Calling all MagWarden Ice Mages! Share your tips.

ArchMikem

Currently at 46 power levelling my 2nd MagWarden after having deleted my first since i got depressed over how abysmal trying to DPS with a Frost Staff was, but this time im going to persevere, and am interested in any tips and tricks other players who have been playing with the build might have.

And i mean a full Frost Staff build, not using Shock staff on your main bar.

Joxer61

Don't take the tri-focus passive and you are fine! Warden passives for frost and cold rock. use ANY morphs that do ice damage in both the winter line and your destroy line. Im loving mine for sure and mobs die AND they don't touch you!! Also, this helped heaps!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbLkaVCDIao

Wolf81

There are a few sets that help with cold damage ysgramor from rift overworld, and winterborn from maelstrom arena, which those can be farmed on normal. The value of increase regarding these sets with say warden and altmer race for max increased in frost damage I don't know I'm sure other sets might still be better like sioria and whatnot.

I would really like to see some average damage ranges for frost warden dps sets using these sets without tri-focus is the gap really that bad or not I find is sorta all over the map with gossip.
Still going to need to use some animal skills, which are magicka base non elemental, my biggest worry is being able to do decent dps without the bear and using the northern storm ultimate..or destro. I just wish zos would have another look at magicka warden in general its not in a good place right now.

TankHealz2015

Ysigramor Birthright, Winterborn (maelstrom arena sucks to farm), Innate Axiom (crafted), and of course Iceheart monster set.

I have a magika Ice Warden in Cyrodil. I do all frost damage with frost enchants on my staves.

Very much a Frost-Control build. Works great and lots of fun.

_Ahala_

Torugs Pact, Winterborn, Skoria... the world has forsaken ice mages so forsake the world by running 3x proc sets

Waffennacht

Depends on how frost you wanna go.

Imo the bear is still a part of the winter theme

The monster helm is where the theme kinda loses out zaan, skoria, grothdar infernal guardian are all fire. Ice heart is the only frost helm theme.

I suppose you could use kena or something along those lines

I can pull 30k fairly easy with the bear and Necro winterborn

ArchMikem

Do Winterborn pieces drop from every Stage, or just the Ice one?

StamWhipCultist

_Ahala_ wrote: »

Torugs Pact, Winterborn, Skoria... the world has forsaken ice mages so forsake the world by running 3x proc sets

lol

Checkmath

ArchMikem wrote: »

Do Winterborn pieces drop from every Stage, or just the Ice one?

There is a specific rule how they drop. Generally you can obtain a winterborn piece in every stage, but the earlier stages drop small armor pieces of the msa sets, the stages in the middle drop the big armor pieces while in the last 2 or 3 stages jewelry can be obtained. Weapons only drop from the last stage together with the msa weapons.

ArchMikem

Checkmath wrote: »

ArchMikem wrote: »

Do Winterborn pieces drop from every Stage, or just the Ice one?

There is a specific rule how they drop. Generally you can obtain a winterborn piece in every stage, but the earlier stages drop small armor pieces of the msa sets, the stages in the middle drop the big armor pieces while in the last 2 or 3 stages jewelry can be obtained. Weapons only drop from the last stage together with the msa weapons.

Wow...never getting weapons or jewelry then.

Well, purple ones at least.

Checkmath

ArchMikem wrote: »

Checkmath wrote: »

ArchMikem wrote: »

Do Winterborn pieces drop from every Stage, or just the Ice one?

There is a specific rule how they drop. Generally you can obtain a winterborn piece in every stage, but the earlier stages drop small armor pieces of the msa sets, the stages in the middle drop the big armor pieces while in the last 2 or 3 stages jewelry can be obtained. Weapons only drop from the last stage together with the msa weapons.

Wow...never getting weapons or jewelry then.

Well, purple ones at least.

Do it on normal and upgrade
Ah wait, jewelry upgrade material is too expensive...maybe wait for winterborn coming to the golden vendor....probably will not happen, since it is a arena set and it already was at the golden vendor for sale once.

Diddly_D_Potatoes

_Ahala_ wrote: »

Torugs Pact, Winterborn, Skoria... the world has forsaken ice mages so forsake the world by running 3x proc sets

Agreed. I run this in 5,1,1 heavy. Let the proc sets do the work for you. Recommend changing your jewelry to swift too.

Kel

https://youtu.be/FBTcgnGAlHM

rosendoichinoveb17_ESO

They should make the tri-focus passive for Ice staffs not taunt enemies on heavy attack and instead apply minor breach and minor fracture. This way it will be used by tanks and DPS as it will give so much to the group as these passives are hard to get for group optimization.

Nazzraeda

My advice would be to play ice build in PvP and solo content exclusively (Where it is really nice build, having good defensive capabilities, lots of snares/roots and decent heals, Ysgramor's Birthright + WInterborn and Iceheart as said above is solid build for those types of gameplay) but for PvE group content I'd advise against it unless you have group of friends who just play for fun and don't mind you dealing 30-40% less dps than with regular setup. Sadly Ice staves are currently considered tanking weapons and they lack potent damage aplification bonuses of inferno and lightning staves. That being said - play what you want! The point of playing games is having fun after all, so by all means you are free to play ice build wherever you want! Just be prepared that in some harder content people might question it!

Joxer61

Anyone have or can do any parses as a Ice Warden, without tri-focus and all that? Curious as to what it actually hits buffed and all. And I has no dummy nor the proper gear as of yet....

_Ahala_

Diddly_D_Potatoes wrote: »

_Ahala_ wrote: »

Torugs Pact, Winterborn, Skoria... the world has forsaken ice mages so forsake the world by running 3x proc sets

Agreed. I run this in 5,1,1 heavy. Let the proc sets do the work for you. Recommend changing your jewelry to swift too.

Yep swift all the way

Wolf81

Now iceheart is a crit proc and while using the bear he scales with whichever max stat is highest..So I feel using necropotence with winterborn w/ frost wouldn't help very much on that proc chance. Would winterborn with julianos or mothers sorrow be ideal or will resource become a bigger issue. I'm also not sure how well Torugs Pact works in pve setup with ice since I haven't used it honestly. Would love more feedback

ArchMikem

Wolf81 wrote: »

Now iceheart is a crit proc and while using bear it scales with whichever max stat is highest..So I feel using necropotence with winterborn w/ forst wouldn't help very much on that proc chance. Would winterborn with julianos or mothers sorrow be ideal or will resource become a bigger issue. I'm also not sure how well Torugs Pact works in pve setup with ice since I haven't used it honestly. Would love more feedback

I've been toying with my 5pc Ysgramor, 5pc Juli, and 2pc Iceheart in overland and Iceheart seems to proc very frequently for just an 8% chance. My crit chance is sitting at 56.8% and that seems to be more than enough to have Iceheart's uptime almost indefinite.

But sustain is terrible.

Joxer61

Again, would love to see some actual (dummy parse?) numbers for this to see if it really sucks ice cubes or has a snowballs chance! Anyone keen enough???

mursie

For non-CP pvp i landed on the following:

2pc bloodspawn (heavy)
3pc pariah (chest/boot/leg - heavy)
2pc winterborn (belt/glove - light)
3pc winterborn jewels - arcane
pariah frost staff
vma ice staff

the key to the build: drop blockade of frost and winter revenge on the fight. if you can fit in arctic blast then do as well.
flip to your front bar with pariah... over 30K resists. use ele drain and force pulse to attack enemies.. your heals are living trellis, arctic blast, and spamming blue betty to remove conditions. you can also use elusive mist to mitigate / kite dmg. - overall, the bloodspawn allows for high permafrost uptimes... the pariah gives great tankability on front bar with an ice staff. the frost enchant and vma ice staff give you decent dmg from light attack force pulse weaves... and winterborn procs on alot of dmg that you're throwing around aoe.

I tried to do a full Light Armor build... and i couldn't make it work. you want to stand in your aoes and control the fight via snares/roots/immobs and heavy seems like the best way to stay alive and accomplish that.

would love to hear if others have different opinion.

md3788

jabrone77 wrote: »

https://youtu.be/FBTcgnGAlHM

@jabrone77 how would this fair in PvE? Maybe swap toruqs for Julianos for a little more spell damage?

Kel

It works very well in PvE. Just don't take the destro staff passives that turn heavy atracks into taunt.
Might be hearing from your tank if you forget.
Also, I don't use vampire, so I switch out mist form for artic wind, but you can replace it with whatever you like.

Samsgaard

ArchMikem wrote: »

Iceheart seems to proc very frequently for just an 8% chance. My crit chance is sitting at 56.8% and that seems to be more than enough to have Iceheart's uptime almost indefinite.

Isn't Iceheart's proc chance 20%? My warden ice tank, with far less than 57% crit, still crits often enough for extremely high uptime. And you know when it's up, because it's very visible, and it's very loud!

ArchMikem

jabrone77 wrote: »

It works very well in PvE. Just don't take the destro staff passives that turn heavy atracks into taunt.
Might be hearing from your tank if you forget.
Also, I don't use vampire, so I switch out mist form for artic wind, but you can replace it with whatever you like.

lol you'll be hearing from your tank regardless once they see you're using the Staff. They automatically assume you're using the passive, already happened to me.

ArchMikem

Joxer61 wrote: »

Anyone have or can do any parses as a Ice Warden, without tri-focus and all that? Curious as to what it actually hits buffed and all. And I has no dummy nor the proper gear as of yet....

Im not the best at rotations but my fully geared Ice Mage can just barely do 20k.

Joxer61

ArchMikem wrote: »

Joxer61 wrote: »

Anyone have or can do any parses as a Ice Warden, without tri-focus and all that? Curious as to what it actually hits buffed and all. And I has no dummy nor the proper gear as of yet....

Im not the best at rotations but my fully geared Ice Mage can just barely do 20k.

yea,its fun but not great damage.....

ESO_Nightingale

I use icy rage, frost blockade, frost reach and winters revenge as my frost skills and i use iceheart for my helm. Necropotence and julianos for sets right now

LeHarrt91

It might be better to wear sets that just boost your stats rather than sets that are associated with Frost damage. Like using Necro, Juli, Mothers Sorrow, Spell Strat, Siroria (unless the effect is to much like fire lol) etc and then use Slimecraw or maybe use Arena weapons and no monster helm.

And then make an outfit using Frostcaster Style and then Ice Heart weapons when they come out.

ESO_Nightingale

LeHarrt91 wrote: »

It might be better to wear sets that just boost your stats rather than sets that are associated with Frost damage. Like using Necro, Juli, Mothers Sorrow, Spell Strat, Siroria (unless the effect is to much like fire lol) etc and then use Slimecraw or maybe use Arena weapons and no monster helm.

And then make an outfit using Frostcaster Style and then Ice Heart weapons when they come out.

Yeah you get more out of stat boosters. Winterborn is a more wasteful version of valkyn skoria as its not as powerful and its a 5 piece set

Diddly_D_Potatoes

In Murkmire I have changed my warden from a heavy ice build of Skoria, Winterborn, Torugs to Necro, Spinners, Slimecraw.
The shalks, bird, la, force pulse combo feels a lot more devastating than it did prior to Murkmire.