Maintenance for the week of November 25:
• PC/Mac: NA and EU megaservers for maintenance – November 25, 4:00AM EST (9:00 UTC) - 7:00AM EST (12:00 UTC)
• Xbox: NA and EU megaservers for maintenance – November 27, 6:00AM EST (11:00 UTC) - 9:00AM EST (14:00 UTC)
• PlayStation®: NA and EU megaservers for maintenance – November 27, 6:00AM EST (11:00 UTC) - 9:00AM EST (14:00 UTC)
• PC/Mac: NA and EU megaservers for maintenance – November 25, 4:00AM EST (9:00 UTC) - 7:00AM EST (12:00 UTC)
• Xbox: NA and EU megaservers for maintenance – November 27, 6:00AM EST (11:00 UTC) - 9:00AM EST (14:00 UTC)
• PlayStation®: NA and EU megaservers for maintenance – November 27, 6:00AM EST (11:00 UTC) - 9:00AM EST (14:00 UTC)
Warden is two different Classes forced together by digital duct tape
Zodiarkslayer
✭✭✭✭✭
✭
✭
The "Druid" and the Frost Mage do not work well together in ESO. Not because of the theme or the fantasy or other role play aspects. No. But because the passives and the abilities force them apart. For the following discussion I'll have to ignore any equipment, because it will not only complicate things, but a class should be playable without any crutches from special gear. (I am looking at you Master's Ice Staff!).
Let's look at Animal Companions and Winter's Embrace together. And what I think about the most outstanding issues.
Animal Companions
The Bears are in a bad spot, because onne morph clearly outshines the other. Which is weird, because a couple years back it was the other way around. And then there is the damage type problem. If Eternal Guardian would do Frost Damage it would not only raise it to be equals again, it would also fit to and synergise with the Winter's Embrace abilities. That, however, is the central theme of this class skill line: wrong damage types.
The Birds are tough to use because of the delayed animation and are outperformed by every weapon skill available in the game damage wise. It is aa really bad spammable. Don'T get me strated on the OFF Balance condition of more than 7m away. That is simply ideosyncratic to a class that is forced into melee range. There is no use for Screaming Cliff Racer in the entire game. If you are using it, you give up so much more instead. If Cutting Dive had mor damage upfront and less in the DoT (à la Blazing Spear), it would be a solid option for Stam Wardens. It will never outperform Flurry, Snipe or Uppercut without changes.
The Bugs are the most important skill for Wardens. The 3s delay is established now and the class benefits from it in PvP and PvE both. But Why again are we talking about Poison and Magic Damage? The Wardens theme of Bleed and Frost has nothing to do with it. Just Frost Damage for the magicka morph would elevate the entire class.
The Bees are fine as long as you do not want any damage out of it. Minor Vulnerability is also quite common these days. Nothing special. And again bleed, but not Frost damage.
The Wings are fine and all, but slotting is always a net loss. Minor Berserk is so common now, that you litterally get it thrown after you. Even Warden Tanks have to think twice if they want to give up one bar slot for just minor Evasion. This ability needs more incentive to use it. The best would be unique unnamed damage and mitigation buffs respectively. Or something à la "While slotted on either ability bar ... ".
I want to take some time and talk about Advanced Species. It is clearly intended to be the power injecting passive of the class. But if you look at the past attempts at balancing it and what it does now, you can get the impression that the devs do not understand warden or balance. Slotting the two absolutely neccessary skills scorch and wild bear, the warden will have +8% Crit Damage more. For comparison, Nightblade and Templar have to slot one skill for a 10% bonus. Even if you slot Cutting Dive as well, we are sitting at 12% CD, which still does almost nothing, considering that you will need a high crit chance to go along with it. And btw, 2H and frost staff do not offer any bonuses to crit chance, only Bows and Dual Wield do, potentially. But good luck getting your Piercing Cold passive up. You have to choose crit chance dense gear.
In short the Warden doesn't need Crit Damage, it needs Weapon and Spell Damage. Similar to how Slayer and Expert Mage are working. Especially when you consider that Hemorrhage and Chill scale with ~90% and ~70% WD/SD respectively, I think. Do not quote me on that though. The math isn't easy with Status Effect scaling.
Winter's Embrace
Northern Storm is 80% less damage compared to Ice Comet for the same amount of Ultimate. Frozen Colossus has 60% damage of Northern Storm, but also applies MajVuln for 20s. 20s!!!! and costs 166 Ult. Why would anybody use the Storm? Especially when the Bears are so good by comparison within the class?
Winter's revenge has 23% (1-10/13) of its damage on the condition of being cast with a destro staff equiped. That's a lot. What are Stamina Wardens supposed to do? Backbaring Icestaffs? Because good luck sustaining that Magicka drain. Also the length doesn't fit to either morph of Wall of Elements, which are 10s or 15s. That makes for bumpy rotations.
Arctic Blast has had so many changes over the years, that one can easily tell just how controversial and non sensical this ability is at the moment. Why does it need a stun? Or a heal? Warden already has SEVEN HEALS! SEVEN! SEVEN! For crying out loud! Why squeeze and eighth heal into frost skill line? Thats crazy!
And why these ridiculous conditions? Its basically a flip a coin situation where you push the button and see what happens. It is so needlessly complicated that it creates so many problems within the class itself and for other players interacting with it. If that first blast doesn't hit, this ability is just short of a costly wet and cold noodle.
Shimmering Shield is beyond comprehension to me. Why only projectiles? You know what you almost never get when you are facetanking a Boss in melee range? Yes! Hit by projectiles! When I used it against Bosses, the shield almost never absorbed any damage. The Major Heroism procced maybe once ot twice per fight, even if I keep up the ability at all time. It's ridiculous. You pump tons of Magicka into that abilitiy and get 14 Ultimate out, maybe 28. You can get that much for one light attack! ONE! BLOODY! LIGHT! ATTACK!
Frozen Gate is a tank focused utility skill, i get it. But what does it bring to the table, that Silver Leash or other pulls don't? Certainly not utility, reliability or ease of use. Because Frozen Gate is none of that.
Piercing Cold and Glacial Presence are another good example of why noone thought things through with this class. Ignoring the frost damage sources from Shield and Gate (because they are dead skills that noone can effectively use), Northern Storm is the only morph in Winter's Embrace that Glacial Presence is enhancing. All other morphs have that famous "has a higher chance to apply the Chilled status effect" secondary effect, anyway. So why does this passive even exist when the skills are doing the passive thing anyway?
And Stamina Warden's cannot easily proc Piercing Cold, which is 8% damage done, only when the do frost damage consistently. WIth Arctic Blast, maybe, in a cotrollable fight, but good luck getting any good damage from Winter's Revenge without a Staff.
The increase to chilled damage is good and fits the theme, but the underlying problem is that a "Chilled" build is such a tight bottleneck. Yes, you get 15k+ dps from it. 135k+ parses. But how do you get there? Its basically playing Stamina Warden with 2H backbar, Master's Ice Staff Frontbar, Relequen and some ridiculously stat dense set like Highland Sentinel. And the only frost abilities that you use are Winter's Revenge, Arctic Blast and Frost Reach. And sustaining that is horrific. Try pulling that off in content! You have to jump through so many hoops, cut so many corners just to make that work somehow. And for what? Being asked to switch to Arcanist, please?
This Skill Tree is almost useless to all Wardens, with the exception of Frost Cloak and maybe Arctic Blast (which has seen better days). It is of limited use for Tanks, because it just doesn't bring anything to the table that other classes or even the Warden Healers do.
To get the maximum effect out of it you have to be melee and you have to use Ice Staffs. Which is ridiculous in itself. Because as a tiny weeny spell caster, I definetly do not want to be chillin' in melee range of Boss heavy attacks ... Pun intended.
TLDR is "Back to the drawing board!" or "I wish I knew that 5 years earlier!"
Puh ... Now that this is out, I thank you for reading! Hope you enjoyed it as much as I did writing it.
Please share your thoughts!
Let's look at Animal Companions and Winter's Embrace together. And what I think about the most outstanding issues.
Animal Companions
The Bears are in a bad spot, because onne morph clearly outshines the other. Which is weird, because a couple years back it was the other way around. And then there is the damage type problem. If Eternal Guardian would do Frost Damage it would not only raise it to be equals again, it would also fit to and synergise with the Winter's Embrace abilities. That, however, is the central theme of this class skill line: wrong damage types.
The Birds are tough to use because of the delayed animation and are outperformed by every weapon skill available in the game damage wise. It is aa really bad spammable. Don'T get me strated on the OFF Balance condition of more than 7m away. That is simply ideosyncratic to a class that is forced into melee range. There is no use for Screaming Cliff Racer in the entire game. If you are using it, you give up so much more instead. If Cutting Dive had mor damage upfront and less in the DoT (à la Blazing Spear), it would be a solid option for Stam Wardens. It will never outperform Flurry, Snipe or Uppercut without changes.
The Bugs are the most important skill for Wardens. The 3s delay is established now and the class benefits from it in PvP and PvE both. But Why again are we talking about Poison and Magic Damage? The Wardens theme of Bleed and Frost has nothing to do with it. Just Frost Damage for the magicka morph would elevate the entire class.
The Bees are fine as long as you do not want any damage out of it. Minor Vulnerability is also quite common these days. Nothing special. And again bleed, but not Frost damage.
The Wings are fine and all, but slotting is always a net loss. Minor Berserk is so common now, that you litterally get it thrown after you. Even Warden Tanks have to think twice if they want to give up one bar slot for just minor Evasion. This ability needs more incentive to use it. The best would be unique unnamed damage and mitigation buffs respectively. Or something à la "While slotted on either ability bar ... ".
I want to take some time and talk about Advanced Species. It is clearly intended to be the power injecting passive of the class. But if you look at the past attempts at balancing it and what it does now, you can get the impression that the devs do not understand warden or balance. Slotting the two absolutely neccessary skills scorch and wild bear, the warden will have +8% Crit Damage more. For comparison, Nightblade and Templar have to slot one skill for a 10% bonus. Even if you slot Cutting Dive as well, we are sitting at 12% CD, which still does almost nothing, considering that you will need a high crit chance to go along with it. And btw, 2H and frost staff do not offer any bonuses to crit chance, only Bows and Dual Wield do, potentially. But good luck getting your Piercing Cold passive up. You have to choose crit chance dense gear.
In short the Warden doesn't need Crit Damage, it needs Weapon and Spell Damage. Similar to how Slayer and Expert Mage are working. Especially when you consider that Hemorrhage and Chill scale with ~90% and ~70% WD/SD respectively, I think. Do not quote me on that though. The math isn't easy with Status Effect scaling.
Winter's Embrace
Northern Storm is 80% less damage compared to Ice Comet for the same amount of Ultimate. Frozen Colossus has 60% damage of Northern Storm, but also applies MajVuln for 20s. 20s!!!! and costs 166 Ult. Why would anybody use the Storm? Especially when the Bears are so good by comparison within the class?
Winter's revenge has 23% (1-10/13) of its damage on the condition of being cast with a destro staff equiped. That's a lot. What are Stamina Wardens supposed to do? Backbaring Icestaffs? Because good luck sustaining that Magicka drain. Also the length doesn't fit to either morph of Wall of Elements, which are 10s or 15s. That makes for bumpy rotations.
Arctic Blast has had so many changes over the years, that one can easily tell just how controversial and non sensical this ability is at the moment. Why does it need a stun? Or a heal? Warden already has SEVEN HEALS! SEVEN! SEVEN! For crying out loud! Why squeeze and eighth heal into frost skill line? Thats crazy!
And why these ridiculous conditions? Its basically a flip a coin situation where you push the button and see what happens. It is so needlessly complicated that it creates so many problems within the class itself and for other players interacting with it. If that first blast doesn't hit, this ability is just short of a costly wet and cold noodle.
Shimmering Shield is beyond comprehension to me. Why only projectiles? You know what you almost never get when you are facetanking a Boss in melee range? Yes! Hit by projectiles! When I used it against Bosses, the shield almost never absorbed any damage. The Major Heroism procced maybe once ot twice per fight, even if I keep up the ability at all time. It's ridiculous. You pump tons of Magicka into that abilitiy and get 14 Ultimate out, maybe 28. You can get that much for one light attack! ONE! BLOODY! LIGHT! ATTACK!
Frozen Gate is a tank focused utility skill, i get it. But what does it bring to the table, that Silver Leash or other pulls don't? Certainly not utility, reliability or ease of use. Because Frozen Gate is none of that.
Piercing Cold and Glacial Presence are another good example of why noone thought things through with this class. Ignoring the frost damage sources from Shield and Gate (because they are dead skills that noone can effectively use), Northern Storm is the only morph in Winter's Embrace that Glacial Presence is enhancing. All other morphs have that famous "has a higher chance to apply the Chilled status effect" secondary effect, anyway. So why does this passive even exist when the skills are doing the passive thing anyway?
And Stamina Warden's cannot easily proc Piercing Cold, which is 8% damage done, only when the do frost damage consistently. WIth Arctic Blast, maybe, in a cotrollable fight, but good luck getting any good damage from Winter's Revenge without a Staff.
The increase to chilled damage is good and fits the theme, but the underlying problem is that a "Chilled" build is such a tight bottleneck. Yes, you get 15k+ dps from it. 135k+ parses. But how do you get there? Its basically playing Stamina Warden with 2H backbar, Master's Ice Staff Frontbar, Relequen and some ridiculously stat dense set like Highland Sentinel. And the only frost abilities that you use are Winter's Revenge, Arctic Blast and Frost Reach. And sustaining that is horrific. Try pulling that off in content! You have to jump through so many hoops, cut so many corners just to make that work somehow. And for what? Being asked to switch to Arcanist, please?
This Skill Tree is almost useless to all Wardens, with the exception of Frost Cloak and maybe Arctic Blast (which has seen better days). It is of limited use for Tanks, because it just doesn't bring anything to the table that other classes or even the Warden Healers do.
To get the maximum effect out of it you have to be melee and you have to use Ice Staffs. Which is ridiculous in itself. Because as a tiny weeny spell caster, I definetly do not want to be chillin' in melee range of Boss heavy attacks ... Pun intended.
TLDR is "Back to the drawing board!" or "I wish I knew that 5 years earlier!"
Puh ... Now that this is out, I thank you for reading! Hope you enjoyed it as much as I did writing it.
Please share your thoughts!
If anyone here says: OH! But, PVP! I swear I'll ...
Thank you for the valuable input and respectfully recommend to discuss that aspect of ESO on the PVP forum.
Thank you for the valuable input and respectfully recommend to discuss that aspect of ESO on the PVP forum.
14
-
adamsmith42✭✭✭✭Well... warden tanks shouldn't be thinking about spending a barslot on wings for minor evasion, since *every* group has an arcanist in it now, and they give group-wide minor evasion just by exisiting
1 -
AcadianPaladin✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭I totally agree that the warden is a very confused class. Frost mage and Druid is not a good mix. Neither is favoring Morrowind only critters instead of general forest creatures.
As far as Piercing Cold, I am getting good up time on it with a bow warden purely from having a frost enchantment on her bow. Pleasant surprise.PC NA(no Steam), PvE, mostly solo9 -
TaSheen✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭I like my wardens, I'm not confused at all. I don't worry about the "Vvardenfell animal" thing; it's just abilities/spells - as long as my girls can kill stuff when they need to I'm absolutely not going to worry about something like "class confusion". I never use the frost stuff - I don't like "ice mages", never have so I just ignore that whole thing....
At this point, 7 years in, I prefer no one messes with the way wardens are set up now.______________________________________________________
"But even in books, the heroes make mistakes, and there isn't always a happy ending." Mercedes Lackey, Into the West
PC NA, PC EU (non steam)- four accounts, many alts....2 -
Soarora✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭I prefer the mix, actually. I wish ZOS leaned harder into it and made magden frost themed and stamden bleed/poison themed. Warden has the best capability of all the classes to have a unique stam vs mag split.PC/NA Dungeoneer (Tank/DPS/Heal), Trialist (DPS/Tank/Heal), and amateur Battlegrounder (DPS) with a passion for The Elder Scrolls lore- CP 2000+
- Warden Healer - Arcanist Healer - Warden Brittleden - Stamarc - Sorc Tank - Necro Tank - Templar Tank - Arcanist Tank
- Trials: 9/12 HMs - 3/8 Tris
- Dungeons: 30/30 HMs - 24/24 Tris
- All Veterans completed!
View my builds!
7 -
Vaqual✭✭✭✭✭I'd appreciate it if there was more thematic flexibility, but I think that should ideally be done with the new styles tool. So nobody will have to feel like anything was taken from them.
The abilities are really just numbers.3 -
C_Inside✭✭✭✭AcadianPaladin wrote: »As far as Piercing Cold, I am getting good up time on it with a bow warden purely from having a frost enchantment on her bow. Pleasant surprise.
See the problem with that is if you do that on your back bar then you're not using a Berserker enchantment. You either have to chose to sacrifice Piercing Cold, or sacrifice Berserker. Both are bad options.
If you use a frost glyph on the front bar then you're not only not getting good uptime on Piercing Cold (enchantments proc every 10 seconds, Piercing lasts only 6), but you're also not able to proc the Poisoned or Burning status effect. Again, bad options.
Warden actually shares a lot of problems with Necro atm. Half the skills are trash and the passives don't synergize well with the toolkit. They really need to rework this class from the ground up imo because right now the class is just a confused mess, like the OP said.
Also, am I the only one that finds it weird that Warden only has 3 passives that increase its damage while Arcanist has 4? I'm not saying Arcanist is scummy pay to win garbage or anything, but just a weird discrepancy that ZOS might want to address.
4 -
Urzigurumash✭✭✭✭✭
✭More damage types is more status effects
More damage types is less mitigated by Nord passives
Some expectations in life should be reworked from the ground upXbox NA AD / Day 1 ScrubDK / Wood Orc Cuisine Enthusiast0 -
WitchyKiki✭✭✭✭✭Been a warden main since it came out... love soloing most content and I have built different types of wardens over the years. I don't think its a confused class at all.Context is for kings -Captain Gabriel Lorca4 -
Zodiarkslayer✭✭✭✭✭
✭
That's kinda my point. You can do that because Winter's Embrace is an ignorable skill line.I never use the frost stuff - I don't like "ice mages", never have so I just ignore that whole thing.....Urzigurumash wrote: »More damage types is more status effects
More damage types is less mitigated by Nord passives
Some expectations in life should be reworked from the ground up
Right, because Wardens only fight Nords and Dragonknights only fight Dark Elfs. Wait. Who do Sorcerers fight again?If anyone here says: OH! But, PVP! I swear I'll ...
Thank you for the valuable input and respectfully recommend to discuss that aspect of ESO on the PVP forum.3 -
Alaztor91✭✭✭✭✭
✭Tbh I don't know why ZOS still hasn't changed all the Warden ''Stam Morphs'' to bleed dmg and all the ''Mag Morphs'' to frost. It is pretty obvious that Frost and Bleed are the themes for this class, just like how DK has Fire/Poison and Sorc has Shock/Physical.
Just rename and update the Frost related passives to also have a similar effect with Bleed/Hemorrhaging, adjust the numbers if necessary and change the remaining non-bleed/non-frost damage skills.7 -
VouxeTheMinotaur✭✭✭I only keep wings on my warden tank to just maintain a running pace while netch is active to recover my stam from a mob / boss fight I've just held. it's the only thing that helps my tank keep up with the speedrunners in dungeons most times, otherwise i have time to swap it out for something else to better help the group
i do wish that warden was 2 different classes though, like an frostknight and druid class. would be awesome to have a druid class since the release of galen showed them in a bit more depthPS5/NA: Vouxe_2 -
Urzigurumash✭✭✭✭✭
✭Zodiarkslayer wrote: »
That's kinda my point. You can do that because Winter's Embrace is an ignorable skill line.I never use the frost stuff - I don't like "ice mages", never have so I just ignore that whole thing.....Urzigurumash wrote: »More damage types is more status effects
More damage types is less mitigated by Nord passives
Some expectations in life should be reworked from the ground up
Right, because Wardens only fight Nords and Dragonknights only fight Dark Elfs. Wait. Who do Sorcerers fight again?
Sorc has an All Magic line along with their All Shock line. The spammable is Magic.
There's argument for and against making every subclass Mono-Damage. I've worn Frostbite through many patches on Warden so I get the appeal.
But this seems like a PvE thread (northern storm is a dot so it's unblockable and is preferred to ice comet by most) so I'll just say that in PvP Warden has consistently been the best class since it came out, no other class has consistently ranked so highly. Also, it's probably the most mechanically complete class - you can effectively play any sort of role, any sort of spec with it, which can't be said for any other class really.
Further, the mixing of Themes appears to be done to stand in contrast to DK, its parallel class:
Fire -> Ice
Geologic -> Biologic
Edited by Urzigurumash on 21 September 2024 20:00Xbox NA AD / Day 1 ScrubDK / Wood Orc Cuisine Enthusiast1 -
Supreme_Atromancer✭✭✭✭✭
✭Just my 2c, some people confuse the mechanical package with the concept or "power fantasy" or w/e.
They've done a pretty good job with the mechanical kit. You've got good tools to build great tanks and healers in PvE and lots of stuff for PvP, though things get tweaked and it falls in and out of meta over very long times.
Conceptually though, its hodgepodge. It would be hard to argue otherwise. The themes are not cohesive. It feels like they heard demand for classic fantasy archetypes and decided it would be a good idea to satisfy them all at once by mashing them all together.
If you wanted to play a classic frost-mage, you were now stuck with weird, unrelated animals and plants as part of your kit.
If you wanted to play a classic druid, you're also stuck with not only the cold elemental theme, but also the Vvardenfell theme. Because marketing, I guess.
Yes, you can ignore half of your class kit in order to achieve those themes, but you're gimping yourself. That's not ideal.
If you really only care about how it fills the standard roles/game modes, or you're even happy with the eclectic mishmash of themes, you're obviously not gonna have too much of a problem with it.
I think that skill styles does have the potential to remedy this, but it needs to go much further than recolours alone.
FWIW, I think that since Warden, ZOS have done a much tighter job on cohesive concepts. I still think there is room for improvement, but it shows that they hear it.5 -
Urzigurumash✭✭✭✭✭
✭It is thematically cohesive, it's the Water class. Ice is Water, Plants and Animals are mostly Water.Xbox NA AD / Day 1 ScrubDK / Wood Orc Cuisine Enthusiast3 -
AzuraFan✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭My main is a warden, and so are a few of my alts. Definitely my favourite class.
I wouldn't want ZOS messing with the class too much, though leaning into ice (magicka morphs) vs. bleed/poison (stamina morphs) would be okay.1 -
EnerG✭✭✭✭✭Some of these I agree with, but I won't abide by the shimmering shield slander, draconian wings and shimmering shield are the best niche tanking ability for some fights, zamajas light attack on vcr is a projectile, pop your shield and heavy attack for rss back whenever you need.1 -
FelisCatus✭✭✭✭✭AcadianPaladin wrote: »I totally agree that the warden is a very confused class. Frost mage and Druid is not a good mix. Neither is favoring Morrowind only critters instead of general forest creatures.
As far as Piercing Cold, I am getting good up time on it with a bow warden purely from having a frost enchantment on her bow. Pleasant surprise.
I've found this really weird too. Insect druid and cyromancer make 0 sense. DK should be fire/ice not fire and poison. Warden should be Druid and Poison.2 -
TinyDragon✭✭✭Some of these I agree with, but I won't abide by the shimmering shield slander, draconian wings and shimmering shield are the best niche tanking ability for some fights, zamajas light attack on vcr is a projectile, pop your shield and heavy attack for rss back whenever you need.
Yes, this a thousand times.
Also, warden gates in BRP are amazing because you can put the gate down before the adds spawn, and the come to you immediately!1 -
tiriusavarao✭✭✭As someone who's had a warden main since Summerset came out and loved playing the class... I will not say they feel 'confused' to me, but there is certainly a lot of room for improvement. Particularly on the DD side, where I find myself slipping behind what some of my other characters are capable of more and more. I play solo a lot, and there I can handle it easily. For group content though - it makes me bench my main character when I want to perform well for my group mates (even on relatively casual runs), which is unfortunate. And my build has also gravitated to using a lot of non-warden skills in an effort to keep up. Not a large issue, but it suggests the warden skill set does not offer sufficient alternatives.
The last few updates I feel have made things worse. For example: as I already struggled with my dps, having Arctic Blast there to double as a self heal and a bit of damage was wonderful. It's a short range ability, so if I want to wade into the danger to use it, my squishy DD needs protection. But I find I can't rely on it for healing anymore, putting more strain on the healers to keep me alive. Slotting a pure healing ability like Spores or Lotus instead drops my dps even further, and also becomes less useful as now I have no reason to get close to the enemy and need less healing to start with... so it's a problem either way. It feels like the animal branch doesn't add enough firepower, and the frost branch only really works with dps if you fully commit to a short-range frost build. I prefer ranged, and thus I struggle.
On the thematic side of the class - the mix of using both animal and frost abilities might seem strange to some, but I have always appreciated that it makes the warden skill icons very distinct. Moreso than say on the DK and Templar who have a lot of golden icons that look very alike. And I like the variety of my character using more than one aspect of the natural world in his skill set. At any rate, the skill styles and scrying can offer solutions for how it looks, so I am not very concerned about that at present.
1 -
Twohothardware✭✭✭✭✭
✭They need to work on Wardens Cliff Racer class spammable. It’s terrible for PvP with the travel time.1 -
TaSheen✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭Twohothardware wrote: »They need to work on Wardens Cliff Racer class spammable. It’s terrible for PvP with the travel time.
ONLY if they don't screw it up for PvE!!______________________________________________________
"But even in books, the heroes make mistakes, and there isn't always a happy ending." Mercedes Lackey, Into the West
PC NA, PC EU (non steam)- four accounts, many alts....1 -
KKolly✭✭✭On one hand, you're right. There is a weird duality in Warden that feels off.
Where you're wrong is in your solution to buff an extremely powerful class even more lol
If you think having useless and easy to obtain buffs is bad, wait till you hear about Necro.Edited by KKolly on 23 September 2024 18:40PC/NA
PvP Enthusiast
Wolves Evermore Raid Lead
DESTRO Officer
Imperfect Cleavage Officer
Army of the Covenant Ex-Officer
DC Faction RPer, All Elves must Die.0 -
ArchMikem✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭I play my Warden as a pure Cryomancer, nothing but frost damage, and I agree, the two should've been separate.CP2,000 Master Explorer - AvA One Star General - Console Peasant - The Clan
Quest Objective: OMG Go Talk To That Kitty!2 -
Zodiarkslayer✭✭✭✭✭
✭From the 10.2.1 PTS parch notes
Glacial Presence: This passive now increases the chance of applying the Chilled status effect from any source, rather than only Winter’s Embrace abilities.
I guess someone read my post. 😅If anyone here says: OH! But, PVP! I swear I'll ...
Thank you for the valuable input and respectfully recommend to discuss that aspect of ESO on the PVP forum.1 -
Urzigurumash✭✭✭✭✭
✭Zodiarkslayer wrote: »From the 10.2.1 PTS parch notes
Glacial Presence: This passive now increases the chance of applying the Chilled status effect from any source, rather than only Winter’s Embrace abilities.
I guess someone read my post. 😅
It's a great change. The increased access to Minor Brittle by this change definitely restores some viability to frontbar Frost, but I'm not sure it's enough to beat out frontbar Lightning after the recent change to Ancient Knowledge. (Speaking in terms of Solo PvP)
Edited by Urzigurumash on 26 September 2024 00:58Xbox NA AD / Day 1 ScrubDK / Wood Orc Cuisine Enthusiast0
