Warden's Winter Revenge Mechanics Experiment

MashmalloMan · November 2020

Edit for Update 32: Charged is now +480% with a Gold 2 Handed weapon, not the stated 220% in these tests. Adjust accordingly.

With the changes to Ice Staves and Warden's being the innate Frost themed class, the importance of proccing chilled has increased due to the introduction of Minor Brittle, I thought it was time to answer a big question I've had for numerous years since Warden was released that not a single person has been able to answer me. My theory and conclusion are at the end of this post.

Question: How much of an increase to the Chilled status effect proc chance does Impaling Shards (all morphs) actually give?

Testing:

While these tests aren't full proof due to RNG and should be replicated on a much longer test duration, the results seem to speak for themselves to give a rough idea of what type of increase we can expect. I tested on a dummy for 6-8 minutes each to ensure there was at least 300 ticks of damage.

These are the values for base status effect proc chance:

Enchants = 20%
Single Target Direct Damage = 10%
AoE Direct Damage = 5%
Single Target DoT Damage = 3%
AoE DoT Damage = 1%

Boosts to status effect chance are additive to this baseline, not multiplicative:

Destruction Staff Passive = +100%
Charged Gold Weapon Trait = +220%
Warden's Glacial Presence Passive = +200% (Only applicable to Winters Embrace abilities)

Winters Revenge:

Winters Revenge is 100% AoE DoT damage so the baseline proc chance is 1%.
When chilled is procced, 1 frost damage tick hits the enemy with 4s of minor maim (and minor brittle if holding an ice staff). This makes it very easy to count anytime it procs.

No boosts:

365 ticks of Winters Revenge - 17 procs of chilled (17% chilled uptime)
Expected outcome: 3.65 (1% chance)
Actual Outcome: 17 (4.5% chance)
If additive: 4.5% - 1% = 3.5% (+350% increase to status effect chance)
If multiplicative: 4.5% / 1% = 4.5x

Only using Glacial Presence passive (+200%):

384 ticks of Winters Revenge - 49 procs of chilled (41% chilled uptime)
Expected outcome = 11.52 (3% chance)
Actual outcome = 49 (12.7% chance)
If additive: 12.7% - 3% = 9.7% (+970% increase to status effect chance)
If multiplicative: 12.7% / 3% = 4.22x

+200% Glacial Presence, +100% Destruction Staff:

363 ticks of Winters Revenge - 66 procs of chilled (55% chilled uptime)
Expected outcome = 14.52 (4% chance)
Actual outcome = 66 (18.2% chance)
If additive: 18.2% - 4% = 14.2% (+1420% increase to status effect chance)
If multiplicative: 18.2% / 4% = 4.55x

+200% Glacial Presence, +100% Destruction Staff, +200% Charged (Purple):

380 ticks of Winters Revenge - 122 procs of chilled (78% chilled uptime)
Expected outcome = 22.8 (6% chance)
Actual outcome = 122 (32.1% chance)
If additive: 32.1% - 6% = 26% (+2610% chance for status effect proc)
If multiplicative: 32.1% / 6% = 5.3x

TLDR: Tests aren't perfect, but I think the conclusion is clear enough. If the Imapling Shard bonus was additive like the other bonuses in the game, there would be a clear number for each test in a ballpark range of lets say +300-400% for arguements sake like in test number 1.

As I increased my status effect chance through the tests, the additive result changed from 350% to 970% to 1420% and finally 2610% with all bonuses applicable. This result shows a large increased curve, there is absolutely no chance the bonus is additive.

My multiplicative results show a consistant range of numbers throughout each test. Ranging from 4.5x to 4.22x to 4.55x to 5.3x as my status effect chance increased from other sources.

My final conclusion: Impaling Shards increases your current status effect chance by around 4 to 5 times its current value.

This is why Warden's are so great at keeping up minor brittle, although any class can do it obviously.. Without a charged staff, I was able to keep up chilled for 55% of the time with 1 aoe frost skill. For comparison sake, a frost wall would have a 2% chance per tick to proc chilled while Winters Revenge with no charged staff has about an 18% chance to proc chilled per tick.

Yes, the best way is still an Infused Frost Enchant back bar + a Charged Staff front bar for an 84% chance every 2s to proc Chilled from the enchant, but that is single target and requires a multiple sacrifices in gear to achieve. Warden's have the largest chance in the game to proc AoE chilled without any actual investment.

In my personal Warden DPS tests using no charged trait, a non infused frost enchant (4s cooldown), and only 2 aoe frost skills (Wall and Winters Revenge) I'm able to get about a 65-75% uptime of chilled on average.

MashmalloMan · November 2020

@ESO_Nightingale What do you think about this? Have you ever done your own test?

ESO_Nightingale · November 2020

MashmalloMan wrote: »

@ESO_Nightingale What do you think about this? Have you ever done your own test?

I haven't done my own tests on this, but it's very interesting to see this, thanks for doing it! I remember a while ago that we were upset about losing arctic blast's damage and how it had a 30% proc chance each time it ticked, after seeing your numbers, i'm fairly sure that this was their attempt to try and sate the loss of the proc chance with AB1.0. This being said i still don't think we have enough chilled proc chance, but mainly when it comes to our normal skills such as deep fissure and SCR, i think it being heavily concentrated on one skill is okay in the short term. i think if they added frost damage animal companions skills in the future, they could remove this bonus chilled proc chance from impaling shards to do something else with it as it's a little boring at the moment even with this chilled bonus, additionally, AB3.0 is currently an issue and does need to be addressed for it's impact in pvp and there has been desire from many people to get more frost damage warden damage skills, even beyond changing anmial companions damage type.

Everest_Lionheart · November 2020

How are the debuffs being applied exactly? Is it all % based chance to apply or is there are way to proc them every time like with breach where casting fissure applies it every time? Trying to figure out when and where to cast skills in an actual rotation to keep things up is difficult right now when things are about as clear as mud. It seems only magden has a real chance of applying this buff as well. Stam can also use the same magic but it seems unless we carried a frost staff on some crazy hybrid we don’t have any real way to apply this buff ourselves.

Has anyone really figure out how it works yet and if so how to use it effectively?

MashmalloMan · November 2020

Everest_Lionheart wrote: »

How are the debuffs being applied exactly? Is it all % based chance to apply or is there are way to proc them every time like with breach where casting fissure applies it every time? Trying to figure out when and where to cast skills in an actual rotation to keep things up is difficult right now when things are about as clear as mud. It seems only magden has a real chance of applying this buff as well. Stam can also use the same magic but it seems unless we carried a frost staff on some crazy hybrid we don’t have any real way to apply this buff ourselves.

Has anyone really figure out how it works yet and if so how to use it effectively?

@Everest_Lionheart If you read through my entire post, I go into detail about base status effect proc chances, but I'll provide some extra info below if this helps.

Minor brittle is only applied if the below conditions are met:

Must be holding a frost staff.
Must proc the chilled status effect.

Chilled status effect function:

1 direct frost damage tick when applied.
- Status effect damage is based on your character stats. eg. Max Magicka, Spell Damage, Spell Crit.. unaware if this dynamically scales.
- Effected by CP related bonuses.
Lasts 4 seconds long.
Minor maim applicable for entire duration.
Minor brittle applicable for entire duration, if holding a frost staff.
Enemies that are chilled become immbolized, if standing in a Frost Wall of Elements.

How to proc (base proc chance, no modifiers):

Enchants = 20% (Frost, Fire, Absorb Magicka, Shock, etc. Base Cooldown is every 4s, infused is every 2s)
Single Target Direct Damage = 10% (Force pulse, etc)
AoE Direct Damage = 5% (Meteor, Unstable Wall final hit, etc)
Single Target DoT Damage = 3% (Destructive Reach)
AoE DoT Damage = 1% (Winters Revenge, Wall of Elements, Arctic Blast, Sleet Storm, Meteor ground dot, etc)

Bonuses to status effect proc chance are additive to the above baseline:

Destruction Staff Passive = +100%
Charged Gold Weapon Trait = +220%
Warden's Glacial Presence Passive = +200% (Only applicable to Winters Embrace abilities)

Here is an example:

Holding just a Destruction Staff for +100% chance. Enchant proc chance becomes 40% instead of the base 20%.
If you were holding a Golden Charged Destruction Staff for an additional +220% (320% combined). Your proc chance for enchants would become 84%.
- Charged trait is only in effect on the weapon you're currently holding, for the best way to consistently proc status effects, you'd therefore want an infused weapon with a frost enchantment on your backbar so it fires every 2 seconds, instead of every 4 seconds. Then, you'd want to use a charged staff on your front bar to increase that proc chance for chilled every 2 seconds from the 40% to 84%. This is potentially overkill for a Warden due to the above tests done with Winters Revenge, but it would guarantee close to 100% uptime of chilled and therefore minor brittle.

If you don't want to sacrifice much as a dps warden by running charged, using an infused frost enchant on back bar + precise staff on front bar and Winters Revenge would probably provide close to 80+ % uptime. Combine that with the Psijic Order spammable, Elemental Weapon and you are guaranteeing yourself about a 33% chance when using your spammable to proc chilled too. That would be more than enough. In my tests, Winters Revenge alone, counted for 55% chilled uptime and this is aoe.

Do your rotations as normal, usally based on keeping up Unstable Wall on rotation every 10s, with every other dot you have and casting Scorch every 3rd ability.

MashmalloMan · November 2020

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

MashmalloMan wrote: »

@ESO_Nightingale What do you think about this? Have you ever done your own test?

I haven't done my own tests on this, but it's very interesting to see this, thanks for doing it! I remember a while ago that we were upset about losing arctic blast's damage and how it had a 30% proc chance each time it ticked, after seeing your numbers, i'm fairly sure that this was their attempt to try and sate the loss of the proc chance with AB1.0. This being said i still don't think we have enough chilled proc chance, but mainly when it comes to our normal skills such as deep fissure and SCR, i think it being heavily concentrated on one skill is okay in the short term. i think if they added frost damage animal companions skills in the future, they could remove this bonus chilled proc chance from impaling shards to do something else with it as it's a little boring at the moment even with this chilled bonus, additionally, AB3.0 is currently an issue and does need to be addressed for it's impact in pvp and there has been desire from many people to get more frost damage warden damage skills, even beyond changing anmial companions damage type.

I agree. Warden deserves the DK treatment. AKA, a guaranteed way to proc chilled.. I'd argue if Winters Revenge remains the same (which it should because 50%+ uptime on chilled via an aoe dot is amazing), then Warden's should get only 1 of 2 changes:

All animal companion skills changed to frost damage.
- I prefer this option because I like theme built into the classes, although I doubt this will ever happen because Sorcs are barely shock mages and it's been that way for 6 years.
- If these skills were frost, the chance to proc chilled would be based on higher base chance abilities than simply aoe dot. Flies would be 6% per tick, Scorch 10%, Birds 20%, Bear 20/10% depending on attack. IMO the combined total between all attacks would be a very high chance for chilled uptime without a charged staff so this route would be pretty nice all things considered with Winters Revenge.
The more likely answer: 1 single target skill guarantees chilled on hit. Flies or Birds as a likely candiate. This is how DK behaves and it works pretty well for Claw proccing Poison/Burning. Players would probably prefer this and it would give Bird spam a much needed bonus utility, this skill is pretty boring and underwhelming. This also works way better for PVP players, since they can combo things better and rely less on RNG for a full rotation using the example in step 1. They're also less likely to use Winters Revenge, so a guaranteed dot or spammable to apply chilled would probably be the first option available to them.

Everest_Lionheart · November 2020

MashmalloMan wrote: »

Everest_Lionheart wrote: »

How are the debuffs being applied exactly? Is it all % based chance to apply or is there are way to proc them every time like with breach where casting fissure applies it every time? Trying to figure out when and where to cast skills in an actual rotation to keep things up is difficult right now when things are about as clear as mud. It seems only magden has a real chance of applying this buff as well. Stam can also use the same magic but it seems unless we carried a frost staff on some crazy hybrid we don’t have any real way to apply this buff ourselves.

Has anyone really figure out how it works yet and if so how to use it effectively?

@Everest_Lionheart If you read through my entire post, I go into detail about base status effect proc chances, but I'll provide some extra info below if this helps.

Minor brittle is only applied if the below conditions are met:
Must be holding a frost staff.

Must proc the chilled status effect.

Chilled status effect function:
1 direct frost damage tick when applied.
Status effect damage is based on your character stats. eg. Max Magicka, Spell Damage, Spell Crit.. unaware if this dynamically scales.

Effected by CP related bonuses.

Lasts 4 seconds long.

Minor maim applicable for entire duration.

Minor brittle applicable for entire duration, if holding a frost staff.

Enemies that are chilled become immbolized, if standing in a Frost Wall of Elements.

How to proc (base proc chance, no modifiers):
Enchants = 20% (Frost, Fire, Absorb Magicka, Shock, etc. Base Cooldown is every 4s, infused is every 2s)

Single Target Direct Damage = 10% (Force pulse, etc)

AoE Direct Damage = 5% (Meteor, Unstable Wall final hit, etc)

Single Target DoT Damage = 3% (Destructive Reach)

AoE DoT Damage = 1% (Winters Revenge, Wall of Elements, Arctic Blast, Sleet Storm, Meteor ground dot, etc)

Bonuses to status effect proc chance are additive to the above baseline:
Destruction Staff Passive = +100%

Charged Gold Weapon Trait = +220%

Warden's Glacial Presence Passive = +200% (Only applicable to Winters Embrace abilities)

Here is an example:
Holding just a Destruction Staff for +100% chance. Enchant proc chance becomes 40% instead of the base 20%.

If you were holding a Golden Charged Destruction Staff for an additional +220% (320% combined). Your proc chance for enchants would become 84%.
Charged trait is only in effect on the weapon you're currently holding, for the best way to consistently proc status effects, you'd therefore want an infused weapon with a frost enchantment on your backbar so it fires every 2 seconds, instead of every 4 seconds. Then, you'd want to use a charged staff on your front bar to increase that proc chance for chilled every 2 seconds from the 40% to 84%. This is potentially overkill for a Warden due to the above tests done with Winters Revenge, but it would guarantee close to 100% uptime of chilled and therefore minor brittle.

If you don't want to sacrifice much as a dps warden by running charged, using an infused frost enchant on back bar + precise staff on front bar and Winters Revenge would probably provide close to 80+ % uptime. Combine that with the Psijic Order spammable, Elemental Weapon and you are guaranteeing yourself about a 33% chance when using your spammable to proc chilled too. That would be more than enough. In my tests, Winters Revenge alone, counted for 55% chilled uptime and this is aoe.

Do your rotations as normal, usally based on keeping up Unstable Wall on rotation every 10s, with every other dot you have and casting Scorch every 3rd ability.

Thanks for that explanation. A bit easier to follow for me than your original post. I appreciate the clarification.

ESO_Nightingale · November 2020

MashmalloMan wrote: »

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

MashmalloMan wrote: »

@ESO_Nightingale What do you think about this? Have you ever done your own test?

I haven't done my own tests on this, but it's very interesting to see this, thanks for doing it! I remember a while ago that we were upset about losing arctic blast's damage and how it had a 30% proc chance each time it ticked, after seeing your numbers, i'm fairly sure that this was their attempt to try and sate the loss of the proc chance with AB1.0. This being said i still don't think we have enough chilled proc chance, but mainly when it comes to our normal skills such as deep fissure and SCR, i think it being heavily concentrated on one skill is okay in the short term. i think if they added frost damage animal companions skills in the future, they could remove this bonus chilled proc chance from impaling shards to do something else with it as it's a little boring at the moment even with this chilled bonus, additionally, AB3.0 is currently an issue and does need to be addressed for it's impact in pvp and there has been desire from many people to get more frost damage warden damage skills, even beyond changing anmial companions damage type.

I agree. Warden deserves the DK treatment. AKA, a guaranteed way to proc chilled.. I'd argue if Winters Revenge remains the same (which it should because 50%+ uptime on chilled via an aoe dot is amazing), then Warden's should get only 1 of 2 changes:
All animal companion skills changed to frost damage.
I prefer this option because I like theme built into the classes, although I doubt this will ever happen because Sorcs are barely shock mages and it's been that way for 6 years.

If these skills were frost, the chance to proc chilled would be based on higher base chance abilities than simply aoe dot. Flies would be 6% per tick, Scorch 10%, Birds 20%, Bear 20/10% depending on attack. IMO the combined total between all attacks would be a very high chance for chilled uptime without a charged staff so this route would be pretty nice all things considered with Winters Revenge.

The more likely answer: 1 single target skill guarantees chilled on hit. Flies or Birds as a likely candiate. This is how DK behaves and it works pretty well for Claw proccing Poison/Burning. Players would probably prefer this and it would give Bird spam a much needed bonus utility, this skill is pretty boring and underwhelming. This also works way better for PVP players, since they can combo things better and rely less on RNG for a full rotation using the example in step 1. They're also less likely to use Winters Revenge, so a guaranteed dot or spammable to apply chilled would probably be the first option available to them.

Throwing 100% chilled chance on scr is in my opinion, not the best thing that could happen to it, i think it should deal frost damage, but it crucially needs to be changed in 3 other ways.

1: it's speed needs to be increased to make it a better spammable, or reverted along with having it's old damage returned to make it a delayed burst damage skill

2: it needs to have it's off balance proc condition either reversed to work in melee range, or given another requirement which isn't contradictory to our playstyle. The problem with it being at range is that we don't have a disengage tool that we can use to reliably proc off balance or scr's morph effect.

3: similar to point 2, it's actual morph effect has the same problem. A good way to fix this imo, is to change the morph to make it deal +10% more damage within 7 meters, that way it's damage mirrors a melee spammable, but it has the utility of being useable at 28 meters with the downside of still having a bit of a delay, being a projectile and being slightly more expensive.

100% chilled chance is something we see on permafrost as an ultimate effect. among some other effects and I'm not entirely sure if having a 100% chilled proc chance is necessary given glacial presence, however, that being said, i think a more suitable candidate for that effect on an animal companions skill, is deep fissure. Given 4s duration of chilled and the rotation demanding you cast it every 3 seconds, along with making it much harder for tanks and healers to use it over dps. However, i still don't know if I'd prefer 100% chilled chance on one animal companions skill over having frost damage animal companions skills in general.

WrathOfInnos · November 2020

@MashmalloMan Great info thanks for posting. I agree with your results, and my Warden logs show about 1 chill proc for every 5 ticks of Winter’s Revenge. So that 20% is likely coming from a base chance of 5% per tick, increased by 300% from the combined destruction and winter passives.

zvavi · November 2020

I agree with @WrathOfInnos , the base proc chance of winter revenge is around 5%, all modifiers are working on that base chance, not the "supposed" 1%, and it goes inline with your tests, where you got (notice, proc, not uptime, proc)
Without bonuses: 4.5%
With 200%: 12.4%
With 300%: 18.2%
With 500%: 32%

While I didn't record my own tests, when I did them I had similar results to yours, and came to the conclusion I stated above.

Also, I am still waiting for them to fix stuff. When they do I will be rocking frosty tank :yey: with 31% proc chance on chilled :yey: that goes ice ice :yey:

FrancisCrawford · July 2021

[snip]

And should one use the rough-and-ready estimate that Winter's Revenge has a base chance of proccing Chilled at 5%/tick rather than the otherwise-standard 1%?

The destro passive, a charged staff, and CP taken together give (from memory) a 4.8x multiplier on whatever the base chance is. So that could be pretty nice.

Note that this isn't only about Brittle (and Chilled itself). If you can drop AoE status effects, then Force Pulse gets much splashier.

[edited for thread bumping]

WrathOfInnos · July 2021

FrancisCrawford wrote: »

[snip]

And should one use the rough-and-ready estimate that Winter's Revenge has a base chance of proccing Chilled at 5%/tick rather than the otherwise-standard 1%?

The destro passive, a charged staff, and CP taken together give (from memory) a 4.8x multiplier on whatever the base chance is. So that could be pretty nice.

Note that this isn't only about Brittle (and Chilled itself). If you can drop AoE status effects, then Force Pulse gets much splashier.

@FrancisCrawford Yes, still true. And for Winter’s Revenge it also gets the 200% from the Warden passive. Each tick gives about 23% chance to Chill normally, and 34% with Charged. This is why Warden is by far the best choice for a Brittle build, as well as losing less damage fro holding an Ice Staff over Inferno front bar.

[edited to remove quote]

FrancisCrawford · July 2021

@WrathOfInnos,

My apologies for being so hasty that I forgot about Glacial Presence, especially in its improved form.

Fizzyapple · November 2021

As of U32 I can get ~100% (99) uptime on chilled with only a frost glyph. I have tested this on 20 parses. Can anyone please confirm this for me? If not then I must be missing something important but I have no idea what that might be.

Thanks!

(Bosmer Bow/Bow Wardeness)

YandereGirlfriend · November 2021

Fizzyapple wrote: »

As of U32 I can get ~100% (99) uptime on chilled with only a frost glyph. I have tested this on 20 parses. Can anyone please confirm this for me? If not then I must be missing something important but I have no idea what that might be.

Thanks!

(Bosmer Bow/Bow Wardeness)

Are you using a Charged Bow? Because, if so, yes, 100% is easily possible.

MashmalloMan · November 2021

Fizzyapple wrote: »

As of U32 I can get ~100% (99) uptime on chilled with only a frost glyph. I have tested this on 20 parses. Can anyone please confirm this for me? If not then I must be missing something important but I have no idea what that might be.

Thanks!

(Bosmer Bow/Bow Wardeness)

Since the chance to proc on enchants starts at 20%, a charged 2 handed weapon of +480% or 5.8x gives you 116% chance to proc chilled. 128% if you count CP, so yeah, 100% guarantee now.

ESO_Nightingale · November 2021

MashmalloMan wrote: »

Fizzyapple wrote: »

As of U32 I can get ~100% (99) uptime on chilled with only a frost glyph. I have tested this on 20 parses. Can anyone please confirm this for me? If not then I must be missing something important but I have no idea what that might be.

Thanks!

(Bosmer Bow/Bow Wardeness)

Since the chance to proc on enchants starts at 20%, a charged 2 handed weapon of +480% or 5.8x gives you 116% chance to proc chilled. 128% if you count CP, so yeah, 100% guarantee now.

charged is very good dps as far as a frostden is concerned. fairly sure it's the BIS trait for it, so on a stamden it might actually remain quite good.