U36 Warden Adjustments and Discussion

ESO_Nightingale

FrancisCrawford wrote: »

How would people feel about loading some of the damage buffs into different morphs of an active skill, such as Lotus or the Netch? Whichever one is chosen would immediately become a required skill, but so what? Oakensoul users might be annoyed, but at least the skills each already give value beyond the part that Oakensoul is redundant with.

In any case, it should be a skill that OTHERWISE works more or less the same way in either morph, to minimize complaints about the rest of the morph design.

in that situation i feel like it's generally a better design if it's included on a skill that would only normally be run for that niche.

LeHarrt91

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

FrancisCrawford wrote: »

How would people feel about loading some of the damage buffs into different morphs of an active skill, such as Lotus or the Netch? Whichever one is chosen would immediately become a required skill, but so what? Oakensoul users might be annoyed, but at least the skills each already give value beyond the part that Oakensoul is redundant with.

In any case, it should be a skill that OTHERWISE works more or less the same way in either morph, to minimize complaints about the rest of the morph design.

in that situation i feel like it's generally a better design if it's included on a skill that would only normally be run for that niche.

Update Frost Destro skill morphs and passives.

ESO_Nightingale

LeHarrt91 wrote: »

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

FrancisCrawford wrote: »

How would people feel about loading some of the damage buffs into different morphs of an active skill, such as Lotus or the Netch? Whichever one is chosen would immediately become a required skill, but so what? Oakensoul users might be annoyed, but at least the skills each already give value beyond the part that Oakensoul is redundant with.

In any case, it should be a skill that OTHERWISE works more or less the same way in either morph, to minimize complaints about the rest of the morph design.

in that situation i feel like it's generally a better design if it's included on a skill that would only normally be run for that niche.

Update Frost Destro skill morphs and passives.

Agreed. It's way better to tie it to the weapon itself or an item set that directly interacts with it's passives.

Mr_Stach

Now that I'm out of time-out, I have some words. I'll also try to not be put in time-out again.

These adjustments are very confusing. Let's review:

Piercing Cold: This passive now increases your damage done by 1/2% which increases to 5/10% while wielding an Ice Staff, rather than increasing your Magic and Frost Damage by 5/10%.

Developer Comment:

This passive is currently creating issues with morph choices in the class, as Wardens have a healthy mix of damage types outside of Magic and Frost. Many morphs that are meant to focus on damage are either close to or even eclipsed by the more utility driven morphs that retain Magic Damage, and the lack of more DPS focused Ice Damage abilities (since they are predominantly made for tanks or utility) create a situation where this passive isn’t helping the unique identity of Ice Mages keep up with other play styles. By shifting the focus of the passive over to generic damage that contextually gets stronger for the audience the passive is made for, we hope to help bring that playstyle up a bit more.

This does not help Frost Mage play style "keep up with other playstyles" even if you are running Ice Staff, the goal post is essentially in the same spot. Making the passive a generic damage buff does nothing, because previously it was Magic and Ice damage +10%, all damage (which Warden's magicka morphs are also Magic and Frost) +10% if wielding a Frost Staff.

All this does is punish people for not running Frost staff, which as the testing I've seen, is still not better than any other weapon

So once again we're playing with Hoops, having to juggle these arbitrary changes to get a sliver of what other classes do normally.

Class Skills and Passives should not rely on Weapon Types at all, it goes entirely against the "play your way" mantra, especially when the proposed change doesn't even make Frost Staff better than the other options.

While we're on the topic of passives though:

Ice Aura:
Reduce the effectiveness of snares applied to you by 15%.

This passive has not been touched since launch of Warden. It's borderline useless and is a prime candidate to be reworked.

ESO_Nightingale

Mr_Stach wrote: »

Now that I'm out of time-out, I have some words. I'll also try to not be put in time-out again.

These adjustments are very confusing. Let's review:

Piercing Cold: This passive now increases your damage done by 1/2% which increases to 5/10% while wielding an Ice Staff, rather than increasing your Magic and Frost Damage by 5/10%.

Developer Comment:

This passive is currently creating issues with morph choices in the class, as Wardens have a healthy mix of damage types outside of Magic and Frost. Many morphs that are meant to focus on damage are either close to or even eclipsed by the more utility driven morphs that retain Magic Damage, and the lack of more DPS focused Ice Damage abilities (since they are predominantly made for tanks or utility) create a situation where this passive isn’t helping the unique identity of Ice Mages keep up with other play styles. By shifting the focus of the passive over to generic damage that contextually gets stronger for the audience the passive is made for, we hope to help bring that playstyle up a bit more.

This does not help Frost Mage play style "keep up with other playstyles" even if you are running Ice Staff, the goal post is essentially in the same spot. Making the passive a generic damage buff does nothing, because previously it was Magic and Ice damage +10%, all damage (which Warden's magicka morphs are also Magic and Frost) +10% if wielding a Frost Staff.

All this does is punish people for not running Frost staff, which as the testing I've seen, is still not better than any other weapon

So once again we're playing with Hoops, having to juggle these arbitrary changes to get a sliver of what other classes do normally.

Class Skills and Passives should not rely on Weapon Types at all, it goes entirely against the "play your way" mantra, especially when the proposed change doesn't even make Frost Staff better than the other options.

While we're on the topic of passives though:

Ice Aura:
Reduce the effectiveness of snares applied to you by 15%.

This passive has not been touched since launch of Warden. It's borderline useless and is a prime candidate to be reworked.

agreed. making it a stat stick doesn't make a frost mage playstyle better, it just makes the weapon better than others in most situations. when we play a frost mage build, we want to be using frost damage skills, sets and effects. making the ice staff absurdly powerful at the cost of player agency, and our unique power gain with frost damage skills isn't what should be happening this literally makes it easier to drop arctic blast because now it doesn't even gain a unique 10% bonus to help it stand out as an option anymore

MashmalloMan

What I would take at this point:

• Advanced Species: 2% damage done or crit chance per animal companion skill slotted.
• Piercing Cold: 4% damage done + 7% frost damage.
• Winter's Revenge:+ 30% damage done to enemies effected by the chilled status effect.... or a stacking +5% damage dealt to enemies hit by WR kinda like Ritual of Retribution, but it's based on stacks instead of duration.

If you asked me before the last few patches:

• Advanced Species: Don't mess with me.
• Piercing Cold: 8% frost damage + 8% bleed damage. Convert all animal companion skills to bleed/frost.
• Winter's Revenge: Apply +6% frost damage taken debuff for 4s per tick (parity of DK's)

Adding bandaids to the Warden's kit to make frost staves viable feels wrong and restrictive. It should be more general like frost bonuses so it isn't just a buff stick. Why not tackle the reason they feel the need to close the gap so much instead of all this nonsense. Destruction staff passives, abilities, Encratis, DK debuff, and burning.

They really just need to adjust Encratis to include all magicka damage types at 4% and make new debuffs for Sorc/Warden to match DK's fire. I would be completely fine with Chilled and Wall of Elements being behind, even Destruction staff because Frost staves provide utility and brittle, it should be slighty behind.

Mr_Stach

MashmalloMan wrote: »

What I would take at this point:

• Advanced Species: 2% damage done or crit chance per animal companion skill slotted.
• Piercing Cold: 4% damage done + 7% frost damage.
• Winter's Revenge:+ 30% damage done to enemies effected by the chilled status effect.... or a stacking +5% damage dealt to enemies hit by WR kinda like Ritual of Retribution, but it's based on stacks instead of duration.

If you asked me before the last few patches:

• Advanced Species: Don't mess with me.
• Piercing Cold: 8% frost damage + 8% bleed damage. Convert all animal companion skills to bleed/frost.
• Winter's Revenge: Apply +6% frost damage taken debuff for 4s per tick (parity of DK's)

Adding bandaids to the Warden's kit to make frost staves viable feels wrong and restrictive. It should be more general like frost bonuses so it isn't just a buff stick. Why not tackle the reason they feel the need to close the gap so much instead of all this nonsense. Destruction staff passives, abilities, Encratis, DK debuff, and burning.

They really just need to adjust Encratis to include all magicka damage types at 4% and make new debuffs for Sorc/Warden to match DK's fire. I would be completely fine with Chilled and Wall of Elements being behind, even Destruction staff because Frost staves provide utility and brittle, it should be slighty behind.

These are some great points and going down the same vein, I think it's important that Warden not be the thing that band-aids Frost Staff or vice versa.

Every Class should be powerful independent of their weapon choice and the weapons themselves should be able to stand on their own merits.

Frost Staff needs to be able to stand on it's own merits.

The changes that we have in these notes follow what I consider an "Anti-Synergy", Warden has an abundance of Crit Damage but we are getting more. The Elemental passive is being reworked to force players to use Frost Staff, but using Frost staff doesn't even make Warden more powerful than it's counterparts.

Hopefully we can get Zos to take another look at these passives, because they are just counter productive.

taugrim

MashmalloMan wrote: »

If you asked me before the last few patches:

• Advanced Species: Don't mess with me.
• Piercing Cold: 8% frost damage + 8% bleed damage. Convert all animal companion skills to bleed/frost.
• Winter's Revenge: Apply +6% frost damage taken debuff for 4s per tick (parity of DK's)

I love this list. Sounds spot on to me.

👏👏👏👏👏

Winstonshead

Another tale about honor knight @ESO_Nightingale and his fight with ancient evil named ZOS.
Everything for the peaceful life of the warden people.
Thank you man.
If someday wardens will playable again it will be Day of the @ESO_Nightingale

ESO_Nightingale

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

Hey again everyone, including @ZOS_Gilliam, @ZOS_BrianWheeler and @ZOS_GinaBruno. it's time for the update 36 warden and frost warden notes, and the feedback for them. Again, i'll try to keep this as brief as possible, but as always, there's a lot to talk about because there's a lot of repercussions with making changes like these. I appologise for the size of this post but it is necessesary to cover everything.

Piercing Cold's changes:

Piercing Cold: This passive now increases your damage done by 1/2% which increases to 5/10% while wielding an Ice Staff, rather than increasing your Magic and Frost Damage by 5/10%.
Developer Comment:
This passive is currently creating issues with morph choices in the class, as Wardens have a healthy mix of damage types outside of Magic and Frost. Many morphs that are meant to focus on damage are either close to or even eclipsed by the more utility driven morphs that retain Magic Damage, and the lack of more DPS focused Ice Damage abilities (since they are predominantly made for tanks or utility) create a situation where this passive isn’t helping the unique identity of Ice Mages keep up with other play styles. By shifting the focus of the passive over to generic damage that contextually gets stronger for the audience the passive is made for, we hope to help bring that playstyle up a bit more.

I like that you're trying to help frost dps builds and are continuing to keep them in consideration when making changes, however, has you may have seen, people are extremely adverse to this type of bonus, it was already very controversial when it was introduced to winter's revenge and it still is. I'm aware that this is to close the gap between frost staves and non frost staff weapons specifically on warden, but beyond the atrocious balancing of this change the perception is really a big problem here. It goes against the whole mantra of play how you want because of the reference to specific weapons, generally people will be more inclined to go "oh damn i have to use this to get full benefit from my passives?" even if it doesn't actually make it best in slot, however, the initial balancing appears to make that the case 2% is absolutely nothing, and 10% for all damage is huge. weapon specific bonuses shouldn't be attached to a class, it just creates massive problems like we're seeing here.

Previously, a frost damage increase did pretty much the same effect except it was not something that was locked away from normal builds. it was exceedingly good at increasing the damage done when using a frost staff as it effected light and heavy attack, status effect, set and skill damage. by changing a frost damage increase to a normal damage increase, all that's being incentivized with your frost staff, is to use better damage types than frost damage. these being flame, bleed and poison as they all have better damage dealing status effects and flame damage is always buffed by trial groups which is an ongoing problem. this change removes any reason to use frost damage skills unless absolutely necessary and as such this is not desirable by frost mage builds. I understand the thought process and I did like the idea on paper, as it effectively gives frost staff a damage increase buff that it currently lacks, but to do it on a class using this wording and these numbers, and locking damage from a passive away from people who don't want to use a frost staff, just feels absolutely awful and takes away the power of frost damage in order to make the frost staff just a stat stick.

The only way to fix the problem with frost damage being undesirable as a dps is to introduce something like a mythic or monster set that increases SPECIFICALLY Chilled's direct damage. Chilled is the best reason/incentivization we have to use a lot of frost damage so making an item set that increases ALL status effect damage will not fix anything. it has to be specifically Chilled.

The problem that you are trying to address ("the passive is currently hurting many morph options that are meant to offer damage, as the class has a myriad of damage types that are not being affected by the passive.") is purely the fault of the magic damage bonus on piercing cold not the frost bonus. Currently there are no frost damage skills that have morphs with another damage type on the class. We wish that the passive increased bleed/frost damage with an update to animal companion damage types to match, but with the current state of the morphs and proposed changes to all damage dealt, there will be no specific damage benefit to specializing in the frost skills or sets, stripping away a reason to make that engaging pure frost build. but this direction, as long as it's raw damage, people will be incentivized to run the best damage types possible, this lowers the value of frost skills and effects. going in the direction of frost damage and bleed damage animal companions skills, will make the class a lot more synergistic with itself while indirectly suggesting to the player that it would be a good idea to make builds around those 2 damage types. please do not force a specific weapon on us. not everyone wants to play a frost mage.

I should add, adding a damage bonus effect to the frost staff is a great idea, but the way in which it's done needs to be done very carefully as the blocking bonus is very powerful, this can likely be achieved through a kiss curse item set that removes the blocking bonuses of ancient knowledge for an effect equivalent to a weapon bonus in addition to a 5 piece item set.

If i am to suggest a change for the meantime, it would be to drop the bonus when specifically using an ice staff, and instead add back increased frost damage done for +6% frost damage done and +6% damage done. this will be a lot less abrasive of a change, and it also means that it'll at least temporarily Band-Aid the problem in piercing cold.

Suggestion:
Remove any bonus on the class that specifically pertains to using a specific weapon in order to gain the bonus. this includes winter's revenge. these types of bonuses should stick to weapons, item sets and maybe cp.

Piercing Cold:
Change this to +6% frost damage done and +6% all damage done.
______________________________

Advanced Species changes:

Pentration to Crit Damage

While this change is technically better, it's only marginally so. yes it's useful in pvp and pve now, except now it directly interferes with medium armor as opposed to light armor. AND It's still a capped stat meaning at a certain point it loses value, it'll lose that value a lot faster if you're wearing medium armor and it invalidates the khajiit race pick. It's also important to mention that we already have glacial presence. it already provides a +10% bonus to critical damage when attacking a chilled enemy. critical damage isn't the right pick for advanced species.

we're still lacking a confirmed reason as to why it was changed away from % raw damage in the first place. if you want to make this passive useful, reverting it back to raw damage, changing it to weapon and spell damage, or just making it critical chance, are the only ways in which to make this passive design not feel like it was changed for the worse and specifically not for any 1 build type, mag or stam. the passive changes this and last update have not been improvements. they've just hurt the class. i understand that you want to help the class, so please let the community help you by listening to our feedback.

Suggestion: Change this bonus to one of the following:

• +2% damage done for every animal companions skill slotted
• +x weapon and spell damage for every animal companions skill slotted
• +x critical chance for every animal companions skill slotted

TL:DR

Piercing Cold losing it's bonus to frost damage, to instead gain increased damage with an ice staff equipped goes against the "play how you want" mantra previously expressed as players will believe that they will need to run an ice staff just to get the most out of their passives. this problem is much worse when it turns out to actually be the case like it is now. 2% is insultingly bad for non frost staff users, and a 10% increase to all damage while using a frost staff is too strong of a difference.
It's important to note that the listed change also hurts pure frost builds as now better damage types (with better damaging status effects) will gain the same bonus that only frost damage skills gained before. it might lead to more dps for those builds, but at the cost of the entire reason to run a frost mage build in the first place, using frost damage skills with a frost staff. this is a significant problem with this new design as frost skills are generally weaker in damage and have a worse damaging status effect. turning the frost staff into a stat stick for all damage types and builds does not help, it just makes everyone use it, and it also makes people drop sources of frost damage that were slightly stronger than other options when they had the +10% frost damage increase. IF you want to help frost mage builds, there are 2 ways to make this playstyle better at the same time as increasing their damage. 1 is that mythic/monster set idea i've previously listed, and the other is to increase the amount of frost damage skills. magic damage animal companions skills are the prime candidates to swap damage types.

Winter's Revenge and Ice Staff DPS: It is worth mentioning that this is also a major problem with winter's revenge, that locks damage away from the skill, making it weak unless you specifically run a destruction staff. this is not the way to make the ice and destruction staves more popular. that issue has to be solved with the weapons themselves, and for the ice staff specifically, having something like a mythic or monster helmet that increases SPECIFICALLY chilled's direct damage is going to be what makes it viable for dpsing. this is because of the amount of chilled procs obtainable on frost damage dealer builds. We generate so many procs of chilled, but we have no way to meaningfully increase their damage to a point where it becomes more powerful to invest in using as much frost damage as possible rather than just stacking bleeds, fire and poison.

Advanced Species:
This passive change just reverses the issue, instead of light armor builds getting screwed over, it'll be medium armor builds because of the cap, we also already have a great passive that increases critical damage in the first place. we still have yet to receive any reasoning for why Advanced Species was changed in the first place. The only options for this passive that will work without hurting a specific build are: Weapon and Spell damage, Raw Damage(like it was) and Critical Chance, it should be changed BACK or to one of these other 2 options.

Just throwing ideas at the wall because i'm not quite sure what's possible for zos this patch.

but i had a couple of ideas to introduce the increased chilled direct damage effect. 150% increased chilled damage is a very good bonus if you consider a pure frost build that runs as much frost damage as possible. candidates for this effect can vary widely, from damage skills to item sets, to even CP points. personally i think that this effect should be regulated to either a frost warden specific damage skill, or, in my opinion, a much easier to balance item set that is probably doable within this pts cycle. there's no possibility of gaining a new mythic or monster helmet this patch, so there's a couple of ideas i can throw out (that would fix a lot of problems with viability provided they're balanced correctly and not napkin mathed like these example tooltips are)

Class Skills/Passives:
Icy Aura:

Changes: added increased scaling of chilled damage based on how many winter's embrace effects you have active. this means that this effect has much more impact for it's intended audience of frost dps builds. it also gives a small indirect buff to Sleet Storm.

Sets:
Winterborn:

Changes: swapped the 2-4 piece bonuses from max magicka, magicka recovery, weapon and spell damage, to crit chance, weapon and spell damage and crit chance.
reduced the damage of the winterborn proc by around 28%, reduced the cooldown to 4 seconds. added 150% increased chilled damage.

Frostbite:

Changes: added 100% increased chilled damage.

Brahma_Br

Zos, please, listen who plays the game, and do the right thing.

This wardens changes are a huge nerf to players who wanna "play your way" mantra. Dev team are making a mistake and a mess in this change, and not making it balanced for pvp x pve.

Advanced Species:
Return it passive to 2% dmg.
Critical dmg will be a huge nerf in pvp (or force us to use Mechanical Acuity). Maybe, critical dmg chance could perfectly fit well in pvp and pve as well...

Piercing cold:
force wardens to use ice staff is frustrating. And a huge nerf for who wanna play with other weapons, wardens don't deserve this treatment.

I just wanna be free for play with my wardens and be competitive as well

Aldoss

Imagine how refreshing it would be for a ZOS Dev to step in here and explain, "this is a great suggestion, and I appreciate it. Here's what we thought about by making these proposed changes" or "here's what you're missing by making these suggestions and why they cannot be implemented".

When people get out of line, ban them. There are plenty of mature adults here that legitimately just want to see this game be great and the changes being presented for Wardens are so backwards that we're either woefully ignorant of something serious on the backend (and would appreciate the insights provided by a Dev) or there was no real thought put into these changes at all.

These forums are an echo chamber. At any time, ZOS can decide to change that.

Please talk to us.

This frost staff nonsense is just plain wrong.

Mr_Stach

Aldoss wrote: »

Imagine how refreshing it would be for a ZOS Dev to step in here and explain, "this is a great suggestion, and I appreciate it. Here's what we thought about by making these proposed changes" or "here's what you're missing by making these suggestions and why they cannot be implemented".

When people get out of line, ban them. There are plenty of mature adults here that legitimately just want to see this game be great and the changes being presented for Wardens are so backwards that we're either woefully ignorant of something serious on the backend (and would appreciate the insights provided by a Dev) or there was no real thought put into these changes at all.

These forums are an echo chamber. At any time, ZOS can decide to change that.

Please talk to us.

This frost staff nonsense is just plain wrong.

I mean I can definitely see where they are hesitant to dive in to the Lion's Den.

But on the other hand, there needs to be some shifting goals at play here, we have no idea on what Zos wants Warden to be and a lot of these changes don't hone in on anything to any end we can see.

Ultimately I think Zos needs to share their Vision with what they want Warden to be or Ultimately move towards. There would be a lot less scrutiny if the changes weren't always so Random.

phungducanh369

Thanks so much for writing this, I agree with majority of what you said, another thing I might add is that if ZOS wants to make frost staff viable, they also need to either buff or rework the destro staff passives. As of right now, only ancient knowledge on inferno staff has a big DPS impact, and it still cannot beat our DW passives. Why trying to push a weapon ahead by forcing it into a specific class on a specific playstyle instead of buffing the weapon itself?

ESO_Nightingale

Aldoss wrote: »

Imagine how refreshing it would be for a ZOS Dev to step in here and explain, "this is a great suggestion, and I appreciate it. Here's what we thought about by making these proposed changes" or "here's what you're missing by making these suggestions and why they cannot be implemented".

When people get out of line, ban them. There are plenty of mature adults here that legitimately just want to see this game be great and the changes being presented for Wardens are so backwards that we're either woefully ignorant of something serious on the backend (and would appreciate the insights provided by a Dev) or there was no real thought put into these changes at all.

These forums are an echo chamber. At any time, ZOS can decide to change that.

Please talk to us.

This frost staff nonsense is just plain wrong.

yep, as much as blizzard deserves everything that's happened to it, the current wow team actually seems actively engaged enough with the community to listen to great suggestions and to give important updates on the changes they're making. i just wish that ZOS would do that, but it legitimately feels like they avoid player suggestions wherever possible, and their own ideas almost always fail to hit the mark.

Caribou77

I would like Deep Fissure reverted back to a 3 second, single cast, that does pre U35 damage.

The nine second delay version does not work in PVP.

Caribou77

"yep, as much as blizzard deserves everything that's happened to it, the current wow team actually seems actively engaged enough with the community to listen to great suggestions and to give important updates on the changes they're making. i just wish that ZOS would do that, but it legitimately feels like they avoid player suggestions wherever possible, and their own ideas almost always fail to hit the mark."

^^ Yes, agree 100%

People who are insecure about what they are doing often lack the confidence to accept advice from others.

Reading the forums, it is clear there are very well-experienced and insightful players who are trying, patiently and positively, to help improve the warden class.

I appreciate the time and energy of those who have done and continue to do so.

ESO_Nightingale

Mr_Stach wrote: »

Aldoss wrote: »

Imagine how refreshing it would be for a ZOS Dev to step in here and explain, "this is a great suggestion, and I appreciate it. Here's what we thought about by making these proposed changes" or "here's what you're missing by making these suggestions and why they cannot be implemented".

When people get out of line, ban them. There are plenty of mature adults here that legitimately just want to see this game be great and the changes being presented for Wardens are so backwards that we're either woefully ignorant of something serious on the backend (and would appreciate the insights provided by a Dev) or there was no real thought put into these changes at all.

These forums are an echo chamber. At any time, ZOS can decide to change that.

Please talk to us.

This frost staff nonsense is just plain wrong.

I mean I can definitely see where they are hesitant to dive in to the Lion's Den.

But on the other hand, there needs to be some shifting goals at play here, we have no idea on what Zos wants Warden to be and a lot of these changes don't hone in on anything to any end we can see.

Ultimately I think Zos needs to share their Vision with what they want Warden to be or Ultimately move towards. There would be a lot less scrutiny if the changes weren't always so Random.

honestly, i think the playerbase has a better claim to what vision that a company should follow regarding their class. we've been almost entirely unanimous about the bleed/frost thing.

Caribou77

So, the proposed change to Piercing Cold is a net loss for Wardens, because while they currently get a 10% bonus to Magicka and Frost damage (regardless of weapon), after the change, the will need to equip a frost staff (-10% damage vs Inferno Staff/Destruction passive AND 12% increase to heavy attacks), in order to get the same 10% damage bonus THEY ALREADY HAVE.

Am I missing something?

This amounts to another significant nerf and restriction to Magicka Warden.

So, Magicka Warden goes from bottom tier class for PVP, to lower bottom tier, but with the requirement of equipping an ice staff?

Am I wrong?

ESO_Nightingale

Caribou77 wrote: »

So, the proposed change to Piercing Cold is a net loss for Wardens, because while they currently get a 10% bonus to Magicka and Frost damage (regardless of weapon), after the change, the will need to equip a frost staff (-10% damage vs Inferno Staff/Destruction passive AND 12% increase to heavy attacks), in order to get the same 10% damage bonus THEY ALREADY HAVE.

Am I missing something?

This amounts to another significant nerf and restriction to Magicka Warden.

So, Magicka Warden goes from bottom tier class for PVP, to lower bottom tier, but with the requirement of equipping an ice staff?

Am I wrong?

The change might seem a bit misleading but it's 10% mag and frost going to +2% all damage if you're not using an ice staff. This includes every other damage type including bleed, flame and poison which means that on most normal builds, it might be a little worse or even the same. But with an ice staff this bonus increases to 10%. This still includes running poison, bleed, physical, flame dmg etc. However, It's still a bad change because while your damage will be higher, it's higher to the point where your damage loss is minor when there's no trade off and you still get the block bonuses and minor brittle. Because of this, it kinda just makes it a no brainer to realistically run this on most warden builds. And because the frost damage specific increase was removed, it means that the generally weaker frost damage skills get the same bonus as better damage skills with better damage types which is completely counter-productive.
When we say we want to play frost dps builds, we mean that we want to play pure frost damage builds. So by them making the ice staff purely a stat stick while on warden, misses our point and really hurts the design freedom of warden.

It also feels bad because the perception given by this passive is that you have to run an ice staff instead of the previous iteration hinting to the player that it'd be a good idea to invest in a frost dps build

And as far as i know, magden isn't the worst in pvp on the live patch. It got the necessary tools it needed.

Caribou77

Thanks for explaining it to me, Nightingale, I really appreciate it.

I was concerned because my current MagWarden build relies on magic damage skills (deep fissure, screaming cliff racer, fetcher infection), and I benefit from 1) +10% magic damage (Piercing Cold), 2) +10% single target damage (Inferno Staff passive), and 3) War Maiden set (+600 magic damage), and also 4) +12% heavy attack damage (Inferno Staff Passive).

So I will lose 10% single target damage (screaming cr, fetcher flies) as well as the 12% heavy attack damage from the Inferno Staff Passive, because I will have to use a Frost Staff to keep +10% (all damage) that I previously got from Piercing Cold.

I guess I will still lose that 10% single target bonus, won't I?

It's really hard for me to imagine enjoying pvp with less damage as a MagWarden, as I struggle to get kills due to no execute and lack of burst pressure (deep fissure feels gutted at 9 seconds and less damage -- and it was pretty hard to line up consistently against good players to begin with).

My record in BGs usually looks something like: 2-2-19. I enjoy the strategy components of the different bg games, but having almost all duels/combat end in a prolonged stalemate gets old.

Thanks again for your helpful explanations.

ESO_Nightingale

Caribou77 wrote: »

Thanks for explaining it to me, Nightingale, I really appreciate it.

I was concerned because my current MagWarden build relies on magic damage skills (deep fissure, screaming cliff racer, fetcher infection), and I benefit from 1) +10% magic damage (Piercing Cold), 2) +10% single target damage (Inferno Staff passive), and 3) War Maiden set (+600 magic damage), and also 4) +12% heavy attack damage (Inferno Staff Passive).

So I will lose 10% single target damage (screaming cr, fetcher flies) as well as the 12% heavy attack damage from the Inferno Staff Passive, because I will have to use a Frost Staff to keep +10% (all damage) that I previously got from Piercing Cold.

I guess I will still lose that 10% single target bonus, won't I?

It's really hard for me to imagine enjoying pvp with less damage as a MagWarden, as I struggle to get kills due to no execute and lack of burst pressure (deep fissure feels gutted at 9 seconds and less damage -- and it was pretty hard to line up consistently against good players to begin with).

My record in BGs usually looks something like: 2-2-19. I enjoy the strategy components of the different bg games, but having almost all duels/combat end in a prolonged stalemate gets old.

Thanks again for your helpful explanations.

hopefully it was easy to understand, i understand i kind of explain everything when i try to explain something.

athena9205

How about instead of "Piercing Cold: This passive now increases your damage done by 1/2% which increases to 5/10% while wielding an Ice Staff, rather than increasing your Magic and Frost Damage by 5/10%." it gets changed to when chilled is applied:

"Piercing Cold: This passive now increases your damage done by 2/4% which increases to 5/10% against chilled enemies, rather than increasing your Magic and Frost Damage by 5/10%."

This will grant the class bonus of frost element without limiting it to frost staff.

Limiting the bonus damage to the least powerful of all the weapons is pointless. Limiting the bonus damage to the warden classes most specific damage type however is more logical.

ESO_Nightingale

athena9205 wrote: »

How about instead of "Piercing Cold: This passive now increases your damage done by 1/2% which increases to 5/10% while wielding an Ice Staff, rather than increasing your Magic and Frost Damage by 5/10%." it gets changed to when chilled is applied:

"Piercing Cold: This passive now increases your damage done by 2/4% which increases to 5/10% against chilled enemies, rather than increasing your Magic and Frost Damage by 5/10%."

This will grant the class bonus of frost element without limiting it to frost staff.

Limiting the bonus damage to the least powerful of all the weapons is pointless. Limiting the bonus damage to the warden classes most specific damage type however is more logical.

doesn't help to make frost damage skills any better. all you need is to attack a chilled enemy. as far as i'm concerned, it's not any better. remember that frost damage skills lost their unique bonus that made them worth considering. you'll just run bleeds, fire and poison.

Darkstorne

ZOS, my dudes, please. Just listen to your community for a change. I love the freedom traditional TES games provide for mixing melee and magic efficiently, just like some of your own boss NPCs in your game do. Stop ruining your own damn power fantasy:

TheTuSiK

Caribou77 wrote: »

Thanks for explaining it to me, Nightingale, I really appreciate it.

I was concerned because my current MagWarden build relies on magic damage skills (deep fissure, screaming cliff racer, fetcher infection), and I benefit from 1) +10% magic damage (Piercing Cold), 2) +10% single target damage (Inferno Staff passive), and 3) War Maiden set (+600 magic damage), and also 4) +12% heavy attack damage (Inferno Staff Passive).

So I will lose 10% single target damage (screaming cr, fetcher flies) as well as the 12% heavy attack damage from the Inferno Staff Passive, because I will have to use a Frost Staff to keep +10% (all damage) that I previously got from Piercing Cold.

I guess I will still lose that 10% single target bonus, won't I?

It's really hard for me to imagine enjoying pvp with less damage as a MagWarden, as I struggle to get kills due to no execute and lack of burst pressure (deep fissure feels gutted at 9 seconds and less damage -- and it was pretty hard to line up consistently against good players to begin with).

My record in BGs usually looks something like: 2-2-19. I enjoy the strategy components of the different bg games, but having almost all duels/combat end in a prolonged stalemate gets old.

Thanks again for your helpful explanations.

The new Piercing Cold is +10% Damage Done, not +10% Ice and Magicka Damage. Overall damage boost means that with Ice Staff you loose some damage like ST from Inferno but you'll gain 10% everywhere else so it kinda negates that loss.

wuuzzum

TheTuSiK wrote: »

Caribou77 wrote: »

Thanks for explaining it to me, Nightingale, I really appreciate it.

I was concerned because my current MagWarden build relies on magic damage skills (deep fissure, screaming cliff racer, fetcher infection), and I benefit from 1) +10% magic damage (Piercing Cold), 2) +10% single target damage (Inferno Staff passive), and 3) War Maiden set (+600 magic damage), and also 4) +12% heavy attack damage (Inferno Staff Passive).

So I will lose 10% single target damage (screaming cr, fetcher flies) as well as the 12% heavy attack damage from the Inferno Staff Passive, because I will have to use a Frost Staff to keep +10% (all damage) that I previously got from Piercing Cold.

I guess I will still lose that 10% single target bonus, won't I?

It's really hard for me to imagine enjoying pvp with less damage as a MagWarden, as I struggle to get kills due to no execute and lack of burst pressure (deep fissure feels gutted at 9 seconds and less damage -- and it was pretty hard to line up consistently against good players to begin with).

My record in BGs usually looks something like: 2-2-19. I enjoy the strategy components of the different bg games, but having almost all duels/combat end in a prolonged stalemate gets old.

Thanks again for your helpful explanations.

The new Piercing Cold is +10% Damage Done, not +10% Ice and Magicka Damage. Overall damage boost means that with Ice Staff you loose some damage like ST from Inferno but you'll gain 10% everywhere else so it kinda negates that loss.

So all I does really for a magden with War Maidens is lock them into Frost Staff, that’s garbage

ESO_Nightingale

wuuzzum wrote: »

TheTuSiK wrote: »

Caribou77 wrote: »

Thanks for explaining it to me, Nightingale, I really appreciate it.

I was concerned because my current MagWarden build relies on magic damage skills (deep fissure, screaming cliff racer, fetcher infection), and I benefit from 1) +10% magic damage (Piercing Cold), 2) +10% single target damage (Inferno Staff passive), and 3) War Maiden set (+600 magic damage), and also 4) +12% heavy attack damage (Inferno Staff Passive).

So I will lose 10% single target damage (screaming cr, fetcher flies) as well as the 12% heavy attack damage from the Inferno Staff Passive, because I will have to use a Frost Staff to keep +10% (all damage) that I previously got from Piercing Cold.

I guess I will still lose that 10% single target bonus, won't I?

It's really hard for me to imagine enjoying pvp with less damage as a MagWarden, as I struggle to get kills due to no execute and lack of burst pressure (deep fissure feels gutted at 9 seconds and less damage -- and it was pretty hard to line up consistently against good players to begin with).

My record in BGs usually looks something like: 2-2-19. I enjoy the strategy components of the different bg games, but having almost all duels/combat end in a prolonged stalemate gets old.

Thanks again for your helpful explanations.

The new Piercing Cold is +10% Damage Done, not +10% Ice and Magicka Damage. Overall damage boost means that with Ice Staff you loose some damage like ST from Inferno but you'll gain 10% everywhere else so it kinda negates that loss.

So all I does really for a magden with War Maidens is lock them into Frost Staff, that’s garbage

It's definitely not something we want to lock people into. But there's definitely better picks out there than warmaiden anyway.

wuuzzum

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

wuuzzum wrote: »

TheTuSiK wrote: »

Caribou77 wrote: »

Thanks for explaining it to me, Nightingale, I really appreciate it.

I was concerned because my current MagWarden build relies on magic damage skills (deep fissure, screaming cliff racer, fetcher infection), and I benefit from 1) +10% magic damage (Piercing Cold), 2) +10% single target damage (Inferno Staff passive), and 3) War Maiden set (+600 magic damage), and also 4) +12% heavy attack damage (Inferno Staff Passive).

So I will lose 10% single target damage (screaming cr, fetcher flies) as well as the 12% heavy attack damage from the Inferno Staff Passive, because I will have to use a Frost Staff to keep +10% (all damage) that I previously got from Piercing Cold.

I guess I will still lose that 10% single target bonus, won't I?

It's really hard for me to imagine enjoying pvp with less damage as a MagWarden, as I struggle to get kills due to no execute and lack of burst pressure (deep fissure feels gutted at 9 seconds and less damage -- and it was pretty hard to line up consistently against good players to begin with).

My record in BGs usually looks something like: 2-2-19. I enjoy the strategy components of the different bg games, but having almost all duels/combat end in a prolonged stalemate gets old.

Thanks again for your helpful explanations.

The new Piercing Cold is +10% Damage Done, not +10% Ice and Magicka Damage. Overall damage boost means that with Ice Staff you loose some damage like ST from Inferno but you'll gain 10% everywhere else so it kinda negates that loss.

So all I does really for a magden with War Maidens is lock them into Frost Staff, that’s garbage

It's definitely not something we want to lock people into. But there's definitely better picks out there than warmaiden anyway.

I guess I’m more of a proponent of just leave it be. I’ve always liked selecting an element, be it sun, swamp raider, etc, and building a build around it. Warden has always been Magic and ice, and I feel like this whole update screws the magic for the sake of making the Frost more relevant

Mr_Stach

wuuzzum wrote: »

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

wuuzzum wrote: »

TheTuSiK wrote: »

Caribou77 wrote: »

Thanks for explaining it to me, Nightingale, I really appreciate it.

I was concerned because my current MagWarden build relies on magic damage skills (deep fissure, screaming cliff racer, fetcher infection), and I benefit from 1) +10% magic damage (Piercing Cold), 2) +10% single target damage (Inferno Staff passive), and 3) War Maiden set (+600 magic damage), and also 4) +12% heavy attack damage (Inferno Staff Passive).

So I will lose 10% single target damage (screaming cr, fetcher flies) as well as the 12% heavy attack damage from the Inferno Staff Passive, because I will have to use a Frost Staff to keep +10% (all damage) that I previously got from Piercing Cold.

I guess I will still lose that 10% single target bonus, won't I?

It's really hard for me to imagine enjoying pvp with less damage as a MagWarden, as I struggle to get kills due to no execute and lack of burst pressure (deep fissure feels gutted at 9 seconds and less damage -- and it was pretty hard to line up consistently against good players to begin with).

My record in BGs usually looks something like: 2-2-19. I enjoy the strategy components of the different bg games, but having almost all duels/combat end in a prolonged stalemate gets old.

Thanks again for your helpful explanations.

The new Piercing Cold is +10% Damage Done, not +10% Ice and Magicka Damage. Overall damage boost means that with Ice Staff you loose some damage like ST from Inferno but you'll gain 10% everywhere else so it kinda negates that loss.

So all I does really for a magden with War Maidens is lock them into Frost Staff, that’s garbage

It's definitely not something we want to lock people into. But there's definitely better picks out there than warmaiden anyway.

I guess I’m more of a proponent of just leave it be. I’ve always liked selecting an element, be it sun, swamp raider, etc, and building a build around it. Warden has always been Magic and ice, and I feel like this whole update screws the magic for the sake of making the Frost more relevant

But here's the thing with that thought process, it doesn't even make Frost Setups more relevant, you are just forced to use Frost Staff. This change doesn't make anything better and using Frost Staff doesn't even out perform on Warden compared to other setups.

If Zos wanted to make Frost Warden better, they would need to address the Warden Class and the Destro Staff separately. Destro heavily favors fire damage, Lightning and Frost are worse in every regard, that needs to be fixed inside of Destro, not inside class passives.

Then we come to Warden, Zos seems to want to do literally anything instead of giving Wardens and Sorcs the DK treatment, Unification of Damage types and Passive Synergies to make the class thrive in their Element. I feel like Zos changed Piercing Cold in this way just to spite the Frost Warden Community.