PTS Update 18 - Feedback Thread for Warden Balance

ZOS_GinaBruno

This is the official feedback thread for the Warden combat balance and ability changes. After you have a chance to try out different combat scenarios, let us know what you think of the current balance.

Froil

For reference:

Warden

Animal Companions
Deep Fissure (Scorch morph): This morph no longer stuns the closest enemy hit. It now applies Major Breach to all enemies hit for 5 seconds.
Subterranean Assault (Scorch morph): This morph no longer applies Major Breach to enemies hit – it only applies Major Fracture. The duration of Major Fracture has been reduced to 5 seconds, down from 10 seconds.

Green Balance
Bursting Vines (Nature’s Grasp morph): This morph now grants 10 Ultimate when used on an ally under 60% Health, and added a 4 second cooldown.
Nature’s Grasp: This ability and the Nature’s Embrace morph now grant 3 Ultimate when the healing over time completes.

Winter’s Embrace
Arctic Wind: Increased the initial heal done by this ability and its morphs to 12% of your Max Health from 10%.
Crystallized Shield: Increased the cost of this ability and its morphs to 3240 Magicka from 2701.
Frozen Gate: This ability and its morphs now deal Frost Damage to the enemy when the trap is triggered.

Froil

As a Warden tank, I would prefer Subterranean Assault to retain the application of Major Breach and Fracture. I run it on my backbar along with Inner FIre/Ice staff for ranged taunting so I can apply these important debuffs with relative ease.
Sure I can run Weakness to Elements and morphs when running an Ice Staff and still use Subterranean Assault and apply both, but I'd rather run Wall of Elements or a defensive ability.

For Deep Fissure, that's one of only two stuns Wardens have, and I've read and heard the outcry that Wardens need to maintain access to a reliable class based stun.

Regarding the heal for Arctic Wind and morphs, it still feels too low. My 40k health tank would heal, ignoring CP bonuses, about 4.8k with the initial heal from it. If I'm doing difficult content without a healer, by choice or not, having a reliable self heal when I'm blocking an almost OHK attack from a boss is necessary. Increasing the base heal amount to even 20% of max health would be a safe increase. Most DPS in PvE would have around 18k health, PvP probably more around 25k, but with heals halved in PvP, 20% is suddenly 10%, with or without CP bonuses, so while, lower, it'd still be a good heal. The heal over time component should be increased from 2% to 5% for very much the same reasons as stated previously.

Nature's Grasp and morphs ult generation seems interesting enough and could potentially increase the uptime on Secluded Grove, or other ults.
The increase to Crystallized Shield's cost seems fine, maybe smarter use with it.
The damage for Frozen Gate seems unnecessary but it's not to say it couldn't be good.

Torbschka

Hey everyone, hopefully hello to @ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_Wrobel etc.,

I want to give u some feedback regarding ur change of the magicka warden, specific about this plannend change. Keep in mind, I'm exclusively speaking about PvP, but some of the things may be also a problem for solo PvE play (the I. 100%).

- Warden

- Deep Fissure (Scorch morph): This morph no longer stuns the closest enemy hit. It now applies Major Breach to all enemies hit for 5 seconds.

I will seprate this post into different categories to give u an idea, why I think that this is a huge mistake.

I. Warden's "style" - advertised as a "frost" caster

So, we had our unique frost skilline and bonus frost damage passives etc. Many people like to play with frost staff in PvP. Well, now tell me please:

How am I supposed to stun ANYONE in PvP when I use a frost staff and dont want to be a vampire / slot vampire drain.

This is a huge nerf. Furthermore, after u made birds dodgeable (which was at least understanable, although most "known" magicka wardens dont use this skill anymore in PvP) we are now going to lose our next unique class mechanic. This is currently what mag wardens are known for, what has a huge skill celling, what has outplay potential, WHAT MAKES US UNIQUE.

To conlude: No stun at all if u use frost staff + resto in PvP - 0. U 100% need inferno/shock staff now in pvp - hello wannabe sorc...


II. Gameplay

I am playing my magicka warden since morrowind now and I can guarentee u that this will be the total end of playing solo/outnumbered as a magicka warden or kill any competent player in a 1v1. We have 0 outplay potential now, we lose our undodgeable, yet hard to aim, stun. Furthermore, for many people u time ur burst with deep fissure, with this change, we lose at least one global cooldown, which means lower burst, more reaction time for ur opponents.

The typical Burst combo right now is:

Deep fissure - Skill - Skill (with fissure stun) - ulti/skill.

With this change it will be:

Deep fissure - Skill - Stun (which can be dodged (keep in mid, block was the counter to fissure stun..)) - ulti/skill.

There were 0 complains about magicka warden being too strong, hell, they are super hard to play if u play SOLO. If u think they were to strong in GROUP play, u made them even stronger in group with this change, because now u have an aoe major fracture high dmg skill - the stun will provided by someone else in your group. That is a totally mistake, MAGICKA wardens are not strong at all in solo play (keep in mind - I dont say super weak, I think they are rather balanced).

III. Bar Space

Even if u think this is a buff, u need to slot at least any stun , which means u are gonna lose one skill. E.g. - Mage light, swarm infection, whatever, which makes this even a stronger nerf.

IV. Conclusion

Well, I dont want this to be a "mimi" post, but there are several reasons why this is a bad change, to sum it up:

- losing uniqueness
- Frost staff will make no sense
- losing bar space
- buffing group play and nerfing solo play
- losing "uniqueness"

Oh, and especially at some other wardens @Waffennacht - we dont get anything good in exchange, beside some ulti from vines.

I hope this gets some attention by warden players and that u, ZOS, really get some good feedback by our CLASS REPRESENTATIVE - whoever that person is, because u nerf and destroy an already underplayed/"weaker" class more.

Thank you and plz keep this matured.

Edit: I can get in detail for myn of those points, especially (outplay) potential etc., but I didnt want to make this a toooooo long post.

MLGProPlayer

These changes do not help magicka warden DPS at all. The class still parses far below the other classes. They also have no group utility on their DPS skills to make up for the lack of damage.

Your argument up until now was that you couldn't buff PvE warden damage because they were OP in PvP. Guess what, they aren't OP in PvP anymore, yet they're still the worst PvE DPS class, by a country mile.

Can you actually fix this *** class? It's been 12 months since we paid MONEY for it and it's still useless in PvE. I'm not asking for it to be the best class. I just want it to be competitive with the others.

Hutch679

These really hurt mag wardens in pvp. No buffs to pve damage either. Mag warden is in a terrible spot, yet stamina warden is still one of the top performing pvp classes. I just don't get where they are going with this class... They have hardly any damage skills you can use unless you are a tank...

Torbschka

@ the stun remove from another poster:

The "reasoning" is one of the most extraordinary examples of dev hypocrisy I've seen yet.

Dev quote;
"In the same vein that snare abilities should either be short and powerful or long and weak, abilities should be low damage and CC, or high damage and no CC."

Buuuut.... Nightblades keeps fear (long CC and high damage) Incap (high damage + CC) and DK keeps Leap (high damage + CC), dizzying swing (high damage + cc) etc....

But they take our stun away completely. Neglecting to realize that the skill as it is already has several downsides that justify it having high damage with cc, and fail to acknowledge that its a pivotal skill for a Warden's offense AND defense.

Again, trying to understand this thought process is nothing short of infuriating.

Kreshja

How about putting some debuffs to Dive and its morphs since it doesn’t get used as a spammable?

Skander

Artic wind: Please make this a reliable heal, a 2% increase does nothing in pve or pvp

Deep fissure: If you really want to help wardens, instead of losing the stun and giving major fracture. Let the stun stay and give minor fracture


The rest is fine and dandy

arkansas_ESO

Thoughts from a PVP perspective as somebody that's leveled both a stam and magic warden:


1.) The cost increase to Shimmering Shield feels like a band-aid fix for a larger issue: the skill is too effective against projectile builds (even at the skill's new 3,240 cost it still restores 1,734 magicka if three attacks are absorbed, returning over half (53%) of the skill's cost, which means it can still be spammed indefinitely) and the skill grants the incredibly strong Major Heroism buff too easily and too frequently.

Suggested changes:

• Lower the 'shield size' (in the tooltip: "Spin a shield of ice around you, absorbing up to 32,494 damage") of both morphs to 7-8k in PVP. Change the Shimmering Shield morph to only grant Major Heroism if the shield is struck with more damage than it can absorb. This ability is overperforming because it can proc off of anything: light attacks from bows and staves, weak-hitting abilities like the initial damage portion of Poison Arrow and Flame Reach, as well as hard-hitting skills like Merciless Resolve and Crystal Fragments. This skill should encourage smart use: if you use it to reduce the damage of a frag that would otherwise take out half your health, you deserve to be rewarded, but there's nothing "heroic" about blocking three light attacks that your opponent was only casting to charge ultimate.
• Consider removing the magicka return from this skill from either the Shimmering Shield morph or the skill altogether. Wings doesn't restore magicka, Purifying Ritual doesn't restore magicka, this shouldn't either.

2.) The Subterranean Assault/Dizzying Swing/Dawnbreaker/Reverse Slice (or Sub/Cutting Dive/Dawnbreaker/Steel Tornado) is too effective in PVP. It's the same as the sorc combo of Curse+Frag+Dawnbreaker+Endless Fury except AOE, with more debuffs (Major Fracture) and a cheap, AOE ultimate that deals high damage and stuns that all scale off the same damage CP (since it's all physical or poison damage.) Magic Warden's Deep Fissure isn't an issue because Magic Warden has no cheap magic damage ultimate (since the bear has terrible and unreliable AI) and no execute (again, the bear is bad.)

Suggested change:

• In other builds, like a bow mainbar build, Subterranean Assault isn't an issue. Neither is Deep Fissure on a magden. It's only when it's combined with a strong, upfront damage execute like 2H's or DW's, and a burst ultimate like Dawnbreaker that it becomes over the top. Reducing the upfront damage of the Subterranean Assault morph, and giving it back it's missing damage in the form of a DOT or a damage bonus when hitting targets at long range (like Screaming Cliff Racer's bonus, to reduce the effectiveness of Sub+Dawnbreaker) would be the best way to nerf this specific combo without hurting PVE DPS or niche PVP builds.

vMaick

No one ever complained about the stun and balance wise it makes no sense to remove it.

mb10

First of all, the reason as to why you're seeing such little outrage is because hardly anyone plays Magicka Warden at the moment.

Mag Warden DPS
The crazy thing with Mag Wardens now is that even if the stun remained on fissure and birds were not dodgeable, they would still underperform in comparison to other magicka based dps classes in PVP.
What we're getting now is neither of these and so a whole class with no CC stun.

Of the whole Warden skill line, there are 4 damage dealing skills out of the 15 (before theyve been morphed):
A slow direct damage attack (Dive)
A delayed aoe burst (Scortch)
A DoT (Swarm)
A ground based AoE based off max health (Impaling shards)

Nightblade has 8, Templar has 10, Sorcerer 8, Dragonknight 11

So the Warden's damage dealing abilities MUST be good/useful and at the moment as there are so few and they're just not. Im not saying buff the whole class across the board but what I am saying is its severaly underperforming in regards to damage and something might need to be looked at.
My suggestion is increasing the speed of Dive and keeping the Fissure stun.
The major breech change to Fissure is a very welcomed change and a step in the right direction imo. Also balances stam and mag wardens a bit.

Mag Warden Healing
Arctic Wind is simply the less optimal heal to Enchanted Growth in regards to healing done and the benefits gained afterwards. EG gives minor intellect and endurance to all your allies in front as well as healing them for 20 seconds.
The secondary arctic wind effect is based of max health for whatever reason and hits every two seconds. I honestly honestly cannot wrap my mind around this skill and the point of it for anybody.
The heal atm in PVP is beyond a joke it really is. The heal wouldnt help a 720cp fighting keep guards atm let alone players.

The Arctic Wind heal should restore a figure of your health (or missing health) based on your max magicka and spell damage instantly or over a few seconds (no more than 3 like the NB heal) and the damage should be based off max magicka and spell damage and done every second, not two.


I understand the difficulty and work put in before making changes but if the Mag Warden community is saying these things and Im sure your stats can show the number of mag wardens in PVP atm in comparison to other classes then I hope you can have a few things done with the class to have a slight improvement to it.

MLGProPlayer

mb10 wrote: »

First of all, the reason as to why you're seeing such little outrage is because hardly anyone plays Magicka Warden at the moment.

This is it right here. Everyone has given up on magicka warden already. It's been the worst class in the game for 12 months now.

You are lucky to see 1-2 wardens in the top-100 for a trial leader board.

I'm not sure how ZOS doesn't see this...

hedna123b14_ESO

Please reconsider the change to Subterranean Assault. Reduced duration is fine, but taking away a debuff makes stamina wardens utterly useless in PvE. There is absolutely no reason to bring one into any raid.

MLGProPlayer

hedna123b14_ESO wrote: »

Please reconsider the change to Subterranean Assault. Reduced duration is fine, but taking away a debuff makes stamina wardens utterly useless in PvE. There is absolutely no reason to bring one into any raid.

ZOS seems adamant on killing the warden in all aspects of PvE (not that it was ever present at all, but they want to be sure no one even accidentally uses it there). Stamina is still much better off than magicka, but they're both useless.

Joy_Division

I normally try to be understanding and reserved in my criticisms on the PTS.

But the magicka warden changes (and lack thereof) are incomprehensible to me.

How exactly is this spec supposed to kill anything with no CC, no execute, and a mere 4 damage abilities that are easily avoided and do nothing else but damage? and this class is terrible DPS to begin with. The only reason this class got any play aside from "healer-troll tank" support was it had undodgeable birds and 2 good skills in Shimmering Shield and Deep Fissure. Now all this class offers is Shimmering Shield and why bother with mag when I can go stam and still use that?

So most people from these forums are probably familair with me because of Templars and I made a big thread about how they are really awkward to play in today's ESO.

Here's the sad news. As much as I lament about Templars, they are wealth of options and possibilities that can function in ESO compared to Wardens who actually want to kill other players. Wardens have 4, only 4 (!) damage skills. My templar, which has a entire skilline dedicated to healing, has 9. With so few damage skills, they have got to be good and versatile, and they're not. Without any passives, (i.e the actual abilities themselves) my templar damage skills snare, stun, gap-close, execute, return resources, heal me, proc additional damage, interrupt, raise my crit, heal others, damage opponents for attacking me, defile, empower, most are AoE, hit dodge rollers, and knock people off buildings. Warden damage skills can ... do what? Apply a debuff that is useless against shielded characters, cases of over-penetration, or targets already afflicted with the debuff.

I kind of understand the potential concern for skills that do high damage and CC. But, what about Dizzying Swing? Cheap ultis like Incap? Also, point me to the thread that complained about how Deep Fissure (NOT Sub Assault) that was so OP in PvP? As it is on Live, even when this skill stuns, I have NO fear of facing off against a Mag Warden in PvP because they're terrible at getting kills. I am much more aggravated by the troll tanks, which is what all magicka Wardens are going to do now because they have zero shot of killing anyone who is halfway decent. Heck, they can't even CC people without becoming a vampire or running DSA just to get a master destro.

I think the Deep Fissure change is a 100000000000% unnecessary and will absolutely pigeonhole Magicka Wardens to be support-tanks, which is the last thing cyrodiil needs.

Waffennacht

Tldr: what made Magden even viable for PvP with it's very small damage ability selection was the abilities' effectiveness, the removal of what made the abilities effective has made Magden a very suboptimal choice in any case of damage dealing.

maboleth

I was fairly new Warden and even without any forthcoming changes, I already moaned in my guild to help me tune my DD magwarden because with all those abilities, I felt I was mostly buffing myself and others! Where was my DD? I used staves more often than Warden skills.

Come on ZOS, Warden is your newest baby, it's a fun Nature-Druid class, but needs to be more powerful for magicka.

Solariken

While I appreciate moving Major Breach to Deep Fissure, not having an on-demand stun is going to obliterate MagWarden PvP viability.

Looking at the class kit, there simply is no other place to put a CC except Cliff Racer, but then it would still just be a crappier Javelin or Stone Fist.

What do you plan to do about this?

Also please buff Piercing Cold to 8%, it's sorely needed.

Solariken

Please scale Crystallized Slab on magicka and spell damage and buff the base damage.

Healthdens and tankdens prefer the ult gen morph anyway and Slab does crap damage even with 60k HP. The damage morph should be tailored to DD MagWarden.

manny254

Speaking mostly from PVP perspectives

First off I think that Cliff Racer and it's morphs need some attention given to them. We were told that these skills were made undodgeable because they have long travel times/animations, but these skills have since become dodgeable. While that was a choice that was better for the game nothing was done to correct the issues that plague the skill. All parts of the skill's animation/travel time need to be looked at and adjusted/sped up. I think that is the absolute minimum that should be done for the skill, but it would still need some work.

Speaking for the stamina morph it needs something additional to make it worth using. One small change that I think could help it would be changing it's damage type. Change it to poisons to fit with the theme of the shalks, and give it a 10% chance to proc the poisoned status effect. A small change that may not be enough to make people use it, but a decent place to start in my opinion.

I personally feel that all the changes to shalk are bad, and I agree with most of the comments already stated in this thread about them. The biggest thing I want to highlight is that taking the breach off the stamina morph only hurts friendly magicka players. Additionally, lowering the duration further kills the utility of the skill. Especially when all other sources of these debuffs last much longer and don't have an avoidable aoe telegraph. All the changes made to this skill need to reverted or put on some middle ground.

Edit: (Unless there was a change I missed) The nature's gift passive still does not proc when the caster is healed. In most (if not all) other cases of the wording "ally" this normally means it affect the caster as well. This means this passive has no benefit to a solo player, and I personally see no reason why this passive should not proc on the caster.

red_emu

And the biggest draw back for mag warden... No execute. No class execute, no guild skill execute, no destro execute. I've been playing mag warden every day in non CP since Morrowind dropped and it is definitely the weakest class there is. It needs re worked across the board. Having a million passives attached to skills does not change the fact that it's incredibly difficult to burst someone down. Even if you manage to take out someone's 75% health bar, they will just heal though it before your second burst lands since we have no access to any execute.

Lynx7386

My feedback:

Arctic Wind & Morphs
The "Improvement" from 10% to 12% max health on the initial heal is almost insulting. You've taken a poor ability and made it just a little less poor - but it's still nowhere near as effective an emergency heal for a tank as dragon blood, dark cloak, or clannfear.
A 20% max health initial heal with 10% over 10 seconds would have put it on a similar total heal level with these other abilities, while still having to wait for the full duration to get the same effect. Given that it can heal an ally or deal damage, that seems a fine exchange to me.
Suggested Change: Make arctic wind and morphs a 20% max health initial heal and 2% every 2 seconds for 10 seconds.

Shalks & Morphs
As a tank, the change to sub assault to remove major breach is a seriously low blow. This is one of the few abilities that warden tanks had to set them apart from others: the ability to apply major fracture and breach to a group of enemies all at once. Now that option has been gutted.
Also, nobody was complaining about the stun on deep fissure, and now it's made pvp even worse for magicka wardens. So you've gone and nerfed both tank and mag wardens with this change, with absolutely no compensation elsewhere.
Suggested Change: Revert this change, add both debuffs back to sub assault and if absolutely necessary find a different change to make for deep fissure.

General Feedback

DPS, especially for mag warden, is in a terrible spot. Stop making all of these unnecessary and pointless little changes and start looking at the big picture. Swarm/Fetcher Infection/Growing swarm all need improvement. The stamina morphs for guardian and cliff racer offer ABSOLUTELY NOTHING over the base ability other than a resource cost and damage type adjustment. STOP making morphs that dont give you anything extra, both of these abilities should be granting some kind of bonus. Stop treating stamina builds like they should be appreciating even having stamina abilities, this isnt 1.6 for god's sake.

Tanking as a warden is only getting nerfed with this chapter, and considering that wardens - even as the acclaimed "second best tanks" in the game, are still not acceptable for trials tanking because dragon knights still provide more.
Warden tanks need a burst emergency heal, and we thought we were getting that with arctic wind's changes, but apparently ZOS botched that already. Frozen device, as interesting as it is, is too slow and too unreliable in comparison to chains as a pull. Resource management, even with netch and nature's gift, still makes it far, far more difficult for a warden tank to maintain permablock than it is for a DK tank. As much as ZOS claims it doesnt like permablocking, you guys still keep forcing it by designing trials around it. Would love to see one of the ZOS devs try to tank AA axes without blocking.

Healing as a warden is more stressful and less reliable than as a templar. With all of the heals being area or conal targeting, it's extremely difficult to 'hit' a moving ally with a heal, and as anyone who's ever done a dungeon will know, the first thing that DPS do when they take heavy damage is start running around like headless chickens trying to get away from the ouchies. Nature's grasp is useless, the area on fungal growth/enchanted growth is too narrow, and the delay on budding seeds is either too short or too long (based on what you're doing). For a healer, budding seeds is only useful when spammed for the instant proc, which just means you're less efficient than a templar healer. For a tank, budding seeds doesnt last long enough to rely on as a burst emergency heal because it ends up disappearing after 6 seconds.
Either make seeds heal instantly and no longer have a wait/duration, or make it a heal over time with a burst heal at the end and a 20 second duration that can be triggered by a second cast - at least then a tank could drop it down and know that if he needs a burst heal he can trigger it any time within 20 seconds.

Guardian & Morphs
Aside from the already touched upon fact that wild guardian does jack-all for stamina because it's no different than the base ability, eternal guardian is actually detrimental to a magicka warden because every time it dies you get stuck in a casting animation.
How about making the eternal guardian take no damage? Or have much higher damage mitigation? That way it doesnt always die in combat.
How about making wild guardian actually deal more damage like the tooltip states it should? Or better yet, give it a ranged charge when you activate the ultimate attack.

arkansas_ESO wrote: »

Thoughts from a PVP perspective as somebody that's leveled both a stam and magic warden:


1.) The cost increase to Shimmering Shield feels like a band-aid fix for a larger issue: the skill is too effective against projectile builds (even at the skill's new 3,240 cost it still restores 1,734 magicka if three attacks are absorbed, returning over half (53%) of the skill's cost, which means it can still be spammed indefinitely) and the skill grants the incredibly strong Major Heroism buff too easily and too frequently.

Suggested changes:

• Lower the 'shield size' (in the tooltip: "Spin a shield of ice around you, absorbing up to 32,494 damage") of both morphs to 7-8k in PVP. Change the Shimmering Shield morph to only grant Major Heroism if the shield is struck with more damage than it can absorb. This ability is overperforming because it can proc off of anything: light attacks from bows and staves, weak-hitting abilities like the initial damage portion of Poison Arrow and Flame Reach, as well as hard-hitting skills like Merciless Resolve and Crystal Fragments. This skill should encourage smart use: if you use it to reduce the damage of a frag that would otherwise take out half your health, you deserve to be rewarded, but there's nothing "heroic" about blocking three light attacks that your opponent was only casting to charge ultimate.
• Consider removing the magicka return from this skill from either the Shimmering Shield morph or the skill altogether. Wings doesn't restore magicka, Purifying Ritual doesn't restore magicka, this shouldn't either.

Your suggestions would destroy the ability for tank wardens. Wings and Shimmering shield are not intended to fill the same roles - shield is there for ult generation and some damage reduction from projectiles. Wings are designed more offensively, and can dish back a whopping 120% of the damage you would have taken from any reflected projectile.

Hutch679

Zos doesn't care about wardens, if they did they would have got more attention this patch. Yet Templars and nightblades are still gonna be BoL spamming, roll dodge cloaking animals. Every just play a nightblade. Then we can a ghost town in cyrodiil of zergs all in stealth.

Ron_Burgundy_79

I've discussed this in another thread, but the guardian should be targetable by all green balance abilities including both morphs of nature's grasp. The free cost of the eternal guardian should come free of the animation as well. The base animation needs to be reduced from 3 seconds to 1.5 seconds like sorc pets. As of now the bear isn't viable in PvP.

LeHarrt91

I do have to agree that the Magicka Warden is lacking in DPS especially without the bear (which is single target and double barred). As its been previously stated numerous times, the DoTs need a buff. i also think that the Animal companion passive could use a tweak as we already have a whole healing tree and the 1260 ish heal from Bond with Nature (tho critable) is small and doesnt help with dps.
Also i would like to see a group dps passive like the other classes which provide minor dps buffs (minor savagery, Brutatilty etc) to the group, the minor toughness the warden provides is only when healing and is also the same buff provided by Warhorn which Tanks and Healers are often rotating.

JohnOfMarkarth

You know... most things written here are mostly bout 'dem pvp-ers'
but as said before... there is not much screaming about this. And that aint because there is no reason for it... Ots because you lot made even trying to use wardens so hard, unrewarding and downright obsolete, that noone wants to even play them.
So here is my piece... what could one change. And am PvE person...
So, one thing needs to be done before we approach what could change. And that is what mag wardens run around that other classes similar to them hold, which are Sorcs and DKs from perspective of being element specific and unique in the matter

• DKs run around fire damage.
• Fire staff bonus is 8% more single target damage.
• Heavy attacks with fire staff also deal more damage on single target
• Blockade deals more damage on burning targets
• They have fire damage bonuses and burning effect extensions
• Engulfing flames provide further 10% fire damage
• Multiple powerful dots based on heavily buffed fire damage.
• Sorcs Run around lightning.
• Lightning staff bonus is 8% more Aoe DMG
• Heavy attacks with lightning deal 108% or so aoe dmg around the main target
• Blockade sets off-balance giving a chance for a great damage boost
• They also have dual execution ability from both passive and mage's fury
• There are at least 4 Abilities that sorc's bonus lightning damage passive benefit from
• Their lightning based skills deal much higher damage
• Very powerful cheap ultimates
• Wardens run around ice damage
• Ice staff has 0 damage bonus passives
• Their class ice damage buff of 6% is only ever so useful on 2 abilities they hold. one of them ultimate
• Blockade Immobilizes. No damage potential from it
• Mediocre damage ultimates

MagWardens are not bad only because of their abilities alone
they are also bad because they run around an elemental damage that reaps little to 0 bonuses from being used.
Ice staves have very little dps utility. And as destruction staves of an element a class is heavily affected by, they should also have some efficient damage bonus
For instance, from a fancy perspective of what ice magic is...

• Give Heavy ice attacks 6% more crit damage.
• Give ice staff ancient knowledge bonus for all single traget abilities to deal 6% more crit damage
• Make Ice staff cause blocking cost magicka, a default thing without need of using a passive for it.
• Perhaps even make destructive ice touch have the same passive as ancient knowledge has, for being slotted but a bit less effective, removing it from Ancient knowledge

And then the class abilities

• Make Impaling shards scale from magicka and spell damage by default and make the winter's revenge deal say 80% (Changeable number)more damage to chars under 25% as a similar story to steel tornado
• Make Crystalized slab scale from max magicka and spell damage and increase the base damage of it at least a bit

This is what I think anyways. People might get some better ideas how to and where to correct me.
But I firmly believe that ice staff is much to blame for warden's mediocrity along its lack of proper ice skills

LeHarrt91

How about changing Chilled (or add a synergy to Winters revenge and morphs) to reduce resistance by x amount. Boom instantly viable in trials.
Well not instantly.... but more than they are now lol

Lynx7386

JohnOfMarkarth wrote: »

You know... most things written here are mostly bout 'dem pvp-ers'
but as said before... there is not much screaming about this. And that aint because there is no reason for it... Ots because you lot made even trying to use wardens so hard, unrewarding and downright obsolete, that noone wants to even play them.
So here is my piece... what could one change. And am PvE person...
So, one thing needs to be done before we approach what could change. And that is what mag wardens run around that other classes similar to them hold, which are Sorcs and DKs from perspective of being element specific and unique in the matter

• DKs run around fire damage.
• Fire staff bonus is 8% more single target damage.
• Heavy attacks with fire staff also deal more damage on single target
• Blockade deals more damage on burning targets
• They have fire damage bonuses and burning effect extensions
• Engulfing flames provide further 10% fire damage
• Multiple powerful dots based on heavily buffed fire damage.
• Sorcs Run around lightning.
• Lightning staff bonus is 8% more Aoe DMG
• Heavy attacks with lightning deal 108% or so aoe dmg around the main target
• Blockade sets off-balance giving a chance for a great damage boost
• They also have dual execution ability from both passive and mage's fury
• There are at least 4 Abilities that sorc's bonus lightning damage passive benefit from
• Their lightning based skills deal much higher damage
• Very powerful cheap ultimates
• Wardens run around ice damage
• Ice staff has 0 damage bonus passives
• Their class ice damage buff of 6% is only ever so useful on 2 abilities they hold. one of them ultimate
• Blockade Immobilizes. No damage potential from it
• Mediocre damage ultimates

MagWardens are not bad only because of their abilities alone
they are also bad because they run around an elemental damage that reaps little to 0 bonuses from being used.
Ice staves have very little dps utility. And as destruction staves of an element a class is heavily affected by, they should also have some efficient damage bonus
For instance, from a fancy perspective of what ice magic is...

• Give Heavy ice attacks 6% more crit damage.
• Give ice staff ancient knowledge bonus for all single traget abilities to deal 6% more crit damage
• Make Ice staff cause blocking cost magicka, a default thing without need of using a passive for it.
• Perhaps even make destructive ice touch have the same passive as ancient knowledge has, for being slotted but a bit less effective, removing it from Ancient knowledge

And then the class abilities

• Make Impaling shards scale from magicka and spell damage by default and make the winter's revenge deal say 80% (Changeable number)more damage to chars under 25% as a similar story to steel tornado
• Make Crystalized slab scale from max magicka and spell damage and increase the base damage of it at least a bit

This is what I think anyways. People might get some better ideas how to and where to correct me.
But I firmly believe that ice staff is much to blame for warden's mediocrity along its lack of proper ice skills

The frost tree is for tanking. Magicka wardens are based on magic damage, not frost damage (i.e. the damage type you get from screaming cliff racer, eternal guardian, deep fissure, and both swarm morphs).

Stop trying to make ice for dps, it isnt intended for that role anymore. Ice is for tanking. A magicka warden should be using a fire or lightning staff, not an ice staff. You get a 6% bonus to magic damage as a warden, that bonus also happens to apply to several undaunted and mage's guild abilities as well as restoration staff damage. The 6% bonus to frost damage is just a gimmick for tanks to use while soloing.

Hutch679

Ron_Burgundy_79 wrote: »

I've discussed this in another thread, but the guardian should be targetable by all green balance abilities including both morphs of nature's grasp. The free cost of the eternal guardian should come free of the animation as well. The base animation needs to be reduced from 3 seconds to 1.5 seconds like sorc pets. As of now the bear isn't viable in PvP.

How do I hit agree more times? The bear is useless in pvp. Honestly, how is a class going receive this few damage skills? I mean for real. They make the cliff racer dodgable, okay understandable because you shouldn't be able to spam an undogable skill that someone if forced to just block or die. Now they are removing the only stun warden has... I mean come on. At some point someone has to speak up about this class seriously lacking in the damage department. The burst is decent, but there is no finisher, AND there delay between cliff racer/deep fissure makes it extremely difficult to kill a good player. I'm not saying it should be easy mode. But at some point someone has to look at this and say "something doesnt add up here".

MLGProPlayer

Hutch679 wrote: »

Ron_Burgundy_79 wrote: »

I've discussed this in another thread, but the guardian should be targetable by all green balance abilities including both morphs of nature's grasp. The free cost of the eternal guardian should come free of the animation as well. The base animation needs to be reduced from 3 seconds to 1.5 seconds like sorc pets. As of now the bear isn't viable in PvP.

How do I hit agree more times? The bear is useless in pvp. Honestly, how is a class going receive this few damage skills? I mean for real. They make the cliff racer dodgable, okay understandable because you shouldn't be able to spam an undogable skill that someone if forced to just block or die. Now they are removing the only stun warden has... I mean come on. At some point someone has to speak up about this class seriously lacking in the damage department. The burst is decent, but there is no finisher, AND there delay between cliff racer/deep fissure makes it extremely difficult to kill a good player. I'm not saying it should be easy mode. But at some point someone has to look at this and say "something doesnt add up here".

We've been speaking up about this class for 12 months, but ZOS has been ignoring us.