Yeah, the sudden death wall thing can be a bit jarring, especially if you were running something that was actually pretty weak but still able to steamroll most chaff etc. critters, and stuff like a raw melee (no bow, little to no other actives) skellie warden is definitely that. You get used to it if you're doing silly things, ehehe. Which... yeah, I guess you can caveat my previous statement. It's probably worth noting that it
is a thing where the more suboptimal you're messing around with on one front (talent build, kit priority, actual playing) the less room you have to do it on others. You can totally win the game with naked archmagi or staffzerkers or whathaveyou, but you
do have to play more carefully when you do it. Similarly, you can play doing incredibly stupid things (only bump attacks! No actives!), but you do have to build around it. You weren't exactly on either extreme on either front, mind you (though a melee warden that pure is admittedly approaching it), but it's worth mention T4 isn't entirely lenient. The game does have its limits, heh.
... though, yeah, now comes the unsolicited advise because it's approaching midnight and it's been a while since I babbled on the subject of a T4 build. Totally feel free to ignore it, I just got a bit caught up in mentioning a few things and ended up saying a lot more than I thought I was going to :V
You can do wardens raw melee, but it's probably notably weaker than mixed or bow primary. The class is very much intended to hybrid, or at least pick up stasis/invest more in mobility/defensive stuff to mitigate some of the missing bits. Thaaat said, you definitely missed a few key things, eyeballing it. Hound blink really needs 5/5 (going hounds without getting the summon on blink effect loses quite a lot of the tree's utility, kinda' like vigor really wants >1 point), if you're going melee you pretty badly need to leverage movement better (phase pulse+blink blade is mildy disgusting, dropping one of the weaker shields for controlled phase door, or getting another inscription slot or two), elemental surge was just odd (what were you even using to proc that? Spellblade effects and item activations?), stuff like that. Sitting on that 60% global slow on-melee is kinda' painful to look at, though, I won't lie, heh. Would have meant no spellblade, but spellblade's only so-so for wardens anyway. Good enough to be end-game kit, but not all that much synergy with the class, and meanwhile 60% slow is slightly ridiculous for anyone regularly using melee attacks.
Also looks like you were either sitting on a cat point or missed the last one, which definitely would have helped -- there's four total for everyone, with cornacs having an extra, and as near as I could count you only spent three (hound, combat boost, fate). Another inscription slot for cpd (or just PD, even) or unlocking threaded combat or stasis would have been pretty major, especially the latter if you were insistent on using no ranged attacks and was having paradox problems. Any of that instead of boosting combat would have made quite the difference, too, heh, but cat boosting talent trees are one of those things people like to argue about. It is almost always the worst thing you can do with a cat point besides not using it (or unlocking arcane trees on someone with antimagic or something odd like that), but you totally can roll with it and still win.
Going zero ranged does explain a lot about why you had trouble, though, heh. Even melee prime warden wants to dip into the ranged stuff for arrow threading + multishot junk (preferably with call, which lets even your melee stuff help on that front) to help with paradox management. You can go without, but it takes either a great deal of care or(/and) a pretty strong kit focus on paradox equivalent and/or willpower. Stasis helps, too, of course.
... tl;dr, what you were trying to do is totes possible, but it wasn't as strong as it felt and you missed a few fairly major things. Just looking over stuff, I don't think you were very far from managing, though. Don't need hyper optimization or anything, just a touch up or three.
Completely aside all that, I have to ask: Were you having much trouble hitting things? I usually have a pretty miserable time when I skimp on accuracy even if I'm doing a dex primary build, but I do occasionally hear someone saying they bullied through without talent or much kit investment. Think I'm usually a good 15-20 effective points over yours with late game accuracy reliant critters, so whether you managed well enough without would be nice to hear.
