[Class Rep] Warden Feedback Thread

ZOS_GinaBruno

The purpose of this thread is to give you a place to post your current top two pain points with the Warden. Our new Class Representatives will be keeping a close eye on this thread, and will utilize it to gather additional feedback for the notes they’re currently compiling for their first meeting with the Dev Team next week. Please be sure and keep your post clear and succinct, and focus more on what is currently frustrating you rather than potential solutions. Thanks!

Joxer61

Ouch. Ok, the simple fact that no one has posted a thing should tell it all. Word on the street class blows, but mostly magden. Why? And I think there are more than 2 things wrong so whats the point?

Bfish22090

Nerf pvp warden buff pve warden

Joy_Division

Joxer61 wrote: »

Ouch. Ok, the simple fact that no one has posted a thing should tell it all. Word on the street class blows, but mostly magden. Why? And I think there are more than 2 things wrong so whats the point?

The point is not to over-saturate ZOS with so much feedback that they lose sight of what you think are the most important issues. I mean I wrote this huge thread about Templars, so yeah, I have a lot of opinions about many many issues that plague that class. but is it reasonable t expect the devs to address all of that in a few weeks in the time before Update 19. Absolutely not. So instead overwhelming them with so much feedback that can;t do, the idea is instead to prioritize what you think are the tow biggest issues that they can do for Update 19.

ZOS cant rework the entire class before the next update. They can, however, address a few things that in your opinion make the class frustrating to play. The idea is to focus on what you think is important.

red_emu

Both points regarding MagWarden:

1. No class stun (even the delayed one was hard to work, now there is none)

2. Ice mage type, so coveted by everyone since the announcement of Morrowind is a tanking set up, forcing us to use destro staff skills.

Thank you.

ATreeGnome

My main focus in this game is endgame PvE so my concerns are from the perspective.

#1 Neither mag nor stam warden DPS bring anything both useful and unique to a 12 man group that I can't get from another source. For example, nightblades offer higher DPS, equivalent major slayer uptime, and a unique group wide minor crit bonus, plus mag blades offer huge built in group heals. Wardens offer minor toughness, which I will usually have from warhorn anyway, -maybe- some minor maim uptime, and some less reliable group heals IF you have room to slot on of the lotus morphs. So why would I ever want a warden DPS for a serious endgame trial run?

#2 The other thing I find frustrating, though to a much lesser extent, is the fact that most skills used by a DPS warden don't have uniform durations. So on a mag warden for example fletcher flies lasts 10 seconds, winter's revenge is 12, and wall of elements is 8. So I have to pick between over casting skills, which is a waste of resources, under casting skills, which is a huge DPS loss, or using a rotation that is far too complex for the payoff.

Probably not as brief as you wanted.

GrumpyDuckling

1 - Access to Major Brutality with Bull Netch is a pain point. On most builds why wouldn't I simply run Rally (burst heal or snare removal and immunity in PVP) or Shrouded Daggers (adds to damage in both PVE and PVP). My suggestion:
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/399223/dire-wolf-summon-for-warden-inspired-by-dark-cloak-change

2 - The class (both magicka and stamina) feels like such a chore to play because it's constantly a buff-fest. Too many Warden skills are strictly buffs. Why not build some of those buffs into passives that will activate when using a skill?

Avran_Sylt

• The Damage Over Time of Arctic Blast (total) is slightly under the base damage of the class spammable for MagDen.
• Healing Seed offers no immediate benefit for a Group on Cast.

gabriebe

Give magica Wardens the undodgeable birds back. And add a snare to them too.

Frozen Device takes forever to cast. Make it cast faster, and ideally all 3 of them at once.

One-slot the bear.

Give us a stun for crying out loud.

casparian

1. No class CC for magwardens. (This would be less of a problem if there were a magicka weapon line CC as dangerous as Reverberating Bash or Dizzy Swing.)
2. Doing decent PVE DPS is entirely dependent on the bear, which (a) must be double-barred and (b) almost inevitably dies to mechanics.

Tryxus

Only 2 points? I'm prob nearing 2 pages of points here But if I only could pick 2, then as a healer I would pick the following:

1. Every class has a group buff, with the Warden providing Minor Toughness through the Maturation passive. But this buff is already provided by the War Horn ultimate, and with a proper horn rotation it makes the Warden's buff practically redundant. So either the buff should stack with War Horn by turning the HP buff from horn into a generic hp increase (like before Morrowind) or the Warden should get a different buff altogether. Preferably one that finds a use in trial groups.

2. Healing Seed and one of its morphs, Corrupting Pollen, are very good skills. But the Budding Seeds morph could use some work.

The instant consumption of Budding Seeds is actually a good idea, but it doesn't work with the duration of the skill: 6 secs is not enough time to decide whether or not the Warden should use the instant consume. So either the field should last (a lot) longer, giving the Warden ample time to make that decision, or maybe even permanent, providing the Synergy every x seconds until the field is activated and consumed.


There's plenty more points I'd like to bring up, such as the lack of synergy with the Bear Guardian, the lack of a class stun in PvP, Arctic Wind, the HP scaling of Winter's Embrace skills, the current Frozen Gate issue, etc, ... But I could only put 2 points here...

Vaoh

I’m sorry, I really do want to give feedback but it’s just impossible for this sort of thread to work for what I want to provide. Hence the reason why so little feedback has yet to be given. I said it on Discord and I’ll say it again:

The Official Warden Summerset Class Balance feedback thread is where people posted their (mostly) thought out ideas. Most posters really don’t want to repeat that information after already posting about it in detail within a thread where it should have been read with at least some care. Discord lasted for a bit but has also died down a lot for Wardens in particular. Mostly there’s just little arguments and such now - not much feedback left to be given that is more than pure opinion.

To consolidate all of the feedback we want to provide into two pain points of the Warden is too difficult because there are so many underlying issues. To only choose two is to devalue the others. Some issues have been there from the beginning and players have given feedback for over a year on what we’d like to see happen. Other issues revolve around new nerfs (Deep Fissure stun removal, Subterranean Assault debuffing power lost, etc) that are highly disapproved of. Yet now we are expected to provide a few pain points that accommodate for unpopular balancing decisions AND underlying class issues that have been there from the very start?

All in all, it feels like the classes as a whole are being balanced in a way that *no one asked for*. This isn’t Warden-specific either. Templars are another great example with so many signature class skills becoming pointless and unused (Sweeps, Jesus Beam, etc). Or even Sorcs losing much of their class identity due to the removal of Frags CC. No one asked for any of this to happen.

So then we post good, lengthy feedback into the official feedback threads for each class in Summerset and everything is ignored, it feels hopeless. And now we need to provide the exact same feedback in all of these new threads, discords, etc in hopes of actually being heard this time?

I truly hope this works out, but I already know exactly how things will turn out

JXNwarrior

Pain Points:

1. No non-ultimate CC. Simply put this is astonishing, at least Templars have 2, even if neither are unblockable.
2. Almost zero offensively synergistic skills/passives. Class has increase Frost damage but only one frost non-ultimate ability and the ultimate is defensive, class spammable (Bird) rewards higher attack range but other key class damage ability (shalks) require close range, WHY DO ANY DAMAGE DEALING MORPHS SCALE FROM HEALTH?? ask templars how many use blazing shield nowadays.
TL'DR class is too defensively focused

Possible Solutions:

1. Give a ranged >8m stun attached to a current skill or reworked skill. That's it.
2. This is too complicated a problem for me to know what to specifically suggest. Rework Bear ult into a single bar summon, make shalks pulse multiple times so it finds its way into PvE rotations, GIVE ICE STAVES/SPELLS SOME DAMAGE INCENTIVES OR DON'T GIVE DPS A CLASS DOT THAT SCALES WITH A "TANKING" DAMAGE TYPE, any and all would be welcome imo.

Pawsy

My 2 points is that

1) <subterranean assault/deep fissure doesn't do well as an ability.> It has huge drain on resources, doesn't do that much more damage than a spammable (to the point when sometimes on magden it is more dps to ignore this ability) and its hard as a beginner (it's hard to aim) and clunky to use (the animation is quite long compared to abilities from different classes.
2) <cliff racer is underwhelming>. It's animation is slow and hard to weave, the stam morph doesn't gain anything as a morph and it seems strange that you can absorb it with ice shield but not with flappers from dk skill line.

Joy_Division

@Vaoh

I hear you. I do. For this thread, which is only one means of communicating feedback, we just want to know priorties. By no means am I or any oehr rep going to assume the 2 things you have listed down is all that;s wrong with the Warden. You can give me 1000 things wrong: 1000 things aren't going to be changed for update 19, so the idea here is tell us what the 2 things you deem are most improtant so those things get changed.

Just because this thread is asking for 2, does not mean you cant come into discord and give more, does not me you cant message me or another rep by mail and give me more than 2, or hell, create your own thread where you list 100 issues like I did in my Templar.

I feel I am typing this sentiment over and over and it's a little frustrating that some people seem to think they are restricted in how much or what they can communicate to us or how. With all the feedback, I think it's important to know priorities. I have my opinion of what's most important, but what if my opinion does not match what most of the playebase feels? Then by acting on my own assessment, I fail at the very position that I was given.

Starlight_Knight

Hello. sorry 2 just isnt enough as i think its across the board that the problem lies - read or delete as you chose but as @Tryxus said most people put their input on the warden feedback thread for class balancing

Im going to give my views purely from a PVP perspective on the Mag Warden as i don't do trials or much more than vet dungeons and i think Magden is ok for me for PVE apart from the clunky weird timing rotation.
I have been playing Magden solo and in small groups in PVP since its early release and im not far from rank 50 now and im not alone in thinking this class has certain short comings that punish you for choosing Magden as a solo pvp class.

The cliff racer is still way to slow for it to be a reliable spam-able and its to fast now to line up with timed burst combos ie - Fissure - cliffracer - force pulse. and the deals more damage based on how far away you are isnt great either as you're using deep fissure.
Fetcher isn't a great dot for pvp and its another skill with no secondary status effects and having to cast it twice you soon get confused and have no idea if your casting the 50% stronger one or not. i know your hands glow but that's not a very good indication in a high octane fight.
Betty netch is a good skill but it removing one negative status effect is a bit of a gimmick with everyone and their grandma running sloads and defile you have to spam betty netch 20 times in a row which you just cant do in a small scale or solo or 1vx fight. i would prefer this skill to have a charge and actually have a usable purge attached to it.
Fungal growth - its to dam hard to target people, needs a bigger effective area or a circle around you instead of a cone.

Passives are good apart from there is nothing that benefits being a werewolf and nothing that deals damage, as the warden lacks a lot of damage on tap skills it would be nice to have some damaging passives like implosion - only that adds the chilled status effect.

My summery is Magden in PVP has to much utility and not enough combat skills, some of the utility could be bunched together.
I would like to see the class be given a usable execute or a CC attached to cliff racer or fetcher (similar to javelin or cripple) or make fetcher like poison injection so its actually a decent dot that dose damage.
The class has a lot of recovery and some cheep skills so i wouldn't mind if some skills got more expensive if they got some decent secondary effects.
The animations need ironing out, there is some hidden cast times on most skills that put me at a disadvantage.
A few side notes - i know that cliff racer in pvp when undogable was over performing but the second that was taken away and with the very high dodge chance in this game this skill has been broken ever since and its just a wasted space on the bar as now i run a CC from the destro tree.
Why are other classes aloud undodgable skills ?? (Rhetorical question)
Its confusing how the warden is a support class - but doesn't offer the best support.
If we magdens are doomed to be support forever then at leased make us the best at healing ect.
( breath of life im looking at you )

booksmcread

1. Need a better execute than the bear ultimate. It's just not functional most of the time I use it in PVP and some trial groups don't want you to bring a pet to vet trials. The pathing and IA is terrible. This could be solved by removing the execute function from the bear and building it into the animal companion skill line passives or make one of the morphs of swarm function like poison injection.

2. Need better access to crowd control abilities.

zTrok

This is coming from a PvE perspective*

My main pain point when dealing with magicka Warden has been the issue of the class ground AoE (Winter's Revenge) being ice based and therefore causing the chilled status effect. If this skill was to somehow deal fire damage and apply the burning status effect, the overall skill would be much more effective, especially when compared to other class AoEs

For the stamina Warden, Cutting Dive simply does not allow Stamina Warden to truely compete with other classes when it comes to DPS. Adding possibly a bleed effect might add some more potential to the skill however.

dovakiin5574

1)
TOO MANY BUFFS, not enough damage skills

2)
Ice mages can't exist because you made ice staves tanking weapons

mb10

1) The arctic wind skill unnecessarily being a weak heal. We have Green Balance for all the healing we need and Frost Magic has never been associated with healing in The Elder Scrolls.

It should be like the Ic Storm skill in Skyrim especially as this is already in the game as some NPCs use this skill.

Skyrim describe the skill as: "Create a freezing whirlwind that does 40/s frost damage to health and stamina"

Video of the skill:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2tvQ6ANH7M

I understand the stamina damage might be too OP in ESO but the skill itself would be a good DPS option for Wardens.


2) No stun. A whole class with no stun is quite ridiculous.

Kitty_Quietly

Pain point 1. Not enough passives outside of slotted abilities. This would help with build choices a bit. There are some really awesome passives on other classes. Seems to be miissing something. No idea what that something is.

Pain point 2. I’m a scatterbrain and having Falcon's Swiftness (both morphs) last longer would be very appreciated. I would gladly spend twice or more the magicka to have that. Would line up better with Netch. Greedy on my part, but yeah keeping the buffs lined up is tough.

Solariken

1. Arctic Blast damage needs to scale on magicka and spell power. Scaling it on health is *** and stupid and not useful for anyone.

2. Swarm needs to suck less.

Why not just give Fetcher Infection double damage? Casting twice is *** and lame.

Why not let Growing Swarm infect a new target within 6 meters every 1 second?

dannymcgr81b14_ESO

I agree with the "too many buffs" crowd. And the bear taking up two slots.

Sedrethi

Now, I typically main as Magicka Nightblade, Stamina Nightblade, Magicka Dragonknight, and Stamina Sorcerer, so I am not as well-versed in the Warden class, however I can share what I feel like it lacks or does awkwardly compared to those other classes.

1. Bear as execute is just a pain. Has to be double-barred for convenience (i.e. when running Necropotence) and can easily die during crucial execute phases of end-game trial bosses. Not to mention combat pet AI. Only benefit is when running something like Master Architect or War Machine—but even then, the execute would be better suited elsewhere. Heck, lower the base damage of the Cliff Racer (and morphs) and make it a scaling execute similar to the Nightblade's Impale. I think that would make sense both in increasing the ability's usage as well as thematically.

2. Like many others, with the announcement of MMOrrowind and the Warden class, I was overjoyed with the possibility of building a proper Frost mage. Of course, the concurrent gutting of virtually all DPS potential from the Frost Staff alongside the Warden's natural lack of offensive Frost-based abilities killed all that hype before it could ever really take off. Yeah, it can still be done, but I found that it was not as "fun" and definitely not as effective as it could have been.

Now this admittedly kinda branches off more into Destruction Staff skill line territory, but one thing I think Wardens could do without is *another heal* in the form of Arctic Wind. We can all agree that it's really not terribly effective at what it's supposed to do in both healing and damage (morph), right? Why not change it into "Arctic Breath" as a Frost-based derivative of Engulfing Flames from the Dragonknight class? That could somewhat bring Frost-based damage back into the DPS fold, although it will still take more than just that.

Just my two drakes. Disregard if I am sorely mistaken on any points.

_Ahala_

1. The lack of a class cc makes magden ice builds unviable for pvp and greatly harms it’s 1v1 and 1vX potential... It would be nice if one morph of arctic wind was a ranged stun with an ice dot scaling off max mag and spell damage (also would really appreciate if the destro passives worked without a destro skill slotted to free up some space on the magden destro bar so they could run this new skill over flame reach but that’s neither here nor there)

2. Class ground based abilities such as pollen and trees are not instant abilities as indicated... they have a hidden cast time which can cause the ability to fail if the caster is stunned... on the same topic... if the caster is feared or knocked back before shalks, the shalks fire backwards and fail to hit the target entirely

Their is a lot more that can be said about the shortcomings of the class, but these two points are the most painful imho...

Im sorry for the text wall and I realize their are time constrictions and not everything can be addressed, but I need to throw these other points in as well to do justice to the previous warden threads... Other pain points include the ice staff tanking concept makes ice dps and the damage from the ice tree laughable and thus kills the cryomancer architype many were looking forward to with this class, the lack of some sort of non ult execute, the lack of ice damaging abilities and class damaging abilities period, the lack of interesting secondary effects on fetcher infection, the lack of a gap closer on the bear ult activation causing the ability to be too easily avoidable in cyrodil, and the continued slowness of the cliff racer spammable

Slack

In my opinion this class really lacks class damage skills and CCs. Both my suggestions refer to the Green Balance skill tree as I think it has the most potential out of all 3

1) corrupting pollen
-Make it an AoE HoT for the duration of 6 seconds,
-add a 30% snare to the area
-and leave defile as it is.

2) Leeching Vines
-Remove the heal effect and make it only buff the caster
-leave the duration of 10 seconds as it is.
-Add a Lifeleech effect. Up to 4 players who damage the caster receive [x] damage every 2 seconds and 25% of the inflicted damage is applied to you as health

Ragnarock41

Magicka warden needs some help in PvP. The class is a good support/tank, but it feels too weak as a damage dealer.

RedRook

Madgen here.

1. Class abilities - I've got no stun and I've got no execute. I could write several paragraphs on why this (and this PLUS being required to rely on destro staff skills) sucks but it really should be obvious. And it sucks in every aspect of the game: PvE and PVP, group and solo.

2. We have all these nifty group heals and utilities, but no cleanse (for anybody but ourselves). Give us a cleanse on the other morph of pollen. I'm happy with the choice of defiling enemies or cleansing allies, what I'm not at all happy with is reliance on a way, way, way too expensive alliance war skill. Yeah, I know it's one of the last things left for the templar, but that can't be the warden's problem, and it shouldn't be my group's problem either.

Integral1900

Just two... gonna be tough

Well leaving aside the fairly useless flies, loads of buffs but few skills to apply the to, the glitch fest bear having to be double barred and the clunky skill times I suppose if I had to choose two it would be these

1: the frost mage dps I wanted to build cannot exist with the skills as they are, the whole ice tanking thing is blocking the idea, frost skills need to hit a lot harder and the ice tanking needs to go, maybe stick it on an underused skill or something... or have it as a morph of the fetchers, so maybe one morph is an aoe that hits a bunch of targets and the other is a single target taunt

2: this thing needs more offensive power, it’s all well and good having a load of burst in pvp, and this is deffinately a class aimed squarely at pvp, but in pve it’s massive and sustained damage that’s needed and it just doesnt have that

Also, please revert the shalk animation to the original one with that huge burrowing beast, the beatles look silly and that original animation was so funky

Osubaker33

Where to start. I was sooo excited when Warden was realized and made four of them. A mag dps, stam dps, healer, and a tank. I only really use the tank anymore.

For PVE the Warden brings no unique buffs to the table that create a compelling reason to make sure there is at least one in a trial. At the same time they have far to many useless buffs taking up space. For example the netch, its only real use is to remove one debuff and save you some $ on spellpower/weaponpower pots.

I agree with what a few others have said. Many of these buffs need to be included as part of another skill. I do like the netch though but if its going to stick around it needs some serious work.

When thinking about how to balance Warden I try to come from the perspective that Warden is pretty good in Pvp and absolute garbage in Pve. So with that in mind either double the duration of the netch so Im not constantly wasting dps time recasting it, or give it a huge boost in stamina/magica regen to help the pve warden with thier sustain issues.

Some other thoughts

1. Give Northern Storm a bonus to all other cold damage while slotted.
2. Divide Arctic Wind into a tank morph and dps morph. One staying health based as it is now and the other become a damage skill based of magica and spell power.
3. Both morphs of impaling shards need thier damage increased.
4. Both morphs of fungal growth are too expensive.
5. With the increased emphasis on light attacking empower might be a useful buff for the warden to provide to a group.

Blobsky

1. Bear needs way more survivability, at the moment it dies in literally one second. Making bear viable would actually give the class burst.
2. Class CC please.
3. Magicka mushroom burst heal is underwhelming at best.
4. Far too much base survivability from skills, passives, hots on stamina