U36 Warden Adjustments and Discussion

ESO_Nightingale

Dottzgaming wrote: »

Great post nightingale, couldnt agree more.
+1

Thanks dottz, not often that I'll see a comment from you!

ESO_Nightingale

whelp, lets see if they listened.

Darkstorne

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

whelp, lets see if they listened.

ESO_Nightingale

Darkstorne wrote: »

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

whelp, lets see if they listened.

As much as i want it to be wrong, this'll probably hold up tomorrow.

Lancer1602

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

whelp, lets see if they listened.

that aged well.

Skjaldbjorn

I've completely given up on the idea that Gilliam et al have a clue how to balance Warden. The changes just get progressively more and more tone deaf. I've completely shifted off DPS and am a full-time tank for the one core I still run with. Not sure how long ESO will keep me at all. The dev team has no earthly idea what they are doing, and it's just depressing. Meanwhile, AGS is killing it with every update. Irony.

Azyle1

Skjaldbjorn wrote: »

I've completely given up on the idea that Gilliam et al have a clue how to balance Warden. The changes just get progressively more and more tone deaf. I've completely shifted off DPS and am a full-time tank for the one core I still run with. Not sure how long ESO will keep me at all. The dev team has no earthly idea what they are doing, and it's just depressing. Meanwhile, AGS is killing it with every update. Irony.

Might I ask what AGS is?

BasP

Azyle1 wrote: »

Skjaldbjorn wrote: »

I've completely given up on the idea that Gilliam et al have a clue how to balance Warden. The changes just get progressively more and more tone deaf. I've completely shifted off DPS and am a full-time tank for the one core I still run with. Not sure how long ESO will keep me at all. The dev team has no earthly idea what they are doing, and it's just depressing. Meanwhile, AGS is killing it with every update. Irony.

Might I ask what AGS is?

I'd guess Amazon Game Studios, with its New World updates (which I might give a try one of these days).

GetAgrippa

What's this tri focus bug I see mentioned?

MashmalloMan

Week 3 changes.. Edit: Unless I'm mistaken, Chilled seems to do about 185% more damage for Wardens.

YandereGirlfriend

Ugh, I misinterpreted the final part of the patch note and thought that they were increasing the % damage done for non-Frost Staff damage from 2% to 6% and then increasing the Frost Staff bonus from 10% to 12%.

But no - just doubling down on the already bad idea of linking a class passive to a specific weapon type.

Lughlongarm

Liked the new proc on chill, reminds me the templar passive just with ~ 33% of the damage but with more proc uptime.
With charge and skills like Winter's Revenge it will proc very often.
Probably some cool ways to theory craft around it.

YandereGirlfriend

Indeed.

If they would only ditch the woeful "Frost Staff Mandate" for something more globally useful then this would end up being somewhat of an okay patch.

Sad to see Icy Aura not touched, however. That is just a whole big bag of FeelsBadMan and wasted potential.

Tannus15

frost reach builds got a pretty hefty buff with the chilled status damage increase, since it procs chilled on cast.

i'm assuming either the passive tooltip hasn't been updated or it's a bug for piercing cold

so compared to live it's

6% damage buff, 12% with a frost staff
increased chilled proc damage
more crit damage %
reduced pen

I'm confused why everyone is up in arms about this apart from the fact that a % of damage is tied to using the frost staff.

While I agree on one hand that it would make more sense to just buff frost staff to do more damage, people have also been crying out for "class identity" since basically forever and making wardens the "frost guys" gives them some solid identity.

Basically what i'm saying here is this reverts a lot of the nerfs that were applied last update, fixes many of the pain points of mag warden in particular AND buffs the frost build niche without making the non frost builds OP.
I really, honestly, don't understand why you're all so upset over it.

YandereGirlfriend

Tannus15 wrote: »

frost reach builds got a pretty hefty buff with the chilled status damage increase, since it procs chilled on cast.

i'm assuming either the passive tooltip hasn't been updated or it's a bug for piercing cold

so compared to live it's

6% damage buff, 12% with a frost staff
increased chilled proc damage
more crit damage %
reduced pen

I'm confused why everyone is up in arms about this apart from the fact that a % of damage is tied to using the frost staff.

While I agree on one hand that it would make more sense to just buff frost staff to do more damage, people have also been crying out for "class identity" since basically forever and making wardens the "frost guys" gives them some solid identity.

Basically what i'm saying here is this reverts a lot of the nerfs that were applied last update, fixes many of the pain points of mag warden in particular AND buffs the frost build niche without making the non frost builds OP.
I really, honestly, don't understand why you're all so upset over it.

How would any other class like it if they got a similar, absurd stipulation locking them to a specific weapon type? Like tying Templars to Greatswords or Nightblades to Bows or some such madness. My guess is that they would all be up-in-arms over the tremendous bait-and-switch that had been perpetrated against them.

Another issue is that, for the Warden changes, they are metaphorically "robbing Peter to pay Paul", which is to say they are taking power out of the entirety of the non-Frost spec of the class to empower these strange interpretations of what Frost Wardens have been asking for.

All that Frost Wardens have wanted are more viable Frost Damage skills via converting some currently Magic Damage skills into Frost Damage skills. This would have been trivially easy to implement and there is basically no valid, non-RP argument against it. But instead of that we have this monkey's paw situation where everything BUT damage types are being changed, nearly all to the detriment of non-Frost specs.

Mr_Stach

Tannus15 wrote: »

frost reach builds got a pretty hefty buff with the chilled status damage increase, since it procs chilled on cast.

i'm assuming either the passive tooltip hasn't been updated or it's a bug for piercing cold

so compared to live it's

6% damage buff, 12% with a frost staff
increased chilled proc damage
more crit damage %
reduced pen

I'm confused why everyone is up in arms about this apart from the fact that a % of damage is tied to using the frost staff.

While I agree on one hand that it would make more sense to just buff frost staff to do more damage, people have also been crying out for "class identity" since basically forever and making wardens the "frost guys" gives them some solid identity.

Basically what i'm saying here is this reverts a lot of the nerfs that were applied last update, fixes many of the pain points of mag warden in particular AND buffs the frost build niche without making the non frost builds OP.
I really, honestly, don't understand why you're all so upset over it.

Tannus15 wrote: »

frost reach builds got a pretty hefty buff with the chilled status damage increase, since it procs chilled on cast.

i'm assuming either the passive tooltip hasn't been updated or it's a bug for piercing cold

so compared to live it's

6% damage buff, 12% with a frost staff
increased chilled proc damage
more crit damage %
reduced pen

I'm confused why everyone is up in arms about this apart from the fact that a % of damage is tied to using the frost staff.

While I agree on one hand that it would make more sense to just buff frost staff to do more damage, people have also been crying out for "class identity" since basically forever and making wardens the "frost guys" gives them some solid identity.

Basically what i'm saying here is this reverts a lot of the nerfs that were applied last update, fixes many of the pain points of mag warden in particular AND buffs the frost build niche without making the non frost builds OP.
I really, honestly, don't understand why you're all so upset over it.

Except it's not 6% without 12% with Frost Staff

It's 2% without 12% with Frost Staff.

Frost Staff bonus should just be removed. OR Revert the passive back to how it was. Or Make it so it's 6% normally, 12% while a Winter's Embrace skill is active.

ESO_Nightingale

at some point later today i'm gonna make a seperate post, but after testing my thoughts are:

glacial presence is great
piercing cold is really stupid
and advanced species is a bit better now that there's no 2nd crit dmg passive, but still would be nice if it didn't hurt medium builds.

Tannus15

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

Tannus15 wrote: »

frost reach builds got a pretty hefty buff with the chilled status damage increase, since it procs chilled on cast.

i'm assuming either the passive tooltip hasn't been updated or it's a bug for piercing cold

so compared to live it's

6% damage buff, 12% with a frost staff
increased chilled proc damage
more crit damage %
reduced pen

I'm confused why everyone is up in arms about this apart from the fact that a % of damage is tied to using the frost staff.

While I agree on one hand that it would make more sense to just buff frost staff to do more damage, people have also been crying out for "class identity" since basically forever and making wardens the "frost guys" gives them some solid identity.

Basically what i'm saying here is this reverts a lot of the nerfs that were applied last update, fixes many of the pain points of mag warden in particular AND buffs the frost build niche without making the non frost builds OP.
I really, honestly, don't understand why you're all so upset over it.

How would any other class like it if they got a similar, absurd stipulation locking them to a specific weapon type? Like tying Templars to Greatswords or Nightblades to Bows or some such madness. My guess is that they would all be up-in-arms over the tremendous bait-and-switch that had been perpetrated against them.

Another issue is that, for the Warden changes, they are metaphorically "robbing Peter to pay Paul", which is to say they are taking power out of the entirety of the non-Frost spec of the class to empower these strange interpretations of what Frost Wardens have been asking for.

All that Frost Wardens have wanted are more viable Frost Damage skills via converting some currently Magic Damage skills into Frost Damage skills. This would have been trivially easy to implement and there is basically no valid, non-RP argument against it. But instead of that we have this monkey's paw situation where everything BUT damage types are being changed, nearly all to the detriment of non-Frost specs.

for a start pretty much every sorc is looking at this going "yes please, make shock damage actually work for us"

the frost staff thing is now a 6% difference. I can pretty much guarantee that non frost builds will be out performing frost builds this PTS iteration.
You just got back most of the advanced species passive and a non conditional crit damage buff.
Just ignore the extra 6% staff damage thing and look at the changes for this update and it's all positive.
It's not exactly what wardens are asking for, but it's pretty damn good.

@Mr_Stach sorry, I misread that. yeah, 2% is too low. They should absolutely buff the non frost staff %. I think 6% would be on point.

taugrim

Mr_Stach wrote: »

Darkstorne wrote: »

My concern from seeing the ice staff change is that they have no idea about the issue they're creating here, and the fact that so few class changes have been proposed for U36 suggests they haven't really dedicated any serious workload to class skills and balance this patch. So the chance of them suddenly dedicating those work hours to try and figure this out mid-PTS seems extremely unlikely. Best case scenario seems to be "okay, you're right, we'll scrap that idea and keep things how they are for now", and nothing significant will happen for Wardens until at least U37.

And I'd happily take that outcome for now tbh

Well this is setting a precedent for all elements right, so are Dks and Sorcs going to have Fire and Lightning Staffs Shoved down their throats as well?

This is my main concern as well.

DKs are not masters of fire because of the weapon they equip.
Sorcs are not masters of lightning because of the weapon they equip.

So given that, why the heck are Wardens only masters of ice when they equip an ice staff?

Mr_Stach

taugrim wrote: »

Mr_Stach wrote: »

Darkstorne wrote: »

My concern from seeing the ice staff change is that they have no idea about the issue they're creating here, and the fact that so few class changes have been proposed for U36 suggests they haven't really dedicated any serious workload to class skills and balance this patch. So the chance of them suddenly dedicating those work hours to try and figure this out mid-PTS seems extremely unlikely. Best case scenario seems to be "okay, you're right, we'll scrap that idea and keep things how they are for now", and nothing significant will happen for Wardens until at least U37.

And I'd happily take that outcome for now tbh

Well this is setting a precedent for all elements right, so are Dks and Sorcs going to have Fire and Lightning Staffs Shoved down their throats as well?

This is my main concern as well.

DKs are not masters of fire because of the weapon they equip.
Sorcs are not masters of lightning because of the weapon they equip.

So given that, why the heck are Wardens only masters of ice when they equip an ice staff?

That goes back to what I said last patch when they attached Destro to Winter's Revenge.

Warden should be able to be FrOsT mAsTeR All contained, inside of Warden. But We have 2 Frost Skills that do damage. Frost Staff also should be competent on it's own, but it's not. There are many paths that Zos could take to make this happen, but this direction is probably one of the worst ways.

MashmalloMan

Tannus15 wrote: »

for a start pretty much every sorc is looking at this going "yes please, make shock damage actually work for us"

Hard disagree. There was a thread where someone asked for the Warden Frost Staff requirement change to be applied to Sorcs, as if Stam Sorc and Physical Damage identity did't exist and next to no one agreed with the original post. The comments within the thread also suggested Sorcs weren't in agreement for it.

Trust me. I've wanted Shock staves to be competitive on Mag Sorc since the beginning of this game, but I would of never suggested a direction like this. DK works flawlessly at improving Fire/Poison damage via % damage done for all Fire/Poison effects, 50% status effect damage and resource return, and finally an entire kit devoted to 1 of those 2 elements instead of what Warden/Sorc's need to deal with. All they needed to do was apply that same mantra towards Sorc and Warden to make them feel more interesting to build for and they would of succeeded.

Stam DK's aren't told they get 10% less damage done to everything they do just because they're not holding a Flame Staff, nor should Warden... and certainly not for Sorc.

Tannus15 wrote: »

the frost staff thing is now a 6% difference. I can pretty much guarantee that non frost builds will be out performing frost builds this PTS iteration.
You just got back most of the advanced species passive and a non conditional crit damage buff.
Just ignore the extra 6% staff damage thing and look at the changes for this update and it's all positive.
It's not exactly what wardens are asking for, but it's pretty damn good.

@Mr_Stach sorry, I misread that. yeah, 2% is too low. They should absolutely buff the non frost staff %. I think 6% would be on point.

The main problems raised earlier in the thread that put Fire damage above Shock/Frost no matter what class you play, is things like Encratis, DK Flame debuff, and burning. Wall is no longer that big of a deal since it's only 10% additional damage on a skill that is pretty low dps to begin with.

With week 3, Chilled is buffed by what seems to be 185% more chilled status effect damage. This is a huge step in covering those problems that created a gap for Wardens. It's effective at incentivizing the use of actual Frost related skills and sets, while still being rewarding for non frost specific Wardens that choose to run things like Arctic, WR and Frost enchants, all useful options for any build regardless of if they consider themselves a Frost Warden or not.. Stam DKs still utilize Fire damage and Burning, thats just how it is and what makes the classes unique.

Non Frost focussed builds will still get a benefit from the passive, just not as much for not going all out on Frost effects. This is basically how the old Frost 10% damage worked if you think about it, but to a much stronger degree in the current build.

The Frost staff buff however is too restrictive and polarizing from the base damage done of 2%. 10% more damage to all damage you deal for holding any specific weapon is just wrong. Fire/Shock only do 10% of direct or aoe, not both - while Frost staff continues to give Minor Brittle.

While I don't think Warden should get any bonus for just holding a specific weapon, a fair balance would of been 4-5% damage done + another 6-7% damage done with a Frost staff equiped. The current split is way too wide.

If their objective was to play catchup with Encratis and DK Flame Debuff... uh why? How about you fix that first because it's shoehorning Sorcs into Flame Staves/Skills too so clearly it's not a Frost Staff specific issue.

MashmalloMan

Just a quick test.. The new Chilled passive seems to increase Chilled damage by about 185% or just under 3x, this scaling should remain as you scale your offensive stats higher - but this is ESO, who knows what may happen or if the scaling is linear.

Keep in mind, while 185% sounds absurd, it's based on a very low base value. Status Effects like Concussed, Chilled, Diseased, Charged and Sundered all deal very minor upfront direct damage because they give additional debuffs with them.

Burning is much stronger as a 4s dot, Poisoned a little weaker as a 6s dot and Hemorphaging the weakest as a 4s dot with Minor Mangle - although all 3, much stronger than the above upfront damage status effects.

Imo.. great change, Incentive is now there to actually run more Frost related skills and sets. Now that Crit damage isn't stackng from 2 passives, Advanced Species makes more sense and provides pretty solid value at 4% per slotted. The only bad direction they seem to keep doubling down on is this idea that you need to hold X weapon to get X more damage. Please stop this. Find a different solution.

Mr_Stach

MashmalloMan wrote: »

Tannus15 wrote: »

for a start pretty much every sorc is looking at this going "yes please, make shock damage actually work for us"

Hard disagree. There was a thread where someone asked for the Warden Frost Staff requirement change to be applied to Sorcs, as if Stam Sorc and Physical Damage identity did't exist and next to no one agreed with the original post. The comments within the thread also suggested Sorcs weren't in agreement for it.

Trust me. I've wanted Shock staves to be competitive on Mag Sorc since the beginning of this game, but I would of never suggested a direction like this. DK works flawlessly at improving Fire/Poison damage via % damage done for all Fire/Poison effects, 50% status effect damage and resource return, and finally an entire kit devoted to 1 of those 2 elements instead of what Warden/Sorc's need to deal with. All they needed to do was apply that same mantra towards Sorc and Warden to make them feel more interesting to build for and they would of succeeded.

Stam DK's aren't told they get 10% less damage done to everything they do just because they're not holding a Flame Staff, nor should Warden... and certainly not for Sorc.

Tannus15 wrote: »

the frost staff thing is now a 6% difference. I can pretty much guarantee that non frost builds will be out performing frost builds this PTS iteration.
You just got back most of the advanced species passive and a non conditional crit damage buff.
Just ignore the extra 6% staff damage thing and look at the changes for this update and it's all positive.
It's not exactly what wardens are asking for, but it's pretty damn good.

@Mr_Stach sorry, I misread that. yeah, 2% is too low. They should absolutely buff the non frost staff %. I think 6% would be on point.

The main problems raised earlier in the thread that put Fire damage above Shock/Frost no matter what class you play, is things like Encratis, DK Flame debuff, and burning. Wall is no longer that big of a deal since it's only 10% additional damage on a skill that is pretty low dps to begin with.

With week 3, Chilled is buffed by what seems to be 185% more chilled status effect damage. This is a huge step in covering those problems that created a gap for Wardens. It's effective at incentivizing the use of actual Frost related skills and sets, while still being rewarding for non frost specific Wardens that choose to run things like Arctic, WR and Frost enchants, all useful options for any build regardless of if they consider themselves a Frost Warden or not.. Stam DKs still utilize Fire damage and Burning, thats just how it is and what makes the classes unique.

Non Frost focussed builds will still get a benefit from the passive, just not as much for not going all out on Frost effects. This is basically how the old Frost 10% damage worked if you think about it, but to a much stronger degree in the current build.

The Frost staff buff however is too restrictive and polarizing from the base damage done of 2%. 10% more damage to all damage you deal for holding any specific weapon is just wrong. Fire/Shock only do 10% of direct or aoe, not both - while Frost staff continues to give Minor Brittle.

While I don't think Warden should get any bonus for just holding a specific weapon, a fair balance would of been 4-5% damage done + another 6-7% damage done with a Frost staff equiped. The current split is way too wide.

If their objective was to play catchup with Encratis and DK Flame Debuff... uh why? How about you fix that first because it's shoehorning Sorcs into Flame Staves/Skills too so clearly it's not a Frost Staff specific issue.

The Glacial Presence change is REALLY Good and I'm all for it.

The Piercing Cold Change is still is the wrong direction and even more punishing for non frost setups

My take on how to approach this is make the Piercing cold passive if they refuse to just change it back to be :

6% Increased Damage done, bonus is increased to 10% damage done while a Winter's Embrace Skill is Active

This would benefit all setups and keep the bonus inside of warden
Also Remove the Destro Staff stipulation on Winter's Revenge

If they want to make Destro more enticing, they need to fix Destro, not make it mandatory inside Class skills and passives

Caribou77

Fellow MagDens: I've noticed that Frost Reach is pretty dodgeable in PVP, as are birds (of course), crystal frags, and just about any ranged spammable magicka skill I can think of. The one exception in my experience has been Crushing Shock. It's fast, and useful, as it often interrupts. Not much damage, but it does actually hit most of the time, and works like a spammable.

Does anyone with more experience than I know of a technique for making Frost Reach less dodgeable? I mean, I realize it's kind of a silly question.

Regarding these latest changes, yeah I was using medium armor for the speed and damage bonuses, so would much have preferred raw damage back on Advanced Species.

The change to Piercing Cold is pretty annoying, for the myriad reasons mentioned here and in other posts related to pigeon holing the class, and greaty narrowing its options. I wonder updates to warden will ever stop feeling peculiar.

robpr

Siroria/Whorl, vMA inferno, kilt. Frost staff Charged


Whorl/Pillar/kilt/Zaan, "traditional" DW/Inferno

Mr_Stach

robpr wrote: »

Siroria/Whorl, vMA inferno, kilt. Frost staff Charged


Whorl/Pillar/kilt/Zaan, "traditional" DW/Inferno

I saw some pretty interesting stuff with people using Frost/2H.

ESO_Nightingale

robpr wrote: »

Siroria/Whorl, vMA inferno, kilt. Frost staff Charged


Whorl/Pillar/kilt/Zaan, "traditional" DW/Inferno

I got higher than your siroria settup with
(St)frostbite/rele, master ice, vma ice
And also
(Aoe)Whorl backbar and jewels, frostbite, iceheart, master ice

robpr

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

I got higher than your siroria settup with
(St)frostbite/rele, master ice, vma ice

Rele/pillar, master/vma double frost


This is as far I can squeeze out of double frost

warich

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

at some point later today i'm gonna make a seperate post, but after testing my thoughts are:

glacial presence is great
piercing cold is really stupid
and advanced species is a bit better now that there's no 2nd crit dmg passive, but still would be nice if it didn't hurt medium builds.

It would still be beneficial over all to not have a capped stat. Bring back % damage done or give a flat damage bonus.

MashmalloMan

warich wrote: »

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

at some point later today i'm gonna make a seperate post, but after testing my thoughts are:

glacial presence is great
piercing cold is really stupid
and advanced species is a bit better now that there's no 2nd crit dmg passive, but still would be nice if it didn't hurt medium builds.

It would still be beneficial over all to not have a capped stat. Bring back % damage done or give a flat damage bonus.

Of course, but you have better odds winning the lottery than getting exactly what you want. At this point, the fact that Warden doesn't double up on Crit Damage is at least a positive. They're not as easily capped.

Due to the way the cap works at 125%, classes giving around 10% crit damage is a solid place. The previous iteration of the passives put Warden at 19-25% which completely shut out Medium armor. Now there is a little bit more flexibility.

Again, I think we all would prefer the original 2% damage done, but we at least managed to convince them to avoid the double passive issue. Thats a semi decent win in my books, so I feel neutral about Advanced Species. If Piercing Cold and Winter's Revenge were updated to not require a Frost staff, I'd be perfectly happy with the recent changes from U33-36..