Soothing stream. Depending on lag you will get a large heal with a HoT (Healing Current), Healing Spray and one or two stacks of Soothing Stream. This is usually enough to bring the entire group back to full, and as an added bonus it doesn’t reduce healing on the tank. This spell magnifies the effect of Tidal Surge as well, as each of the spells that are spread to the group will benefit from the 80% increase on Tidal Surge.
Ocean’s Blessing – Passive. Increases the Spell Power bonus on your heal over time spells by 6% plus an additional 3.6% per point spent in the warden soul above 36. This is the core of this build. Putting the extra points into warden increases the bonus to your HoT spells by A LOT. At 51 points you are looking at a 60% bonus to your HoTs. If you have 1000 spell power, that’s like getting an extra 600 spell power for free.

Offensive Touches
For a lot of the easier zones (T1 expert specifically) you will be able to heal the trash with nothing but a 4-stack of Soothing Stream and Healing Spray. In these situations it is best to DPS with your two DoT spells and Waterjet. If you run into a large group of ranged caster mobs, make sure you silence one of them so it runs to your tank. This makes it easier on him for holding agro, and also reduces the difficulty in healing the encounter by making the ranged mob less likely to agro YOU for healing. Be aware though that some ranged attackers are simply using a bow. Silencing them will not help. In these cases you can use the knockback to move them towards the tank, or you can just heal through it.

Gearing
As this build revolves around a solid, steady stream of heals, it doesn’t benefit from a focus on crit. Crits are great when they happen, but lowering your overall healing amount by focusing on INT to get crits is not the way to play this class. If you crit, great, but you should be able to heal without any crits at all. Focus on WIS and +SP. I also find that the best greater essences are the faesources that trigger an extra HoT on your heals and the one which gives you an SP boost when you cast heals. The same thing for trinkets. If you can get the wolf-trinket from the first name in King's Bastion (expert) you'll do well with it. Failing that there is another trinket (that I'm currently using) which gives you 60 SP when you cast a heal.

Variations
The most popular variations are listed below. Please note that if you don’t have at least half your points into Warden, then I don’t consider it to be a Warden build anymore. At that point Warden becomes the secondary soul, not the build. I will also argue why I consider these builds to be inferior to the 51 Warden.

Sentinel(32)/Warden(34)/Whatever(0) – This build is trying to do two things, and basically fails at both. First, it tries to use the HoT spells to heal with and second it spends a lot of points enhancing casting times. You do gain several damage reduction abilities, which are quite nice, but the loss in overall healing power means you now NEED those abilities to keep your tank up. Cast times are not an issue for wardens. The majority of their spells are instant-cast and the ones that aren’t can be made instant cast, or are really short cast anyway.

Warden(44)/Sentinel(22)/Whatever(0) – This build is actually quite strong. You give up a little bit of offensive power (who cares) and Downpour (this is a big loss), and in exchange you gain the sentinel’s 40% damage reduction ability and a group cleanse. It’s a solid build, but there are issues with it. I’m not sure if it’s worth losing 25% bonus to your HoT spells… that’s the equivalent of about 300 spellpower for me. Also the reduction to damage is only up for 10 seconds every 2 minutes, or requires an AoE heal to trigger every few seconds… you will drain your power to 0 in very short order. The group cleanse is awesome-sauce though.

Conclusion
This class has a lot of potential. But it is fiddley to use and requires a lot more attention than the normal 32/34 sentinel/purifier build that I see a lot of people using. Yes, it is more difficult than spamming Healing Invocation/Restorative Flame. But it also brings a lot more healing to the group. If you spend the points in the Warden tree to get the extra spell power bonus (60%!) you’ll notice your HoTs will be healing for A LOT more and are actually viable as the main source of healing instead of just as filler while you cast your next Healing Invocation or Restorative Flame. The hybrid-Warden builds do gain some utility over the pure-Warden, however to put enough points into them that they get anything really useful, you have to pull so many points out of warden that your HoTs are back to being filler and you then have to use those extra heals as your main heal (HI or RF), at which point, you aren’t really a warden anymore.
The Warden soul can absolutely stand on its own. It doesn’t require help from other souls to work, and I honestly feel that it is the only one of the three healing souls that SHOULD be maxed out.

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Original link: forums.riftgame.com/showthread.php?156276-The-Maxed-Warden-A-guide-for-5-Man-Content.

[thal]

Thanks for all your build(s) information.

What I like to know is as a newb at level 20 working with a static group of 5, what tree should I be focusing in on at this time and at say level 30 or 40. My goal is to use a 32/34 sentinel/purifier build at 50 but that may change to this new build. I have been focusing on the Sentinel tree and am currently 20/6/0.

[Sokanon]

Depends on what your role is. If you're working with a static group of 5, chances are you won't really need to DPS too much, however a hybrid build would be best, unless you're dungeon running.

I would keep with your Sentinel build as it is strong for healing, or switch to a Warden. It will really come down to playstyle at that point.

If you want a hybrid build, something along the lines of Sham/Justi/Sent is excellent for support heals and dps.
like this

Make sure to buff:
Salvation
Reparation
Cavalier
Courage of the Jaguar (for extra crit)
Heart of the (whichever suits your group best)

here's a good post concerning this build here

[thal]

So if I stay with this build do I focus on Sentinel until filled then purifier?

[Sokanon]

You don't need to necessarily fill it. I would go 32 points in Sentinel, and rest in Purifier (34). You can read my Purifent here in this forum as well under common healing builds.

[mingmong]

Firstly, thank you for a great guide, I intend to have a crack at healing and will give this build some serious consideration.

However, I do have a little bit of confusion....

In the 'General Rotation' you say to pre-load the tank with Tidal Surged single orbs. However, all I see in the skills for this build are two skills that give 3 orbs (Orbs of tide & Orbs of stream). Is there something that i'm overlooking?

Thanks for any answers/advice....

MM

[Sokanon]

1) I did NOT write the guide, Paikis did.
2) He's referring to using your Tidal Surge ability and then cast an Orb ability on your target. The orbs will benefit from your Tidal Surge.

[bellatora]

Hello all, first time poster here.

I play Bellatora in Inquisition on Tearfall, I'm one of Sokanon's guildies.
I play warden full time in raids, and a fair majority of the time in experts and warfronts.
Now that the intro is done, let's get to it.

Most of the information in this guide is good, but there are a few things I can clear up.

Firstly, this build is a RAID HEALING BUILD, as such it is very hard to be a healing god in 5mans with warden.

As a 5man healer, you will always want to pre-hot your tank with a 4stack of Soothing Stream, it's going to be your big kicker. Once you get your 4stack up, you'll want to put up either of your two orb spells on the tank.

Once the fight has engaged, obviously you'll want to put up Healing Spray and healing current. So far, we are on the same page as the guide. Here is where I will veer off a little bit.

There is NO rotation. The writer clearly misunderstands the nature of healing as a warden, and that nature is that you basically wait around a lot. You'll want to cast deluge pretty often, every time the tank needs healing, and depending on the tank, that can be pretty frequent. With improved Deluge, you are looking at a one GCD "Dead" time between deluge casts. You can either do nothing, or use that time to refresh one of your hots.

I caution the readers, do not refresh a hot with 8 seconds remaining, just do nothing, or better yet, put up one of your orb spells on yourself, or a dps, or the tank, if the first set are gone.

Basically, the name of the game is patience. This is not a spammy build, and as such, those who wish to feel that every keystroke will make great strides towards saving the day should consider a different build. Warden will keep your tank up pretty well, and with cooldowns, you can be highly effective, just remember that spamming your hots will only result in your mana going away, and nobody wants that.

[Karlman]

Umm.. doesn't pre-hotting cause heal-agro on the pull?
everything I've read says so.. but I've not played deep warden to try it out?

[Sokanon]

Overhealing does not cause aggro... only if your tank gets hit will your heals cause aggro. If your tank sucks.. you might die... but thats true even if you didn't HoT him.

[paikis]

Firstly, this guide has been updated here. Secondly:

Apr 28, 2011 9:17:33 GMT -5 bellatora said:

Most of the information in this guide is good, but there are a few things I can clear up.

Firstly, this build is a RAID HEALING BUILD, as such it is very hard to be a healing god in 5mans with warden.

As a 5man healer, you will always want to pre-hot your tank with a 4stack of Soothing Stream, it's going to be your big kicker. Once you get your 4stack up, you'll want to put up either of your two orb spells on the tank.

Once the fight has engaged, obviously you'll want to put up Healing Spray and healing current. So far, we are on the same page as the guide. Here is where I will veer off a little bit.

There is NO rotation. The writer clearly misunderstands the nature of healing as a warden, and that nature is that you basically wait around a lot. You'll want to cast deluge pretty often, every time the tank needs healing, and depending on the tank, that can be pretty frequent. With improved Deluge, you are looking at a one GCD "Dead" time between deluge casts. You can either do nothing, or use that time to refresh one of your hots.

I caution the readers, do not refresh a hot with 8 seconds remaining, just do nothing, or better yet, put up one of your orb spells on yourself, or a dps, or the tank, if the first set are gone.

Basically, the name of the game is patience. This is not a spammy build, and as such, those who wish to feel that every keystroke will make great strides towards saving the day should consider a different build. Warden will keep your tank up pretty well, and with cooldowns, you can be highly effective, just remember that spamming your hots will only result in your mana going away, and nobody wants that.

This build is actually an EXPERT DUNGEON HEALING BUILD, and I have solo healed just about everything in T1 and T2 dungeons with it. My spec has changed to 51 warden/10 sentinel/5 cabalist for the focus on extra spell power. I now have exactly 2 cooldowns, Ripple for Aoe healing and Tidal Surge for making my heals bigger. Alot of people feel that losing Touch the Light is too much, but I was hardly using it anyway, so didn't feel the loss. After all my talents and such, I have about 1200 spell power, which gives me an effective spell power of 1920 for my heal over time spells. Not a small amount.

I use the following rotation: Pre-pull, cast single-orbs on tank and depending on how good he is, I will either save the AoE orbs, or cast them on myself. It is a good idea to keep the AoE orbs on your entire group, but Im lazy so I usually wont bother. The orbs are to keep your tank alive while you get things ticking (if you have a good tank, you can keep the 4x Soothing Stream ticking between pulls). Once the 3 orbs are gone, you should assess things. Is your tank getting killed? Hit the AoE orbs. Is everything fine? Finish you 4 stack. After this point, my rotation is very spammy: HC, Deluge, HC, deluge, SS, repeat. If I'm lagging (happens alot unfortunately) I will drop the first HC and just run deluge, HC, deluge, SS, repeat. If the tank starts spiking, drop a HC and use orbs, or Tidal Surge a Deluge. Contrary to what the quoted poster said, you should never be just standing there. If you don't need to refresh HoTs and your tank is not taking any meaningful damage, hit Waterjet. Contribute some damage.

Anyways, if you want something to read, the updated guide is a good read, even if you dont like the build.