Please revert Arctic Blast's stun to be immediate, not delayed

taugrim · May 2023

ZoS finally fixed the lack of an on-demand stun for Warden, only to change it to something undesirable.

Please revert this change, it makes the stun unpredictable / less reliable, and there was no reason given for the change. The vast majority of class-based stuns (that players actually use) are immediate.

Arctic Blast (morph):
The stun from this morph now fires after a 2 second delay, rather than immediately. Recasting the ability before the delay completes will reset the delay timer.

EDIT 1: some players in this thread mistakenly believe that Arctic Blast's heal scales with HP. That is incorrect, the healing scales with offensive stats. The healing for the other morph, Polar Wind, scales with HP. Polar Wind has high healing output, basically double (single target) or quadruple (2 targets) the healing of Arctic Blast. This narrative that Arctic Blast has high healing output is incorrect. It's modest healing, compared to pure healing abilities.

Here is the tooltip for Arctic Blast:
https://eso-skillbook.com/skill/arctic-blast

Skill description
Envelop yourself in winter winds, instantly healing for 2904 Health. The winds persist for 20 seconds and chill your foes to the bone, dealing 435 Frost Damage every 2 seconds and stunning them after a 2 seconds for 3 seconds after actviating. The damage has a higher chance to apply the Chilled status effect.
New effect
The initial heal is based on your offensive stats rather than Health. Converts the heal over time into damage over time that stuns enemies.

Cast_El · May 2023

They should completely remove the stuhn from this skill and add it to another.
This is too strong as it is. Not broken though.
No skill healing you instantly for 18k should be able to stuhn your opponent.

If they don't change it you can rely on dawnbreaker, landing it with shalk like Necro does with blastbone.

I guess this nerf came because of tanky meta. But warden are not the PB, mara and vigor are.

Mara: PB solved.
Vigor: still to strong and still has minor resolve yet

Melzo · May 2023

Cast_El wrote: »

They should completely remove the stuhn from this skill and add it to another.
This is too strong as it is. Not broken though.
No skill healing you instantly for 18k should be able to stuhn your opponent.

If they don't change it you can rely on dawnbreaker, landing it with shalk like Necro does with blastbone.

I guess this nerf came because of tanky meta. But warden are not the PB, mara and vigor are.

Mara: PB solved.
Vigor: still to strong and still has minor resolve yet

Do not tell tales about 18 thousand. I rarely play warden but even I know that warden heals with direct heals for 4-5k. The warden's direct heal is worse than the Restoration Staff's AoE direct heal. This skill is really good. Since it gives direct healing and dot damage or hot healing. Even as a necromancer, I didn’t restore health so much with direct healing, and at the same time, the necromancer’s is better by 20 percent. The warden’s healing skill deals damage and stuns. 18 thousand will be able to give out only perhaps dd in pve content. But there is nothing special here. And in pvp, these are some unattainable numbers.

Galeriano · May 2023

I am suprised they didn't remove stun completly and also didn't change polar wind values. As it stands right now this ability in both morphs is one of the most broken things in PvP.

Cast_El · May 2023

Melzo wrote: »

Cast_El wrote: »

They should completely remove the stuhn from this skill and add it to another.
This is too strong as it is. Not broken though.
No skill healing you instantly for 18k should be able to stuhn your opponent.

If they don't change it you can rely on dawnbreaker, landing it with shalk like Necro does with blastbone.

I guess this nerf came because of tanky meta. But warden are not the PB, mara and vigor are.

Mara: PB solved.
Vigor: still to strong and still has minor resolve yet

Do not tell tales about 18 thousand. I rarely play warden but even I know that warden heals with direct heals for 4-5k. The warden's direct heal is worse than the Restoration Staff's AoE direct heal. This skill is really good. Since it gives direct healing and dot damage or hot healing. Even as a necromancer, I didn’t restore health so much with direct healing, and at the same time, the necromancer’s is better by 20 percent. The warden’s healing skill deals damage and stuns. 18 thousand will be able to give out only perhaps dd in pve content. But there is nothing special here. And in pvp, these are some unattainable numbers.

9k heal in pvp with 40k health

StarOfElyon · May 2023

taugrim wrote: »

ZoS finally fixed the lack of an on-demand stun for Warden, only to change it to something undesirable.

Please revert this change, it makes the stun unpredictable / less reliable, and there was no reason given for the change. The vast majority of class-based stuns are immediate.

Arctic Blast (morph):
The stun from this morph now fires after a 2 second delay, rather than immediately. Recasting the ability before the delay completes will reset the delay timer.

1 second delay at LEAST. No instant stun. It was too strong and was a get out of jail free card. It was the perfect panic button to hit to prevent getting executed. Even 1 second delay might make it feel more balanced.

xDeusEJRx · May 2023

I don't think the change should happen, i think it's crazy 40k health wardens with 10k polar wind bursts + heal over times is more balanced than this skill.

I think it's dumb the only thing you can rely on for a reliable stun is an ultimate, which pigeonholds you into some ultimates. I enjoyed being able to use northern storm, now I have to be forced to use meteor or dawnbreaker to actually line up a combo on people because 2 second delays are not always reliable.

I wish they provided a reason why the skill needs a change, if its the heal then nerf the heal. I really don't see why it's necessary to nerf the 1 aspect warden actually needed in their class: a reliable hard CC(stun).

CameraBeardThePirate · May 2023

Not having on-demand stuns feels like poo. Warden finally got one, but now they'll be back to partying with Necromancer. Every class should have one - stunning someone is a core mechanic of the game and not having an on demand stun in your class kit makes PvP needlessly difficult.

Not to mention, Arctic isn't even the problematic morph - Polar is what's contributing to the stalematey meta.

ItsNotLiving · May 2023

Warden needs arctic blast to not heal, do damage, and instant stun and then buff the burst off trellis or the mushrooms and make that the class burst heal.

xDeusEJRx · May 2023

ItsNotLiving wrote: »

Warden needs arctic blast to not heal, do damage, and instant stun and then buff the burst off trellis or the mushrooms and make that the class burst heal.

Agree, it would make sense considering green balance is supposed to be the "healing tree" anyways and it would function better to the healing passives more. I was hoping they'd do more for mushrooms in the past to make them better

taugrim · May 2023

Cast_El wrote: »

9k heal in pvp with 40k health

Arctic Blast. Doesn't. Scale. With. Health.

I wish people could be bothered to read the tooltips.

Melzo wrote: »

Cast_El wrote: »

They should completely remove the stuhn from this skill and add it to another.
This is too strong as it is. Not broken though.
No skill healing you instantly for 18k should be able to stuhn your opponent.

If they don't change it you can rely on dawnbreaker, landing it with shalk like Necro does with blastbone.

I guess this nerf came because of tanky meta. But warden are not the PB, mara and vigor are.

Mara: PB solved.
Vigor: still to strong and still has minor resolve yet

Do not tell tales about 18 thousand. I rarely play warden but even I know that warden heals with direct heals for 4-5k. The warden's direct heal is worse than the Restoration Staff's AoE direct heal. This skill is really good. Since it gives direct healing and dot damage or hot healing. Even as a necromancer, I didn’t restore health so much with direct healing, and at the same time, the necromancer’s is better by 20 percent. The warden’s healing skill deals damage and stuns. 18 thousand will be able to give out only perhaps dd in pve content. But there is nothing special here. And in pvp, these are some unattainable numbers.

Agreed.

The person claiming 18k is clearly talking about PVP (e.g. tanky meta). I have 5k weapon damage (and 32k HP) and the average heal is ~25% of the amount quoted, i.e. almost exactly 4.5k for non-crit.

Melzo · May 2023

Cast_El wrote: »

Melzo wrote: »

Cast_El wrote: »

They should completely remove the stuhn from this skill and add it to another.
This is too strong as it is. Not broken though.
No skill healing you instantly for 18k should be able to stuhn your opponent.

If they don't change it you can rely on dawnbreaker, landing it with shalk like Necro does with blastbone.

I guess this nerf came because of tanky meta. But warden are not the PB, mara and vigor are.

Mara: PB solved.
Vigor: still to strong and still has minor resolve yet

Do not tell tales about 18 thousand. I rarely play warden but even I know that warden heals with direct heals for 4-5k. The warden's direct heal is worse than the Restoration Staff's AoE direct heal. This skill is really good. Since it gives direct healing and dot damage or hot healing. Even as a necromancer, I didn’t restore health so much with direct healing, and at the same time, the necromancer’s is better by 20 percent. The warden’s healing skill deals damage and stuns. 18 thousand will be able to give out only perhaps dd in pve content. But there is nothing special here. And in pvp, these are some unattainable numbers.

9k heal in pvp with 40k health

Healing based on max health does not grant a stun. The stun only grants healing based on spell damage. And most players heal 5000 .

Kartalin · May 2023

I don't think the delay is bad, you can still line up burst with it considering it takes deep fissure 3 seconds for it's first hit. As long as you're using more for the stun and less for the heal.

robpr · May 2023

As long as its tied to hp scaling heal it's better with the delay. When you need to heal yourself better not give your opponent free CC immunity where you don't want to. On-demand stun should be on dedicated skill, not the heal, but Warden's kit is made in a way that there is no other skill that could have it without reworking some of morphs just for that (Frozen Retreat hint hint)

But, seeing how the changes went last time, I'd rather not touch anything honestly other than numerical values.

taugrim · May 2023

Melzo wrote: »

Cast_El wrote: »

Melzo wrote: »

Cast_El wrote: »

They should completely remove the stuhn from this skill and add it to another.
This is too strong as it is. Not broken though.
No skill healing you instantly for 18k should be able to stuhn your opponent.

If they don't change it you can rely on dawnbreaker, landing it with shalk like Necro does with blastbone.

I guess this nerf came because of tanky meta. But warden are not the PB, mara and vigor are.

Mara: PB solved.
Vigor: still to strong and still has minor resolve yet

Do not tell tales about 18 thousand. I rarely play warden but even I know that warden heals with direct heals for 4-5k. The warden's direct heal is worse than the Restoration Staff's AoE direct heal. This skill is really good. Since it gives direct healing and dot damage or hot healing. Even as a necromancer, I didn’t restore health so much with direct healing, and at the same time, the necromancer’s is better by 20 percent. The warden’s healing skill deals damage and stuns. 18 thousand will be able to give out only perhaps dd in pve content. But there is nothing special here. And in pvp, these are some unattainable numbers.

9k heal in pvp with 40k health

Healing based on max health does not grant a stun. The stun only grants healing based on spell damage. And most players heal 5000 .

Correct. It's unfortunate that people who don't understand how Arctic Blast works on live keeps commenting on it.

robpr wrote: »

As long as its tied to hp scaling heal it's better with the delay.

But....it's not.

To reiterate, Arctic Blast's heal scales with offensive stats. Here's the morph text on live:

The initial heal is based on your offensive stats rather than Health.

OBJnoob · May 2023

Honestly I'm surprised they messed with Warden at all. While it is quite good in PvP I think DK and NB are quite a bit better, and I'm sure Arcanist will come out near the top as well. Warden is/was middle of the pack and therefore arguably the only class that was okay.

Arctic Blast is/was a good skill and the stun helped warden a lot but it really wasn't without it's problems. Stunning someone everytime you burst heal might be a good defensive mechanic but it was a lousy offensive one. Well not lousy, but made things hard as often as it made things easy.

CameraBeardThePirate · May 2023

robpr wrote: »

As long as its tied to hp scaling heal it's better with the delay. When you need to heal yourself better not give your opponent free CC immunity where you don't want to. On-demand stun should be on dedicated skill, not the heal, but Warden's kit is made in a way that there is no other skill that could have it without reworking some of morphs just for that (Frozen Retreat hint hint)

But, seeing how the changes went last time, I'd rather not touch anything honestly other than numerical values.

It isn't tied to your health though; you're thinking of the other morph. Arctic Blast scales with offensive stats.

ESO_Nightingale · May 2023

ItsNotLiving wrote: »

Warden needs arctic blast to not heal, do damage, and instant stun and then buff the burst off trellis or the mushrooms and make that the class burst heal.

Exactly this.

ESO_Nightingale · May 2023

Cast_El wrote: »

They should completely remove the stuhn from this skill and add it to another.
This is too strong as it is. Not broken though.
No skill healing you instantly for 18k should be able to stuhn your opponent.

If they don't change it you can rely on dawnbreaker, landing it with shalk like Necro does with blastbone.

I guess this nerf came because of tanky meta. But warden are not the PB, mara and vigor are.

Mara: PB solved.
Vigor: still to strong and still has minor resolve yet

No, it's not the stun that should go from this morph, but the heal. We have an entire line for healing with good passives that we just don't proc with arctic blast as a heal. The burst self heal and stun in the same gcd is a balance problem, but try to think of wardens whole kit when suggesting balance.

Thecompton73 · May 2023

Melzo wrote: »

Cast_El wrote: »

Melzo wrote: »

Cast_El wrote: »

They should completely remove the stuhn from this skill and add it to another.
This is too strong as it is. Not broken though.
No skill healing you instantly for 18k should be able to stuhn your opponent.

If they don't change it you can rely on dawnbreaker, landing it with shalk like Necro does with blastbone.

I guess this nerf came because of tanky meta. But warden are not the PB, mara and vigor are.

Mara: PB solved.
Vigor: still to strong and still has minor resolve yet

Do not tell tales about 18 thousand. I rarely play warden but even I know that warden heals with direct heals for 4-5k. The warden's direct heal is worse than the Restoration Staff's AoE direct heal. This skill is really good. Since it gives direct healing and dot damage or hot healing. Even as a necromancer, I didn’t restore health so much with direct healing, and at the same time, the necromancer’s is better by 20 percent. The warden’s healing skill deals damage and stuns. 18 thousand will be able to give out only perhaps dd in pve content. But there is nothing special here. And in pvp, these are some unattainable numbers.

9k heal in pvp with 40k health

Healing based on max health does not grant a stun. The stun only grants healing based on spell damage. And most players heal 5000 .

Yep, I usually play at around 6K WD/SD on my warden and can confirm the heal from Artic Blast is bit less than 5K non crit in PvP. If I don't have the extra 400wd/sd buff from dive up it actually is more like 4.5K for a non crit heal.

Hotdog_23 · May 2023

The skill is pretty loaded with a stun, heal and AOE damage. The stun really should be moved to somewhere else. Such as on the gripping shards initial hit instead of the 30% snare of bitter cold.

Stay safe

ESO_Nightingale · May 2023

Hotdog_23 wrote: »

The skill is pretty loaded with a stun, heal and AOE damage. The stun really should be moved to somewhere else. Such as on the gripping shards initial hit instead of the 30% snare of bitter cold.

Stay safe

Growing Swarm would be a good option for a single target stun. But blast as an aoe stun is fine. I think the healing is the actual problem since we literally have an entire healing line of offensive scaling stat heals except we don't use most of them unless we're specifically a healer.

taugrim · May 2023

Added the following to the original post:

Here is the tooltip for Arctic Blast:
https://eso-skillbook.com/skill/arctic-blast

Skill description
Envelop yourself in winter winds, instantly healing for 2904 Health. The winds persist for 20 seconds and chill your foes to the bone, dealing 435 Frost Damage every 2 seconds and stunning them after a 2 seconds for 3 seconds after actviating. The damage has a higher chance to apply the Chilled status effect.
New effect
The initial heal is based on your offensive stats rather than Health. Converts the heal over time into damage over time that stuns enemies.

Have yet to hear any explanation from ZoS on the rationale behind the change. It's unneeded.

Jamie_Aubrey · May 2023

This, its annoying I could attack a Warden and he's running away so I turn around to go back and 2 seconds later I've been frozen

ESO_Nightingale · May 2023

taugrim wrote: »

Added the following to the original post:

Here is the tooltip for Arctic Blast:
https://eso-skillbook.com/skill/arctic-blast

Skill description
Envelop yourself in winter winds, instantly healing for 2904 Health. The winds persist for 20 seconds and chill your foes to the bone, dealing 435 Frost Damage every 2 seconds and stunning them after a 2 seconds for 3 seconds after actviating. The damage has a higher chance to apply the Chilled status effect.
New effect
The initial heal is based on your offensive stats rather than Health. Converts the heal over time into damage over time that stuns enemies.

Have yet to hear any explanation from ZoS on the rationale behind the change. It's unneeded.

they should've reverted it for sure. no idea why they felt the need to revert the buff.

xDeusEJRx · May 2023

Hotdog_23 wrote: »

The skill is pretty loaded with a stun, heal and AOE damage. The stun really should be moved to somewhere else. Such as on the gripping shards initial hit instead of the 30% snare of bitter cold.

Stay safe

Please no, people will start calling Warden OP because that stun would work like fossilize lmao.
Gripping is already immobilize, adding a stun on to it would be an interesting dynamic, but players really hate having that much cc power on skills, hence why there's nerf thread to kill fossilize lol.

OBJnoob · May 2023

I kinda think it's fine either way. Like the original change to sub assault timing that made so many people upset... It's really 6 of one, half a dozen of another. Relearn the timing and it's really a zero sum change.

But so it just makes me want to say again what I said before... Why even tinker with it? I can press the button and stun you immediately as my beetles hit you or I can hit the button 2 seconds before my beetles come out. Not game-changing at all.

And it's only pressure anyway-- if you were honestly going for the kill you'd stun with Dawnbreaker instead. Well no let me stop while I'm ahead. I can't pretend to know how everyone plays.

taugrim · May 2023

OBJnoob wrote: »

And it's only pressure anyway-- if you were honestly going for the kill you'd stun with Dawnbreaker instead. Well no let me stop while I'm ahead. I can't pretend to know how everyone plays.

When we didn't have a class on-demand AOE, we had to use Dawnbreaker of Smiting. Once the stun was added to Arctic Blast, we had choice.

I personally pivoted from Dawnbreaker of Smiting to Flawless Dawnbreaker, because I no longer had to use an ultimate to deal with a gap in the class kit in terms of CC.

With the change, we don't have a reliable on-demand stun, so I'll be forced into using Dawnbreaker of Smiting again.

Narrowing options is lame IMO. It's the same reason why the "you have to use an ice staff to get the 12% damage bonus" was a poor decision.

OBJnoob · May 2023

@taugrim yeah. I agree with all of that. And I'm sure there are plenty of Wardens using Northern Storm too. I was wrong to start down that path.

The way my warden operated, not too long ago, some forum people had advised me Polar Wind was better than Arctic Blast. I was skeptical because the stun seemed so obligatory... But after switching to Dawnbreaker it did seem the right choice. I had been using the Destro Ulti before that.

All I was really getting at though is that if you're trying to kill someone you want to do it in the shortest amount of GCDs as possible. So why cast Arctic when you could cast Dawnbreaker? If it's a long fight I would stun them with Arctic on cooldown but when my burst lined up I would Dawny instead. So, as I realize now, this isn't relevant to everyone nor is it the way everyone does things. But I think this is generally the way things are done. Most kills are some kinda combo of delayed burst + ulti + execute (or high powered spammable,) and in a perfect world the Ulti doubles as a stun.

taugrim · May 2023

OBJnoob wrote: »

The way my warden operated, not too long ago, some forum people had advised me Polar Wind was better than Arctic Blast. I was skeptical because the stun seemed so obligatory... But after switching to Dawnbreaker it did seem the right choice. I had been using the Destro Ulti before that.

Yea I had a similar debate with @gariondavey a while back. He and the other folks are right about Polar Wind. It's super strong now, because it's a quadruple heal (2x direct heal, 2x HoT).

But we still need a class instant stun in our toolkit, regardless whether one uses it.

gariondavey · May 2023

Yeah polar wind is wack. Back for mym @taugrim

?