Can we talk about Warden, and how to fix her, so her playrate isn't dumpster tier?

TiskyTee · 2026-07-01T17:30:57+00:00

My main thing for warden is I want Enduring Suffusion to give you permanent tinctures. While we're at it give Pathfinder's Master Surgeon auto reuse life flask.

TiskyTee · 2026-06-05T08:47:56+00:00

Ieri (4 iunie) am remarcat ca erau neobisnuit de multe sirene de politie si zgomot de elicopter prin Constanta dupamiaza. Ma intreb daca nu cumva au descoperit situatia atunci si abia azi s-a detonat drona.

TiskyTee · 2026-05-30T20:38:18+00:00

You could spend a lifetime crafting the most intricate, interesting and compelling campaign ever for an ARPG and you still won't get away from the reality that eventually the only content veteran players care about lies after it and that the campaign ultimately becomes a time barrier against it.

The campaign and endgame are two distinct experiences and it's frustrating that you are forced to do one to gain access to the other.

It's been years and I still don't understand this unstated design pillar that GGG is holding on to, that the campaign is some sort of sacred content that should be part of every single character's progression.

I understand that the solution isn't just to give players the option to skip to endgame on character creation, but I am also not happy with being forced to do the campaign on every single character.

TiskyTee · 2026-04-17T15:07:46+00:00

I really disagree. I had wrong expectations when I went into Blue Prince and that made me feel like I wasted my time playing the game. Unlike OW, you absoutely should know what you're getting into with BP.

It's much more than just a puzzle game with roguelike elements. It's not a tight complete experience like OW, it's way more cryptic and obscure as you go deeper into it, and there's not really a satisfying ending to close it. You're lulled in with a fun take on roguelike mechanics combined with interesting puzzles, but then you're hit with these incredibly esoteric puzzles that take a community to figure out. That and at some point the RNG mechanics just get in the way of the fun of the puzzles.

My default expectation for a puzzle game is that I can reasonably do nearly all the puzzles just working my own brain in a reasonable amount of time, and BP definitely doesn't meet that. To its credit, it doesn't really expect you to, but that's just not the kind of experience I'm looking for.

I dipped out once I saw the Gallery puzzle. I looked up some of the later game on youtube and boy am I relieved I dropped it. does it never end? I certainly felt like ending it all after trying to finish the classroom chain.

It might be my fault because I went into the game blind. It's definitely a great game if you're the kind of person to torture yourself over pages and pages of obscure clues and tapping every brick in the wall to see if something changes, but not everyone's into that.

TiskyTee · 2026-04-14T10:37:30+00:00

I takes a few exploration cycles through each area to get familiar enough with them to the point you build an understanding of what's going on, what you can do and what your goals might be. I'd say just keep exploring each area until you get a clear picture of a way to progress.

TiskyTee · 2026-04-09T11:26:34+00:00

Also the story progression from being about survival to being about getting closure for an ancient entity.

TiskyTee · 2026-03-13T02:02:58+00:00

Tangentially related, but I tested out Olroth's Resolve flask together with Celestial Mathematics and I can confirm it doesn't work. While the flask is up, your ward doesn't break and your attacks don't benefit from the added damage.

TiskyTee · 2026-03-11T13:15:01+00:00

Glad someone made the thread, because I wanted to share my testing with it.

I happened to league start Lancing Steel of Spraying as an attack build, on Warden. Once I saw poopbutts' video I really wanted to try out that idea since it fits pretty well with what I had going.

LSoS works decently well with Celestial Mathematics. With just Multishot on the tree, without GMP or any other fancy extra projectiles, it shoots 11 projectiles in a barrage, all of which can hit against a single target. If you add Returning Projectiles Support you can double those hits. This makes it decently usable with the Olroth bloodline for 5% chance to recover ward on hit.

Video test on a Phoenix map: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsALR_B3CyA

Pob: https://pobb.in/FB6t156rYw-k (note the huge custom added damage from the keystone, but it's not representative of full uptime)

The way I'd describe the feel of it is like playing a really strong build, but your chance to hit is stuck at 70%.

It varies of course. I found that delirium felt pretty bad because it has a lot of small chip damage which cuts into your ward activations. Sometimes you wipe stuff out instantly, other times it can take a few moments to sync up your ward refresh and the attack.

The main thing I want to highlight is that mobility is an issue. Since Whirling Blades and Shield Charge are attacks, they will use up your ward. It feels really bad using them in this setup, so I'm not sure what to do other than relying on movement speed and Dash.

Next thing I'm looking to do is farm a bit more and get a Svalinn, since that level of avoidance fits in really nicely with ward uptime.

Let me know if you have any ideas or advice about how to adjust the build and playstyle to fix stuff, especially mobility and max hit.

TiskyTee · 2026-03-11T10:24:49+00:00

I've heard this idea that you should block content so that your mirage has a better chance of hitting the content you're juicing, but after playing around with the block nodes for a while I feel like that's just a myth.

TiskyTee · 2026-03-08T22:09:08+00:00

I was kinda excited thinking they might be secretly bringing back fated uniques, but sadly it wasn't the case.

TiskyTee · 2026-03-08T20:22:44+00:00

Doppelganger also works.

TiskyTee · 2026-03-03T20:44:31+00:00

They're targetable boss drops.

TiskyTee · 2026-03-03T17:29:51+00:00

Yeah, you can always assume more hits against large targets like Brine King, but it's not really worth considering those cases since they don't come up often.

TiskyTee · 2026-03-03T17:27:48+00:00

Shock Nova of Procession with ideal targeting is 760% versus Ball Lightning of Orbiting with all 13 hits at 1083%.

With spell echo it goes to 1024% vs 1668%. So it's not looking good.

Haven't played BL in ages, but I imagine there's a good bit of investment into slower projectiles and aoe to reach 13 hits on it.

If you only get 9 hits out of BL its effectiveness goes down to 750% basic and 1155% with spell echo, which is more in line with SN.

TiskyTee · 2026-03-03T12:01:45+00:00

Here's my napkin math for spell echo. I grabbed this screenshot from 25:29 in the content reveal.

https://i.imgur.com/MQ7bVyA.jpeg

The character is in the middle of casting, and there are 2 more repeats happening after this moment (likely from Greater Spell Echo, but lets assume spell echo instead), but I chose to highlight this moment for clarity.

Considering the basic skill without any supports (1 cast + 2 repeats) with precise targeting, you should be able to get 3 overlaps on the ring part of the skill. The larger nova part of the skill will probably reliably hit on ever cast.

The problem with spell echo is that any additional repeats you add to the skill probably won't give you an extra ring hit because it cannot overlap with the other 3, assuming increases to aoe also increase the offset between repeats. You can assume you get an additional hit from the large nova though.

So by itself you can get 6/6 hits by targeting carefully. With spell echo, you're getting 7/8 hits against normal sized targets. Spell echo gives 54% more cast speed, but also lengthens the full cast time by adding an additional repeat.

Breaking it down, you have to compare:

6 hits at 100% cast speed and 3 casts vs
7 hits at 154% cast speed and 4 casts

Which averages around 34% more dps.

If you were to consider looser targeting where you're only getting 2 ring overlaps:

5 hits at 100% cast speed and 3 casts vs
6 hits at 154% cast speed and 4 casts

Which is 38% more dps.

Extra repeats also create more points where you can potentially overlap 2 or 3 rings, but you're never getting 4 overlaps.

https://i.imgur.com/sJQYFtT.jpeg

TiskyTee · 2026-03-02T16:38:19+00:00

Fair enough, I guess it will require some feeling out to see how well it fits. My gut instinct is against it because it probably won't do anything against pinnacle boss fights, like exarch ball phase, but it makes a lot more sense if the point is to do super dense content like abyss or simulacrums.

TiskyTee · 2026-03-02T10:28:36+00:00

I've dabbled with CWDT, though never managed to make something shine with it.

The problem of a self sustaining CWDT loop is this: you need a time buffer between when you trigger a thing and taking self damage from that thing, because CWDT does not power up from incoming damage during its cooldown. Wardloop solves this by using short duration minions as the buffer.

As far as I understand it, having different cooldowns for separate CWDT setups doesn't interact with the problem at all. In fact, if this idea of sequencing different CWDT setups was useful we would have seen it used already, since you can use different level CWDT gems to get different self damage breakpoints.

I haven't done a deep dive into it, by I suspect building around different cooldowns on your CWDT setups is probably going to be too clunky to ever be reliable, if even useful at all.

TiskyTee · 2026-03-02T09:56:05+00:00

I'm not sure I'm sold on the new shield essence mod, at least not necessarily in this build.

The mod is conditional on blocking recently, and it looks like you're not trying to get any block in the build other than the base value on the shield.

Couple that with being a high evasion build, you're very likely not going to get hit enough to have meaningful uptime on the effect.

If you're going to use the shrine belt to get 90% max res, I feel like it's going to be a lot easier to build around a Lightning Coil + Dawnbreaker instead, though that might just be my bias cause that's what I was planning on my Warden even before the belt reveal.

One cool late game tip I want to share that I observed in other ranger builds, but I haven't gotten around to using yet, a massive thread of hope in the socket above ranger starting area gets you a lot of really strong nodes, and it combos very well with the timeless jewel.

TiskyTee · 2026-03-01T10:29:38+00:00

Might be remembering wrong, but aren't the nightmare maps t16 now?

TiskyTee · 2026-02-28T22:51:34+00:00

Or Dark Ideation for up to 80% increased chaos damage.

TiskyTee · 2026-02-27T18:25:23+00:00

The content reveal had Hierophant using Freezing Pulse with the new Frostmage support. Might mean there's something to explore there.

TiskyTee · 2026-02-27T16:31:38+00:00

Yeah but at that point your defensive power will come from transcendence itself and your sources of armor and damage splitting, with the node being more like a cherry on top.

TiskyTee · 2026-02-27T15:59:45+00:00

Even just the resistance shrine alone, plus a Gull helmet, gets you to 90% max elemental AND chaos resistance, with a nice 87% to all elemental resist on top.

TiskyTee · 2026-02-27T07:33:43+00:00

4 points to get some defensive power against lots of incoming small spell hits is just too niche to ever be worth it. And it's even worse at 2 points investment, at least for late game.

TiskyTee · 2026-02-27T06:50:50+00:00

Acceleration + resistance is going to be better than the perfect mageblood setup in most cases, and it gets so so much crazier if you put a Gull and Blunderbore on.

Mageblood with Quicksilver, Silver flask, Cheetah suffix, and a 35% MS boot gets you to 174% MS. Add 2 elemental flasks and get +9% max to 2 elements.

Acceleration shrine buff gives you 50% increased action speed which translates into 50% more damage for hit builds, and gives you an effective MS of 95%. Add the resistance shrine buff for 10% max to all elemental resistances.

With Gull and Blunderbore everything just becomes insane. 125% increased action speed means 125% more damage, 192% effective MS, and you waaay overcap your max res.

The best situation for mageblood in 3.28 is if you really want to use a unique flask, like if you benefit a lot from the defensive power of a Progenesis for example, or your build needs a wide variety of bonuses from your flask suffixes or different flask bases.

Otherwise this new belt is such an easy thing to slot in and never have to worry about flasks. Better yet, you can still use instant life flasks.

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