How I would improve the thematics of Warden

Soarora · February 28

Note: I have never played a stamden so I’m not sure how good these changes would be however I hope its at least a step in the right direction thematically.

Animal Companions
Eternal Guardian - Can no longer be killed (excluding PvP). Remains through death. Attacks do frost damage.
Wild Guardian - Same as it is.

Cutting Dive - Same as it is.
Screaming Cliff Racer - Renamed to Freezing Cliff Strider (or some other similar name. It is a Cliff Strider though). Now a frost ability, a frozen Cliff Strider dives from the air and rams into an enemy, shattering. This would be a direct damage ability with an AoE component making it a good trash aoe spammable instead of pulsar for frost wardens.
OR Freezing Hail, which would have it be a summoning of several ice crystals that shoot down and hit an area. This could function more like the other morph of pulsar, not requiring a target.

Sub Assault - The shalks are now thorny vines and do bleed damage.
Deep Fissure - The shalks are now frosty or are ice spikes and do frost damage.

Fetcher/Swarm I think is alright but growing swarm should do aoe minor vulnerability.

Blue Betty - This appears similar to Betty Netch. Might as well make it frosty.
Bull Netch - This one’s fine.

Both morphs of Falcon’s Swiftness are fine. They don’t fit thematically at all but they’re pretty cool and I see more complaints about the damaging abilities.

Green Balance

I would change Leeching Vines into a single target bleed DoT. I don’t ever see either morph used but if they are used for anything, the usefulness should be added to Living Trellis as the healer morph.

Lotus Flower just needs help in general. Maybe Green Lotus can be buffed so that it would be useful to a Ro/Jo warden healer (heal while HAing, great for CR and KA executes where you need to HA while people are mega dying). Lotus Blossum can be buffed to give DPS some added damage if the thematic changes aren’t enough.

Nature’s Grasp also needs help.
Bursting Vines needs re-buffed (it is completely useless right now).
Perhaps Nature’s Embrace can be used to pull allies (only works on people in your group) to you.

Winter’s Embrace

Sleet storm is fine.

Frost cloak is perfect.

Gripping Shards should cost stamina and become thorny vines with damage that scales off DPS stats, instead of chilled status this has an increased chance to do bleed damage. This would give stamdens a class AoE that doesn’t require an ice staff without removing the slow/immobilize for tanks. This is one of the more important proposed changes.
Winter’s revenge is fine.

Polar Wind should no longer heal an additional ally. It’s a problem in PvP and I also see warden healers slot it when they shouldn’t. Tanks generally should not be able to heal other people. Sorc tanks can but matriarch takes 2 slots which helps with the balance.
Blast is alright, though I liked when the stun was immediate more.

Crystal shield is fine.

Finally, frozen gate. Frozen device should be reworked to either pull any enemy within it and then expire or stay up for a duration and pull an enemy within it every second or so. Right now, it’s a pain to use. If there are two concepts that both are balanced, then one can be given to retreat so wardens can choose which style of pull they prefer. Retreat should keep the synergy that lets players teleport to you.

moderatelyfatman · February 29

You've made some good points, but I think the devs need to take a step back and think more about playstyle and archetypes:

Warden Healer (=Druid)
Strong and unusual healing abilities with the option of using animal companions or ice abilities in fights.
I'd say that the Warden Healer is pretty much in the ideal spot right now except for Nature's Grasp which is kind of worthless since the heal is not particularly strong, not AOE and puts the caster in danger when used to keep a tank alive.

Magicka Warden DPS (= Elsa from Frozen)
I think the devs have gotten fairly close with this them but the class still needs more tuning if it is to perform in endgame situations. Since Magden is the only class that focusses on cold damage, they could tweak some of the chilled and frozen passives to make the class have something unique to offer.

Stamina Warden (= Ranger)
The ranger playstyle is a mainstay in nearly all fantasy rpg games but seems to be missing here. The Stamwarden should be a very versatile playstyle that can be equally effective in either melee or ranged (bow) and is accompanied by the animal companions and their abilities. They might not be nearly as strong in melee as a DK or Stamplar but are able to switch builds between the two.

Unfortunately, right now the stamwarden is in a bad place. I'm hoping that in the future the devs add some extra passives buffs to bleed damage like they have done for Piercing Cold passive with icestaff (e.g. 2% bonus to bleed damage normally but 12% if wielding a martial weapon).

yadibroz · February 29

moderatelyfatman wrote: »

You've made some good points, but I think the devs need to take a step back and think more about playstyle and archetypes:

Warden Healer (=Druid)
Strong and unusual healing abilities with the option of using animal companions or ice abilities in fights.
I'd say that the Warden Healer is pretty much in the ideal spot right now except for Nature's Grasp which is kind of worthless since the heal is not particularly strong, not AOE and puts the caster in danger when used to keep a tank alive.

Magicka Warden DPS (= Elsa from Frozen)
I think the devs have gotten fairly close with this them but the class still needs more tuning if it is to perform in endgame situations. Since Magden is the only class that focusses on cold damage, they could tweak some of the chilled and frozen passives to make the class have something unique to offer.

Stamina Warden (= Ranger)
The ranger playstyle is a mainstay in nearly all fantasy rpg games but seems to be missing here. The Stamwarden should be a very versatile playstyle that can be equally effective in either melee or ranged (bow) and is accompanied by the animal companions and their abilities. They might not be nearly as strong in melee as a DK or Stamplar but are able to switch builds between the two.

Unfortunately, right now the stamwarden is in a bad place. I'm hoping that in the future the devs add some extra passives buffs to bleed damage like they have done for Piercing Cold passive with icestaff (e.g. 2% bonus to bleed damage normally but 12% if wielding a martial weapon).

I really like these

LunaFlora · February 29

i agree with those and don't get why the magicka costing abilities still deal Magic damage after we lost the passive that increased Magic Damage.

and frost staff should really get some damage buffs to help too.

Soarora · February 29

moderatelyfatman wrote: »

You've made some good points, but I think the devs need to take a step back and think more about playstyle and archetypes:

Warden Healer (=Druid)
Strong and unusual healing abilities with the option of using animal companions or ice abilities in fights.
I'd say that the Warden Healer is pretty much in the ideal spot right now except for Nature's Grasp which is kind of worthless since the heal is not particularly strong, not AOE and puts the caster in danger when used to keep a tank alive.

Magicka Warden DPS (= Elsa from Frozen)
I think the devs have gotten fairly close with this them but the class still needs more tuning if it is to perform in endgame situations. Since Magden is the only class that focusses on cold damage, they could tweak some of the chilled and frozen passives to make the class have something unique to offer.

Stamina Warden (= Ranger)
The ranger playstyle is a mainstay in nearly all fantasy rpg games but seems to be missing here. The Stamwarden should be a very versatile playstyle that can be equally effective in either melee or ranged (bow) and is accompanied by the animal companions and their abilities. They might not be nearly as strong in melee as a DK or Stamplar but are able to switch builds between the two.

Unfortunately, right now the stamwarden is in a bad place. I'm hoping that in the future the devs add some extra passives buffs to bleed damage like they have done for Piercing Cold passive with icestaff (e.g. 2% bonus to bleed damage normally but 12% if wielding a martial weapon).

I definitely agree. After posting this I’ve been thinking about going over passives too. A bleed version of piercing cold for stamdens would be amazing. Warden has so much potential to really have diversity between the 4 specs, unlike other classes that are typically the same no matter spec.