Helm
Life Guard gives a crucial 50% direct and indirect damage reduction.
Weyrick’s gives a huge boost to base health/mana/damage.
We take a +25% indirect damage reduction minor enchant on the helm to help get us to 100%.
Also notice we take the Companion Damage minor stat wherever we can.
Accessory
Part 1 of our Mana Package™, Cosmic Cape allows us to scale our damage with max mana. This let’s us scale our damage infinitely (albeit slowly), since there is no limit to the points you can put into max mana through Class Mastery lines. When fully upgraded this turns 70% of our max mana into 1.5x damage, which comes out to (.7 * 1.5) =1.05damage per mana point. This means we will want to put mastery points into mana (more on that in the skills/mastery section).
Call of the Wild rune adds an additional 3 companions for each of our “multi-companion” versions of our skills (spiderlings/wolf pack/sparkies) for an additional 9 companions total, which further boosts our damage from Gaia.
We get one of our 4 resist-all enchants from here. Also notice the +20% increased gem effect, we want as many as these as we can get to increase the bonuses from our gems.
Amulet
Set piece for Master’s Command, this is essential for any Companion build. The Set gives a whopping FOUR different damage multipliers (base damage x5, special attack, +30% attack speed, and increased Companion Damage stat), and double their health.
For the rune, Wolftooth Necklace is mandatory as it doubles wolf damage and gives them an infinitely stacking bleed effect, allowing the wolf damage to scale into endless anomaly tiers.
For rolls, we get 20% DR, and another +25% indirect DR, bringing us to 100% with roll from the helm.
We also get an overpower roll here, as we want as close to 100% overpower as we can get without wasting stats.
Offhand
There’s not too many good companion build options for Warden’s offhand. We take Thistle Thorn here, as Ice Shard & Air Freeze are both Nature skills, so this gives double attack-speed.
The Wolfcaster rune lets us use Ice Shard & Air Freeze with all of our wolf multipliers for damage, and then further tripling it for huge damage on our attacks.
For enchants, offhands do not offer cooldown reduction or gem effect, so we take effect duration to improve the uptime on our Winterbringer ultimate.
Armor
Part 2 of our Mana Package™, this lets us scale our defense through max mana. This drains 15%, but then multiplies it by 40. So each point of mana is worth (.15 * 40) =6points of barrier.
The Packleader rune is essential as it lets wolfpack also summon an alpha wolf, which is an additional companion for Gaia as well as more frost damage. It also makes all wolves deal +500% damage, a huge multiplier.
For rolls, we get another 20% DR and another +20% resist-all. Armor’s minor enchant options are quite bad for this build, as they do not have companion damage, cooldown reduction, or effect duration. As such, we take +20% increased gem effect and mana cost reduction here.
Bow
Gaia is one of the big damage multipliers of the build, as it gives a +20% increase to damage for every companion. When the build is completed we get 27 companions, for a +540% damage increase. If you use the Dancing Blades codex, you get another 3 companions as well.
The Bloodscent rune gives additional damage for companions (not our own skills) to bleeding enemies. The Wolftooth Necklace rune on our amulet gives the wolves a bleed effect to their attack, so as soon as one wolf attacks an enemy, all of your companions will deal 4x damage to it.
For rolls, we take the twister epic enchant to allow our Stormchaser boots to increase our damage (see below for boots). We also take mana to boost our Mana Package™ even further. For minor enchants, we take cooldown reduction and effect duration – both are needed to get 100% uptime on our Winterbringer ultimate.
Boots
The boots options for Warden for this build are not great. The best one we have damage-wise is Stormchasers, which lets the twister enchant on our weapon increase our damage by up to +300%.
The Advancing Army rune turns 430% of movement speed into Companion Damage (which then gets a further 25% multiplier due to the Master’s Command Set). This is a huge damage multiplier for companions. For example, 150% movement speed becomes (4.3 * 150) = 645%, which with Master’s Command Set becomes (645 * 1.25) =+806.25%Companion Damage. Wow!
For rolls, Stormchasers comes with a guaranteed epic enchant: Evasion. This allows us to roll a 2nd epic enchant! We take Kill Haste to increase our movement speed, which in turn also increases our Companion Damage through Advancing Army rune. We also take our 3rd +20% resist-all enchant. Finally, boots allow 25% reduce damage from harmful ground effects that we can’t get anywhere else, so definitely take that.
Ring
2nd half of the Master’s Command Set. Additionally, this ring reduces all damage taken by companions by 98% when fully upgraded, making them effectively invincible. This 98% DR for companions is so good that we can actually skip all Companion Health bonuses on gear and skills/masteries!
The Pure energy rune is Part 3 of our Mana Package™, and is a 3x multiplier on our mana when fully augmented. This means the Vestige shield is 3x bigger, and it means our damage increase through Cosmic Cape is 3x bigger as well. This is also why dumping all mastery points into Mana is more efficient than either damage or health, even at the soft cap.
For rolls, we take Evasion, as well as our 4th and final +20% resist-all roll. The last major enchant is mana. For minor enchants, we take +20% gem effect and +17% cooldown reduction.
