I want to add one more thing: You can do all manner of stuff, like slowing mobs, freezing them still (rooting), or meditating to gain resources. You'll find the most genuine use for that, and the most build variety in general, in PvP. In PvE, however, the longer you play and start to see combat for what it is, you'll find stuff like that is mostly pointless, unless you're the tank in a group. All it does is waste resources and slows down combat. It leaves you, seconds later, in exactly the same spot with no progress. In overland everything is so easy, that doesn't matter, but you may become aware that you're purely role-playing at that point. The most effective way of dealing with anything is to burn it. Damage rules and AOE (area of effect) damage rules for dealing with trash mobs.

As an endgame player and 9 year veteran of the game, my weapon choices are purely utilitarian these days. I could be running a dual-wield back bar, because that's what happens to work in Infinite Archive for my magicka build. I have a few remnants of role-playing, such as not being a vampire (which tends to hamper you in PvP), and I know other players who put "arbitrary" constraints on how they play as well, such as playing only one class. You can go quite far with that, even in PvP. I was killed by a pure ice warden, once, who knew and played their role-playing build really well. Generally, though, the further you progress into endgame, the more utilitarian you become. You simply go with what works.

Lest this sounds boring, I will say that I very much like my warden as a healer nowadays, but it is otherwise not my favorite class. I find Arcanist the most effective as a PvE DD, or certainly the easiest, and I find templar more fun because of how it's toolkit works. Warden is buff heavy, templar has more situational skills, e.g. a gap closer, execute and a cleanse. Their use depends on, well, the situation, whereas warden, at endgame, focuses more on doing the same thing all the time, regardless of the combat situation. That said, situational play is more relevant to PvP, because PvP is simply more situational than PvE. That said, also, the things I find most fun are movement skills in general, sorc's Streak, NBs Shadow Image, DK's Leap, templar's gap closer, and so on. Warden has a speed skill, but it's very vanilla. It also has a healer gap closer and a trap / displacement rune, but those skills are quite gimmicky. They don't work well in actual combat. Only in terms of parkour / housing, e.g. following someone climbing (or a sorc streaking) to inaccessible places, is the warden gap closer good.

A Two Handed weapon on the back bar can be fun in PvE with the Stampede skill. You could start by casting Scorch, use Stampede to charge into your enemies from afar and then Scorch will most likely go off when you've arrived at your targets, leading to some decent burst damage which will make short work of most overland enemies once you've leveled up a bit.

I personally mostly use two Frost Staffs on my Magicka Warden though, as I like playing as a Frost Mage. That setup has been nerfed slightly this year, but it's still okay for a lot of PvE content.

For Xbox NA PvP, don't overlook the new great advantage of Sword & Board backbar: slapping a Health Enchant on the Shield and/or pieces with a Health Bonus, which can allow you to sit at 29k HP frontbar and 31k HP backbar, to take maximum advantage of the new version of the Piercing Cold passive. You can achieve this with backbarring the 4 and 5 of a set with HP on those lines, but that limits your set selection.

I specify the platform because I hear everyone on PC runs 40k HP in PvP, hardly anyone does on Xbox NA. People were saying PC PvP Wardens will all just sit above 30k and not access the Damage side of Piercing Cold, not sure how it's panned out for them.