Zos warden players like ice damage

Anti_Virus

Lalothen wrote: »

Anti_Virus wrote: »

I personally wished the ice theme would disappear. It seems really out of place for the class tbh.

Why? Winter is the climax of the natural cycle, heralding an end to the old cycle before the ushering in of new beginnings in the form of spring.

All three of the Warden's skill lines fit them thematically, they just don't really produce a cohesive damage-dealing theme because ZOS has constantly tinkered around leeching potency from Animal Companions whilst vaguely pushing Wardens down the Frost avenue of DPS. The result is this weird bastardization that nobody's completely happy with.

Frankly, the Animal Companions line could make a really good, semi-unique tanking line calling on various animal spirits to negate damage, return resources, debuff/cc enemies, etc, whilst Winter's Embrace could become a Frost/Physical DPS line that would work for mag, stam & hybrid builds. But that's just wishful thinking.

Sounds great and all but that last part is a no from me. I like warden for the animal companions, it’s what the class is about anyways(The class logo is literally a bear paw) if they made the class about Ice I would stop playing it

ZoeliTintanie

easy peasy fix would be to

Animal Companions - Stam/Mag dps tree (one morph has animal visuals, the other has frost recolor-touchup)
Green Balance - clean it up and add some tank/buff skills too (summer/spring/fall themed buffs/debuffs/heals)
Winters - mag/stam dps (self-buffs for non-ice users) but skill tree is full frost attacks, aoes, shields, fields, so non-ice mages can use the skill tree for some benefits too. (frost-bitey debuffs, snares, roots, magic damage, dots, weapon/armor buffs (shards of ice), ice lances (templar javelin style with arcanist beam or escalating runes type skills)

mix and match and you can have a bunch of various animal animations, seasonal-elemental stuff (possibly with access to different seasons depending on what staff you use) (summer - fire, spring - resto, winter - ice, fall - lightning)

Araneae6537

yadibroz wrote: »

SkaiFaith wrote: »

yadibroz wrote: »

GusTheWizard wrote: »

We are also trying to add more sources of damage to their damage focused skill line, so we can slowly look at shifting damage out of their tanking focused skill line.

Let us stop you right there zos I would say most wardens play this class because it is an ice focused class myself included, my least favorite part of the class are the animal companions skills, please don’t remove what we’ve been telling you we wanted for 6 years, we finally got good ice damage in the last year and a half.

They need to remove ice and add it to a new class

Ahahahah hell no...

Like sorcerer and dk all fire and lightning but ice

Tell that to the devs because sorc is all daedric pets with some static electricity on the side. It SHOULD be storm mage or summoner at least, just as warden should have different viable playstyles within each role (animals should not be made frosty and frost should have viable skills and morphs for both damage and tanking and if plant and animal skill lines could likewise use primary or off stat (like arcanist) and then actually have different utility (damage, heal, tank, any of these but with more PvP utility), then I’d be very happy indeed.

Theist_VII

I wouldn’t be surprised if this is part of some plan to make a new Frost Damage centered class.

Kind of like when they stripped Major Mending from Templar and gave it to Warden, I see the same thing happening here.

ZoeliTintanie

This npc is in Eyevea during the mage-guild quest line. He throws out a tornado full of ice shards that leaves an ice-trail behind it.

This would be a great spammy animation with an aoe-dot trail like trample.

ESO_player123

Just posting to agree with the OP. I have a warden centered around Frost damage (outfit, name and all). I would hate to abandon it.

Lystrad

Telos_Tim wrote: »

I wouldn’t be surprised if this is part of some plan to make a new Frost Damage centered class.

Kind of like when they stripped Major Mending from Templar and gave it to Warden, I see the same thing happening here.

I mean to be fair they wouldn't really need to wind down warden's frost damage elements to do that. I know our player classes tend to be pretty picky when it comes to what elements they prefer, but in universe destruction magic is pretty ubiquitous so there is no reason why there couldn't be two different classes that share a frost theme other than player fear of homogenization. A perfect example of this is that most of the shock/frost/flame mages you see running around aren't actually sorcerers, wardens, or dragon knights.

Hottytotz

I could maybe be ok with pet line if it had ice theme I guess. If dps warden goes full pet line though without bringing the frost along im out.

ItsNotLiving

ZoS I’m a warden main and I think the ice line is the most boring of the three.

ESO_Nightingale

I hope we soon get some good changes to elemental explosion and the lingering torment/mages guild 20% duration increase bug for ulfsilds contingency.

HuanShai

Have you seen how strong permafrost is in pvp? I've seen a lot of guards building just this, I think if you first buff something you should be careful with this specific skill that reaches big ticks.

ESO_Nightingale

HuanShai wrote: »

Have you seen how strong permafrost is in pvp? I've seen a lot of guards building just this, I think if you first buff something you should be careful with this specific skill that reaches big ticks.

thats a seperate problem

Hottytotz

Why is the soul scribing spammable ability able to have every other damage type but frost applied to it as well? WTH does ZoS have against letting us frost mage it up.

Lystrad

Hottytotz wrote: »

Why is the soul scribing spammable ability able to have every other damage type but frost applied to it as well? WTH does ZoS have against letting us frost mage it up.

To be fair wield soul and soul burst don't have frost OR flame, so fire mages don't get to play with it either. That said they should totally add both.

ESO_Nightingale

Lystrad wrote: »

Hottytotz wrote: »

Why is the soul scribing spammable ability able to have every other damage type but frost applied to it as well? WTH does ZoS have against letting us frost mage it up.

To be fair wield soul and soul burst don't have frost OR flame, so fire mages don't get to play with it either. That said they should totally add both.

they really should. to be honest, it should do any type as the "spammable" archetype skill.

TheBaronXIII

valenwood_vegan wrote: »

Yeah this note was odd. A great example of a lack of an overall vision and random see-saw changes. Specific changes were made over the last year (or two? - hard to keep track) to make dps ice wardens an actual thing. Now it's gonna slowly be undone? I don't get it.

The see-saw changes are due to a lack of listening and playing the character in game. If devs would just listen... they could easily find solutions to the class. But maybe there is just a lack of motivation? Sad. Frustrated. There was a time that it wasn't that big of a deal that Wardens were C+ at best in end game, but when they nerfed it further cause of QQing from bad PvPers the solo portion of the class feel to a C as well.

ZoeliTintanie

So what the heck is going on/going to go on with Wardens? Druidic? Ice Mages? Healer? Tanks? Bleed + Pet (but loose 2 ultimates?)
Ice Fortress for Resolve, but nothin else? (great skill to show the "no dev plays this", because this skill is 100% unfinished)

I really don't want to keep investing time in my warden if there is no Dev-representation (devs playing it like they play DK/Sorc/Arc to see the flaws) and the balancing is/was done on just player feedback, not dev-playthroughs and player feedback combined.

I love this class, or rather the idea of the class. Can whoever worked on DK/Sorc/Arc work on Warden for a patch-phase pleaseeeeee?

Elyu

To elaborate on some comments from page 2:

Compare arcanist and warden:

Arcanist: 1 theme, each skill line dedicated to each combat "role"
Warden: 3 themes (ice, plants, animals). Each skill line has skills that contribute to different roles. Plants = healing....except there's healing skills in ice line. Ice = tanking...but also contains DPS skills. Animals = DPS.....but also contains buff/utility skills.

Theme and combat effectiveness need to be considered at the same time, or this mess will continue (same for other classes, sorc and necro I'm looking at you)

Savos_Saren

Elyu wrote: »

To elaborate on some comments from page 2:

Compare arcanist and warden:

Arcanist: 1 theme, each skill line dedicated to each combat "role"
Warden: 3 themes (ice, plants, animals). Each skill line has skills that contribute to different roles. Plants = healing....except there's healing skills in ice line. Ice = tanking...but also contains DPS skills. Animals = DPS.....but also contains buff/utility skills.

Theme and combat effectiveness need to be considered at the same time, or this mess will continue (same for other classes, sorc and necro I'm looking at you)

To be fair- the original 4 classes didn't really have a healing/tanking/dps skill line structure, either. Warden was the first class to have very distinct skill lines for healing/tanking/dps. Over the past 10 years, ZOS has tried to give the original classes more tanking/healing/dps distinction.

Morvan

Sometimes I feel like they could just split the warden class in 2, one focused in plants and animals, and the other a proper ice class.

Ashryn

I know plenty of people like the frost theme, but to be honest not all of us Wardens want to be in the frozen camp! The animal skill line is what attracted me from the very beginning and I enjoy that. I would like it to be expanded to give us a choice of non-vvardenfell animals, though. In a perfect world, they should have just made another class to be Ice-themed mages.

ZoeliTintanie

Kind of the same here, what drew me to the class was the elemental/nature themes (flower fields, growing forests, mushroom rings, vines, water/ice magic, animals. But playing the class, it's pretty much just, stick an ice staff or greatsword on it and call it a day.

I've noticed the Warden is one of the few if not the only class, where it kinda requires non-class skills to complete its class-kit.
No shields, no damage & heal yourself skill (like templar, dk, every other class), some passives even are worse than the armor or weapon skill lines or are redundant such as " lower the effect of snare" which is on the skill tree, for less of an effect than on the armor skill line.
Or the Mending Buff which is imo (noob opinion) not as good as one heavy attack with a resto staff.

The skills themselves, like Ice Fortress seem unfinished, while others like Lotus Bloom/Netch, don't give the Prophecy/etc buffs with the "on either skill bar" tooltip. We have to click them every 20 seconds, while other classes get them for free on backbar or front bar.

But again, we can use magelight instead of class skills for that which, with the mage guild passives, become better than the class skills + passives combined.

It's weird. Whomever did the Arcanist/DK (if not already) should play the Warden for a bit and see the, not flaws, but, oversights, things left unfinished.

Hope that makes sense.

LeHarrt91

ZoeliTintanie wrote: »

Kind of the same here, what drew me to the class was the elemental/nature themes (flower fields, growing forests, mushroom rings, vines, water/ice magic, animals. But playing the class, it's pretty much just, stick an ice staff or greatsword on it and call it a day.

I've noticed the Warden is one of the few if not the only class, where it kinda requires non-class skills to complete its class-kit.
No shields, no damage & heal yourself skill (like templar, dk, every other class), some passives even are worse than the armor or weapon skill lines or are redundant such as " lower the effect of snare" which is on the skill tree, for less of an effect than on the armor skill line.
Or the Mending Buff which is imo (noob opinion) not as good as one heavy attack with a resto staff.

The skills themselves, like Ice Fortress seem unfinished, while others like Lotus Bloom/Netch, don't give the Prophecy/etc buffs with the "on either skill bar" tooltip. We have to click them every 20 seconds, while other classes get them for free on backbar or front bar.

But again, we can use magelight instead of class skills for that which, with the mage guild passives, become better than the class skills + passives combined.

It's weird. Whomever did the Arcanist/DK (if not already) should play the Warden for a bit and see the, not flaws, but, oversights, things left unfinished.

Hope that makes sense.

On my pve warden setup with double frost staff I have 6-7 class skills slotted including the bear, and one of them is a heal. If you don’t want to use any frost skills/ weapon then yes it does lower skill options.
I understand what you mean about the lotus and netch, but we would activate them regardless for the heals/ sustain (new damage buff on pts) but giving the prophecy/ sorcery buffs while slotted would be nice, then you would have to activate for the additional effects heal/sustain.
And yes there are certainly skills and passives that need to be updated, but we will have to wait and see what they intend to change

ESO_Nightingale

LeHarrt91 wrote: »

ZoeliTintanie wrote: »

Kind of the same here, what drew me to the class was the elemental/nature themes (flower fields, growing forests, mushroom rings, vines, water/ice magic, animals. But playing the class, it's pretty much just, stick an ice staff or greatsword on it and call it a day.

I've noticed the Warden is one of the few if not the only class, where it kinda requires non-class skills to complete its class-kit.
No shields, no damage & heal yourself skill (like templar, dk, every other class), some passives even are worse than the armor or weapon skill lines or are redundant such as " lower the effect of snare" which is on the skill tree, for less of an effect than on the armor skill line.
Or the Mending Buff which is imo (noob opinion) not as good as one heavy attack with a resto staff.

The skills themselves, like Ice Fortress seem unfinished, while others like Lotus Bloom/Netch, don't give the Prophecy/etc buffs with the "on either skill bar" tooltip. We have to click them every 20 seconds, while other classes get them for free on backbar or front bar.

But again, we can use magelight instead of class skills for that which, with the mage guild passives, become better than the class skills + passives combined.

It's weird. Whomever did the Arcanist/DK (if not already) should play the Warden for a bit and see the, not flaws, but, oversights, things left unfinished.

Hope that makes sense.

On my pve warden setup with double frost staff I have 6-7 class skills slotted including the bear, and one of them is a heal. If you don’t want to use any frost skills/ weapon then yes it does lower skill options.
I understand what you mean about the lotus and netch, but we would activate them regardless for the heals/ sustain (new damage buff on pts) but giving the prophecy/ sorcery buffs while slotted would be nice, then you would have to activate for the additional effects heal/sustain.
And yes there are certainly skills and passives that need to be updated, but we will have to wait and see what they intend to change

wtb natures gift/maturation usability updates for dps as well as an utter rework of icy aura. piercing cold should probably look like increased frost and bleed damage with frost damage increasing further with an ice staff equipped instead of what it is now.

ESO_Nightingale

I'm so glad that many of us agree on this. frost warden simply would not exist without the efforts of us forums posters. it would be awful to see all of our hard work removed.

AzuraFan

Durham wrote: »

Originally it was the Stam Warden. I still play Stam Warden I reject the ICE label !!

Me too. My main is a warden (stamden) that loves the animal line. Having said that, I keep up with all the changes to the class, and ZOS has definitely been pushing ice DPS for the past while. So I'm surprised they're now maybe suggesting that's going to change, and if I had an ice warden, I'd be upset.

But any suggestions that would destroy the animal line (turning it into tanking, or whatever) would be a big no from me, because that would ruin my enjoyment of the class. Preserving one style of play shouldn't mean destroying another. I wish ZOS would stop making fundamental changes to classes that have been around for years.

FlopsyPrince

They took away my Crystal Shard morph from my Pet Sorc and also removed my Blastbones attack on my Necromancer. What is the next to go?

Soarora

I didn't read the whole thread so fair warning. I don't even know what damage ZOS can take out of the tanking skill line... like... our chilled damage? Our class damaging AoE? Arctic blast??? I certainly believe none of those three should be touched, it'd be better to leave frostden as it is than to change it in that way. I'm with the poster(s) who said they'd quit if frostden was destroyed-- my frost warden is my everything. I play other roles, heck, I'm a tank main nowadays, but I put my heart and soul into that build over several patches.

That said, I also don't think ZOS means "obliterate frost warden", at least I hope not. Warden has the unique circumstance of being able to have an aesthetic for stamina and a different aesthetic for magicka. I really think ZOS needs to utilize this and just let the magdens be frostdens at this point and the stamdens be pets and plants. Thus, instead of "moving damage away from the tanking skill line", I think we should even embrace the tanking skill line. That's where our class damaging AoE is. In my post here, I mention changing the tank morph of winter's revenge to be thorny vines for stamina users. I also mention taking an underused skill from the healing line to become a stamina DoT. I think I also mentioned somewhere the idea of buffing bleed damage, maybe as the same skill that buffs our chilled damage.

Down with the idea of a "tank", "healer", and "DPS" skill line, honestly. It's restrictive and doesn't make sense, not a single class I can think of uses skills ONLY from one class skill line. The "tank" skill line inherently is just used by all 3 roles, I don't know how else to put it. There is no tank skill line with wardens. There doesn't need to be. Warden tanks are doing fine already, why not just spread the skills across all 3 skill lines and maximize aesthetics? Let us make a bleed animal/vines stamden, a frost magden, a flowery healer, an ice tank, even let us make an animal/vines tank. The potential is there and don't tell me that not having a "tank", "healer", and "DPS" skill line will make wardens confusing-- wardens are the class I understand the best because of the thematic differences (templar skills for example, are all yellow light stuff.. don't ask me anything about templars).

Lystrad

Soarora wrote: »

Down with the idea of a "tank", "healer", and "DPS" skill line, honestly. It's restrictive and doesn't make sense, not a single class I can think of uses skills ONLY from one class skill line. The "tank" skill line inherently is just used by all 3 roles, I don't know how else to put it. There is no tank skill line with wardens. There doesn't need to be. Warden tanks are doing fine already, why not just spread the skills across all 3 skill lines and maximize aesthetics? Let us make a bleed animal/vines stamden, a frost magden, a flowery healer, an ice tank, even let us make an animal/vines tank. The potential is there and don't tell me that not having a "tank", "healer", and "DPS" skill line will make wardens confusing-- wardens are the class I understand the best because of the thematic differences (templar skills for example, are all yellow light stuff.. don't ask me anything about templars).

I agree. I get the wardens pioneered the design of having skill lines meant to focus on a dedicated role, but I think that design really only kind of works for the classes that have a single unified theme across all of their skill lines (Necro/arcanist) and even then the argument could be made that some necro skills are out of place for the sake of having them in a specific skill line but that's off topic.

Warden would, in my opinion, benefit tremendously from being retrofitted to function like the original 4 classes with alot of cross pollination for each role between it's skill lines. Like say a grasping vine morph for tanks that gives them a pull, or a healing swarm morph that gives healing wardens a sticky hot, or rewoking corrupting pollen into a poison/disease AoE for martial wardens so they don't have to use winter's revenge if they want a class AoE but frost isn't their thing.

ESO_Nightingale

Lystrad wrote: »

Soarora wrote: »

Down with the idea of a "tank", "healer", and "DPS" skill line, honestly. It's restrictive and doesn't make sense, not a single class I can think of uses skills ONLY from one class skill line. The "tank" skill line inherently is just used by all 3 roles, I don't know how else to put it. There is no tank skill line with wardens. There doesn't need to be. Warden tanks are doing fine already, why not just spread the skills across all 3 skill lines and maximize aesthetics? Let us make a bleed animal/vines stamden, a frost magden, a flowery healer, an ice tank, even let us make an animal/vines tank. The potential is there and don't tell me that not having a "tank", "healer", and "DPS" skill line will make wardens confusing-- wardens are the class I understand the best because of the thematic differences (templar skills for example, are all yellow light stuff.. don't ask me anything about templars).

I agree. I get the wardens pioneered the design of having skill lines meant to focus on a dedicated role, but I think that design really only kind of works for the classes that have a single unified theme across all of their skill lines (Necro/arcanist) and even then the argument could be made that some necro skills are out of place for the sake of having them in a specific skill line but that's off topic.

Warden would, in my opinion, benefit tremendously from being retrofitted to function like the original 4 classes with alot of cross pollination for each role between it's skill lines. Like say a grasping vine morph for tanks that gives them a pull, or a healing swarm morph that gives healing wardens a sticky hot, or rewoking corrupting pollen into a poison/disease AoE for martial wardens so they don't have to use winter's revenge if they want a class AoE but frost isn't their thing.

agreed. frost dps is now a main pillar of warden's identity, and to remove it or parts of it simply because it's on the "tanking line" is ignoring the fact that this is no longer even the truth. winter's embrace is not a tanking line anymore. its a tanking and dps line. removing damage from it is the most 180 move they could ever make so i'm genuinely concerned that this is even in the plans for them considering how many people love frost warden.