Zos warden players like ice damage

ESO_Nightingale

GusTheWizard wrote: »

We are also trying to add more sources of damage to their damage focused skill line, so we can slowly look at shifting damage out of their tanking focused skill line.

Let us stop you right there zos I would say most wardens play this class because it is an ice focused class myself included, my least favorite part of the class are the animal companions skills, please don’t remove what we’ve been telling you we wanted for 6 years, we finally got good ice damage in the last year and a half.

its amazing to see so many likes on this post. if they start stepping back, thats just gonna start undoing so much good it'll just be silly. this isn't to say that winter's embrace is perfect, because it definitely isn't. but the frost damage portion of the class has come so far in the last few years.

ADarklore

I had another thought today, PERHAPS they are going to actually give Frost staff some actual damage in the Destruction Staff skill line. Now that would definitely go a long way to giving all classes the option to run a Frost mage build, which would be welcomed and a good step forward... because right now the only viable Frost mage class is Warden. However, I don't think they need to be touching Winter's Revenge or Arctic Blast. Yet, if they would give the +12% damage increase to all FROST skills when wielding a frost staff to the Destruction Staff skill line and removed it from Warden- it would be a fair trade. I mean, how many 'Frost' tanks are their in reality?? I'm doubting there are many. So to make a staff revolve around a niche build, seems a bit silly, so giving Frost damage capabilities would go a long way to adding more build diversity to the game IMO.

ESO_Nightingale

ADarklore wrote: »

I had another thought today, PERHAPS they are going to actually give Frost staff some actual damage in the Destruction Staff skill line. Now that would definitely go a long way to giving all classes the option to run a Frost mage build, which would be welcomed and a good step forward... because right now the only viable Frost mage class is Warden. However, I don't think they need to be touching Winter's Revenge or Arctic Blast. Yet, if they would give the +12% damage increase to all FROST skills when wielding a frost staff to the Destruction Staff skill line and removed it from Warden- it would be a fair trade. I mean, how many 'Frost' tanks are their in reality?? I'm doubting there are many. So to make a staff revolve around a niche build, seems a bit silly, so giving Frost damage capabilities would go a long way to adding more build diversity to the game IMO.

I dunno man, seems like wishful thinking.

LeHarrt91

Galeriano2 wrote: »

There's plenty of ice damage coming up with scribing.

Yeah from what i have seen its 2 skills what are not that great for high end dps.

LeHarrt91

This is just wishful thinking but maybe they are going to move and merge passives together. As some of the Animal Companion tree passives could be updated or move Piercing Cold over to that tree and add in Hemorrhaging for the Bleed theme. They should not remove the 2 DPS skills we have in the Ice Tree but maybe just shift the passives and make the Class trees work together more. Like changing Advanced Species to "Warden Skills" and not just "Animal Skills" a lot of the passives restrict themselves to a single skill tree.

ESO_Nightingale

LeHarrt91 wrote: »

Galeriano2 wrote: »

There's plenty of ice damage coming up with scribing.

Yeah from what i have seen its 2 skills what are not that great for high end dps.

yeah, and ulfsild's main problem is that its bugged right now with the mages guild passive that buffs its duration to 5.8 seconds instead of 6.

ZoeliTintanie

What if Wardens had something like this, with as "cleaned up and efficient" as the arcanist in its ability-effects, instead of something like "Ice Fortress + Resolve & Minor prot" for a skill slot, Ice Fortress with the Arcanist treatment, along with its identity being highlighted. Its the only true "nature" class in the game and side note, where's the water magic and rain, rain storms for Wardens?

Green Balance/Earthen Heart (Defensive & healing, support skill line)
Stormcalling/Winters (cc, debuffs, aoes. changes visuals depending on staff, like the seasons)
Animal Companions/Aedric Spear'ish (combat for ranged, melee, calling in animal companions, charging into enemies, traps, dots etc)

mix and match it and lemme play it

Elyu

Step one: Separate the destro staves into separate skill lines
Step two: overhaul all classes to focus around two types of damage (dk has fire+poison, sorc should be physical+shock etc) as per @MashmalloMan suggestion from sorc thread

Anti_Virus

Hottytotz wrote: »

yadibroz wrote: »

GusTheWizard wrote: »

We are also trying to add more sources of damage to their damage focused skill line, so we can slowly look at shifting damage out of their tanking focused skill line.

Let us stop you right there zos I would say most wardens play this class because it is an ice focused class myself included, my least favorite part of the class are the animal companions skills, please don’t remove what we’ve been telling you we wanted for 6 years, we finally got good ice damage in the last year and a half.

They need to remove ice and add it to a new class

No because this will never happen we need to salvage what ice theme warden has left. I wish it was its ONLY theme to be honest.

IF by some miracle an actuall ice class version of fire DK became a thing I would understand but that is likely NOT happening. So we need to double down on frost warden until that actually can become a reality.

I personally wished the ice theme would disappear. It seems really out of place for the class tbh.

Lalothen

Anti_Virus wrote: »

I personally wished the ice theme would disappear. It seems really out of place for the class tbh.

Why? Winter is the climax of the natural cycle, heralding an end to the old cycle before the ushering in of new beginnings in the form of spring.

All three of the Warden's skill lines fit them thematically, they just don't really produce a cohesive damage-dealing theme because ZOS has constantly tinkered around leeching potency from Animal Companions whilst vaguely pushing Wardens down the Frost avenue of DPS. The result is this weird bastardization that nobody's completely happy with.

Frankly, the Animal Companions line could make a really good, semi-unique tanking line calling on various animal spirits to negate damage, return resources, debuff/cc enemies, etc, whilst Winter's Embrace could become a Frost/Physical DPS line that would work for mag, stam & hybrid builds. But that's just wishful thinking.

ESO_Nightingale

Elyu wrote: »

Step one: Separate the destro staves into separate skill lines
Step two: overhaul all classes to focus around two types of damage (dk has fire+poison, sorc should be physical+shock etc) as per @MashmalloMan suggestion from sorc thread

I wish they'd let warden just be frost/bleed focused for mag and stam builds respectively. Magic damage doesn't really do much for us.

Durham

Originally it was the Stam Warden. I still play Stam Warden I reject the ICE label !!

Destai

I don't understand this move. There's been several patches to build up the ice damage with them, granting them damage passives and such. Why reverse course like that? @ZOS_Gilliam

chessalavakia_ESO

valenwood_vegan wrote: »

Yeah this note was odd. A great example of a lack of an overall vision and random see-saw changes. Specific changes were made over the last year (or two? - hard to keep track) to make dps ice wardens an actual thing. Now it's gonna slowly be undone? I don't get it.

My impression is that the changes were in response to feedback and that the changes didn't really work out that well.

I'm seeing the same names posting about how they aren't happy with Ice Wardens that I saw before the changes at a similar frequency.

SilentFox22

GusTheWizard wrote: »

We are also trying to add more sources of damage to their damage focused skill line, so we can slowly look at shifting damage out of their tanking focused skill line.

Let us stop you right there zos I would say most wardens play this class because it is an ice focused class myself included, my least favorite part of the class are the animal companions skills, please don’t remove what we’ve been telling you we wanted for 6 years, we finally got good ice damage in the last year and a half.

I very much disagree with this statement. More like half play for the frost mage aspect while the other half play for the animal/nature aspect. Think “most” can agree though that they should have been separate classes altogether and perhaps make the animals more general themed rather than Morrowind.

OtarTheMad

If they take the damage out of the tank skill line and make it harder to be a Frost Mage I will just delete my wardens.

Other classes, except necro, have damage outside of the damage skill line so why can’t Wardens?

Never should have made frost the magicka tanking theme. It would have been better to make an Alteration Staff skill line, but oh well.

Don’t mess up my Sub-Zero build ZOS.

MashmalloMan

valenwood_vegan wrote: »

Yeah this note was odd. A great example of a lack of an overall vision and random see-saw changes. Specific changes were made over the last year (or two? - hard to keep track) to make dps ice wardens an actual thing. Now it's gonna slowly be undone? I don't get it.

As an advocate for ice warden, I'm cautiously optimistic, it becoming a thing is really cool, but they did it in such a poor way that completely destroyed stam warden and the animal companion skill line in the process, which is never something any of us asked for. It's also very half baked leaving ice wardens with a lot to be desired because they only really have 2 ice skills.

I take their select comments from "shifting" as a sign they merely want to rebalance the power budget to not be so weighted towards the tanking line as it is now, give more power back to the DPS line where it's missing, that doesn't mean destroying the fact that you can use Winter's Revenge, Arctic Blast, and Northern Storm as DPS skills. In my opinion, they will always deal DPS now, that's just how they're designed.

Let me paint a picture:

• Piercing Cold = Instead of 2% damage done or 12% with a frost staff, it should be 5% damage done or 12% with a frost staff.
• Glacial Presence = Instead of +200% status effect chance for Winter's Embrace, it should be +60% status effect chance for ALL frost damage.
• Winter's Revenge = Remove the +30% damage done with a frost staff, bake in 15-20% with no requirement. Keep the high chilled proc effect.
• Eternal Guardian = Damage type changed from magic to frost, passive damage reduced by 50%, but can now be 1 barred.
• Subterranean Assault = Damage type changed from poison to bleed.
• Deep Fissure = Damage type changed from magic to frost. Swap the damage bonus from the 9s hit to the 3s hit.
• Cutting Dive = Now applies off balance regardless of range.
• Screaming Cliff Racer = Damage type changed from magic to frost. Now applies off balance regardless of range.
• Growing Swarm = Increases pet damage dealt by 20%, eg. Deadric Prey for Warden Bear enthusiasts.
• Fetcher Infection = Damage type changed from magic to frost. Now deals +9% damage per tick instead of +60% every second cast.
• Bond With Nature = Now scales based on a stat. Maybe HP%, maybe max stam or mag. IDK.
• Flourish = Increase 12% regen to 18% or +200 mag/stam regen for slotting... Eg. Arcanist or Necromancer passive.
• Advanced Species = Simplify it. Now gives +12% critical damage/healing for slotting 1 companion skill instead of +4% per animal companion skill slotted.
• Add some type of bleed bonus to one of the passives.

While they're at it... they should probably nerf Polar Wind to only heal yourself or at the very least, reduce the amount on secondary targets. It's way over tuned and if it was coupled with Bond with Nature proccing from HP%, it would be even more broken.

This would be what I consider "shifting" because you're taking some of the power budget out of the tank line where it's heavily weighted and distributing it among companion skills to make them more worth slotting. All in all, if you played an Ice Warden, it shouldn't make a difference because you would be receiving more ice companion skills.

Like I said though... Cautiously optimistic. This is best case scenario.

flizomica

I think it makes a lot more sense for Winter's Embrace to be support/utility/tanking focused instead of also having core DPS skills and passives also thrown in there, so I am supportive of that idea. Re-focusing that skill line and also improving Animal Companions sounds fabulous to me if those damage skills also receive adjustments (like overall shifts to bleed/frost damage types.. class identity, please!). My ultimate fantasy would be combining that with skill styles to enhance a more Druid feel (i.e. not so many Morrowind critters). It would be so cool to run around with a wolf perma summon and launch spectral hawks instead of cliff racers, for instance.

SkaiFaith

MashmalloMan wrote: »

valenwood_vegan wrote: »

Yeah this note was odd. A great example of a lack of an overall vision and random see-saw changes. Specific changes were made over the last year (or two? - hard to keep track) to make dps ice wardens an actual thing. Now it's gonna slowly be undone? I don't get it.

As an advocate for ice warden, I'm cautiously optimistic, it becoming a thing is really cool, but they did it in such a poor way that completely destroyed stam warden and the animal companion skill line in the process, which is never something any of us asked for. It's also very half baked leaving ice wardens with a lot to be desired because they only really have 2 ice skills.

I take their select comments from "shifting" as a sign they merely want to rebalance the power budget to not be so weighted towards the tanking line as it is now, give more power back to the DPS line where it's missing, that doesn't mean destroying the fact that you can use Winter's Revenge, Arctic Blast, and Northern Storm as DPS skills. In my opinion, they will always deal DPS now, that's just how they're designed.

Let me paint a picture:

• Piercing Cold = Instead of 2% damage done or 12% with a frost staff, it should be 5% damage done or 12% with a frost staff.
• Glacial Presence = Instead of +200% status effect chance for Winter's Embrace, it should be +60% status effect chance for ALL frost damage.
• Winter's Revenge = Remove the +30% damage done with a frost staff, bake in 15-20% with no requirement. Keep the high chilled proc effect.
• Eternal Guardian = Damage type changed from magic to frost, passive damage reduced by 50%, but can now be 1 barred.
• Subterranean Assault = Damage type changed from poison to bleed.
• Deep Fissure = Damage type changed from magic to frost. Swap the damage bonus from the 9s hit to the 3s hit.
• Cutting Dive = Now applies off balance regardless of range.
• Screaming Cliff Racer = Damage type changed from magic to frost. Now applies off balance regardless of range.
• Growing Swarm = Increases pet damage dealt by 20%, eg. Deadric Prey for Warden Bear enthusiasts.
• Fetcher Infection = Damage type changed from magic to frost. Now deals +9% damage per tick instead of +60% every second cast.
• Bond With Nature = Now scales based on a stat. Maybe HP%, maybe max stam or mag. IDK.
• Flourish = Increase 12% regen to 18% or +200 mag/stam regen for slotting... Eg. Arcanist or Necromancer passive.
• Advanced Species = Simplify it. Now gives +12% critical damage/healing for slotting 1 companion skill instead of +4% per animal companion skill slotted.
• Add some type of bleed bonus to one of the passives.

While they're at it... they should probably nerf Polar Wind to only heal yourself or at the very least, reduce the amount on secondary targets. It's way over tuned and if it was coupled with Bond with Nature proccing from HP%, it would be even more broken.

This would be what I consider "shifting" because you're taking some of the power budget out of the tank line where it's heavily weighted and distributing it among companion skills to make them more worth slotting. All in all, if you played an Ice Warden, it shouldn't make a difference because you would be receiving more ice companion skills.

Like I said though... Cautiously optimistic. This is best case scenario.

Scrap your changes to Glacial presence and Polar wind and we can happily talk about the rest. Those should remain untouched.

MashmalloMan

SkaiFaith wrote: »

MashmalloMan wrote: »

valenwood_vegan wrote: »

Yeah this note was odd. A great example of a lack of an overall vision and random see-saw changes. Specific changes were made over the last year (or two? - hard to keep track) to make dps ice wardens an actual thing. Now it's gonna slowly be undone? I don't get it.

As an advocate for ice warden, I'm cautiously optimistic, it becoming a thing is really cool, but they did it in such a poor way that completely destroyed stam warden and the animal companion skill line in the process, which is never something any of us asked for. It's also very half baked leaving ice wardens with a lot to be desired because they only really have 2 ice skills.

I take their select comments from "shifting" as a sign they merely want to rebalance the power budget to not be so weighted towards the tanking line as it is now, give more power back to the DPS line where it's missing, that doesn't mean destroying the fact that you can use Winter's Revenge, Arctic Blast, and Northern Storm as DPS skills. In my opinion, they will always deal DPS now, that's just how they're designed.

Let me paint a picture:

• Piercing Cold = Instead of 2% damage done or 12% with a frost staff, it should be 5% damage done or 12% with a frost staff.
• Glacial Presence = Instead of +200% status effect chance for Winter's Embrace, it should be +60% status effect chance for ALL frost damage.
• Winter's Revenge = Remove the +30% damage done with a frost staff, bake in 15-20% with no requirement. Keep the high chilled proc effect.
• Eternal Guardian = Damage type changed from magic to frost, passive damage reduced by 50%, but can now be 1 barred.
• Subterranean Assault = Damage type changed from poison to bleed.
• Deep Fissure = Damage type changed from magic to frost. Swap the damage bonus from the 9s hit to the 3s hit.
• Cutting Dive = Now applies off balance regardless of range.
• Screaming Cliff Racer = Damage type changed from magic to frost. Now applies off balance regardless of range.
• Growing Swarm = Increases pet damage dealt by 20%, eg. Deadric Prey for Warden Bear enthusiasts.
• Fetcher Infection = Damage type changed from magic to frost. Now deals +9% damage per tick instead of +60% every second cast.
• Bond With Nature = Now scales based on a stat. Maybe HP%, maybe max stam or mag. IDK.
• Flourish = Increase 12% regen to 18% or +200 mag/stam regen for slotting... Eg. Arcanist or Necromancer passive.
• Advanced Species = Simplify it. Now gives +12% critical damage/healing for slotting 1 companion skill instead of +4% per animal companion skill slotted.
• Add some type of bleed bonus to one of the passives.

While they're at it... they should probably nerf Polar Wind to only heal yourself or at the very least, reduce the amount on secondary targets. It's way over tuned and if it was coupled with Bond with Nature proccing from HP%, it would be even more broken.

This would be what I consider "shifting" because you're taking some of the power budget out of the tank line where it's heavily weighted and distributing it among companion skills to make them more worth slotting. All in all, if you played an Ice Warden, it shouldn't make a difference because you would be receiving more ice companion skills.

Like I said though... Cautiously optimistic. This is best case scenario.

Scrap your changes to Glacial presence and Polar wind and we can happily talk about the rest. Those should remain untouched.

1. I'm not ZOS. I'm trying to spin their comment in a positive light.
2. I would happily give up +200% to a few skills to improve everything else. The value I proposed doesn't matter, it was simply an example of how they could shift power without destroying the DPS of Winter's Revenge and Arctic Blast. Note: WR has x5 status effect chance (5% base) and AB has x15 status effect chance (15% base), these wouldn't change. You would still have high chilled uptime, just not specifically from these 2 skills only, with my suggestions, you could have Scorch, Flies, Cliff Racer, and Bear to contribute towards chilled which is why I think they use the term "shift".
3. If you think Polar Wind's off healing is fine the way it is, I don't know what else to say to you. It's busted in pvp and really besides the actual point of my comment.

Lystrad

Lalothen wrote: »

Why? Winter is the climax of the natural cycle, heralding an end to the old cycle before the ushering in of new beginnings in the form of spring.

On mean on paper that makes sense, the problem is the way the winter theme clashes with the animals warden summons. Other than the bear (which fits the cold, but does technically hibernate during the winter), warden summons tropical flying reptiles and insects, due to it's morrowind theme. This becomes jarring because insects and reptiles notoriously don't get along well with the cold so it creates a level of cognitive dissonance.

And at the very least I know that as someone who wants to play a frost/winter themed mage, the absolute last thing I want to be summoning to surround myself with is bugs. Bear is fine, bear kind of makes sense, but when I think of the combination of frost and insects I think necromancer.

Thematically Warden would honestly be better served stealing the earthen heart line from dragon knight for volcanic ash and stone in my opinion.

Alternativly, re-theme the animal companion line as a nature conjuration line that changes the magicka variants of each ability into something that fits the ice theme and doesn't have to be an animal.

Spectral wolf for for cliff racer.
Ice wraith for netch (could also flip this with the wolf tbh)
Glacial spikes for fissue
A localized blizzard for fetcherflies.

Theist_VII

Lalothen wrote: »

Alternativly, re-theme the animal companion line as a nature conjuration line that changes the magicka variants of each ability into something that fits the ice theme and doesn't have to be an animal.

Spectral wolf for for cliff racer.
Ice wraith for netch
Glacial spikes for fissue
A localized blizzard for fetcherflies.

While I agree with the majority of your take, where I also feel as though the skill lines are in direct conflict with each other thematically, I wouldn’t go so far as to swipe Daedric Summoning.

Warden, at least to me, has always been about Mysticism, not Conjuration. What I mean by that, is rather than summon daedra and undead to fight for you, Mysticism works to convince nearby animals to fight for you, more akin to permanent pets than Sorcerer… that being said, ESO’s Warden fails horribly at that fantasy.

No matter where you are, you summon animals/insects/mushrooms from Vvardenfell, rather than calling creatures and plants native to whatever region you’re in to help you.

Theist_VII

For my opinion regarding Ice tanking instead of damage dealing, never before in an Elder Scrolls, at least to my knowledge, has there been a Destruction element that does anything other than destroy.

If the goal is to change the entire Winter’s Embrace tanking skill line to be more about the preservation of nature, not the killing of it, I 100% support that move, but in the same breath there needs to be an acknowledgement that people chose the class for the Ice magic, and an option to change classes needs to be made available for those players.

yadibroz

GusTheWizard wrote: »

We are also trying to add more sources of damage to their damage focused skill line, so we can slowly look at shifting damage out of their tanking focused skill line.

Let us stop you right there zos I would say most wardens play this class because it is an ice focused class myself included, my least favorite part of the class are the animal companions skills, please don’t remove what we’ve been telling you we wanted for 6 years, we finally got good ice damage in the last year and a half.

Just changed everything to ice and make it better

yadibroz

SkaiFaith wrote: »

Agree with OP. Definitely not liking this idea.
The ice theme is really cool but if the line get made for tanks, as a solo oakensoul player I wouldn't need it anymore basically, and I don't want to get rid of my frosty damage and heals: yes, I don't want damage NOR heal to go away since Arctic and it's morphs are quite literally "my life".
(Shards is nice too btw)

I'm against the change and me myself I'm fine with how wardens are now.
If anything, I've seen others propose to change the animals skills to do frost damage instead of magic, making them all "blue-ish". Now that would be more cool 😎

That what I want

yadibroz

GusTheWizard wrote: »

Galeriano2 wrote: »

There's plenty of ice damage coming up with scribing.

Two skills with ice damage, one is terrible and the other is just decent.

And the point is that warden has passives and buffs in its ice line to help make those skills better for them to use on warden, otherwise you might as well use fire or lightning damage because their status effects give better buffs.

That is what I need

yadibroz

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

Imagine Bird but instead of a Cliffracer it's an Ice Wraith.

Also Glacial Shalks and Frozen Fetcherflies or something. And Snow Bear ultimate.

These are easy changes to make they just... need to actually be made.

I always say it

MashmalloMan

@Lystrad Personally I think making Animal Companions deal bleed/frost damage, even as their current visual designs makes more than enough sense to justify and wouldn't really require any substantial VFX reworks on the devs side. Maybe a recolour here or there. This makes it more than likely that it can happen since it doesn't require a lot of workload to complete.

You're effectively conjuring those animals out of thin air, the damage type you choose for them could be decided based on the magic you originate from; Ice (frost/tanking) or Nature (bleed/healing). Winter's Embrace and Green Balance serve as influences for which your Animal Companions are summoned from. This same influence is why Sorcerer's being rooted in Dark Magic and Storm Calling, summon Daedric pets that deal Shock/Physical damage. It just makes sense and binds each of the lines together.

To this effect, I'd argue (as I have suggested for a long time), that Corrupting Pollen should deal some form of aoe bleed damage to further cement this idea of 2 halves coming together in the Animal Companion line... but who knows when or if that could ever happen. It would just be a nice option to offer Wardens a 6th non-ult damage skill imo.

To further prove my point:

• Growing Storm as of patch 5.2.5 changed from magicka cost to stamina cost, dealing bleed damage instead of magic damage.
• Cutting Dive as of patch 5.2.5 added a 7s bleed dot, later changed to 10s and removing the 3x stacking. As of patch 7.0.5, the skill was changed to purely bleed damage instead of a combination of physical + bleed.
• Wild Guardian as of patch 8.0.5 changed from physical damage to bleed damage.

Just look at Scorch morphs for instance, you spawn 3 Shalks which spew out clouds around them that happen to deal poison (green) or magic (blue) damage. It really makes no sense, but we accept it. Could easily slap the colour red (bleed) and keep blue (frost) and not a single person would argue about it, but the kit would be much better for it.

SkaiFaith

MashmalloMan wrote: »

SkaiFaith wrote: »

MashmalloMan wrote: »

valenwood_vegan wrote: »

Yeah this note was odd. A great example of a lack of an overall vision and random see-saw changes. Specific changes were made over the last year (or two? - hard to keep track) to make dps ice wardens an actual thing. Now it's gonna slowly be undone? I don't get it.

As an advocate for ice warden, I'm cautiously optimistic, it becoming a thing is really cool, but they did it in such a poor way that completely destroyed stam warden and the animal companion skill line in the process, which is never something any of us asked for. It's also very half baked leaving ice wardens with a lot to be desired because they only really have 2 ice skills.

I take their select comments from "shifting" as a sign they merely want to rebalance the power budget to not be so weighted towards the tanking line as it is now, give more power back to the DPS line where it's missing, that doesn't mean destroying the fact that you can use Winter's Revenge, Arctic Blast, and Northern Storm as DPS skills. In my opinion, they will always deal DPS now, that's just how they're designed.

Let me paint a picture:

• Piercing Cold = Instead of 2% damage done or 12% with a frost staff, it should be 5% damage done or 12% with a frost staff.
• Glacial Presence = Instead of +200% status effect chance for Winter's Embrace, it should be +60% status effect chance for ALL frost damage.
• Winter's Revenge = Remove the +30% damage done with a frost staff, bake in 15-20% with no requirement. Keep the high chilled proc effect.
• Eternal Guardian = Damage type changed from magic to frost, passive damage reduced by 50%, but can now be 1 barred.
• Subterranean Assault = Damage type changed from poison to bleed.
• Deep Fissure = Damage type changed from magic to frost. Swap the damage bonus from the 9s hit to the 3s hit.
• Cutting Dive = Now applies off balance regardless of range.
• Screaming Cliff Racer = Damage type changed from magic to frost. Now applies off balance regardless of range.
• Growing Swarm = Increases pet damage dealt by 20%, eg. Deadric Prey for Warden Bear enthusiasts.
• Fetcher Infection = Damage type changed from magic to frost. Now deals +9% damage per tick instead of +60% every second cast.
• Bond With Nature = Now scales based on a stat. Maybe HP%, maybe max stam or mag. IDK.
• Flourish = Increase 12% regen to 18% or +200 mag/stam regen for slotting... Eg. Arcanist or Necromancer passive.
• Advanced Species = Simplify it. Now gives +12% critical damage/healing for slotting 1 companion skill instead of +4% per animal companion skill slotted.
• Add some type of bleed bonus to one of the passives.

While they're at it... they should probably nerf Polar Wind to only heal yourself or at the very least, reduce the amount on secondary targets. It's way over tuned and if it was coupled with Bond with Nature proccing from HP%, it would be even more broken.

This would be what I consider "shifting" because you're taking some of the power budget out of the tank line where it's heavily weighted and distributing it among companion skills to make them more worth slotting. All in all, if you played an Ice Warden, it shouldn't make a difference because you would be receiving more ice companion skills.

Like I said though... Cautiously optimistic. This is best case scenario.

Scrap your changes to Glacial presence and Polar wind and we can happily talk about the rest. Those should remain untouched.

1. I'm not ZOS. I'm trying to spin their comment in a positive light.
2. I would happily give up +200% to a few skills to improve everything else. The value I proposed doesn't matter, it was simply an example of how they could shift power without destroying the DPS of Winter's Revenge and Arctic Blast. Note: WR has x5 status effect chance (5% base) and AB has x15 status effect chance (15% base), these wouldn't change. You would still have high chilled uptime, just not specifically from these 2 skills only, with my suggestions, you could have Scorch, Flies, Cliff Racer, and Bear to contribute towards chilled which is why I think they use the term "shift".
3. If you think Polar Wind's off healing is fine the way it is, I don't know what else to say to you. It's busted in pvp and really besides the actual point of my comment.

1 and 2 I get them, I was just saying my preference: You can easily guess my build by what I said, so since I have 1 frost ability on my bar which is Shards, I very much prefer having guaranteed status chance on it than spreading on stuff I don't use. Totally personal thing.

3 Polar Wind is perfect as is for PvE, it's a necessity for solo Wardens, especially Oakensoul ones with limited skill options. I don't look deeply into PvP but I'm not expecting it to be so busted as you make it seem...

Skullstachio

MashmalloMan wrote: »

Let me paint a picture:

• Piercing Cold = Instead of 2% damage done or 12% with a frost staff, it should be 5% damage done or 12% with a frost staff.
• Glacial Presence = Instead of +200% status effect chance for Winter's Embrace, it should be +60% status effect chance for ALL frost damage.
• Winter's Revenge = Remove the +30% damage done with a frost staff, bake in 15-20% with no requirement. Keep the high chilled proc effect.
• Eternal Guardian = Damage type changed from magic to frost, passive damage reduced by 50%, but can now be 1 barred.
• Subterranean Assault = Damage type changed from poison to bleed.
• Deep Fissure = Damage type changed from magic to frost. Swap the damage bonus from the 9s hit to the 3s hit.
• Cutting Dive = Now applies off balance regardless of range.
• Screaming Cliff Racer = Damage type changed from magic to frost. Now applies off balance regardless of range.
• Growing Swarm = Increases pet damage dealt by 20%, eg. Deadric Prey for Warden Bear enthusiasts.
• Fetcher Infection = Damage type changed from magic to frost. Now deals +9% damage per tick instead of +60% every second cast.
• Bond With Nature = Now scales based on a stat. Maybe HP%, maybe max stam or mag. IDK.
• Flourish = Increase 12% regen to 18% or +200 mag/stam regen for slotting... Eg. Arcanist or Necromancer passive.
• Advanced Species = Simplify it. Now gives +12% critical damage/healing for slotting 1 companion skill instead of +4% per animal companion skill slotted.
• Add some type of bleed bonus to one of the passives.

Piercing Cold: I can agree to disagree with this as if a player is using a two handed weapon or dual wielding and benefitting the 2% bonus, it is quite powerful on the high end if built correctly for the designated dps role, 12% for frost staves is merely to help them be near equal in power to 2H & DW as a ranged option in comparison to the melee power of the aforementioned 2H & DW as frost staves do not have as much weapon/spell damage rating on the weapon itself in comparison to 2H and in the case of DW, having 2 one-handed weapons with different traits and enchantments makes it flexible with its own power which is something frost staves may not completely have in their toolkit. That and % based bonuses are not very strong on the low end of DPS.

Glacial Presence: Make it about 100% status effect chance for all frost damaging abilities and I'm in, as this was done in comparing it to that of the arcanists psychic lesion passive which increases status effect damage by 15% and status effect chance by 55% while a herald of the tome ability is slotted, whereas a similar principle could apply "if" at least one winters embrace ability were to be slotted but just for raw status effect chance with frost damage abilities without touching the status effect damage as is.

Winters Revenge: I can see where it's goin, and coupled with glacial presence makes for a decent toolkit synergy.

eternal guardian: 50-50 here. I agree with changing the damage type from magic to frost (not so much on reducing raw damage.), but maybe make it part of the base ultimate as well, if anything, it should be made so that feral guardian is changed to eternal guardian to reflect the base ability to reflect this:

• Rouse a Polar Bear to fight by your side, the bear swipes an enemy, dealing X Frost Damage, and sometimes swipes all enemies in front of it, dealing X frost damage and stunning them for 2 seconds. Once summoned, you can activate guardians wrath for 100 ultimate, causing the bear to maul an enemy for X frost damage. Deals 100% more damage to enemies below 25% Health. Once summoned While slotted on either bar, the bear respawns when killed once per minute.

This way, if the bear is killed while the cooldown is active, it can return on its own once the cooldown is over while the ultimate is slotted on either bar, as for the former morph, it could be changed to something like Eternal Wrothgardian and reflect as such:

• Rouse the Spirit of Coldwind to fight by your side, the bear swipes an enemy, dealing X Frost Damage, and sometimes swipes all enemies in front of it, dealing X frost damage and stunning them for 2 seconds. Once summoned, you can activate coldwinds wrath for 100 ultimate, causing the bear to maul an enemy for X frost damage. Deals 150% more damage to enemies below 25% Health. Once summoned While slotted on either bar, the bear respawns when killed once per minute.
• If "A Cold Wind from the Mountain" has been completed at least once, Coldwinds Wrath now ramps up in bonus damage to targets below 100% health rather than the latter, and is capped at 150% bonus damage if a target is at 25% health or less. If the target is both at <25% health and afflicted with Chilled and minor brittle, Coldwinds Wrath costs 150 ultimate and becomes a guaranteed critical hit.

This would effectively create a choice between a stamina ultimate morph that deals bleed damage with a good emphasis on a indirect hemorrhaging status effect that is it's own instance next to the wardens hemorrhaging status effect whilst having the respawn mech making wild guardian the more DoT oriented choice, or the more direct frost damage choice with a powerful execution that costs more ultimate with fulfilling certain frost based conditions for even more powerful direct burst damage near execution phase, plus increasing the ulti cost would help reflect the ultimates power in general. Plus the ramping bonus damage and guaranteed crit thing being tied to the "Cold Wind in the Mountain" quest in wrothgar "after" becoming the hero of wrothgar just seemed like a nice touch for lore reasons since it would help the warden player understand the bear coldwind better.

Subterranean Assault: couldn't agree more with this (you should find my comment about changing it to an "assassin beetle barrage" since it would make some sense.)
deep fissure: just changing it to frost damage seems the right way to go, the rest of it can be left as is, as I really have no problem with it being a delayed burst option that fractures affected enemies armor, but thats just me.

Dive: the base kit and both morphs should apply off-balance regardless of distance to begin with, not just cutting dive on its own.
Screaming Cliff Racer: maybe consider calling it a "frozen Cliff racer" for clarity, but yes, adding frost damage to would make sense, but the concept of frozen cliff racers may have to be introduced in a future main-line chapter beyond the not-so-gold road.

Growing swarm: just a me thing, It should be left as is for now since it is already decent for what it currently does.
Fetcher infection: call it "Glacial Swarm" to signify the frost damage but let the Dot be akin to the DK's Venomous claws perhaps...

Bond with nature: I can agree here, Make it scale dynamically off the wardens highest maximum resource.
Flourish: move the 12% Stamina/Magicka Recovery to the green balance maturation passive and let it be independently active at all times on top of what maturation does. Move the effects of the Savage Beast passive into flourish so flourish becomes the ulti-gen passive, and then Make the Savage Beast Increase your critical hit chance by a flat amount for each bleed effect on the target up to a cap. Like so:

• Savage Beast I/II: Increase your critical hit chance by 109/219 for every bleed effect currently on the enemy, up to a maximum of 2190/4380 critical hit chance.
• Flourish I/II: when you cast an animal companion ability while you are in combat, you generate 2/4 ultimate. This can occur once every 8 seconds.
• Maturation I/II: Increases your Magicka and Stamina Recovery by 6/12%. When you activate a heal on yourself or an ally, you grant the target minor toughness, increasing their maximum health by 10% for 10/20 seconds.

By doing this, Savage beast gets reworked into a passive that grants bonuses when fulfilling the condition of attacking targets with different bleed effects on them from all sources (hence the 10/20% critical chance cap.) the previous effects of savage beast get moved to flourish which would make sense as an ultimate generating passive, and the previous effects of flourish get moved to a green balance passive which independently remains active at all times without slotting anything and helps a little with sustainability issues but not completely, and a lot of wardens score a potential win.

Advanced Species: this here I would disagree with, mostly because increased Critical Healing done could be added to one of the green balance passives like Nature's Gift since healing is hypocritically part of the wardens green balance toolkit, and just having 3 animal companion abilities slotted gets you 6/12% critical damage (2/4% per AC ability slotted) off the bat. At the same time though, If it were to be 4% critical damage done for each animal companion ability slotted on either bar to a maximum of 24%, it may be enticing enough. Case and point though for the DPS point of things, wardens ain't just emphasised on Frost/Bleed Damage alone, they are also indirectly but undoubtedly emphasised on Critical Damage as well in their toolkit alongside the Bleed and Frost damage, which is why the combat team should also revisit the critical hit damage cap due to the large amount of sources of critical hit damage available.