Warden Changes - Deep Dive/Discussion

Skjaldbjorn

Let's just cut to the chase and get right to one of the most extreme, heavy-handed, absurd nerfs I have ever seen since I joined ESO back in Morrowind.



The reasons why this is a horrendous change are multitude, if not legion. Let me explain.

1. This encourages Wardens to slot less class skills, not more. In optimized group content, this change is effectively worthless. Wasted stat. Give it crit, or weapon damage. Something useful. This change only encourages Warden to be the "overland master" and nerfs them ridiculously hard in literally every other arena we have.
   
2. This strips away yet more class identity as non-class skills become vastly superior, such as Silver Shards as a spammable, which was already dusting birds in a lot of content.
   
3. Wardens have long relied almost exclusively on this buff to stay competitive. When this passive was nerfed initially, it put Wardens in the dumpster for a full patch cycle, and that was only a relatively small adjustment to the % values. Removing that damage ramp entirely puts Wardens squarely in the basement.

With this change topping list of other changes, this just pushes Wardens further away from being competitive and viable in end-game content, particularly organized, optimized groups, and encourages Necro spam even further, which was already exceedingly strong last patch.



Let's break this down into two halves.

Cutting Dive:

I assume this new effect triples the chance of proccing Hemhorrage, as the skill deals bleed damage. The issue with this is, again, in real end-game content, proccing that isn't hard. I carried a ~75%+ uptime before the change to bear increased it. This doesn't encourage this morph's use - in fact, it pushes it further down and makes Silver Shards the best "class" spammable in the game for Warden, if it wasn't already. Sustain is also not an issue in optimized content. Anyone who knows me knows I thought the bleed stacks were an absurd, needlessly clunky mechanic, especially chained to Off-Balance, and yet you somehow made it worse. Nice job, I guess? The bar was on the floor and you brought a shovel.

Screaming Cliff Racer:

This change actually seems okay. Better than the previous effect. Solid change overall. Not mad at it. Still think this skill underwhelms pretty drastically compared to other spammables and other options, but it's not awful.



This change is...odd. I'd need to playtest it to get an idea of how I feel. If anything, the Stam shalks should retain its unique effect and trigger 3 times over 10s, rather than twice. I don't think this is a damning, terrible change, but without playtesting it simply feels..awkward.




This is fine. Meets the "standard" we're seeing across the board, so sure. Whatever.



Again, sure. It's more nerfs layered on nerfs, but without some of the others, this change isn't too damning.



And now we hit the other heavy nerf for Warden. Not only a massive cost increase, but a huge damage reduction. This was another key skill keeping Warden's competitive and in a decent place DPS-wise in end-game content.

I think, objectively, reverting the change to Advanced Species would lessen the overall impact of these changes for the Warden class specifically. That change alone will severely depress Warden DPS and make it much more difficult to stay effective. Pair it with everything else, and Warden got slapped around incredibly hard for no legitimate reason, and with no counter-balance changes to return the damage to their kit elsewhere.

I think this "gap", since that's the word we love using around here, is highlighted best in the Shalks vs Blastbones comparison.

Shalks triggered twice over 6s previously. Now it's twice over 10s, at an 8% damage reduction.

Its "sister" skill Blastbones, an equally high-damage, high-investment "delayed spammable" received NO CHANGES AT ALL within the same patch cycle.

I'm not one to cry that the sky is falling before testing, but I don't need to test to know a ~6-8% damage nerf across the board to EVERYTHING THEY DO is going to bust a class in the jaw and probably drop them out of most content. I would hope the devs are intellectually capable of seeing that as well, but apparently not. Revert Advanced Species and fix Shalks. Everything else is fine.

Soarora

I'm absolutely horrified by the passive change as well and really hope it gets changed. I built around that passive and now I'm wondering if I'm going to have to change my entire skills setup or if I'll just become irrelevant totally (I main brittleden).

Skjaldbjorn

As an edit, since I for some reason cannot edit the initial post, to keep its unique identity, having the Sub Assault morph of Shalks deal damage at 3s/3s/4s makes infinitely more sense across the board. This allows it to be markedly different from the Deep Fissure morph, and retain what was at the very least a cool element to the morph, instead of making it trigger a little differently with no meaningful separation between the two.

Skjaldbjorn

Soarora wrote: »

I'm absolutely horrified by the passive change as well and really hope it gets changed. I built around that passive and now I'm wondering if I'm going to have to change my entire skills setup or if I'll just become irrelevant totally (I main brittleden).

I am literally getting my Necro raid-ready for this week. I'm putting my Warden on the shelf because I don't believe for even a half second Zos is capable of seeing how badly this is going to damage Warden in PVE. I wish I had faith, I was starting to build some the last few patches with the overall direction things were heading, but this U-turn into a brick wall put an end to that.

Grandchamp1989

Am I wrong in assuming some of those changes in the new meta looks.. not good for endgame PvE, but quite alright for PvP?

Class stun, burst heal, more pen etc.

Skjaldbjorn

Grandchamp1989 wrote: »

Am I wrong in assuming some of those changes in the new meta looks.. not good for endgame PvE, but quite alright for PvP?

Class stun, burst heal, more pen etc.

Pen is unlikely to outscale a flat 2% damage gain in PVP or PVE.

Skjaldbjorn

Some parses from a friend of mine.

LIVE:



PTS:

Azyle1

I posted in another thread - I hit about 120k ish on live on Xbox. Got about 90k ish on PTS. It will go up a bit I am sure but still... not good. Not good at all.

Skjaldbjorn

Azyle1 wrote: »

I posted in another thread - I hit about 120k ish on live on Xbox. Got about 90k ish on PTS. It will go up a bit I am sure but still... not good. Not good at all.

The flat damage nerf is basically a ~10k DPS loss. That's before we factor in DoT changes, bear nerfs, birds changes, etc, etc, etc. Warden got slapped in the face with a 10k loss before anyone else even got touched.

Azyle1

Skjaldbjorn wrote: »

Azyle1 wrote: »

I posted in another thread - I hit about 120k ish on live on Xbox. Got about 90k ish on PTS. It will go up a bit I am sure but still... not good. Not good at all.

The flat damage nerf is basically a ~10k DPS loss. That's before we factor in DoT changes, bear nerfs, birds changes, etc, etc, etc. Warden got slapped in the face with a 10k loss before anyone else even got touched.

Yeah its bad.

Meanwhile at least Stamcro will be easier to play with longer dot timers lol. I have mine ready but I enjoy Warden so much more.

SidraWillowsky

I'm so disheartened. I was already frustrated with hybridization, and this is just... beyond awful. DPS Magwarden is my favorite class in the game by miles, and I honestly don't know if I can even play the game if these changes go live because it'll make me too sad to see them as shells of their former selves. We're going back to Memeland in terms of how weak the class will be, it seems.

Amdar_Godkiller

Skjaldbjorn wrote: »

Grandchamp1989 wrote: »

Am I wrong in assuming some of those changes in the new meta looks.. not good for endgame PvE, but quite alright for PvP?

Class stun, burst heal, more pen etc.

Pen is unlikely to outscale a flat 2% damage gain in PVP or PVE.

That's not true at all. 1K pen is going to be a 3% increase in damage against max resistance targets in PVP. It will be a 2% increase against all targets with over 16500 resistance, so pretty much everybody in pvp. Basically it's going to buff the bonus you get from that passive by about 50% on average since the previous buff ultimately gave you less than a 2% damage increase, and since all bonuses to damage done are additive.

Pevey

I personally HATE the change to scorch the most. That 3 second cadence is burned into any warden main’s soul, at this point. How do you mess up the fundamental timing of a class defining skill? I honestly cannot believe how bad this change is, and my expectations were really, really low.

ESO_Nightingale

there's a lot of significant changes here that i really can't even break many of them down beyond first impressions.

arctic is pretty much finally in a place where i'd consider it very viable for pve dps, but honestly it should just get 20 seconds of duration too if we don't see any other type of significant sustain increase on the class itself, i think that's one of the biggest issues right now

advanced species being changed into pen is a huge pve nerf when we weren't even doing that great

impaling shards. so this used to be a hugely powerful skill and it makes sense that by giving us another damage skill finally, that it'd be brought down. however, the tooltip going from 2.5k every 1 second to 1.8k every 2 seconds is such a significant nerf that it's just a bit much. what is worse is that they also nerfed our sustain which was already nigh unplayable without using sub assault on magden. we really need nature's gift to be able to work on self.

i can't say i like the timing changes to scorch. everyone likes the 3 or 6 second window, but changing it to 4 and 10 on resurface feels really off on deep fissure. sub assault feels lackluster with the 3 then 8 second window being the only change it recieved. honestly i think sub assault should remain as is with the 3 second timer. deep fissure already does more per tick as well as providing major and minor breach.

i like the change to screaming cliff racer. though it's not enough. cutting dive got absolutely destroyed, agree that it needed a big change, but this isn't it.

bear's changes seem like a step in the right direction but i still don't see a reason to use eternal guardian over wild at this point in time.

the change to bird of prey is something we've been asking for for years.

nature's grasp keeps getting nerfed even though it sucks lol, whatever.

swarm change is what it is, not hugely notable.

Amdar_Godkiller

The change to cutting dive, however, basically makes it useless again after finally being good in PVP. That bleed stacking was a game changer, and now its back to other spammables.

Amdar_Godkiller

Oh but I do like the change to bird of prey. long time coming, and I'm so psyched to finally be able to slot it in PVP over race against time.

ESO_Nightingale

Still not sure what they're thinking.

GetAgrippa

Pevey wrote: »

I personally HATE the change to scorch the most. That 3 second cadence is burned into any warden main’s soul, at this point. How do you mess up the fundamental timing of a class defining skill? I honestly cannot believe how bad this change is, and my expectations were really, really low.

This is class killing to me. Probably game killing.

ccfeeling

Not main a warden , but the change is terrible !

taugrim

Skjaldbjorn wrote: »

Let's just cut to the chase and get right to one of the most extreme, heavy-handed, absurd nerfs I have ever seen since I joined ESO back in Morrowind.



The reasons why this is a horrendous change are multitude, if not legion. Let me explain.

1. This encourages Wardens to slot less class skills, not more. In optimized group content, this change is effectively worthless. Wasted stat. Give it crit, or weapon damage. Something useful. This change only encourages Warden to be the "overland master" and nerfs them ridiculously hard in literally every other arena we have.

If our passives are boosting our penetration, couldn't we swap replace a trait or weapon choice to increase weapon & spell damage since we don't need as much penetration from gear / traits?

Skjaldbjorn

taugrim wrote: »

Skjaldbjorn wrote: »

Let's just cut to the chase and get right to one of the most extreme, heavy-handed, absurd nerfs I have ever seen since I joined ESO back in Morrowind.



The reasons why this is a horrendous change are multitude, if not legion. Let me explain.

1. This encourages Wardens to slot less class skills, not more. In optimized group content, this change is effectively worthless. Wasted stat. Give it crit, or weapon damage. Something useful. This change only encourages Warden to be the "overland master" and nerfs them ridiculously hard in literally every other arena we have.

If our passives are boosting our penetration, couldn't we swap replace a trait or weapon choice to increase weapon & spell damage since we don't need as much penetration from gear / traits?

In optimized groups, nobody needs pen. It's not a thing. As the transition to medium armor setups has solidified, groups are now running Crimson/Tremor or Alkosh.

It's literally nothing but wasted stats now. Nirn/Charged was meta for multiple patches now. Dagger/Dagger. In optimized, organized content, this was never a concern.

LeHarrt91

Also with Winters Revenge, they dropped of 2s of the skill. They Increased it from 12s to 20s but changed the damage ticks to every 2s instead of every 1s, so we lost 2 ticks of damage on top of the damage nerf.

kindred

Someone at zos hates wardens.

Amdar_Godkiller

kindred wrote: »

Someone at zos hates wardens.

This^

Ermiq

Skjaldbjorn wrote: »

I think this "gap", since that's the word we love using around here, is highlighted best in the Shalks vs Blastbones comparison.

Shalks triggered twice over 6s previously. Now it's twice over 10s, at an 8% damage reduction.

It's interesting how you talk about the Stamina Shalks exclusively, it's like Magicka Shalks don't even exist. Speaks a lot about the Magicka morph state.

Whiskey_JG

2 years ago Warden was fun, but it was nerfed to the ground.

So I switched to DK and had to grind sets & setups to get myself to endgame level.

DK got nerfed so I had to switch again to warden.....

WArden gets nerfed again.....

Guess I will be needing to switch to NECRO.

ZoS has an amazing talent to waste your time

Lalothen

Cliff Racer & Deep Fissure should do frost damage so MagDen can finally fill the empty niche of "pure Frost DPS".

Beyond that I find myself agreeing with pretty much everything in the OP.

Skjaldbjorn wrote: »

Some parses from a friend of mine.

LIVE:



PTS:

Those numbers are pretty disturbing - and that's presumably with Dummy buff changes inflating the PTS parse dps somewhat compared to Live as well.

ESO_Nightingale

Lalothen wrote: »

Cliff Racer & Deep Fissure should do frost damage so MagDen can finally fill the empty niche of "pure Frost DPS".

Beyond that I find myself agreeing with pretty much everything in the OP.

Skjaldbjorn wrote: »

Some parses from a friend of mine.

LIVE:



PTS:

Those numbers are pretty disturbing - and that's presumably with Dummy buff changes inflating the PTS parse dps somewhat compared to Live as well.

would be nice if they changed the damage type for sure, i mean they did animation changes this update. so it's not off the table or anything. if i'm being completely honest, i think that sub assault or deep fissure should be reworked into playstyle-differentiating morphs like how sorc has the crystal weapon and frags morphs. yeah i know weapon got crapped on, but this is a warden thread.

Skjaldbjorn

Ermiq wrote: »

Skjaldbjorn wrote: »

I think this "gap", since that's the word we love using around here, is highlighted best in the Shalks vs Blastbones comparison.

Shalks triggered twice over 6s previously. Now it's twice over 10s, at an 8% damage reduction.

It's interesting how you talk about the Stamina Shalks exclusively, it's like Magicka Shalks don't even exist. Speaks a lot about the Magicka morph state.

Because I, unlike some, stopped viewing classes within the rigid framework of mag/stam last patch. We're all just Wardens now. We use mag bugs, stam shalks, etc. The normalization/hybridization removed a TON of the pain points associated with an "identity" based around a resource, which was stupid on its best day, and instead brought legitimate class identity. Nobody uses the Stam BB either, but you don't mention that.

I'm addressing the issue based on what is actually used.

Aldoss

Pvpers still use deep fissure and the addition of minor breach was somewhat helpful, but ultimately not needed since there were already plenty of ways to source it.

Deep fissure needs a damage increase. It's hitting for pathetically low numbers.

There's no reward for the challenge that exists using it. Magden will remain a joke without some serious attention.

Skjaldbjorn

Aldoss wrote: »

Pvpers still use deep fissure and the addition of minor breach was somewhat helpful, but ultimately not needed since there were already plenty of ways to source it.

Deep fissure needs a damage increase. It's hitting for pathetically low numbers.

There's no reward for the challenge that exists using it. Magden will remain a joke without some serious attention.

I think this is part of the fundamental issue Zos has with balance. There's too many subsets of the community that want this or that buffed. The focus should always be within the vacuum of balancing what's currently "meta" or "best". Once that's defined and structured and finished, then is the time to go back and resolve the outlier morphs/issues. As an example, Sub Assault is the "meta" morph for all Warden DPS right now. That's fine. Clean it up, stop screwing around with a skill that was working fine, and THEN work on Deep Fissure. Same deal with bugs. Mag Bugs are "meta". Refine them. Finish them. THEN go work on stam bugs.

With all the changes they've done, I have no earthly idea why people still feel compelled to cater to the illusion that a "Stamden" having some mag skills on their bar or vice versa is anathema. We're just Wardens. We should embrace that, honestly. This is the first time in ages (well, right now, this patch trashes that) that we're actually seeing legitimate, tangible, functional class identity that isn't chained needlessly and laboriously to an unnecessary delineation (Mag/Stam distinction) that was never actually a good idea to start with, but people are so stuck in and absorbed in they can't see the forest for the trees.

The ultimate objective should always, always be game balance at large. If there's some bad morphs, that's just fine temporarily as long as the opposite morph is functional and useful.