ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

Skjaldbjorn wrote: »

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

Skjaldbjorn wrote: »

I'm also 99% sure Cutting Dive is not considered a "melee ability" meaning Stam Warden doesn't really benefit from the new Aegis set, either.

I hate this game.

The way i structured the passive, i made it so the entire class gains a crit damage bonus against chilled enemies. this is how the passive made it into the game. In a group environment Stamden benefits from the crit damage. this is mostly significant for stamdens in pve. I see it as a win for both DPS. but yeah, Dive and Arctic blast need to be looked at.

In the bulk of groups, tanks and healers are running lightning staves. Magdens are a rarity. Where is this chilled coming from?

Magicka wardens, Magicka Necros, frost glyphs and spammables like elemental weapon and force pulse.

Let's be candid for a second.

Magicka Warden - Irrelevant in end-game PVE
Magcro - Mostly seen where Stamcro isn't viable, such as vCR, vAS, etc. Stam and Mag aren't even commonly in the same groups

You can't balance classes around highly idealistic concepts. Yes, it'd be great if every end-game group had a Magden. They don't. They haven't. The only person I know who ever plays Magden is @WrathOfInnos and that really just seems for the luls. You have to balance against the actual meta.

In most cases where I have mag in my groups, they're mag DKs now. How much chilled you think they're applying?

As far as your frost glyph suggestion, I tested that. On a 6m dummy, over a 2:30 parse, my frost enchant did a staggering ~700 DPS and triggered Chilled exactly...four times. Four. I have to drop poisons for what? 20s of this buff? 2.5-3.5k guaranteed damage for ~20s of 10% increased crit damage. On the same dummy using and same rotation, my DPS went down ~2k from using poisons,

This is a buff in the most miniscule, meaningless way possible. It's an incredibly niche, rarely gained effect that will be a minimal DPS gain at absolute best and utterly meaningless at worst.

On live as a Redguard (couldn't sustain Orc in trials), my top parse is right at 83k.

Using both setups on PTS as an Orc (sustain is much improved with the hail cost reduction), my DPS has plummeted to 78-79k.

I'm sorry, but if you think this is meaningful change for Warden, particularly the Stam variant, you really, really don't grasp how poor Stamden is right now.

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

ATreeGnome wrote: »

The extra crit damage against chilled enemies would be amazing for stamden if there were ever any reason for groups to run stam and mag DPS together in a trial. Or if there were any additional reason for supports to go out of their way to apply chilled. Or if applying it yourself as a stam DPS were in any way practical.

Don't forget that group dps can run elemental weapon and frost glyphs.

Who will do that? The 7 stamcros that will be in any stamina friendly trial?

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

ATreeGnome wrote: »

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

ATreeGnome wrote: »

The extra crit damage against chilled enemies would be amazing for stamden if there were ever any reason for groups to run stam and mag DPS together in a trial. Or if there were any additional reason for supports to go out of their way to apply chilled. Or if applying it yourself as a stam DPS were in any way practical.

Don't forget that group dps can run elemental weapon and frost glyphs.

Who will do that? The 7 stamcros that will be in any stamina friendly trial?

Ah i was refering to the trials that 99% of people do where its a mix and match of all different DPS.

So "not the end-game", which has been my point from the start. In Craglorn PUGs, sure, you go play your Stamden you trooper. Stamden is an absolute joke in serious raiding environments.

Due to the points made before, it doesn't seem like a stamden problem. It seems like a meta problem for the miniscule amount of players who score run. People only run the best dps pick anyway. This buff will help the 1% in score running when the meta is shifted. The buff isnt bad. It's just not making stamden better than whatever the meta is right now.

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

Due to the points made before, it doesn't seem like a stamden problem. It seems like a meta problem for the miniscule amount of players who score run. People only run the best dps pick anyway. This buff will help the 1% in score running when the meta is shifted. The buff isnt bad. It's just not making stamden better than whatever the meta is right now.

To be realistic it's simply not impacting Stamden. It's a Magden buff which is totally chill (haha), they absolutely need buffs. Magden has been a terrible place for a long time. I would never begrudge Magden getting a buff. But it's disingenuous and offensive to paint this as a Stamden buff. That implies this makes Stamden better, which it absolutely does not in any meaningful way.

Skjaldbjorn wrote: »

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

Due to the points made before, it doesn't seem like a stamden problem. It seems like a meta problem for the miniscule amount of players who score run. People only run the best dps pick anyway. This buff will help the 1% in score running when the meta is shifted. The buff isnt bad. It's just not making stamden better than whatever the meta is right now.

To be realistic it's simply not impacting Stamden. It's a Magden buff which is totally chill (haha), they absolutely need buffs. Magden has been a terrible place for a long time. I would never begrudge Magden getting a buff. But it's disingenuous and offensive to paint this as a Stamden buff. That implies this makes Stamden better, which it absolutely does not in any meaningful way.

It is better though. It now can gain access to even higher dps under the right circumstances without any cost to its own build.

The timeline of Stamden would be funny if it weren't so sad. The nerf to Advanced Species was completely unnecessary. They nerfed the bear initially to give us that buff, put power in the rest of the kit instead of the bear, reverted that buff, never reverted the bear nerf, nerfed birds and made the bleed work incredibly poorly and then wonked out off-balance to make the bleed even harder to use.

If you're playing the worst Stamina DPS in the game and they give you a ~2% DPS increase, have you really gained anything? You have to stop looking at changes in the vacuum of flat numbers. DPS can only be measured versus your peers. You can't bring Stamden from 85k to 86k and scream "YOU GOT BETTER!" when every other Stam DPS is doing 90k+. Sure, they got "better" and it didn't matter a whit in the grand scheme.

Does that make sense?

Skjaldbjorn wrote: »

The timeline of Stamden would be funny if it weren't so sad. The nerf to Advanced Species was completely unnecessary. They nerfed the bear initially to give us that buff, put power in the rest of the kit instead of the bear, reverted that buff, never reverted the bear nerf, nerfed birds and made the bleed work incredibly poorly and then wonked out off-balance to make the bleed even harder to use.

If you're playing the worst Stamina DPS in the game and they give you a ~2% DPS increase, have you really gained anything? You have to stop looking at changes in the vacuum of flat numbers. DPS can only be measured versus your peers. You can't bring Stamden from 85k to 86k and scream "YOU GOT BETTER!" when every other Stam DPS is doing 90k+. Sure, they got "better" and it didn't matter a whit in the grand scheme.

Does that make sense?

Yes, you gained a ~2% buff. Might not be much now but meta shifts could change that.

You guys gained a buff. Somewhat indirect. But you got one. Here is to more warden buffs in the future.

@ESO_Nightingale

I've always respected your thoughts on Magden PvP and some other aspects of PvP. However, if you haven't played PvE at a very high level (vDLC Trials, HMs, trifecta dungeons, vBRP) or taken time to look through individual or aggregated logs, it is impossible to have the knowledge base to understand how PvE balance works. All aspects of every potential build interrelate, and it matters a ton.

Yes pure Meta will always leave out classes in certain roles and that's just the way it is. But, Stamden right now is not just not in the top meta, they are the rarest class used in trials across all levels. It's not just an end-game meta thing. The way groups are constructed they add no utility other than extra procs of minor vuln for low-intermediate groups. But, even then they aren't used because they have the lowest damage potential coupled with the most complex and difficult to execute rotation.

Even in a perfect scenario (100% chilled) Stamden still would provide no group benefit and likely still have lower damage than Stamplar/Stamcro and probably others, and the rotation just got more complex.


@Skjaldbjorn
My frost glyph idea was just a thought test. I assumed it'd be paltry. Thanks for testing it.

thadjarvis wrote: »

@ESO_Nightingale

I've always respected your thoughts on Magden PvP and some other aspects of PvP. However, if you haven't played PvE at a very high level (vDLC Trials, HMs, trifecta dungeons, vBRP) or taken time to look through individual or aggregated logs, it is impossible to have the knowledge base to understand how PvE balance works. All aspects of every potential build interrelate, and it matters a ton.

Yes pure Meta will always leave out classes in certain roles and that's just the way it is. But, Stamden right now is not just not in the top meta, they are the rarest class used in trials across all levels. It's not just an end-game meta thing. The way groups are constructed they add no utility other than extra procs of minor vuln for low-intermediate groups. But, even then they aren't used because they have the lowest damage potential coupled with the most complex and difficult to execute rotation.

Even in a perfect scenario (100% chilled) Stamden still would provide no group benefit and likely still have lower damage than Stamplar/Stamcro and probably others, and the rotation just got more complex.


@Skjaldbjorn
My frost glyph idea was just a thought test. I assumed it'd be paltry. Thanks for testing it.

I welcome views from people who want to talk about warden in trials. You should join the wardens in the class discussuon discord because it's been dead for a while and basically only filled with pvp people. Hard to get more pve info when it's only pvpers. I seem to have given off the impression that i don't want stamden buffed for pve which is the opposite of what i want. I think you guys deserve to have your spot in the meta, as do all classes, including my subclass, magden. Sorry if i gave off that impression. As we are one class there should be little argument.

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

ATreeGnome wrote: »

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

ATreeGnome wrote: »

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

ATreeGnome wrote: »

The extra crit damage against chilled enemies would be amazing for stamden if there were ever any reason for groups to run stam and mag DPS together in a trial. Or if there were any additional reason for supports to go out of their way to apply chilled. Or if applying it yourself as a stam DPS were in any way practical.

Don't forget that group dps can run elemental weapon and frost glyphs.

Who will do that? The 7 stamcros that will be in any stamina friendly trial?

Ah i was refering to the trials that 99% of people do where its a mix and match of all different DPS.

Yeah, you can probably get decent chilled uptime in a group that's not trying to optimize. That's not the issue though, the issue is that Stamden (and some other classes) don't bring enough to the table to justify taking a spot in any semi-optimized raid group - their raw DPS is too low and their group utility can be provided more effectively by a healer or even a tank.

If you aren't concerned about class balance for optimized groups, then does (PvE) balance really even matter at all? If you have to make someone else in the group run a frost enchant just to make stamden slightly more viable, then you've sacrificed group DPS to boost an individual's DPS. That's not a good solution.

I believe it's just not the meta for it to really stand out yet. Who knows, stamden and a source of chilled could be meta in any patch going forward. I don't know the future, but i know this buff isn't as worthless as you think, right now you think it sucks. It's reliant on other players and is sensitive to changes in other classes and skills. Other than that, it adds that unique flavour to our passives that for some reason only green balance got before.

That's the point though - stamden has never really had a place in the PvE meta but it has been around for years. Players should not have to wait for some future shift in meta that may or may not even happen in order to feel like playing their favorite class isn't a complete burden to the rest of the group in semi-serious content.

It's not a secret that warden DPS have been in a bad spot, but nearly every significant buff has been geared toward warden supports. It shouldn't be that hard to simply give warden DPS a raw numbers boost to make them feel relevant until a coherent class design is in place.

ATreeGnome wrote: »

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

ATreeGnome wrote: »

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

ATreeGnome wrote: »

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

ATreeGnome wrote: »

The extra crit damage against chilled enemies would be amazing for stamden if there were ever any reason for groups to run stam and mag DPS together in a trial. Or if there were any additional reason for supports to go out of their way to apply chilled. Or if applying it yourself as a stam DPS were in any way practical.

Don't forget that group dps can run elemental weapon and frost glyphs.

Who will do that? The 7 stamcros that will be in any stamina friendly trial?

Ah i was refering to the trials that 99% of people do where its a mix and match of all different DPS.

Yeah, you can probably get decent chilled uptime in a group that's not trying to optimize. That's not the issue though, the issue is that Stamden (and some other classes) don't bring enough to the table to justify taking a spot in any semi-optimized raid group - their raw DPS is too low and their group utility can be provided more effectively by a healer or even a tank.

If you aren't concerned about class balance for optimized groups, then does (PvE) balance really even matter at all? If you have to make someone else in the group run a frost enchant just to make stamden slightly more viable, then you've sacrificed group DPS to boost an individual's DPS. That's not a good solution.

I believe it's just not the meta for it to really stand out yet. Who knows, stamden and a source of chilled could be meta in any patch going forward. I don't know the future, but i know this buff isn't as worthless as you think, right now you think it sucks. It's reliant on other players and is sensitive to changes in other classes and skills. Other than that, it adds that unique flavour to our passives that for some reason only green balance got before.

That's the point though - stamden has never really had a place in the PvE meta but it has been around for years. Players should not have to wait for some future shift in meta that may or may not even happen in order to feel like playing their favorite class isn't a complete burden to the rest of the group in semi-serious content.

It's not a secret that warden DPS have been in a bad spot, but nearly every significant buff has been geared toward warden supports. It shouldn't be that hard to simply give warden DPS a raw numbers boost to make them feel relevant until a coherent class design is in place.

It feels as if they're getting around to coherent class design bit by bit now. Most recent changes i recall have been trying to fix our pain points. Reguarding the trial balance, unfortunately i just don't think it will ever work any other way. People always find a way to get max dps. Usually by stacking 1 thing if possible. Now it's just "will it be my turn to shine in the sun?". I wish meta was decided by developers. But in a game like this, players optimise usually to levels where it gets boring really fast.

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

It feels as if they're getting around to coherent class design bit by bit now. Most recent changes i recall have been trying to fix our pain points. Reguarding the trial balance, unfortunately i just don't think it will ever work any other way. People always find a way to get max dps. Usually by stacking 1 thing if possible. Now it's just "will it be my turn to shine in the sun?". I wish meta was decided by developers. But in a game like this, players optimise usually to levels where it gets boring really fast.

Uhhhhhhh. I don't mean to be an ass, but this meta was literally defined by the devs. Necro defines this meta, and none of the "fixes" they've made have changed that. Even the cooldown on vuln (something I suggested repeatedly) isn't enough because Necro are still the top DPS regardless of the colossus. ESO has been a game where devs have DIRECTLY defined the meta over and over again. The light attack change during Summerset created a year-long Nightblade meta.

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

Skjaldbjorn wrote: »

ATreeGnome wrote: »

That's the point though - stamden has never really had a place in the PvE meta but it has been around for years. Players should not have to wait for some future shift in meta that may or may not even happen in order to feel like playing their favorite class isn't a complete burden to the rest of the group in semi-serious content.

It's not a secret that warden DPS have been in a bad spot, but nearly every significant buff has been geared toward warden supports. It shouldn't be that hard to simply give warden DPS a raw numbers boost to make them feel relevant until a coherent class design is in place.

That's the source of my frustration. They did exactly that with the Advanced Species change. That bumped Warden to 2nd-3rd Stam DPS. It was a solid change that should have worked as a band-aid until more meaningful, core structure changes could be implemented. It lasted a few patches before being nerfed, likely due to PVP reasons.

You have opened my eyes a little. I always saw the bandaids as a bad thing. But what you say does make sense. If they introduce a whole lot of bandaids and then while they are in place, start working under the hood, it's a more systematic approach rather than 1 at a time. Interesting.

There are two places incremental change never works unless worked on tirelessly. Politics and vidya games. This "incremental change" approach to Warden will leave a game devoid of Warden DPS.