What Warden setup is necessary to be tanky (enough) with S&B, and deal (enough) damage to have fun?

Spearpoint

Hi! If you have the time to toss in your two cents, it would be very much appreciated!

TL:DR; what skills to use to mainly be tanky with S&B on front, but also able to deal some damage (read: bomb enemies) with Ice Staff on back bar? How can I perfect this inperfect build as much as possible? With the bear alongside all the time


Due to the combination of hitting the 1000 hour mark of ESO playtime - according to Steam - and recieving the Warden class though pre-order of Summerset, I now want to stray away from my Stamina NB. This was my "SERIOUS SNEAKY DD BOW+2H OVERKILL DPS + BURST SHADOWWE BUILD ". You get the idea.

So now I want to lay back, and enjoy some fun with a Warden S&B/Ice Staff setup. Probably no Veteran or Trial stuff, just normal dungeons, some Battleground, some PVP and overland expeditions.

I've played around some with it, and at lvl 32, with about 600 CP spent across the board, I'm now using 5x Willows Path, 4x Torug's Pact, 3x Clever Alchemist, landing me at 35k Health unbuffed.
I would like to have only one set of gear, and that it would be more PVP-oriented than PVE, if it comes to that. It seems normal dungeons work fine with PVP gear.

I've read all articles about Frost Warden Tank builds etc. that I can find. Here are some of them:
- Xynode's Atronach
- Woeler's Guardian
- Deltia's Warden Tank
- Archangel's Ice Warden
- Snibbers' Frost Control!
- ayu_fever's Iceberg
- Alcast's Frostbite
- Albus Aldmeris's Frost Lord

None of these match by prefered playstyle, so I hope anyone with more Warden or Tank experience can guide me

The ultimate goal of this build: Being able to tank 4 enemies in Battleground with S&B, then switch to the Ice Staff and just bomb them to Oblivion. Ish. Fine, maybe bomb them away slooowly. I don't know - how close can I come to this with 64 points into Health, and all Armour Glyphed to Health?

My main crafts gear with all nine traits, and Jewelry with three traits. All crafted set stations will be available for me, so I'm open for both crafted, dropped and Monster sets for my Warden.

Current skill setup:

S&B:
- Ice Fortress
- Shielded Assault
- Pierce Armor
- Artic Blast
- Gripping Shards
- Eternal Guardian

Ice Staff:
- Blue Betty
- Impulse/Destrucive Clench (testing what I prefer)
- Force Pulse
- Deep Fissure
- Elemental Blockade

And all available passives.


ANY tips and advices are welcome!

Spearpoint

Oh, I should mention that I'm sticking to being an Altmer for this build.

Blobsky

Youtube.com/blobeso

Build is called Abominable Sloadman. I have another version that i use for full immortality support role, but for damage that should give you a good start

Asardes

Basically Amber Plasm, Lich or Bloodthorn with any damage or mitigation 5p & monster set. 1H+S gives you lots of mitigation when blocking so you don't need that much resistance. As long as you can stack 3K+ spell damage before procs and 1.5K+ magicka recovery w Whichmother's Potent Brew you're good for both Cyrodiil and BGs. You can even try some of the less popular ones like Winterborn. Skoria is probably still the best monster set.

Spearpoint

Thanks guys! Really appreciating your input

Irylia

Blobsky wrote: »

Youtube.com/blobeso

Build is called Abominable Sloadman. I have another version that i use for full immortality support role, but for damage that should give you a good start

That’s a trash build and you should feel bad for encouraging it.

@Sandnessen
Do you prefer supporting with debuffs cc and some damage

Or self reliant dps and tanky enough to solo or small group

Lightning destro (buff shalk)
Inferno (buff birds/pulse)

5x necro 5x impreg all tri glyphs 7x well fitted
2x monster (bs/pirate/engine guardian or 1/1 domi + groth

1k cp impen
15% sprint cost reduc
15% roll cost reduc

The rest allotted as normal to dmg/mitigation

Sb: shimmering/frost armor/netch/vines/wings/thicket
Destro: innerlight/shalk/clench/bird/dampen (speed buff) northern storm

Looking to Stam
Fury bs asylum 2h 5x spriggan/alchemist/bone pirate if sb main and alch/darkstrider/duroks if sb back bar.

Spearpoint

Irylia wrote: »

@Sandnessen
Do you prefer supporting with debuffs cc and some damage

Or self reliant dps and tanky enough to solo or small group

Is it possible to set up my character for both, and just swap skills in order to adapt to those two different situations?

I would love to "self reliant dps and tanky enough to solo or small group" for Cyrodiil and Battlegrounds as a main-focus of this build, yet still support with debuffs cc and some damage for PVE-related gameplay, after some skills are swapped around.

And thus set this build up for PVP, as this is where I need the extra edge. Is it possible?

Thank you so much for your input, @Irylia !

Mojomonkeyman

Irylia wrote: »

Blobsky wrote: »

Youtube.com/blobeso

Build is called Abominable Sloadman. I have another version that i use for full immortality support role, but for damage that should give you a good start

That’s a trash build and you should feel bad for encouraging it.

@Sandnessen
Do you prefer supporting with debuffs cc and some damage

Or self reliant dps and tanky enough to solo or small group

Lightning destro (buff shalk)
Inferno (buff birds/pulse)

5x necro 5x impreg all tri glyphs 7x well fitted
2x monster (bs/pirate/engine guardian or 1/1 domi + groth

1k cp impen
15% sprint cost reduc
15% roll cost reduc

The rest allotted as normal to dmg/mitigation

Sb: shimmering/frost armor/netch/vines/wings/thicket
Destro: innerlight/shalk/clench/bird/dampen (speed buff) northern storm

Looking to Stam
Fury bs asylum 2h 5x spriggan/alchemist/bone pirate if sb main and alch/darkstrider/duroks if sb back bar.

That build is not good for BGs. Necro scaling in no-cp is terrible, worse than spell dmg even moreso compared to proc based builds. Impreg won't save you from what will be killing you (Oblivion dmg) and well-fitted won't increase your survivability versus rune-cage spam.

And by the way, you will never, ever kill a decent sorc with that setup. Never.

Irylia

Mojomonkeyman wrote: »

Irylia wrote: »

Blobsky wrote: »

Youtube.com/blobeso

Build is called Abominable Sloadman. I have another version that i use for full immortality support role, but for damage that should give you a good start

That’s a trash build and you should feel bad for encouraging it.

@Sandnessen
Do you prefer supporting with debuffs cc and some damage

Or self reliant dps and tanky enough to solo or small group

Lightning destro (buff shalk)
Inferno (buff birds/pulse)

5x necro 5x impreg all tri glyphs 7x well fitted
2x monster (bs/pirate/engine guardian or 1/1 domi + groth

1k cp impen
15% sprint cost reduc
15% roll cost reduc

The rest allotted as normal to dmg/mitigation

Sb: shimmering/frost armor/netch/vines/wings/thicket
Destro: innerlight/shalk/clench/bird/dampen (speed buff) northern storm

Looking to Stam
Fury bs asylum 2h 5x spriggan/alchemist/bone pirate if sb main and alch/darkstrider/duroks if sb back bar.

That build is not good for BGs. Necro scaling in no-cp is terrible, worse than spell dmg even moreso compared to proc based builds. Impreg won't save you from what will be killing you (Oblivion dmg) and well-fitted won't increase your survivability versus rune-cage spam.

And by the way, you will never, ever kill a decent sorc with that setup. Never.

Who said it was for bg’s

jaws343

I have an interesting Max health warden build that tanks a ton of damage and due to the scaling of a few skills can dish out semi decent damage. With one or two adjustments you could tweak this build to dish out even more damage while remaining tanky.

Sets are:

All Heavy armor, Orc for the race
5 Piece Orgnum's Scales, 3 body, Sword and Board front bar, Ice staff back bar.
5 Piece Green Pact Set, 3 Jewelry 3 Body
2 Piece Troll King
My jewelry is healthy with health recovery enchants.
I also run lingering health pots.

As you can see, this is a max health, max health recovery build. I sit just under 60K health in Cyrodil (I don't have the appropriate undaunted passives to boost it even more yet.) And when everything procs, Troll King, and Orgnums, I sit right around 7K health regen. And without procs I am at around 3K health regen. Its pretty ridiculous.

As for skills, the Warden has a number of skills that scale off of max health. My primary damage skills are:
Gripping Shards, Scales off of max health. Does around 1K damage per second and snare enemies.
Arctic Blast, The heal scales off of max health and the frost damage does around 500 per second with this build
Reverberating Bash, Provides defile and a stun.
Heavy attacks, keep stamina up and apply poison.
Permafrost as back bar ultimate, does really good damage and stuns enemies
The poison I run is double damage health poisons. They provide a nice damage over time that goes well with everything else in the build.
On my front bar I run the Sword and Board ult. I provides good damage protection and a window to get resources back with heavy attacks.

Everything else on the build is based around surviving, including the netch, Crystalized shield, Frost cloak.

You can easily make this more damage oriented while retaining the max health factor by switching either of the sets out for Shacklebreaker, or changing the race, or switching up the jewelry enchantments. I would recommend going in the magicka direction in that case, because the frost damage scaling is much better from a warden tanking perspective.

Mojomonkeyman

Irylia wrote: »

Mojomonkeyman wrote: »

Irylia wrote: »

Blobsky wrote: »

Youtube.com/blobeso

Build is called Abominable Sloadman. I have another version that i use for full immortality support role, but for damage that should give you a good start

That’s a trash build and you should feel bad for encouraging it.

@Sandnessen
Do you prefer supporting with debuffs cc and some damage

Or self reliant dps and tanky enough to solo or small group

Lightning destro (buff shalk)
Inferno (buff birds/pulse)

5x necro 5x impreg all tri glyphs 7x well fitted
2x monster (bs/pirate/engine guardian or 1/1 domi + groth

1k cp impen
15% sprint cost reduc
15% roll cost reduc

The rest allotted as normal to dmg/mitigation

Sb: shimmering/frost armor/netch/vines/wings/thicket
Destro: innerlight/shalk/clench/bird/dampen (speed buff) northern storm

Looking to Stam
Fury bs asylum 2h 5x spriggan/alchemist/bone pirate if sb main and alch/darkstrider/duroks if sb back bar.

That build is not good for BGs. Necro scaling in no-cp is terrible, worse than spell dmg even moreso compared to proc based builds. Impreg won't save you from what will be killing you (Oblivion dmg) and well-fitted won't increase your survivability versus rune-cage spam.

And by the way, you will never, ever kill a decent sorc with that setup. Never.

Who said it was for bg’s

OP asked for a build for both, bgs and open world in terms of pvp.

Sky_WK

Irylia wrote: »

Blobsky wrote: »

Youtube.com/blobeso

Build is called Abominable Sloadman. I have another version that i use for full immortality support role, but for damage that should give you a good start

That’s a trash build and you should feel bad for encouraging it.

@Sandnessen
Do you prefer supporting with debuffs cc and some damage

Or self reliant dps and tanky enough to solo or small group

Lightning destro (buff shalk)
Inferno (buff birds/pulse)

5x necro 5x impreg all tri glyphs 7x well fitted
2x monster (bs/pirate/engine guardian or 1/1 domi + groth

1k cp impen
15% sprint cost reduc
15% roll cost reduc

The rest allotted as normal to dmg/mitigation

Sb: shimmering/frost armor/netch/vines/wings/thicket
Destro: innerlight/shalk/clench/bird/dampen (speed buff) northern storm

Looking to Stam
Fury bs asylum 2h 5x spriggan/alchemist/bone pirate if sb main and alch/darkstrider/duroks if sb back bar.

Wrong - Its a build that functions well due to developer incompetence, and you should feel bad for encouraging it.