A (Stamina) Warden's Plea

Skjaldbjorn

DISCLAIMER: This has nothing to do with PVP. To be blunt, I don't particularly care about PVP. Wardens have been wave nerfed repeatedly due to PVP balance issues that has directly (and almost always negatively) impacted their PVE performance. Wardens have been brutalized due to clamoring from the PVP community since release.

A while back, Zos made a change for Wardens that I thought was minimalist and wouldn't be overly impactful. I was wrong. By changing the flat damage % from the Animal Companions passive "Advanced Species", bumping it to 3% from 2% per skill slotted, Wardens were actually brought in line. For the first time since CWC (and realistically ever, honestly) Stamina Wardens were competing for the top spot. Nightblades were still ahead, sure, but the gap was closing quickly. Wardens were completely viable (though they did lack a way to contribute meaningfully with a group buff).

With this PTS patch, you're reverting that change. I have a simple question. Why?

Is it PVP? If so, return the power elsewhere. Put it in the bear. Put it in a skill that isn't overly useful in PVP, but PVE Wardens can use. Those do exist, you know. That change singularly put Wardens in the top 2-3 stamina DPS. Magicka was still far behind, but there's a host of other issues there that need to be addressed. Wardens have been cellar dwellars for a long time. I've played Warden since Morrowind, it's been my main pretty much the entire time i've played ESO. I love Warden. It's by far the most fun, interactive class i've played.

But, the logic of the change is missing. What's the issue? Are Wardens so broken in PVP you need to cripple them in PVE just to balance them? That doesn't make a lot of sense. Wardens went from competing for the #2 spot behind Necro to being just above Stamplar, and everybody else is ahead of them. Why are you, as a company, so terrified of parity? What's wrong with classes being defined by their...crazy thought here, class skills?

And i'm no scrub. I have a lot of top-5 parses on ESOlogs for Stamden, as well as some #1 overall parses, or #1 NA. I'm not talking out of my ass. I've played this class for a long time. I know this class in and out, and those PTS changes are brutal for absolutely no reason. Well, unless the reason is PVP. This goes back to the issue of trying to balance PVE and PVP concurrently, rather than applying logic to changes.

FOR EXAMPLE;

Let's say we tire of the power creep, and want to reduce overall raid damage. That's fair. Power creep is an issue. But the Necro ultimate is a prime contributor to said power creep. The damage ramp we're seeing from Major Vuln is absolutely absurd. It makes some mechanics and entire fights completely irrelevant. So why not balance it? I have a solution for you, and it's something you already did! Because, you know, balance. Off-balance.

Put a cooldown on bosses being affected by Major Vuln. Once the effect ends from the atro, the boss can't take another major vuln effect for 25-30 seconds. Suddenly, Necros have to meaningfully time their ultimates, know the relative cooldowns, and you can't just spam back-to-back atros to functionally ignore mechanics, or simply DPS through them. The game gains balance this way. It's not a cooldown on the ability - you're welcome to hammer R for the damage, but the impact lessens. The power creep is chained down to some degree.

But instead of doing that - instead of balancing the skill most responsible for the ludicrous power creep, you're hitting class skills. You're taking away a lot of class identity. You're nerfing classes that weren't necessarily even the top DPS in most cases. You're crushing the 2nd-4th options, so that really, the options are Necro.

So, Zos. Come on. Give classes back their identity. We don't want to run around spamming Flurry. We don't want to do some weird ass quasi-dynamic garbage rotation that depends entirely on keeping 10 dots active. That's not fun. That's not engaging. That's tedious nonsense.

I'm a Warden main. I want to stay a Warden main, and still be able to do the content i've been doing for years, without having to switch over to a Necro so you can sell Elsweyr.

Don't take our power away just to do it. Give us something back. Put power back into PVE-centric skills like the bear. Give us better passives. Give us a buff that only we can apply, and do it in a way that makes sense. We're never going to apply the HP buff as a Stam DPS. We would eat such a nerf to our personal DPS it'd never be worth the cost. Give us something back. At least acknowledge that this class f'ing exists.

That's my plea Zos. I can only speak for Warden. PVE, we don't deserve a nerf. There's few enough of us as it is.

Canned_Apples

Don't bother.
Zos only buff sorcs.

Skjaldbjorn

Canned_Apples wrote: »

Don't bother.
Zos only buff sorcs.

That's not what i'm saying. Not even asking for a buff. Just revert the change.

Though a stam morph of fetcher would be cool. Be a unique element to give a stam a ST class dot other than DK.

MartiniDaniels

Skjaldbjorn wrote: »

Canned_Apples wrote: »

Don't bother.
Zos only buff sorcs.

That's not what i'm saying. Not even asking for a buff. Just revert the change.

Though a stam morph of fetcher would be cool. Be a unique element to give a stam a ST class dot other than DK.

Tbh, I don't have idea why ZOS decided to nerf advanced species right now (class passives were scheduled for review only in next patch), given that stamwarden is "balanced" and not OP on live and magwarden desperately needs buff in dps. Meanwhile another class is great on live and on PTS even matches necromancer in DPS and it's over-powered passives are not touched. I'm not calling for nerfs here, I'm just wondering how ZOS balancing thought works.

ESO_Nightingale

I feel like the buff should have never happened in the first place. At 2% it made animal companions abilities feel a lot more like a choice with a nice benefit. With 3% it felt necessary to slot them. I think 2% was originally balanced. But what was unbalanced were the actual skills themselves. There is next to no unique utility or interesting effects on warden's skills. Stamina or Magicka. We still need more magicka DPS morphs in our winter's embrace line too.

I originally thought the passive buff was entirely undeserved and lazy. Not targeting what actually needed changes. And i was happy to see it reverted. But don't mistake this for me being happy Warden was nerfed. We still never get any worthy compensation and it's really starting to *** me off.

MinaevNaKone

RIP bro. Use necro if u need good DPS

SodanTok

While I strongly disagree with this mindset that seems to be affecting people like you "I dont do PVP, but for some reason that gives me good enough experience to see when nerfs are being done for PVP sake". I have to agree that this nerf came out of nowhere with no reason.

This nerfs wasnt done in any way for PVP. This is purely PVE nerf, but question is why. Changes like this need dev comment, because its quite clear this nerf was done to put warden down, yet there are more things above warden which werent pulled.
Only reason I can see is that they really wanted that this patch every class uses same skill, and possibly strong 'on slot' passive for class skills could have go against it.

Azyle1

I think the change needs reverted, on PTS right now, sWarden is the weakest stam dps not including templar.

A few months ago, it was fighting for the top.

BrokenGameMechanics

MartiniDaniels wrote: »

I'm not calling for nerfs here, I'm just wondering how ZOS balancing thought works.

This is by far the most frustrating aspect of the change. This a MAJOR change to both the motif of the class AND its DPS. How ZOS does this repeatedly with ZERO dev commentary or rational just drives you crazy. How can you be the combat design team and sit in a meeting and say, "all those in favor of cutting Wardens across the board 3%-5% and discouraging use of their class abilities". Everyone, I assume raised their hand.

"Ok, all those in favor of providing the community any explanation whatsoever, please raise their hand." All hands remain down. "Ok, next line item, looks like we still need to nerf Magdens some more. I need some fresh ideas people as we've nerfed everything possible already."

Anyway, let's recall the events more precisely, as people are just posting nonsense again. <sigh>

Last release the Warden's animal passive was increased from 2% to 3% AND amazingly ZOS provided a rational as to why. I paraphrase, "we are doing a SUBSTANTIAL nerf to the Bear DPS of around 30% and to compensate and keep the Warden's damage neutral we are raising the passive from 2% to 3%. This will keep the Warden's current damage the same or slightly less and offers more build diversity." (Rumor is the Warden Class Rep wanted this.)

The low and behold, the very next release, ZOS reverses the passive AND DOES NOT RESTORE THE BEARS's damage.

So looking across these two releases you can see what the Combet Design Team wanted to do, even if they refuse to communicate it. "We need to a SUBSTANTIAL 30% nerf to the bear as it is extremely overpowered Ultimate <sigh>. But we are doing so in a way as to hide that fact."

As best we know, this process was started at the behest of the Warden Class Rep so maybe some background could be provided from them. Clearly ZOS feels that such substantive changes to the core nature of class do not require any explanation. Go figure.

x48rph

MartiniDaniels wrote: »

I'm just wondering how ZOS balancing thought works.

It's easy, it doesn't. Balancing for ZOS is really just code for deliberately shifting the meta every patch in an effort to keep people grinding and spending. Look at what they did. They overhauled racials massively but only gave 3 change tokens out, knowing most players had way more characters than that. But lo and behold, we will sell you more tokens for crowns. They did a massive rework of skills in elsweyr but gave no way to change and implemented faction lock(which I like, don't get me wrong) on pvp with no way to change alliance but again , lo and behold if your forced to grind an alt, we'll sell you skyshards to do it faster for more crowns. Now look, another massive overhaul , some of which completely reverse direction from just a couple months ago with no way to change class or anything. But again, ZOS has the answer for you, you can make new characters and this time, not only buy the skyshards but the skill lines as well in the store...

Skjaldbjorn

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

I feel like the buff should have never happened in the first place. At 2% it made animal companions abilities feel a lot more like a choice with a nice benefit. With 3% it felt necessary to slot them. I think 2% was originally balanced. But what was unbalanced were the actual skills themselves. There is next to no unique utility or interesting effects on warden's skills. Stamina or Magicka. We still need more magicka DPS morphs in our winter's embrace line too.

I originally thought the passive buff was entirely undeserved and lazy. Not targeting what actually needed changes. And i was happy to see it reverted. But don't mistake this for me being happy Warden was nerfed. We still never get any worthy compensation and it's really starting to *** me off.

See, I agree and I don't. I get where you're coming from here, and on a base level, I agree with it. But if this change was the bridge to better balancing later, fine. But Zos has a history of doing this. Their plans come out in three parts, and the players suffer for it. If this change was coincided with increasing power elsewhere in the kit, sure! No argument from me!

The issue is this buff was keeping Stam in line. It was giving Stamdens a chance to compete. Is it the right way to get balance? No, but it's a change that worked temporarily. it was a band-aid. If you're going to rip off the band-aid, have a plan to replace it. Don't just leave a gaping wound.

Skjaldbjorn

SodanTok wrote: »

While I strongly disagree with this mindset that seems to be affecting people like you "I dont do PVP, but for some reason that gives me good enough experience to see when nerfs are being done for PVP sake". I have to agree that this nerf came out of nowhere with no reason.

Warden has a decent history since release of eating nerfs for PVP reasons. We can discuss the why's and the validity, but there's no denying Wardens have seen a lot of hits exclusively for PVP reasons. Having said that, I never claimed this was a PVP change, I simply asked the question.

SodanTok wrote: »

This nerfs wasnt done in any way for PVP. This is purely PVE nerf, but question is why. Changes like this need dev comment, because its quite clear this nerf was done to put warden down, yet there are more things above warden which werent pulled.
Only reason I can see is that they really wanted that this patch every class uses same skill, and possibly strong 'on slot' passive for class skills could have go against it.

But then they're nerfing the Maelstrom DW and Soul Trap, etc, so it's pretty clear while the initial dynamic may have seemed to be "errbody use this", that is changing. It's all very confusing and seems like meaningless adjustment for the sake of adjustment, not with any goal in mind.

Skjaldbjorn

As a matter of perspective, Wardens have four key issues right now from a balance side of things, we'll ignore technical issues.

1. Damage isn't competitive (especially with proposed changes)
2. Lacks meaningful group contribution beyond their own damage
3. Class-specific buff that isn't functional for DPS to apply
4. No meaningful utility

With that in mind, i'd propose a change that's very simple, solves almost all the issues, and only requires the alteration of a single skill path. Swarm. First and foremost, Growing Swarm and Fetcher Infection are eliminated. Swarm is the only AC ability without a stam morph. Let's address that while also providing utility in a meaningful way.

Damage and ability duration remain unchanged except for type of damage.

The Magicka morph which would likely need a new name, deals magic damage, and applies the following effect.

A target affected by the skill takes 2-4% more damage from elemental abilities (fire, ice, lightning)

This plays up the Druidic aspects of Warden, thriving on natural elements, but still only applying to abilities to avoid enchant breaking, while also avoiding the heavy magic damage that comes from non-elemental effects like Soul Trap.

Conversely, the stamina morph would do something similar, providing a 3-5% (only two sources of damage) damage increase to disease and poison damage.

These abilities would only be able to apply to a single target at a time, meaning it doesn't break the game for trash fights, but allows Wardens to empower their group (and themselves) in a meaningful way without being utterly game-breaking on a base level.

Just...do something, Zos. Give Wardens something. To be super blunt, as a lifelong gamer and someone who has helped two people through game design grad school, game development and balance just isn't this f'ing difficult.