Caster Wardens focus heavily on the use of ranged spell attacks and disables as well as the use of their pet in order to fill the role of a ranged DPS class. This class is incapable of putting out the DPS of Scouts and other ranged DPS, but with the use of our pet and other abilities unique to the warden we manage to remain competitive as well as fun and adaptive on the battlefield.
Caster Wardens shine in group play where our silences, knockdowns, and disables allow for our party members to succeed. With the addition of our Renew, Natural Balance, and Aqua Vitae we also fill a support role. You'll find that our Renew alone is enough to get us into any group. Our added damage is icing on the cake.
Solo play is also very possible. With our pet and utility we can do very well on our own in PvP and PvE. We remain very squishy but hard to kill, often to the point of becoming very annoying, and in the end we out last our opponents rather than destroy them quickly.
Stat Allocation
Caster Wardens, like every other Warden build, are very stat intensive. In order to achieve what we're setting out to do we must have the stats to back it all up. The biggest problem facing this build is mana. We simply do not have enough of it when we need it and we're always trying to recoup mana after most fights. Mana problems aside, we also need to keep our perception, luck, and intelligence up and that's not always easy to do with the gear being offered to us.
Below are each of the important stats and their percentage or goals that you should shoot for.
Intelligence - Determines our damage output on spells and our pet's dmage. When you let your intel dip too low you will notice a drastic decrease in overall dps. As a rule of thumb I always try to keep this near my perception. Since our Natural Wizardry talent increases spell damage by an additional 10% of our intelligence, having this stat higher helps.
Perception - Controls our resist and miss rates as well as our pet's. When you watch your combat log and see that some damage has been blocked, parried, or that you were resisted completely it is because your perception is too low for the target you are fighting. We're going to shoot for a goal that is both obtainable and functional. You need to keep your Perception 20% or lower on a bad day. Ideally this should be closer to 10% or lower, but obtaining that while keeping your luck and wisdom up is probably not going to happen until major gear milestones or level 40 in blues. This will probably be your highest stat.
Wisdom - This stat controls our mana regen, size of our mana pool, and our pet's ability to penetrate enemy armor and deal damage. Given what I said earlier about mana, and how much our spells cost, you'll never want this stat to be too low for your level (downward facing red arrows).
Luck - Quite simply, Luck determines our chance to crit and do glancing blows for melee, spells, and heals. If you gear yourself wrong you'll never break the 5% crit barrier. Honestly, this isn't as big of a deal as it sounds while leveling up but it is still something we want to try and overcome. Passing the 5% crit barrier into ANY greater chance to crit, while keeping your other stats where they should be at, should be considered a success. If you can, get it above 10%. Watch your chance to glancing blow! I like to avoid letting it get above 20%.
Stats to remember
Endurance - The higher this is the lower chance we have to be crit. Pay attention to it when you reach level 20+ and always keep your chance to be crit down!
Stamina - HP. More HP = live longer.
Agility - The more you avoid the better. We'll be taking talents to improve our dodge %. It would be nice if we actually had a % to improve.
Where do I put that 1 stat point every level?
In the long run your 1 point per level isn't going to make a huge difference at all considering a piece of gear will have +15 to this and +20 to that. Some people make the mistake of being fairly short-sighted and wanting to put these points into their important stat like intel or perception. However, they don't realize that some of our gear may be lacking in a stat when we reach the mid levels. I've found that Wisdom is severely lacking on gear that also contains enough int, perception, and luck to reach those target goals. As a result, I would put all of the points while leveling into Wisdom.
Talent Specs
The Sturdy Caster
+150% dodge
+50%-100% parry
+15% endurance
+30% armor
+x% to resists (I forget what the number is, but those 3 called "lightning bearer" don't do what the tooltip says in that calc - Will Edit Later)
+30% Lightning damage (if it works in OB)
+15% of intel to spell damage.
This build focuses on the increase in passive defense abilities to allow you to take more hits. There are a couple of swing talents that you can work with such as taking 1 out of Secret Ritual (mana regen ability) to increase chance to parry. With the added defense you will be able to sustain a bit more damage and stay in the fight longer.
Key stats to remember:
Agility - You're going to want this higher than normal with this build since you're relying on +dodge and +parry. You can actually neglect stammer a bit more than usually if you get your parry up.
Endurance - It needs to be higher as well because we're relying on the +15% endurance talents to give us a nice boost to the point where we're as uncrittable as possible.
The Concoction Caster
+150% dodge
+50% parry
+x% to resists (I forget what the number is, but those 3 called "lightning bearer" don't do what the tooltip says in that calc - Will Edit Later)
+30% Lightning damage (if it works in OB)
+15% of intel to spell damage.
This build lacks the defense of the former build but it increases your utility tremendously. Increased concoction duration and healing potion effects will be handy. With Storm and Snake blow you've been given a few extra tools for offense.
Key Stats to Remember:
Stamina - Probably want more HP on this one than the defense build.
Agility - Even though we're not taking the pure defense route, having the agility will make a difference.
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