Wall of Frost (+morphs): Currently snares enemies and immobilizes Chilled targets.
New effect: Keep old effects. It now also deals 10% bonus damage, and enemies inside of your Wall of Elements take 5% more damage from all Cold Damage skills.
Reasoning: Wall of Shock still procs the all-powerful Off Balance. Wall of Flame still deals more damage against Burning targets (20%), and a DK’s Engulfing Flames further buffs all Flame damage skills (10%). The benefit of a Wall of Frost is that it retains its Frost Damage without the reliance on a Burning proc or DK buff, though it will only provide exactly half the damage modifiers. This is very nice because it helps it become closer in damage to Walls of Fire/Shock but makes those who want to to play Ice Mages in dungeons much more effective (they often won’t get as many if any Burning procs or Engulfing Flames).

Destructive Clench (morph of Destructive Touch): Currently Immoblizes targets for longer. (same effect as base morph but slightly longer duration)
New effect: No longer increases immobilize duration. It is already a long duration root skill. Targets you hit with this skill will now have an increased chance to become Chilled, and grants the caster Minor Force for 12 seconds.
Reasoning: Not nearly as strong in damage as either of the two other morphs, but it grants the cast a powerful buff. This buff can be attained by other Magicka DPS by either using Rearming Trap (like Stam DPS do) or through Stalwart Guard. This is a strong buff and finally a legitimate reason to incentivize players to consider slotting a Frost Staff over the current two viable Destruction staves. A Flame Staff still puts out the best single target DPS, while a Shock Staff is still the king of AoE DPS. Frost Staves incentivize critical hits.

Tri-Focus (passive): Fully Charged Frost Heavy Attacks taunt targets for 15sec and grant you a miniscule value (usually around 1500 value) damage shield for 5sec. Wielding a Frost Staff causes blocking to drain Magicka instead of Stamina.
New effect: The taunt is removed, and holding a Frost Staff no longer changes your blocking resource from Stamina to Magicka. The damage shield is increased to 3000 value, gains 1500 value each second over the course of 2 seconds, and expires after 15sec if not destroyed. Heavy Attacks restore 10% more Magicka, and always critically strike.
Reasoning: Removes the taunt and Magicka blocking that ruins the Ice Staff. The damage shield looks great and fits very well with Magicaka DPS builds, so this provides a bit of needed defense while also restoring some extra Magicka. In general, Flame Staves will have superior Heavy Attacks for single target while Shock Staves will have superior Heavy Attacks for AoE, with Frost Staves granting more Magicka to more easily cast your actual skills, and the side benefit of a damage shield that may allow you to get away with not casting Annulment/Conjured Ward sometimes.

Ancient Knowledge: Currently reduces Block cost by 30%, and damage blocked by 20%.
New effect: No longer reduces Block cost or damage blocked. This passive now increases Critical Hit Chance and Damage by 5%.
Reasoning: Similar to how a Flame Staff deals 8% additional single target DPS, and a Shock Staff deals 8% additional AoE DPS, the Ice Staff will focus on Critical Hits.


Chilled (status effect): Currently debuffs affected targets with Minor Maim and deals a very small amount of damage for 4 seconds.
New effect: Now debuffs targets with Minor Breach (spell resist debuff) instead of Minor Maim.
Reasoning: Minor Maim is a very common debuff that tanks already apply. Having the ability to debuff enemies with Minor Breach makes this status effect slightly more valuable. It also indirectly helps out Wardens who have Winter’s Revenge to reliably apply Chilled in an AoE.


That’s it! Frost Staves become a tool for DPS again. They become unique in that they focus on Critical Hits rather than single target or AoE damage. Flame and Shock Staves are still generally stronger, but a Frost Staff is likely the strongest option without proper group support, and still worth slotting on a NB or Warden in trials. It will be on par if all of the proper trial group support is there, but also gernally slightly stronger than the other two staves at skill casts (not at pure single target or AoE though) if very little or none of it is there such as in non-trial scenarios. Frost Staves finally become viable for DPS, and “Ice Mage” builds can actually be a thing in PvE!

I want them to be strong but not overpowered. My main idea for that would be to focus their damage in some way on critical hits to make them both powerful and different from the other destruction staves. I think these changes would work well based on how stuff goes in endgame PvE (Vet trials, etc).

Note: There might be some bias here since I really do not like Frost Staff tanking. Keep that in mind. What I write here is all true though from my experience and anyone I have played with except for the speculation at the end.

Before the Ice Destro became a tool for "tanks", it used to be pretty common amongst Magicka builds, and especially Nightblades since it fit them well thematically. Many players wanted (and still do want) to create an Ice Mage DPS build. It was a fun alternative to using a Fire Staff despite losing a small bit of damage. The main drawback was a DPS loss on Wall of Elements which was not a very big loss, and made the Ice Destro fine to use for essentially all content. A Warden class featuring Ice-based skills was highly requested for this very reason. For the time being (prior to Homestead), playing a Sorcerer or a NB with an Ice Staff was the best choice for an effective “Ice Mage” DPS build.

In terms of DPS:
Homestead launched. Both the Fire and Shock staves were simultaneously given passives to increase their DPS while the Frost Staff was instead given tanking passives, so it was dropped from DPS builds completely. Using a Flame or Lightning staff yielded significantly more damage and group utility, as well as not requiring you to take points out of a valuable passive (also losing lots of DPS) unless willing to risk taunting on an accidental Heavy Attack. Though uncommon, it is not unheard of for a DPS in group finder dungeons to slot Frost Staves because they want to play Ice Mages, not realizing they taunt enemies/bosses on Heavy Attacks which cause either them or their tank to get kicked.

In terms of Tanking:
The 1H/S is still far superior for tanking, which does make sense for someone wielding a Shield. No one in endgame PvE uses a Frost Staff tank….at all. The extremely rare exception may happen once in a long time during a non-score run, but this is only meant to take screenshots and troll friends. It is quite literally unused. In PvP, there are maybe a few decent players per server who use them who aren’t just zerging with 50+ people (in which case you can run around with your fists and do well), but are ineffective at best. It is highly, highly uncommon, rarely ever seeing any use.
Magicka is too valuable when tanking to spend blocking, and nothing else besides two passives support a tanking playstyle with a Frost Staff. The Destruction Staff skills themselves are meant for damage dealing – never tanking. There are way more passive tanking 1H/S benefits which are all far stronger, and the 1H/S active skills are essential to playing a good tank. Frost Staff tanks are highly ineffective and constantly kicked from dungeons because the only players using Frost Staves are quite bad as tanks and don’t have the tools to even do their job well.

Wrobel and Wardens – why things probably turned out this way:
The Warden's Winter's Embrace skill line was directly changed into the tanking/mess of a skill line it currently is due to the concept of Frost Staff tanking, which also directly corresponds to Wardens being terrible at DPS.
This was Wrobel’s response to Warden skill lines in the Warden Developer Q&A Article located here……

"Question: How important was it to ensure that the Warden is able to perform multiple roles (damage, tanking, healing) from just their class Skill Lines?

Wrobel: This was a pillar of the class's design. ESO: Morrowind is a great opportunity for new players to experience The Elder Scrolls Online for the first time, so we wanted a class that was easy to pick up, yet difficult to master. When we came up with the ideas for Animal Companions, Green Balance, and Winter's Embrace, they each had to fit into one of these molds. We did move some of the Skill Lines around as we were designing them to see what best fit. For example, we were playing with the idea of having Winter's Embrace exclusively deal damage, but when trying to make an entire class' Skill Lines, the other options made less sense for a tanking tree. There are only so many abilities you can make out of mudcrab armor!”

……To put it simply, the design of forcing each skill tree to perform one role (which strays from all other class designs) likely caused them to rework the Warden’s Winter’s Embrace skill tree, which is essentially a parallel of a Sorcerer’s Storm Calling and a Dragonknight’s Ardent Flame, into a tank skill tree rather than a DPS skill tree. The Frost Destruction Staff was then dragged along to fit the tanking concept too. Either that or the other way around - Frost Destruction staves were decided to become a tanking tool, and Winter's Embrace and to follow. Those are my thoughts on that at least.