Why Magden DPS is crippled in Update 35

Klingenlied · September 2022

#1: Worst offender: Advanced Species passive. For those "worst case scenarios, Magdens do flat out loose 12% damage. In the median however, we will likely see a 6-10% damage reduction for most player that run dungeons or trials in at least semi-coordinated groups. 990 penetration does roughly translate to 2% more damage, but only if you still are below the cap. Magica characters however very, very easily were able to hit this without much issues. Now just build into this the magica morph of Scorch, Deep Fissure, with what the Warden itself is capeable of almost 9k resistances. Now add in light armor passive and you should realize, Magden easily manages beyond 20k resistance shred in PvE / overworld by himself. Was this ever needed?
My suggestions: Old passive was nice. Whatever you do, just make sure it is useable by mag & stam specs.

#2: Screaming Cliff Racer. The new effect does only work on off balance. When it does, it actually boosts DPS by quiet a bit. When it does not, as with a diverse set of dungeon and trial bosses - oh and target dummies of course - we miss 300 weapon and spell damage with relatively nice uptime. Maybe this might be worth a consideration: When you cast cliffracer, you get one stack of "screaming cliff racer", increasing your weapon and spell damage by 100. This can stack to 3 times. The stack lasts 4 seconds and gets refreshed whenever you recast cliffracer. Something like this would likely massively help out magden where he needs it most: on challenging boss encounters.

That's like the both primary issues holding Wardens back in regards of performance - likely underperforming even in regards to developer expectations. There is a lot of old, lingering issues with Warden however that I will just repeat for .. yea, repeating sake / hoping it gets better somewhen?

#1: Very old issue, especially important for solo play: Nature's Gift passive. As long as this one is tied to healing an ally, Wardens in general will have significant issues sustaining. This is one important puzzle piece that seems overlooked too many times

#2: Natures Grasp & all it's morphs. In my eyes, this still is the most useless heal in existence of ESO ever - even more so then before with the nerfs, the current state .. it's baffling, like really, no words for this. My suggestion would be scrapping it. If you want to keep the animations, well maybe make a nature themed charge. On morphs, you can play with damage, dot damage or / and selfhealing I guess? Anyway, there are a lot of suggestions for this skill - just the way it is now ain't good.

#3: This one is new. But I dislike how Netch timer feels with the new timers. I always felt Netch should be a fix companion that once on your bar, never leaves your side anway. Cleanse? Now make that one work in a circle around you and cost magica and - you just got a very, very desirable skill for class identity that now can actively be used and will not "automatically" be detrimental. And for those asking "why is auto cleanse detrimental" - ever done Icereach trifecta? Removing netch to steer clear of auto cleanse so you can keep the firedebuff up to unfreeze flowers is important.

#4: Frozen Gate Icy Retreat morph: Pretty much like natures grasp, but at least base and tank morphs are fine. The "support" variety is just useless; Replace with a spamable AE dps - Marden is missing one anyway.

#5: Icy Aura passive. I deem it rather useless in it's current form. When taking a look at templar and modifying a bit: "When you deal damage you gain icy aura for 3 seconds. After reaching 10 stacks of icy Aura, you deal 1000/2000 ice damage in a 9m radius. This aura effect can stack once every half second. After the aura explosion, you can not gain new stacks for 10 seconds.

Well then, the first two points I mentioned are like really, really important to me. It seems wrong, the class feels off, making a build and overcapping high 4 digits worth of penetration even when you just want to avoid doing so is just odd. Same for the quadruple spelldamage buff. Why doesn't it work where it counts?
On the other suggestions .. well, those are pain points too, just way less severe and more on the "luxury" side of things. But well, we can all wish for our favorite classes to become more useful, can't we?

dmnqwk · September 2022

They could've made Screaming Cliff Racer into an execute instead of a spell damage buff, that would've helped.

And yes I fully agree that there is a big issue with penetration in ESO atm - it's this games equivalent of hit rating and when you consider that viewpoint you'll notice why it's a bit silly to let a character easily reach 115% hit chance in a place where 100% is the limit.

6500 from light armor
700 from cp
11k from a tank

The entirety of the passive is lost for Magdens, which is a serious issue in terms of damage (essentially 10% damage lost for no reason). If they dont wish it to be overall damage, they can definitely do something better.

I wont address the other points because if people fight over EVERYTHING it gets lost in the noise - ZOS would revamp everything, so pick 1 issue and focus on it to get it fixed.

Klingenlied · September 2022

dmnqwk wrote: »

They could've made Screaming Cliff Racer into an execute instead of a spell damage buff, that would've helped.

And yes I fully agree that there is a big issue with penetration in ESO atm - it's this games equivalent of hit rating and when you consider that viewpoint you'll notice why it's a bit silly to let a character easily reach 115% hit chance in a place where 100% is the limit.

6500 from light armor
700 from cp
11k from a tank

The entirety of the passive is lost for Magdens, which is a serious issue in terms of damage (essentially 10% damage lost for no reason). If they dont wish it to be overall damage, they can definitely do something better.

I wont address the other points because if people fight over EVERYTHING it gets lost in the noise - ZOS would revamp everything, so pick 1 issue and focus on it to get it fixed.

I mean they could have learned from people not really being happy with wood elf passives due to adding penetration - even though the stealth vs stealth detection issue was by far the bigger one.

But Yea, overall the penetration system as a whole might be in need of an overhaul. I mean no full overhaul - please not, that would be scary with U35 in mind! But at least stuff like considering "negative penetration" - that when you overpenetrate, you simply get bonus damage. That would help too.

warich · September 2022

Also not to mention the cutting dive morph isnt even a consistent dot. It stops applying the dot at all when the dummy is off balance. How was this one thought through???

Klingenlied · September 2022

warich wrote: »

Also not to mention the cutting dive morph isnt even a consistent dot. It stops applying the dot at all when the dummy is off balance. How was this one thought through???

This ain't that bad. Off balance on bosses should last for 7 seconds. Thus maintaining 100% or close to 100% dot uptime still is possible with 10 second duration. Still a bad stam spamable. I mean it does lack impact

PrinceShroob · September 2022

The patch notes provided no explanation for the Advanced Species change.

If it was due to not wanting “uncapped” damage boosts, 1. that is inconsistent with Fighters Guild and Sorcerer passives providing “uncapped” Weapon and Spell Damage, but 2. a potential compromise would be to swap Flourish’s functionality with Advanced Species’: Advanced Species becomes a flat damage boost for slotting one Animal Companions ability while Flourish would provide Stamina and Magicka Recovery for each Animal Companions ability slotted.

If it was due to wanting the passive to be in parallel to Frozen Armor, that’s completely idiotic.

Given that Wardens are essentially playing without a class passive due to Penetration’s uselessness, this should be addressed in an incremental patch, frankly.

ESO_Nightingale · September 2022

PrinceShroob wrote: »

The patch notes provided no explanation for the Advanced Species change.

If it was due to not wanting “uncapped” damage boosts, 1. that is inconsistent with Fighters Guild and Sorcerer passives providing “uncapped” Weapon and Spell Damage, but 2. a potential compromise would be to swap Flourish’s functionality with Advanced Species’: Advanced Species becomes a flat damage boost for slotting one Animal Companions ability while Flourish would provide Stamina and Magicka Recovery for each Animal Companions ability slotted.

If it was due to wanting the passive to be in parallel to Frozen Armor, that’s completely idiotic.

Given that Wardens are essentially playing without a class passive die to Penetration’s uselessness, this should be addressed in an incremental patch, frankly.

An incremental? It should have been addressed in week 2 of pts.

Caribou77 · September 2022

The change to advanced species, for magica warden especially, is impossible to fathom. But then so is the change to deep fissure.

The extreme ignorance of these changes suggests tha tnot only is the class fundamentally misunderstood by developers, they really don’t care about it at all, either.

llBlack_Heartll · September 2022

warich wrote: »

Also not to mention the cutting dive morph isnt even a consistent dot. It stops applying the dot at all when the dummy is off balance. How was this one thought through???

I had the same thought last night when I was parsing. Why would I get punished for the off balance period.

AcadianPaladin · September 2022

Not sure it is the solution but I'm tinkering with my magden using the stam shalks. With so much other pen from 7 x light armor and passives, I'm thinking I may not need the major/minor breach, I much prefer the 6 second timer and it quite helps sustain by introducing a nice stam dump into my rotation. Still workin' on it though. As a PvE soloist, I want to fight with about 18 k pen and the mag shalks push me to about 21k. Dropping magshalks puts me below 18k so I'm tinkering with sharpened, one pen monster piece or even the pen mundus to get to 18 with no breach. Have ruled out the Spinner's set and using Elemental Drain in my case.

Ironically, my stamward (bow/bow) switched from stam shalks to mag shalks to gain pen and a mag dump. That experiment has worked out really well. Among other things it allows dropping either Spriggans or sharpened to provide more flexibility.

Nexxperumbra · September 2022

U35 has completely ruined magdens. Magdens had already lost damage prior to U35, but they were still in an alright spot, and I was content with their output during U34. I often run perfectas, and prefer my magden to do so, as they're beneficial to the group, and have decent group healing/buffs compared to my blade. I prefer four man content, as I find it to be more reliant upon personal skill, whereas trials are more of a group as a whole. I often run thrassian in content, so I often will parse with thrassians (for my own amusement, and to see what I can do, I'm aware people don't accept thrassians on parse) to see what I'll be hitting at max stacks. I am on console, and while running kinras/whorl/thrassians and double inferno, I could put out 112k on my magden on the 21mil. I could push that to 120k with daggers, but I rarely use daggers in actual content, so I prefer to parse with staff as that's what I'll be using. Using this same setup on U35, my magden (with 50 stacks) hit 99k on the new inflated dummy. People have mostly agreed that the damage loss for the new dummy is around 20%, so that'd be right at 20k from the 99k, so a magden running max thrassians isn't even hitting 80k DPS anymore, which is honestly just depressing. I moved to the new meta to see what could be done, siroria/pillar/kilt/kjalnar and the most I've done with my magden thus far is 93k on the dummy, which is even worse than before. (I also ran pillar on the body, 5m 2light to counter excess penetration and damage loss from passives) If I replace the kilt with thrassians, I can likely push that number higher, but for a lot of people, they don't want to use thrassians, or run daggers, or a 2h backbar. As a magden I want to use a staff, and we should be able to do comparable damage to our stamina counterparts. The loss of our passive dmg% is a large factor in this. With light armor, I'm sitting at about 13k base penetration, and for what? That's entirely wasted. I am to run my magden in all medium to somewhat counter this, use daggers and a 2h, then I'm not really a magden am I? I'm aware hybridization is a thing, but I dislike these changes, and they've crippled my class unless I want to change to stam based magden, which I dislike compared to their magica counterparts. I'll be trying out different set combinations and racking my brain to make up the loss of damage, but the amount of transmutes and gold I have to put out to try and make my class even worth playing after a patch is ridiculous. Games should be enjoyed, and presently, that isn't what I'm doing. Revert U35 changes to Warden, and preferably all of them as a whole, but I'd settle for Warden.

pikHz · September 2022

llBlack_Heartll wrote: »

warich wrote: »

Also not to mention the cutting dive morph isnt even a consistent dot. It stops applying the dot at all when the dummy is off balance. How was this one thought through???

I had the same thought last night when I was parsing. Why would I get punished for the off balance period.

I was wondering the same thing until the moment I thought "Cutting Dive might actually be a really good ten second DoT rather than a spammable, I should try that.. oh wait, the Off Balance penalty." That's when it hit me - the condition makes the DoT uptime much more tricky if you're not spamming it, and I bet that's why it is the way it is.

ESO_Nightingale · September 2022

Nexxperumbra wrote: »

U35 has completely ruined magdens. Magdens had already lost damage prior to U35, but they were still in an alright spot, and I was content with their output during U34. I often run perfectas, and prefer my magden to do so, as they're beneficial to the group, and have decent group healing/buffs compared to my blade. I prefer four man content, as I find it to be more reliant upon personal skill, whereas trials are more of a group as a whole. I often run thrassian in content, so I often will parse with thrassians (for my own amusement, and to see what I can do, I'm aware people don't accept thrassians on parse) to see what I'll be hitting at max stacks. I am on console, and while running kinras/whorl/thrassians and double inferno, I could put out 112k on my magden on the 21mil. I could push that to 120k with daggers, but I rarely use daggers in actual content, so I prefer to parse with staff as that's what I'll be using. Using this same setup on U35, my magden (with 50 stacks) hit 99k on the new inflated dummy. People have mostly agreed that the damage loss for the new dummy is around 20%, so that'd be right at 20k from the 99k, so a magden running max thrassians isn't even hitting 80k DPS anymore, which is honestly just depressing. I moved to the new meta to see what could be done, siroria/pillar/kilt/kjalnar and the most I've done with my magden thus far is 93k on the dummy, which is even worse than before. (I also ran pillar on the body, 5m 2light to counter excess penetration and damage loss from passives) If I replace the kilt with thrassians, I can likely push that number higher, but for a lot of people, they don't want to use thrassians, or run daggers, or a 2h backbar. As a magden I want to use a staff, and we should be able to do comparable damage to our stamina counterparts. The loss of our passive dmg% is a large factor in this. With light armor, I'm sitting at about 13k base penetration, and for what? That's entirely wasted. I am to run my magden in all medium to somewhat counter this, use daggers and a 2h, then I'm not really a magden am I? I'm aware hybridization is a thing, but I dislike these changes, and they've crippled my class unless I want to change to stam based magden, which I dislike compared to their magica counterparts. I'll be trying out different set combinations and racking my brain to make up the loss of damage, but the amount of transmutes and gold I have to put out to try and make my class even worth playing after a patch is ridiculous. Games should be enjoyed, and presently, that isn't what I'm doing. Revert U35 changes to Warden, and preferably all of them as a whole, but I'd settle for Warden.

If they reverted all but blast's I'd be happy tbh.

llBlack_Heartll · September 2022

pikHz wrote: »

llBlack_Heartll wrote: »

warich wrote: »

Also not to mention the cutting dive morph isnt even a consistent dot. It stops applying the dot at all when the dummy is off balance. How was this one thought through???

I had the same thought last night when I was parsing. Why would I get punished for the off balance period.

I was wondering the same thing until the moment I thought "Cutting Dive might actually be a really good ten second DoT rather than a spammable, I should try that.. oh wait, the Off Balance penalty." That's when it hit me - the condition makes the DoT uptime much more tricky if you're not spamming it, and I bet that's why it is the way it is.

Exactly what I thought. I put it in my back bar as a Dot and changed my spammable to the Fighters Guild Silver Shards. But yeah realised it’s limitations.

ESO_Nightingale · September 2022

llBlack_Heartll wrote: »

pikHz wrote: »

llBlack_Heartll wrote: »

warich wrote: »

Also not to mention the cutting dive morph isnt even a consistent dot. It stops applying the dot at all when the dummy is off balance. How was this one thought through???

I had the same thought last night when I was parsing. Why would I get punished for the off balance period.

I was wondering the same thing until the moment I thought "Cutting Dive might actually be a really good ten second DoT rather than a spammable, I should try that.. oh wait, the Off Balance penalty." That's when it hit me - the condition makes the DoT uptime much more tricky if you're not spamming it, and I bet that's why it is the way it is.

Exactly what I thought. I put it in my back bar as a Dot and changed my spammable to the Fighters Guild Silver Shards. But yeah realised it’s limitations.

the off balance honestly doesn't belong on the skill or as a condition. there's no way it wasn't a hamfisted design idea just to make the skill do something

Caribou77 · September 2022

In my view, cliff racer is fundamentally flawed because it is so slow and predictable, and good players, (pvp) just don’t get hit by it. ZOS seems to keep monkeying with it in awkward unhelpful ways (off balance) rather than changing the animation so that it is an effective spammable that actually hits opponents a good percentage of the time.

AcadianPaladin · September 2022

Since slotting animal skills boost pen instead of damage now, I too have switched to the FG xbow skill. Solid skill, and slotting passively boosts damage. It's faster, hits multiple targets and does better damage. Thanks to the posters above who mentioned it and caused me to give it a try.

boi_anachronism_ · September 2022

Thing is folks used to slot animal skills for the extra damage. For mag users that is pretty unappealing now as the extra pen is useless in group content and with cliff racer being so clumsy why use it. Just go for an off class skill.. which then leads us back to dps wardens having no class identity. Basically you will know them by their netch. That's about it. Other then that, well wardens are now effectively pigeon holed into support roles.

ESO_Nightingale · September 2022

boi_anachronism_ wrote: »

Thing is folks used to slot animal skills for the extra damage. For mag users that is pretty unappealing now as the extra pen is useless in group content and with cliff racer being so clumsy why use it. Just go for an off class skill.. which then leads us back to dps wardens having no class identity. Basically you will know them by their netch. That's about it. Other then that, well wardens are now effectively pigeon holed into support roles.

i seriously want to know why they made such a crippling change. it's not like they gave us an insanely strong new damage ability. arctic blast is barely *viable* so it's not paticularly amazing either.

Klingenlied · September 2022

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

boi_anachronism_ wrote: »

Thing is folks used to slot animal skills for the extra damage. For mag users that is pretty unappealing now as the extra pen is useless in group content and with cliff racer being so clumsy why use it. Just go for an off class skill.. which then leads us back to dps wardens having no class identity. Basically you will know them by their netch. That's about it. Other then that, well wardens are now effectively pigeon holed into support roles.

i seriously want to know why they made such a crippling change. it's not like they gave us an insanely strong new damage ability. arctic blast is barely *viable* so it's not paticularly amazing either.

I guess they kinda have lost vision AND understanding of their own game. Penetration for mag never was an issue, reaching 100% was incredibly easy for what feels like an eternity. So of course, adding even more penetration would be adding dead stats to any class that runs a mag spec.

For arctic blast, it is "weird"? It is good for PvP. It is freakin expensive. It kinda is awesome for stamdens in melee. It's getting useless if you want to use it with bows unless you go for bow melee range. So yea, Warden is so strange those days.

ESO_Nightingale · September 2022

Klingenlied wrote: »

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

boi_anachronism_ wrote: »

Thing is folks used to slot animal skills for the extra damage. For mag users that is pretty unappealing now as the extra pen is useless in group content and with cliff racer being so clumsy why use it. Just go for an off class skill.. which then leads us back to dps wardens having no class identity. Basically you will know them by their netch. That's about it. Other then that, well wardens are now effectively pigeon holed into support roles.

i seriously want to know why they made such a crippling change. it's not like they gave us an insanely strong new damage ability. arctic blast is barely *viable* so it's not paticularly amazing either.

I guess they kinda have lost vision AND understanding of their own game. Penetration for mag never was an issue, reaching 100% was incredibly easy for what feels like an eternity. So of course, adding even more penetration would be adding dead stats to any class that runs a mag spec.

For arctic blast, it is "weird"? It is good for PvP. It is freakin expensive. It kinda is awesome for stamdens in melee. It's getting useless if you want to use it with bows unless you go for bow melee range. So yea, Warden is so strange those days.

They didn't need to make it do everything to be honest. The damage portion of it suffers but only very slightly because of the stun AND heal also existing on it. It's very stacked. If it's too powerful in it's pvp versatility, giving it's self healing power to shrooms, and increasing it's damage and/or reducing it's cost would be great options to make it better. But i don't know at the moment.

FrancisCrawford · September 2022

boi_anachronism_ wrote: »

Thing is folks used to slot animal skills for the extra damage. For mag users that is pretty unappealing now as the extra pen is useless in group content and with cliff racer being so clumsy why use it. Just go for an off class skill.. which then leads us back to dps wardens having no class identity. Basically you will know them by their netch. That's about it. Other then that, well wardens are now effectively pigeon holed into support roles.

+400 spell power from Birds before Major Sorcery and so on is something. Except that it's a lot less against a solo boss ...

Klingenlied · September 2022

FrancisCrawford wrote: »

boi_anachronism_ wrote: »

Thing is folks used to slot animal skills for the extra damage. For mag users that is pretty unappealing now as the extra pen is useless in group content and with cliff racer being so clumsy why use it. Just go for an off class skill.. which then leads us back to dps wardens having no class identity. Basically you will know them by their netch. That's about it. Other then that, well wardens are now effectively pigeon holed into support roles.

+400 spell power from Birds before Major Sorcery and so on is something. Except that it's a lot less against a solo boss ...

But is buffing your power really what your spamable is for? I agree mag version of birds now is better then stam version. It even goes into building up burst and is highly interesting in theory for PvP. But it does not enough to save the Warden - not nearly enough!

TheTuSiK · September 2022

I don't think SCR would go through with that stacking bonus just for using it. On DK you have whip that gives you 150/stack up to 3 stacks when you cast OTHER ardent flame ability. Nightblade with Grim Focus - 5 stacks but you either keep them for a passive boost or you shoot a powerful arrow dealing a lot of dmg and being and important part of nb's burst dps. What I'm trying to say is that it could add weap and spell dmg but not just by casting it at any condition, giving it 100% uptime without any effort. Too op.

About the netch: Icereach isn't the only problem. Scalecaller Peak, last boss HM. If you choose to go to the geyser (the pool) with the netch active and the cleanse happens - you'll be free from it and with a bad timing you'll get killed by the boss' aoe. Can just not use it but hey, that's not the point.

I also must say I don't really like that Winter's Revenge deals more damage with destruction staff. I'd love that skill to be equally effective on any weapon or even without one.

Klingenlied · September 2022

TheTuSiK wrote: »

I don't think SCR would go through with that stacking bonus just for using it. On DK you have whip that gives you 150/stack up to 3 stacks when you cast OTHER ardent flame ability. Nightblade with Grim Focus - 5 stacks but you either keep them for a passive boost or you shoot a powerful arrow dealing a lot of dmg and being and important part of nb's burst dps. What I'm trying to say is that it could add weap and spell dmg but not just by casting it at any condition, giving it 100% uptime without any effort. Too op.

About the netch: Icereach isn't the only problem. Scalecaller Peak, last boss HM. If you choose to go to the geyser (the pool) with the netch active and the cleanse happens - you'll be free from it and with a bad timing you'll get killed by the boss' aoe. Can just not use it but hey, that's not the point.

I also must say I don't really like that Winter's Revenge deals more damage with destruction staff. I'd love that skill to be equally effective on any weapon or even without one.

Oh yea, almost forgot about Scalecaller, a lot of time has passed since doing the triple there. But yea, another example on how bad "auto cast" abilities can be. As a player you want to be in control.

As for bonus damage with the birds, the issue is that it should work with all enemies in PvE. Thus, the way it is set up right now is flawed.

As for Winters Revenge, my main issue is that the damage is laughingly without a staff - it is unusable low unless you want it for status effects. The 30% bonus should be the "base" damage. I would not mind another 30% for staff, though it would not be needed. With U36 promising overall damage increase and special ice staff boni, I guess 15% extra for staff would be numerical sound.

Anyway, right now, I guess it is waiting for PTS notes to see where they are going. Then, we mighta start suggesting stuff anew.

pikHz · September 2022

Here's my wishlist for Warden in no particular order (PVE oriented):

Advanced Species needs to be moved off stats that cap. Crit chance, flat damage % like before, or weapon/spell damage.
Cutting Dive needs to be re-thought: it seems to me that the off balance condition is only there to stop us from just using it as a DoT. And, it feels really weird that the OB effect it procs actually hurts the skill.
Screaming Cliff Racer is no longer fighting Scorch now that it doesn't scale on range, which is great. However, now it's fighting Arctic Blast with the OB proc being outside the 6 meter range. IMO this skill really needs to stop directly conflicting with other skills in the Warden kit.
Lotus Flower should just rank up to 60 seconds at base. Green Lotus increases the healing and adds a target as on live, Lotus Blossum gets some unique damage source attached to light attacks or something like that. If ZOS wants Warden DDs to run this skill it needs to do more than give the potion crit buff and proc Nature's Gift.
Frozen Retreat is renamed and converted into a damage skill. Reduce the cost and only one gate can be summoned. Gate lasts 15 seconds and spawns up to 3 frost damage projectiles within 15 meters every 5 seconds. Yes this is just Flames of Oblivion centered on a gate rather than the caster but I'd take it.
Winter's Revenge needs the destruction staff condition removed and damage at base increased a bit. If they want to give it a procced damage increase then tie the condition to something that is not the gear we're using (i.e. enemies recently chilled take x% more damage from this skill)
Nature's Grasp and morphs: the healing values need to account for the fact that the skill needs to be aimed and moves your character into harm's way a lot of the time.
Take the stun off Arctic Blast and increase its damage a bit or reduce its cost (or heck, both?). Turn Crystallized Slab into a proactive stun.
Growing Swarm needs to offer something more than a bit of AOE damage and a bleed stack for Dro'Zakar's Claws. Right now it just doesn't seem to compete with Fetcher Infection.
Take the passive purge off Netch, keeping the purge of one effect on cast, and increase the duration a bit while returning the same amount of mag/stam per second.
Icy Aura needs something more useful especially now that wings gives snare/immobilization removal. What about 'Increases the duration of snares and immobilizations on targets by 1/2 seconds'? Just spitballing here as I'm sure this suggestion could be really rough for playing against Wardens in PvP.
Flourish should be a flat amount of recovery instead of a percent. Like 100/200 mag and stam recovery or something.

Klingenlied · September 2022

pikHz wrote: »

Here's my wishlist for Warden in no particular order (PVE oriented):
Advanced Species needs to be moved off stats that cap. Crit chance, flat damage % like before, or weapon/spell damage.

100% agree!

pikHz wrote: »

[*] Cutting Dive needs to be re-thought: it seems to me that the off balance condition is only there to stop us from just using it as a DoT. And, it feels really weird that the OB effect it procs actually hurts the skill.[*]

100% agree!

pikHz wrote: »

[*] Screaming Cliff Racer is no longer fighting Scorch now that it doesn't scale on range, which is great. However, now it's fighting Arctic Blast with the OB proc being outside the 6 meter range. IMO this skill really needs to stop directly conflicting with other skills in the Warden kit.[*]

100% agree!

pikHz wrote: »

[*] Lotus Flower should just rank up to 60 seconds at base. Green Lotus increases the healing and adds a target as on live, Lotus Blossum gets some unique damage source attached to light attacks or something like that. If ZOS wants Warden DDs to run this skill it needs to do more than give the potion crit buff and proc Nature's Gift.[*]

I think requiring this skill for triggering our in class passive for sustain is a problem in itself. Once you stop playing bear, this just doesn't work any longer in solo content. Once this is fixed however, we might even be less inclined to slot this skill. So yea, it is kinda lackluster but still forced on us.

pikHz wrote: »

[*] Frozen Retreat is renamed and converted into a damage skill. Reduce the cost and only one gate can be summoned. Gate lasts 15 seconds and spawns up to 3 frost damage projectiles within 15 meters every 5 seconds. Yes this is just Flames of Oblivion centered on a gate rather than the caster but I'd take it. [*]

Whatever they do, with it, everything damage related will be better than the original effect!

pikHz wrote: »

[*] Winter's Revenge needs the destruction staff condition removed and damage at base increased a bit. If they want to give it a procced damage increase then tie the condition to something that is not the gear we're using (i.e. enemies recently chilled take x% more damage from this skill)[*]

100% agree!

pikHz wrote: »

[*] Nature's Grasp and morphs: the healing values need to account for the fact that the skill needs to be aimed and moves your character into harm's way a lot of the time.[*]

Skill is bad by design. Sadly. Don't know how to really fix it. The best way I could think about being two morphs and making the heal one expensive. So let it cost "really much", give it a shield and a hot component and it would work. For the other morph, go with a poison themed "charge" that is a dps skill. Stamden with build in gap closer? People would love this.

pikHz wrote: »

[*] Take the stun off Arctic Blast and increase its damage a bit or reduce its cost (or heck, both?). Turn Crystallized Slab into a proactive stun.[*]

This would be very good for balance purposes. Taking power off Artic Blast and transfering it to Slab .. yea, like it.

pikHz wrote: »

[*] Growing Swarm needs to offer something more than a bit of AOE damage and a bleed stack for Dro'Zakar's Claws. Right now it just doesn't seem to compete with Fetcher Infection. [*]

This one is easy to make awesome. Make the debuff AE and done.

pikHz wrote: »

[*] Take the passive purge off Netch, keeping the purge of one effect on cast, and increase the duration a bit while returning the same amount of mag/stam per second.[*]

I would be more extreme. Make netch passive, make the cast for purge active while retaining the regen on the passive.

pikHz wrote: »

[*] Icy Aura needs something more useful especially now that wings gives snare/immobilization removal. What about 'Increases the duration of snares and immobilizations on targets by 1/2 seconds'? Just spitballing here as I'm sure this suggestion could be really rough for playing against Wardens in PvP. [*]

Wardens are pretty strong in PvP right now. I would not boost them further, especially not in the cc department. The best thing to do about it would simply be percentage based damage reduction.

pikHz wrote: »

[*] Flourish should be a flat amount of recovery instead of a percent. Like 100/200 mag and stam recovery or something.

Disagree on that. This would devalue builds stacking recovery already and devalue bretons or redguard and wood elf even farther.

Anyway, overall a hella lot of nice suggestions. Hope devs take a look at it.

Mr_Stach · September 2022

Klingenlied wrote: »

#1: Very old issue, especially important for solo play: Nature's Gift passive. As long as this one is tied to healing an ally, Wardens in general will have significant issues sustaining. This is one important puzzle piece that seems overlooked too many times

#2: Natures Grasp & all it's morphs. In my eyes, this still is the most useless heal in existence of ESO ever - even more so then before with the nerfs, the current state .. it's baffling, like really, no words for this. My suggestion would be scrapping it. If you want to keep the animations, well maybe make a nature themed charge. On morphs, you can play with damage, dot damage or / and selfhealing I guess? Anyway, there are a lot of suggestions for this skill - just the way it is now ain't good.

I've beaten most of these points to death last PTS but I just wanted to touch on Nature's Gift and Nature's Grasp.

First 100% spot on for Nature's Gift, just the simple change of "Yourself or Allies" would make this a great sustain tool in all content.

Next Nature's Grasp. So this skill is a bit more complicated, there is a serious base of people that like the swing heal from Nature's Embrace, which is ok. But Bursting Vines is completely useless. Something that I recommended before was to make this just a simple burst heal like so:

Personally I would love for Green Balance to really go full druid and allow for healing and CC options with entangling roots and whatnot, but just these two changes would help quite a bit.

It would also allow the burst heal on Arctic Blast to be removed so the entire skill isn't immediately lined up for a nerf again.