Hey everyone, it's been a while since i last made one of these types of posts. i've not been feeling it much as of the last few months given the changes that have occured, but i decided after testing out the new frosty options on the pts cycle that i wanted to make a bit of an updated post. i want to cover things i think frost warden needs to succeed moving forward as a build archetype.

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Ancient Knowledge:
Firstly, since the introduction of the 3rd piercing cold change to warden, we once again lost a reason to use the ice staff over other builds. with the first 2 iterations, there was at least incentive to use an ice staff, firstly with the increased frost damage on piercing cold there was a strict increase to that damage type outside of status effects. this was good, but the increased magic damage made little sense for stamina wardens at the time. however, it was removed for the second iteration which turned the ice staff into a stat stick. while this succeded in making the ice staff a good weapon for warden, it was flawed in that the bonus was attached to the class and made people feel restricted in how they could build, as they felt that it forced them to use an ice staff. i proposed an idea as a middleground where that the ice staff would increase the frost part of a new frost and bleed damage increasing effect. however, now that that has been reworked, its time to throw that idea away and settle for one that benefits not just warden, but everyone who wishes to use an ice staff for damage.

My (and many other people's proposals) is that there be a condition added to the ice staff version of ancient knowledge using the new precident established by piercing cold, that being a bonus that granting you different effects based on your maximum hp. lower than 30k could increase your damage dealt by 5% with an ice staff equipped as a middleground between shock and flame staves. or perhaps a critical chance bonus of 1314. but not a capped stat like crit damage or penetration as those fall off in organised group content and make the bonus useless where it really matters.

An example of how it may look like (made editing the client side html of eso skillbook):


the outcome for a change like this would be that the ice staff would once again have a role as a damage dealer's weapon without being strictly tied to one class. it would be heavily incentivised on a class like warden, which i don't think is a bad thing, this is similar to how the shock staff and flame staff now seem tailored towards sorcerer and dragonknight specifically.

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Damage Type Standardisation:
Subterranean Assault and Wild Guardian are necessary parts of frost warden's kit. frost wardens need these 2 abilities in order to come anywhere close to other DPS classes even though they're not particularly synergistic with our playstyle. for the longest time we've asked for bleed and frost damage standardisation on our animal companions skills. Eternal Guardian having frost damage and increased chilled proc would help immensely to bring a set like frostbite into the spotlight for frost wardens, as bear currently accounts for 12% of our damage by itself, not including the insane value of hemmorhaging proc that wild guardian also brings. Trying to use frostbite, even with all of the new frost damage skills on live and PTS servers has proven to still be completely ineffective compared to using tried and true proc sets like pillar of nirn despite frostbite needing to be built around. warden obtaining frost damage via bear and deep fissure would be a massive step up for pure frost builds, while not effecting regular warden builds.
While i think deep fissure's damage type being updated would require considerable work, i think eternal guardian would be relatively minimal effort for the help it would provide pve frost warden builds. it's certainly worth the effort as magic damage simply does not do anything for warden, while frost damage is beneficial to wardens due to glacial presence and piercing cold.
Frostbite itself is also largely let down due to the fact that it is light armor, and therefore punishes the wearer with dealing less damage, and taking significantly more damage than medium armor (i think this is largely because it has penetration instead of something that makes sense for magic dps and healer armor, such as damage, healing and damage shield strength.)


Frost Damage buffs:
If there's one massive disparity right now regarding elemental damage, that is the damage difference between flame damage, shock damage and frost damage. the problem lies with Engulfing Flames on Dragonknight and the Encratis's Behemoth set. 2 really popular group buffs that buff the group's flame damage. Why? flame damage doesn't just deal 5-11% more damage than every other damage type in the game with these bonuses, it also deals increased damage to vampires and has arguably the best status effect in the game. I genuinely think that engulfing flames and encratis should be redesigned to increase all damage taken, magic damage taken, status effect chance, or some other effects that doesn't unnecessarily throw out the balance of damage types for entire groups. In addition, Frost Wardens once had increased frost damage done and now that is completely gone since the 2nd iteration of piercing cold, which makes the problem infinitely worse for us compared to say, sorcerers who at least have an inbuilt 5% shock and physical damage increasing talent. i genuinely wish we also had a 5% increased frost and bleed damage instead of "6% increased damage when we deal frost damage". While we do deal increased chilled proc damage, our chilled proc rates aren't guarenteed, and therefore stuff like the frost scripts being applied to scribing skills is always beaten by flame damage.