Is Frost Reach really viable as a spammable?

CaptainVenom

I couldn't test it myself, so... is it good? PvE and PvP?

oterWitz

When I did some tests on an iron atro I found that ice staff with destructive reach performed about the same (within the margin of error) as a flame staff and force pulse while wearing MS/Medusa (come to think of it I ought to test with Frostbite, perhaps later tonight). In my mind, it will be a matter of choosing between force pulse's aoe component + group buffs to flame damage in a raid setting vs. providing brittle to the group. Also for reference, I did some live tests and the same setup had ice destructive reach ~2k lower than flame force pulse.

I only pvp occasionally and casually but imagine frost staff with destructive reach would be better than flame and the slow moving warden spammable due to the buff of destructive reach as well as its slight dot and the rest of the ice staff passives and abilities being tanky. I'm thinking of trying ice staff backbar on my necro healer for those reasons, but again I only PvP casually so take this with a grain of salt.

ESO_Nightingale

It's definitely an improvement over previous options and does very well on the parses. but parses have indicated that frostden is still behind. So far from testing we haven't gotten over 94.67k on it yet

PrinceShroob

I plan to have a Brittle build for my magicka Warden next patch since it'll be so easy to keep high uptimes -- you just need Frost Reach (and, consequently, a frontbar frost staff). Any class can, in theory, keep high Brittle uptimes, but Warden loses less due to their higher frost damage and increased Critical Damage against chilled enemies (and Frost Reach guarantees the chilled status).

In my testing, using Frost Reach as a spammable results in a very high Brittle uptime (about 80%) and about a 2k DPS loss. The real concern when using Frost Reach is that it's more expensive than other spammables, so it can hurt your sustain. However, at rank IV, Frost Reach costs the same amount of magicka as Screaming Cliff Racer. If I recall correctly, the up-front damage is about the same as Screaming Cliff Racer, but you lose the increased damage on single target abilities from using an inferno staff (but you gain a damage over time effect on your spammables).

Overall, using Frost Reach as opposed to another spammable on Warden results in a small DPS loss. It's up to you to decide whether the DPS loss is worth the high Brittle uptime for your group.

ESO_Nightingale

PrinceShroob wrote: »

I plan to have a Brittle build for my magicka Warden next patch since it'll be so easy to keep high uptimes -- you just need Frost Reach (and, consequently, a frontbar frost staff). Any class can, in theory, keep high Brittle uptimes, but Warden loses less due to their higher frost damage and increased Critical Damage against chilled enemies (and Frost Reach guarantees the chilled status).

In my testing, using Frost Reach as a spammable results in a very high Brittle uptime (about 80%) and about a 2k DPS loss. The real concern when using Frost Reach is that it's more expensive than other spammables, so it can hurt your sustain. However, at rank IV, Frost Reach costs the same amount of magicka as Screaming Cliff Racer. If I recall correctly, the up-front damage is about the same as Screaming Cliff Racer, but you lose the increased damage on single target abilities from using an inferno staff (but you gain a damage over time effect on your spammables).

Overall, using Frost Reach as opposed to another spammable on Warden results in a small DPS loss. It's up to you to decide whether the DPS loss is worth the high Brittle uptime for your group.

Costs the same as cliff racer but the burst does like maybe 5% less damage than it. But at least right now it's still not able to compete with dot rotation magicka wardens, even though frost reach got a lot closer. So the damage loss is still significant enough that you'd probably still want to try and run brittle on a tank or healer. We are getting closer though. But it needs to be more competitive damage-wise and naturally able to do good aoe brittle.

FrancisCrawford

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

good aoe brittle.

Isn't that what Winter's Revenge is for?

FrancisCrawford

What gets confusing about warden frost builds for me starts:

• Shalks has a 3 second cooldown.
• Brittle lasts for 4 seconds (correct?).
• The Spell Power buff from the Master's "Destructive Impact" frost staff lasts 4 seconds.

There's no way to optimize everything about the rotation at once.

ESO_Nightingale

FrancisCrawford wrote: »

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

good aoe brittle.

Isn't that what Winter's Revenge is for?

It's very inconsistent on its own.

oterWitz

My numbers from Mother's Sorrow, Medusa, and Frostbite as well as flame vs ice testing. Frostbite Medusa is surprisingly similar to MS Medusa but flame still wins by a slight margin. I only did one parse on the last set because it felt pretty solid and mistake free, and I was getting tired of dummy humping lol. Also, the MS/frostbite parse could probably be more optimized, but I didn't want to change my bar around too much while testing without the crutch of addons.

ESO_Nightingale

oterWitz wrote: »

My numbers from Mother's Sorrow, Medusa, and Frostbite as well as flame vs ice testing. Frostbite Medusa is surprisingly similar to MS Medusa but flame still wins by a slight margin. I only did one parse on the last set because it felt pretty solid and mistake free, and I was getting tired of dummy humping lol. Also, the MS/frostbite parse could probably be more optimized, but I didn't want to change my bar around too much while testing without the crutch of addons.

can definitely run a more optimised settup for fire, a full dot rotation is more powerful, you only use force pulse on warden if you want to proc chilled a bit more, or if you want AoE. now you don't want to use it at all because frost reach is much better.

oterWitz

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

oterWitz wrote: »

My numbers from Mother's Sorrow, Medusa, and Frostbite as well as flame vs ice testing. Frostbite Medusa is surprisingly similar to MS Medusa but flame still wins by a slight margin. I only did one parse on the last set because it felt pretty solid and mistake free, and I was getting tired of dummy humping lol. Also, the MS/frostbite parse could probably be more optimized, but I didn't want to change my bar around too much while testing without the crutch of addons.

can definitely run a more optimised settup for fire, a full dot rotation is more powerful, you only use force pulse on warden if you want to proc chilled a bit more, or if you want AoE. now you don't want to use it at all because frost reach is much better.

Thanks for the tip, I'll try a full dot. I probably won't make it back on the pts to test exact numbers for a few days but I trust you that flame is still out performing frost.

I've also been thinking about a rotation of shalks - destructive reach - dot with both the Master's and Maelstrom staves, after FrancisCrawford's post, but then you're missing a mythic or two monster pieces. Nowadays a mythic, specifically the Kilt, would probably be better, and I doubt that the Master's staff provides enough benefit to run instead of the long reigning MA inferno. I could be wrong but that's how it looks to me when I think how to make a build to test it.

RandomKodiak

@oterWitz try this thread some great parses by a couple of people including a build with Masters Maelstrom and Kilt

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/580824/frost-damage-for-warden#latest

oterWitz

Oh, thank you! I didn't realize what a gold mine that thread had turned into. Man, it shows me how much I still have to learn on my magden

Also, @FrancisCrawford since you were originally talking about the master staff and optimizing, the parse with it is post 142 in that thread, if you haven't seen, though it doesn't break down rotation.
Edit: I should say the builds start at 142 and keep going, now that I'm actually reading instead of glancing at the pics