High Level Warden Are Useless!

[Drudenfusz]

Many Dailies from the Warden don't have the Weapon Keyword, so they can't have an Enhancement Bonus or the Benefit from Weapon Expertise....

 

[Piratecat]

We may have different definitions of useless. Can you please list examples that don't have weapon, implement or an intrinsic bonus ("strength +6 vs...") to attack?

 

[Mengu]

Many Dailies from the Warden don't have the Weapon Keyword, so they can't have an Enhancement Bonus or the Benefit from Weapon Expertise....

I don't have access to PHB2 right now, but looking at the compendium, the polymorph dailies you might be talking about all give you a once per encounter attack which either has the weapon keyword, or is a stat+6 attack.

Can you give a specific example of a daily attack power that doesn't?

 

[Black Knight Irios]

Many?

I read the lvl 19-29 dailies and researched that:
Only 1 should have the weapon keyword, Form of the Starmetal Warrior 29.
And I assume that was an oversight and not intentional.

All others have either the weapon keyword or target a NAD and gain a tier appropriate bonus.

 

[DracoSuave]

None of the Form dailies have the weapon keyword. This is because they don't have stats that are affected by an accessory. Most powers that affect yourself and only yourself don't have the weapon or implement keyword.

However, if you look at the attacks themselves, they'll usually say 'Make a weapon attack' which inherently gives that attack (and only that attack) the weapon keyword.

 

[Mengu]

Only 1 should have the weapon keyword, Form of the Starmetal Warrior 29.
And I assume that was an oversight and not intentional.

For what it's worth, the compendium entry for the encounter attack associated with this daily power does have the weapon keyword.

 

[franzel]

Many Dailies from the Warden don't have the Weapon Keyword, so they can't have an Enhancement Bonus or the Benefit from Weapon Expertise....

Emphasis mine. I think the main issue is that for attacks that don't use a weapon or an implement, even if they gain a tier-appropriate bonus (as the Warden powers or the Dragonborn's breath do), they cannot gain the benefit of any Expertise feat, thus they are 1-3 points behind the max curve of other attacks with no way to make it up. The only options are to houserule a new expertise feat to cover all of these types of attacks or to bake the expertise bonuses into the level advancement (as a number of DMs have done).

Obviously, this is mitigated somewhat by your attitude towards the expertise feats themselves.

 

[Black Knight Irios]

For what it's worth, the compendium entry for the encounter attack associated with this daily power does have the weapon keyword.

That's one more reason to believe that it is an oversight.

 

[DracoSuave]

Fah!

It's -not- an oversight, because the keyword -isn't- missing.

Once during this encounter, you can make the following weapon attack while you are in this form.

These are all cases where a part of the power (the attack it grants) has a keyword the rest of the power does not. Now I don't know -why- this is, but one interesting thing about it... if you had a Warden that had immunity to weapons, if the power had the Weapon keyword they could never go into their form, and could never gain the attack. I doubt that's why, but it bears mentioning.

The power's effect doesn't involve weapons in any way tho, it simply allows you to gain some buffs and an attack. It's -that attack- that does get the weapon keyword.