Magden PVP

rothtwinsdad

Looking for some magden pvp advice. Love playing this character and while I do fairly well in PVP could still use some improvement.
Breton wearing Crafty and Necro with flame staff and resto back bar. Mighty Chudan or Bloodspawn monster set. I am pretty tanky for light armor and do decent damage.
Front bar: force shock, fetcher, deep fissure, blue betty, bird of prey, Northern storm
Back bar: living trellis, corrupting pollen, rapid regen, shimmering shield, degeneration, Northern storm
My main problem is no gap closer or execute any advice would be appreciated.

Iki

Lack of gapcloser or execute is not problem. Your main problems are lack of stun and burst heal. Find slot for arctic blast, its better than nothing (until they ruin it next patch) and also find slot for either enchanted growth or harness magicka.

One option is to drop resto-staff and have ice-staff at back-bar, then you can block with magicka, and be more tanky when under pressure. That works with magden as your class provides both burst heal and heal over time, so rapid regen isn`t really needed.

Take a look at my magdens barsetup, sharing it just to serve as food for thoughts, not claiming it to be awesome or bis setup.
Front-bar inferno-staff: 1. arctic blast 2. deep fissure 3. force pulse 4. leaching vines 5. bird of prey Ice-comet ulti.
Back-bar ice-staff: 1. swarm 2. blue netch 3. shimmering shield 4. enchanted growth 5. Flexible slot. Permafrost ulti.

Flex slot at back bar would obviously have ice cloak if one use something else than mighty chudan, but with chudan can slot whatever you situationally need there. Like corrupting pollen, ele blockade, harness, entropy etc.
Swarm > deep fissure > ice comet > arctic blast is lethal combo if you manage to stun before meteor hits, so ice comet will not be blocked and hit like a truck.

chrightt

Crafty Alfiq + Necropotence gives you tons of max magicka but Wardens don't have skills that scale that well with max magicka other than storm. Also, your sustain is completely crap. With Alfiq being a low stat density set and the next patch hitting soon here are some advice for changing your build. I kept as many similarities as your current build as possible and did some minor tweaks to help with your build and magdens next patch in general.

Necropotence + Bright Throat's Boast (spring loaded infusion for the max stam) + Bloodspawn (you would like to keep ice fortress for minor protection).

Frontbar (inferno): Fetcher, Deep Fissure, shimmering shield (front bar/back bar switch) bird of prey, screaming cliffracer (better spammable next patch imo) Ultimate: Northern Storm no longer need to double bar this and is more bursty (check 5.2.0 patch notes PTS section)
Backbar (resto): corrupting pollen, rapid regen, blue betty (front bar/back bar switch)(this is because if you have animal companion slotted on backbar you will get 12% maggen and stamgen bonus => it is worth losing 2% damage dealt which you get back by slotting cliff instead anyways), lotus blossom (to make your front bar more bursty and allow for better self sustain since you can't use synergy on your own pollen), ice fortress (very useful because it gives allies minor protection as well). Ultimate: flex slot but I find precog good here as you already have minor protection so you don't need temporal guard. Precog can reposition you + used while you're stunned/rooted to save you even if you just dodge rolled and used up all your stam. Alternatively, resto ulti is also nice but I'd say use precog if you're running ice staff - see below).

IMHO, with the next patch's northern storm you will want bloodspawn > chudan due to the ultimate generation. With northern storm's max magicka buff lasting 30 seconds shimmering + bloodspawn will greatly help you increase up time. Since you're not running chudan, ice fortress is a good move to have as a buff. Personally, for next patch I really prefer using cliff racer a ton more on PTS. With cliffracer setting people off balance at 7m, you can do partial heavy into stun from inferno staff. If you want a stricter stun it would also be a good idea to swap backbar for ice staff and rapid regen => arctic wind (which is plenty enough self sustain combined with lotus (imo, this is a good way to go actually). This will help you perform well with storm by doing snare => stun with more burst on front bar as well.

Ice staff works better for solo play but if you run consistently in a group you can get away with having no stuns. A lap of gap closer is just pretty normal for magden but at least it have bird of prey for mobility unlike something like a mag necro.