Frozen Watcher and Mighty Glacier. Warden's Skills to Sets

ESO_Nightingale · January 2019

I've seen this talked about a little bit. but i wanted to create a discussion for these 2 sets specifically on "Public Test Server".

Essentially. Back in Murkmire Arctic Blast was reworked into one of the worst stuns in the game.

just quickly:
-Barely heals intended audience. Healing is also cut in half in PvP where the stun is useful.
-Seriously deals 0 damage (removed from piercing cold and glacial presence.)
-very expensive for output, 4051 mag cost.
-casting animation is slow and hard to weave.
-projectile speed is very slow.
-projectile is not special for all these downsides. blockable and dodgeable.

it's only redeeming quality is most likely a bug as it can go through reflect.

It's fair to say that the community was not happy about this. if you type up "Arctic Blast" in the search bar, you will find a large amount of posts confused and angry about what happened to blast.
people wanted the old skill back. It was a very fun area of effect skill that was good for tanking. Reason being is not because it scaled off max health. It's because it had a 30% chance to proc chilled per tick. This was listed as a pain point to the reps. I said it myself to @Masel (thanks for hearing our concerns by the way man. you're awesome!) this was on 11/02/2018.

I think it is very fair to say that ZOS heard our pain point. i don't know if this was done out of ignorance, malicious compliance or something else. but we received:

Frozen Watcher (Heavy)
2 – Adds 1096 Maximum Stamina
3 – Adds 1206 Maximum Health
4 – Adds 1096 Maximum Stamina
5 – Summon a blizzard around you while blocking, inflicting 1000 Frost Damage every 1 second to enemies within your blizzard. Your blizzard has a 15% chance of inflicting Chilled on enemies damage.

That IS arctic blast. from testing it had the same if not similar area of effect range, perhaps 1 meter off at most. The reason this is a problem is that it's on a set. This is a Warden skill with a Warden passive increase. on a set. Now i must ask, what is the point of Glacial Presence anymore? it was already a forgettable passive. It's never had a massive impact on warden. except on the one skill that really used it do decent effect. Arctic Blast. like I said before. it had a 30% chance to proc per tick with glacial.

It was enough to remove the skill with the best synergy with the passive. But to give the same chance over the same time (watcher's 15% every 2 ticks to blast's 30% every 1 tick) to a set just makes glacial presence even more useless. if you want to apply minor maim in AOE on your tank, just use Choking Talons on DK which is still the best tank. It has a 100% chance to proc minor maim.

What would i do to this set?
i'd rework it to this:
2 – Adds 1096 Maximum Magicka
3 – Adds 1206 Maximum Health
4 – Adds 1096 Maximum Magicka
5 – Summon a blizzard around you while blocking, inflicting 1000 Frost Damage every 1 second to enemies within your blizzard.

That's right. I just want to remove the "Your blizzard has a 15% chance of inflicting Chilled on enemies damage." bit and change the resource increase to Magicka as frost is a Magicka thing. Not a stamina thing. unless ZOS wants to delete Magicka tanking. this is a kick in the balls to those of us are still lying on the floor in pain after our beloved skill was taken from us.

Mighty Glacier:

This is Expansive Frost Cloak on a set. now if you cast a snare/ or snare/immobilise anyone you give everyone around you Expansive Frost Cloak. this morph was already very niche. now we have a set that does it for us along with giving max stam and mag which is really nice for pvp? well, nice! the warden pvp supports who use this skill sometimes can swap over to Glacier and just use Ice Fortress instead! Not to mention that while every class has access to snares and or an immobilise, warden has the best synergy with them, doing both? You gave every class Expansive Frost Cloak and more reason for the class with the skill that does the set's proc anyway to use the set. Interesting... is this hinting towards a rework?

But! I can't say i blame you anyway ZOS. People were already looking to rework this morph due to how niche it is. here's hoping that you rework it into a DPS skill that we can use with glacial presence, yes?

ZOS, i implore that you leave us Frost Wardens with a shred of dignity.

Ihonu · January 2019

RETURN THE OLD ARCITC BLAST!!! I WANT IT BACK!!!

mb10 · January 2019

I honestly find the treatment of arctic blast and magicka wardens in general really really really strange by ZOS

IronWooshu · January 2019

I just want Arctic Blast back, I am hoping with Wrobel gone the injustices done to Warden will be undone.

Arctic Blast was even useful to Stamina tanks since we use Chilled as well to debuff enemies and keep them rooted for the DPS. However I have a dirty idea to use that Frozen Watcher set in PVP on a Warden health tank, that and Impaling Shards while blocking and being near unkillable.

However I don't care if they remove the chilled, our passive gives 200% tho that one only 15% so its not a complete game breaker for us Wardens, I'm impartial either way to the set.

EDIT: If they changed the Warden passive to Increase chance of applying Chilled to enemies with Frost Damage by 200% that would be a huge start to the Ice Mage DPS while not hurting tanks.

ESO_Nightingale · January 2019

Ihonu wrote: »

RETURN THE OLD ARCITC BLAST!!! I WANT IT BACK!!!

we are trying to do that. however Watcher stands in our way.

ESO_Nightingale · January 2019

IronWooshu wrote: »

I just want Arctic Blast back, I am hoping with Wrobel gone the injustices done to Warden will be undone.

Arctic Blast was even useful to Stamina tanks since we use Chilled as well to debuff enemies and keep them rooted for the DPS. However I have a dirty idea to use that Frozen Watcher set in PVP on a Warden health tank, that and Impaling Shards while blocking and being near unkillable.

However I don't care if they remove the chilled, our passive gives 200% tho that one only 15% so its not a complete game breaker for us Wardens, I'm impartial either way to the set.

EDIT: If they changed the Warden passive to Increase chance of applying Chilled to enemies with Frost Damage by 200% that would be a huge start to the Ice Mage DPS while not hurting tanks.

i wouldn't say it's a huge start. it's helpful! but we still lack any real synergy with chilled. currently it's to proc immobilise on frost wall in pvp. and frost staff is a meme for dps. pve dps.

we need more synergy on glacial presence. we already have an idea for that though.

for us right now it's either:
deal 10% more critical damage against chilled enemies (separated from minor force)

or:
gain minor force for x seconds when you proc chilled on an enemy.

removes channeled acceleration/ rearming trap from the bar and gives us another slot. might be detrimental because of passives provided by psijic. however, that's why i included 2 options.

Gorrest · January 2019

I would really like to know where you got the 30% chance to Chilled enemies from Arctic Blast from. From everything I know about the game, the chance for Arctic Blast to Chill was really low.

ESO_Nightingale · January 2019

Gorrest wrote: »

I would really like to know where you got the 30% chance to Chilled enemies from Arctic Blast from. From everything I know about the game, the chance for Arctic Blast to Chill was really low.

it most likely acted as direct damage. it could have been a bug. but we know it did have that chance.

Gorrest · January 2019

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

Gorrest wrote: »

I would really like to know where you got the 30% chance to Chilled enemies from Arctic Blast from. From everything I know about the game, the chance for Arctic Blast to Chill was really low.

it most likely acted as direct damage. it could have been a bug. but we know it did have that chance.

How was it tested? As in did you have Destro/Charged Trait/Glacial Presence?

ESO_Nightingale · January 2019

Gorrest wrote: »

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

Gorrest wrote: »

I would really like to know where you got the 30% chance to Chilled enemies from Arctic Blast from. From everything I know about the game, the chance for Arctic Blast to Chill was really low.

it most likely acted as direct damage. it could have been a bug. but we know it did have that chance.

How was it tested? As in did you have Destro/Charged Trait/Glacial Presence?

i believe it was tested with Elemental Force and Glacial Presence.

Maura_Neysa · January 2019

Gorrest wrote: »

I would really like to know where you got the 30% chance to Chilled enemies from Arctic Blast from. From everything I know about the game, the chance for Arctic Blast to Chill was really low.

@Gorrest

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO wrote: »

@Maura_Neysa i have spent a couple hours at a dummy, we are both right and we are both wrong. take a look at this

wall of elements is clearly an "Area-of-effect damage-over-time ability"

see here with a stam sorc with no destro passives unlocked and nothing into magic at all-

chilled is easy to track because it is only one damage tick, so in the picture you can see that wall of frost hit 751 times and chilled only procs 6 times, making that a chance of .7%, which is close enough to 1%

the fact that wall is an "Area-of-effect damage-over-time ability", i did the same on my warden with all the destro passives unlocked, results here-

you will see that blockade hits for 788 times but only procs chilled 30 times. making that a 3.8% chance, close enough to the 2% it ought to be. or the 4 maybe if the warden's "Glacial Presence" was applying to it as well, though it should not be as it says, specifically "winters embrace" int eh description, see here, "Increase chance of applying Chilled to enemies with Winter's Embrace abilities by 200%"

so i was right about wall.

now you were right about gripping shards, it is procing chilled like an "Area-of-effect ability" ie 5%, see here-

as you can see, out of 778 damage ticks, chilled proced 98 times, which is 12.5% of the time. closer to 15% then the 3 or 4% that it would be if the game classified as an "Area-of-effect damage-over-time ability". you were correct with this skill, so good job.

then there is arctic blast. this skill is counting as a "Single-target direct attack ability" as you can see here-
out of 592 ticks of damage, chilled proced a staggering 179 times, meaning a proc rate of 30%. without the wardens passive, that would go down to 10%. so we were both wrong about this ability.

both arctic blast and gripping shards were tested with no destro staff equipped, only s/b. so add 10% chance to arctic blast and 5% chance to gripping shards if you have a destro staff equipped .

i believe all three of the aforementioned skills ought to be the same, as they all do damage over time and they all do it in an area, wither around you or on the ground. i would classify arctic blast and gripping shards behavior as bugs.

now i do not wish to get back into an argument, you are dead set on not using heroic slash, i will not stop using it and i like the heals i can put out with polar wind but with this data, the kind i know you can't get by being a console, we are both more informed and anyone else that see this data can make a more informed decision.

good day.

Gorrest · January 2019

Came back after some testing what Arctic Blast would of been.

To help understand, there are 3 test with 1 test using a different gear.

1. All Tests were using Destro Staff with Elemental Force.
2. This was all done on the PTS
3. Values are listen below

Weapon enchants 20%
Standard ability 10%
Area of effect abilities 5%
Damage over time abilities 3%
Area of effect damage over time abilities 1%

First was testing the thing we have most similar to Old Arctic Blast, Impaling Shards. This was done with a NON-CHARGE Destro.(Reason will be explained later)

74/444=16.66% to proc.

Next thing was to test was the proc chance of a AOE non-DoT ability. This test was done with a CHARGE destro(This was to simulate the Glacial Presence passive of 220%.)

80/400=20% to proc

Next for fun, I decided to test Frozen Watcher. This test was done with a CHARGE destro(This was to simulate the Glacial Presence passive of 220%.)

317/480=66.04% to proc

So with the above guidelines and the help of Frozen Watcher we can conclude that on average %increase of a Destro+Glacial Presence would of been 4x the amount of the proc chance.

16.66%/4=4.165%
20%/4=5%
66.04%/4=16.51%

The interesting thing about this is Impaling Shards dot proc chance is consider single target DoT(Maybe an AOE Instant damage) rather than an AOE dot. When reflecting back on Old Arctic Blast, it was most likely considered as an AOE non-DoT ability so closest to Impluse. If we factor our %increases to status chance we can somewhat see what each %increase is doing.

With Impluse:
1(Default Status Chance)
1(Destro Status Chance)
2.2(Charged)
Giving it an increase of 4.2x of base Status Chance
20%/4.2=4.76%

To line it out easier this is how our %increases line out for Impluse:
1(Default Status Chance)=4.76%
1(Destro Status Chance)=4.76%
2.2(Charged)=10.472%
(Slightly lower due to rounding)
So we can easily conclude that Glacial Presence would be around 10.472% increase to total chance to proc Chilled with Impluse alone

(4.76%+4.76%)+(10.472%+10.472%)=
(9.52%)+(20.944%)=30.464%

So Old Arctic Blast would of been around 30.464% status Chance with my testing if you were using a Destro with a Charged Trait. Which is close to what the 30% you would have stated.

T.L.D.R
Old Arctic Blast would of most likely been an AOE non-DoT ability. Similar to how Deep Essence is on live.

Gorrest · January 2019

Maura_Neysa wrote: »

Gorrest wrote: »

I would really like to know where you got the 30% chance to Chilled enemies from Arctic Blast from. From everything I know about the game, the chance for Arctic Blast to Chill was really low.

@Gorrest

Interesting, that it was most likely bugged. This game is wack.

Maura_Neysa · January 2019

@Gorrest Your test is flawed. The weapon trait only effects Weapon skills. It has no effect at all on the Class skill chances to proc Chilled.
Old Blast may have been bugged. It was coded with Self as the Target (so single target) and coded with thr AoE size as zero.
So it worked by checking the area around you and hitting them with a Single Target Direct Damage Frost Attack every 2 seconds.

The one question I did still have was whether the Destro Passive that increases Proc chance, does add to the Class Skills. SO that a Warden with passives really has a 300% increase to proc Chilled, and/or is the chances Additive or Multiplicative

Gorrest · February 2019

Maura_Neysa wrote: »

@Gorrest Your test is flawed. The weapon trait only effects Weapon skills. It has no effect at all on the Class skill chances to proc Chilled.
Old Blast may have been bugged. It was coded with Self as the Target (so single target) and coded with thr AoE size as zero.
So it worked by checking the area around you and hitting them with a Single Target Direct Damage Frost Attack every 2 seconds.

The one question I did still have was whether the Destro Passive that increases Proc chance, does add to the Class Skills. SO that a Warden with passives really has a 300% increase to proc Chilled, and/or is the chances Additive or Multiplicative

@Maura_Neysa

Don't know how my test was flawed as I didn't use a Charged Staff when I was testing Impaling Shards. Anyways, that is inncorrect as it does affect class skills.

-All theses test were without Glacial Presence
-When it comes to the Elemental Force Passive, it works just as any other Status Chance %increase

No Charged-No Elemental Force

Charged Destro-No Elemental Force

No Charged- Elemental Force Passive

Lughlongarm · February 2019

@Gorrest
Hi, thank you for doing all the testing, very interesting.
points I still don't understand -

-Does the Frozen Watcher set benefit from % proc chance bonuses such as destro passive and charged?

-does the Warden passive, Glacial Presence, effect skills which are not Warden skills(such as impulse and the Frozen Watcher set)?

Thank you.

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO · February 2019

@Maura_Neysa The weapon trait only effects Weapon skills. It has no effect at all on the Class skill chances to proc Chilled.

Citation needed.

Maura_Neysa · February 2019

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO wrote: »

@Maura_Neysa The weapon trait only effects Weapon skills. It has no effect at all on the Class skill chances to proc Chilled.

Citation needed.

@Lightspeedflashb14_ESO Gorrest already posted showing Metrics with and w/out Charged.
So whether it is supposed to or not, his test show it does.
So why bother digging up the proof, when much like you about Arctic/Gripping Chilled proc chances, I was wrong

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO · February 2019

Maura_Neysa wrote: »

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO wrote: »

@Maura_Neysa The weapon trait only effects Weapon skills. It has no effect at all on the Class skill chances to proc Chilled.

Citation needed.

@Lightspeedflashb14_ESO Gorrest already posted showing Metrics with and w/out Charged.
So whether it is supposed to or not, his test show it does.
So why bother digging up the proof, when much like you about Arctic/Gripping Chilled proc chances, I was wrong

So I missed that post. So thank you for pointing it out. So have a good day.