Warden - I don't hate this change

Nerouyn · April 16

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/656454/pts-patch-notes-v10-0-0#latest

Animal Companions
Betty Netch: This ability and its morphs now also increase your damage done by 5% for 5 seconds if no negative effect was removed from the ability.

Developer Comment:

In order to help the Warden's damage production without rocking the boat too much in PvP (where they already are plenty strong), we're adding a conditional bonus that will mainly activate in PvE. We are also trying to add more sources of damage to their damage focused skill line, so we can slowly look at shifting damage out of their tanking focused skill line.

As someone who loves this class thematically and its aesthetics but much less how they play, it is encouraging to read what you're trying to move them towards.

I don't hate that they have damage in the ice line and for magicka players like myself, that has been buffed in ice quite a bit since launch. But it does stand in odd contrast to the other 3 new classes.

Have always thought the Betty Netch looked cool as, but yes, in PvE the every 5 second negative effect removal is useful.... not very often.

This is a decent incentive to have it out, and gives me hope for future changes.

SkaiFaith · April 16

I'm honestly scared by the idea they are going to move away the damage from the Icy line. Shards and Arctic could become "useless", while now I favor them. And I'm well into the frosty theme, so I don't think I'm going to like the changes...

Necrotech_Master · April 16

i think the change is pretty good too, at least it gives you something when its unable to purge anything

yadibroz · April 16

Hope they change cliff for a snow monster execute and add more ice or remove all ice and transfer it to a new class.

i11ionward · April 16

What I would really like for the Warden is standardized buff timing. What's the point of having 3 buffs (betty, fortress, lotus) with durations of 25, 30, 60 seconds? And it’s time to turn one of the buffs into a passive effect "While slotted on either bar".

YandereGirlfriend · April 16

This was definitely a good and somewhat creative change.

Targets PvE while side-stepping PvP (since you're always swimming in negative effects).

Necrotech_Master · April 16

i11ionward wrote: »

What I would really like for the Warden is standardized buff timing. What's the point of having 3 buffs (betty, fortress, lotus) with durations of 25, 30, 60 seconds? And it’s time to turn one of the buffs into a passive effect "While slotted on either bar".

yeah i could see this, i think lotus is probably the best candidate for being a passive while on either bar, mostly for the minor effect it provides (crit buff + the minor heal on light/heavy attacks) and its already fairly long duration

SkaiFaith · April 16

Count me in for lotus passive healing, great idea.

Now, let me get controversial: I like the idea of having the luminous arms effect up all the time, just like grim focus effect is up all the time on Nightblades.

Nerouyn · April 19

SkaiFaith wrote: »

I'm honestly scared by the idea they are going to move away the damage from the Icy line. Shards and Arctic could become "useless", while now I favor them. And I'm well into the frosty theme, so I don't think I'm going to like the changes...

As I said, I don't hate that frost presently has damage but frost is weird right now for having literally everything.

Beast and plants are damage and healing respectively, with a little bit of buffing.

Ice has damage, healing, buffing and tanking.

And don't forget scribing, which might let you stack up frost damage in lots of other places and ways.

yadibroz wrote: »

Hope they change cliff for a snow monster execute and add more ice or remove all ice and transfer it to a new class.

Yeah I never liked sorc, dk and later warden each having one third of the single player game destruction trilogy of shock / fire / frost. No matter which I look at it I feel short changed for the elements I don't have and even though I'd prefer the game to be classless like the single player games, having gone that route I feel like these classes are short changed in only having two themed for theirs.

Rather than giving it to a new class though I'd prefer to see those three elemental / destruction lines go into like the Mage's Guild, and every class could use them.

i11ionward wrote: »

What I would really like for the Warden is standardized buff timing. What's the point of having 3 buffs (betty, fortress, lotus) with durations of 25, 30, 60 seconds? And it’s time to turn one of the buffs into a passive effect "While slotted on either bar".

I think the point is to have us madly swapping bars every 3 seconds, which frankly is not my idea of a good time.

ItsNotLiving · April 19

If they buff the Animal Companion line to be as good is Ice Warden I’d come back to the game. (The ice stuff being forced on me drives me crazy and messed up my favorite class)

kojou · April 19

Warden is actually in a pretty good place in live right now with the update to Status Effects. Sustain isn't terrible if you can throw in some Stamina costing abilities. Adding this in for the next patch might be enough that we see some DPS Wardens in trial groups.

I wish we could go all in with Ice for Magicka and Bleed for Stamina on the Warden, but otherwise it is pretty fun to play.

brandsnipe · April 19

ItsNotLiving wrote: »

If they buff the Animal Companion line to be as good is Ice Warden I’d come back to the game. (The ice stuff being forced on me drives me crazy and messed up my favorite class)

Id like to see the skill line push us to using the bear more often. Maybe increase the execute damage to under 35-50% health instead of 25. Overall i think the skill line is pretry strong. Major and minor breach on a burst skill that hits harder on the 2nd hit, bird of prey is stacked, swarm is a powerful DoT with minor vuln. Its a stacked skill tree, just push drunning the bear a little bit more and adjust the dive skill. I wish necro got this sorta love.

ItsNotLiving · April 19

brandsnipe wrote: »

ItsNotLiving wrote: »

If they buff the Animal Companion line to be as good is Ice Warden I’d come back to the game. (The ice stuff being forced on me drives me crazy and messed up my favorite class)

Id like to see the skill line push us to using the bear more often. Maybe increase the execute damage to under 35-50% health instead of 25. Overall i think the skill line is pretry strong. Major and minor breach on a burst skill that hits harder on the 2nd hit, bird of prey is stacked, swarm is a powerful DoT with minor vuln. Its a stacked skill tree, just push drunning the bear a little bit more and adjust the dive skill. I wish necro got this sorta love.

The bear should either be a transformation ult like werewolf or an instances damage ult like a selenes proc. That and the bird needs to just be completely changed to something else.

Hottytotz · April 19

You are in the minority. Most people who like warden dps like the frost damage concept and most of the pet abilities are cumbersome and not nearly as fun to use. Moving away from frost line to pet line is one of the worst decisions made and on par with necro blastbones rework. Hopefully some sanity returns to the devs SOON.

FlopsyPrince · April 19

I really want a true "Pet Owner" class (like Hunter in Warcraft) but Warden is not it, unfortunately. Nor is a Pet Sorc for that matter.

I am not sure I see the PvP value of Wardens, but then I suck at PvP so what do I know?

ItsNotLiving · April 19

FlopsyPrince wrote: »

I really want a true "Pet Owner" class (like Hunter in Warcraft) but Warden is not it, unfortunately. Nor is a Pet Sorc for that matter.

I am not sure I see the PvP value of Wardens, but then I suck at PvP so what do I know?

Deep Fissure is the last AoE burst skill outside of proxy set in the game.

ItsNotLiving · April 19

FlopsyPrince wrote: »

I really want a true "Pet Owner" class (like Hunter in Warcraft) but Warden is not it, unfortunately. Nor is a Pet Sorc for that matter.

I am not sure I see the PvP value of Wardens, but then I suck at PvP so what do I know?

Warden is designed to fill multiple fantasy archetypes Ranger, Frost Mage, and Druid and currently it fulfills one of those decently because the classes main damage passive is now tied to using a frost staff. That’s not how any other classes work and it’s a band aid fix that narrows what warden dps can use in actual content.

brandsnipe · April 20

Hottytotz wrote: »

You are in the minority. Most people who like warden dps like the frost damage concept and most of the pet abilities are cumbersome and not nearly as fun to use. Moving away from frost line to pet line is one of the worst decisions made and on par with necro blastbones rework. Hopefully some sanity returns to the devs SOON.

I dont get why they cant just tweak the animal companion tree while leaving the winters embrace tree alone.

Stafford197 · April 20

My hope is that Scribing is used to flesh out classes in the future to fulfill their vision for each class. That or third morphs for each ability.

No need to get rid of Warden Dive or create a new ability for Warden, if you can just tack on a third morph which is meant to be that “ice spammable” etc.

Nerouyn · April 20

ItsNotLiving wrote: »

If they buff the Animal Companion line to be as good is Ice Warden I’d come back to the game. (The ice stuff being forced on me drives me crazy and messed up my favorite class)

I always found it to be an odd combination.

Released with the Morrowind expansion, it made sense for many of the animal abilities to be Vvardenfell themed. A tropical swamp island with a great big honking volcano in the middle.

Then there's the frost line.

Erm.... Sure. Ok.

The single player Morrowind had the Bloodmoon expansion set on icy Solstheim but that's a fairly arcane link. Especially since Solstheim wasn't added with Morrowind to ESO.

kojou wrote: »

I wish we could go all in with Ice for Magicka and Bleed for Stamina on the Warden, but otherwise it is pretty fun to play.

If you enjoy it, I'm glad for you, but personally I've never found them fun.

Visually they're beautiful but mechanically they're boring as.

Basically 90% of the class's power and utility were injected into just a small number of their abilities (eg. Scorch and Budding Seeds), then the rest were designed to be useful in only very specific circumstances.

Play warden for about an hour and you've pretty much seen it all.

During this event I deleted several wardens on my main account and levelled 3 arcanists to 50 to replace them. Then deleted a few more and replaced with more arcanists.

On an alt account I also levelled a warden to 50. Choosing warden that character's name is nature themed.

I'm still enjoying the arcanists. I was over warden by level 20.

While arcanists are brand spanking new to me - I've been away a while - their shiny newness doesn't account for my enjoying them more. And while I had a lot of wardens, I hadn't played them much beyond levelling them to 50, doing their horse training and trait research.

I haven't deleted all of my wardens though and will put playing them on hold until the devs rework them.

FlopsyPrince wrote: »

I really want a true "Pet Owner" class (like Hunter in Warcraft) but Warden is not it, unfortunately. Nor is a Pet Sorc for that matter.

I am not sure I see the PvP value of Wardens, but then I suck at PvP so what do I know?

Me too - for warden as a proper pet class. That would make me squee.

As for pvp value, returning to my previous point about wardens having most of their utility and power packed into just a few abilities, then having the rest only useful in very specific circumstances, most of those circumstances are PvP.

I wouldn't be surprised if most of the players who don't want any warden changes are more PvP oriented.

ItsNotLiving wrote: »

Warden is designed to fill multiple fantasy archetypes Ranger, Frost Mage, and Druid and currently it fulfills one of those decently because the classes main damage passive is now tied to using a frost staff. That’s not how any other classes work and it’s a band aid fix that narrows what warden dps can use in actual content.

Personally I find the whole destruction staff situation really bizarre.

Why should wielding a lightning staff boost AOE damage?

Why should wielding a fire staff boost single target damage?

What about either of those makes any sense at all?

Why should any class be forced to use specifically one of those staffs and stack all of their AOE / single target damage class abilities onto it to maximise damage?

For frost themed wardens it was especially perverse because if you weren't playing a tank - which was all that frost boosted - then you had to equip either or both a fire and shock staff to maximise DPS, including with frost abilities.

The warden passive change to boost all damage with a frost staff wielded is an improvement.

Stafford197 wrote: »

My hope is that Scribing is used to flesh out classes in the future to fulfill their vision for each class. That or third morphs for each ability.

No need to get rid of Warden Dive or create a new ability for Warden, if you can just tack on a third morph which is meant to be that “ice spammable” etc.

Also styling which potentially lets you make non-nature / ice themed abilities look more warden-like.

I don't think they've showcased nature ones yet but eg. a nature restyle of dest and resto staff abilities might fix a lot of what I don't enjoy about wardens right now.

ESO_Nightingale · April 21

Nerouyn wrote: »

Personally I find the whole destruction staff situation really bizarre.

Why should wielding a lightning staff boost AOE damage?

Why should wielding a fire staff boost single target damage?

What about either of those makes any sense at all?

Why should any class be forced to use specifically one of those staffs and stack all of their AOE / single target damage class abilities onto it to maximise damage?

it doesn't anymore though, have you not read the passive recently?

flame now increases dot damage and shock increases direct.

Nerouyn · April 21

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

it doesn't anymore though, have you not read the passive recently?

flame now increases dot damage and shock increases direct.

I had but forgot, because arcanists are largely immune to it in terms of their main damage ability (laser beam) qualifying as both dot and direct damage. So you can wield either.

I don't like the new one either for forcing one or the other but this one at least makes more sense with the DoT / direct division.

Foxtrot39 · April 21

bear just need to follow the "sloted in either bar" rule, warden is the only class that need to double bar an ult to make it usable