Fellow Wardens

OnGodiDoDis

I'm glad that Wardens are finally getting the attention we have longed for. The new morphs are good, and defensively, Wardens are in a good place. However, the upcoming Piercing Cold changes may throw this progress away. You see, Piercing Cold currently buffs Magic and Frost damage by 10%. This means that I can equip a lightning or inferno staff and benefit from the passive. I can use an inferno staff to proc Burning Spellweave and still have the passive 10%. I could use any set and destro staff and stack their respective bonuses with the Piercing Cold bonus. This upcoming patch however, that will no longer be the case. The bonus changes from 10% to 2%, and you only get the 10% while using a frost staff. Let me tell you why this is a horrible idea:

Frost staff does not grant any damage bonuses to either single target skills or aoe skills like inferno and lightning staves do, respectively. This means that if I do not want to run a Frost staff, my entire setup will receive an 8% nerf to my damage. In the forums, the devs said "the lack of more DPS focused Ice damage abilities (since they are predominantly made for tanks and utility)". This right here means that the devs acknowledge that Wardens Frost skills are subpar and are not made to fulfill a DPS role. However, they want to make that playstyle more common, not by making those skills stronger, but by nerfing all other non-Frost staff playstyles. This change will affect mag Wardens the most, since stamdens predominantly use zero magic/frost-dealing skills/ultimates. Keep in mind that the reason we don’t see many DPS Frost Wardens is because our Frost skills are not made for bursting enemies down. Not Northern Storm, nor Arctic blast, nor Winter's Revenge, and especially not Frozen Gate will ever end up in a death recap, unless that person got zerged down.

An already subpar, DPS playstyle is going to receive an extra 8% nerf in order to make an even weaker playstyle more popular, not stronger. Make it make sense.

My suggestion is to make the new Piercing Cold take effect with all destro staves, instead of just frost. Increase the damage of our frost skills, or just rework them to make them more viable in PvP. The entire Winter's Embrace tree is dog**** compared to other classes' "support" tree.

rauyran

I don't understand ZOS logic for this change. Ice staffs are for tanking and defense. Ancient Knowledge passive gives bonuses to blocking with an ice staff, Tri Focus gives shields as does Wall of Frost.

haelgaan

i'd love an option for an ice staff mage to be decent offensive DPS, but this is not the way...

Dangranma_Burgrukgad

rauyran wrote: »

I don't understand ZOS logic for this change. Ice staffs are for tanking and defense. Ancient Knowledge passive gives bonuses to blocking with an ice staff, Tri Focus gives shields as does Wall of Frost.

Logic? They changed the Advanced Species passive 3 times in a couple of months, do you see any logic in what they are doing?

Disclaimer: this post does not contain any bashing towards anyone, I've just reported a fact that just everyone can check.

Master_Kas

Play the way you want turned into play the way we(ZOS) wants.

Passive useless except for icestaff users? Forced to use icestaff?

Nice zos.

merpins

I just want them to fix advanced species to be something decent, and to not force ice staves. Yeah, we want to be able to play ice mages. But forcing us to use an ice staff isn't making the playstyle more viable. We'd need more cold-damage skills for and ice mage to be more viable, not just forcing wardens to use an ice staff if they want full damage.

1. Make advanced species give a bonus that doesn't have a hard cap (not pen, not crit damage). It needs to be damage like it was before, or crit rate for it to be in a good place. I don't see the necessity in changing it away from damage in the first place; warden is one of the lowest DPS/DPM classes in the game. It's easy to get their highs, but their highs are really low. As in, it's not hard to do good DPS as a Warden, it's just that Warden's good dps is bad in comparison to every other class. It needs buffs, not nerfs, and making situational buffs won't help warden players.
2. Don't give us situational buffs that require a specific weapon. The motto of ESO is "Play How You Want." If you buff the damage of skills, it will buff ice mages. Rather than making it so you get more damage with an ice staff equipped, just make it so you deal more damage with the ice-based skills and maybe give warden its own ice-damage spammable.