PTS Update 18 - Feedback Thread for Warden Balance

Ludof

Warden are crap pve wise.
Whilse stamden os OP af, magden will be complete garbage (lacking of class cc, and nerf to pidgeon).

Good job so far!

Peekachu99

The Arctic Winds change is minuscule to the point of irrelevance. I have no idea why this class hasn’t had more attention after a year. The shalks change was okay, though it benefits solo/ PVP more than anything else. There’s really nothing else to say since everything else was so minor.

Perhaps making the birds undodgeable (again) might be worth revisiting. I don’t know tbh.

mb10

Make Arctic Wind a good spell damage/magicka DoT that hits every one second and heals for every target hit?

xbobx

mb10 wrote: »

Make Arctic Wind a good spell damage/magicka DoT that hits every one second and heals for every target hit?

i would rather them make it into a single target spamable like ice spear or something that way that one set that requires direct frost damage would be useful.

mainarhont

Sometimes the bear call skill does not work (Eternal Guardian). It's possible that it works, but the call animation does not play and the bear does not appear. But when I use the skill on the mob - ultimate is spent and the mob aggravates on me. It also happens that after teleportation the bear disappears and it must be called again.

Not exactly about Warden, but still: there was a situation, riding a mount, the character spontaneously dismounted and ran further on foot.

Il3rotherhood

Also, the fact that I can log on a sunday night with my warden, look at the weekly vMA leaderboard and do a run with a final score below 100k and still make the leaderboards tells a lot about the class... why ? because there is usually only between 10-20 wardens who completed vMA every week ! Nobody wants to run the arena with it because it is simply underperforming PvE wise. It makes it challenging even tho you can complete it with your eyes closed with another class. With all the other classes, you are lucky to make the leaderboads with a score of 400k.

I main a magicka warden since the launch of Morrowind and take her for everything I do (thank god i'm not into trials, even my frends wouldn't take me lol) and the lack of good class damage dealing abilities is really depressing when you think about it. There are a lot of good ideas and feedback on this thread and I truly hope they will listen to it and even implement some, because the changes they propose as of now does nothing to help the class...

_Ahala_

Have you considered adding off balance to deep fissure? This would allow Magden to retain a sort of class stun with a heavy or medium weave with any weapon and provide some group utility in pvp and pve with off balance... Imagine the beautiful Magdk synergy...
anyways... if the availability of off balance leads to a resource glut with the x2 resource modifier off a heavy or if the heavy attack damage gets out of hand, you can always place a cool down on the off balance portion of the skill. Please consider.

Ludof

All I know is that I won't play warden anymore, if they don't make any change...

Soleya

A thought on shalks and morphs.

Magicka version should gain major breech and a CC, Stam version should be reverted back to major breach/fracture so it's useful on tanks and gives warden tank something no other tank class has.

Then change the damage to half the current valule, with the other half done as a 3 second dot after. This would reduce the burst potential in PVP and have no affect on the DPS in PVE.

I like what some others here have said about adding empower to the cliff racer.

Lotus needs a duration increase, 17 seconds causes it to expire mid rotation since most dots are around 10 seconds. Really should match the netch duration.

Bear AI needs some work, and it dies way to often in harder content (vMA, vDSA, Trials, etc). With as important as it is to warden dps, it really needs work. I also agree that activating the ultimate should have it do some sort of charge if not near an enemy.

Mihael

I thinks instead of birds giving increased damage based on distance they should have the same effect as fetcher infection where if you cast it again it does more damage with maybe a multiplier of 3 before it resets

Walden

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.

I'm concerned about this. Given the change that allows two-handed weapons to count as two set pieces, it felt like Frost Staves were being validated as a proper, desirable tanking weapon. On Live, I've been running two Frost Staves. I'd been using Subterranean Assault as a substitute for Pierce Armor, since it applies both Major Breach and Fracture, and it's only two seconds shorter.

But now, I have to choose between Fissure and Assault, to apply only one of them, and for only 5 seconds. 5 seconds is... nothing? I'll have to blow twice as much Stamina to keep the Fracture active, and I'll have to hope that the healer or a mage is running Elemental Drain because I certainly don't have room on my bar. So I'm forced to go back to slotting Pierce Armor to provide the debuffs that are expected of a tank.

Eh. It's not the end of the world. Just kinda had my hopes up.

Hutch679

What if deep fissure was a knock down? Make the bugs root someone or something.... just give warden SOMETHING for CC for the love of god!

Edrein

Lynx7386 wrote: »

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.

Their points were valid. As far as the change to make ice tank based? That's not exactly a great change. Instead they should just create a seperate stave for magicka tanking and revert the ice staff to being a shield proccing bonus.

Warden was billed as being an ice caster, whether or not you want to admit that was the marketing ploy or not is irrelevant.

There are two great sets that synergize with making a frost damage build. Winterborn and Ysgramor. The problem is between the 1 (3 with morphs as of Summerset) ice damage dealing spells in a Wardens kit and Destro staff, you still don't really have enough to make Ysgrammor strong. Winterborn doesn't require ice damage to be dealt, however with it's abysmal 3m range mobs have to literally glitch ontop of each other to hit multiple targets with the proc.

If they added frost based morphs to Animal Companion's lines then it'd work out. A cold Swarm, cold bear, cold cliff racer, etc. Make it an optional passive to turn Magic Damage to Frost for Warden skills.

I personally would love to be able to make my magicka DPS warden work as a good cryomancer. The problem is; even with the proper gearing and forgoing a frost staff, it just won't work until the base class itself is updated.

Mihael

DONT LET MAGDEN CC NERF DISTRACT YOU FROM THE FACT THAT SUB ASSAULT DID NOT GET NERFED OR ANY ASPECT OF STAM WARDEN FOR THAT MATTER.

why nerf the version of the class not one single person was saying was op but the stam version literally anyone who plays this game can agree its overperforming is left virtually untouched (the reduced duration of major fracture is not a nerf lets be real any good warden can still have the same uptime on it as on live)

Boojumhunter

Guards-the-Young is a "sub optimal" build -- that is, he's mostly magicka, but runs both magicka and stamina skills, doing both Magicka and Physical damage. No PvP here, so can't speak to those issues.

Of the changes so far, Subterranean Assault will affect my PvE experience the most -- and change group dynamics the most. I'm going to do less damage, and somebody else in the group is going to have to cast that debuff!

NyassaV

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

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.

When the bear works (When) it is probably the most powerful skill in the game. However it seldom works well

dodgehopper_ESO

My suspicion: Warden is going to be Templar 2.0. Brace yourselves folks; it is gonna be painful.

Spurius_Lucilius

Should have a skill or at least a morph that shoot the ice bolt just like the redguard in the CG did. It should be a stun with some damage or some extra effects, and its range should be 15m or 8m.
If it is a skill, it should has a morph that get rid of the stun and give a nice Dot to Buff up PVE Magden.
This would make up for the Deep Fissure stun and improve the PVE DPS.

Tryxus

Animal Companions

Screaming Cliff Racer: Increased the travel speed of the Cliff Racer by approximately 33% to make up for the fact that it cannot can be dodged. (fixed a typo there while I was at it)

This is 1 of the 2 good changes that we received with Summerset. The current Cliff Racer is slow, both easily dodged and mitigated so a speed increase was needed for this ability. The change is really noticable and along with the increase in Light/Heavy attack damage it makes the Warden feel like a threat again at long range.

I am wondering though if the Stamina morph Cutting Dive also received a speed increase. It's definitely needed since that morph doesn't add anything else to the skill, only changing the damage type.


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.

Now... if there is a way to completely "gut" a class (like a horker), this nerf would probably be it. If we're talking about solo PvP and smallscale, then Deep Fissure currently is what makes us capable in that aspect:

- A delayed stun along with the damage of the skill is something that we can combine with certain Ultimates (think Soul Assault and Ice Comet) and other skills for a great burst combo
- The stun can also be used defensively to cancel out the offense of an incoming attacker

Now, you told us the following in the developer comments:
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.

But the thing is: you cannot apply the same rule to every class/skill in this game and expect it to work. Especially not on a class that doesn't have a reliable built-in CC.

Currently on the PTS, if I'm fighting a single opponent, I can't properly set up a burst combo anymore since I have to throw in another CC from a different skill tree (currently using Borrowed Time from the Psijic Order) causing me to lose valuable time for a follow-up attack. And really mobile fighters (Medium Armor), who were already hard to hit with this skill, can just freely move around us whether the Shalk hit them or not.

Our offense is delayed, slow and easily avoided or mitigated. And now with this change to Deep Fissure, we lost a good chunk of damage and burst. This has crippled us in solo PvP

On the other hand a Magicka Warden is an excellent team player and group supporter in PvP, which is the aspect of the class that I like the most. And it does seem to me that you guys are trying to improve us in that aspect but at the same time, you're downgrading us heavily in areas that we already were struggling with.

Besides, this change doesn't even offer us anything in regards to PvE: Major Breach is a debuff that both tanks and healers apply through other skills like Elemental Drain and Pierce Armor. If you really want us to become better at being the "support" guys, you need to come up with something a lot better than just ruining a key skill and slapping a redundant debuff on it. Something that will make PvE Trial group actually want us as the secondary healer (or as a Magicka DPS, for those that want it).

So please, revert this change. Deep Fissure is too important a skill for us in PvP.


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.

No ZOS, no matter how attractive you're trying to make Bursting Vines, there's no way I'll ever pick that morph over Nature's Embrace for the simple reason that it also heals the caster.

This skill is THE way to have mobility on a Magicka Warden in PvP and whenever I need to pull myself away towards my allies, it's best to heal myself at the same time. So in this scenario, Nature's Embrace is way better than Bursting Vines, even with the increased speed and the chance to gain 10 Ultimate.

Now, with the added 3 Ultimate if the HoT completes, I can actually see myself use this skill in PvE as well both as a preventive heal and as a way to have higher War Horn uptime (especially with the Jorvuld's Guidance set). Nature's Embrace would still be the preferred morph for this then.


Winter’s Embrace
Arctic Wind: Increased the initial heal done by this ability and its morphs to 12% of your Max Health from 10%.

We got trolled. I think a lot of ppl here were expecting this skill to become our version of a Dragonknight's Dragon Blood skill: healing for 30% instantly. Especially due to Dark Cloak becoming a similar skill to that.

Turns out, the initial heal was increased by 20%, meaning it now heals for a grand total of... 12%

Congratulations ZOS, you took a useless skill and made it 2% less useless.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Could you clarify how we lied? If you're referencing one of the write-ups from the recent event we had at the studio, they mentioned the heal will increase by 20% which is still true. It is increasing to 12%, which is a 20% increase in effectiveness. If this is something different, please let us know.

The initial heal of this skill and the additional one from the Polar Wind morph are not as good as other self heals the Warden has access to, and both the HoT and the damage from the Arctic Blast morph are neglectable as well. The only good thing about this skill is the Arctic Blast morph being another source of Cold Damage for certain setups (Winterborn) and the Chilled status.

Increasing the initial heal with 2%? It's laughable, it's not going to make this skill useful all of a sudden.

Crystallized Shield: Increased the cost of this ability and its morphs to 3240 Magicka from 2701.

Come on, this is just a slap on the wrist.

Even with this increase in cost, this skill still returns a large portion of Magicka whenever a projectile is stopped while the Shimmering Shield morph adds a very powerful buff to the caster. Magicka Wardens can still endlessy spam this skill and shut down ranged builds whereas Stamina Wardens don't have to invest much Magicka to get this shield and Major Heroism.

We shouldn't receive a discount in cost if we want such a powerful buff as Major Heroism. The Magicka return of this skill is too much.


That all the feedback I have about the Warden on the Summerset PTS. To be honest, I'm very disappointed with these changes because while there are few improvements, the heavy nerf to Deep Fissure leaves us in a worse state than before. Not to mention that we're also being slowly pigeonholed as support and healers, but we're still second rate healers compared to the Templar

I really hope the nerf to Deep Fissure gets reverted. It might work for other classes, but not for the Warden. And I also hope that the next series of PTS updates will be more beneficial to us because at this point, WE NEED HELP!

MLGProPlayer

NyassaV wrote: »

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

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.

When the bear works (When) it is probably the most powerful skill in the game. However it seldom works well

And yet the class still parses below the other magicka classes with it, not to mention it's a double-barred single target ability, which is useless to a magicka toon.

MLGProPlayer

dodgehopper_ESO wrote: »

My suspicion: Warden is going to be Templar 2.0. Brace yourselves folks; it is gonna be painful.

Magicka templar has been the best healer since launch. They were also the best DPS class for a long time. Even in their current state, they're still better than magicka warden.

MinarasLaure

Even the fact that this thread falls to the second page shows that wardens popularity is _very_ low

LeHarrt91

MinarasLaure wrote: »

Even the fact that this thread falls to the second page shows that wardens popularity is _very_ low

It is sad but true, i love playing the warden but so many times (even though i get 35+ on my stam warden) ive been asked if i have any other class i can play.... because they pull greater numbers.

Torbschka

Not saying I do know now 100% why such things happening, but I just saw @Alcast reading the pts patchnotes, at the deep fissure nerf, NO JOKE, he is saying " this skill is too strong and the nerf is good".

If those guys are in charge balancing and giving feedback to ZOS - good night. Did this guy every played a mag warden in pvp?

@Waffennacht @Hutch679 @MLGProPlayer we are dead haha

MLGProPlayer

Joy_Division wrote: »

SanTii.92 wrote: »

MinarasLaure wrote: »

Even the fact that this thread falls to the second page shows that wardens popularity is _very_ low

I urge everyone to downright stop playing the class until Zos addresses it's many, many issues. Or at the very least acknowledge them.

Magicka Warden is easy: have not played much since Dragon Bones.

Stamina Warden is still strong in PvP so it's going to get a lot of play.

I suspect ZOS's metrics indicate the class is still played enough such that they'll infer that the customer base is satisfied with how they measure up

We have access to the same metrics they do: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/5055307/#Comment_5055307

Wardens comprise only around 2% of the endgame population.

Alcast

Torbschka wrote: »

Not saying I do know now 100% why such things happening, but I just saw @Alcast reading the pts patchnotes, at the deep fissure nerf, NO JOKE, he is saying " this skill is too strong and the nerf is good".

If those guys are in charge balancing and giving feedback to ZOS - good night. Did this guy every played a mag warden in pvp?

@Waffennacht @Hutch679 @MLGProPlayer we are dead haha

In my opinion, any ability that has high aoe damage, stun, aoe undodgeable dmg, aoe unblockable dmg is too strong yes.

That this is wardens only direct ability to get access to a stun in the class line is a whole other problem.

MinarasLaure

Alcast wrote: »

Torbschka wrote: »

Not saying I do know now 100% why such things happening, but I just saw @Alcast reading the pts patchnotes, at the deep fissure nerf, NO JOKE, he is saying " this skill is too strong and the nerf is good".

If those guys are in charge balancing and giving feedback to ZOS - good night. Did this guy every played a mag warden in pvp?

@Waffennacht @Hutch679 @MLGProPlayer we are dead haha

In my opinion, any ability that has high aoe damage, aoe stun, aoe undodgeable dmg, aoe unblockable dmg is too strong yes.

That this is wardens only direct ability to get access to a stun in the class line is a whole other problem.

What are you talking about?
The skill is aoe but stun is single target.

MLGProPlayer

Alcast wrote: »

Torbschka wrote: »

Not saying I do know now 100% why such things happening, but I just saw @Alcast reading the pts patchnotes, at the deep fissure nerf, NO JOKE, he is saying " this skill is too strong and the nerf is good".

If those guys are in charge balancing and giving feedback to ZOS - good night. Did this guy every played a mag warden in pvp?

@Waffennacht @Hutch679 @MLGProPlayer we are dead haha

In my opinion, any ability that has high aoe damage, aoe stun, aoe undodgeable dmg, aoe unblockable dmg is too strong yes.

That this is wardens only direct ability to get access to a stun in the class line is a whole other problem.

Fair enough.

But when they start nerfing a class that's already underperforming, there needs to be compensation elsewhere in the kit. ZOS hasn't given the class any buffs, despite it being the most underrepresented class in endgame.

Seraphayel

I said it several times, give Wardens a passive that increases their damage / crit damage done to Chilled targets by 10%/20%. We already have a higher chance to chill targets so this would fit the theme of the class.

On top of that at least Cliff Racer and Flies (and maybe one Bear morph) should deal Frost damage to further improve Warden's frost damage potential. There are quite some nice sets that buff frost damage but there is barely any frost damage in game.

The execute problem... give Flies an execute Magicka morph like Poison Injection from Bow. Start the scaling at 50% HP and make it quite strong around <20%. This would be helpful for trials and dungeons and would give Wardens a nice way of increasing their pressure when it matters.

Alcast

MinarasLaure wrote: »

Alcast wrote: »

Torbschka wrote: »

Not saying I do know now 100% why such things happening, but I just saw @Alcast reading the pts patchnotes, at the deep fissure nerf, NO JOKE, he is saying " this skill is too strong and the nerf is good".

If those guys are in charge balancing and giving feedback to ZOS - good night. Did this guy every played a mag warden in pvp?

@Waffennacht @Hutch679 @MLGProPlayer we are dead haha

In my opinion, any ability that has high aoe damage, aoe stun, aoe undodgeable dmg, aoe unblockable dmg is too strong yes.

That this is wardens only direct ability to get access to a stun in the class line is a whole other problem.

What are you talking about?
The skill is aoe but stun is single target.

thanks for the correction.