What to run on mag warden?

Yubarius

I wanna do like an ice mage but I'm not sure what's best for warden, as I have just started levelling one.

Shushu_H

You should be able to find usefulness out of war maiden and necropetence still. Keep in mind fletcher isn't behaving as a dot in cp with thaumaturge it is direct damage and doesn't proc valkyn skoria. Other than that there is a pretty interesting burst build Kevduit made with ice. Alcast also made an ice dd build.

Vaoh

If you a want to play an Ice Mage don't expect high damage

Set-wise, you definitely want to run Maelstrom Arena on Normal and gather pieces of the Winterborn set. It is one of the two true Ice-based sets in the game, and is actually pretty decent.

The second set to go after is Iceheart, a 2-piece monster set, which could require quite a bit of farming to get.

This is the best way to truly create an "Ice Mage".

In case you want to build a strong Magicka Warden for PvE, sets like Julianos, Moondancer, War Maiden, and Necropotence come to mind. The strongest build I've managed to find for DPS has been 2x Ilambris, 5x Julianos, 4x Moondancer as of the Morrowind patch, though Magicka Warden is notably the weakest Damage Dealer of them all (by a lot) right now.

Jitterbug

Yeah ^
Im real interessed in the result on dps from winterborn, iceheart, and maybe even ysgramors birthright . DW would take out the ice staff though but I dont think you should group dps with an icestaff anyway...

seedubsrun

I run a winterborn/ice heart DPS magWarden. It's mostly just for fun since DPS for mag warden is so bad right now. I run a sharpened lightning or inferno crafted staff on front bar and vMA frost staff on back bar. Here's my skills:

Bar 1: lightning/inferno spell damage glyph
Inner Light
Force Pulse
Fetcher Infection
Subterranean Assault
Dampen Magicka
Ult: Northern Storm

Bar 2: vMA Frost Staff
Blue Betty
Rearming Trap or Ice Fortress
Living Trellis
Elemental Blockade
Winter's Revenge
Ult: Destro

I've been doing vMA with this pretty successfully and run rearming trap on back bar when I do that. If I'm doing regular stuff or dungeons I'll use Ice Fortress to be more tanky. A lot of people say that running an ice staff on a DPS or in a group is a bad idea but here's why it's not: The issue is the taunt from heavy attacking with an ice staff. Solution: Don't heavy attack with an ice staff. I have it on my back bar to determine the elemental affect of my destro ulti and elemental blockade. When I do my rotation I weave light attacks and do all heavy attacks with the lightning/inferno staff on my front bar. It's easy and unless I'm really not paying attention I never accidentally taunt. The proc from Ice Heart goes off all the time and that also procs the Winterborn set a ton.

Like I said the DPS output isn't anything special by any means but it's fun. You can swap out Winterborn for Julianos and get more damage but you'll lose some of the Frost Mage RP of it all

Vizier

I primarily use my Magwarden in PvP. It's fun, but frustrating at the same time. I am getting more effective with him though despite difficulties. I've experimented with some sets, mostly combined with Necropotence. I've run 5X Shacklebreaker. I used sets of impen, divines and infused. (expensive I know). I even switched up heavy for light. I found I was happiest with impen. The difference in the others wasn't enough to offset the survivability of heavy impen.

The warden has some nice skills that allow for you to ditch the healing staff. I switched out to S n B for the backbar with defending 1H and Health glyph on the shield. I've also replaced shacklebreaker with Julianos for now and have been swiching up my 5 Necro with War Maiden just to see. They are all interesting but so far I'm most pleased with 5x Julianos, 5X Necro and 1X Illambris. (use watever monster piece you want for the stat you need) I run a Firestaff front (lightning was fun too but..) SnB back. 2 dmg glyphs on rings and regen on Neck. Race Breton. With Witchmothers brew and Blue Betty up I have around over 44K magicka and 1800 Magicka regen, 22-24K health and enough stam for most of my needs. Gear is purple with exception of weapons. (Not golding up until I settle on a build) Also around 2200-2300 Spell damage, 9K spell pen, 30ish% spell crit and roughly 18K-22K weapon and spell resistances.

What I've found is this class can get kills but vs good players it's difficult. The burst is nice. I can see the Warden being a real pain in the ass to people with burst and good CC, but the sustain damage between the burst that is needed to put some of these better players away just isn't there, even with cliff racer and force shock. So at the moment I don't feel like the Warden is a great Solo PvP class yet, but really shines in groups. I get tons of killing blows in groups. With good burst, great CC's and stuns, self heals, Healing de-buff's, Area heals etc, they are a killer support / DPS class.

I am anxiously waiting for ZoS's promised increases to MagWard Dps. Once these hit I think the class will great.

Waffennacht

So the new version I'm running is:
x2 Grothdar (may try Shadowrend or one of the new sets after update)
x5 Necropotence (just too good for me to pass up)
x4/5 Alchemist (wanted to run heavy and needed an offensive set that can go to both bars)

SnB
Fire Staff

Witchmother's
x3 tri Glyphs x4 magicka (magicka on shield)

Atronach Mundus

SnB
Invasion, Gripping Shards, Betty (probably gonna change to Bull ftw), Enchanted Fungus (lol), Flex, ult Healing Thicket

Staff
Trellis, Fissure, Pulse, Dampen, Racer ult Northern Storm

It's pretty awesome ATM, with invasion I get a hard CC and gap closer, combined with Shards gets the Roots, switch to fire staff, walk around then like a DK and hit then with your combo.

It's got everything you could want with the sustain you need. x2 spell Glyphs x1 mag regen because you get your burst from alchemist

Northern Storm for the magicka and dampen because no innerlight, most times use Thicket anyway

However I'm gonna change it up a bit, see if I can get alteration in there and do some crazy mitigation things with block while utilizing shards and a gap closer.

It's like a DK with shields and range

Flameheart

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Wrong thread.