U36 Magden BG Build

OBJnoob

So I'm on console and U36 hasn't hit yet. I enjoyed playing a hybrid warden very much at the start of U35 and, even though I think the whole 'ice staff' idea is pretty dumb I'm going to try a magden this patch.

Previously I had run almost exclusively in ravenwatch and used that no proc setup for bgs as well. I'll be using proc sets this time... So I'm looking for build advice, magden skill advice, thoughts on warden, ice staff tricks... Whatever you have to say really.

My build right now (havent used it yet but already equipped everything,) is rallying cry back bar (sword n shield,) Hrothgar front bar (ice staff,) malubeth the Scourger head and shoulders, trainee boots, markyn ring of magesty.

Armor is 3 heavy, 2 medium, 2 light or something like that. Infused on big pieces, reduced block cost on most of the little pieces with some impen sprinkled in.

Toon is a dark elf, will be running stage 3 vamp, will either be running weapon/spell damage mundus or recovery mundus. A lot of the little stuff will be fine tuned once I take it for a test drive.

General idea... Probably won't be much of a "killer" but an aoe damager capable of putting up millions of damage in prolonged fights. Aoe major and minor breach, aoe stuns, and aoe immobilizes, and aoe minor mangle if I decide to run pulsar.

Survivability will come from being able to block effectively and cheaply on both bars and with both stats, undeath passive, reasonable armor levels, minor protection and hopefully high uptime on major protection via northern storm. Plus healing should be 'alright.'

Not sure what else is important to say... I know hrothgar might seem like a weird choice but I like that its easy to control, not too long a cooldown, and hits in an aoe. I also like that the 2 and 3 piece are max health and armor... Helps out when I'm on the backbar. Malubeth might seem weird too but I think the major vitality will pair nicely with wardens occasional major mending, and since I'm going to be aoe stunning and immobilizing a lot I think the tether mechanic will be kinds fun for me.

Caribou77

I’m interested to hear how this goes, as a magden pvp main. Please update this post with your progress, if you’re inspired to do so.

One suggestion I have is that you might try Dagons Dominion in place of Hrothgar’s, since you’re focusing on an aoe build. DD offers very strong aoe dmg with 100% up time.

Also I’d like to hear if you find a way to make pulsar effective in pvp. I’ve tried it a bit and could never get it to do decent damage.

I’m always interested to hear about off-meta builds. 🙂

OBJnoob

@Caribou77 I had you in mind actually when I wrote this. I'm glad you found your way here...

I've used pulsar with a lightning staff to decent effect in the past but don't see it being viable anymore since we're all probably going to be using ice staves now and wardens have no use for minor protection because its already in our kit.

I've been using force pulse as my spammable... The one that deals splash damage to nearby enemies effected by a status effect. It does pretty good since my opponents stay chilled.

I can tell you I'm doing very well with it in this crazy king weekend, but I havent played the toon in a while so am probably in a mid to low MMR. Do pretty good in duels too... Which is to say about as good as I ever do, which is surprising because its a big fat aoe setup and until the update my FB ice staff is... Dumb.

I ended up having to run bloodspawn for my monster set... If malubeth ever procced I didn't notice it.

I'm finding some other good sets I might swap out. Ice furnace and frostbite. What I really want is to run frostbite and rallying cry but they're both light armor so I probably won't.

You got any tips for me brotha?

gariondavey

OBJnoob wrote: »

@Caribou77 I had you in mind actually when I wrote this. I'm glad you found your way here...

I've used pulsar with a lightning staff to decent effect in the past but don't see it being viable anymore since we're all probably going to be using ice staves now and wardens have no use for minor protection because its already in our kit.

I've been using force pulse as my spammable... The one that deals splash damage to nearby enemies effected by a status effect. It does pretty good since my opponents stay chilled.

I can tell you I'm doing very well with it in this crazy king weekend, but I havent played the toon in a while so am probably in a mid to low MMR. Do pretty good in duels too... Which is to say about as good as I ever do, which is surprising because its a big fat aoe setup and until the update my FB ice staff is... Dumb.

I ended up having to run bloodspawn for my monster set... If malubeth ever procced I didn't notice it.

I'm finding some other good sets I might swap out. Ice furnace and frostbite. What I really want is to run frostbite and rallying cry but they're both light armor so I probably won't.

You got any tips for me brotha?

You can still run 2 light sets and have 3 heavy pieces (heavy reinforced trainee chest + helm and shoulders of your monster set)
Belt + 2 jewels + front bar ice staff of your offensive set (frostbite from the sounds of what you have said)
Gloves boots legs + back bar resto or frost staff of rally cry
Leaves room for balorgh or bloodspawn or whatever other monster set you have in mind, as well as the trainee piece and a mythic jewel (ssc ddf markyn)

Syiccal

Imo 3 m 3 light 1 heavy probs best all round for dmg

OBJnoob

gariondavey wrote: »

OBJnoob wrote: »

@Caribou77 I had you in mind actually when I wrote this. I'm glad you found your way here...

I've used pulsar with a lightning staff to decent effect in the past but don't see it being viable anymore since we're all probably going to be using ice staves now and wardens have no use for minor protection because its already in our kit.

I've been using force pulse as my spammable... The one that deals splash damage to nearby enemies effected by a status effect. It does pretty good since my opponents stay chilled.

I can tell you I'm doing very well with it in this crazy king weekend, but I havent played the toon in a while so am probably in a mid to low MMR. Do pretty good in duels too... Which is to say about as good as I ever do, which is surprising because its a big fat aoe setup and until the update my FB ice staff is... Dumb.

I ended up having to run bloodspawn for my monster set... If malubeth ever procced I didn't notice it.

I'm finding some other good sets I might swap out. Ice furnace and frostbite. What I really want is to run frostbite and rallying cry but they're both light armor so I probably won't.

You got any tips for me brotha?

You can still run 2 light sets and have 3 heavy pieces (heavy reinforced trainee chest + helm and shoulders of your monster set)
Belt + 2 jewels + front bar ice staff of your offensive set (frostbite from the sounds of what you have said)
Gloves boots legs + back bar resto or frost staff of rally cry
Leaves room for balorgh or bloodspawn or whatever other monster set you have in mind, as well as the trainee piece and a mythic jewel (ssc ddf markyn)

Yes, that's a good idea. That's basically what I'm doing now but with a heavy Hrothgar chest n legs, medium trainee boots and... Well I change out the monster set weights from time to time. Wouldn't be hard do what you said though. I wonder, in your opinion, is that going to be survivable?

I have no love for heavy armor really I'm just trying to meet a certain HP requirement for the undeath passive.

I wouldn't use a heavy shoulder havent kept many of those around over the years.

I do think frostbite and rallying cry would be a good setup though. Hmm.

Kartalin

I was running this setup right around the high isle launch (think it was in May). It worked decently well. Master inferno + flame reach is no longer as necessary to me in my magden builds with the change to arctic blast so if you wanted something different and hopefully interesting, maybe run something like this:

Sharpened 2h Maul Wretched Vitality front bar, Precise Rallying Cry resto back bar, 3 trainee, and Markyn. Both Deep Fissure and Rally/FM proc Wretched Vitality, can use Vigor or Rapid Regen to proc Rallying Cry.

Edit: I've been using Rally/FM in lieu of netch because of plaguebreak. I haven't been in BGs for a little while now so I'm not sure if that's still a thing.

axi

Maelstrom+master ice staffs are way to go atm. Add just some 5 piece set (any good set will do), 2x trainee, 2x monster set and 1x mythic and You are ready to demolish BGs.

gariondavey

OBJnoob wrote: »

gariondavey wrote: »

OBJnoob wrote: »

@Caribou77 I had you in mind actually when I wrote this. I'm glad you found your way here...

I've used pulsar with a lightning staff to decent effect in the past but don't see it being viable anymore since we're all probably going to be using ice staves now and wardens have no use for minor protection because its already in our kit.

I've been using force pulse as my spammable... The one that deals splash damage to nearby enemies effected by a status effect. It does pretty good since my opponents stay chilled.

I can tell you I'm doing very well with it in this crazy king weekend, but I havent played the toon in a while so am probably in a mid to low MMR. Do pretty good in duels too... Which is to say about as good as I ever do, which is surprising because its a big fat aoe setup and until the update my FB ice staff is... Dumb.

I ended up having to run bloodspawn for my monster set... If malubeth ever procced I didn't notice it.

I'm finding some other good sets I might swap out. Ice furnace and frostbite. What I really want is to run frostbite and rallying cry but they're both light armor so I probably won't.

You got any tips for me brotha?

You can still run 2 light sets and have 3 heavy pieces (heavy reinforced trainee chest + helm and shoulders of your monster set)
Belt + 2 jewels + front bar ice staff of your offensive set (frostbite from the sounds of what you have said)
Gloves boots legs + back bar resto or frost staff of rally cry
Leaves room for balorgh or bloodspawn or whatever other monster set you have in mind, as well as the trainee piece and a mythic jewel (ssc ddf markyn)

Yes, that's a good idea. That's basically what I'm doing now but with a heavy Hrothgar chest n legs, medium trainee boots and... Well I change out the monster set weights from time to time. Wouldn't be hard do what you said though. I wonder, in your opinion, is that going to be survivable?

I have no love for heavy armor really I'm just trying to meet a certain HP requirement for the undeath passive.

I wouldn't use a heavy shoulder havent kept many of those around over the years.

I do think frostbite and rallying cry would be a good setup though. Hmm.

Yes, 3 heavy on a frost warden with 40k+ hp is very survivable. Destro staff ice field + warden stun is just complete lockdown lately.
Throw on insane heals and 70 percent snare with permafrost and watch your opponents cry

taugrim

gariondavey wrote: »

OBJnoob wrote: »

gariondavey wrote: »

OBJnoob wrote: »

@Caribou77 I had you in mind actually when I wrote this. I'm glad you found your way here...

I've used pulsar with a lightning staff to decent effect in the past but don't see it being viable anymore since we're all probably going to be using ice staves now and wardens have no use for minor protection because its already in our kit.

I've been using force pulse as my spammable... The one that deals splash damage to nearby enemies effected by a status effect. It does pretty good since my opponents stay chilled.

I can tell you I'm doing very well with it in this crazy king weekend, but I havent played the toon in a while so am probably in a mid to low MMR. Do pretty good in duels too... Which is to say about as good as I ever do, which is surprising because its a big fat aoe setup and until the update my FB ice staff is... Dumb.

I ended up having to run bloodspawn for my monster set... If malubeth ever procced I didn't notice it.

I'm finding some other good sets I might swap out. Ice furnace and frostbite. What I really want is to run frostbite and rallying cry but they're both light armor so I probably won't.

You got any tips for me brotha?

You can still run 2 light sets and have 3 heavy pieces (heavy reinforced trainee chest + helm and shoulders of your monster set)
Belt + 2 jewels + front bar ice staff of your offensive set (frostbite from the sounds of what you have said)
Gloves boots legs + back bar resto or frost staff of rally cry
Leaves room for balorgh or bloodspawn or whatever other monster set you have in mind, as well as the trainee piece and a mythic jewel (ssc ddf markyn)

Yes, that's a good idea. That's basically what I'm doing now but with a heavy Hrothgar chest n legs, medium trainee boots and... Well I change out the monster set weights from time to time. Wouldn't be hard do what you said though. I wonder, in your opinion, is that going to be survivable?

I have no love for heavy armor really I'm just trying to meet a certain HP requirement for the undeath passive.

I wouldn't use a heavy shoulder havent kept many of those around over the years.

I do think frostbite and rallying cry would be a good setup though. Hmm.

Yes, 3 heavy on a frost warden with 40k+ hp is very survivable. Destro staff ice field + warden stun is just complete lockdown lately.
Throw on insane heals and 70 percent snare with permafrost and watch your opponents cry

At 40k, your damage is going to be easy to heal through.

Yes, you will be very difficult to kill and throw down a lot of immobilizes plus AB stuns, which is super trolly towards opponents.

But stacking health is orthogonal to being able to pressure opponents.

A couple months ago, I finally went ahead and tried Hrothgar's Chill (I didn't bind the set pieces for a long time due to bad memories of how broken & cheesy it was last year). It's a solid set, but the damage scales based on resistances, which means you deal the most damage to tankier targets (but still not much) but less damage when it procs on squishy targets.

axi wrote: »

Maelstrom+master ice staffs are way to go atm. Add just some 5 piece set (any good set will do), 2x trainee, 2x monster set and 1x mythic and You are ready to demolish BGs.

Those staves make sense. I don't agree with 2x Trainee + 2x Monster set. Would rather say backbar a set (e.g. Wretched Vitality). So:

Frontbar
2-pc Master
5-pc something
3-pc backbar set
1-pc mythic
1-pc Magma Incarnate (stat dense)

Backbar
5-pc something
5-pc backbar set
1-pc mythic
1-pc Magma Incarnate (stat dense)

This provides much more flexibility. Trainee is a filler, not the main course.

I also believe that given that the Master's Staff should be frontbarred due to the short (4s) buff duration. Unless you want to be swapping to your backbar every 4 sec (which I wouldn't).

OBJnoob

Good advice going on here I appreciate it.

Yeah hrothgars really isn't bad, it really isn't good either but its kinda like I said in the beginning before I tried it... It synergizes great with warden, arctic blast and shalks. Super easy to get it to proc right when you want it to as part of your burst. And I like that its aoe burst cuz... I mean why not?

The toon the way I'm playing him now isn't built for 1v1s, though he does okay, but I had a lot of fun creating areas of denial around flags during the crazy king weekend. And if I can stay alive long enough... And I mostly can... Then I do find I finish games with a k/d of 12/2 or something. So the finishing blows come if you're patient.

I don't have 40k health though I admit I am tinkering with the idea of going that route. The frostbite set, malacath, and some health scaling frost damage like the gripping shards are... Arctic blast, and I think crystal slab are all health based damage right? Would be interesting to see if it can be made to amount to anything.

Well, I'm just babbling now. But uh... Yeah I don't have a masters or maelstrom frost staff unfortunately. But I think my current setup, with 2 5 pieces active, a complete monster set, mythic, and 1 trainee has got to be... Close to optimal. Are the arena staves really better than a monster set? Better than a mythic?

taugrim

OBJnoob wrote: »

And if I can stay alive long enough... And I mostly can... Then I do find I finish games with a k/d of 12/2 or something. So the finishing blows come if you're patient.

I don't have 40k health though I admit I am tinkering with the idea of going that route.

No point in stacking health if you are already averaging a 6:1 KDR.

Generally speaking, you stack enough health for a build so that you can survive burst reliably, then stop there.

OBJnoob wrote: »

But uh... Yeah I don't have a masters or maelstrom frost staff unfortunately. But I think my current setup, with 2 5 pieces active, a complete monster set, mythic, and 1 trainee has got to be... Close to optimal. Are the arena staves really better than a monster set? Better than a mythic?

It's not arena vs mythic. I stack both.

It's really arena vs monster set.

DSA is a bit of a chore to farm because it's long, and PUGs will struggle with the last fight in vet mode, as it requires the tank to hold a bunch a mini-bosses while the healer tanks the main boss. Granted, you can farm normal DSA, which is easy. The 2-pc bonus (103 damage) on the Perfected Destructive Impact is worth farming though.

Caribou77

taugrim wrote: »

DSA is a bit of a chore to farm… The 2-pc bonus (103 damage) on the Perfected Destructive Impact is worth farming though.

So I farmed the Masters Perfected Ice Staff awhile back (PUGing was tedious indeed) for a frost/Magden build, but found that the Frost Reach spammable was frequently dodged in PvP.

I find that Crushing Shock hits significantly more often, enough to make it a better option, if weaker damage. At least it hits.

Taugrim (& others): have you noticed this problem with Frost Reach being highly dodgeable? For me it’s as bad as Crystal Frags— dodged as much as 50% of the time.

I sometimes wonder if the dodge rate on delayed ranged skills increases with lag. That’s often how it seems. Would love to hear others’ perspectives on this.

axi

taugrim wrote: »

gariondavey wrote: »

OBJnoob wrote: »

gariondavey wrote: »

OBJnoob wrote: »

@Caribou77 I had you in mind actually when I wrote this. I'm glad you found your way here...

I've used pulsar with a lightning staff to decent effect in the past but don't see it being viable anymore since we're all probably going to be using ice staves now and wardens have no use for minor protection because its already in our kit.

I've been using force pulse as my spammable... The one that deals splash damage to nearby enemies effected by a status effect. It does pretty good since my opponents stay chilled.

I can tell you I'm doing very well with it in this crazy king weekend, but I havent played the toon in a while so am probably in a mid to low MMR. Do pretty good in duels too... Which is to say about as good as I ever do, which is surprising because its a big fat aoe setup and until the update my FB ice staff is... Dumb.

I ended up having to run bloodspawn for my monster set... If malubeth ever procced I didn't notice it.

I'm finding some other good sets I might swap out. Ice furnace and frostbite. What I really want is to run frostbite and rallying cry but they're both light armor so I probably won't.

You got any tips for me brotha?

You can still run 2 light sets and have 3 heavy pieces (heavy reinforced trainee chest + helm and shoulders of your monster set)
Belt + 2 jewels + front bar ice staff of your offensive set (frostbite from the sounds of what you have said)
Gloves boots legs + back bar resto or frost staff of rally cry
Leaves room for balorgh or bloodspawn or whatever other monster set you have in mind, as well as the trainee piece and a mythic jewel (ssc ddf markyn)

Yes, that's a good idea. That's basically what I'm doing now but with a heavy Hrothgar chest n legs, medium trainee boots and... Well I change out the monster set weights from time to time. Wouldn't be hard do what you said though. I wonder, in your opinion, is that going to be survivable?

I have no love for heavy armor really I'm just trying to meet a certain HP requirement for the undeath passive.

I wouldn't use a heavy shoulder havent kept many of those around over the years.

I do think frostbite and rallying cry would be a good setup though. Hmm.

Yes, 3 heavy on a frost warden with 40k+ hp is very survivable. Destro staff ice field + warden stun is just complete lockdown lately.
Throw on insane heals and 70 percent snare with permafrost and watch your opponents cry

At 40k, your damage is going to be easy to heal through.

Yes, you will be very difficult to kill and throw down a lot of immobilizes plus AB stuns, which is super trolly towards opponents.

But stacking health is orthogonal to being able to pressure opponents.

A couple months ago, I finally went ahead and tried Hrothgar's Chill (I didn't bind the set pieces for a long time due to bad memories of how broken & cheesy it was last year). It's a solid set, but the damage scales based on resistances, which means you deal the most damage to tankier targets (but still not much) but less damage when it procs on squishy targets.

axi wrote: »

Maelstrom+master ice staffs are way to go atm. Add just some 5 piece set (any good set will do), 2x trainee, 2x monster set and 1x mythic and You are ready to demolish BGs.

Those staves make sense. I don't agree with 2x Trainee + 2x Monster set. Would rather say backbar a set (e.g. Wretched Vitality). So:

Frontbar
2-pc Master
5-pc something
3-pc backbar set
1-pc mythic
1-pc Magma Incarnate (stat dense)

Backbar
5-pc something
5-pc backbar set
1-pc mythic
1-pc Magma Incarnate (stat dense)

This provides much more flexibility. Trainee is a filler, not the main course.

I also believe that given that the Master's Staff should be frontbarred due to the short (4s) buff duration. Unless you want to be swapping to your backbar every 4 sec (which I wouldn't).

I've said maesltrom+master not maelstrom/master. You want to have them both at the same time. Basically reach is Your spammable and blockade control+dmg pressure ability. Combo of these two weapons is really devastating in BGs atm since both weapons and abilities complement each other and whol;e build perfectly. Backbaring some 5 piece bonus set is completly not needed since having master+maesltrom ice staves outperforms other options. They are just that strong combo in this patch.

gariondavey

taugrim wrote: »

gariondavey wrote: »

OBJnoob wrote: »

gariondavey wrote: »

OBJnoob wrote: »

@Caribou77 I had you in mind actually when I wrote this. I'm glad you found your way here...

I've used pulsar with a lightning staff to decent effect in the past but don't see it being viable anymore since we're all probably going to be using ice staves now and wardens have no use for minor protection because its already in our kit.

I've been using force pulse as my spammable... The one that deals splash damage to nearby enemies effected by a status effect. It does pretty good since my opponents stay chilled.

I can tell you I'm doing very well with it in this crazy king weekend, but I havent played the toon in a while so am probably in a mid to low MMR. Do pretty good in duels too... Which is to say about as good as I ever do, which is surprising because its a big fat aoe setup and until the update my FB ice staff is... Dumb.

I ended up having to run bloodspawn for my monster set... If malubeth ever procced I didn't notice it.

I'm finding some other good sets I might swap out. Ice furnace and frostbite. What I really want is to run frostbite and rallying cry but they're both light armor so I probably won't.

You got any tips for me brotha?

You can still run 2 light sets and have 3 heavy pieces (heavy reinforced trainee chest + helm and shoulders of your monster set)
Belt + 2 jewels + front bar ice staff of your offensive set (frostbite from the sounds of what you have said)
Gloves boots legs + back bar resto or frost staff of rally cry
Leaves room for balorgh or bloodspawn or whatever other monster set you have in mind, as well as the trainee piece and a mythic jewel (ssc ddf markyn)

Yes, that's a good idea. That's basically what I'm doing now but with a heavy Hrothgar chest n legs, medium trainee boots and... Well I change out the monster set weights from time to time. Wouldn't be hard do what you said though. I wonder, in your opinion, is that going to be survivable?

I have no love for heavy armor really I'm just trying to meet a certain HP requirement for the undeath passive.

I wouldn't use a heavy shoulder havent kept many of those around over the years.

I do think frostbite and rallying cry would be a good setup though. Hmm.

Yes, 3 heavy on a frost warden with 40k+ hp is very survivable. Destro staff ice field + warden stun is just complete lockdown lately.
Throw on insane heals and 70 percent snare with permafrost and watch your opponents cry

At 40k, your damage is going to be easy to heal through.

Yes, you will be very difficult to kill and throw down a lot of immobilizes plus AB stuns, which is super trolly towards opponents.

But stacking health is orthogonal to being able to pressure opponents.

A couple months ago, I finally went ahead and tried Hrothgar's Chill (I didn't bind the set pieces for a long time due to bad memories of how broken & cheesy it was last year). It's a solid set, but the damage scales based on resistances, which means you deal the most damage to tankier targets (but still not much) but less damage when it procs on squishy targets.

axi wrote: »

Maelstrom+master ice staffs are way to go atm. Add just some 5 piece set (any good set will do), 2x trainee, 2x monster set and 1x mythic and You are ready to demolish BGs.

Those staves make sense. I don't agree with 2x Trainee + 2x Monster set. Would rather say backbar a set (e.g. Wretched Vitality). So:

Frontbar
2-pc Master
5-pc something
3-pc backbar set
1-pc mythic
1-pc Magma Incarnate (stat dense)

Backbar
5-pc something
5-pc backbar set
1-pc mythic
1-pc Magma Incarnate (stat dense)

This provides much more flexibility. Trainee is a filler, not the main course.

I also believe that given that the Master's Staff should be frontbarred due to the short (4s) buff duration. Unless you want to be swapping to your backbar every 4 sec (which I wouldn't).

The magdens in my games that do 2-3m damage with 40k+ hp and 1m+ healing say otherwise

taugrim

Caribou77 wrote: »

taugrim wrote: »

DSA is a bit of a chore to farm… The 2-pc bonus (103 damage) on the Perfected Destructive Impact is worth farming though.

So I farmed the Masters Perfected Ice Staff awhile back (PUGing was tedious indeed) for a frost/Magden build, but found that the Frost Reach spammable was frequently dodged in PvP.

I find that Crushing Shock hits significantly more often, enough to make it a better option, if weaker damage. At least it hits.

Taugrim (& others): have you noticed this problem with Frost Reach being highly dodgeable? For me it’s as bad as Crystal Frags— dodged as much as 50% of the time.

For Magden, I'd run Force Pulse over Crushing Shock, because you're going to see high uptime on Chill status effect, so your Force Pulse will cleave enemies nearby your target.

In terms of Destructive Touch morphs, I'd prefer Destructive Clench over Destructive Reach, because DoTs were nerfed in U35 and Clench with Ice Staff is a guaranteed root.

The real question is whether to run Force Pulse, Destructive Clench, or both. The only downside to both is that it eats up a bar slot, however you can consider Clench an opener to root the target and get the 600 damage buff, then blast them in the face with Force Pulse.

gariondavey wrote: »

taugrim wrote: »

gariondavey wrote: »

OBJnoob wrote: »

gariondavey wrote: »

OBJnoob wrote: »

@Caribou77 I had you in mind actually when I wrote this. I'm glad you found your way here...

I've used pulsar with a lightning staff to decent effect in the past but don't see it being viable anymore since we're all probably going to be using ice staves now and wardens have no use for minor protection because its already in our kit.

I've been using force pulse as my spammable... The one that deals splash damage to nearby enemies effected by a status effect. It does pretty good since my opponents stay chilled.

I can tell you I'm doing very well with it in this crazy king weekend, but I havent played the toon in a while so am probably in a mid to low MMR. Do pretty good in duels too... Which is to say about as good as I ever do, which is surprising because its a big fat aoe setup and until the update my FB ice staff is... Dumb.

I ended up having to run bloodspawn for my monster set... If malubeth ever procced I didn't notice it.

I'm finding some other good sets I might swap out. Ice furnace and frostbite. What I really want is to run frostbite and rallying cry but they're both light armor so I probably won't.

You got any tips for me brotha?

You can still run 2 light sets and have 3 heavy pieces (heavy reinforced trainee chest + helm and shoulders of your monster set)
Belt + 2 jewels + front bar ice staff of your offensive set (frostbite from the sounds of what you have said)
Gloves boots legs + back bar resto or frost staff of rally cry
Leaves room for balorgh or bloodspawn or whatever other monster set you have in mind, as well as the trainee piece and a mythic jewel (ssc ddf markyn)

Yes, that's a good idea. That's basically what I'm doing now but with a heavy Hrothgar chest n legs, medium trainee boots and... Well I change out the monster set weights from time to time. Wouldn't be hard do what you said though. I wonder, in your opinion, is that going to be survivable?

I have no love for heavy armor really I'm just trying to meet a certain HP requirement for the undeath passive.

I wouldn't use a heavy shoulder havent kept many of those around over the years.

I do think frostbite and rallying cry would be a good setup though. Hmm.

Yes, 3 heavy on a frost warden with 40k+ hp is very survivable. Destro staff ice field + warden stun is just complete lockdown lately.
Throw on insane heals and 70 percent snare with permafrost and watch your opponents cry

At 40k, your damage is going to be easy to heal through.

Yes, you will be very difficult to kill and throw down a lot of immobilizes plus AB stuns, which is super trolly towards opponents.

But stacking health is orthogonal to being able to pressure opponents.

A couple months ago, I finally went ahead and tried Hrothgar's Chill (I didn't bind the set pieces for a long time due to bad memories of how broken & cheesy it was last year). It's a solid set, but the damage scales based on resistances, which means you deal the most damage to tankier targets (but still not much) but less damage when it procs on squishy targets.

axi wrote: »

Maelstrom+master ice staffs are way to go atm. Add just some 5 piece set (any good set will do), 2x trainee, 2x monster set and 1x mythic and You are ready to demolish BGs.

Those staves make sense. I don't agree with 2x Trainee + 2x Monster set. Would rather say backbar a set (e.g. Wretched Vitality). So:

Frontbar
2-pc Master
5-pc something
3-pc backbar set
1-pc mythic
1-pc Magma Incarnate (stat dense)

Backbar
5-pc something
5-pc backbar set
1-pc mythic
1-pc Magma Incarnate (stat dense)

This provides much more flexibility. Trainee is a filler, not the main course.

I also believe that given that the Master's Staff should be frontbarred due to the short (4s) buff duration. Unless you want to be swapping to your backbar every 4 sec (which I wouldn't).

The magdens in my games that do 2-3m damage with 40k+ hp and 1m+ healing say otherwise

If you're dealing 2mm damage with 40k HP, you're likely scoring a low kill count. That is, you're generating a lot of low-damage AOE which adds up.

Anyway, there is little reason to run 40k on a DPS Magden in PVP, especially BGs. Magden already has good mobility and class-based healing tools. If you were a healer, then health stacking for Polar Wind makes sense.

Caribou77

Thanks Taugrim -- I'll give Force Pulse and Destructive Clench a shot. I was using the flame version of Destructive Clench in BGs quite effectively to knock back in order to land Deep Fissure, or just to get a Dizzy spammer out of my face for a second. Using the root on Frost Clench will feel pretty natural for me... got that button wired into muscle memory.

Kind of excited to start theorycrafting/messing with my ice staff Magden. Going to also try the Stormweaver Cavort mythic.

I'm interested to hear of any Frost/Magden/Warden experiments people are trying. Thanks in advance! Appreciate the experience y'all bring to the forum.

gariondavey

taugrim wrote: »

Caribou77 wrote: »

taugrim wrote: »

DSA is a bit of a chore to farm… The 2-pc bonus (103 damage) on the Perfected Destructive Impact is worth farming though.

So I farmed the Masters Perfected Ice Staff awhile back (PUGing was tedious indeed) for a frost/Magden build, but found that the Frost Reach spammable was frequently dodged in PvP.

I find that Crushing Shock hits significantly more often, enough to make it a better option, if weaker damage. At least it hits.

Taugrim (& others): have you noticed this problem with Frost Reach being highly dodgeable? For me it’s as bad as Crystal Frags— dodged as much as 50% of the time.

For Magden, I'd run Force Pulse over Crushing Shock, because you're going to see high uptime on Chill status effect, so your Force Pulse will cleave enemies nearby your target.

In terms of Destructive Touch morphs, I'd prefer Destructive Clench over Destructive Reach, because DoTs were nerfed in U35 and Clench with Ice Staff is a guaranteed root.

The real question is whether to run Force Pulse, Destructive Clench, or both. The only downside to both is that it eats up a bar slot, however you can consider Clench an opener to root the target and get the 600 damage buff, then blast them in the face with Force Pulse.

gariondavey wrote: »

taugrim wrote: »

gariondavey wrote: »

OBJnoob wrote: »

gariondavey wrote: »

OBJnoob wrote: »

@Caribou77 I had you in mind actually when I wrote this. I'm glad you found your way here...

I've used pulsar with a lightning staff to decent effect in the past but don't see it being viable anymore since we're all probably going to be using ice staves now and wardens have no use for minor protection because its already in our kit.

I've been using force pulse as my spammable... The one that deals splash damage to nearby enemies effected by a status effect. It does pretty good since my opponents stay chilled.

I can tell you I'm doing very well with it in this crazy king weekend, but I havent played the toon in a while so am probably in a mid to low MMR. Do pretty good in duels too... Which is to say about as good as I ever do, which is surprising because its a big fat aoe setup and until the update my FB ice staff is... Dumb.

I ended up having to run bloodspawn for my monster set... If malubeth ever procced I didn't notice it.

I'm finding some other good sets I might swap out. Ice furnace and frostbite. What I really want is to run frostbite and rallying cry but they're both light armor so I probably won't.

You got any tips for me brotha?

You can still run 2 light sets and have 3 heavy pieces (heavy reinforced trainee chest + helm and shoulders of your monster set)
Belt + 2 jewels + front bar ice staff of your offensive set (frostbite from the sounds of what you have said)
Gloves boots legs + back bar resto or frost staff of rally cry
Leaves room for balorgh or bloodspawn or whatever other monster set you have in mind, as well as the trainee piece and a mythic jewel (ssc ddf markyn)

Yes, that's a good idea. That's basically what I'm doing now but with a heavy Hrothgar chest n legs, medium trainee boots and... Well I change out the monster set weights from time to time. Wouldn't be hard do what you said though. I wonder, in your opinion, is that going to be survivable?

I have no love for heavy armor really I'm just trying to meet a certain HP requirement for the undeath passive.

I wouldn't use a heavy shoulder havent kept many of those around over the years.

I do think frostbite and rallying cry would be a good setup though. Hmm.

Yes, 3 heavy on a frost warden with 40k+ hp is very survivable. Destro staff ice field + warden stun is just complete lockdown lately.
Throw on insane heals and 70 percent snare with permafrost and watch your opponents cry

At 40k, your damage is going to be easy to heal through.

Yes, you will be very difficult to kill and throw down a lot of immobilizes plus AB stuns, which is super trolly towards opponents.

But stacking health is orthogonal to being able to pressure opponents.

A couple months ago, I finally went ahead and tried Hrothgar's Chill (I didn't bind the set pieces for a long time due to bad memories of how broken & cheesy it was last year). It's a solid set, but the damage scales based on resistances, which means you deal the most damage to tankier targets (but still not much) but less damage when it procs on squishy targets.

axi wrote: »

Maelstrom+master ice staffs are way to go atm. Add just some 5 piece set (any good set will do), 2x trainee, 2x monster set and 1x mythic and You are ready to demolish BGs.

Those staves make sense. I don't agree with 2x Trainee + 2x Monster set. Would rather say backbar a set (e.g. Wretched Vitality). So:

Frontbar
2-pc Master
5-pc something
3-pc backbar set
1-pc mythic
1-pc Magma Incarnate (stat dense)

Backbar
5-pc something
5-pc backbar set
1-pc mythic
1-pc Magma Incarnate (stat dense)

This provides much more flexibility. Trainee is a filler, not the main course.

I also believe that given that the Master's Staff should be frontbarred due to the short (4s) buff duration. Unless you want to be swapping to your backbar every 4 sec (which I wouldn't).

The magdens in my games that do 2-3m damage with 40k+ hp and 1m+ healing say otherwise

If you're dealing 2mm damage with 40k HP, you're likely scoring a low kill count. That is, you're generating a lot of low-damage AOE which adds up.

Anyway, there is little reason to run 40k on a DPS Magden in PVP, especially BGs. Magden already has good mobility and class-based healing tools. If you were a healer, then health stacking for Polar Wind makes sense.

Disagree with pretty much everything you said to me. I've seen at least 4 magdens in the last 10-15 games I've played this patch who had high kills, assists, 2-3m damage and 1m+ healing with high 30s or low 40s hp. Obviously high elo matches.

OBJnoob

I think the disconnect between garion and taugrim here is an overlooked portion of my babble a few posts back. Wardens have some damage skills that scale off of HP. And yes they are kinda low damage aoe dots, but they are decent pressure and area denial since one comes with a stun and the other comes with an immobilize. And since I'm using hrothgars that is also a source of damage that doesn't need spell damage. Also, since pretty much everyone plays with 30k+ HP these days and wardens get minor toughness it really isn't a huge commitment to get to 40.

About some of the skills being discussed... Yes force pulse is awesome because of the cleave damage. And me personally I wouldn't much want to run destructive clench with an ice staff because I'm already using gripping shards or whatever it's called. Like taugrim said, force pulse is only preferred because of the high uptime on chilled and when you can expect to be fighting more than 1 person. So for those reasons I prefer my immobilize to be aoe.

And I do understand that my point of view isn't appreciating the strength of the arena staves... But I don't have them, and honestly doubt I'll be motivated to get them in the next 7 days. There was a time a few years ago when I was a real sweat and I grinded for those things... Beat VMA a couple of times, had a nice collection of melee weapons (played exclusively stam back in the day,) oh and I have a black rose lightning staff too actually. Buuuut.... When they made the regular weapons drop in normal and created perfect versions of what I already had but didn't upgrade my owned items to perfect I kinda swore off that grind. The straw that broke the pve camels back.

taugrim

Caribou77 wrote: »

Thanks Taugrim -- I'll give Force Pulse and Destructive Clench a shot. I was using the flame version of Destructive Clench in BGs quite effectively to knock back in order to land Deep Fissure, or just to get a Dizzy spammer out of my face for a second. Using the root on Frost Clench will feel pretty natural for me... got that button wired into muscle memory.

Pre U36 I also used to run Master's Inferno staff for the knockback. It was a nice setup.

So it's a shift from a KB to root. Arctic Blast being a PBAOE stun really rounded out the Warden kit.

Caribou77

Update on my success using a frost-ish* Magden in battlegrounds: It’s fun, and has a little better damage and alot better survivability than preU36 ice staff dmg/12% piercing cold passive.

Been using masters ice staff with frost clench and crushing shock as spammables. That’s working pretty well, though the root on frost clench often takes a second or two to actually stop opponents. They keep moving for 20m or so with the fc animation on them. Server perfomance remains a sore spot in this game.

What’s funny is, after theorycrafting and testing multiple builds/setups for U36 pvp Magden, my kill/death/assist hasn’t changed much (low kills/low deaths/high assists), BUT, I’m winning alot more matches by a larger margin. Not uncommon to be top scorer on the winning team, with 1k lead over the next player. Honestly, I think alot of the really good players in bgs left after U35.

Thanks for the good advice here— I gave the masters ice staff another shot (ditched frost reach for frost clench) and find it’s a noticeable boost to damage.

Noticing several new frost wardens spamming Arctic Blast repeatedly, which is annoying, but ultimately not effective for them. I don’t respect anyone who button mashes a single skill repeatedly (i.e. whirling blades, howl, etc.) but I get that’s my personal issue. 😐

Currently built to play a mobile brawling style, thanks to good warden defensive passives/buffs, and learning to block more with ice staff.

Thinking about improving my crit chance to get more kills:

Can anyone recommend a good Magden pvp crit build?

I’ve been conditioned to think building for crit isn’t effective for pvp, but with brittle and new advanced species, and new crit sets, seems like it might be viable?

OBJnoob

@Caribou77 glad that you're doing well! I'm doing pretty well too, may end up sharing a clip or two. Not that they're stupendous or anything but it definitely works.

I also realize I'm probably under utilizing the crit/brittle synergy and I've been thinking about it. Find room for the lotus flower major savagery somewhere on your bar if you aren't already... That's step 1. My thoughts after that are that rallying cry + frostbite + iceheart should be sufficiently frost oriented with enough crit bonuses to make it worthwhile. I'm not sure how you'll make room to have frostbite active at all times with a masters staff, but I feel like you can figure it out. My current build has two 5 pieces, full monster set, mythic, and 1 piece trainee. You might have to sacrifice something but it'll prolly be worth it if the staff is as good as everyone says it is.

taugrim

Caribou77 wrote: »

What’s funny is, after theorycrafting and testing multiple builds/setups for U36 pvp Magden, my kill/death/assist hasn’t changed much (low kills/low deaths/high assists), BUT, I’m winning alot more matches by a larger margin. Not uncommon to be top scorer on the winning team, with 1k lead over the next player.

Thanks for the good advice here— I gave the masters ice staff another shot (ditched frost reach for frost clench) and find it’s a noticeable boost to damage.

Thanks for the update.

High uptime in BGs matter for winning fights, holding onto or flipping nodes, etc. Your experience is consistent with what I'd expect and have seen. Magdens are really trolly right now.

The earlier poster claiming that they get lots of kills in BGs while playing with 40k health is likely in low/lower MMR. The Magdens who apply meaningful pressure in high MMR typically have less than 33k health, from what I've recorded the past 20 or so matches. You sacrifice too much damage getting up to 40k health.

gariondavey

taugrim wrote: »

Caribou77 wrote: »

What’s funny is, after theorycrafting and testing multiple builds/setups for U36 pvp Magden, my kill/death/assist hasn’t changed much (low kills/low deaths/high assists), BUT, I’m winning alot more matches by a larger margin. Not uncommon to be top scorer on the winning team, with 1k lead over the next player.

Thanks for the good advice here— I gave the masters ice staff another shot (ditched frost reach for frost clench) and find it’s a noticeable boost to damage.

Thanks for the update.

High uptime in BGs matter for winning fights, holding onto or flipping nodes, etc. Your experience is consistent with what I'd expect and have seen. Magdens are really trolly right now.

The earlier poster claiming that they get lots of kills in BGs while playing with 40k health is likely in low/lower MMR. The Magdens who apply meaningful pressure in high MMR typically have less than 33k health, from what I've recorded the past 20 or so matches. You sacrifice too much damage getting up to 40k health.

Actually I already stated it is in high mmr. I know because sometimes you are in my games.

Edit: also, I didn't say I play like that, I said I have seen several wardens doing this in my games.
You don't get 3m damage and 1m healing in games that end early in low mmr. This only happens at high mmr.

Also, the best wardens in the game that I personally know all run very high health. I don't think I need to name names, as you should know who I'm talking about.

gariondavey

And @Caribou77 I can confirm that a ton of the skilled players in bgs have quit the game

Miracle19

gariondavey wrote: »

taugrim wrote: »

Caribou77 wrote: »

What’s funny is, after theorycrafting and testing multiple builds/setups for U36 pvp Magden, my kill/death/assist hasn’t changed much (low kills/low deaths/high assists), BUT, I’m winning alot more matches by a larger margin. Not uncommon to be top scorer on the winning team, with 1k lead over the next player.

Thanks for the good advice here— I gave the masters ice staff another shot (ditched frost reach for frost clench) and find it’s a noticeable boost to damage.

Thanks for the update.

High uptime in BGs matter for winning fights, holding onto or flipping nodes, etc. Your experience is consistent with what I'd expect and have seen. Magdens are really trolly right now.

The earlier poster claiming that they get lots of kills in BGs while playing with 40k health is likely in low/lower MMR. The Magdens who apply meaningful pressure in high MMR typically have less than 33k health, from what I've recorded the past 20 or so matches. You sacrifice too much damage getting up to 40k health.

Actually I already stated it is in high mmr. I know because sometimes you are in my games.

Edit: also, I didn't say I play like that, I said I have seen several wardens doing this in my games.
You don't get 3m damage and 1m healing in games that end early in low mmr. This only happens at high mmr.

Also, the best wardens in the game that I personally know all run very high health. I don't think I need to name names, as you should know who I'm talking about.

You are 100% right 😉

taugrim

OBJnoob wrote: »

About some of the skills being discussed... Yes force pulse is awesome because of the cleave damage. And me personally I wouldn't much want to run destructive clench with an ice staff because I'm already using gripping shards or whatever it's called. Like taugrim said, force pulse is only preferred because of the high uptime on chilled and when you can expect to be fighting more than 1 person. So for those reasons I prefer my immobilize to be aoe.

And I do understand that my point of view isn't appreciating the strength of the arena staves... But I don't have them, and honestly doubt I'll be motivated to get them in the next 7 days.

I can't fit 2 Destro arena staffs with my build, but that's because I backbar Wretched Vitality.

I've been playing with the following today:
5-pc Frostbite
1-pc Markyn
1-pc Magma Incarnate
2-pc Destructive Impact (Master's Ice Staff)
Backbarred 5-pc Wretched Vitality (Bow, for the crit and mobility passives)

30k Health
27k Magicka
35% Crit Chance

Ran Crushing Shock for the interrupt. I think Force Pulse would be worth it if I run some kind of field (Impaling Shards or Elemental Blockade), but I wasn't in this build.

I recorded some matches with Charged vs Sharpened, and Charged gets way more procs as you'd expect of Chilled, Burning, and Concussion. On the one hand, Destructive Clench automatically applies Chilled, which triggers Minor Brittle, and both of those are important for Frostbite 5-pc 4% and 2% damage bonuses. But getting Chilled from spamming Crushing Shock is also really nice.

So right now I'm leaning towards Charged over Sharpened.

P.S. played against some 40k Health wardens. They simply don't burst.

gariondavey

Then you clearly aren't playing against the people I'm referring to.

Kartalin

taugrim wrote: »

I recorded some matches with Charged vs Sharpened, and Charged gets way more procs as you'd expect of Chilled, Burning, and Concussion. On the one hand, Destructive Clench automatically applies Chilled, which triggers Minor Brittle, and both of those are important for Frostbite 5-pc 4% and 2% damage bonuses. But getting Chilled from spamming Crushing Shock is also really nice.

It might be worth it to slot elemental susceptibility for the free chilled procs and then run sharpened. My only issue is not being able to fit it on my front bar (deep fissure, frost clench, force pulse, bird of prey, and arctic blast). I suppose I could run arctic on back bar but I really like having the front bar heal/stun.

Miracle19

taugrim wrote: »

OBJnoob wrote: »

About some of the skills being discussed... Yes force pulse is awesome because of the cleave damage. And me personally I wouldn't much want to run destructive clench with an ice staff because I'm already using gripping shards or whatever it's called. Like taugrim said, force pulse is only preferred because of the high uptime on chilled and when you can expect to be fighting more than 1 person. So for those reasons I prefer my immobilize to be aoe.

And I do understand that my point of view isn't appreciating the strength of the arena staves... But I don't have them, and honestly doubt I'll be motivated to get them in the next 7 days.

I can't fit 2 Destro arena staffs with my build, but that's because I backbar Wretched Vitality.

I've been playing with the following today:
5-pc Frostbite
1-pc Markyn
1-pc Magma Incarnate
2-pc Destructive Impact (Master's Ice Staff)
Backbarred 5-pc Wretched Vitality (Bow, for the crit and mobility passives)

30k Health
27k Magicka
35% Crit Chance

Ran Crushing Shock for the interrupt. I think Force Pulse would be worth it if I run some kind of field (Impaling Shards or Elemental Blockade), but I wasn't in this build.

I recorded some matches with Charged vs Sharpened, and Charged gets way more procs as you'd expect of Chilled, Burning, and Concussion. On the one hand, Destructive Clench automatically applies Chilled, which triggers Minor Brittle, and both of those are important for Frostbite 5-pc 4% and 2% damage bonuses. But getting Chilled from spamming Crushing Shock is also really nice.

So right now I'm leaning towards Charged over Sharpened.

P.S. played against some 40k Health wardens. They simply don't burst.

At what, entry level MMR?

There are very few wardens worth mentioning and almost all of them are 40k+ with 2 being below that threshold at around 35-36k

OBJnoob

Catching up on comments since I kinda forgot my own thread for a couple days...

My warden only has like 33k HP... Perhaps higher with battlespirit and minor toughness, let's say he's at 35 that's probably a decent guess. I've definitely seen some warden builds in battlegrounds that are better than mine... But I am the obj noob after all, and thus far I seem to be able to avoid dying to them, gang up on and kill them when able, and work around them to accomplish whatever the mission may be.

I abandoned my idea to use the frostbite set because without the masters staff I just don't have a lot of frost abilities... At least none that are bursty. To be honest @taugrim and probably @Caribou77 I'm sure your builds are better than mine but again I just have no real desire to grind a masters ice staff.

I'm doing just fine though so don't kick me out of the club! I replaced bloodspawn with balorghs for more damage and I replaced force pulse with arterial burst for more single target damage.

Still using rallying cry bb and Hrothgar fb. With the extra damage from chilled application Hrothgar's does even more damage and even though my crit rating isn't terribly high I can kill tougher opponents by letting my own health get low and spam them with guaranteed arterial burst crits (enhanced by brittle.)

Kinda an area denial build still, good for capping flags and defending relics. Had a nice deathmatch recently where my team won handily but I just "got that feeling" that the competition was pretty decent. I went 14-2 and my group playstyle became very apparent to me. I basically hang out with my team... Not too strong in the off-heals department but I do what I can. Frequently save teammates by showing up with key stuns/immobilizes to let them breathe. For offense I'm looking for any 2v2 or greater with the other two teams and that's when I swoop. Punch the ground, flap my wings, cast ice staff destruction ult, gripping shards and/or arctic blast the whole group with Hrothgar+chilled proc, find the guy who appears low on health or slow to break free and arterial burst the crap out of him.

As I said before I'll probably upload a couple of videos. Not that I'll be teaching anyone anything, but for my own satisfaction if anyone cares to watch... It's a very "fun" build. A good mixture of "decent damage" in the form of pressure-- no execute but extreme pressure during ulti-- and a healthy dose of mild CC trolling. It's hard to run good players out of stamina these days but at least without CP enabled I find the constant stam pressure at least makes them think and have to shorten their own burst windows.