Mag warden is a fine choice. Yes they are getting nerfed next patch but most are being overly sensational, in truth the nerfs are not that severe for the exception of losing your only class based (and highly telegraphed) CC.

that said heavy armor, +2500 crit resist and physical and spell resist buffs will make you tanky w/o focusing your build (skills,attributes) on doing so

I'll preface this by saying that all of my PvP is done in Battlegrounds. Cyrodiil is mostly boring to me, and I haven't set foot in there (except for checking the special vendor) in quite some time. Therefore, some of what I'm saying may not perfectly translate over to Cyrodiil, especially if you play in a CP-enabled campaign.

Magicka Warden was mediocre in PvP when Morrowind first came out, and it's much worse now. Offensively, the class is too reliant on Deep Fissure in order to get kills, which good players will frequently be able to avoid. I've been using Destructive Clench in order to land the shalks more reliably, and started doing so long before ZOS announced the removal of the stun.

However, the stun from Flame/Shock Clench can be dodged, blocked, or reflected, and if you run Frost for the root (which can still be dodged or reflected), you'll need to either play without any stun whatsoever, or give up another bar slot in order to fit something like Vampire Drain. 'Course, being a Vampire comes with its own set of drawbacks, which are going to get worse with the upcoming increased light attack damage on flame staves. It's also worth mentioning that Flame Clench can sometimes push your target in odd, unexpected directions, and actually knock them out of the path of your shalks, helping them to survive.

When it comes to defense, the Warden class absorb is quite overpowered vs projectile-using Magicka setups, but worthless vs most Stam players. The vast majority of the time I'm in Battlegrounds, on any class I play, Stamina is what's truly dangerous. For this reason, I honestly don't even run the class absorb most of the time. Outside of that absorb though, Magicka Warden defenses are essentially the worst in the game.

Broadly speaking, there are 2 ways to stay alive in Battlegrounds: tanking damage, and avoiding damage. The second way really isn't an option for Magicka Wardens, unless you can use Nature's Embrace to pull yourself to a properly positioned teammate (and good luck with that when you're playing solo, or even sometimes in groups, depending on terrain, classes you're with, classes you're against, etc...)

But what about the first option - tanking the damage? Unfortunately, that's also not much of a solution for Magicka Wardens. I've yet to see a Magicka Warden setup that can both block a lot (which is absolutely necessary for tanking damage in no-CP PvP), and still have any killing power worth mentioning.

Maybe magblade is an option for me. They seem to be able to build out decent sustain/escape w/ cloak and do fairly good single target dmg. I could then swap things around a bit for a sap tank build in pve.

Thoughts?