I enjoy these threads, and hope the reasons to buff wardens seem compelling, because mines doing fine and will be even better if these guys can convince developers to buff them.

It has a good basic toolkit. The "extras" are what really seem off with the class---abilities are either useful enough to keep on the bar or just plain aren't, and won't be in their current state. It needs polish, and some of the more obscure abilities maybe need a rework.

Grasp is a good example. It's a neat toy, but really now, am I going to want to get closer to the person getting hurt often enough to slot that thing regularly? Vines is another one--unless you really need the lifesteal applied, it's not much of a heal compared to anything else you can put in the slot, including resto staff skills. It's also fortunate that their heals are such high output, since they don't offer a proper cleanse option like purify(damage not done is HPS that didn't need to happen).

In the damage front, The bear needs to be much more reliable. A gap closer immediately springs to mind so that it actually attacks things. It's virtually useless for adds and whatnot because it'll never get to them. Scorch is good, but the delay and targeting are clunky. Birds are blah but easily spammed DD, when the situation warrants. Swarm kinda sucks with no upfront damage and seems to have pretty mediocre scaling.

Netches have great utility but obnoxious graphics in the way---these are also a great potential source of group utility, imagine how great they'd be if they emitted an aura(no green/blue beam to everyone, though, please!) and gave their effects to the group! Also worth noting that this would bring them more in line with DK's on the tanking front, in terms of utility delivered.

Falcon is ok, but the duration is so short that it becomes part of a rotation if it's in use. Ten seconds means you need this in place of something else---in PvE, it usually means in place of a bird, which means one less DD every rotation.

Then we get to the cold stuff. Yuck. It's what I'd originally wanted the class for, and frankly, it sucks. First off, there are no stamina morphs here, and that alone is a travesty. Making the "tanking line" not have any stamina morphs doesn't push people into frost staves because people aren't going to give up their shields in order to field this garbage. Frost needs help in a big way. I'll break it all down, and it's gonna get wordy.

Frost Cloak---expansive should be a stamina morph, in my opinion. Tanks will appreciate the magicka morph with its built in minor protection, healers/magicka dps that need to supply this to a group will appreciate it not using their primary bar.

Arctic Wind-- The base ability healing is pretty decent(and great that it's hp%, so it works with tank levels of spell damage), and the damage Polar Wind(the heal morph) just doesn't add much. A 10% hp heal to one person just doesn't justify the thing. The damage morph is OK, but the % heal doesn't help much on the lower HP damage dealer that probably doesn't want to stand that close in the first place, especially when his birds have the exact opposite effect.

Solution----make Polar wind heal all friendlies in the radius for the LATTER part of the effect(2% every 2 seconds for 10 seconds) instead of one friendly on a burst. Make arctic blast either a ground target for magicka(heal+damage combo) or make it a stamina morph so that it scales and uses resources properly at melee range.

Crystallized Shield---uh...just yeah. It's junk. It doesn't restore enough magicka with one morph, and doesn't do enough damage with the other---not even close. Short of some specialized tanking in a high end encounter, I honestly can't see where it belongs on a bar. It's a waste, you're better off with the 1h/Shield reflect/absorb for most things that this might be handy for(which comes with another great, passive reason to not use an ice staff, I might add).

Impaling Shards--I wanted to like this. I was hoping that gripping shards would be a reasonable damage ability with a snare/immobilize that scales with health? Neat! Except the scaling is horrid---A STAMINA warden(no bonus spell power at all and about 10k magicka) doesn't eclipse the damage of Winter's Revenge until they've broken 40k or so hp. By then you've given up any pretense using this for damage purposes so the "scale with health" bit is pretty much moot. Fix that scaling or make it scale with health+weapon or spell damage so that it can get the bonuses from it so that the damage is worth mentioning.

Winters Revenge---this one actually works.

Frozen Gate---Oh god. This one is so bad that I rarely see anyone even messing with it. Huge, single target, and takes up a hotbar spot of a proper gap closer. Also works opposite the magicka birds, nature's grasp, or anyone elses gap closers because it sucks things to you instead of you to it, as well as reducing range to everyone instead of properly tanking in positions that do pretty much the opposite of that. Flawed in concept, worse in execution. I don't even know what could save it, frankly.

So anyway......I apologize for such a long post, but I like my warden well enough and would love to see some tweaks to really make it shine. This is the direction I'd like that to go.

My warden works perfectly fine in pvp and pve. I'm a full ice spec running winterborn and i look like sub zero.

My stam warden seems fine to me. Turned up in Cyrodiil, first kill on this character? A grand overlord. My little buddy does alright enough for me.

Don't like its a 'jack of all trades'. Was hoping for an ice mage given the npc ice mages have some really cool hard hitting abilities but alas. Maybe when they bring us the necromancer class.

WARDEN all sucks not only pve or pvp

i dont like that class with cute flowers or animations. I dont like its YOGI The bear Bear Ultimate...
I dont like skills of it cuz all of them stolen or copied from other classes as a mechanics...
I dont like it is actualy aweful class and u need to pay for it.
I dont like that you have to pay for BROKEN "CHAPTER" to be able to play as Warden...

I dont want to pay also for addition character slot to be able to play with warden or if i dont wanna pay i have to delete one of my full character...

Zos i know this is ur bussines but...Even tho IPHONE when their phone is broken cuz of them self they change it with new one or give ur money back... U only say "WE KNOW" ....

ArchMikem wrote: »

I just wanted an Ice Mage. But now she's gathering dust.

Make Ice Great Again....or for once, I dunno. Was it ever good to begin with?

You can tank as an ice warden.

Its hard to follow this conversation, when people keep flipping between a pve argument to a pvp argument.

Drdeath20 wrote: »

Its hard to follow this conversation, when people keep flipping between a pve argument to a pvp argument.

Funny that, when it stated in the title and both are valid area's of gameplay. Finding it pretty easy to keep up myself

ArchMikem wrote: »

I just wanted an Ice Mage. But now she's gathering dust.

Make Ice Great Again....or for once, I dunno. Was it ever good to begin with?

Ice staff is a good backup for a warden healer I've found. Using magicka to block is helpful. I've never found ice staff to be useless, especially where support abilities in PvP come into play. With the boost from warden passives, it actually becomes quite effective as a support type class. Ice staff isn't really meant for damage and doesn't perform well in that role, as it was intended.

That said, Wardens make great well-rounded tanks with strong resource pools across the board and a buttload of abilities to buff your team and debuff the enemy. Sub assault is an insanely powerful skill.

Wardens also make good healers, especially as a secondary healer on trial runs, while being a bit more difficult to utilize as a main heal.

My stamwarden bow build is performing just as well as most of my other stam classes, as the burst damage on the warden is pretty damn good, especially with sub assault casting major breach on large groups of enemies, allowing my AoEs to be more effective than say on my stamblade or stamdk.

StormWylf wrote: »

Not sure it's connected, but every group I was in (yes I know anecdotal evidence is weak) someone would spam the raid to share the 'Kill 20 (Fill in the Blank) quest. But would always say"Not the Warden One". There were many many Wardens playing, I assumed it was due to a lack of Warden Deaths.

It's because the Warden kill quest is broken, doesn't have anything to actually do with Wardens themselves.

Thogard wrote: »

BTW guys, trinotops and taleof2cities are both really really good players. Top 1% in BGs in PC NA. If they say something, it's legit.

No offense but being in the top of Battlegrounds Leaderboard (Non CP) doesn't mean anything at all, being in the top of any PvP Leaderboard doesn't mean anything in general, but I agree with them, just wanted to point that out.

subtlezeroub17_ESO wrote: »

Vaoh wrote: »

subtlezeroub17_ESO wrote: »

I REALLY wish they hadn't changed winter's embrace to a tank line. That's where I believe they messed up and you can tell by how much of a mess that line is.

They really crushed so many people's dreams of an ice mage (including mine) and in return we got nothing to write home about. The only skills I bother with is ice fortress and winters revenge.

^

I can only imagine what skills were planned. Probably some sort of spammable ice arrow for DPS, a strong single target Ice DoT, etc.

Not anymore

One thing I remain critical of ZoS about is the rework to the frost element. I understand they wanted to increase build diversity but they didn't have to do that and honestly, no one was asking for ice to be changed in such a matter. Yes, people thought the ice element was useless but that's because it had no decent effect to compare to the other options. Ironically enough, it remains a useless element. (Ha)

There's plenty of choices they could have made but they made a gamble and failed. Not one tank I've ever grouped with past normal dungeons has used an ice staff and for good reason.

Magicka Wardens were robbed from a good potential magicka line and stamina and tank toons were robbed from a skill line that could have been tailored towards that play style (animal companions). The Warden class as a whole was robbed from a good player base bc now no one wants to bother with them unless you're healing.

Actually had a tank run an ice staff in hmAA the other day to tank axes.. It's not like an optimal build or antyhing lol, bu *** helped with her resources a good bit.

AzraelKrieg wrote: »

Spam cliff racer. That's all you need as a warden

LOL..yep. Get killed by a dozen birds at once in Cyrodil. Fun times!

Add more ice damage abilities, and for gods sake, get rid of the stupid clunky delayed cast abilities, new damage abilities all around focusing on cold damage. Until they do that...don't expect the warden to ever put out any magicka DPS. Even on the support front they are inferior...Gate<Chains Shrooms<BoL etc etc etc. It seems they focused on animations at the expense of gameplay with the class. Every single ability is clunky because of it...animation canceling required for very mediocre DPS/heals/support abilities.

paulsimonps wrote: »

This thread is funny. While yes their PvE DPS is lacking. They are not lacking in the roles of PvE Healer or Tank. And I don't know what you are talking about in regards to them being bad in PvP. They rock. They get lots of utility and undodgable spamable. Oh, and you can only block for so long unless you are a tank so good luck getting sustained down to hell, especially if they combo that with resource poisons. And they got good burst with the shalks, if they line it up well. And while not used too often, the Frozen Gate can be devastating in seige fights. Its range is devastating, pull em out one by one and watch them get nuked.

The are sub-par for either heals or tanking. DK has better tanking skills(chains will TARGET, not lay an AOE trap that takes twice as long) not to mention DK has a root, with warden you are relying on an ice staff for that, IF it applies that status effect. Templar has better healing skills...the Warden ONLY brings buffs to the table...at a cost.

josiahva wrote: »

Add more ice damage abilities, and for gods sake, get rid of the stupid clunky delayed cast abilities, new damage abilities all around focusing on cold damage. Until they do that...don't expect the warden to ever put out any magicka DPS. Even on the support front they are inferior...Gate<Chains Shrooms<BoL etc etc etc. It seems they focused on animations at the expense of gameplay with the class. Every single ability is clunky because of it...animation canceling required for very mediocre DPS/heals/support abilities.

paulsimonps wrote: »

This thread is funny. While yes their PvE DPS is lacking. They are not lacking in the roles of PvE Healer or Tank. And I don't know what you are talking about in regards to them being bad in PvP. They rock. They get lots of utility and undodgable spamable. Oh, and you can only block for so long unless you are a tank so good luck getting sustained down to hell, especially if they combo that with resource poisons. And they got good burst with the shalks, if they line it up well. And while not used too often, the Frozen Gate can be devastating in seige fights. Its range is devastating, pull em out one by one and watch them get nuked.

The are sub-par for either heals or tanking. DK has better tanking skills(chains will TARGET, not lay an AOE trap that takes twice as long) not to mention DK has a root, with warden you are relying on an ice staff for that, IF it applies that status effect. Templar has better healing skills...the Warden ONLY brings buffs to the table...at a cost.

Templars and Wardens are very close in terms of healing abilities, the big difference is the purge and shards of the Templar, while Warden has Buffs for sustain and protection. And also while yes the wardens teleport is slower than chains, its only really needed in a few fights in Trials since most things are CC immune, this makes it a small different at best. Also with the root the only different with the Grippling Shards and Choking Talons is that one gives Minor maim all the time and the other only has a small chance, but in terms of root, both has the same AoE Range and Max target limit and both Root immediately, not sure why you think Wardens need a Ice staff for that, or did you miss that one big skill?

A Warden is amazing off tank and while some still like 2 Templar healers in Trials others really like the 1 templar 1 warden combo for the team synergy it gives. They are not bad.