Thank you for killing my favorite class in the game (Warden).

YandereGirlfriend

BananaBender wrote: »

DenverRalphy wrote: »

Pevey wrote: »

DenverRalphy wrote: »

Pevey wrote: »

DenverRalphy wrote: »

Wardens heal passively with their animal companion skills, so they're less in need of a self heal.

The healing from this is negligible and only happens on despawn.

Whut.. your main spammable you healing every time you use it is negligible? You can also have multiple instances of Swam/Fetcher-Infection running at the same time. On top of ALL of your other animal skills constantly refreshing while a halfway decent Warden keeps them in a constant juggle with no additional effort than their normal dps rotation?

All that self healing isn't good enough for you?

If you think the bird is a warden's main spammable, there is no point in trying to explain this issue to you.

If you're in a competent group that knows what they're doing, obviously not. But then too, if you're in a competent group, you don't actually need an additional self heal now do you? Not to mention pretty much every warden build has one of the Dive morphs in it, so it's there to serve in a pinch when needed.

Arctic Wind served as a Burst Heal, and it was nice to have. But that burst heal isn't really mandatory. And not having it doesn't suddenly make the Warden class useless. Wardens just have to pay attention to what they're doing and not SiS.

Just like when Pragmatic Fatecarver got nerfed and all the Arcanists screamed bloody murder. Yet Arcanists are doing just fine, because they learned to not SiS. And it'Zos like the nerf never really mattered.

Think of it more as ZoS taking away an un-needed crutch.

I agree with you on the fact that Warden isn't dead. The frost mage fantasy kinda is, but that's not a subject for another thread...

People will always complain about nerfs that much is obvious, and on that note...

What makes the Arctic Blast change stupid is that they removed the heal from it without removing the heal and compensating for it. What I'm saying with that is in situations where you need a heal, you need to bring another heal other than Arctic Blast, because having a heal that sometimes doesn't heal you is the same as not having one at all. If they really thought that the skill had too much in it they should have removed effects from it and compensated by improving the other parts, now it's just a really expensive DoT that sometimes (rarely) heals you. Arctic Blast was one of the few good things going for Warden as a DD. They had a reliable burst heal that wasn't a dps loss to slot.

It just feels like another half thought out change. They could have just removed the healing and buffed the damage, removed the stun or lower the damage and improved the healing if they really thought the skill offered too much, but this just feels that they wanted to please everyone and left this skill worse off for everyone without actually solving a single problem.

What did this change actually achieve? I just don't see the problem they tried to fix with this change. It's not like warden was the most versatile and flexible class out there, far from it. It just created another hurdle for a class that itself is a one big hurdle.

Agree with you here.

IMO, the heal and Stun should be stripped entirely and then the skill buffed-up to do considerably more damage. In other words, to make it an actual damage skill rather than the weird Frankenstein's monster that it has been for years now. These sorts of skills that ZOS doesn't know what to do with and just keep throwing effects at never turn out well. Let Polar Wind heal and let Arctic Blast be the pure damage skill that it should have been all along.

LittlePinkDot

Kisakee wrote: »

Dragonnord wrote: »

Useless? Unkillable class in PvP if you know how to use it, one of the best PvE/PvP healers in the game, one of the top solo classes in Infinite Archive.

Yeah, useless, sure.
 

And because of PvP something got nerfed affecting PvE too. Again. I'm so tired of it.

Nobody was using Arctic blast in PvP, the stun is delayed. Polar wind is the prefered morph since most people have more than 30k health

But I must say. I love warden as a healer. Even though mine is a PvP character, she's fun to queue as a healer for normal dungeons. I just switch out vigor for budding seeds and I can heal and single target DPS at the same time.

Stafford197

Why is a weird Arcanist spamming Stamina laser beams a godly DPS with minimal skill level, insane AoE, and is functionally amazing in all content… while my Ice Warden comparatively sucks no matter how perfect I play it?

Putting aside all other gameplay concerns, if we could play our favorite Archetypes in all content and be effective, most people would be happy. Nerfing Ice Warden doesn’t make any sense.

I think it’s sad that ESO Logs and in-game Leaderboards can accurately portray the effectiveness of each class in each role, and yet gameplay balance is still so lopsided.

LittlePinkDot

Stafford197 wrote: »

Why is a weird Arcanist spamming Stamina laser beams a godly DPS with minimal skill level, insane AoE, and is functionally amazing in all content… while my Ice Warden comparatively sucks no matter how perfect I play it?

Putting aside all other gameplay concerns, if we could play our favorite Archetypes in all content and be effective, most people would be happy. Nerfing Ice Warden doesn’t make any sense.

I think it’s sad that ESO Logs and in-game Leaderboards can accurately portray the effectiveness of each class in each role, and yet gameplay balance is still so lopsided.

They said the ice skills of warden are intended for tanking, not damage.

Stafford197

LittlePinkDot wrote: »

Stafford197 wrote: »

Why is a weird Arcanist spamming Stamina laser beams a godly DPS with minimal skill level, insane AoE, and is functionally amazing in all content… while my Ice Warden comparatively sucks no matter how perfect I play it?

Putting aside all other gameplay concerns, if we could play our favorite Archetypes in all content and be effective, most people would be happy. Nerfing Ice Warden doesn’t make any sense.

I think it’s sad that ESO Logs and in-game Leaderboards can accurately portray the effectiveness of each class in each role, and yet gameplay balance is still so lopsided.

They said the ice skills of warden are intended for tanking, not damage.

Yeah and it was a really bad decision imo. Make a Alteration staff or something for tanking, instead of confining a popular archetype to a role that makes no sense

Pevey

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

BananaBender wrote: »

DenverRalphy wrote: »

Pevey wrote: »

DenverRalphy wrote: »

Pevey wrote: »

DenverRalphy wrote: »

Wardens heal passively with their animal companion skills, so they're less in need of a self heal.

The healing from this is negligible and only happens on despawn.

Whut.. your main spammable you healing every time you use it is negligible? You can also have multiple instances of Swam/Fetcher-Infection running at the same time. On top of ALL of your other animal skills constantly refreshing while a halfway decent Warden keeps them in a constant juggle with no additional effort than their normal dps rotation?

All that self healing isn't good enough for you?

If you think the bird is a warden's main spammable, there is no point in trying to explain this issue to you.

If you're in a competent group that knows what they're doing, obviously not. But then too, if you're in a competent group, you don't actually need an additional self heal now do you? Not to mention pretty much every warden build has one of the Dive morphs in it, so it's there to serve in a pinch when needed.

Arctic Wind served as a Burst Heal, and it was nice to have. But that burst heal isn't really mandatory. And not having it doesn't suddenly make the Warden class useless. Wardens just have to pay attention to what they're doing and not SiS.

Just like when Pragmatic Fatecarver got nerfed and all the Arcanists screamed bloody murder. Yet Arcanists are doing just fine, because they learned to not SiS. And it'Zos like the nerf never really mattered.

Think of it more as ZoS taking away an un-needed crutch.

I agree with you on the fact that Warden isn't dead. The frost mage fantasy kinda is, but that's not a subject for another thread...

People will always complain about nerfs that much is obvious, and on that note...

What makes the Arctic Blast change stupid is that they removed the heal from it without removing the heal and compensating for it. What I'm saying with that is in situations where you need a heal, you need to bring another heal other than Arctic Blast, because having a heal that sometimes doesn't heal you is the same as not having one at all. If they really thought that the skill had too much in it they should have removed effects from it and compensated by improving the other parts, now it's just a really expensive DoT that sometimes (rarely) heals you. Arctic Blast was one of the few good things going for Warden as a DD. They had a reliable burst heal that wasn't a dps loss to slot.

It just feels like another half thought out change. They could have just removed the healing and buffed the damage, removed the stun or lower the damage and improved the healing if they really thought the skill offered too much, but this just feels that they wanted to please everyone and left this skill worse off for everyone without actually solving a single problem.

What did this change actually achieve? I just don't see the problem they tried to fix with this change. It's not like warden was the most versatile and flexible class out there, far from it. It just created another hurdle for a class that itself is a one big hurdle.

Agree with you here.

IMO, the heal and Stun should be stripped entirely and then the skill buffed-up to do considerably more damage. In other words, to make it an actual damage skill rather than the weird Frankenstein's monster that it has been for years now. These sorts of skills that ZOS doesn't know what to do with and just keep throwing effects at never turn out well. Let Polar Wind heal and let Arctic Blast be the pure damage skill that it should have been all along.

It’s just not that easy to slot an additional skill for warden.

- The ice line may have been somewhat intended for tanking, but that has always been blurred, and a significant chunk of a warden’s power budget comes from the piercing cold passive. So have to slot winters revenge and arctic.

- Another big chunk of the warden’s power budget comes from the stacking of animal companion skills on the skill bar. The more the better. Any AC skill you remove to slot a heal instead means any comparison to other classes is more unbalanced.

Wardens can parse okay because they don’t have to slot that heal. That’s not okay in a lot of scenarios like solo arenas and solo portions of vet trials. These are exactly the places where you can’t sacrifice damage just to have a self heal, and other classes don’t have to.

The best way to deal with the warden changes is to level up an arcanist, which is maybe what was intended. Warden is still my “main” in some sense (learning motifs and such), but I haven’t played warden in actual content since I got the hang of arcanist. I’m not even healing on warden, the only role where it does a great job, since I prefer my NB healer.

Pevey

If I had to guess, I would say this change had less to do with PVP and more to do with how well wardens do in the archive. And that traces back to ZOS’s decision to make ice destruction staff a tanking weapon instead of introducing a separate magical weapon for tanking. And that was back before hybridization when people were asking for a mag alternative to sword and board. Post-hybridization, it would maybe never have happened. And taking the heal off Arctic won’t address the core issue. It will just kill mag warden dps in 12-person content deader than it already was.

ChaoticWings3

Pevey wrote: »

If I had to guess, I would say this change had less to do with PVP and more to do with how well wardens do in the archive. And that traces back to ZOS’s decision to make ice destruction staff a tanking weapon instead of introducing a separate magical weapon for tanking. And that was back before hybridization when people were asking for a mag alternative to sword and board. Post-hybridization, it would maybe never have happened. And taking the heal off Arctic won’t address the core issue. It will just kill mag warden dps in 12-person content deader than it already was.

I agree with you on this. I kind of wish ice became a bit more offensive and a separate skill tree for a mag base tanking skill would be more welcome. I normally use polar wind for group support in pvp so I won't really see much difference but I think the overall skill seems very weird to slot on my bar now with the changes in how it heals. There are still skills in the Warden skill lines I almost never slot and those should be looked into more IMO. The most notable ones that comes to mind is frozen device and nature's grasp. Still waiting on a rework for these skills. I have not seen a single Warden main use them in a really long while except in very niche circumstances.

Einar_Hrafnarsson

Warden is not useless. Warden is the only viable PvP Healer currently after all the nerfs healing got and only because it has a heal that scales with Health instead of Magicka or Spell power.

Pevey

Einar_Hrafnarsson wrote: »

Warden is not useless. Warden is the only viable PvP Healer currently after all the nerfs healing got and only because it has a heal that scales with Health instead of Magicka or Spell power.

Indeed. The irony.

The crossheal on that skill is what should have been nerfed for PVP, not arctic.

heavenelva

On the contrary, Warden's parse data is currently significantly higher than other classes, which is why it's my favorite DPS class in this patch. Although Arcanist might be more advantageous in professional raid teams, Warden performs exceptionally well in terms of DPS in PUGs or daily dungeons.

Anifaas

LittlePinkDot wrote: »

They said the ice skills of warden are intended for tanking, not damage.

I don't play a warden but I do take exception with this decision because I believe it is unhealthy for the game. And I'm also a little sad for the people who lost something they enjoyed.

The paying customers of ESO, the fans, discovered a method in which they could sustainably play a missing/beloved arch-type: a frost mage. Rather than rewarding the players for their innovation, the vendor (ZOS) said "no, you're doing it wrong" and stomped out the customers' innovation.

Perhaps "play as you want" is not all its cracked up to be.

moderatelyfatman

Bucky_13 wrote: »

Kisakee wrote: »

Dragonnord wrote: »

Useless? Unkillable class in PvP if you know how to use it, one of the best PvE/PvP healers in the game, one of the top solo classes in Infinite Archive.

Yeah, useless, sure.
 

And because of PvP something got nerfed affecting PvE too. Again. I'm so tired of it.

Welcome to the world of nightblades, we've had this issue for years. Let's hope ZOS will start to make skills work differently in PvE and PvP so we have less of these problems.

I think we need to start using different terms when discussing game modes for that class: in PvP they are referred to as Nightblades but in PvE they should be called Niceblades on account of their inability to draw agro when there is no tank due to their low dps being so low.

robpr

Adding a stun and damage dot on a skill that heals you for % max hp was a bad idea in first place. Instead of overengineering the skill that does damage when there are enemies and heals when there are not, it should just be changed to "heals for x% of damage done by this skill" and then just left alone. Then move stun back to initial hit. There, problem fixed.

moderatelyfatman

LittlePinkDot wrote: »

Kisakee wrote: »

Dragonnord wrote: »

Useless? Unkillable class in PvP if you know how to use it, one of the best PvE/PvP healers in the game, one of the top solo classes in Infinite Archive.

Yeah, useless, sure.
 

And because of PvP something got nerfed affecting PvE too. Again. I'm so tired of it.

Nobody was using Arctic blast in PvP, the stun is delayed. Polar wind is the prefered morph since most people have more than 30k health

But I must say. I love warden as a healer. Even though mine is a PvP character, she's fun to queue as a healer for normal dungeons. I just switch out vigor for budding seeds and I can heal and single target DPS at the same time.

Actually, I used Arctic Blast in PvP: having a smaller heal (compared to Polar) just before you went into melee range against an opponent and then having the stun and Deep Fissure go off together was immensely satsifying. It was a nice (but not necessary meta) set up which allowed warden to PvP as something other than a brick.

BlueRaven

Pevey wrote: »

If I had to guess, I would say this change had less to do with PVP and more to do with how well wardens do in the archive. And that traces back to ZOS’s decision to make ice destruction staff a tanking weapon instead of introducing a separate magical weapon for tanking. And that was back before hybridization when people were asking for a mag alternative to sword and board. Post-hybridization, it would maybe never have happened. And taking the heal off Arctic won’t address the core issue. It will just kill mag warden dps in 12-person content deader than it already was.

Your guess would be wrong. The skill was nerfed due to PvP.

Pevey

heavenelva wrote: »

On the contrary, Warden's parse data is currently significantly higher than other classes, which is why it's my favorite DPS class in this patch. Although Arcanist might be more advantageous in professional raid teams, Warden performs exceptionally well in terms of DPS in PUGs or daily dungeons.

Stam wardens parse well. Mag wardens parse fine but have trouble slotting a self-heal. And any class in the game can do adequate dps for daily dungeons.

Parse numbers don’t tell the whole story. Otherwise, endgame would be filled with sorc dps.

heavenelva

Pevey wrote: »

heavenelva wrote: »

On the contrary, Warden's parse data is currently significantly higher than other classes, which is why it's my favorite DPS class in this patch. Although Arcanist might be more advantageous in professional raid teams, Warden performs exceptionally well in terms of DPS in PUGs or daily dungeons.

Stam wardens parse well. Mag wardens parse fine but have trouble slotting a self-heal. And any class in the game can do adequate dps for daily dungeons.

Parse numbers don’t tell the whole story. Otherwise, endgame would be filled with sorc dps.

You're right, but I think it's unfair to say that they're "killing the class" based on that. Warden is one of the strongest healers in the game, comparable to Templar, but I wouldn't say they're "killing" Dragonknight or Nightblade just because their healing roles have been in a weaker state for a long time. Instead, I find joy in playing these non-meta healers. As for your point about performance in dungeons, it largely depends on the player's understanding of mechanics, class knowledge, and skill proficiency. Just yesterday, I encountered a HA Sorc in a base game dungeon with almost 900 CP, but it still took half an hour to complete a simple dungeon. Meanwhile, another Nightblade DPS was spamming his execute skill from the start. I can't say the game's class design and balance are perfect, but the actual performance of a class also depends on the player.

Major_Toughness

BlueRaven wrote: »

Pevey wrote: »

If I had to guess, I would say this change had less to do with PVP and more to do with how well wardens do in the archive. And that traces back to ZOS’s decision to make ice destruction staff a tanking weapon instead of introducing a separate magical weapon for tanking. And that was back before hybridization when people were asking for a mag alternative to sword and board. Post-hybridization, it would maybe never have happened. And taking the heal off Arctic won’t address the core issue. It will just kill mag warden dps in 12-person content deader than it already was.

Your guess would be wrong. The skill was nerfed due to PvP.

Wrong.

BlueRaven

Major_Toughness wrote: »

BlueRaven wrote: »

Pevey wrote: »

If I had to guess, I would say this change had less to do with PVP and more to do with how well wardens do in the archive. And that traces back to ZOS’s decision to make ice destruction staff a tanking weapon instead of introducing a separate magical weapon for tanking. And that was back before hybridization when people were asking for a mag alternative to sword and board. Post-hybridization, it would maybe never have happened. And taking the heal off Arctic won’t address the core issue. It will just kill mag warden dps in 12-person content deader than it already was.

Your guess would be wrong. The skill was nerfed due to PvP.

Wrong.

I already posted this earlier in this thread. Please note the bolded portion.

“In this pass, we're tweaking how this ability functions to reduce some of its raw power to do damage, crowd control, and heal all at once. Now, the ability can be used to deal the same total damage over its duration, with more damage focused on an up-front hit - granting the Warden a class-based area effect spammable that it previously lacked. Additionally, we're changing the healing to be a conditional requirement rather than a guarantee, so the ability can act as a heal when you back away from the fight, rather than outright removing it.It is our hope that these changes still help the Warden class have access to powerful tools from their kit, without the overwhelming power they enabled in PvP situations.“

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/664131/pc-mac-patch-notes-v10-1-5-update-43#latest

BXR_Lonestar

Dragonnord wrote: »

Useless? Unkillable class in PvP if you know how to use it, one of the best PvE/PvP healers in the game, one of the top solo classes in Infinite Archive.

Yeah, useless, sure.
 

Yeah, I don't see this change killing off the Warden by a longshot. The warden has too many good group buffs for it to be rendered obsolete any time soon.

tomofhyrule

I am annoyed that the guaranteed burst heal is not stuck to using health, so Wardens now need to have either a health-based burst heal (which won't do as much for a DPS), an unreliable burst heal (which only heals if you aren't in a circumstance where you need a burst), or to give up the ice skill and slot mushrooms.

While Arctic Blast was a bit overloaded, I'd have preferred that they'd either remove the stun or reduce the damage instead of the heal. And as everyone's pointed out, the issue with Wardens in PvP using it was that they used the Polar Wind morph to cross heal others, not necessarily the Arctic Blast one.

I hope the next patch will give Arctic its offense-based guaranteed heal back, even if that means reducing the damage or stun. It's so awkward to use my warden now.
...though not as awkward as it is to use him in his proper form (cries in werewolves being super underpowered)

TDVM

This class will be more alive than necro.

Einar_Hrafnarsson

Pevey wrote: »

Einar_Hrafnarsson wrote: »

Warden is not useless. Warden is the only viable PvP Healer currently after all the nerfs healing got and only because it has a heal that scales with Health instead of Magicka or Spell power.

Indeed. The irony.

The crossheal on that skill is what should have been nerfed for PVP, not arctic.

Do you want to remove the last decent Healer from PvP so Healer mains have no option to PvP anymore?
The Game already feels dead, don't drive away even more players.

moderatelyfatman

TDVM wrote: »

This class will be more alive than necro.

Well, is it possible to be more dead than the necro?

Nharimlur_Finor

Warden class used to be linked to Morrowind? So this is a 'free' class now isn't it? When compared to Necro and Arcanist,

which require some purchase to enable them?

GuuMoonRyoung

It is pretty sad that now Warden is the only class that doesn't have a class ability that heals them based on the damage they do. Every single class has one ability that heals them based on damage, Warden doesn't anymore, instead Wardens need the help of gears to do so.

And the reason given by ZOS is "Blah bla blah PvP!!!", when this skill is barely used in PvP, if at all... they nerfed Warden on everything other than PvP. I hope they reverse this decision, but I am very sure they won't.

Galeriano2

GuuMoonRyoung wrote: »

It is pretty sad that now Warden is the only class that doesn't have a class ability that heals them based on the damage they do. Every single class has one ability that heals them based on damage, Warden doesn't anymore, instead Wardens need the help of gears to do so..

Not that I am fan of change to arctic blast but in terms of offensive scaling heals almost whole green balance tree does that. Shooting spores are even healing for more than arctic blast did.

Galeriano2

LaintalAy wrote: »

Warden class used to be linked to Morrowind? So this is a 'free' class now isn't it? When compared to Necro and Arcanist,

which require some purchase to enable them?

It's not a free class. When chapter becomes a DLC and can be purchased in crown store for crowns then class that this chapter contains is no longer tied to it in crown store version of said DLC. Same goes for arcanist and necromancer. And since the only way to get free morrowind is to get it from crown store than You will still need to pay additionally if You want to have acces to warden class.

Major_Toughness

BlueRaven wrote: »

Major_Toughness wrote: »

BlueRaven wrote: »

Pevey wrote: »

If I had to guess, I would say this change had less to do with PVP and more to do with how well wardens do in the archive. And that traces back to ZOS’s decision to make ice destruction staff a tanking weapon instead of introducing a separate magical weapon for tanking. And that was back before hybridization when people were asking for a mag alternative to sword and board. Post-hybridization, it would maybe never have happened. And taking the heal off Arctic won’t address the core issue. It will just kill mag warden dps in 12-person content deader than it already was.

Your guess would be wrong. The skill was nerfed due to PvP.

Wrong.

I already posted this earlier in this thread. Please note the bolded portion.

“In this pass, we're tweaking how this ability functions to reduce some of its raw power to do damage, crowd control, and heal all at once. Now, the ability can be used to deal the same total damage over its duration, with more damage focused on an up-front hit - granting the Warden a class-based area effect spammable that it previously lacked. Additionally, we're changing the healing to be a conditional requirement rather than a guarantee, so the ability can act as a heal when you back away from the fight, rather than outright removing it.It is our hope that these changes still help the Warden class have access to powerful tools from their kit, without the overwhelming power they enabled in PvP situations.“

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/664131/pc-mac-patch-notes-v10-1-5-update-43#latest

I don't care what they make up in their Developer Notes. Had you actually played PvP, especially since Gold Road you know that basically no Warden used Arctic Blast. They used Healing Soul, or Polar Wind.

It's quite obvious to me, that this change is because of Infinite Archives, because Arctic is an insanely good damage skill there, and a heal.

Warden was the best DD in IA without a doubt and survived almost solely on Arctic Blast while it did several hundred thousand damage ticks with chilled.