Strongest warden build?

[Syn]

ive been messing around with the classes and i cant seem to find which build to go with. What are your thoughts?

[ZeZerT]

Hay

Overall, the frost tree is considered the best, to be completed with the Wind ranger

Now my personnal opinion.

Still only lvl 45~ with the warden.
I tried all the trees, of course not at their maximum due to my lvl.

For the early levels (like <35) I liked the Wind ranger only tree
Now I'm on the Storm caller one that I find unexpectedly strong. (I litteraly shot less arrows than I kill mobs with that, thanks to some companion spawns)

I'm not a fan of poison in general so I didn't invest time in that tree, but I saw some possibilities too

[NullPointer]

Some sort of Frost-based build mainly using the Winter Storm skill would probably be the strongest Warden build in terms of DPS, but I'd say from experience that the easiest and safest build is likely a Lightning-based build mainly using the Nimbus skill. This is because of the insane effective range on it, often killing mobs that are offscreen as long as you get line of sight to them.
I recently managed to get to Anomaly 303 with my Warden using that kind of build quite easily and safely. Currently trying to write up a post in the Character Builds section detailing the skills, masteries, gear, etc. so I'll link to that once it's done.

Edit: just finished the post, here's the link

[Ishiga]

Originally posted by NullPointer:

Some sort of Frost-based build mainly using the Winter Storm skill would probably be the strongest Warden build in terms of DPS, but I'd say from experience that the easiest and safest build is likely a Lightning-based build mainly using the Nimbus skill. This is because of the insane effective range on it, often killing mobs that are offscreen as long as you get line of sight to them.
I recently managed to get to Anomaly 303 with my Warden using that kind of build quite easily and safely. Currently trying to write up a post in the Character Builds section detailing the skills, masteries, gear, etc. so I'll link to that once it's done.

Please do. I'm personally a terrible theorycrafter in everything I play so I rely on people like you to put things together that work well and give me some direction to my skill investment.

[comment me aftr match]

I think it first depends on your items

[snackpoke]

I've eventually managed to make the warden build i like, which is non-archery ranger skills + poisons. Using Poison Arrow, Trapflip, Windwalker, Traps, Hallucinative Gas and Razor Wind. The rest skills are put to Spores, Splinter and Pod.

Basically i flip into the mob, use gas, traps, razor wind and watch them die (if they're still alive?) while moving futher.

[derkart]

I've tried an Archery/Poison build up to about level 65, and quite liked it. Yesterday I tried NullPointers Nimbus build. It is quite strong and lots of fun. The only downside is that playing it feels more like playing a mage than an archer.

I still haven't decided which to go with longterm. I'm missing my spiderlings a bit (the Wolfpack is nice too, though), and I feel that the Archery build had better single target damage. Nimbus on the other Hand clears rooms extremely fast, which is great for farming/leveling and given the game's design, probably more useful overall. Loving that after (now) 72 levels I still haven't decided on a build. Most games have you in a corner by that point.

[Herflik]

Tested many warden builds and the one that I like the most is lightning elemental one,based on 3 damage skills (for the future update when masteries should be nerfed when focusing just on one skill).

[AvronShar]

The Ranger tree is fairly decent when lvling, doesn't require much to actually be useful.

I've yet to dab into the druid much, tested out some skills, seems rather poo, but still not sure.

Lightning/Frost are definetly end game builds, both packing a massive punch, clearing mobs and bosses fairly fast. Best builds seem to be using differnt legs/ancient leg pieces though, and stemming away from the FULL sets, and max out ele damage with the Athos/D'artagnan two piece set instead, and going from there.

[Phantasma]

Ranger tree is great for end game, but there are sadly no good items for it, either set or single legendaries.

[NullPointer]

I actually feel like the Wind Ranger (Physical) tree is by far the worst of the four in endgame due to the lack of scaling on Splinters and lack of stacking on Razor Tips practically forcing builds to focus on a single skill, which would probably be Rapid Shot due to the lack of duration-based cooldown skills and maximum cooldown reduction being limited to 75%.
I may not have explored some sort of combination that makes it on par with or even stronger than the other trees, but that was my experience with it.

Aside from the Nimbus build I posted previously, I also enjoyed a Pods-based Druid build with the Everspring Raiment set for the stacking effect, and Forest Ward + Toxic Storm for applying the DoT. Gameplay was pretty similar to Cloak of Infection Warlock but more reliant on movespeed bonuses instead of mobility skills for movement, and with less damage in exchange for a little more flexibility in gear due to Bloom providing healing, making regen from Royal Armor and Pathfinders not necessary for sustain.

A Snow Blast-based Winter Herald build using the Snowstorm Armor set is extremely powerful in terms of damage, possibly having the highest DPS of any Warden build due to Winter Storm hitting four times per second per instance and scaling with duration while having a low cooldown. However I didn't enjoy the gameplay quite as much as the Nimbus and Pods builds since it was slower due to the limited speed at which Winter Storm travels. Still very much worth trying if you manage to get at least three pieces of the set though.

[Phantasma]

Well I haven't been playing warden as much, only Anomaly 300+ so far. My experience with the ranger tree so far has been different though, just stack bleed damage %, max razor tips damage mastery, max overdraw mastery for piercing, max splinter proc rate mastery, then multi shot/volley to clear everything on the screen in 1-2 shots. Bosses can be kinda tricky, just walk into them and use volley to hit them with 20 arrows at once, it's kinda like a shotgun. At higher levels, probably will add mastery points to volley to kill bosses faster. There is also arrow rain + the 30% cooldown bow for it if you want to go that route. Haven't made any guides yet because I'm still low level and haven't played it as much, but the concept is to just get enough bleed damage to kill mobs with 1 shot using volley, then start pumping points into a skill that can take down a boss fast, either volley or arrow rain.

[NullPointer]

Ah yes, I didn't gear for bleed damage when I was playing around with Physical build ideas since I found the ones I could come up with rather boring compared to builds focusing on the other trees, so I didn't commit to enchanting specific gear for it. Sounds like it could be decent at the very least and not comparatively terrible like my experience, if not good or even great but that would need further testing to be certain.

[Deceit]

I haven't played a ranger at end game, but a spore and pod build using forest ward had some pretty solid clear speed with ult up, and the damage from Boom Shrooms seemed very good as well. At least during the leveling process, it was far stronger than the Ice build. Maybe I was doing it wrong, but even with all the damage passives and cold burst, the tornado itself seemed fairly mediocre.

[Phantasma]

Lot's of good information in this thread about the warden. I feel like a hybrid build would probably be the best one for end game. Can anyone confirm if a single element build does well at 800+ Anomaly? Other than the poison pods build, I feel the other builds would have trouble with staying alive but I'm not sure.

[NullPointer]

Not quite at 800+ yet since I've been playing around with the other classes a lot, but for the Nimbus build at least I find that just the +100 life on hit on D'Artagnan is good enough to sustain health even with Heartstone inflating health values at 700+ anomalies. It can't facetank sustained damage but it really shouldn't have to since it's meant to be a long-range build. For times when the character is left on low health with nothing to leech off, Storm Mender heals 8% of max health per second, and the use effect provides a large buffer shield for immediate threats, giving over 230% of the character's max health in shield with investment in companion health.