So, recently there was an attack on the Wadens from a kin that I have no doubt doesn’t need them for their brute force play style.  To each their own, if you don’t want a tank type, that’s cool.  What’s not cool is the attacks coming out of some of the wadens.

Really, all this is going to do is bring more hate back at us, which makes me sad…

Seriously, live and let live.  Having both a champ and a Waden leveled and geared for raiding I can see merit in both sides, but even in good fun, these attacks are childish, on both sides.

/disappointed in community at the moment

So, this is a long overdue thought, but it seems that I’ve finally gotten to the point where my Waden is accepted by most of the people that were nay-saying for the entire time I was leveling one.  Sure, the class has its weaknesses, but they all do.  After having tanked (successfully) everything from the rad instances (save Gurvy, haven’t gotten a group together that wanted to/could have a shot at killing him), to the watcher, to the first 4 bosses in DN.

This weekend should be a blast, we’re going in to say “hello” to the Blind One and hopefully walk out with a fully cleared DN raid instance.  The only question is how to trait for this, let the guard take him with a champ clobbering while I help the LMs with the shades (go full fist line for the increased fears) and keep trying to fear them for the massive CC damage, or stick with my current Shield line and help/tank the big nasty, though with no forces that could be tough to get it over the guard, since we’ve got an awesome one coming.

Maybe I’ll ask in the Waden forums for some guidance on this boss fight, not really worried about the mistress, as she sounds like a push over compared to the Blind One.

While resting in the sanctuary of the 21st Hall after spending hours traversing through the darkness of Moria Ryodor was approached by a friend and kinsman, Ryothir.

“Hey, I picked up something for you on my last conquest” — Said Ryothir

“Oh?!  Doesn’t much seem like you to hand out your spoils of victory”  — Ryodor replied

What Ryodor didn’t know was the ‘gift’ was what appeared to be a decrepid, rusty old sword.  Ryodor was often the butt of jokes made by Ryothir and the target of such pranks as this.  The families of these two were long time friends, and though Ryothir was several hundred years older, he acted very much like he was a child most of the time.

“Here you are”  — Ryothir said while handing the decaying sword to Ryodor

Ryodor was trying to formulate a response to show his appreciated of what appeared to be garbage being pawned off on him.  He couldn’t speak, something fealt different when he held the ancient sword.

“Thanks, gotta go” — Was all Ryodor could say

Leaving Ryothir laughing histerically in the center of the 21st Hall, Ryodor proceeded to head to the Crafting and wares bunker where he acquired the services of the resident forge master, Spaki.  Spaki examined the sword and confirmed that there was something more to this than the centuried of mud and gunk that had bound itself around the blade and handle.

Ryodor cringed as Spaki took his hammer and beat off the gunk, slowly the sword’s true form took shape.  The more the forge master hammered away, the moregunk would fall from the sword.

Suddenly the hammering stoped, followed by the smithing hammer falling to the floor.  The forge master turned to Ryothir and said:

“This is remarkable!  Not only were your feeling of this blade right on, there’s more to this blade than even I can figure.”  — Said Spaki as he picked up his hammer, still in shock

More feverishly did Spaki work as he was determined to clean the blade of the centuries of built up gunk.

Once Spaki was finished he found an inscription on the sword that made his eyes open wider than Ryodor had ever seen them in the short while he had known Spaki.  While Spaki was not able to translate the inscription completely, as the language was far too old for him to make out, he was able to make out the name of the sword and pin point an approximate time of its creation.

“My friend, you have come accross Duath Dagnir, Slayer of Darkness.  This masterpiece was crafted during the first wars with Morgoth.  This must have been lost in battle and carried by orcs, neglected and abused until it ended up coming into Moria and being discarded.”  — Explained Spaki

Examining the sword further Spaki offered to repair what damage and abuse he could.  Before Ryodor could reach for his coin purse Spaki said that the simple honor of working on the blade would be payment enough.  Which Ryodor was more than happy to agree to these terms, as he was never very wise when it came to saving his gold.

After a few hours of work Spaki finished with the blade.  Being as masterfully created as it was during the first wars, most of the damage was simply skin deep, as Spaki explained as he handed the blade back to Ryodor.

“Wield this well and she’ll not let you down” — Said Spaki

“May she live up to her name again, in this time against the coming shadow and darkness from Mordor”  — Said Ryodor as he thanked Spaki and left to see if he could track down Ryothir to get the last laugh.

Sure enough Ryothir was in the same spot boasting of all of his recent deeds.  When he noticed Ryodor coming he prepared to get a talking to about his latest joke, but was floored when Ryodor pulled out the sword and said:

“I thank you for the gift of Duath Dagnir, Slayer of Darkness.  Sword from the first age crafted to fight against the coming darkness of Morgoth.  This blade shall serve me well!”  — Said Ryodor as he saluted Ryothir and left the halls in search of evils to slay.

Finally!  After what seems like forever, I finally have my Warden (and new main) up to 60.

Having to deal with people mocking the class, even in my own kin, simply because they did not know, or see where the main roll of the class was/is.  I think after doing some learning, I’ve been able to show that I can be a competant main tank on instance runs.  The tough part is getting into the swing of things, I had gotten used to Guardian and Champion tanking (much preferred doing DPS on my Champ to tanking on him).  The learning curve on the Warden was something to behold, but I think I’m starting to get the hang of it.

All in all, I’m quite impressed with the class at 60, there are some drawbacks that come with medium armor, and relying on avoidances and gambit stacking.  Namely getting stunned.  Tanking a group of elites and getting stunned usually means the Warden is defeated very quickly, but all in all, I think that having an active level 60 Warden in the kin is a definite good addition.

The drain of leveling has been really gnawing on me, that or I’m just freaking out about my graduate paper/project so I can graduate this semester wiuth my MS degree.  It could also be the gleam of a new game, well new to me, picked up Oblivion Game of the Year Edition for $20, beaten the Shivering Isles expansion and now on to the main game storyline with my archer, granted I should be working on the paper, but that’s what the weekends are form.

Anyways the Warden is coming up slowly, but surely.  I’ve nixed the idea of grinding out deeds in an area before moving on, I just want to get him up to 60, I’ll worry about deeds on and off as I’m either bored of questing or only have an hour or so to grind stuff.

So far the experience has been fantastic, save for the one problem of being solo the whole time.  I’m going to have to learn how to tank on him as time moves on, as my normal DoT/Bleed routine does some decent DPS once the bleeds/DoTs really get ticking, but the threat just isn’t high enough for me.  But I’m starting to learn some gambits that I can use to grab and hold.  I definitely need some more practice, polish, and information on what seems to work well at 60.

So, to start off I might get some flack for this, but I really enjoyed my first trip to the moors on my champ, and my first trip since MoM was released.  Ended up halfway through R2 in just a matter of hours.  I really enjoyed some of the changes out there, combat seemed to be a bit quicker in pace, and people were dying on both sides very quickly.  That was always one of the things that bugged me about PvMP before MoM, nobody really died much, reavers would charge in, then run away, same with Burgs sneaking in, taking some pot-shots then making it out of the fray alive.  Just seemed too slow.

All in all, I might continue to head out there when bored of PvE, but nothing too serious for me, especially since the rank armor sets are rather underwhelming for me.

I have decided that instead of powering up my Warden, I’m going to take my time and grind out each and every deed that I can in a Zone before going forward.  Already at level 25 I’m up to 2 additional quests in the log and about halfway to the 3rd.  The end result will be less of a grind once I hit 60, being able to jump right into the fray of the Hard-Mode instances, but oh the tedium…  Sometimes I feel like gouging out my eyeballs, usually when I hit the end of a zone’s quest and all that’s left is the grind.  I always hope that I’ll get most of them done through questing, but in the Lone Lands, that wasn’t the case.  Finished off all of the quests I can do solo, still a handful of fellowship quests to do, but they aren’t all that important.  I’ve skipped them on most of my toons.

But I digress…  where was I?  Oh yeah, so I’m done with all the quests out there, though I still have the book to do.  I still have to polish off Spider Slayer, Warg Slayer, Craban Slayer, Troll Slayer, and Wight Slayer.  There’s also some exploration deeds I need to try and polish off, though the GA exploration will have to wait until later.  Hooray for the grind, hopefully having a full day off and able to play will let me get through most of the grind.  The North Downs awaits!

Stayed up much later than I should have last night and got my first taste of grouping.  The group consisted of 3 wardens (including myself), a champ, and a hunter.  The other wardens were using mainly spear based attacks and trying to do DPS, the highest level in the group was a warden, which at the beginning was able to maintain aggro on the trolls (we were doing Pursued by the Past in the Lone Lands).    After a couple of trolls I decided to see if I could tank and hold aggro over a warden that was 4 levels above me, and to my suprise, with the right combination of gambits, I could pull it off.  Now this only means that he was not using his threat gambits and primarily trying to do DPS.

What I found was that opening up with a quick javalin, usually shield breaker, then moving in for a few F-Sp gambits to establish hate.  Once I got a decent hold I would use Maddening strike to start stealing threat from the fellowship, and I would stack my DoTs (Sp-Sh-F + F-Sh-F + F-Sh), the Trolls went down before I could finish off my DoT cycle, but if I did not get a resist or miss I was able to hold threat on the mobs until dead.

All in all, I enjoy the aspect of tanking on the warden, I’ll definitely need to hone and freshen up my skills at it when I start reaching higher levels on him, but the experience was very much enjoyable.

So, after many, many tablets turned in to try to get a good 1h weapon, I had essentially given up on getting a main hand for the nice offhand Hammer my champ got, then I got Cururist from the Stairs, decent stats, well at least they are not terrible, but the DPS is huge.  This reignited my desire to grab a good 1h weapon, so I ended up blowing another 20 tablets in the past couple of days and finally, got one with only 2 legacies and one being tier 5 Fervour.  (Aside:  I like 1 great legacy and only 1 other, increases the chances to upgrade the great one, if not tier 6.).  At level 10, I think I got something rather decent legacy, tier 5 or 6 Rend Bleed damage, which when ranked up high I find it to be useful.  So this weapon is turning out to be a rather decent little 1h axe.

The problem I’m faced with is legendary slots.  I currently have 5 of 6 now filled up with weapons I use.  A 2h DPS weapon, 1h DPS weapon, Tanking 1h weapon, tanking rune, and a DPS rune.  Leaving only 1 slot for the sacraficial weapon.  There might be some tough choices ahead of me if I cannot decide if I want to stick with 2h or DW, both of which I rather enjoy.

/end random thoughs

This is a great feature, though I’m a little nervous that this will turn into what the Armory in WoW turned into.  IF you don’t logout in your best gear, you’ll be ridiculed, when you ask to get into a group, you’ll get the run around for a few min while someone checks on you, only to get a generic “Sorry, but no thanks…” message because people think you’re undergeared.

I have faith in the LOTRO subscirber base, which has shown time and time again, since open beta of SoA, that they are more mature than other MMO crowds.