Ice Warden DPS / Ysgramor's Birthright Questions

Crafts_Many_Boxes · November 2018

So I know most of my threads / posts tend to be criticisms of ZOS, but I've got a legitimate couple of unrelated questions here.

I've been working on an ice warden because why not. Don't really have any theme characters, most are just meta slaves and that gets boring.

Anywho, my planned setup is iceheart, ysgramor's birthright, and winterborn. Ice staff, ice enchant.

My first question is, exactly what does Ysgramor buff? Does it buff frost procs from other gearsets, like iceheart and winterborn? Does it buff frost light / heavy attacks? Does it buff ice enchants? It says it only buffs frost abilities, does that mean literally only spells on my bars?

I'm asking because ysgramor is very theme-friendly, but ultimately it doesn't create any sort of additional ice effects, so if something else is better I can swap it out. Keep in mind my main damage dealers are winter's revenge, blockade of frost, cliff racer, and the frost storm ultimate.

And yeah, I could test all of this out myself, but I'm sitting at work right now so having some insight would make my life easier later on.

Edit: Meant to post this in the combat section, whoops!

Joosef_Kivikilpi · November 2018

Ysgramor's, to my knowledge, does not buff Winterborn or Iceheart, due to proc sets not being buffed by Spell Damage. A set that WOULD buff their damage would be Spinner's.

Ysgramor's would buff light & heavy attack damage + all other "cold" damage abilities. I'd switch to Frost Clench/Reach for more cold damage + cold dot to proc Winterborn. I do not believe it buffs Cold Enchantments. Only Infused would do that, plus CP I believe.

Crafts_Many_Boxes · November 2018

Thanks for the response. How would spinners buff those sets though? Unless you're just talking about the max magicka, which I can get from plenty of sets.

As for frost clench, I've never used it. It looks too expensive to use as a spammable, plus with the dot it doesn't make sense to spam it. If you're talking about just adding it into the rotation, my bars are pretty much full as it is and managing another 8s dot doesn't sound thrilling unless it really has a dramatic impact on winterborn uptime.

NordSwordnBoard · November 2018

Crafts_Many_Boxes wrote: »

Thanks for the response. How would spinners buff those sets though? Unless you're just talking about the max magicka, which I can get from plenty of sets.

As for frost clench, I've never used it. It looks too expensive to use as a spammable, plus with the dot it doesn't make sense to spam it. If you're talking about just adding it into the rotation, my bars are pretty much full as it is and managing another 8s dot doesn't sound thrilling unless it really has a dramatic impact on winterborn uptime.

I've tried it in PvP, and the damage losses from ice staff (compared to Fire/Light) are only sort-of made up by Ysgrammor with it's limitations. So, a 5th set bonus gets spent to be on par with lightning & fire. I ended up just going back to Spinners and Necro, with mostly Ice stuff slotted and kept the Iceheart for looks.

I feel like I spent more time getting the ice gear together than I did actually using it. Master's Ice staff made it fun, most people don't know that snowball can hurt. It was enjoyable and new, but I didn't make Ice warden my main, either.

re: Spinner's - the penetration helps all of your mag attacks.
re: Destructive Touch - CC, Direct damage, and DOT. With Master's staff from Dragonstar Arena it becomes much better.

Crafts_Many_Boxes · November 2018

NordSwordnBoard wrote: »

Crafts_Many_Boxes wrote: »

Thanks for the response. How would spinners buff those sets though? Unless you're just talking about the max magicka, which I can get from plenty of sets.

As for frost clench, I've never used it. It looks too expensive to use as a spammable, plus with the dot it doesn't make sense to spam it. If you're talking about just adding it into the rotation, my bars are pretty much full as it is and managing another 8s dot doesn't sound thrilling unless it really has a dramatic impact on winterborn uptime.

I've tried it in PvP, and the damage losses from ice staff (compared to Fire/Light) are only sort-of made up by Ysgrammor with it's limitations. So, a 5th set bonus gets spent to be on par with lightning & fire. I ended up just going back to Spinners and Necro, with mostly Ice stuff slotted and kept the Iceheart for looks.

I feel like I spent more time getting the ice gear together than I did actually using it. Master's Ice staff made it fun, most people don't know that snowball can hurt. It was enjoyable and new, but I didn't make Ice warden my main, either.

re: Spinner's - the penetration helps all of your mag attacks.
re: Destructive Touch - CC, Direct damage, and DOT. With Master's staff from Dragonstar Arena it becomes much better.

Overall, I don't think the master's staff is viable for PvE, which is my focus. From what I can tell, the staff basically makes destructive touch into a viable elemental spammable, which is cool and fits my theme but then I'd have to lose either the ysgramor or the winterborn set bonus for most of every fight. That being said, I think i'll still pursue the staff to test with.

And spinners is really only viable for PvP these days, which again I don't do much of. I'm not making a frost dps because it's OP in PvE or anything, just wanted to do a theme is all.

jaws343 · November 2018

I have tried many times to make this setup work in PVP. The problems I always run into is the amount of AOE damage you need to make it viable just does not translate well into open world PVP. And you need AOE damage because if you arent using WOE and Winter's Revenge, you are barely using any ice skills. Its great at defending breaches and flags but the moment you have to 1v1 someone in a field you are worthless.

If you really want to make it work, back bar Ice Maelstrom for even more light attack damage.