Have been playing mine again recently.
Wardens are still infinitely inferior to necromancers in the fun department, courtesy of too many gimicky / highly situation abilities and boring arse buffs, but the Arctic Blast change is an improvement. An extra damage ability is definitely nice.
I love that it follows the necromancer design style of being multi-functional and potentially useful in different ways in different roles or scenarios. Awesome. But I think it also follows the warden design style of a few super powered abilities and lots of useless ones - this being a super powered one. The stun and heal make slotting a straight heal unnecessary.
Super hating those destruction staff passives, which only magnify the lack of options available to mag players.
Making fire staff boost single target damage, shock aoe, and frost cc / taunt dictates weapons, hotbars and playstyle.
thadjarvis wrote: »My Day 1 magden feedback:
Tested new magden through vMA last night. Didn't get a full chance to compare log to an old one, but I definitely felt noticeably more powerful in both damage and sustain. Eliminated several bosses prior to their second mechanic, which I could not do prior patch.
Tried one of the new HMs (Unhallowed Grave is super fun btw).
Had no healer but there's almost no ambient damage. It's mostly near one-shots. Bring this up bc many magden's (myself included) choose Iceheart in no healer situations, but I recommend strongly against it. Grundulf for the final boss for sustain, defensive giving stamina for dodging, and permitting bi-stat food to have just enough (and I mean just enough...like dropping to 2% health) to survive would be one shots. Earlier in dungeon can go offensive monster or I guess Iceheart but it wouldn't do much.
Noticed Fissure's intermediate range on the HM. A downside but made for some engaging risk/reward gameplay for sure.
Do I think another of my particular subset of builds would perform stronger in there over Magden: NO.
Stamplar bad range
(No self-buff) Stamsorc bow build probably much weaker than magden asylum build
MagDK not as bursty and less range than magden which comes in real handy in there
Though some other classes might be a bit stronger, the combo of group benefits, AOE, and excellent self serving debuffs/buffs package is powerful
Tried Prismatic weapon a few times early on assuming most things are undead in there but it never showed as doing damage, but did not test it later in dungeon. Bring it up because, Prismatic scales strongest on magdens due to our passive if it works in the content. Not sure what does and doesn't count in the dungeon yet.
Budding seeds for Lokk allies and toughness was nice prior to HM encounter, and fetcher was quite the boon to group DPS as always.
Actually actively used all three of our ultimates, and found each useful.
Haven't parse tested yet. Interested to hear others' comparatives on that.
any of you got any logs to post?
any of you got any logs to post?
so is this all due to the 10% crit buff or what?
I think I know the answer, but has anyone tested the new Ice Furnace set yet?
thadjarvis wrote: »For pure AOE master lightning is the highest if and only if the trash is stacked tight. Lightning front bar also makes fissure, orb, winters etc hit harder. I’ve been testing it on MoL and SS trash lately and it crushes relative to my old AOE setups (and has been beating stamcros in group).
Asylum is a useful middle ground in many scenarios for cleave, bursting down adds, group benefits, and now chilled uptime.
I’ve dropped my impulse build option with those two options available, and can’t imagine a small proc damage set will be worth much of anything. But if anyone tests something with those, please share.
WrathOfInnos wrote: »I think I know the answer, but has anyone tested the new Ice Furnace set yet?
@Faulgor Yes I’ve tested it, it is bugged when used with Frost DoTs. It seems like the cooldown is a little too long, so it only procs on about 2/3 of Winter’s Revenge ticks. This brings its average DPS down to about Grothdarr level, and not worth using vs other 5pc sets. This was reported by me and several others on PTS, but I haven’t seen any dev comments acknowledging it.
It does work fairly well when using Force Pulse, I’m guessing since my weaving is slightly slower than 1s (unlike DoTs ticks which are exactly 1s). I was getting it to proc in about 90% of Force Pulse casts. I might play around with this more as a possible NMA replacement for clearing trash fights, but using Force Pulse on a Magden isn’t really optimal, and FP hits fewer enemies than just using Elemental Ring.
coming at this from a Stamden pov, curious as to if WR on the backbar would be ok to run? I mean NB's run the shades and stamplar run ritual so meh, why not...if it means a increase?
Or Gripping shards since it at least scales off health and is melee range? I dunno, hopefully someone with better smarts will test.
WrathOfInnos wrote: »If it functioned properly it could be good on trash. 1644 tooltip DPS that doesn’t require melee range. However the current bugged state means that with Winters Revenge it only gets about 1.1k tooltip DPS.
Compare that to the new stam AoE DPS set, Aegis Caller, which has a tooltip DPS of 2.8k, and can be used by all classes, in medium armor, without requiring a damage type tied to a tanking weapon. Not exactly balanced.
thadjarvis wrote: »@Runefang
Not running a fire staff means lossing the skill's bonus to burning targets and bonus from engulfing flames. Combined that is huge. Also the status effect proc rate of a ground AOE DoT is extremely low. Instead I suggest using a Frost Glyph if you want to change something with weapons to proc chilled.
Asiangod's very recent video on using any Maelstrom staff type as well an analysis of using a frost glyph within his video on the new passive
@Joxer61 do a quick parse with and without. can see above that someone seems to benefit.
thadjarvis wrote: »Aegis: yes it's annoying that stams will likely be stronger for both ST and AOE. Odd that there is not an Aegis/Asuzreblight type set for mag; eg why does Vicious Death only proc on players in the first place. However, for magden players maximizing an AOE setup has nothing to do with what another build can do.
I love playing warden, probably because i like nature based magic in most games.
- The bear: Not really good for a magwarden, change it to a spriggan with a ranged magic attack.
- The only that i do not use is Nature's grasp: Really hard to get this one off in PvP.
- I like all other healing skills
Lughlongarm wrote: »It is false that wardens can PvP with only Arctic blast as a primary heal
thadjarvis wrote: »@WrathOfInnos o Ive furnace? That’s still an RP or potential no CP PvP set until proven otherwise. I mean on paper it doesn’t seem to do a fraction of asurzeblight or Aegis. In practice mother sorrow or NMA would probably crush it into uselessness.
With master lightning I believe two 5 pieces or willpower + 2pc crit works best assuming you output high damage unless maybe maybe you want to run into the middle of the pack with grothdaar.
I tested master on magden both in trials and on a group of dummies. It beats asylum or 5/5/2. Yes not as many spams as Sorc but the AOE passive is big for winters, fissure, orbs. I think I tested against a MS or NMA lightning impulse but probably will double check to see how much dps is coming from Master and how much comes from lightning staff AOE passive.
thadjarvis wrote: »True I do 5-5-Master but the loss of undaunted can be rough for survival a bit. I haven't gotten around to it but that's what I was thinking: maybe Juli or NMA with heavy/medium chest/leg with False god would work nicely.