Please Un-Nerf Arctic Blast's Healing

BasP · December 2024

Considering that the testing for the next patch will start sometime next month (I believe?), I thought I'd bring this up again. I think that it would be great if the conditional requirement for Arctic Blast's healing would be dropped. The healing is pretty worthless at the moment, because you can't rely on it when you need it most - in combat.

But why should that change be undone now? Well, the Developer Comment in the U43 Patch Notes mentioned that Arctic Blast was changed because: "It is our hope that these changes still help the Warden class have access to powerful tools from their kit, without the overwhelming power they enabled in PvP situations."

However, as was pointed out by PvP'ers back then, most PvP'ers actually use Arctic Blast's other morph (Polar Wind). As an example, there's this recent post on the forums with a screenshot of the results of a 4v4 Battleground in which one team had four Wardens that all used Polar Wind. And it's not like those players had uncommon builds. Though I don't really PvP much myself, I believe building for high health, which increases Polar Wind's healing, and relying on Mechanical Acuity and Balorgh to deal damage is the meta setup for Wardens.

Seeing as Arctic Blast didn't enable the overwhelming power Wardens may have in PvP situations, and Arctic Blast's conditional requirement for the healing hasn't changed anything when it comes to PvP, could you please consider dropping that requirement? As it is, the change mostly only had a negative impact on PvE'ers.

(Or the healing could be removed altogether if that would mean that there would be room in the power budget of the skill to increase its damage, I suppose.)

Turtle_Bot · December 2024

I still cannot understand the thought process behind the arctic change and especially what it was changed into...

The morph was already the weaker (and less complained about) of the 2 morphs, but was enabling squishier warden builds (that nobody was complaining about) the ability to survive without putting everything into health and spamming polar, and allowed for different more sustained damage focused playstyles that wear down the foe instead of the current polar spam until balorgh + northern + aquity is ready then ulti dump 1 target.
Not only this, but the new design is just so contradictory. When you're surrounded, getting beaten on by multiple enemies, you want that heal, but that's when the heal doesn't work with it's current design, it's just completely opposite in functionality to how a heal ability is supposed to function.
If arctic is not a heal ability, then why was Polar left alone? Also why was spores not buffed to become the class's heal ability for non-tank wardens when arctic was deleted?

Just so many questions about the whole change done to Arctic that really needs answering.

VixxVexx · December 2024

Fungal Growth should've been the main heal, just look at all the healing-related passives in that tree.
Make Arctic Blast a cc ability, something you'd expect from a frost line.

ESO_Nightingale · December 2024

BasP wrote: »

Considering that the testing for the next patch will start sometime next month (I believe?), I thought I'd bring this up again. I think that it would be great if the conditional requirement for Arctic Blast's healing would be dropped. The healing is pretty worthless at the moment, because you can't rely on it when you need it most - in combat.

But why should that change be undone now? Well, the Developer Comment in the U43 Patch Notes mentioned that Arctic Blast was changed because: "It is our hope that these changes still help the Warden class have access to powerful tools from their kit, without the overwhelming power they enabled in PvP situations."

However, as was pointed out by PvP'ers back then, most PvP'ers actually use Arctic Blast's other morph (Polar Wind). As an example, there's this recent post on the forums with a screenshot of the results of a 4v4 Battleground in which one team had four Wardens that all used Polar Wind. And it's not like those players had uncommon builds. Though I don't really PvP much myself, I believe building for high health, which increases Polar Wind's healing, and relying on Mechanical Acuity and Balorgh to deal damage is the meta setup for Wardens.

Seeing as Arctic Blast didn't enable the overwhelming power Wardens may have in PvP situations, and Arctic Blast's conditional requirement for the healing hasn't changed anything when it comes to PvP, could you please consider dropping that requirement? As it is, the change mostly only had a negative impact on PvE'ers.

(Or the healing could be removed altogether if that would mean that there would be room in the power budget of the skill to increase its damage, I suppose.)

Agreed. The change was honestly awful. I don't like blast's current design. If they want to fix the skills power budget they can remove the heal and make fungal growth heal the caster significantly more.

Soarora · December 2024

It’s very annoying, I really liked having a heal without sacrificing damage and having it as an aoe spammable isn’t very helpful when it’s only slightly better than pulsar. It’s also too much in one skill, its confusing to read. In PvP, yeah I could use it a few times but the high magicka cost it had means I’d topple over dead within a few seconds to having no magicka.

autocookies · December 2024

I am very disappointed with the current arctic blast. Honestly it was almost perfect before the change.... a heal that didn't sacrifice much dps.. But now honestly its better to just use a scribing skill for damage instead and run without any heals. It went from a solid skill to something I would never slot.