New Class Suggestion: The Warden, Nature-based

Lynx7386 · June 2015

For those unaware, there were 5 classes in the alpha version of ESO, prior to launch. One of those was a nature-based class, akin to a shaman or druid, but this class was removed and many of its abilities were moved to the templar class.

This thread is a suggestion for re-implementing the Warden as a nature-based class. Many civilizations across tamriel use something akin to shamans and druids: there are the wyresses of glenumbra, the singers and keepers of valenwood, the hist-tenders of blackmarsh, and numerous tribal groups throughout the reach. We also see nature magic at use by spriggans, greenwardens, the green lady, and the silvenar.

Suggestions for the warden's class skill trees are as follows:

Renewal Skill Tree
Heal, cleanse, and protect yourself and your allies with nature magic.

1. Invigorate
Restores health over time to the lowest health ally in the party.

Morph 1: Inspire
Restores stamina as well as health.

Morph 2: Energize
Restores magicka as well as health.

2. Tranquility
Removes all negative effects from allies in an area.

Morph 1: Hexes to Healing
Restores health for each effect removed.

Morph 2: Reversal
Removes positive effects from enemies in the area as well.

3. Spring Rains
Showers an area with healing magic, restoring health over time to allies in the area.

Morph 1: Soothing Rains
Increased duration and healing.

Morph 2: Refreshing Storm
Increased area of effect.

4. Nature's Blessing
Instantly heals up to 3 nearby allies.

Morph 1: Shared Energy
Reduced magicka cost per ally healed.

Morph 2: Sustained Blessing
Adds additional healing over time to effected allies.

5. Thorn Shield
Surrounds the caster and up to 3 nearby allies with a shell of brambles, absorbing damage and returning damage to melee attackers.

Morph 1: Mending Brambles
Provides healing over time to allies as long as the shield lasts.

Morph 2: Shattering Thorns
When the shield is depleted it explodes, dealing physical damage to nearby enemies.

Ultimate: Circle of Life
Revives all nearby allies and surrounds them with a protective shield.

Morph 1: Full Circle
Restores all revived allies to full health, magicka, and stamina.

Morph 2: Breathing Room
Stuns all nearby enemies when cast.

Passives:

1. Reduces the magicka cost of Renewal spells.
2. Increases the duration of Renewal spells.
3. Increases healing done to allies effected by Thorn Shield.
4. Increases magicka recovery for each ally effected by a Renewal spell.
5. Each renewal spell you cast provides additional ultimate.

Beast Mastery Skill Tree
Call upon and imbue yourself with the power of Nature's most ferocious creatures.

1. Insect Swarm
Send a cloud of stinging insects to torment your target, dealing damage over time and reducing the damage the target deals.

Morph 1: Expanding Swarm
The cloud duplicates on impact, spreading to up to 3 additional nearby enemies.

Morph 2: Leeching Swarm
As the enemy takes damage from insect swarm, you regain health equal to the damage dealt.

2. Aspect of the Wolf
Toggle on/off
Only one aspect can be active at a time
Call upon the spirit of the wolf. You gain additional movement speed, spell power, and weapon damage for each nearby ally (max 3 allies).

Morph 1: Wolfpack
Nearby allies are empowered with the same bonuses you gain from aspect of the wolf.

Morph 2: Alpha Lupi
Increases the benefits provided by aspect of the wolf.

3. Aspect of the Bear
Toggle on/off
Only one aspect can be active at a time
Call upon the spirit of the bear. You gain increased armor, spell resistance, and maximum health.

Morph 1: Toughened Hide
Aspect of the bear provides even more armor, spell resistance, and health.

Morph 2: Hibernation
When aspect of the bear is active, you regain health whenever you become stunned or immobilized.

Aspect of the Tiger
Toggle on/off
Only one aspect can be active at a time
Call upon the spirit of the tiger. You gain increased weapon damage, weapon critical, and stamina recovery.

Morph 1: King of the Jungle
While aspect of the tiger is active, your attacks ignore a percentage of your target's armor.

Morph 2: Sharpened Claws
While active, all light and heavy attacks made with a melee weapon cause additional bleed damage to your target.

Aspect of the viper
Toggle on/off
Only one aspect can be active at a time
Call upon the spirit of the viper. You gain increased spell power, spell critical, and magicka recovery.

Morph 1: Venemous Scales
Enemies that strike you with melee attacks are poisoned, taking damage over time.

Morph 2: Spirit Scales
While active, projectile attacks have a chance to be deflected away from you.

Ultimate: Spirit Guide
Summons an animal spirit to fight alongside you for a short time. The type of creature summoned changes based on your active aspect. Summoned spirit lasts for 30 seconds.
No aspect active: Summons a giant wasp to attack your enemies.
Aspect of the Wolf: Summons a dire wolf to attack your enemies. The dire wolf can howl, sending enemies running in fear.
Aspect of the Bear: Summons a grizzly bear to attack your enemies. The grizzly bear uses claw swipe to knock down enemies in front of it.
Aspect of the Tiger: Summons a tiger to attack your enemies. The tiger mauls enemies, causing bleed damage over time.
Aspect of the Viper: Summons a viper to attack your enemies. The viper spits poison, reducing the target's healing taken.

Passives:

1. Increased weapon and spell damage while an aspect is active.
2. Increased armor and spell resistance while an aspect is active.
3. Movement and sprinting speed increased when out of combat.
4. Your light and heavy weapon attacks have a chance to deal additional poison damage to your targets.
5. Increases health, magicka, and stamina recovery when you use an ultimate.

Nature's Wrath Skill Tree
Flora and Fauna come to your aid in striking down your foes.

1. Lash
Lash out at your target with a vine whip, dealing poison damage.

Morph 1: Strangling Vine
Lash stuns the target for a brief duration.

Morph 2: Nature's Reach
Increased range.

2. Envenom
Send a poison thorn flying at your target, causing poison damage over time.

Morph 1: Sleeping Venom
Stuns the target for 20 seconds. Dealing damage ends the effect early.

Morph 2: Thorn volley
Sends out a fan of thorns, poisoning all enemies in a cone in front of you, dealing poison damage over time. Reduced range.

3. Roots
Grow roots from the ground to trap all enemies in front of you, preventing them from moving for 4.5 seconds.

Morph 1: Thorned Roots
while trapped, enemies take poison damage over time.

Morph 2: Mangling Roots
After the effect ends, enemies remain slowed for several seconds.

4. Bramblepatch
Grow a patch of thorned plants in front of you. Enemies entering the area take constant damage over time and are slowed.

Morph 1: Poison Ivy
Enemies continue to take poison damage over time for a duration after leaving the bramblepatch.

Morph 2: Wall of Thorns
The bramblepatch is replaced with a wall of thorns, preventing enemies and allies alike from moving through it. The wall can be hacked or burned down early, however.
(The wall becomes a targetable entity that can be attacked, and has limited life. The wall cannot be healed.)

5. Wisp
toggle on/off
Cannot be active at the same time as magelight.
Summons a wisp to your side, increasing your spell critical strike chance.

Morph 1: Wisp Mother
Summons three wisps instead of one, increasing your spell critical strike chance, weapon critical strike chance, and health recovery.

Morph 2: Stinging Wisp
The wisp lashes out at nearby enemies every few seconds, dealing magic damage.

Ultimate: Culminate
Consumes poison effects afflicting nearby enemies, dealing instant poison damage to each afflicted target and releasing a cloud of toxic spores that cause poison damage over time to all enemies in the area.

Morph 1: Harvest
You regain magicka, stamina, and health for each enemy effected by culminate.

Morph 2: Deadly Spores
The spore clouds released by culminated enemies deal significantly more damage to low-health targets.

Note: To explain this ultimate in further detail, it "detonates" poison effects on any enemies within a large radius around you when used. So, for example, you cast envenom on an enemy, poisoning them, then use culminate; that enemy will take instant poison damage, and at that enemy's location a cloud of green spores is created that deals additional poison damage over time to any enemies that are in it. Culminate can effect several enemies, so if you poison 3-4 enemies and then use it you'll detonate the poisons on each one of them, and spawn 3-4 clouds of spores for area damage over time.

Passives:

1. Increases the range and radius of all Nature's Wrath spells.
2. Poison damage over time you apply to enemies lasts longer.
3. You gain increased magicka and stamina recovery for a short duration when you poison an enemy.
4. Your poisons deal more damage to enemies in the area of effect of bramblepatch, enemies under the effects of roots, and enemies in the spore clouds generated by culminate.
5. Increases your spell resistance and resistance to poisons and diseases.

Lynx7386 · June 2015

For the TL:DR crowd, the class has three skill trees:

Renewal is a healing tree, mostly based around heal over time effects.

Beast Mastery allows you to buff yourself with toggled spells that increase your effectiveness in combat.

Nature's Wrath is a poison-based spellcasting tree for ranged magicka-based combat.

RavenSworn · June 2015

Very interesting idea, love the feel and theme of it.

However, there are a few things i would look into. Firstly, The renewal tree is amazing but really lacks utility and is a mixture of restoration skill tree of the templar and the resto staff skill line.

- Invigorate seems to be really mundane and lacks theme. How about a stamina and magicka morph, with the stamina morph (inspire) giving increased stamina and health regen, gives the minor berserk and minor endurance buff for 8s and the magicka morph (Energize) restoring magicka, health and stamina.

- Nature's Blessings seems to be just a copy of the breath of life morph. Keep the initial instant heal but up to 2 allies. change Shared Energy to "Cast Blessings onto 2 allies with low health, giving them a blessing that transmutes 50% damage taken to healing received". Change Sustained Blessing to "The heal is no more instant but healing X over Y secs and granting increased health and magicka regen for the caster."

- Thorn Shield should not absorb damage, but rather return damage exponentially to melee enemies. Change morph 1 to "Tighter Weave" which will absorb X damage and will increase healing received. it will no longer return damage. Change morph 2 to a stamina based morph (Thorn Grip) which will return a higher damage to melee attackers and shatter, dealing poison damage to enemies around the target.

The rest of the abilities are really sound and makes a really good skill line.

The Beast mastery (should be called the Wild Hunt imo) skill line... is lackluster to me. I feel that it should have multiple toggles, in which you can only use one aspect at each time, rather than having multiple aspects. However, in the questline of Grahtwood where you as a hunter learns of three animals, three ways of hunting, it implies that the Snake, Wolf and Tiger are the main 'hunters'. I say change the toggle to only one toggle, with the Aspect of the Viper, Wolf and Tiger using the same toggle.

Now i understand the toggle will complicate matters with the morph since you are essentially changing three different aspects but i would like it to be this way: The Viper aspect will give minor mending and intellect. The Wolf aspect gives minor endurance and fortitude. The Tiger aspect gives minor vitality and heroism. When morph, each will be different in the two sets of morphs thus: Set 1 morphs will give Major mending, Major Fortitude and Major Heroism respectively. Set 2 will give Major intellect, Major Endurance and Major Vitality.

Now that two of the abilities are tied in to the skill line, three more are needed to complete the tree.

1. Mark of the Warden
The caster deals X damage to a target and marking him, causing a Minor Maim onto the target.

Morph 1 : Mark of the Bear
The caster deals X damage to a target, giving the caster Minor Resolve and causing Minor Maim onto the target.

Morph 2 : Mark of the Wasp
The caster deals X damage over Y secs, causing a Major Defile onto the target instead.

2. Forest Champion
You let out a shout, dealing X damage around yourself, empowering your allies, giving them minor berserk buff for 4s

Morph 1 : Forest Bastion
You also give allies a minor Protection buff, reducing their damage taken.

Morph 2 : Jungle Ruins
You deal X damage to one target, causing Major Fracture and Breach to the target.

3. With Fang and Claw
You deal X damage to a conal area, swiping all enemies along the way. ( kind of like the charge attack of tanky mobs in dungeons. )

Morph 1 : Viper's Nest
You deal X poison damage to all targets around you, restoring magicka for each target affected.

Morph 2 : Predator
You howl, dealing X damage to a conal area, causing Fear to maximum of 3 targets.

the rest seems amazing i guess.