The Fall of Artic Blast: When a Skill Becomes Useless

MarioMario

"Envelop yourself in winter winds, instantly dealing 1799 Frost Damage to nearby enemies. If no enemies are hit, you heal for 2323 Health. The winds persist for 20 seconds and chill your foes to the bone, dealing 298 Frost Damage every 2 seconds, after 2 seconds. The damage has a higher chance to apply the Chilled status effect. Stuns enemies after the delay for 3 seconds."

If you want to play an offensive build, artic blast has always been the only burst heal for warden.
Stuns have never been reliable, delayed stuns are not great in PvP, and they are certainly not needed for trash mobs in PvE.
But now the heal part is unusable, both in PvP and PvE, so what's the point of keeping it?

Dear combat team, in what situation do you think the heal/stun part of this skill could be useful?

Just remove the heal/stun part, change Polar Wind so that it scales on offensive stats, and you will also solve the 50k health warden problem.
Piercing cold change is interesting, but in PvP a warden that stays below 30k health does not have an efficient class burst heal now.

And don't tell me to use a scribe skill, because I still need a reliable istant stun.

xylena_lazarow

I don't understand why this skill can't just be a standard AoE stun + standard AoE dot.

Ren_TheRedFox

@MarioMario it's sad seeing how they pretty much want you to use a scribe heal instead ... rip the class identity I guess ... piercing cold is also useless against the tanky meta ... literally blocktanks all over the place ... and what do we do against that? Of course we nerf the wrong morph of the skill and give them 12% block mitigation to make it even worse xD If you play a warden with less than 30k hp now either you have to be really good and have all the server stability on your side to pull it off or you just pray you have a good shielder/healer on your side who keeps you healed and buffs your resistances cause then you're pretty much unstoppable. Hate to say it but what are the odds that u have someone like that and what if you just wanna play solo?

Durham

If you play a warden with less than 30k hp now either you have to be really good and have all the server stability on your side to pull it off or you just pray you have a good shielder/healer on your side who keeps you healed and buffs your resistances cause then you're pretty much unstoppable.

No one is going to play a warden at less then 30k hits in PVP, even with a healer. Run a nightblade in this situation

Ren_TheRedFox

@Durham some people do and they can pull it off pretty well ... just need a good team to make it work ... but still the skill was fine as it was before ... as usual they nerf one skill to make it unplayable and in a few patch they're gonna be like "Since a lot of people were not using that morph we're gonna buff it and make it an instant heal with a 13% increase" ... literally just another useless adjustment.

MarioMario

Durham wrote: »

No one is going to play a warden at less then 30k hits in PVP, even with a healer. Run a nightblade in this situation

I play 99% of BGs solo, and I can only rely on myself. It’s really punishing to play warden with less than 30K HP, i tryed, it is not worth.
Even scribe heal is not that good on wardens as it is on plar, sorcerers or dk.
I have seen others trying, they soon came back as 50k health healers or switched to nb, sorc and expecially DK this patch. Two of the most active wardens only runs Arca now.

Delimber

I had no idea that was added to Arctic Blast...this explains so much of what I've been experiencing.
Just need 2 more ranks and I'm retiring my Warden from PvP.

Bashev

MarioMario wrote: »

Durham wrote: »

No one is going to play a warden at less then 30k hits in PVP, even with a healer. Run a nightblade in this situation

I play 99% of BGs solo, and I can only rely on myself. It’s really punishing to play warden with less than 30K HP, i tryed, it is not worth.
Even scribe heal is not that good on wardens as it is on plar, sorcerers or dk.
I have seen others trying, they soon came back as 50k health healers or switched to nb, sorc and expecially DK this patch. Two of the most active wardens only runs Arca now.

Theoretically if you need a heal you can use one of the Fungal Growth morphs. The stamina one is cheaper.

Anifaas

How big of an impact does the nerf to arctic blast have on wardens in the IA?