C'mon Zos, Arctic Blast, STOP MAKING IT SO COMPLICATED

Mr_Stach

For Reference:

Arctic Wind:
This ability and the Polar Wind morph no longer deal damage over their duration.
The Healing over Time effects now tick once every 2 seconds over 10 seconds, rather than once every second over 5.
Increased the healing per tick to 6% of your Max Health, up from 2.5%.
Polar Wind (morph):
This morph now causes the initial heal and Heal over Time to target an additional ally, rather than only the initial heal.
Increased the healing over time by 20%.
Arctic Blast (morph):
This morph now causes the initial heal to scale with your highest Offensive stats, rather than Max Health.
This morph now causes the Heal over Time to be converted to Damage over Time.
This morph no longer ranks up in cost reduction.
This morph now stuns on the 2nd and final ticks, rather than requiring hitting the same target 5 times in succession. The stun is no longer unblockable.

Arctic Blast, since the Stun was added to it, has been a complicated mess and a nightmare to balance and this rendition is just one in a long line of bad changes. Initially I skipped right to Arctic Blast and was like oh nice they made it the same as other AoE Durations, Job's done, we can move on from Arctic Blast. But no. AoE Standard has been moved to 20 seconds to some reason, which is bad for several reasons (you know mobility, if AoE fights are stagnant for that long, they are really boring fyi).

So now Arctic Blast is in the same place but slower, is it really too much to ask to make the Damage portion up to standard? Will that somehow break the game? Let us test it. Let the players see.

The Heal scaling on Max stats is nice, it's a little burst heal, which is fine I guess,

Next the Stun, the Stuns? 2nd and final ticks. So that is a one second delayed Stun and 9 second delayed Stun, which isn't bad except it's Blockable. I think this is probably the more annoying thing, we gave several points of feedback of an On Demand Unblockable Stun, Like what Templars, Sorcerers, and DKs Have. But we get a Very Blockable and Predictable Stun. So that's my review.

Also with Arctic Blast not matching AoE Standard that is being set, it's being cast twice as often, burning through twice as much resources.

So I'm not a fan, I'm sure from the offset it might seem oh this feels a little better but then in practice it just gets worse.

prof_doom

And honestly, why take away the damage? It wasn't even much damage to begin with, and it was one of the few things that made Warden tanking feel even marginally unique.

Mr_Stach

They did it before, they also did it to Twisting Path if you remember.

Zos has a problem with overloading skills. This change does not change that, it just makes the different parts worse. The Damage is less than other "Comparable DoTs", you burn through twice the resources. You have a Blockable Stun, which I guess is ok. But it just defeats the Purpose of a stun. If the AoE Stun is the Problem, remove that Variable. I need to stun 1 SOB right now, if he can block it, I once again wasted that energy. Then there's the Heal, great it scales off Max Stats, which is great, but what about our whole healing tree? Why can't we have a good Self Heal to proc all our good Nature's Balance stuff in the Healing Tree.

I'll need to do a lot of testing to do a really large in depth review. But the different moving parts are not great.

Necrotech_Master

i dont have the PTS installed, so based on the description it might be OK

polar wind will be more useful in that it will heal both you and another target (with both burst and heal over time)

arctic blast will be the more dmg focused variant, the stun still seems very random, and losing the heal over time portion will hurt, but functionally the burst heal will still be useful with the way im using the mag warden

Everaen

Mr_Stach wrote: »

Next the Stun, the Stuns? 2nd and final ticks. So that is a one second delayed Stun and 9 second delayed Stun, which isn't bad except it's Blockable.

I saw somewhere that since this ability now ticks every 2 seconds, that first stun would hit at 4 seconds on the second tick, and then at 10 seconds on the fifth tick. I wonder if the first tick of these abilities is counted at 0 seconds or at 2 seconds, though.

Mr_Stach

You're probably right, my PTS just finished downloading so now I can do a good ol test. Will confirm