In the future they might be good, but for this set basically 99% of the roster does magic damage so the bonus armor seemingly has no bonus whatsoever. Maybe Wardens should get a change to instead of gaining armor gain a type of damage resistance that applies to all damage?
The Warden buffs at 4 and 6 are significant... except that the TFT meta now is 100% spells and incapacitating effects (Glacial, Poison) for which armor is irrelevant. It's not like the armor boost isn't high enough, though, so it's not something that can really be fixed with changed numbers. It basically needs meta tweaks to be relevant again.
Given that you always face 7 others and thus multiple different comps means any buff that hard focuses either armor or mr is rather pointless. To make things worse, any Physical damage heavy comp will have atleast 2 dessert for 50% armor shred aswell...
I think a % boost to both armor and mr would be nice, it would empower defstats gained from items so you can choose wether you need more mr or more armor that way while giveing decent baseline tankyness vs everything but truedamage.
Not to mention desert.
Warden is only effective against assassins, blademasters or rangers. 3 Assassins doesn't scale well into late, nobody goes rangers, and if the person goes blademasters, they're going to get desert.
Look at this game. Mainly ap damage, and most games are like this
Am I the only one who likes Wardens as they are?
Warden is the first synergy is throw if I need to chose between Warden and "X." Warden is a good counter sometimes. If you have a player with Assassins, it is good to buff up the back line. If you can get Nasus to sit in the middle of everyone, he can do a good job tanking. If you get spatula warden, you can toss it on a beserker who jumps in or an assassin who jumps in. I have noticed mages don't target assassins first that often. It is, however, not a great buff. I think the only thing worse is probably Druid. It only heals the druids themselves, and those champs suck past stage 2.
Warden is the difference between your back line dying in 20 seconds or 8 seconds. Although a lot of damage is Skills and Magic. there's still the Shields, the autos that take time to charge mana (even Ocean still has 3-4 rounds of autos unless standing on an ocean node or starting with items)
Try this experiment:
Go Ocean, but only take Thresh or Nautilus. Go a few rounds into late game like this.
Then have both. Compare what your team can do with 2 wardens vs 1.
4 Wardens goes even further, especially if you give them items for magic mitigation, and crit mitigation, or glove dodge items.
My braum hypercarry with warden buff tends to do pretty well, but it does also feel like the people I'm playing against have no idea what they're doing a lot of the time. It's hard countered by the 4 desert buff or by summoners or to a lesser extend magic damage heavy comps. I give him a dragon's claw and sometimes get the mystic buff so he's not squishy to magic damage, plus his shield reduces the damage as well, but he doesn't reflect magic damage like he does physical.
Wardens are strong if you use them right, especially if you can get 4p warden and 2p mystic.. You just gotta know how to do the dance, cc's help a ton too. I mean not with EVERY composition but there are a few REALLY strong teams that weave in some of these defensive with a huge amount of success...
If the Warden bonus actually gets tweaked then I feel like the best tweak would be to give the wardens bonus health.
This makes the Warden bonus work on all types of damage, which fits the front-line role of wardens, and a viable warden comp would be a good buff to both Titanic Hydra (as a solid item for this type of comp) and Giant Slayer (as a solid counter to this type of comp, if it gets too strong).
I definitely agree that the warden bonus needs work though.
I honestly have a lot of success with wardens. A couple of things to remember is what other champs you are using with them what items you are putting on them. I like having Talia on the team to get the shield from mountain bonus once you get malphite. And on water maps I get qiyanna to synergize with thresh or naut. Volibear works great with both braum and ornn and add zed late game. For items I will try to spatual a non-warden champ into a ward to hit my spike earlier. I also use multiple sword breakers depending on item rng. It doesn't always win but I will normally get me to top 4.
