Warden rework

TheTuSiK

Hello everyone.
Recent (u35 but mostly u36) warden changes made a lot of people confused with the direction that ZOS chhose for the class, tying it with Ice Staff to gain damage and make wardens an ice themed class but without changes to Destruction Staff passives and skills. This results in a situation where you do more damage with a weapon that currently works bettwr as a tanking and support weapon. Why not change class abilities in the way that the class feels like an ice themed one without forcing a specific type of weapon? I gave it a thought and I came up with "a few" changes that also include stamina morphs.

Animal Companions
Feral Guardian - no changes
Eternal Guardian - no respawn (name change needed I suppose), deals Ice Damage instead of Magic Damage, deals 5% more damage to enemies with a brittle status effect
Wild Guardian - no changes
Right now Wild Guardian having highier chance of applying Hemorrhaging is a better choice since you don't have that many uses of the extra damage form activating the special ability. Those changes should make the other one more competetive.

Dive - no changes
Cutting Dive - no bleed on non off balance enemies. Instead, deals more damage to enemies with a bleeding effect and even more damage to enemies with Hemorrhage effrct. I think 10% and 15% boosts should be enough since uptiimes of both effects should be pretty high.
Screaming Cliff Racer - deals ice damage, deals more damage to chilled enemies and even more to those with Brittle status effect. Numbers could be similar to those of Cutting Dive.
Although this spammable is not bad as it is, there should be something extra since other class spammables do: Crystal Frag has special proc version, Swallow Soul has healing, Concealed Weapon gives 10% dmg boost after leaving sneak or Major Expedition expiring etc. So far Warden's special mechanic was about off balance. It is not consistent enough though in my opinion, even if the skill can proc ob itself.

Scorch - hits 3s and 6s after casting instead of 3 and 9.
Subbterranean Assault - does bleed damage instead of poison, 2nd hit deals more damage and has a high chance of applying Hemorrhaging effect
Deep Fissure - does ice damage instead of magic, also hits after 3 and 6 seconds instead of 3 and 9.
The shalks hitting after two different periods feels weird and should be unified. Both morphs used to hit (time wise) the same as Blastbones on necro and it was fine. Extra damage of 2nd hit from Deep Fissue could be reverted since aoe Major and Minor Breach is a nice effect already.

Swarm - no changes
Fetcher Infection - deals bleed damage instead of magic.
Growing Swarm - deals ice damage to the target and enemies nearby (like Soul Splitting Trap).
Single Target version should be stronger but the other one should be a bit more aoe. Given it's name I can see it working the same way thst Soul Splitting Trap works.

Blue Netch - no changes.
The cleanse that occurs every 5s might be tricky and work against the player sometimes (Icereach 2nd and last boss HM, Scalecaller Peak HM) I couldn't think of a better solution. I thought about the Netch granting cleansing self-synergy but synergies have 20s cooldown.

Passives:
Savage Beast - grants ulti (as it is now) and increases warden's bleed damage by 4/8 %
Flourish - from % increase to magicka and stamina regeneration to a flat number. Given Warden's sustain 100/200 or 150/300 bonus should be ok.
Advanced Spiecies - 1/2 % more damage done (or critical chance) for each Animal Companion skill slotted. Each skill increases damage done to enemies below 25% health by 3/5 %. - this passive was ok in u34, became bad in u35 and in u36 is not better. It should either be reverted or give a bomus that doesn't have a cap easily reachable by other means like critical chance or weapon/spell damage. Also due to the lack of a decent execute I can see it working similar to Necromancer's passive that gives more crit chance against enemies below 25% health. It would synergize nicely with the bear's active ability.

Green Balance
Passive:
Nature's Gift - it should grant magicka and stamina also when healing yourself but only with healing ability, passive from Animal Companion would make that one tol overpowered.
Emerald Moss - increaased healing done overall, not just with Green Balance abilities.

Winter's Embrace
Sleet Storm - increased duration to 16s
Northern Storm - no changes
Perfmafrost - increased duration to 16s
Change made to work with a passive listed below

Impailing Shards - no change
Gripping Shards - no change
Winter's Revenge - no damage boost from wielding a destruction staff, overall 20% damage boost to the skill, 10s duration instead of 12s.
This skill forces Wardens to play destruction staff to gain maximum damage of it. I don't like that. This skill should be good no matter what weapon you use. 20% damage boost should be enough for it to be good with any weapon. 2s reduced duration so it fits rotation better since other dots are either 10 or 20 seconds long.

Passive:
Frozen Armor - casting Winter's Embrace ability that lasts more than 15s grants you 1000/2000 armor for 20s. - this passive is almost unnoticeable as it is now, this change should help a bit. 15s requirement so DDs won't proc it with Winter's Revenge.
Icy Aura - when under an effect of a snare, your health recovery is increased by 5/10%. - this is currently one of the least needed passives. A change like that would make it vailable again.
Piercing Cold - increases ice damage by 4/8 %. Enemies with armor reduced by 8000 take 1/2% more damage from your damaging abilities. - changing all warden's skills to do ice damage doesn't require this skill to increase magic damage. Also, to live up to its name, something extra related to "piercing" sounds good.


All numbers here are more or less what I think would boost warden a bit but not make the class too powerful. Also, that makes it ice themed without a need to use ice staff but make the use of it a choice that can increase the ice theme. I'm looking forward to your opinion about my rework ideas. Feel free to make changes to skills I posted but also to those I skipped.
Cheers.

AcadianPaladin

I think the biggest insult to being an ice mage is that the ice staff is confused between tank-support and damage. Predictably, the ice staff is a mediocre tank weapon and a mediocre damage weapon. I maintain the answer is to rework the ice staff itself to be all about, well, destruction - damage, dps. Create a new class of staff to support tanks just like we have a separate class of staff to support healers.

TheTuSiK

I agree. Destro passives make inferno staff the best choice for damage in most cases. Lighting is for a specific setups like Master staff + clench as a spammable for aoe or overall for heavy attack builds. Even sorcs, which you could call a Lighting themed class, plays with inferno staff. And destruction staff (in pve) is not even the best choice if you can play at melee range. Ice passives are tank friendly. As a dd I removed points from the first passive so I won't use magicka to block, warden's sustain is bad enough without it. Destruction staff tree needs a rework but I think overall changes to warden wouldn't hurt either.

merpins

My main wants for Warden:

1. give Cliff Racer a new animation or replace the skill altogether. It sucks, it's sucked since Warden came out, and I will never use that skill as it currently is. It looks bad and feels bad to use.
2. Change the Advanced Species passive to give crit rate or back to just flat damage. It can keep the penetration, but that's not necessary.
3. remove all the frost staff requirements from skills. If they want to buff frost damage, sure. But I don't think the class should have a frost skill line to begin with; it doesn't fit the theme of warden at all in the first place. But as it sits, just remove that requirement and it would be fine.

Other than that, and Ice Bear would be cool. But I don't play frost warden. Just think it'd be cool with the current warden.

ESO_Nightingale

i agree with your sentiment, but not so much with specific passive suggestions as i feel they're too overly complicated. changing magic animal companions to frost damage would be great for frostbite, but we definitely need some sort of direct damage buff for the chilled status effect.

i included one on icy aura as an example. even though glacial is our "chilled" passive, i'd honestly at this point, rather our build have the tools it needs to compete.



this passive would increase in value while you have more winter's embrace effects active. so that it hopefully prevents compounded power which forces other builds to become frost mages, but really increases in value for frost specific builds.