Warden's new Class Masteries: Glacial Cold and Hypothermia

ESO_Nightingale · 3:26AM

Hey Everyone, an amazing announcement yesterday with the new class masteries.

I was really happy to see that there is finally a new system in place for strong class related passives that you must pick between rather than gaining access to all of them. This is an idea i've been expressing would be good for a while now after playing world of warcraft and experiencing their talent system.

Seeing that you must be pureclassed in order to gain access to these makes sense although i feel it is a bit too punishing towards subclassed players. perhaps if you only subclass once for 1 single line, you can still get one passive, but lose one as a cost. But i'm probably getting ahead of myself. it's more important to see these in action first and worry about these types of quality of life later.

I wanted to discuss Hypothermia and Glacial Cold as revealed yesterday.

Obviously, these are probably not implemented yet in a practical form and all we have to go off is the names and icons which are likely temporary anyway.

Seeing 2 frost related masteries has given me hope that at least one of them has to do with frost damage and perhaps buffing winter's embrace in some way. Though i must admit that it is very difficult to design when there is no existing class mechanic or focus.

Here are some ideas i designed for the fun of it, but they're likely extremely unbalanced or not even close to what the development team has in mind.

I'm very excited either way for update 50.

Soarora · 3:44AM

I wonder if Hypothermia will be a way for warden DPS to proc major brittle? Ey? Ey???

ESO_Nightingale · 5:31AM

Soarora wrote: »

I wonder if Hypothermia will be a way for warden DPS to proc major brittle? Ey? Ey???

personally i think major brittle might not be a great idea. especially not if applied to northern storm. i wouldn't want to be forced to sacrifice 1 of my 2 mastery passives or be forced to hold ult just to apply major brittle at specific times for the group.

CatalinaWineMixer2 · 7:06AM

Nothing is too punishing towards subclass since most of the pure class enthusiasts have been kicked out of dungeons, prohibited from trials, removed from prog groups, forced to become arcanists (even after 3 awful years of the beam), forced to create a new character for base class or simply left the game entirely.
And anyone with a Warden main will have waited more than a year, just to have it back where it was last summer, in end game and on leaderboards and only if we are lucky and they do it right and on time.

That aside, I am excited at the thought of being able to use my main character again. For all things. And especially as a frost dps that I loved very much. I miss seeing varieties of dps out in the world and in groups.

This is a good post Nightingale, it is cool to see another Warden enthusiast as well.

I think they made a mistake reducing ultimate generation in the game in general (Pillager Gear nerf, magma shell, ect). Not to mention the nerf to the Warden's ultimate (though everyone talks about burst damage for the new Warden). And I agree with you, I wouldn't want to be forced to hold ultimate for any reason.

Im interested so see how this will affect the support aspect of the class. I dearly miss seeing Warden tanks and healers around the realm. Though I have a feeling we will get a taste of this with the DK rework since it'll be around first.

CalamityCat · 12:46PM

I'm really happy to see class masteries coming in. I'll be happy if pure classes are equal to subclassed, or a bit stronger. It makes sense that specialists are a bit stronger, and it takes away any pressure for players to subclass.

I get the impression that balance will be tweaked as the classes are being revamped, so I don't think subclassers will be that hard done by. Especially when classes like the arcanist and nightblade won't get revamped for a good while. I'm sure there will still be some strong subclass builds for some time.

On the other hand, I'm curious/concerned about the future emphasis on frost stuff, but it maybe isn't changing. I don't want to jump to conclusions purely based on mastery names

It would be interesting if they give warden tanks a boost, given they were at one point talking about the frost line as a tank one.

BasP · 1:51PM

Yeah, I really like the idea behind the Class Mastery system as well. Your ideas for those two Warden passives sound cool too.

Since the devs mentioned that the number of Class Mastery passives might change in the future, a part of me already hopes that they'll eventually add more than five. I think it would be nice to have multiple passives for each role that play into different themes/ skill lines of a class, allowing us to further specialise each character.

In the case of the Warden, I'd personally like it if my Magden could use two Class Mastery passives for Frost DPS and my Stamden could use two passives that buffed Animal Companions/ Bleed Damage or something, for example.

Zodiarkslayer · 2:39PM

I think it is clear from what was shown in the video that every class mastery will modify an existing class passive. They all worked and were worded like: "Rank 2 of class passive X now does this as well."

Based on that, I expect Glacial Cold to be related to Piercing Cold and Hypothermia to (ironically) Glacial Presence.

Glacial Cold sounds like it will directly buff frost damage. Just how? That's the interesting part. I think the class has always been a little low on crit chance, so a flat buff to base crit chance would be nice. It would also synergize with animal companion skills in the front bar. As long as they still get 5% crit damage per slotting. Who knows, we'll see.

Hypothermia sounds like something to apply to the enemy, so it will most likely extend the functionality of Chilled or add another debuff at the same time. Maybe Major Breach is the best choice, because Wall of Frost already applies minor Breach and it'll fit really well.

ESO_Nightingale · 2:42PM

Zodiarkslayer wrote: »

I think it is clear from what was shown in the video that every class mastery will modify an existing class passive. They all worked and were worded like: "Rank 2 of class passive X now does this as well."

Based on that, I expect Glacial Cold to be related to Piercing Cold and Hypothermia to (ironically) Glacial Presence.

Glacial Cold sounds like it will directly buff frost damage. Just how? That's the interesting part. I think the class has always been a little low on crit chance, so a flat buff to base crit chance would be nice. It would also synergize with animal companion skills in the front bar. As long as they still get 5% crit damage per slotting. Who knows, we'll see.

Hypothermia sounds like something to apply to the enemy, so it will most likely extend the functionality of Chilled or add another debuff at the same time. Maybe Major Breach is the best choice, because Wall of Frost already applies minor Breach and it'll fit really well.

They didnt all buff rank 2s but many of them did. Recursive flame and pound of flesh didnt.

ESO_Nightingale · 6:36PM

BasP wrote: »

Yeah, I really like the idea behind the Class Mastery system as well. Your ideas for those two Warden passives sound cool too.

Since the devs mentioned that the number of Class Mastery passives might change in the future, a part of me already hopes that they'll eventually add more than five. I think it would be nice to have multiple passives for each role that play into different themes/ skill lines of a class, allowing us to further specialise each character.

In the case of the Warden, I'd personally like it if my Magden could use two Class Mastery passives for Frost DPS and my Stamden could use two passives that buffed Animal Companions/ Bleed Damage or something, for example.

I agree. 5 is a nice starting point but it definitely doesnt feel like enough. If we had at least 2 per role and dps build type it would probably feel pretty good. But 5 to start with feels fine.