Don't get me wrong, the Animal Companion and Green Balance trees look alright, but the Winter's Embrace tree just does not seem to fit... at all...

Does it not occur to anyone else that Warden should perhaps have been 2 classes, a full nature class and a full ice or ice/water class, rather than 2/3 of a nature class and 1/3 of a frost class?

Fire damage has a full class of its own (Dragonknight), Lightning has a full class of its own (Sorceror), so eventually it would have been nice to have gotten a full Frost based class, but with the inclusion of this weird nature/frost hybrid that after 3 bloody years that seems eminently unlikely.

Most of the Winter's Embrace skills dont arent even particularly inspired, or have any reason that they should be frost themed. It gets:
-Ice Fortress: One generic source of Major Resolve/Ward, I guess every class has to have source of this, but excepting Nightblade which doesnt waste an ability slot for this buff, the other classes sources of Major Res are at least INTERESTING and do something besides simply granting the buff, and besides there are already 2 non-class sources of this buff.
-Crystalized Shield: One generic spell shield, nice for PVP I guess but WHY if we are never likely to receive a full frost class is one of the skills in the single frost tree we get wasted on a skill that does nothing frost related?
-Arctic Wind: One %hp heal, which really has no reason to be frost themed in the first place, and frankly would fit an ice based class fantasy better as a shield, and would probably be more useful as a shield. Why couldnt this have just been a morph for a Green Balance skill. And is it just me or is this skill even shittier than Dragon Blood for DK?

Impaling Shards is alright, except that it only scales off Max HP, which means you're only going to see it in a very limited variety of builds
Sleet Storm (ULT) has to be compared to Consuming Darkness for NB, both cost 200 ult and grant Major Protection, the difference being that Consuming Darkness heals and CCs and lasts longer, whereas Sleet Storm does an extremely meager amount of damage (seriously, based on the screenshots I've seen of a magicka based Warden Sleet Storm either has some of the worst damage scaling of any ult, or it scales off of HP like the rest of Winters Embrace skills). One of the morphs for this seriously does nothing but adds 8% max magicka while slotted, that would be great if Frozen Gate wasnt likely the only **** Winter's Embrace skill that scales off Magicka, and why would you even slot this when if you were doing a Magicka build you could slot a bear that does 3.5k dps PASSIVELY on top of a 40k damage execute for 75 ult (based on current screenshots).

Frozen Gate: Solid looking ability, looks great, they should take it off of Warden and put it on a full fledged frost class.


Honestly, Animal Companion and Green Balance look good enough that people who have been fighting spriggans and wanting their own Nature themed spells for 3 years will be happy, though the lack of a 3rd Nature tree will still be a deep loss compared to what could have been. Winters Embrace though basically spells doom for Frost themed spells in this game, since they will likely never make another attempt at frost magic. Yep, just a couple of spells that ONLY scale with HP, and a few extremely uninspired buffs (and Frozen Gate, the one redeemingly creative ability).

references:
https://imgur.com/gallery/9h8in
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/321834/warden-class-skills-what-we-know-so-far-updated/p1

EDIT: Ive finally gotten tired of pedants with their nonsense about "oh DK isnt really a fire class its 1/3 a DRAGON BIOTRANSFORMATION CLASS", whatever that is, so to clarify.

11/14 of DK's skills that deal damage have morphs that deal fire damage, including ALL of their ults. Even ability's that DK have that dont deal fire damage are things like Molten Armanments and Dragon Fire Scale. Not only do the majority of DK's spells deal fire damage, but the majority of all fire spells in the game belong to DK. There is literally nothing more fiery in this game than DK, so I feel perfectly *** justified in calling DK a fire class.

The exact same thing can be said for sorc to only a slightly lesser extent. "Oh but dadric summoning has nothing to do with lighting". Well when ALL of your summons deal shock damage and you summon a GIANT STORM ATRONACH yes I'm pretty sure that lightning is involved. Once again not only do the majority of Sorc's damage dealing abilities deal shock damage, but they also have the majority of all shock damage in the game.

Fire, Lightning and Frost have always been the main 3 elements of TES destruction magic, this is extremely well established. DK has the majority of fire spells in the game and represents fire very well, Sorc has the majority of shock spells in the game and represents shock very well, even if they do also afford conjuration and perhaps mysticism some representation. Warden has... a mess.