My thoughts on Stamina Warden

Soleya · September 2017

After playing my stamina warden for 116+ hours now, I wanted to put together some thoughts on the class and abilities.

I spent levels 15-42 in non vet PVP on Kyne, and then ground out the last few levels in skyreach, delves, dolmens, getting skyshards, etc. Once at max level, I tried out a few gear set options to see what I liked. I wanted to go with a bow/bow build, for something different than DW+Bow like very other stam build. I also felt maybe the ranged abilities on warden (cliff racer, subteranean assault, etc) would go well with a bow/bow build.

I tried the following setups:
Master Bow + Maelstrom Bow + 5 Bone Pirate + 5 VO.
Master Bow + Maelstrom Bow + 5 Bone Pirate + 5 Hundings.
Maelstrom Bow + 5 Spriggan + 5 VO + 2 Velidreth (Bow/DW)
Note: I don't have enough Twice Fanged Snake to try out.

Heavy attacks with the bow feel more clumsy than DW, so I wanted higher regen. With Bone Pirate + Dubious Camlorn Throne, + potion/Bird of Prey my stam recover ends up being 2104.

For my vet experiences I've done Vet Pledges and attempted vMA (got to final boss but could not finish). It seemed like warden is pretty balanced in healing, tanking and dps abilities, so I was hoping it would be easier to do vMA on than say Stam NB, unfortunately I found it to be a harder.

I also put my warden in tank gear to tank some pledges as its easier to get a group as a tank. I found tanking pretty fun with this build and well balanced. For tanking I ran Green Pact + Plague Doctor + 1 Master Sword + Frost Staff. I found this build to be a good buff/debuff tank with decent off heals, sometimes pulling 8k heals per second.

Animal Companions:

Cutting Dive - This ability feels weaker damage wise than say Surprise Attack on NB. But it's ranged and you get a heal from Bond With Nature so it seems to balance out. I don't understand though why this morph doesn't do more damage based on range (instead of the magicka version) as that would synergize well with Long Shots bow passive.
Subterranean Assault - This ability is really good. Works well when tanking as a way to apply major fracture/breach to mobs. Only issue here is the 3 seconds on this ability doesn't go well with a rotation. Almost feel like it needs to be 6 seconds and fire off twice (at 3 and 6 seconds)
Swarm - No reason to run this on stam build.
Bull Netch - Stam Regen + Major Brutality, reduces the need for weapon power pots. Makes it great ability for newer players. Extra stam recovery + heal when Netch is recasted or goes expires from Bond With Nature passive.
Bird of Prey - Minor Berserk, Major Endurance, Major Expedition all around good ability. Seems better for vMA and PVP where the speed boost is useful and you don't have buffs from other players to give you Minor Berserk.
Bear Ultimate - I know many people find this to be good dps, but for me the bear seems to run all over from one enemy to another getting there as it dies, and doing no damage.

Green Balance:

Soothing Spores - Feels like a strong heal, until you compare it to Vigor, then you realize it's just utter garbage. Costs more than Vigor and heals for WAY less. For example, fully buffed on my build, it healed for 7,873 non crit or 13,305 crit. In comparison Vigor heals for 13,236 if all ticks don't crit and 22,368 if they all crit. Vigor costs 3090 stam vs Soothing Spores costing 3433 stam. My suggestion here would be to add a HOT. So it burst heals and then gives 2 or 3 more heal ticks every 2 seconds for 2-3k healing. Other option would be to cut cost in half, but then it would be OP in PVP.
Healing Seed - no reason to run on stam.
Leeching Vines - heal is pretty weak on stam, so I don't bother with this one
Green Lotus - Major Savagry and Heals on light/heavy attacks. This ability would probably be great, except the heal doesn't work on anything except light and full heavy attacks. Anything in between does NOT heal. Not sure if this is a bug, but it feels like it should give healing for medium attacks to be useful. Heals per second on this ability is about half what crit/power surge give on Sorc, and thats only if you don't do any medium attacks and have a perfect weave.
Natures Grasp - found no use for this ability
Enchanted Forest - Awesome heal. I run this on my tank build as a just in case heal to back up the healer or if the healer goes down. Ult generation is high so you can have this up pretty quckly. On dps build I run this as well with bow/dawnbreaker ultimate on other bar. Other morph might be better, haven't really compared them.
Maturation Passive - Extra 10% health seems good, except it's bugged when using Green Lotus. See Below.

Winters Embrace:

Ice Fortress - Great tanking ability, no room for it on dps build.
Gripping Shards - Another great tanking ability, root enemies in trash pulls
Polar Wind - Heal on this is a bit weak, even on a tank with 45k health. I feel like this needs a cost reduction, since 4k magicka is a large cost on a tank who normally has lower pools.
Shimmering Shield - Great ability for all builds against ranged enemies.
Frozen Gate - Haven't tried this one.
Permafrost - Decent damage, protection, and stun on enemies. Great in trash pulls on the tank to lock everyone in place and reduce incoming damage to allies nearby.

The main issue I had in vMA was lack of heals per second (can't out heal crematorial guard and soul churn is rough). With green lotus not proc-ing on Medium attacks, my heals per second is sub 1k, mostly from Bond with Nature (excluding Vigor). I'm not all that good at light attack weaving with cutting dive, I find medium is easier to pull off, even if it's lower dps output. In comparison on a stam sorc, you get 3-4k heals per second with crit surge + your AOE dots and requires no thought whatsoever to get those heals.

Maturation Bug:
If you heal using green lotus, you gain the minor toughness giving you 10% more health. This makes your max health go up, but not actual health. So if you spam light attacks to keep healing, it appears to keep refreshing maturation, by resting your health back down and then back up again, so you can't get healed to full health. I tried it with soothing spores and it seems to heal you to full. But if I use green lotus heal first, then I can spam soothing spores without getting to max health for quite awhile.

Video of bug:

https://youtu.be/HGIvtjYVwjg

SodanTok · September 2017

Regarding VMA as bow/bow warden. It is all about experience with the content. Personally I go full dmg (with camoran food) so around 1.4k regen. I have both vigor and soothing spores to outheal consistent damage (like 2nd arena bleeding or soul churn) and the big burst. Shimmering shield is must too, not sure if you tried it there. Even bear I feel is better than normal ulti setups, it takes some pressure off and allows you to to fight more from range (so far the only scenario where it dies constantly is enraged lizard boss).
No flawless yet, but I also do not have VO so that makes it difficult.

But yeah, cutting dive feels weak. The heal is pretty insignificant. DW or 2H builds would do more damage with cutting dive than bow builds, yet they still not use it. That says imo enough how behind it is as spammable. I disagree with giving it some bonus range damage. That crap should just be gone even on long shots (that with all the changes to math give whooping 4% damage bonus from 20m range for me). Be it solo, pvp or some trial, most of these fights you are close range even on ranged build...

Soleya · September 2017

I'll give the bear another try. I used it when I did the normal (leveling when non vet) and it just seemed to run back and forth between enemies not doing any real damage. It may work better on final boss since he doesn't move as much. I also had the issue where the bear stunned and killed the clanfear 3 times in a row before i could kite it to a portal. But that was on normal.

I use shimmering shield, and I got through the first 8 stages without any real problems, just the final boss I'm struggling on..and its mostly the crematorial guard and the churn damage.

I'm running all damage glyphs, my weapon damage is approx 3500 buffed not including the master bow buff. The best damage I get on the cliff racer is about 15k.

I also uploaded a video testing the heal on green lotus. This may be as designed based on the description, but the lack of heals for anything except light and full heavy just feels broken. Like your being punished for holding down the mouse button for a few milliseconds too long.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GQOJoVsFnY

SodanTok · September 2017

The bear is not primarily for damage. Tho it is great single target DPS ulti against stationary targets. It is for the burst and to tank some mobs. The 75 cost nuke is almost on demand, contrary to dawnbreaker with 125 or bow ulti for 175. So you can always deliver the needed final punch against boss, crematorial guard, those mages that try to summon the skeleton boss in last zone.
But the best thing is what it tanks. With most fights being against 2-4 mobs, it usually occupies 1-2. Of course once you are comfortable it may be slightly faster to do it without bear.

Regarding crematorial guards. Most of the time you dont have to fight them if you time your 3-gold-ghost-explosion right. On the last boss If I pick the damage glyph I can burn boss so quickly he will move to top floor before spawning crematorial guard. And after destroying crystal I can usually pick 3 gold ghosts just in time for crematorial guard summon (tho I usually just finish the boss during the stun, but you can choose to kill crem guard first)

And lotus not healing on medium attacks? Reported and discussed back in closed beta for Morrowind. I guess it is intended or not important. Take your pick.
I dont do medium attacks anyway, you should probably get used to light attacking more.

Masel · September 2017

SodanTok wrote: »

The bear is not primarily for damage. Tho it is great single target DPS ulti against stationary targets. It is for the burst and to tank some mobs. The 75 cost nuke is almost on demand, contrary to dawnbreaker with 125 or bow ulti for 175. So you can always deliver the needed final punch against boss, crematorial guard, those mages that try to summon the skeleton boss in last zone.
But the best thing is what it tanks. With most fights being against 2-4 mobs, it usually occupies 1-2. Of course once you are comfortable it may be slightly faster to do it without bear.

Regarding crematorial guards. Most of the time you dont have to fight them if you time your 3-gold-ghost-explosion right. On the last boss If I pick the damage glyph I can burn boss so quickly he will move to top floor before spawning crematorial guard. And after destroying crystal I can usually pick 3 gold ghosts just in time for crematorial guard summon (tho I usually just finish the boss during the stun, but you can choose to kill crem guard first)

And lotus not healing on medium attacks? Reported and discussed back in closed beta for Morrowind. I guess it is intended or not important. Take your pick.
I dont do medium attacks anyway, you should probably get used to light attacking more.

I made a forum post about the medium attacks and lotus flower back on the pts... It seems ZoS doesn't really care about multiple important flaws that the warden class has.

The whole design is annoying:

You have to either double bar an ultimate for the bear, or have uneven resource pools while slotting northern storm and the destro ultimate on a mag warden.

Then lotus flower... Yeah it can heal someone else, but that's never really necessary and also, when you compare it to surge from sorcerers, it's just straight up weaker. The requirement for the heal is bigger as it requires active damage dealing instead of working with DoTs, it often doesn't heal the person that really needs it and the critical bonus is also not necessary...

Overall, the only point a stamina warden has in a raid is to debuff trash mobs with subterranean assault...

SodanTok · September 2017

Masel92 wrote: »

SodanTok wrote: »

The bear is not primarily for damage. Tho it is great single target DPS ulti against stationary targets. It is for the burst and to tank some mobs. The 75 cost nuke is almost on demand, contrary to dawnbreaker with 125 or bow ulti for 175. So you can always deliver the needed final punch against boss, crematorial guard, those mages that try to summon the skeleton boss in last zone.
But the best thing is what it tanks. With most fights being against 2-4 mobs, it usually occupies 1-2. Of course once you are comfortable it may be slightly faster to do it without bear.

Regarding crematorial guards. Most of the time you dont have to fight them if you time your 3-gold-ghost-explosion right. On the last boss If I pick the damage glyph I can burn boss so quickly he will move to top floor before spawning crematorial guard. And after destroying crystal I can usually pick 3 gold ghosts just in time for crematorial guard summon (tho I usually just finish the boss during the stun, but you can choose to kill crem guard first)

And lotus not healing on medium attacks? Reported and discussed back in closed beta for Morrowind. I guess it is intended or not important. Take your pick.
I dont do medium attacks anyway, you should probably get used to light attacking more.

I made a forum post about the medium attacks and lotus flower back on the pts... It seems ZoS doesn't really care about multiple important flaws that the warden class has.

The whole design is annoying:

You have to either double bar an ultimate for the bear, or have uneven resource pools while slotting northern storm and the destro ultimate on a mag warden.

Then lotus flower... Yeah it can heal someone else, but that's never really necessary and also, when you compare it to surge from sorcerers, it's just straight up weaker. The requirement for the heal is bigger as it requires active damage dealing instead of working with DoTs, it often doesn't heal the person that really needs it and the critical bonus is also not necessary...

Overall, the only point a stamina warden has in a raid is to debuff trash mobs with subterranean assault...

Well, they can always slot the template stamina build for veteran trials and do at least close as good as everyone else. But remove that and it is bad. Making 2H build is worse than on Sorc. Making bow build is... well as bad as on any class really (still behind by at least 20%). Making mag build out of these skills nearly as bad as on bow.

There really isnt point (except the debuff you mentioned) to build DD warden if you already have some other class. Unless you just want something new... or PVP

Soleya · September 2017

I also noticed a bug with the minor heroism from the Maturation Passive, when healing from Green Lotus. Updated OP with this info.

If you heal using green lotus, you gain the minor toughness giving you 10% more health. This makes your max health go up, but not actual health. So if you spam light attacks to keep healing, it appears to keep refreshing maturation, by resting your health back down and then back up again, so you can't get healed to full health. I tried it with soothing spores and it seems to heal you to full. But if I use green lotus heal first, then I can spam soothing spores without getting to max health for quite awhile.

Video of bug:

https://youtu.be/HGIvtjYVwjg

Morgul667 · September 2017

This is interesting. Thanks for sharing. Ill give mine a VMA try.

For tanking how do you manage ressources without stamina returns like DK ? Heavy attacks ?

Stannum · September 2017

Soleya wrote: »

[*] Soothing Spores - Feels like a strong heal, until you compare it to Vigor, then you realize it's just utter garbage. Costs more than Vigor and heals for WAY less. For example, fully buffed on my build, it healed for 7,873 non crit or 13,305 crit. In comparison Vigor heals for 13,236 if all ticks don't crit and 22,368 if they all crit. Vigor costs 3090 stam vs Soothing Spores costing 3433 stam. My suggestion here would be to add a HOT. So it burst heals and then gives 2 or 3 more heal ticks every 2 seconds for 2-3k healing. Other option would be to cut cost in half, but then it would be OP in PVP.

It's really a great heal as it gets you burst heal unlike vigor. In PvP i play starden in tanky high sustain build (Bone pirate + eternal hunt) frost staf\bow. And when you need to support group with burst heals Soothing Spores is much more effective then vigor and you can also spam it with high regens.

SodanTok · September 2017

Soleya wrote: »

I also noticed a bug with the minor heroism from the Maturation Passive, when healing from Green Lotus. Updated OP with this info.

If you heal using green lotus, you gain the minor toughness giving you 10% more health. This makes your max health go up, but not actual health. So if you spam light attacks to keep healing, it appears to keep refreshing maturation, by resting your health back down and then back up again, so you can't get healed to full health. I tried it with soothing spores and it seems to heal you to full. But if I use green lotus heal first, then I can spam soothing spores without getting to max health for quite awhile.

Yeah that is currently bugged. It looks like if you refresh the minor toughness buff you wont heal to maximum (and since you are warden, you always refresh if by healing)
At least that is my theory, because first apply of minor toughness will always heal you to full

Soleya · September 2017

Morgul667 wrote: »

This is interesting. Thanks for sharing. Ill give mine a VMA try.

For tanking how do you manage ressources without stamina returns like DK ? Heavy attacks ?

Bull Netch for stam + heavy attacks on 1H+Shield.
Ice Staff heavy attacks to get back magicka.

Stannum wrote: »

Soleya wrote: »

[*] Soothing Spores - Feels like a strong heal, until you compare it to Vigor, then you realize it's just utter garbage. Costs more than Vigor and heals for WAY less. For example, fully buffed on my build, it healed for 7,873 non crit or 13,305 crit. In comparison Vigor heals for 13,236 if all ticks don't crit and 22,368 if they all crit. Vigor costs 3090 stam vs Soothing Spores costing 3433 stam. My suggestion here would be to add a HOT. So it burst heals and then gives 2 or 3 more heal ticks every 2 seconds for 2-3k healing. Other option would be to cut cost in half, but then it would be OP in PVP.

It's really a great heal as it gets you burst heal unlike vigor. In PvP i play starden in tanky high sustain build (Bone pirate + eternal hunt) frost staf\bow. And when you need to support group with burst heals Soothing Spores is much more effective then vigor and you can also spam it with high regens.

I agree it's great in PVP, not so much in vMA where your taking tons of damage constantly. HOT's work better in many of those situations...at least for me anyway.

For example, on stam sorc, with bloodthirst, vigor and crit surge, your get 8-10k heals per second, plenty to withstand the soul churn and crematorial guards.

Soleya · October 2017

SodanTok wrote: »

The bear is not primarily for damage. Tho it is great single target DPS ulti against stationary targets. It is for the burst and to tank some mobs. The 75 cost nuke is almost on demand, contrary to dawnbreaker with 125 or bow ulti for 175. So you can always deliver the needed final punch against boss, crematorial guard, those mages that try to summon the skeleton boss in last zone.
But the best thing is what it tanks. With most fights being against 2-4 mobs, it usually occupies 1-2. Of course once you are comfortable it may be slightly faster to do it without bear.

I went back in vMA again with the Bear this time. It rarely tanks anything. All adds ignore it and just attack me instead. It's damage output is less than my light attacks for dps because it just runs back and forth between enemies and rarely actually attacks. Only one out of all the adds in the first 3 rounds of stage 9 did it actually aggro.

SodanTok · October 2017

Soleya wrote: »

SodanTok wrote: »

The bear is not primarily for damage. Tho it is great single target DPS ulti against stationary targets. It is for the burst and to tank some mobs. The 75 cost nuke is almost on demand, contrary to dawnbreaker with 125 or bow ulti for 175. So you can always deliver the needed final punch against boss, crematorial guard, those mages that try to summon the skeleton boss in last zone.
But the best thing is what it tanks. With most fights being against 2-4 mobs, it usually occupies 1-2. Of course once you are comfortable it may be slightly faster to do it without bear.

I went back in vMA again with the Bear this time. It rarely tanks anything. All adds ignore it and just attack me instead. It's damage output is less than my light attacks for dps because it just runs back and forth between enemies and rarely actually attacks. Only one out of all the adds in the first 3 rounds of stage 9 did it actually aggro.

Then you play it wrong?

Dunno what to say to you. Any add that is getting damage by bear and not you is aggroed on bear. It also cant run between enemies unless you do absolutely nothing to control it. If you order him to go on someone it will stay on him until that someone dies.

AverageJo3Gam3r · October 2017

@SodanTok on console we don't have buttons to order our pets. We have to heavy attack something to order it to attack that target we heavy attacked.

SodanTok · October 2017

AverageJo3Gam3r wrote: »

@SodanTok on console we don't have buttons to order our pets. We have to heavy attack something to order it to attack that target we heavy attacked.

That would be ok, but I get that also means you have no call back button, that is far worse. Bear can easily die to mechanics if you cant order him to retreat (well, easily, the only mechanics that kills him in VMA is the enraged scream of lizard boss, but cant imagine using it in dungeons or trials then)

Tho it can also mean every mob is enraged on you because you heavy attacked first

Waffennacht · October 2017

SodanTok wrote: »

AverageJo3Gam3r wrote: »

@SodanTok on console we don't have buttons to order our pets. We have to heavy attack something to order it to attack that target we heavy attacked.

That would be ok, but I get that also means you have no call back button, that is far worse. Bear can easily die to mechanics if you cant order him to retreat (well, easily, the only mechanics that kills him in VMA is the enraged scream of lizard boss, but cant imagine using it in dungeons or trials then)

Tho it can also mean every mob is enraged on you because you heavy attacked first

Exactly, the only way for bear to grab aggro "on command" for console is to hold block.

After a few seconds of holding block then the bear grabs aggro

Very unreliable and a good way to get killed (say in vMA)

However, in solo vet Dungeons you can do this to get the bear to aggro the boss

Huyen · October 2017

I just tried to do the vet dungeons today with my guild. Somehow the hotfix broke stamina-wardens even further, as my dps has dropped to insane low amounts, while no changes to gear or skills are made. Also the lack of duration on the buffs is game-breaking, forcing me to reroll (again!) to be able to participate in my guild's trials in the future. Just because every in the morrowind-beta went "its gonna be p2w class! Nerf it asap!".