Official Discussion Thread for "Warden Guide: Skill Lines and Abilities"

ZOS_JessicaFolsom · April 2017

This is the official discussion thread for the Warden Guide: Skill Lines and Abilities blog article.

The Warden, ESO's first new class since launch, is coming to Tamriel with the release of The Elder Scrolls Online: Morrowind on June 6. Interested in creating a new character with this nature-based class? Check out the complete list of Warden abilities, including morphs and passives, in this latest deep dive.

SanTii.92 · April 2017

All in all looks quite fun, but is anyone else concerned about the lack of offensive spells? From a mag point a view, without considering ults, since everyone just has access to comet/destro ult, there are only three. Imapling shards could have had a mag based morph.

Rickter · April 2017

It looks like ZOS has really for the first time completely distinguished Stamina morphs from Magicka. meaning: this is the first class ever to be completely worked with the differentiation in mind.

Also: those are really cool new animations. I really hope other classes get unique animations like that.

Vaoh · April 2017

Loving this class so much!

Personally I just don't understand why we have only 3 damage-dealing spells (4 if counting Impaling Shards). It is odd that Arctic Wind is a heal when the entire Green Balance skill line is healing-based and there is a lack offensive spells.

olsborg · April 2017

I do hope they adjust the other classes at the same time, one example, one spell from the warden gives him major resists and minor protection for 24 seconds, while nbs cloak is broken and doesnt work and give minor protection for 5 seconds. mmmh, yea, thats just one example.

Sedrethi · April 2017

Interesting so far.

While I disagree with the direction of the previous changes to the Frost Staff skill mechanics, it doesn't look like there are a whole lot more additions to Frost Damage offense with Winter's Embrace. Most appear to be side-effects of other abilities and as indirect damage, which is a little disappointing when compared to the Sorcerer's Storm Calling for Shock Damage—especially without numbers to see just yet.

It feels like in every Elder Scrolls game, Frost Damage gets a bit shafted (sans mods). It was only really useful in TES3 since there were so many fire-resistant Dunmer all over the place, and it was cheaper than Shock Damage. Then in TES4, it had a cool lingering fog mechanic, but it would also dissipate sooner on distance traveled. TES5 had so many Nords that, besides the Stamina Damage side-effect, it wasn't of much note. This game continues the tradition of making Frost Damage feel like the odd one out, providing less damage output than the other two elements and now being relegated to a poor "tank" play-style, instead of giving it something a little more unique (e.g. 8% more Spell Penetration when equipped with a Frost Staff?).

Also, as far as Sleet Storm is concerned, it's kinda odd that it's pretty much an already morphed version of the Nightblade's Veil of Blades Ultimate, except dealing Frost Damage instead of Magic Damage. It would've been neat if it was a little more unique, but I guess higher up-time of Major Protection between the two would be neat as well.

P.S.: Nightblade's could use some love, too. Maybe allow Path of Darkness (and morphs) to cause enemies within to take increased Magic Damage similarly to the Dragonknight's Engulfing Flames with Flame Damage? And have it so that Grim Focus (and morphs) auto-refresh Minor Berserk and the 4-hit counter every time you activate the Assassin's Scourge/Will?

Bo0137 · April 2017

Important questions:
1- Does the baby netch stay active while in werewolf form/another bar its not slotted? What about the bear?
2-Do the wolves summoned by the werewolf count as animals and benefit you from the first line passives?

Integral1900 · April 2017

Please god will someone give me a reason to care, I've been pouring over this class and it's a mess, duplicate effects that will cancel each other out, the animations for the thunderbug aoe looks like it was nocked together in someone's lunch break. I've got a Templar that will out heal it, a nightblade hammers it single target, my mag sorc is dam near invulnerable as long as I keep up the rotation and the dk just a beast in general.

This thing seems a jack of many roles but doesn't really excel at any, yes it's useful in a group but so what, the vast bulk of eso players are solo dps players, don't believe me? Just drop into any normal dungeon pug as watch how they play, hell even most vet pugs, this class has nothing for us in that regard

Elsonso · April 2017

Rickter wrote: »

It looks like ZOS has really for the first time completely distinguished Stamina morphs from Magicka. meaning: this is the first class ever to be completely worked with the differentiation in mind.

Honestly, I was hoping that a future revision of the class skills would better separate magicka and stamina and get away from the switch-by-morph, entirely.

There is really nothing mechanically different between Cutting Dive and Screaming Cliff-racer. They both spawn a bird and the bird attacks. Nothing about the Cutting Dive screams "stamina" to me, any more than Screaming Cliff-racer screams "magicka" to me. One is stamina because, well, I guess one had to be stamina. Flip coin. Heads. Cutting Dive it is!

I am assuming that skills like Falcon's Swiftness and Nature's Grasp are stamina from the start? Hard to tell from the descriptions. If so, that is a radical departure and a step in the right direction, but if these are listed in order, they are not anything a starting stamina character can use.

And that actually brings up a point. Reading the descriptions does not paint a clear picture of whether it is a stamina or magicka ability for all of those abilities. I assume that when they change a skill with a morph they will tell what resource it uses, but it is a guess about what the original skill uses.

Maybe I am getting too caught up with all-in stamina or magicka builds, which is the rage for the other classes. Will have to see after June 6 whether hybrids are the new "stamina" builds when running Warden, or whether I should just stick with magicka.

As a side note... how can that warden stand so close to the ancestor silk node and not pick it!

FluffyReachWitch · April 2017

What happened to the Haj Mota? This makes 4 out of 6 Animal Companions skills Morrowind themed when not every Warden will be from Vvardenfell. This would be more interesting with different animal morph options to choose from.

Green Balance and Winter's Embrace look interesting though. Can't wait to try them out.

Fodore · April 2017

More offensive skills needed...

Elsonso · April 2017

Fodore wrote: »

More offensive skills needed...

Actually, reading through this, I disagree. I will have to see it in play, but one of the problems with the other classes is that they can be too independent from the weapons.

argouru · April 2017

My concern is on the active skills in the winter's Embrace skill line Arctic Wind and Impaling Shards.

Why have a frost healing power on a class that already has an entire skill line devoted to healing? It's needlessly redundant.

Also, unless you're a health-focused tank, Impaling shards will hit like a limp noodle and is only useful for the effects. I see IS as the least desirable power for the class and will likely see little use on most builds.

FauxHunter · April 2017

Looks really neat! Can't wait to see all the new warden players summoning fauna across tamriel

Will have to hope and wait for class changes in a future update to play it on my character though

Ratzkifal · April 2017

I am really looking forward to this class now, especially if we get our class change token. (My orc is ready to become a frosty tank >:3)

Just one skill has me a little concerned. Has anyone else wondered what Frost Gate does in Cyrodiil? The mechanic sounds fun and all, especially in pve for a tank, but it only takes one troll to give an enemy raid a teleport into a keep. Hopefully the skill does not work that way.

Integral1900 · April 2017

Considering the amount of in game time a class change token would save it has absolutely no chance in hell of ever happening

Tyrion87 · April 2017

Vaoh wrote: »

Loving this class so much!

Personally I just don't understand why we have only 3 damage-dealing spells (4 if counting Impaling Shards). It is odd that Arctic Wind is a heal when the entire Green Balance skill line is healing-based and there is a lack offensive spells.

Exactly. This is something that I've been pointing out from the very beginning. Arctic Wind could be an amazing ice-based dps skill... I just don't get this healing aspect of it while we have already the whole healing-based skill line... Excluding the Cliff Racer (Dive ability), the Warden seems to be the next (along with a sorc) class that is so bound to the Force Pulse as a spammable...

And apart from the Arctic Wind as a candidate for a good dps skill, one of the morphs of Impaling Shards (preferably Winter's Revenge) could scale off of Max Magicka instead of Max Health in order to boost its dps potential for magicka DDs.

@Wrobel Could you guys rethink this lack of offensive skills for magicka DDs, please?

Toorlokviing · April 2017

i hope at least one of those ice skills has a stamina morph...i was going to build a stamwarden nord around that with pets but if there are no stamina morphs for ice skill line or nord doesnt get any bonus to frost damage with chapter drop...im going to be very sad.

Toorlokviing · April 2017

argouru wrote: »

My concern is on the active skills in the winter's Embrace skill line Arctic Wind and Impaling Shards.

Why have a frost healing power on a class that already has an entire skill line devoted to healing? It's needlessly redundant.

Also, unless you're a health-focused tank, Impaling shards will hit like a limp noodle and is only useful for the effects. I see IS as the least desirable power for the class and will likely see little use on most builds.

i would love to see health tanks hit meta with this if there is more to back it up

charlmgn · April 2017

I don't know what kind of impact it will have on class balance, but I see an inconsistency in the class passive skills as compared to the existing classes. In each of the original classes, each class skill line contains one passive which gives benefits regardless of that skill line, while the other three passives are specific to that respective skill line. For example, the Sorcerer has Unholy Knowledge (reduces magicka and stamina costs of all spells) under Dark Magic, Power Stone (reduces cost of Ultimate abilities) under Daedric Summoning, and Capacitor (increases magicka regeneration) under Storm Calling. Each of these passives benefits the sorcerer regardless of skills slotted or used, and each of the other 3 original classes has the same setup (although they're not all 1st or 2nd tier passives as these are).

In the Warden skill lines, the Winter's Embrace skill line contains two passives which are independent of that skill line (Ice Aura and Piercing Cold), while the other two skill lines have no skill-line-independent passives. Also, Aura and Penetrating Cold are the 3rd and 4th passives (respectively) in that skill line.

As I said earlier, I don't know how (or if) this will impact the Warden's balance, but I thought it worth mentioning. After all, some active skills may make up for the shortage of "universal" passives for the class. But it does mean that a fully skilled Warden won't have the leisure of not slotting skills of each skill line to have at least some benefit from the passives, as all other classes have.

paulsimonps · April 2017

Bo0137 wrote: »

Important questions:
1- Does the baby netch stay active while in werewolf form/another bar its not slotted? What about the bear?
2-Do the wolves summoned by the werewolf count as animals and benefit you from the first line passives?

1: It will stay up until the time ends even if not slotted, its not a toggle.
2: No they do not, it specifically animal companion skills that it effects.

Integral1900 wrote: »

Please god will someone give me a reason to care, I've been pouring over this class and it's a mess, duplicate effects that will cancel each other out, the animations for the thunderbug aoe looks like it was nocked together in someone's lunch break. I've got a Templar that will out heal it, a nightblade hammers it single target, my mag sorc is dam near invulnerable as long as I keep up the rotation and the dk just a beast in general.

This thing seems a jack of many roles but doesn't really excel at any, yes it's useful in a group but so what, the vast bulk of eso players are solo dps players, don't believe me? Just drop into any normal dungeon pug as watch how they play, hell even most vet pugs, this class has nothing for us in that regard

It has great solo potential and will be a strong class in both Cyrodiil and Battlegrounds. In Trials it synergies very well with DK Main tanks as their off tank, as well with the Templar healer as the 2nd healer. It has great potential and people are knocking at its damage dealing abilities before even seeing the numbers and actually tested it. Sure it has few damage skills but most classes don't use more than 3 or 4 anyway. Sure not a lot of variety but it does have flexibility in roles instead. And what duplicate effects are you talking about btw?

argouru wrote: »

My concern is on the active skills in the winter's Embrace skill line Arctic Wind and Impaling Shards.

Why have a frost healing power on a class that already has an entire skill line devoted to healing? It's needlessly redundant.

Also, unless you're a health-focused tank, Impaling shards will hit like a limp noodle and is only useful for the effects. I see IS as the least desirable power for the class and will likely see little use on most builds.

The abilities is on a skill line specifically designed for tanks. Tanks will deal good damage with Impaling Shards, Tanks will have a strong heal with Arctic Wind. As a Tank I will love the Arctic wind ability as a self heal cause most heals form Green Balance will heal me for very very little in comparison based on how the average tank is built. They made each skill tree to be more focused on one role each, its a design decision by the devs that they have explained to us the players a fair amount of times now.

Ratzkifal wrote: »

I am really looking forward to this class now, especially if we get our class change token. (My orc is ready to become a frosty tank >:3)

Just one skill has me a little concerned. Has anyone else wondered what Frost Gate does in Cyrodiil? The mechanic sounds fun and all, especially in pve for a tank, but it only takes one troll to give an enemy raid a teleport into a keep. Hopefully the skill does not work that way.

When I playtested it I asked the same questions, you can't even use it if you are too high up and especially around keeps. Normally if you can't teleport someone they instead take damage but they told me that to prevent such exploits it wouldn't work if you tried to put it down on the ground below you if you were on a keep wall.

Toorlokviing wrote: »

i hope at least one of those ice skills has a stamina morph...i was going to build a stamwarden nord around that with pets but if there are no stamina morphs for ice skill line or nord doesnt get any bonus to frost damage with chapter drop...im going to be very sad.

One of the crystallized shield morphs used to be a stamina morph but they seemed to have removed that, as far as I know winter's embrace has no stamina morphs.

argouru · April 2017

So did they change their minds on doing an episode of ESO Live where they covered the other two skill lines for Wardens?

Entegre · April 2017

Warden seems to have nearly ALL buffs avaible to it... It seems very OverPowered in this regard. They can easily buff themselves with all important Major/Minor buffs while other classes struggle to buff themselves with 1-2 usefull buff.

Strider_Roshin · April 2017

With the recent changes done to Major Mending among the other classes; the duration for Major Mending needs to get cut in half in order to make it barely better than a resto heavy attack. 6 seconds is far too long considering the recent changes to sacred ground, and igneous shield.

Elsonso · April 2017

Entegre wrote: »

Warden seems to have nearly ALL buffs avaible to it... It seems very OverPowered in this regard. They can easily buff themselves with all important Major/Minor buffs while other classes struggle to buff themselves with 1-2 usefull buff.

As a general observation... Interesting how "Warden is underwhelming" changed to "Warden is the only class in town" overnight.