I think devs and players both are missing the mark on Arctic Blast

Eira_Rosynhwyr

I feel I should start with a bit about where I'm coming from. A tl;dr is provided at the end.

• I love my Frostden. I care first for thematics and damage second.
• I am not a Warden main. This is due to already having two healers and not feeling like I need a third and it doing fairly poor in the realm of DPS.
• I take my Frostden into BG, non-DLC vet dungeon (save for the older ones which are pretty much easy mode), and normal trials. Not vet dungeons and not vet trials and on no character do I engage in large scale PvP.
• I do not tank in this game except in the sense of "there is no real tank and I'm top agro'er".
• I do tank in literally every other MMO and so have a solid idea as to what a tank actually is for.
• This is not my only problem with the patch notes, but this is the one that really irks me. At the same time, some of the community feedback concerns me.
• I rolled a Frostden because I love the aesthetic and am very willing to let function suffer for style's sake. Even though Frostden is an under-performing DPS, I will keep rolling it as pure-frost, eschewing things like either one of Scorch's morphs or the Bear since they don't fit in (Please, please, please ZOS, please give us a Polar Bear morph or skin!). Just wanted to reiterate this very important point.

That said, the Arctic Blast nerf is getting a lot of hate right now. Personally, I feel the angst is justified in the PvP space and, to a lesser degree, PvE. However, I also understand that as it is on Live, Arctic Blast has issues. Frankly, now that my initial revulsion has passed, I'm more displeased that they took a broken skill and broke it a bit more than I am about the devs "nerfing it into the dirt". Frankly, I don't feel like this is that much worse off.

On the one hand, it is annoying to melee. On the other, it's annoying to the Warden since it's a poorly controlled stun and CC immunity is a thing. I personally have not once found the stun on Arctic Blast to particularly useful in PvP. In PvE, I do find it useful when solo-ing non-overland content (ie, soloing group dungeons). However, I don't do that often, so from a functional stand point, I couldn't care less about the nerf to stun. In group content I use Polar Wind and in overland it doesn't matter because things just die (which frankly, I'm okay with since there is other, harder content I can do when I so choose and sometimes it's nice to feel like a god of icy death).

However, looking at this from the lens of a DPS—which is how most of the community seems to be taking it—seems inherently mistaken. The entire Winter skill line is a tank line which happens to have non-tank morphs. Polar Wind is unequivocally the healing morph of Arctic Wind, but that doesn't make Arctic Blast the DPS morph. It is the tank morph. That is why you can't just remove the heal, as has been suggested, nor can you remove the utility. Because it is a tank morph and tanks want self-heal and utility. I may not tank in this game, but that's only because I don't like the way agro is managed. I tank in literally every other MMO I've played so I understand tanks are more than just damage sponges. They are about utility and control. They hold agro not so much to keep everyone else alive, but rather to manage the chaos. (I am fundamentally opposed to the mind-set that it's okay to let some mobs roam free, which is why I'll never tank in this game. Or, put differently, my OCD won't allow it.)

That all said, what do I actually suggest to do about it? The skill is not okay as is and the changes aren't great either. @ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_BrianWheeler @ZOS_Gilliam

Well, I would like to call to mind it's theme and purpose. The theme is Winter and the purpose is Utility (it's self-healing at it's base already). With this in mind, I prose the following:

1. Keep the damage the same.
2. Keep the heal the same. Maybe let it alternatively scale off something other than health, such as magicka and/or stamina.
3. Get rid of the stun.
4. Each stack lasts 2 seconds.
5. Each stack after the first now adds a 10% snare. The first stack snares for 5%. At max stacks this is a 45% snare.
6. At 3 stacks it procs a guaranteed chilled status. An alternative, perhaps each stack increases susceptibility to the chilled status effect.

How does this address the devs' concern.

Let's first remind ourselves of the devs' concern:

Right now, this ability is offering too much offensive nature for the Warden, allowing them to line up their burst perfectly with Scorch to remove counter play. By increasing the stack count required, there should be less of a guarantee with this combination and require more reactive play from the caster, while the increased duration of tracking helps also reduce the ease of counter play by backing off for 1 second from the Warden to completely avoid the stun.

They worry about the "hard stop". Well, this removes that hard stop. Simple as that. The chilled status effect can be turned into immobilize, but that requires additional effort from the Warden and still takes longer than the three seconds required on Live.

Why these changes? In general.

• I feel they are all thematically inline with a winter theme. Things slow down in the cold. In fact, I'd argue this is more wintry than what's on Live.
• There is no hard stop without the Warden doing something extra, such as casting Unstable Wall to turn the chilled status into an immobilization.
• In my opinion, a bad stun is worse than no stun.
• I like snares. If I were to ever start tanking I like the flow idea of dashing in with Rush of Agony and keeping things stacked thanks to the snare and immobilize.
• This both provides CC utility and also addresses the need for more frost DPS.

Why these changes? Specifically.

1. This is a tank ability. Dealing damage by itself isn't the point.
2. This is a tank ability, removing the heal is counter to this. For a tanking self-heal, the healing amount seems okay to me, as is how it scales off max health, especially in light of the Wardens existing heal kit. If you want the heal to be relevant to non-tanks (Yes, please!) it can alternatively scale with the higher of constant_1*max_health or constant_2*max_resource_stat.
3. The stun seems to be the main problem, both for the players using this skill as well as playing against it. I feel it's bad for everyone. Thus, it goes.
4. The 2 second thing is something that just feels right. 1 second seems to short to use reliably in PvP given the current state of the servers, and 3 seconds overly reduces the skill needed to make use of this. In PvE, it doesn't matter, but PvP has technically issues where players can "teleport" all over the place. Alternatively, ZOS, fix the servers.
5. For reasons both thematic and functional, this needs some kind of CC. Rather than hard CC, I feel a soft-CC is more appropriate. As for why those numbers, the Frostden already gets a 30% snare and with the way the addition works, it would be weird if it hit 30% as there would actually be a dip at 3 stacks.
6. My Frostden hurts for damage compared to all my other DPS. This provides an indirect damage boost, one which can be utilized by the rest of the group as well (since the team is what matters to the tank). As for why "3 stacks"? I picked a number.

tl;dr: Arctic Blast on Live is bad. Arctic Blast on PTS is slightly worse. The devs are right that something needs to change, but missed the mark in changing it. I suggest replacing the hard CC with soft CC that stacks with existing soft CC and adding in chilled for the damage utility (which is sorely needed). this allows the skill to retain its identity as a tank skill while also being more managable by all players in both PvP and PvE, foe and friend alike.

Response to some comments:

• Though the Warden already has soft CC, more soft CC won't hurt, and it does stack with the existing CC up to 105%. I wouldn't want to remove the hard CC without adding something back.
• It has been said that the chilled status proc is already in the kit. This is not entirely true. Permafrost does have a 100% proc, but it's damage is lacking, and can't be used all the time. Impaling Shards and its morphs have a higher chance of providing the debuff, and the Glacial Presence passive increases the chances of for all frost damage, but 100% uptime on chilled is not possible is currently not possible. At least not without multiple Wardens in a 12-person all cooling things down.
• I'm not saying the skill line is purely tanking. There are obviously some non-tank morphs. Unless I'm mistaken, every tanking skill in the game has a non-tank morph. I'm just saying this a tank-centric skill line. The other morph of Arctic Wind is a healer-cententric (whether it's used on healers, tanks, or DPS) and thus it makes sense for the other morph, Arctic Blast, to be inline with a tank's traditional purposes.
• I feel I may have given the impression that I want this to remain a tank skill. That is not the case. I don't tank, so I don't really care that much. However, I do want to propose an alternative to whats on Live and PTS that stays within the bounds of a tank skill simple because I fear any proposal that makes it more of a DPS skill will go in one ear and out the other.

SEINTDARKNES

I think you are seeing things way different than the reality is because winter's embrace isn't a purely tank skill tree i never seeing or used myself the ultimate for tanking (main tank here) also they buff and give more damage to northern storm so why a tank would care about damage? You can say maybe pvp and is an okeysh answer.

Still we have Winters revenge skill and that skill is purely a dps morph so yeah the skill line have some tanking utility but is not a purely tank skill tree.

For the artic blast nerf i simply don't like the nerf if a tank want to heal you could use polar wind is way better and for control you have griping shards, why i will choose to stun enemies in 3 seconds if i can keep control in 1 press with gripping shards, crystalized slab isn't used by tanks is mainly used in pvp or solo content so i think we could ask for something better because winter's embrace is not a purely tank skill tree.

Also tanks have a soft cc in gripping shards and proc chill too.

Eira_Rosynhwyr

SEINTDARKNES wrote: »

Eira_Rosynhwyr wrote: »

*Snip*

I think you are seeing things way different than the reality is because winter's embrace isn't a purely tank skill tree i never seeing or used myself the ultimate for tanking (main tank here) also they buff and give more damage to northern storm so why a tank would care about damage? You can say maybe pvp and is an okeysh answer.

Still we have Winters revenge skill and that skill is purely a dps morph so yeah the skill line have some tanking utility but is not a purely tank skill tree.

For the artic blast nerf i simply don't like the nerf if a tank want to heal you could use polar wind is way better and for control you have griping shards, why i will choose to stun enemies in 3 seconds if i can keep control in 1 press with gripping shards, crystalized slab isn't used by tanks is mainly used in pvp or solo content so i think we could ask for something better because winter's embrace is not a purely tank skill tree.

I didn't say it was purely tank-oriented. There are skills with DPS-morphs. I never said there weren't. However, every skill has a tank morph or is defensively focused (ie Crystal Shield and its morphs). The passives are tank-centric. The main themes, functionally, are CC and defense. These tanks themes.

I didn't say tanks don't care about damage. After all, there is no chaos if everything's dead. It's the same as the arguement for healers dealing damage. Killing mobs gives 100% damage mitigation.

As for your comment of "Why would I X when I can Y", that's not the point.

Also, I would like to point out that my proposed changes address the need for more damage, but in a way that is more inline with adding utility rather than raw numbers.

SEINTDARKNES

Okay my bad for the purely skill tree but still you are asking for things that the skill line already provide like the soft cc and the child effect.

Eira_Rosynhwyr

SEINTDARKNES wrote: »

Okay my bad for the purely skill tree but still you are asking for things that the skill line already provide like the soft cc and the child effect.

It's a very long post, I know.

And yeah, I know it has soft CC already. I mention that in there. As has been said else where, Warden needs an offensive stun, one that can be controlled. I'm not saying that isn't true. I am saying that the current state of existing stun is more trouble than it's worth. Also, the proposed CC was chosen in a way that would stack with existing CC. When combined, it would provided a 105% snare and the guaranteed chill would help with immobilize.

Other than Permafrost, there is no guaranteed Chill effect. 100% uptime on chilled is currently not possible. This would make that possible.

On the whole, I'm not sure what is best to do with the skill line. I'd like to see more damage and better hard CC. This isn't meant as a "There, I fixed Winter's Embrace. GG." thread. Or even a "I fixed Arctic Blast". I'm merely saying that I feel this is worlds better then whats on Live or PTS.

SEINTDARKNES

It's a very long post, I know.

And yeah, I know it has soft CC already. I mention that in there. As has been said else where, Warden needs an offensive stun, one that can be controlled. I'm not saying that isn't true. I am saying that the current state of existing stun is more trouble than it's worth. Also, the proposed CC was chosen in a way that would stack with existing CC. When combined, it would provided a 105% snare and the guaranteed chill would help with immobilize.

My final insight is if you say that you play pvp as i do too you know how bad snares are, I don't want to imagine what a 105% could do, already frostdens in pvp are very annoying and snare and puts soft cc and hard cc on top of a 105%, i know you don't say that it will give you the 105% in one second but still xD

Is kinda difficult to balance things because pve affects pvp and pvp affects pve like you say it will be better if the separate pvp and pve but i have a better crazy idea what if devs make that the base skills and morphs have different effects, right know we only have 2 options but if they change that we could have 3 morphs with different effects and make more room to have more options to use!

Eira_Rosynhwyr

SEINTDARKNES wrote: »

It's a very long post, I know.

And yeah, I know it has soft CC already. I mention that in there. As has been said else where, Warden needs an offensive stun, one that can be controlled. I'm not saying that isn't true. I am saying that the current state of existing stun is more trouble than it's worth. Also, the proposed CC was chosen in a way that would stack with existing CC. When combined, it would provided a 105% snare and the guaranteed chill would help with immobilize.

My final insight is if you say that you play pvp as i do too you know how bad snares are, I don't want to imagine what a 105% could do, already frostdens in pvp are very annoying and snare and puts soft cc and hard cc on top of a 105%, i know you don't say that it will give you the 105% in one second but still xD

Is kinda difficult to balance things because pve affects pvp and pvp affects pve like you say it will be better if the separate pvp and pve but i have a better crazy idea what if devs make that the base skills and morphs have different effects, right know we only have 2 options but if they change that we could have 3 morphs with different effects and make more room to have more options to use!

Yes, I can imagine how annoying that can be. However that would require three different skills, one of which is an ult, and the other requires 5 stacks. In a world with Dark Convergence and Dragon Knights, I don't think that's terrible.

I could not agree with you more in regards to the difficulty with balancing PvE and PvP. Frankly, I wish they wouldn't bother. having three morphs would certainly help in regards to a great many problems, but it also would provide many more combinations of skills which would make balancing that much more difficult. Right now you have X choose 5 non-ult combinations, where X is some number I don't want to count. Increasing that to 1.5X choose 5 would more then exponentiate the number of combinations.

Kory

Artic Blast is only somewhat of a reliable stun for me offensively when I use it preemptively for a combo, but defensively it saved me a lot. I love that they are heavily considering counterplay though.

SEINTDARKNES

Kory wrote: »

Artic Blast is only somewhat of a reliable stun for me offensively when I use it preemptively for a combo, but defensively it saved me a lot. I love that they are heavily considering counterplay though.

Ask dks if they have a counterplay when you get fossilized and wiped x3 times the damage on top of all their dots xD
Or templars with their unblockeable stun, streak maybe? Or nb with invis

Necros and wardens are the only 2 clases that don't have a good stun on demand kinda weird xD

Eira_Rosynhwyr

Yeah. I'm sure there is a counter play to DKs, but I haven't found it personally and don't care enough to look it up. DC isn't as terrible as people make it out to be, but breaking free and rolling out of the way does eat up my stamina.

Kory

SEINTDARKNES wrote: »

Kory wrote: »

Artic Blast is only somewhat of a reliable stun for me offensively when I use it preemptively for a combo, but defensively it saved me a lot. I love that they are heavily considering counterplay though.

Ask dks if they have a counterplay when you get fossilized and wiped x3 times the damage on top of all their dots xD
Or templars with their unblockeable stun, streak maybe? Or nb with invis

Necros and wardens are the only 2 clases that don't have a good stun on demand kinda weird xD

Don't get me started on the lack counterplay with unblockable stuns and immobilizations here and there. Also you snuck in NB invisibility as if it's not the most counterable class in the game I'm a nightblade killer man lol

SEINTDARKNES

Don't get me started on the lack counterplay with unblockable stuns and immobilizations here and there. Also you snuck in NB invisibility as if it's not the most counterable class in the game I'm a nightblade killer man lol

No, i put nb invis because they can have an really easy stun on demand and what i was trying to tell is warden don't have any good stun like other classes that can line up a stun and perfect burst combo, you know seems unfair for the warden to not have a good stun.

LeHarrt91

I understand where your coming from and I'm not to fussed on what skill gets the stun, but for PvP a reliable offensive stun that doesnt knock target out of burst damage (Flame Clench) or a stun that doesnt do any damage (Petrify) is needed in the wardens toolkit (mainly for MagDen, and even MagCro)