Warden skill point allocation: When?

[Digital Entropy]

Greets!

I just picked up this game today from Direct2Drive, after reading these forums it was easy for me to decide on playing a Warden and after further research I have a good idea of what skills I need. My only problem is knowing what levels to take what. I've seen some nice detailed guides around here for other masteries, but none for the Warden so I was wondering if there were any guidelines for at least a few levels until it becomes more obvious what needs to be filled in when.

[F4rmerbob]

Warden is a pretty good first character.

Generally you want to use a shield + spear, and the skill selection is very straightforward. Basically put points in whatever looks good to you at the moment, but be sure to finish the points in both masteries earlyish (mid-late 20's) so you get the most benefit from the health and stats.

Use http://titancalc.com to preview your build, and remember you can always remove points from the mystic.

Some skills of note:
Gauge, Barbed Netting, Eviscerate, and Detonate don't deserve any points at any time. Bleeding is next to useless past the very beginning of normal.

Battle Awareness, Take Down, Rally, and Adrenaline don't usually need more than one point, as the benefits they give are less than what you can get elsewhere, although they are all pretty good. You want all of those for their synergies (except Take Down), which are awesome.

All four skills on the right side of the Defense tree plus Volley and maybe Wood Lore are probably what you want to max first (I find its a good idea to have at least one point in most of the good stuff before you start maxing skills), and Pulverize is the best of those.

You should put at least one point in Batter and Rend armor, as you have nothing else to put on your left click, and that gives you another multi-target shield attack (which does weapon damage + shield damage for alot of damage).

I don't recommend the marksmanship tree for a warden, as defense is blah without a shield.

For stats, you want to be able to have enough dex to use the best spears, and as much strength as you can get after that.

[Digital Entropy]

Cool, thanks for the heads up. When I was playing earlier today I was putting 2 points in defense mastery each level,and doing 1:1 str/dex thus far as well. I'm probably going head-long into the game tomorrow from scratch now that I have a better idea of what I'm doing.

So far, even from what little I played, this game is a total blast. I tried getting into a few other Action RPGs but this one blows them out of the water by a mile.

[Soranor]

This is what my warden would look like somewhere in Act 3: click

The four maxed skills Wood Lore, Disruption and Pulverize by the time are taken because they're the ones that make me kill fastest. Inspiration helps regain the mana used by shield charge.
One point Rend Armor is enough for attacking three targets.

[Matseb2611]

I usually like to keep a smaller gap between amount of points in two masteries, but that is my play style. I don't like to only have benefits and skills from one mastery, I like to get them both involved before the end of normal.

To me: Shield charge > Take down, but I like to use both. But if you can only get one then I'd advise shield charge.

Overall it's an excellent class.