Thoughts on Deep Fissure in PVP

Caribou77 · April 2023

I'm curious to hear from people who've spent time playing Warden what your thoughts are on the current state of Deep Fissure.

I am going to refrain from stating my perspective as I am hoping to encourage a variety of views. I genuinely want to know what others think of the skill in its current form.

Thank you for your thoughtful replies!

OBJnoob · April 2023

Coming out of forum retirement briefly to throw my two cents in on this.

It's amazing. Period. One cast, two bursts, both armor debuffs. What's not to like?

Long-time warden mains complained initially because of the lengthy delay on the second burst... But, in my opinion, there was no real reason to complain. Just a bunch of people used to one thing that were forced into another thing. People hate change. But I haven't heard any complaints about this lately... Depending on your opinion of course.

Turn your ability timers on and you'll know when it's gonna go. That simple. People complain about not being able to time it as though this isn't an obvious and glaring learn to play issue. The user has zero excuses not to combo it with something potent. What the increased length of time actually does is make it harder for the opponent to know. And this is gold.

For the user the only thing that changed, for PvP and PvE alike, is how many other skills you're going to cast between burst 1 and burst 2. For timing and rotational purposes this may have made it worse for PvE (but I doubt it,) but for PvP where you frequently have to be offensive and defensive at the same time having a delayed burst counting down even as you heal is a lovely feature. Especially if that heal happens to be Arctic Blast. Good to go.

The last warden I played (which you know very well,) walked a middleground between offensive and defensive. Wasn't a heavy hitter by any means. Fairly low weapon damage, and decent penetration only because of the ability we're currently talking about. Definitely a survivor more than a DPS. Nevertheless... A synchronized beetles/dawnbreaker/spammable kills everything but troll tanks from 60% health or less. That's really all the burst a well balanced game should allow.

Turtle_Bot · April 2023

Coming from a sorc, playing predominantly warden during U36 (whenever I wasn't stubbornly still trying to make sorc work), deep fissure is such a strong ability, yes the targeting takes some getting used to, but the timers were no issue at all.

3- 9 seconds is much better timing than 3.5 - 12 seconds on your delayed burst, especially adding full damage AoE and both major + minor breach on top of this and completely immune to being purged too.

It was also fairly easy to bait enemies into tanking the second hit too, since they often get complacent in that 6 second gap that is just long enough to bait out a switch to going offensive but short enough that if they go offensive, they usually aren't properly buffed up, making for some really nice burst windows, even against DKs.

OBJnoob wrote: »

Turn your ability timers on and you'll know when it's gonna go. That simple. People complain about not being able to time it as though this isn't an obvious and glaring learn to play issue. The user has zero excuses not to combo it with something potent. What the increased length of time actually does is make it harder for the opponent to know. And this is gold.

For the user the only thing that changed, for PvP and PvE alike, is how many other skills you're going to cast between burst 1 and burst 2. For timing and rotational purposes this may have made it worse for PvE (but I doubt it,) but for PvP where you frequently have to be offensive and defensive at the same time having a delayed burst counting down even as you heal is a lovely feature. Especially if that heal happens to be Arctic Blast. Good to go.

The last warden I played (which you know very well,) walked a middleground between offensive and defensive. Wasn't a heavy hitter by any means. Fairly low weapon damage, and decent penetration only because of the ability we're currently talking about. Definitely a survivor more than a DPS. Nevertheless... A synchronized beetles/dawnbreaker/spammable kills everything but troll tanks from 60% health or less. That's really all the burst a well balanced game should allow.

Honestly, this, that slightly increased length made it the perfect timing for a 1-2 delayed burst. it lines up really well with arctics stun (and stun immunity) allowing you to stun them, heal up a bit and hit them with a second round of burst timed to perfection with that second hit.

I played a very similar warden myself, a complete hybrid (both in terms of resources used and offense/defense playstyle) and it worked amazing for me.

Edit: you know it works well when even an emp DK refuses to fight you

GetAgrippa · April 2023

Still hate the timing on the second burst. Would kill to have it burst 3 seconds and then 3 seconds again like Sub Assault. The 6 seconds can feel like an eternity.

YandereGirlfriend · April 2023

Same here.

This was classic ZOS "let's change things for the sake of change" rather than for any identifiable design objective.

We see this again at work with the (hopefully bugged) random change of Blastbones to now be 4 seconds instead of 3. Like, why would you change this after 4 years of the class using the previous timing?!

In any case, nobody asked for any of the Warden changes last year. I had been a Warden main but have since moved on.

Caribou77 · April 2023

Well, I was hoping to get more responses, but honestly, the four of you constitute a solid 70% of the informed knowledge I find on these forums, so I'll consider it a win.

@OBJnoob - I'm honored and thankful you came out of retirement to share your insights! I very much appreciate and continue to mull them over as they settle and integrate with my own thoughts on the skill. Do you still play ESO? I've been thinking it's a good time to take a break and focus on other things non-screen related.

@YandereGirlfriend - curious what class you've moved on to? I'm a long-time Magden main, but the frost staff restriction has narrowed options to where I can't come up with alternative sets/skills/playing styles on the class to keep it interesting.

Thanks to all of you for the thoughtful and well-considered posts you've contributed over the year(s). I really have appreciated them and they've lent depth and character to my experience of the game.

OBJnoob · April 2023

@Caribou77 No I don't still play. I've logged in like 4 times in the past month thinking I'd play a bit... But somewhere during the process of picking a character to play and what gear to use I get bored and play something else instead. Honestly I'm kinda disgusted with myself for being on the forums still. The mods erased my "I quit" post and sent me a message telling me how I can't do that or whatever. I told them I really don't care, and asked for their help in closing my forum account since I can't figure out how... And you can see how that went. Kinda funny really. I mean I have some forum friends but I don't spend a lot of time agreeing with people I don't really see the point of saying what's already been said. So for however long I've been on here I've been a pretty disagreeable person. I've been snipped, deleted, warned, and messaged I don't know how many times. You'd think when a volatile personality asks to have their forum account deleted the mods would gladly cooperate. But nope. I'm still here. What can I say? Gears of War and PubG forums (if they even have one,) just aren't as interesting! My dang lingering curiosity and mid-day boredom keeps getting the best of me. Which makes me lame. I've definitely laughed at people on these forums who say they don't play the game anymore. And my opinion hasn't changed. I've just become lame.

On an aside... Anyone want to place bets on whether or not this post results in me getting banned? Or will they just delete it? LOL. My money is on them deleting it. Fortunately I'm a lot nicer in real life than I seem, so I decided against just being SUPER rude and inappropriate until they did ban me. But the thought did occur to me.

Janni · April 2023

Don't care for the change at all. It just means I have to wait 9 seconds for my real burst instead of 3 and it's weaker than it was before. 100% loss imo.

Cast_El · April 2023

Aoe damage zone, minor+major breach on it, delay burst ability.
Very Strong Skill... Cast it, immobilize,slow or stuhn your target, hit dawnbreaker with it in the Sam time you target Will be almost dead

ESO_Nightingale · May 2023

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

Same here.

This was classic ZOS "let's change things for the sake of change" rather than for any identifiable design objective.

We see this again at work with the (hopefully bugged) random change of Blastbones to now be 4 seconds instead of 3. Like, why would you change this after 4 years of the class using the previous timing?!

In any case, nobody asked for any of the Warden changes last year. I had been a Warden main but have since moved on.

not true, we asked for the blast and glacial presence changes. and to an extent, the cutting dive changes too.

Janni · May 2023

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

Same here.

This was classic ZOS "let's change things for the sake of change" rather than for any identifiable design objective.

We see this again at work with the (hopefully bugged) random change of Blastbones to now be 4 seconds instead of 3. Like, why would you change this after 4 years of the class using the previous timing?!

In any case, nobody asked for any of the Warden changes last year. I had been a Warden main but have since moved on.

not true, we asked for the blast and glacial presence changes. and to an extent, the cutting dive changes too.

I mean *I* certainly didn't want any of the changes. Despite what others complained about I kept saying that if we buffed healing any more in Warden you'd see them everywhere in PvP playing troll tanks... look at us now.

The changes to Sub and Deep were totally unwarranted and required loads of feedback before they ended up on something that wasn't completely bad and only just kinda bad.

I definitely didn't want the changes to cutting dive. It was one of my main tools in Cyrodiil. I'll never touch it again now. I'm convinced that one of the devs plays a troll tank cause I used to stack dive with carve and rendering slashes to take tanks out and the very next patch after that they decided to nerf dive and carve. Shortly after that, all DoTs across the board especially master DW with rending slashes

YandereGirlfriend · May 2023

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

Same here.

This was classic ZOS "let's change things for the sake of change" rather than for any identifiable design objective.

We see this again at work with the (hopefully bugged) random change of Blastbones to now be 4 seconds instead of 3. Like, why would you change this after 4 years of the class using the previous timing?!

In any case, nobody asked for any of the Warden changes last year. I had been a Warden main but have since moved on.

not true, we asked for the blast and glacial presence changes. and to an extent, the cutting dive changes too.

I mean specifically about Shalks.

Nobody asked for the entire year of nerfs (literally 4 consecutive patch cycles) to the ability, the most egregious of which was changing the timing of the skill itself.

And I'll even jump on the "Templar Logic" train for a bit here and say that Shalks is receiving another indirect nerf with more accessible Minor Evasion (which I am glad to see on the Arcanist, don't get me wrong).

At this point the skill is a very pale imitation of what it used to be.

TheTruestKing · May 2023

As a Sorc main that uses curse. I flipping love this skill. Non purgeable armor debuff with burst. It's definitely one of the most impactful skills in any PvP scenario. Every now and again I play my warden to enjoy a fully decked out kit. Bird of prey is like my favorite skill in the game. Zerk+snare removal+major expedition+damage for slotting. Warden kit is bonkers compared to Stam Sorc. I love where the warden is at right now.

LunaFlora · May 2023

it's a nice ability and i Love it more ever since it got changed in update 35 to cast multiple times