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!