Warden identity and the changes of arctic blast

Nser

With the current buffs and nerfs the Warden class has recently received this PTS cycle I had some concerns regarding the direction,
mainly the questionable change to arctic blast.
first off id like to say most changes are nice and welcome, but i feel they're missing their mark.
in this post id like to talk about skills that could use some tweaking and/or buffs to provide more playstyles that don't default to
vigor and radiating/rapid regen, while keeping class identity in new and old playstyles.
here's my incomplete list of what I feel could help warden

Animal companion:
Dive = Cutting Dive and Cliff racer morphs: need their traveling time decreased for it to become a more favourable ranged spammable over other options, with the added
benefit from class passives. if the traveling time cannot be changed since its design is to have delayed burst with shalk+bird then perhaps,
as crazy as it sounds, cutting dive and cliff racer could again become undodgable or unblockable, either works not both ofcourse.

Bird of Prey: needs snare removal to compete with Race against time which everybody has acces to. Rat has 3 effects + passives, expedition,
snare removal/immunity and minor force while bird of prey essentially has 2 in expedition and minor berserk. being a class skill i believe it should be
on par if not better than options everybody has acces to. at the moment i feel conflicted between choosing BOP or RaT and end up taking both, for passive
and active use, taking valueble bar space.

Scorch = Deep fissure and subterranean assault and morphs: this is where i feel the buff is missing its mark, minor breach is nice and all but charged and absorb stamina is widely used
all over the place so the added 3k pen might result in nothing since sundered status effect = minor breach. instead i think Deep Fissure needs its stun
back (ill come back to this later) 1 stun per cast is hardly op in AOE situations and back in the day the OP part about this was that the shalks were
unblockable which is no longer the case.

additionally Screaming cliff racer and Deep Fissure should deal frost damage to please the frost mages

Green Balance:
Secluded growth and morphs: should heal all allies within the radius on the initial healing tick, rather than only the lowest health allies.
my issue with this ultimate is that somebody or something (pets) could potentially "steal" the burst heal portion of this ultimate which could
result in your own death.

Living vines and morphs: need to follow the lotus treatment, combine both morphs make one AOE 8 meter range 10s uptime, and one single target 20s
uptime. Micro managing for AOE or longer durations for single target is imo good design.
Nature embrace and spores could use a cost reduction

healing seed and morphs: an option to SELF SYNERGY

Winters Embrace:
I think this skill line and its passives are pretty much fine, the only outliers being froze gate skill and the recent nerf/change to arctic blast.
the buff to Northern Storm is welcomed but not unique since its essentially the exact same bonus from flawless dawnbreaker, which is imo lazy but ill take
it, however the ultimate needs more love for the sake of identity.

Arctic Blast: its clear to me they are trying to push arctic blast nerfs in one way or another. while its true this skill is op on paper offensively and defensively
and has been a very potent burst heal, its not the reality anymore after the changes to its healing power patches ago to everybody gaining 1k spell/weapon damage
which effectively didn't buff our main healing, to the positional desync that plague the skill into being unreliable as a stun. id argue its even skillful
making the stun portion work since threes so many counters, yet the dev comment tries to convince you ARCTIC is the most oppressive thing out there.
if nerfs are inevitable then i believe other things need to be done, in order to maintain identity without destroying arctic blast completely. Arctic is a
heal for health based tanks firstly, the stun was later added when taken away from permafrost. This was imo a mistake and made arctic too overloaded with a
burst heal, HoT, DoT AND stun and we've been paying the price. first a 20/25% healing nerf and now the stun portion is under attack.

i believe we have to go full circle and give the stun back to deep fissure while removing the stun from Arctic blast
and give the 3 tick stun mechanic from arctic BACK to the permafrost AND Northern Storm ultimates both, a real reason to use these class defining ultimates.

New Arctic wind: Both morphs: will burst heal, HoT and DoT like they do now WITHOUT the stun. instead polar wind will heal an ally aswell as yourself,
and arctic blast receives a cost reduction to balance its losing stun aswell as being single target.

i believe these changes will help warden keep unique class identity without gutting existing playstyles. heal with max health, heavy armor and arctic or med
armor and green balance without defaulting to generic RR/vigor = class identity maintained and all playstyles viable

Writeup by Skaffa/Sanguivoria, Warden PC EU

@ZOS_GinaBruno, @ZOS_BrianWheeler, @ZOS_RichLambert.

DtOG

I think taking away the stun completely and let the healing scale off weapon and spell damage would make that skill usable and fun again. Dk has cauterize. Sorc has dark deal . Templar has bubble which is getting nerfed but you get what I’m saying. The class needs a third decent healing ability bar space wise or buff to the other healing abilities they have. Desperately. And this is from a pvp perspective.

Nser

I agree we are in in need of healing, our own class healing in the form of Green balance.
Arctic blast is reserved for pve tanks and niche pvp builds and should remain healing scaling on max health.
Changing the healing to scale with wpn/spell damage would only nuke warden pve tanking and destroys build diversity when the only way is medium armor stack spell/wpn dmg.
This is why im asking for green balance buffs, so you are not forced anymore to borrow healing from resto or other sources or feel like you have to use this health scaling heal which does not suit your build as much as a spell/wpn dmg based heal would.
Heal in a spell/wpn dmg medium armor build with green balance, or heal with heavy armor max health and arctic blast