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Warden gripes - primarily PvE tank focused
Tonturri
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After getting my Warden to 50, getting her some armor and whatnot then tanking a whole bunch of Vet dungeons (skill points and Undaunted. Ugh) i decided to write up a post on why I think I'll generally prefer my Sorc/DK/NB/Templar tank over Warden, despite how much I want to/was prepared to enjoy Warden tanking.
1) Leeching Vines - I really like this ability due to the lovely heal per sec and the Minor Lifesteal, which allows me to survive nearly anything with Arctic Blast and a ground DoT or two going. However, some things about it make the thing a pain to use. First, it behaves nothing like Muta/Rapid's targetting. As the tank, I want this buff on myself - and in most cases, ONLY on myself. The cast is wasted if, as a tank, I put it on a DPS. They're generally not supposed to be taking hits, and if they are it most certainly won't be a continuous, 1+ hits/sec for 10 seconds, so a big chunk of the ability is going to be wasted. Unlike Muta/Rapid, I can cast Leeching Vines as much as I want, and it could end up on the same target - over and over - until I'm out of magicka. It won't pick a different target if the current one already has the buff, it'll just keep wasting my magicka. It seems to always prioritize group members if at all possible, so in order to get this buff consistently on myself, I have to spin around every ten seconds. Very irritating. Otherwise it's a very well designed (imo) ability.
From a PvP perspective, it seems Minor Lifesteal is halved, when it was already pretty weak to begin with. Just a minor thing, but as someone trying to make a light armor build not focused on shields, it's just another thing to grump about. It'd be great if Minor Lifesteal wasn't halved by battle spirit, especially considering it's not exactly a common debuff in pvp anyway. I also despair at getting the buff on myself when it's needed in Cyro/battlegrounds if there are other people around. While yes, spinning about does work, it seems to not only be a bad design choice/not fun/could be done better, but which way you're facing seems pretty important for a Warden - Deep Fissure and whatnot.
I have found it useful when healing, but in most dungeons requires me to hug the tank in order to get it on the right person, and as a squishy healer I've no wish to be that close to the tank and - presumably - the mobs/boss beating on the tank.
Lastly, it seems to scale oddly. I went from my tank setup to my light armor/healer setup, and the tooltip only increased by 100-200 (I gained around 7-8k magicka, lost ~100 spell damage - not sure how actually, but eh).
Suggested solution: Make it scale a bit better with Magicka (or, keeping it as it is, scale part with magicka part with health, or just health, or...you get the idea. Improve the targeting priority a bit (I had some success using my targeting reticle to buff the right target, but it still sometimes buffed someone completely different). I would also welcome a on/off switch to go between 'I'm tanking, give me the buff first if I don't have it, but if I have it already give it to someone else' and 'I'm healing, prioritize the tank but other people can have it too'. I am unsure as to what to do for PvP situations.
2) Nature's Embrace - During the PTS, I was able to use this skill on the bear pet ultimate, giving both the skill and the ultimate a - I felt - unique and well deserved feature, seeing as how both aren't seeing much use. Pretty much all Magicka wardens I've seen running around are using Northern Storm. I haven't actually seen any Stam Wardens running around except a godawful attempt at the 'stam healer' thing they have, but I assume they'd end up with DBoS/weapon ults. At least, those all look superior to the stam morph of the bear.
Anyway, come live, I couldn't use Nature's Embrace on the bear anymore. I posted a thread in the bug section of the forum, and only got one response about how it might've been a side effect of somethingsomething, people were teleporting to critters and so ZOS fixed it. Still haven't found anything in the patch notes. TLDR: unique - and certainly not OP - feature removed for reasons I can't quite identify. I was looking forward to using the bear ult in both PvP and PvE. In PvP it would've helped my no-shield magden survive, as the HoT is pretty powerful. In PvE, it would've been nice to have the option to give up Northern Storm in exchange for a bit more damage from the bear and being able to heal myself by using the bear as Nature's Embrace target.
On a side note, the bear is really, really clunky to use. Moving on.
3) Lotus Blossom - Another ability I feel is well designed in concept, but falls short in practice. First off, it doesn't seem to scale with...well, ANYTHING. Except %healing increased, via Troll king's 1 piece for example, or the Green Balance passive. Otherwise, the tooltip didn't change when my health, magicka, stamina, or spell damage changed. It also doesn't heal on medium weaves, which I feel should definitely be added.
4) Screaming Cliff Racer - Not really a tanking thing, but the 15% dmg bonus depending on range doesn't seem all that appealing in PvP, considering the abundance of gap closers. Heck, Winter's Embrace has an ability that bring the opponent to you, saving them the trouble of using their own gap closer (though I've morphed it to Frozen Device for the Major Maim, which is lovely, but even so). However, I will be the first to admit I am not the most experienced in PvP, so perhaps a more experienced warden could yay/ney on this one. It still looks pretty strong, I'm just iffy about the usefulness of the on-morph effect. With my shoddy gear, at max range it'd have 10405 tooltip damage.
Thank you for reading!
1) Leeching Vines - I really like this ability due to the lovely heal per sec and the Minor Lifesteal, which allows me to survive nearly anything with Arctic Blast and a ground DoT or two going. However, some things about it make the thing a pain to use. First, it behaves nothing like Muta/Rapid's targetting. As the tank, I want this buff on myself - and in most cases, ONLY on myself. The cast is wasted if, as a tank, I put it on a DPS. They're generally not supposed to be taking hits, and if they are it most certainly won't be a continuous, 1+ hits/sec for 10 seconds, so a big chunk of the ability is going to be wasted. Unlike Muta/Rapid, I can cast Leeching Vines as much as I want, and it could end up on the same target - over and over - until I'm out of magicka. It won't pick a different target if the current one already has the buff, it'll just keep wasting my magicka. It seems to always prioritize group members if at all possible, so in order to get this buff consistently on myself, I have to spin around every ten seconds. Very irritating. Otherwise it's a very well designed (imo) ability.
From a PvP perspective, it seems Minor Lifesteal is halved, when it was already pretty weak to begin with. Just a minor thing, but as someone trying to make a light armor build not focused on shields, it's just another thing to grump about. It'd be great if Minor Lifesteal wasn't halved by battle spirit, especially considering it's not exactly a common debuff in pvp anyway. I also despair at getting the buff on myself when it's needed in Cyro/battlegrounds if there are other people around. While yes, spinning about does work, it seems to not only be a bad design choice/not fun/could be done better, but which way you're facing seems pretty important for a Warden - Deep Fissure and whatnot.
I have found it useful when healing, but in most dungeons requires me to hug the tank in order to get it on the right person, and as a squishy healer I've no wish to be that close to the tank and - presumably - the mobs/boss beating on the tank.
Lastly, it seems to scale oddly. I went from my tank setup to my light armor/healer setup, and the tooltip only increased by 100-200 (I gained around 7-8k magicka, lost ~100 spell damage - not sure how actually, but eh).
Suggested solution: Make it scale a bit better with Magicka (or, keeping it as it is, scale part with magicka part with health, or just health, or...you get the idea. Improve the targeting priority a bit (I had some success using my targeting reticle to buff the right target, but it still sometimes buffed someone completely different). I would also welcome a on/off switch to go between 'I'm tanking, give me the buff first if I don't have it, but if I have it already give it to someone else' and 'I'm healing, prioritize the tank but other people can have it too'. I am unsure as to what to do for PvP situations.
2) Nature's Embrace - During the PTS, I was able to use this skill on the bear pet ultimate, giving both the skill and the ultimate a - I felt - unique and well deserved feature, seeing as how both aren't seeing much use. Pretty much all Magicka wardens I've seen running around are using Northern Storm. I haven't actually seen any Stam Wardens running around except a godawful attempt at the 'stam healer' thing they have, but I assume they'd end up with DBoS/weapon ults. At least, those all look superior to the stam morph of the bear.
Anyway, come live, I couldn't use Nature's Embrace on the bear anymore. I posted a thread in the bug section of the forum, and only got one response about how it might've been a side effect of somethingsomething, people were teleporting to critters and so ZOS fixed it. Still haven't found anything in the patch notes. TLDR: unique - and certainly not OP - feature removed for reasons I can't quite identify. I was looking forward to using the bear ult in both PvP and PvE. In PvP it would've helped my no-shield magden survive, as the HoT is pretty powerful. In PvE, it would've been nice to have the option to give up Northern Storm in exchange for a bit more damage from the bear and being able to heal myself by using the bear as Nature's Embrace target.
On a side note, the bear is really, really clunky to use. Moving on.
3) Lotus Blossom - Another ability I feel is well designed in concept, but falls short in practice. First off, it doesn't seem to scale with...well, ANYTHING. Except %healing increased, via Troll king's 1 piece for example, or the Green Balance passive. Otherwise, the tooltip didn't change when my health, magicka, stamina, or spell damage changed. It also doesn't heal on medium weaves, which I feel should definitely be added.
4) Screaming Cliff Racer - Not really a tanking thing, but the 15% dmg bonus depending on range doesn't seem all that appealing in PvP, considering the abundance of gap closers. Heck, Winter's Embrace has an ability that bring the opponent to you, saving them the trouble of using their own gap closer (though I've morphed it to Frozen Device for the Major Maim, which is lovely, but even so). However, I will be the first to admit I am not the most experienced in PvP, so perhaps a more experienced warden could yay/ney on this one. It still looks pretty strong, I'm just iffy about the usefulness of the on-morph effect. With my shoddy gear, at max range it'd have 10405 tooltip damage.
Thank you for reading!
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