MindOfTheSwarm wrote: »

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

MindOfTheSwarm wrote: »

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

Snow_White wrote: »

[Quoted post was removed]

I have a Warden tank and all you need from from those skills is a Health-based heal (Polar Wind) and a pull (Frozen Device).

As said above, you don't need two redundant morphs from both of those skills

[Edit to remove bait]

I agree. It’s not about eliminating Tank options but eliminating redundancy on a single morph. Instead buffing the tank option and creating a more offensive option. This is something that applies to Slab too. Another morph that is rarely chosen due to the other being too good for tanks and neither being good for healers or DPS. Having slab work like Flames of Oblivion and grant Major Prophecy and Frozen Retreat act more as an offensive skill you create more class options for damaging abilities. Like others have said, Magicka Warden’s have few choices for in class abilities.
I am split when it comes to making the Animal skills Frost, on the one hand it makes sense given that other class aside Necro focus on one element. Then again even Sorcerer has Magic options.
Regarding Shalks. I actually hate this ability. I understand it’s necessary for high DPS but this is exactly why I take issue with it. No class should be forced into taking a skill to hit good DPS. Not saying the skill should be removed, but adding alternative options in the Winter’s Embrace would help.
Other classes are rarely forced into taking abilities, their is usually at least one other option. Even Necromancer can forgo Blastbones and still hit great numbers.

You may not use it, but Shalks should also just deal frost damage. Shalks already is very necessary for good dps like you said. And until it deals frost damage we cannot get the most out of sets like ysgramor's and elemental sucession. But that isn't the only reason either. Because we have such an affinity for frost damage via our passives, specifically glacial presence, it will serve to increase our chilled chance even more, and make it more likely to have better uptimes without having to take charged. It also would increase our AoE proc which helps out our spammable that we use as a frostden, which is force pulse, increasing our cleave power. I've seen people try to argue that frost damage shalks doesn't make any sense. When it already does.

Because the animals are summoned and all deal magic damage regardless of what their actual real counterparts do, whether that be fire or physical damage, it makes sense to call them spirit animals. And it would make sense for them to take on the aspects of magic that the caster uses. Frost is warden's magical element. So why they all deal magic damage is honestly beyond me. Considering our class's innate desire to proc chilled as much as possible for good uptime on our bonus critical damage.

I get what you are saying but here is the kicker. If you make Shalks Frost, then once again Warden will be forced to slot it even if we get other options. The point I was making is that we should have other options in spite of Shalks. That being said, if the other animal skills dealt Frost damage along with a couple of options added into Winter’s Embrace then this would be a non- issue and a Frost caster could instead focus on DoT’s and deal comparable damage without having to slot Shalks. This is also a problem for Stamden’s too. They are forced to pick Shalks too although at least Stamden’s can forego Shalks in order to make a bleed build if they wish. Speaking of Stamden’s they have it rough as they can’t apply the chilled status without using a Frost glyph with Charged trait. I wonder if anyone has tested a Charged weapon on a Stamden to see if it improves their DPS.

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

I'm also in the Frost Shalks (and Cliffracer and Bear) camp. We're the Frost class so we may as well fully specialize in it.

But changing those skills doesn't in any way preclude also making changes to Arctic Blast and Frozen Escape and turning them into genuine Frost Damage skills as well. The goal is to have an entire rotation using Frost Damage skills like magDKs are able to have with Flame Damage.

(Of course, I wish the same for our poor Sorcerer friends as well. They ought to have an entire Shock Damage rotation but they are also awkwardly divided between two different elements - one of which they don't even have a bonus passive for [Magic Damage]).

LeHarrt91 wrote: »

Yeah i agree that one morph should remain a pull, as have plenty of snare options anyway. the other can be damage/utility (like a frost Scalding Rune)

Frost Scalding Rune sounds A-MAZING!

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

MindOfTheSwarm wrote: »

However, this post is primarily discussing Frozen Gate. The over reliance on Shalks should be a separate post.

personally i don't think it's a problem at all that it has to be slotted, certainly not right now. it's wardens defining skill, i think you should lose damage by not slotting it because it's really valuable and unique to warden, same with necro and blastbones.

Though, i suppose gaining a few more good and reliable damage skills in the future would change my mind. but for right now, i think it should be a damage loss.

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

MindOfTheSwarm wrote: »

I think by making both Frozen Retreat and Slab into morphs that promote offence you could drop the Shalks if you wanted and not lose much. The case for Shalks over reliance can be seen in damage numbers on parses. Typically on an optimised parse Deep Fissure can give around 15 k DPS. That’s HUGE... it doesn’t even qualify as ridiculous. Take that out and put a different skill even something strong like Mystic Orb and you are taking a tremendous hit to your damage output. It’s way too restrictive in its necessity. All I’m saying is ‘let’s bridge the gap a little’. Many others have commented on Shalks being overtuned. There isn’t really a question on it’s overpowered nature. It may be balanced when compared to the rest of the Warden’s kit but that’s only due to the lack of other options. As a stand-alone it’s way too overtuned. Not calling for a nerf, far from it. I just think the whole ‘If you don’t run Shalks, you shouldn’t play Warden’ is a very good philosophy. Magplars have the same issue with jabs but at least they can run destro spammable if they wanted. Even sorcs can drop mines if they wanted. Other classes have alternatives. Wardens don’t.

Yeah, we should have alternatives but we have 4 skills at the moment which is why it's so neccessary and not really worth playing without imo.

Also, is it just me or is it really irritating to be gatekept by people who don't actually play the class and don't look at, nor care about what we have and don't have. And they just come into our posts and tell us to shut up just because arctic blast is annoying?

So yeah. I'm definitely all for more skills in the near future and reworking arctic blast, crystallized slab, frozen retreat and expansive frost cloak. But i also think it's important to work on the smaller important stuff right now such as frost damage shalks.

MindOfTheSwarm wrote: »

Community input is always important but the issue you have illustrated is common. This is something that happened with Nightblades. Everyone that did not know how to deal with them complained they were broken. At one point that may have been true but they have been nerfed into the ground and can no longer function as assassins that can burst down squishy players. As such they have lost much of their identity. I thought about Arctic Blast and I think it could work as an on demand stun but it’s AOE effect would have to be reigned in. Unless of course it’s stun condition depended on the Chilled status.

MindOfTheSwarm wrote: »

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

MindOfTheSwarm wrote: »

Community input is always important but the issue you have illustrated is common. This is something that happened with Nightblades. Everyone that did not know how to deal with them complained they were broken. At one point that may have been true but they have been nerfed into the ground and can no longer function as assassins that can burst down squishy players. As such they have lost much of their identity. I thought about Arctic Blast and I think it could work as an on demand stun but it’s AOE effect would have to be reigned in. Unless of course it’s stun condition depended on the Chilled status.

Being dependent on the chilled status effect for a stun could be bad for us because it's something we naturally apply through our damage rotation. Meaning it'll either be extremely awkward, or just really infuriating to fight especially if a skill like this is up a lot. What we need is an on-demand stun that travels to the enemy.

We had this before in our previous Arctic Blast and it sucked. Furthermore a stun that travels to the enemy is all well and good but if that’s the case it cannot be AOE. A long ranged on demand AOE stun is overpowered (hence it being removed from Shalks). Plus a single target stun is no different to say a Fire Clench, Magnum Shot or Petrify. Where is the difference outside of aesthetics?

You could however have an AOE stun that deals burst damage IF you limit it’s range. To a maximum of 8 meters and it was in a cone shape AOE. This would be fine as enemy players would actually need to get closer to you in order to improve their chances of dodging it. Something like this for the morphs:

Polar Wind:
Increased duration by 6 seconds and range by 1 meter. Damage and healing scales with highest stat (Magicka, Stam or health). Making it good for all builds.

Arctic Blast:
Blast a cone of freezing wind in front of you dealing 500 Frost Damage and freezing enemies caught in the blast, stunning them for 2 seconds. When used against Chilled targets, this ability deals 10% increased damage and stuns for 2 seconds longer.

(No longer deals damage over time or heals. Instead gives more upfront damage and stuns. Scales with Spell Damage and Max Magicka.)

MindOfTheSwarm wrote: »

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

MindOfTheSwarm wrote: »

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

MindOfTheSwarm wrote: »

Community input is always important but the issue you have illustrated is common. This is something that happened with Nightblades. Everyone that did not know how to deal with them complained they were broken. At one point that may have been true but they have been nerfed into the ground and can no longer function as assassins that can burst down squishy players. As such they have lost much of their identity. I thought about Arctic Blast and I think it could work as an on demand stun but it’s AOE effect would have to be reigned in. Unless of course it’s stun condition depended on the Chilled status.

Being dependent on the chilled status effect for a stun could be bad for us because it's something we naturally apply through our damage rotation. Meaning it'll either be extremely awkward, or just really infuriating to fight especially if a skill like this is up a lot. What we need is an on-demand stun that travels to the enemy.

We had this before in our previous Arctic Blast and it sucked. Furthermore a stun that travels to the enemy is all well and good but if that’s the case it cannot be AOE. A long ranged on demand AOE stun is overpowered (hence it being removed from Shalks). Plus a single target stun is no different to say a Fire Clench, Magnum Shot or Petrify. Where is the difference outside of aesthetics?

You could however have an AOE stun that deals burst damage IF you limit it’s range. To a maximum of 8 meters and it was in a cone shape AOE. This would be fine as enemy players would actually need to get closer to you in order to improve their chances of dodging it. Something like this for the morphs:

Polar Wind:
Increased duration by 6 seconds and range by 1 meter. Damage and healing scales with highest stat (Magicka, Stam or health). Making it good for all builds.

Arctic Blast:
Blast a cone of freezing wind in front of you dealing 500 Frost Damage and freezing enemies caught in the blast, stunning them for 2 seconds. When used against Chilled targets, this ability deals 10% increased damage and stuns for 2 seconds longer.

(No longer deals damage over time or heals. Instead gives more upfront damage and stuns. Scales with Spell Damage and Max Magicka.)

I'll tell you why this sucked. It's very simple. We had shock clench and vampire's stun, blast didn't do any damage whatsoever, it was expensive and slow for the cost. At the time we had better stuns and shock clench worked much better for our playstyle than blast did.

It can be AoE if it is something expensive, like it is. Shock clench wasn't in the past, had a great stun and did spammable levels of damage.

It doesn't need to be directly targeted.
It also just needs to be able to go to the enemy. If you have to aim it like fissure that works with the playstyle and would be more skillful.

Maybe. I suppose at skill cost is something to consider. Btw. Frostbite set.

MindOfTheSwarm wrote: »

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

MindOfTheSwarm wrote: »

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

MindOfTheSwarm wrote: »

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

MindOfTheSwarm wrote: »

Community input is always important but the issue you have illustrated is common. This is something that happened with Nightblades. Everyone that did not know how to deal with them complained they were broken. At one point that may have been true but they have been nerfed into the ground and can no longer function as assassins that can burst down squishy players. As such they have lost much of their identity. I thought about Arctic Blast and I think it could work as an on demand stun but it’s AOE effect would have to be reigned in. Unless of course it’s stun condition depended on the Chilled status.

Being dependent on the chilled status effect for a stun could be bad for us because it's something we naturally apply through our damage rotation. Meaning it'll either be extremely awkward, or just really infuriating to fight especially if a skill like this is up a lot. What we need is an on-demand stun that travels to the enemy.

We had this before in our previous Arctic Blast and it sucked. Furthermore a stun that travels to the enemy is all well and good but if that’s the case it cannot be AOE. A long ranged on demand AOE stun is overpowered (hence it being removed from Shalks). Plus a single target stun is no different to say a Fire Clench, Magnum Shot or Petrify. Where is the difference outside of aesthetics?

You could however have an AOE stun that deals burst damage IF you limit it’s range. To a maximum of 8 meters and it was in a cone shape AOE. This would be fine as enemy players would actually need to get closer to you in order to improve their chances of dodging it. Something like this for the morphs:

Polar Wind:
Increased duration by 6 seconds and range by 1 meter. Damage and healing scales with highest stat (Magicka, Stam or health). Making it good for all builds.

Arctic Blast:
Blast a cone of freezing wind in front of you dealing 500 Frost Damage and freezing enemies caught in the blast, stunning them for 2 seconds. When used against Chilled targets, this ability deals 10% increased damage and stuns for 2 seconds longer.

(No longer deals damage over time or heals. Instead gives more upfront damage and stuns. Scales with Spell Damage and Max Magicka.)

I'll tell you why this sucked. It's very simple. We had shock clench and vampire's stun, blast didn't do any damage whatsoever, it was expensive and slow for the cost. At the time we had better stuns and shock clench worked much better for our playstyle than blast did.

It can be AoE if it is something expensive, like it is. Shock clench wasn't in the past, had a great stun and did spammable levels of damage.

It doesn't need to be directly targeted.
It also just needs to be able to go to the enemy. If you have to aim it like fissure that works with the playstyle and would be more skillful.

Maybe. I suppose at skill cost is something to consider. Btw. Frostbite set.

Yeah i know. When pts comes up I'll test it, if it's not up to snuff we'll ask for some changes to it.

I think that it might be good if you can keep enemies Chilled regularly. The interesting thing to note is that the bonus damage applies to all damage. It’s just the first 6% that applies to Frost Damage.

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

Yes, but compare Frostbite to a basic DPS set like Mother's Sorrow.

That is going to give you 11% Critical Chance. When you have something like a +125% Critical Damage (since no Shadow Mundus now) multiplier in a full raid environment, that's a true ~14% additional damage to ALL of your abilities.

Then you have Frostbite which has an additive 6% (which is to say not a true 6%) that benefits a small handful of your abilities. If we assume that Frost Damage is likely comprising no greater than 50% of your overall damage, then this value maxes out at around 3% additive (which, again, is not a true 3%) damage.

Then we have the bonus damage to Chilled/Brittle. This is a true 2 + 4 = 6% damage increase that does benefit all of your skills though you will only reach this with 100% uptime on both, which is unlikely.

But even if we assume 100% uptime on Chilled/Brittle, our cumulative damage bonus is still only +9% (and, to emphasize, it's not even a true 9% due to the additive first portion of the bonus) compared to Mother's Sorrow's true ~14%, fully 50% less valuable in terms of power.

And those estimates are using extremely rosy assumptions that are unlikely to be met in actual gameplay. That's why I say that this set needs to be significantly stronger if it wants to ever be in the conversation for BiS non-trial set on a Frost Warden (which it honestly should be as moving the meta away from a stagnant 5-year monopoly of MS/Medusa ought to be a design priority of ZOS' moving forward).

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

Yes, but compare Frostbite to a basic DPS set like Mother's Sorrow.

That is going to give you 11% Critical Chance. When you have something like a +125% Critical Damage (since no Shadow Mundus now) multiplier in a full raid environment, that's a true ~14% additional damage to ALL of your abilities.

Then you have Frostbite which has an additive 6% (which is to say not a true 6%) that benefits a small handful of your abilities. If we assume that Frost Damage is likely comprising no greater than 50% of your overall damage, then this value maxes out at around 3% additive (which, again, is not a true 3%) damage.

Then we have the bonus damage to Chilled/Brittle. This is a true 2 + 4 = 6% damage increase that does benefit all of your skills though you will only reach this with 100% uptime on both, which is unlikely.

But even if we assume 100% uptime on Chilled/Brittle, our cumulative damage bonus is still only +9% (and, to emphasize, it's not even a true 9% due to the additive first portion of the bonus) compared to Mother's Sorrow's true ~14%, fully 50% less valuable in terms of power.

And those estimates are using extremely rosy assumptions that are unlikely to be met in actual gameplay. That's why I say that this set needs to be significantly stronger if it wants to ever be in the conversation for BiS non-trial set on a Frost Warden (which it honestly should be as moving the meta away from a stagnant 5-year monopoly of MS/Medusa ought to be a design priority of ZOS' moving forward).

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

BuildMan wrote: »

Retreat is the only warden skill with any uniqueness at this point. Take that and the class may as well be a cold dragonknight.

Well, deep fissure is pretty unique. But everything else is pretty much copy pasted.

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

MindOfTheSwarm wrote: »

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

BuildMan wrote: »

Retreat is the only warden skill with any uniqueness at this point. Take that and the class may as well be a cold dragonknight.

Well, deep fissure is pretty unique. But everything else is pretty much copy pasted.

What? Hardly. Bear, Flies, Netch, Wings, Arctic Wind, Sleet Storm, every single healing skill, the passives. All beg to differ.

About the only skills comparable are Ice Fortress, Slab and Winter’s Revenge which hits harder than any DK AoE except Standard.

I dunno all of the offensive stuff is copy pasted to me. Bear is like any sorc pet but an "ultimate", flies is a generic ranged st DoT. Dive is a slow af ranged st direct damage projectile, wings is a reskinned rapids with a passive slotted effect And arctic wind is just solar barrage but with a heal and stun on it as well but for less duration. Netch is definitely more unique as a type of passive buff pet though. The healing skills are definitely more inspired.

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

MindOfTheSwarm wrote: »

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

MindOfTheSwarm wrote: »

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

BuildMan wrote: »

Retreat is the only warden skill with any uniqueness at this point. Take that and the class may as well be a cold dragonknight.

Well, deep fissure is pretty unique. But everything else is pretty much copy pasted.

What? Hardly. Bear, Flies, Netch, Wings, Arctic Wind, Sleet Storm, every single healing skill, the passives. All beg to differ.

About the only skills comparable are Ice Fortress, Slab and Winter’s Revenge which hits harder than any DK AoE except Standard.

I dunno all of the offensive stuff is copy pasted to me. Bear is like any sorc pet but an "ultimate", flies is a generic ranged st DoT. Dive is a slow af ranged st direct damage projectile, wings is a reskinned rapids with a passive slotted effect And arctic wind is just solar barrage but with a heal and stun on it as well but for less duration. Netch is definitely more unique as a type of passive buff pet though. The healing skills are definitely more inspired.

I actually like the bear a lot. I just wish Shadow Silk had its conditions swapped around so I can run a bear and a spider. Throw in a new monster set that lets me have a perma young wasp and my stam pet build is a go.

i wish that skill was better for stamden too. too bad that it's bad.