Warden class identity chanages

Arjuna1696

Controversial opinion - I'm really jazzed to play both of my wardens after this patch. Winter's Revenge buff, fetcher infection / cutting dive functionality changes, netch buff, piercing cold passive buff...it's all good and class-identity building. I'm even down with the Northern Storm change, because I think that equipping too many skills (especially ults) just for passive effects is flaccid and stupid - other than falcon's swiftness, because casting wings is fun! Anyone else excited to play their wardens? (And - to the frustrated stamDKs...I'm sorry for this post, and I hope you get all your hearts desire eventually)

_Ahala_

Still wish the class spammable on magden were better than force pulse/elements weapon, arctic blast actually were actually reliable 1v1, winters embrace and frost staff had better dps passives, magden brought something to the table that stamden couldn’t also bring while also having higher dps, magden had more offensive morphs in winters embrace to make up for its lack off offensive weapon lines, and frozen retreat/expansive frost cloak were not dead morphs

Casul

As a warden with ~110 server hours I am pleased in some ways, and upset in others. As to be expected.

Pros:

I am pleased with the functionality change to cutting dive and swarm. It opens up the use of sets such as blooddrinker,deadly strikes, and dro'zakar's claws. More variety is always a good thing. I am also pleased with the damage being given back to arctic winds. The stun mechanic is a step in the right direction as well. The netch purge will give another way to proc steadfast hero (although it is much weaker now unfortunately), and will give a good alternative to running the overly costly purge, albeit a niche one.

Cons:

The changes to sleet storm morphs are a mixed bag for me. On one hand i really like the utility that permafrost has now (and given a combination with the new arctic blast its essentially a pre-patch permafrost with longer duration). When I did the math, the overall damage was lower but I did not take into consideration the increase to the % frost/magic damage passive. With that in mind there may not be as bad of a damage hit. The real issue I have is how northern storm has no utility for stamdens. I ran permafrost as a stamden because I grew tired of running onslaught and DBoS like every other stamina build. Much in the same way that stamsorcs will run storm atro or overload. Being that northern is strictly an offensive magicka ult I will likely only use permafrost, if I decided to slot it at all. Again I probably will just because I love the concept, but this patch could have been a great opportunity to add some utility for both class specs.

Overall my general feelings towards the patch are mainly positive.

LiquidPony

Arjuna1696 wrote: »

Controversial opinion - I'm really jazzed to play both of my wardens after this patch. Winter's Revenge buff, fetcher infection / cutting dive functionality changes, netch buff, piercing cold passive buff...it's all good and class-identity building. I'm even down with the Northern Storm change, because I think that equipping too many skills (especially ults) just for passive effects is flaccid and stupid - other than falcon's swiftness, because casting wings is fun! Anyone else excited to play their wardens? (And - to the frustrated stamDKs...I'm sorry for this post, and I hope you get all your hearts desire eventually)

Not super excited to be the worst DPS spec on stam and magicka, tbh.

_Ahala_

It’s a step in the right direction, but it’s only a step. We are not there yet, especially when it comes to the mag side of things. When you compare mag and stam variants of nb, dk, sorc, and plar and then look at warden, magden doesn’t really have that sense of uniqueness anymore. Guess we should be grateful of the direction things are going with the northern, blast, and winters revenge changes but it’s hard to be happy as a magden when you expected your spammable and stun to be good coming out of a warden rework patch and then finding that that’s not the case.

fierackas

So what is our identity?

Luckylancer

Stamden will be more fun, additions are nice. Magden is still way weaker than stamden. Sleet storm nerf is bad and I wont play my magden in this patch too.

Canned_Apples

Cutting Dive still sucks.

LiquidPony

Luckylancer wrote: »

Stamden will be more fun, additions are nice. Magden is still way weaker than stamden. Sleet storm nerf is bad and I wont play my magden in this patch too.

Magden is not really weaker than stamden. Might actually be parsing higher. Winter's Revenge is very strong. Stamdens have nothing comparable, because Growing Swarm sucks.

LeHarrt91

I do like a lot of the changes to, but Arctic Blast was better as a ranged stun and Dive is still lacklustre.

Arjuna1696

fierackas wrote: »

So what is our identity?

Is it really so unclear? Nature / Creatures / Ice (which, that third one, somewhat random, but I dig it). All of the animal companion skills are viable, there are some some really fun and/or viable green balance skills, and the winter's embrace line needs some work for sure, but the class in general feels as advertised to me.

ESO_Nightingale

fierackas wrote: »

So what is our identity?

Blue, apparently.

ESO_Nightingale

Arjuna1696 wrote: »

fierackas wrote: »

So what is our identity?

Is it really so unclear? Nature / Creatures / Ice (which, that third one, somewhat random, but I dig it). All of the animal companion skills are viable, there are some some really fun and/or viable green balance skills, and the winter's embrace line needs some work for sure, but the class in general feels as advertised to me.

Dive is not viable. It's actually quite bad because it forces you to create distance in order to proc it's off balance, unlike every other skill in this game. Most fights are melee and the rest of our kit incentivises a close quarters playstyle as that is what is most comfortable.

It's increased travel speed from summerset knocked it out of it's combo with deep fissure, yet it's still not fast enough to be an effective spammable being in an awkward middleground.

Don't forget that it's cost was increased and it's damage reduced by a whole 10%.

YandereGirlfriend

I've only done a handful of dungeons so far but I am liking the changes (my magSorc though... not so much!).

My magWarden is more of a "fun" character, so I'm not as concerned with full end-game optimization, and have been using a double Frost staff setup. Being able to put Winter's Revenge back on my bar and use it along with Wall of Frost really enjoyably locks down enemies and makes them easy to AoE.

I actually use Cliff Racer as my spammable and the thing still hits for like a 24k Crit against a debuffed target. Having Minor Vulnerability on the Fletcher just feels so easy and OP compared to what other classes have to do to inflict that status and having the unbuffed tooltip greater than 2k DPS compared to the wasteland of the other ~1k DoTs feels good.

Goes without saying that I love the 10% Frost and Magic Damage bonus and think that they should go this route for every class.

I do wish that they'd change Arctic Blast to be like a Warden version of Hurricane or something, e.g. giving you like a character-centered Frost Damage AoE that did no healing and was purely offensive. Like a stronger Iceheart effect and with a much larger radius.

Either that or change it into like a single-target Frost DoT. Either choice would help round-out Frost as a legitimate damage element and enhance the Frost Mage "power fantasy" that the devs seem so keen on.

Or just scrap Frozen Gate because that seems like just a wasted meme skill for getting on top of the Wayshrine in Craglorn.

ESO_Nightingale

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

I've only done a handful of dungeons so far but I am liking the changes (my magSorc though... not so much!).

My magWarden is more of a "fun" character, so I'm not as concerned with full end-game optimization, and have been using a double Frost staff setup. Being able to put Winter's Revenge back on my bar and use it along with Wall of Frost really enjoyably locks down enemies and makes them easy to AoE.

I actually use Cliff Racer as my spammable and the thing still hits for like a 24k Crit against a debuffed target. Having Minor Vulnerability on the Fletcher just feels so easy and OP compared to what other classes have to do to inflict that status and having the unbuffed tooltip greater than 2k DPS compared to the wasteland of the other ~1k DoTs feels good.

Goes without saying that I love the 10% Frost and Magic Damage bonus and think that they should go this route for every class.

I do wish that they'd change Arctic Blast to be like a Warden version of Hurricane or something, e.g. giving you like a character-centered Frost Damage AoE that did no healing and was purely offensive. Like a stronger Iceheart effect and with a much larger radius.

Either that or change it into like a single-target Frost DoT. Either choice would help round-out Frost as a legitimate damage element and enhance the Frost Mage "power fantasy" that the devs seem so keen on.

Or just scrap Frozen Gate because that seems like just a wasted meme skill for getting on top of the Wayshrine in Craglorn.

if you'd like to discuss frost builds, the ESO Frost Discord community can help you out with that. we can give you want you want to optimise the build as best you can while still having theme.

Arjuna1696

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

Arjuna1696 wrote: »

fierackas wrote: »

So what is our identity?

Is it really so unclear? Nature / Creatures / Ice (which, that third one, somewhat random, but I dig it). All of the animal companion skills are viable, there are some some really fun and/or viable green balance skills, and the winter's embrace line needs some work for sure, but the class in general feels as advertised to me.

Dive is not viable. It's actually quite bad because it forces you to create distance in order to proc it's off balance, unlike every other skill in this game. Most fights are melee and the rest of our kit incentivises a close quarters playstyle as that is what is most comfortable.

It's increased travel speed from summerset knocked it out of it's combo with deep fissure, yet it's still not fast enough to be an effective spammable being in an awkward middleground.

Don't forget that it's cost was increased and it's damage reduced by a whole 10%.

I think it's fair to say that dive is not the "meta" skill for endgame trials, and that it can have awkward timing for pvp, but those venues alone do not determine overall "viability." The skill is very much viable - for mag wardens and bow/bow stamwardens especially, in all other content, and it's not -useless- in pvp either. I'm generally not interested in what is best-of-the-best-meta, because exclusively following that is boring and will inherently inhibit build variety. I'm more interested in what is effective AND fun/useful, and this fits those criteria for my bow/bow and mag wardens.

ESO_Nightingale

Arjuna1696 wrote: »

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

Arjuna1696 wrote: »

fierackas wrote: »

So what is our identity?

Is it really so unclear? Nature / Creatures / Ice (which, that third one, somewhat random, but I dig it). All of the animal companion skills are viable, there are some some really fun and/or viable green balance skills, and the winter's embrace line needs some work for sure, but the class in general feels as advertised to me.

Dive is not viable. It's actually quite bad because it forces you to create distance in order to proc it's off balance, unlike every other skill in this game. Most fights are melee and the rest of our kit incentivises a close quarters playstyle as that is what is most comfortable.

It's increased travel speed from summerset knocked it out of it's combo with deep fissure, yet it's still not fast enough to be an effective spammable being in an awkward middleground.

Don't forget that it's cost was increased and it's damage reduced by a whole 10%.

I think it's fair to say that dive is not the "meta" skill for endgame trials, and that it can have awkward timing for pvp, but those venues alone do not determine overall "viability." The skill is very much viable - for mag wardens and bow/bow stamwardens especially, in all other content, and it's not -useless- in pvp either. I'm generally not interested in what is best-of-the-best-meta, because exclusively following that is boring and will inherently inhibit build variety. I'm more interested in what is effective AND fun/useful, and this fits those criteria for my bow/bow and mag wardens.

your criteria for a viable spammable is different from mine. This skill is not good in it's current state, and not worth a slot for magicka wardens especially when there are better alternatives such as elemental weapon and force pulse/crushing shock for pve and pvp respectively. i would never use a slower projectile that punishes me for being in melee range, where most fights happen when it does comparable damage to elemental weapon

Ragnarock41

As that frustrated stamDk, I must say cutting dive shares a lot of pain points that stonefist seems to have.(bad animation that doesn't fit class theme at all, slow travel time, clunky animation making it hard to weave properly..) However comparing netch to igneous weapons I can easily say warden got the better deal out of that one.

Though warden has a lot more stamina morphs than stamDk so they can make do with slotting uppercut. It even synergizes very well with their sub assault-dbos combo, the off-balance adds a lot of damage to that and they can heavy attack to get a stun mid-combo.

I'm glad you're having fun with it, Stamina classes should not feel like cheap knock-off builds. They should be fully functional and I'm glad stamden got those buffs.

juhislihis19

Ragnarock41 wrote: »

As that frustrated stamDk, I must say cutting dive shares a lot of pain points that stonefist seems to have.(bad animation that doesn't fit class theme at all, slow travel time, clunky animation making it hard to weave properly..) However comparing netch to igneous weapons I can easily say warden got the better deal out of that one.

Though warden has a lot more stamina morphs than stamDk so they can make do with slotting uppercut. It even synergizes very well with their sub assault-dbos combo, the off-balance adds a lot of damage to that and they can heavy attack to get a stun mid-combo.

I'm glad you're having fun with it, Stamina classes should not feel like cheap knock-off builds. They should be fully functional and I'm glad stamden got those buffs.

Fellow main sDK here:

Warden has the skills and passives a class should have IMO.

Passives are meaningful and they give you something for slotting them.

Many skills have both resource morphs, and those which are only magicka-based, are still very usable for stamina users as well.

All the skills I slot for stamden have multi-purpose -> main effect, secondary effect and a passive supporting it. For stamDK you slot skills just for 1 purpose (Fragmented shield just for Mending, Spiked Armor just for resistances), where as stamden gets major resistances + minor protection + passive.

This is how it should be done.