Warden

From Lotro-Wiki.com

Armed with spears as their weapon of choice, Wardens use a gambit system to fire off powerful combo attacks at the front lines. Unlike other classes, which have to wait for opportunities, the warden creates his own openings and then capitalizes on them. Wearing medium armor, Wardens specialize in ambushing and focusing on single enemies.

The Warden as designed takes as its inspiration Haldir, the Elf warden who protected the lands of Lothlorien from incursions by orcs and other foul things that crept from Moria. True to its model, the Mines of Moria Warden is a medium-armor tank class built around an Elf rather than a Man's idea of a heavy fighter -- sacrificing heavy protection in favor of agility and anticipation. As a result, the Warden in Mines of Moria may find his or her greatest utility not as a tank but as a support fighter -- an off-tank.

Interestingly, the Warden's gameplay mechanics owe a debt to Tekken as much as to any Elf-lord. The Warden's main abilities are triggered by a new "gambit" system. These are special attacks and status effects triggered by firing off certain combination of moves in sequence. Thus a "Power Attack" designed to take advantage of a specific break in a creature's defenses might be fired off by using four specially-colored attacks in a row, while a different attack designed to slow an enemy's attacks could be used to set up combos that let companions regain some health or power. The Warden, then, is a strategic class designed, according to Steefel, "... for players want to anticipate what they'll need 10 seconds from now as opposed to right this second." [1]

Available Races: Man, Elf, Hobbit

Note: This class will become available with the Mines of Moria expansion.