Frost damage for warden

Oakiyo

Hi

Warden currently doesn't have half of his damaging abilities doing frost damages. It is impossible to fully build around this unique feature of the class without loosing significant amount of damage.

Can you consider switching magicka damage abilities of the warden to frost damage pls ?

@ZOS_GinaBruno or @ZOS_JessicaFolsom

ESO_Nightingale

Oakiyo wrote: »

Hi

Warden currently doesn't have half of his damaging abilities doing frost damages. It is impossible to fully build around this unique feature of the class without loosing significant amount of damage.

Can you consider switching magicka damage abilities of the warden to frost damage pls ?

@ZOS_GinaBruno or @ZOS_JessicaFolsom

I can tell right now that some people might think that this is a dumb ask, but honestly, changing our magic damage skills to frost would help so damn much for magden. We need to proc the chilled status effect now, and with elemental damage seemingly on the rise due to new sets and changes, it's high time this happened. It's completely justifiable lorewise too. Cliff racers and shalks don't actually do magic damage. So it's safe to assume they're spirit animals in a sense. And since spirit animals are a "warden magic" affair when they're heavily associated with frost damage, it just works to make all of the damage, frost. So yes. Please zos, do this among other changes to make Dive less clunky overall, give fetcher infection a more consistent morph effect + other stuff we actually need fixed. We still need another unique damage skill with an offensive (not defensive!!!) stun that works with both deep fissure and northern storm. Exactly like the Arctic Blast 4.0 suggestion, for this we can begin to drop the absurd levels of raw damage boosts we have gained over the years. We might have missed out on some love this patch. But i'm here once again to reaffirm that the few Magden mains that do exist, still very much care and need some help.

These changes would additionally increase the viability of our class skills as they would then be allowed to proc chilled. Specifically Screaming Cliff Racer and Deep Fissure should at least be considered to gain frost damage.

Nemesis7884

would be nice indeed...and add a frost damage monster set while youre at it

karios525

No leave the animal abilities alone as mag damage not frost, after all your passives give as much frost as they do magic damage. Currently buffed shalks hit for over 20k, fetcher 22k, cliff racer 14k, bear swipes 18.5k and ulti activate 22k with my burst damage build.. If you just want some icy flavor go farm ice furnace, i just use arctic wind and winters revenge on my other build, to proc ice furnace which is continually hitting for 2.4k every second. With the cooldown removed, also with cooldown removed for winterborn on pts should give you enough ice sets if thats your concern. I will admit i would like to see the destruct passives reworked, as ice staffs are useless for dps, though i still frontbar ice furnace frost as I still cant get the inferno, but use shock back bar with all my aoe for the 8& buff to aoe abilities

ESO_Nightingale

karios525 wrote: »

No leave the animal abilities alone as mag damage not frost, after all your passives give as much frost as they do magic damage. Currently buffed shalks hit for over 20k, fetcher 22k, cliff racer 14k, bear swipes 18.5k and ulti activate 22k with my burst damage build.. If you just want some icy flavor go farm ice furnace, i just use arctic wind and winters revenge on my other build, to proc ice furnace which is continually hitting for 2.4k every second. With the cooldown removed, also with cooldown removed for winterborn on pts should give you enough ice sets if thats your concern. I will admit i would like to see the destruct passives reworked, as ice staffs are useless for dps, though i still frontbar ice furnace frost as I still cant get the inferno, but use shock back bar with all my aoe for the 8& buff to aoe abilities

There isn't close to enough representation of actual frost damage skills, you can't really just say "use a proc set" because at that point no one can complain about lack of class identity. mag damage should go on warden. nightblade and templar have it as their main "element". When DK is fully fire and Sorc is mostly shock, i don't see why we have so little representation via frost damage. frost is just better than magic damage, after all, changing all of the damage to frost allows further passive changes to take some power out of them and funnel them into the actual damage skills themselves. specifically it would allow us to drop bird of prey's minor berserk for a better movement related effect. meaning less people would use it overall since it's no longer a "required slot", but it would still be better as a movement tool. and an option for those who want to use it. it basically frees up a slot, then, since stam would lose more from this change than mag, you can simply replace the magic damage bonus on piercing with physical damage, and round it down back to a more reasonable amount as +10% is just a bit much and was implemented to bandaid the class, rather than fix it, additionally, this passive is one of the few class damage passives in the game that is legit useless for a specific damage subclass. There is legitimately a gain in power from changing the magic damage to frost because of glacial presence unless you're using warmaiden for whatever reason.

Dark_Lord_Kuro

I support this

ESO_Nightingale

Dark_Lord_Kuro wrote: »

I support this

Right! Because there isn't a single reasonable and beneficial reason for them to not all deal frost damage. I just don't understand how some warden players don't support this.

karios525

Because warden was supposed to be nature guardian aka druid or ranger type class [snip]. Animal skill line makes sense the whole ice line doesn't so let it go, no other game with ranger or druids sees them using ice magic and doesn't fit in with lore anyway. Magden is in a good balanced place right now so stop trying to get the class screwed again like the magplar, guess you guys are role players as opposed to pve players,

[edited for bashing]

Nemesis7884

what I would do is change the magicka version of the bear into a frost attronach doing frost damage

maddiniiLuna

+1 for more frost damage.

-1 for the frost atro. I'm so annoyed by seeing daedroths all the time please for the love of god don't make gigantic frost atros

ESO_Nightingale

karios525 wrote: »

Because warden was supposed to be nature guardian aka druid or ranger type class [snip]. Animal skill line makes sense the whole ice line doesn't so let it go, no other game with ranger or druids sees them using ice magic and doesn't fit in with lore anyway. Magden is in a good balanced place right now so stop trying to get the class screwed again like the magplar, guess you guys are role players as opposed to pve players,

I literally explained how it works from a lore perspective. It's not stupid. And it doesn't screw the class, rather making it better. But not so much so that it would be a meta changing decision, it would just secure our ability to proc the chilled status effect and make sure our class would fully synergise with sets like Ysgramor's Birthright. We need this on SCR and specifically so that it can become more of a legitimate spammable option in pvp (among other changes) and on deep fissure in general to increase our chilled proc to groups. What are you even on about?

lucky_Sage

They should make the ice tree the dmg skill line

WrathOfInnos

Yeah this would be great. One Frost Damage ability (Winter’s Revenge) doesn’t make a true Cryomancer. Screaming Cliff Racer and/or Deep Fissure becoming Frost Damage would help the class a lot. There are not currently any Frost Damage spammables or burst skills in the game.

The bear could also be a great opportunity. I don’t want a Frost Atronach, but maybe a polar bear . The Eternal Guardian needs a new morph effect anyway, given that respawn is meaningless in group PVE content (and clunky in solo content and PVP).

karios525 wrote: »

Because warden was supposed to be nature guardian aka druid or ranger type class [snip]. Animal skill line makes sense the whole ice line doesn't so let it go, no other game with ranger or druids sees them using ice magic and doesn't fit in with lore anyway. Magden is in a good balanced place right now so stop trying to get the class screwed again like the magplar, guess you guys are role players as opposed to pve players,

Not sure why your notion of druids from other games would affect this one, but in ESO the ideas of nature and Frost have been closely tied together since the warden class was introduced. It’s not the only lore to make this connection either, in the Gothic series the nature type spells of rangers and druids were closely associated with water and ice. In fact, in Gothic 3 ice and animal transformations were grouped together in one skill line (magic of Adanos, basically ESO wardens), with Fire + Light/Holy/Healing (magic of Innos, basically ESO Templars) and Lightning + Summoning (magic of Beliar, basically ESO Sorcerers) being the other two.

ESO_Nightingale

lucky_Sage wrote: »

They should make the ice tree the dmg skill line

I don't think they would go that far. The best we can do in reguards to getting frost damage skills, is ask for the animal companions skills change.

Nemesis7884

at least you can use destro as spammable....turning the bear and the bugs ice would already help a lot...

Wolf81

I wonder if the Winterborn set would be more appealing on warden after ptr...though I expect probably not much.
-Winterborn:
Increased the damage of this set to 7400, up from 6020.
Removed the proc chance from this set. Now when you deal frost damage, you summon an ice pillar that deals 7400 frost damage to all enemies in a 3 meter radius. The ice pillar persists for 2 seconds and reduces the movement speed of all enemies within the radius by 50%. This effect can only occur once every 6 seconds.
Increased the cooldown from 6 seconds, up from the hidden 4 second cooldown, which is now also properly mentioned on the tooltip.
Reduced the snare potency to 50%, down from 60%.

I remember trying to use the Ysgramor's set back in the day when I wanted my warden to be ice...sadly the concept keeps being hard to manifest.

YandereGirlfriend

I support this and would also like the same for Sorcerers and Lightning damage.

At present, their class kit is (especially for non-PetSorcs) is evenly divided between Magic Damage and Lightning Damage, making it impossible to specialize into either (despite being the Lightning class) and shoe-horning them into the same "Inferno Staff or bust" build monoculture of all end-game magDPS.

Wardens and Sorcerers should be at their best when building for their respective elements and destruction staves.

LeHarrt91

Its a controversial topic that has been discussed a lot. The warden is in a weird spot being the Druid/ Nature and Ice Class in one. We definitely need more Frost skills, and how thats done will be hard.
Whether it be a new skill line with Frost skills, or adjust 1-2 of the Animal skills (or adjust them to either deal Magic or Frost depending on how you spec your stat/ gear) or even create/ update a set to change your Magic type damage to a specific element like Frost (i.e add it to Ysgramor).
But one thing for certain is that there arent many Frost skills in the game with with the Frost Staff being a hybrid tank weapon its in a weird spot right now.

Vaoh

I’m convinced that these issues will be solved with Spellcrafting and/or third morphs.

Spellcrafting is bound to come eventually. ZOS has exhausted everything else that has been datamined besides Horse Racing and the old Murkmire zone (probably scrapped). It’s also a huge “chapter-selling” feature.

Third morphs may or may not happen, but 4 years ago I was told by the combat lead that they’d love to do it after Spellcrafting.

We’ll see lol.

Nocturnalan

I already have a "frost warden" named "one frosty boi" for PvP. He even uses a Ice staff. However more frost options are a must.

ESO_Nightingale

Wolf81 wrote: »

I wonder if the Winterborn set would be more appealing on warden after ptr...though I expect probably not much.
-Winterborn:
Increased the damage of this set to 7400, up from 6020.
Removed the proc chance from this set. Now when you deal frost damage, you summon an ice pillar that deals 7400 frost damage to all enemies in a 3 meter radius. The ice pillar persists for 2 seconds and reduces the movement speed of all enemies within the radius by 50%. This effect can only occur once every 6 seconds.
Increased the cooldown from 6 seconds, up from the hidden 4 second cooldown, which is now also properly mentioned on the tooltip.
Reduced the snare potency to 50%, down from 60%.

I remember trying to use the Ysgramor's set back in the day when I wanted my warden to be ice...sadly the concept keeps being hard to manifest.

it's definitely buffed imo. it'll be more attractive overall.

Skjaldbjorn

This discussion comes up just about every cycle. I too would like to see more frost added to Magden's kit, but honestly also to Stamden. After giving it a lot of consideration, and realizing Shade had also received the "scales with highest offensive stat" treatment with Ritual and Flames of Oblivion, I think it's time Stamina Warden receive a similar pathway. After a lot of thought and perspective change, I personally have settled on Gripping Shards. It's a rarely used root morph for tanks, doesn't impact any DPS spec negatively, doesn't eliminate a heal, doesn't impact the class at all other than a direct buff for Stamden, since it's a PB AOE DoT that wouldn't be overly useful for Magden, and allows Winter's Revenge to remain Mag-only. The idea of a spiked, dangerous frozen arena around the Stamden is actually fairly thematic, and would be super cool. It'd be a healthy change with no real negative impact on PVP, too.

@ZOS_GinaBruno Please based Gina. We need some love. So badly.

ESO_Nightingale

Skjaldbjorn wrote: »

This discussion comes up just about every cycle. I too would like to see more frost added to Magden's kit, but honestly also to Stamden. After giving it a lot of consideration, and realizing Shade had also received the "scales with highest offensive stat" treatment with Ritual and Flames of Oblivion, I think it's time Stamina Warden receive a similar pathway. After a lot of thought and perspective change, I personally have settled on Gripping Shards. It's a rarely used root morph for tanks, doesn't impact any DPS spec negatively, doesn't eliminate a heal, doesn't impact the class at all other than a direct buff for Stamden, since it's a PB AOE DoT that wouldn't be overly useful for Magden, and allows Winter's Revenge to remain Mag-only. The idea of a spiked, dangerous frozen arena around the Stamden is actually fairly thematic, and would be super cool. It'd be a healthy change with no real negative impact on PVP, too.

@ZOS_GinaBruno Please based Gina. We need some love. So badly.

That's the last damage skill we have that isn't used by stamden in some way. hell, adding a physical/poison/disease damage component on leeching vines, corrupting pollen, bursting vines or bird of prey will be far better for both stamden and magden's thematical differences. giving stamden gripping shards destroys the last damage skill we have that's actually different to stamden's options, when it comes to glacial presence, bleeds should also be included onto the crit damage bonus thing. that way both subclasses have easy access to it that involves their unique class damage themes.

Skjaldbjorn

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

That's the last damage skill we have that isn't used by stamden in some way. hell, adding a physical/poison/disease damage component on leeching vines, corrupting pollen, bursting vines or bird of prey will be far better for both stamden and magden's thematical differences. giving stamden gripping shards destroys the last damage skill we have that's actually different to stamden's options, when it comes to glacial presence, bleeds should also be included onto the crit damage bonus thing. that way both subclasses have easy access to it that involves their unique class damage themes.

We've gone over this, and I firmly disagree. We share every other skill. I actually think the frost damage concept is fine, it limits uptimes on our crit damage scaling. That's not always a bad thing. Giving Stamdens 10% crit damage on bleed would easily be 100% uptime. Interactions like that are totally fine to not be 100%. Beyond that, Gripping Shards could also be used as a way to give Stamden group utility down the road, such as a stacking buff/debuff effect for things standing in it. A "hypothermia" styled debuff.

I understand you want frost to be completely unique to Magden. Well, i'd love animals to be completely unique to Stamden. I'd love to have a wolf instead of a bear. I'd love to not throw goofy ass birds at mobs. The point is, Gripping Shards is a simple, quick conversion that is thematic as I have shown you in their own release video, harms absolutely nothing and gives Stamden a reliable source of Chilled without breaking the class or being overbearing in PVP.

We've been through this, I see where you're coming from, but legitimately I think it's a terrible argument and rooted more in a desire to not have shared skills than actually wanting to stay unique. Warden isn't a straight-line divide "one's frost, one's nature". That's not how the class was designed from jump.

ESO_Nightingale

Skjaldbjorn wrote: »

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

That's the last damage skill we have that isn't used by stamden in some way. hell, adding a physical/poison/disease damage component on leeching vines, corrupting pollen, bursting vines or bird of prey will be far better for both stamden and magden's thematical differences. giving stamden gripping shards destroys the last damage skill we have that's actually different to stamden's options, when it comes to glacial presence, bleeds should also be included onto the crit damage bonus thing. that way both subclasses have easy access to it that involves their unique class damage themes.

We've gone over this, and I firmly disagree. We share every other skill. I actually think the frost damage concept is fine, it limits uptimes on our crit damage scaling. That's not always a bad thing. Giving Stamdens 10% crit damage on bleed would easily be 100% uptime. Interactions like that are totally fine to not be 100%. Beyond that, Gripping Shards could also be used as a way to give Stamden group utility down the road, such as a stacking buff/debuff effect for things standing in it. A "hypothermia" styled debuff.

I understand you want frost to be completely unique to Magden. Well, i'd love animals to be completely unique to Stamden. I'd love to have a wolf instead of a bear. I'd love to not throw goofy ass birds at mobs. The point is, Gripping Shards is a simple, quick conversion that is thematic as I have shown you in their own release video, harms absolutely nothing and gives Stamden a reliable source of Chilled without breaking the class or being overbearing in PVP.

We've been through this, I see where you're coming from, but legitimately I think it's a terrible argument and rooted more in a desire to not have shared skills than actually wanting to stay unique. Warden isn't a straight-line divide "one's frost, one's nature". That's not how the class was designed from jump.

Let's just make every skill scale off max mag and stam. Gg uniqueness and difference between classes. I firmly disagree in stamden taking our last skill when they have more weapon options. I'm going to keep arguing the same points because you want to remove magden's identity.

Skjaldbjorn

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

Let's just make every skill scale off max mag and stam. Gg uniqueness and difference between classes

I mean...sure I guess? There's clearly a trend with that, whether you hate it or not lol. Like, i'm not trying to be rude, but based on the Crystal Weapon change, there's a clear bias in recent changes to things they can re-skin or fiddle with code for and fill holes in kits. Gripping needs code altering. That's it. No changes to targeting, no changes to animation, no changes to damage type, no changes anywhere but the scaling. It'd take them an incredibly short amount of time with minimal effort and no cost. That's why I am suggesting it. It's painless, easy and helps Stamden tremendously.

ESO_Nightingale

Skjaldbjorn wrote: »

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

Let's just make every skill scale off max mag and stam. Gg uniqueness and difference between classes

I mean...sure I guess? There's clearly a trend with that, whether you hate it or not lol. Like, i'm not trying to be rude, but based on the Crystal Weapon change, there's a clear bias in recent changes to things they can re-skin or fiddle with code for and fill holes in kits. Gripping needs code altering. That's it. No changes to targeting, no changes to animation, no changes to damage type, no changes anywhere but the scaling. It'd take them an incredibly short amount of time with minimal effort and no cost. That's why I am suggesting it. It's painless, easy and helps Stamden tremendously.

It helps stamden by hurting magden's themes. Why can't you have corrupting pollen? That skill barely needs to change in order for it to be useful to stamden. And at least like that, it doesn't hurt our identity. I want them to put more work in to make things better because the constant bandaids make things worse in the long term as there is more fluff to strip away.

ESO_Nightingale

Skjaldbjorn wrote: »

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

Let's just make every skill scale off max mag and stam. Gg uniqueness and difference between classes

I mean...sure I guess? There's clearly a trend with that, whether you hate it or not lol. Like, i'm not trying to be rude, but based on the Crystal Weapon change, there's a clear bias in recent changes to things they can re-skin or fiddle with code for and fill holes in kits. Gripping needs code altering. That's it. No changes to targeting, no changes to animation, no changes to damage type, no changes anywhere but the scaling. It'd take them an incredibly short amount of time with minimal effort and no cost. That's why I am suggesting it. It's painless, easy and helps Stamden tremendously.

I get you want your sub class to be better and i think it absolutely should. But it should have improvements to it's own themes via skills unique to it rather than just taking magden's.

Skjaldbjorn

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

Skjaldbjorn wrote: »

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

Let's just make every skill scale off max mag and stam. Gg uniqueness and difference between classes

I mean...sure I guess? There's clearly a trend with that, whether you hate it or not lol. Like, i'm not trying to be rude, but based on the Crystal Weapon change, there's a clear bias in recent changes to things they can re-skin or fiddle with code for and fill holes in kits. Gripping needs code altering. That's it. No changes to targeting, no changes to animation, no changes to damage type, no changes anywhere but the scaling. It'd take them an incredibly short amount of time with minimal effort and no cost. That's why I am suggesting it. It's painless, easy and helps Stamden tremendously.

It helps stamden by hurting magden's themes. Why can't you have corrupting pollen? That skill barely needs to change in order for it to be useful to stamden. And at least like that, it doesn't hurt our identity. I want them to put more work in to make things better because the constant bandaids make things worse in the long term as there is more fluff to strip away.

@ESO_Nightingale There's several reasons I don't think Corrupting Pollen makes sense.

1. Green Balance tree is, thematically, healing and buffs. Not a single damage skill exists within the scope, and it carries zero passives to that effect. Every green balance passive is for healing.

2. It's a targeted AoE. Zos has made an effort to reduce those, particularly for Stam. With Caltrops gone, we're still pretty much down to one across the board. If they change the functionality, that takes work, investment, time and probably money to some extent.

3. It would give Stamden an easy, reliable source of Major Defile in PVP, which people already hate with Necro blastbones. That leads us back to the dangerous road of Stamdens getting dumpstered in PVE because of PVP. I don't want to watch that TV show again, thanks.

There's more reasons, but those are the pertinent ones that simply make it illogical to go that direction.

ESO_Nightingale

Skjaldbjorn wrote: »

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

Skjaldbjorn wrote: »

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

Let's just make every skill scale off max mag and stam. Gg uniqueness and difference between classes

I mean...sure I guess? There's clearly a trend with that, whether you hate it or not lol. Like, i'm not trying to be rude, but based on the Crystal Weapon change, there's a clear bias in recent changes to things they can re-skin or fiddle with code for and fill holes in kits. Gripping needs code altering. That's it. No changes to targeting, no changes to animation, no changes to damage type, no changes anywhere but the scaling. It'd take them an incredibly short amount of time with minimal effort and no cost. That's why I am suggesting it. It's painless, easy and helps Stamden tremendously.

It helps stamden by hurting magden's themes. Why can't you have corrupting pollen? That skill barely needs to change in order for it to be useful to stamden. And at least like that, it doesn't hurt our identity. I want them to put more work in to make things better because the constant bandaids make things worse in the long term as there is more fluff to strip away.

@ESO_Nightingale There's several reasons I don't think Corrupting Pollen makes sense.

1. Green Balance tree is, thematically, healing and buffs. Not a single damage skill exists within the scope, and it carries zero passives to that effect. Every green balance passive is for healing.

2. It's a targeted AoE. Zos has made an effort to reduce those, particularly for Stam. With Caltrops gone, we're still pretty much down to one across the board. If they change the functionality, that takes work, investment, time and probably money to some extent.

3. It would give Stamden an easy, reliable source of Major Defile in PVP, which people already hate with Necro blastbones. That leads us back to the dangerous road of Stamdens getting dumpstered in PVE because of PVP. I don't want to watch that TV show again, thanks.

There's more reasons, but those are the pertinent ones that simply make it illogical to go that direction.

1: true in that it's the healing line but it has a burst heal which applies minor toughness to your group when it ends, it doesn't have to lose it's group utility.

2: i have no idea why this is even an issue

3: it's already been adressed in a previous update where it's no longer as ridiculous. People now have to be in that AoE for them to have the defile. And it drops off as soon as you exit. Many magdens don't run it anymore over budding seeds as far as I've seen.

Skjaldbjorn

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

Skjaldbjorn wrote: »

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

Skjaldbjorn wrote: »

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

Let's just make every skill scale off max mag and stam. Gg uniqueness and difference between classes

I mean...sure I guess? There's clearly a trend with that, whether you hate it or not lol. Like, i'm not trying to be rude, but based on the Crystal Weapon change, there's a clear bias in recent changes to things they can re-skin or fiddle with code for and fill holes in kits. Gripping needs code altering. That's it. No changes to targeting, no changes to animation, no changes to damage type, no changes anywhere but the scaling. It'd take them an incredibly short amount of time with minimal effort and no cost. That's why I am suggesting it. It's painless, easy and helps Stamden tremendously.

It helps stamden by hurting magden's themes. Why can't you have corrupting pollen? That skill barely needs to change in order for it to be useful to stamden. And at least like that, it doesn't hurt our identity. I want them to put more work in to make things better because the constant bandaids make things worse in the long term as there is more fluff to strip away.

@ESO_Nightingale There's several reasons I don't think Corrupting Pollen makes sense.

1. Green Balance tree is, thematically, healing and buffs. Not a single damage skill exists within the scope, and it carries zero passives to that effect. Every green balance passive is for healing.

2. It's a targeted AoE. Zos has made an effort to reduce those, particularly for Stam. With Caltrops gone, we're still pretty much down to one across the board. If they change the functionality, that takes work, investment, time and probably money to some extent.

3. It would give Stamden an easy, reliable source of Major Defile in PVP, which people already hate with Necro blastbones. That leads us back to the dangerous road of Stamdens getting dumpstered in PVE because of PVP. I don't want to watch that TV show again, thanks.

There's more reasons, but those are the pertinent ones that simply make it illogical to go that direction.

1: true in that it's the healing line but it has a burst heal which applies minor toughness to your group when it ends, it doesn't have to lose it's group utility.

2: i have no idea why this is even an issue

3: it's already been adressed in a previous update where it's no longer as ridiculous. People now have to be in that AoE for them to have the defile. And it drops off as soon as you exit. Many magdens don't run it anymore over budding seeds as far as I've seen.

@ESO_Nightingale

1. Giving Stamdens a reliable way to apply Toughness seems to be against their direction. Furthermore, skills that heal and deal damage are a big no-no right now. Look at Ritual. It's one or the other. Further, with zero damage passives in the tree, this would fall flat.

2. It's an issue, apparently. Stamina has not received a single targeted AoE since the change to Caltrops. I have to assume it's for the design model of Stam: Single Mag: AoE. If that's the case, makes perfect sense.

3. Okay, you're telling me you can't already hear the tears about a Stamden leaping on someone with Shalks triggered to dizzy swing spam in a major defile field with a DB stun? C'mon, dude. Be realistic. Stamden has long been the most hated spec in PVP. Giving them Major Defile would be a colossal blunder, especially if it deals competitive damage.