Pain Points and Ideas for the Warden Class Refresh (plus Destruction staff)

ESO_Nightingale · January 13

Hey everyone, i figured now was a great time to post a bit of an update for my thoughts for Warden given that the DK and 2h refresh is on the PTS.

This PTS Cycle

Firstly, before I jump into it, i'd like to acknowledge my excitement over the work that's been done for the DK and 2H refresh as well as the significant improvement to communication and transparency in recent months. My pessimism with the game had been growing a lot over last year (as evidenced by my last major post) and while i wasn't ready to give up on the game, I was very much beginning to become apathetic due to the few changes we saw. As i'm sure many of you know, I'm very much into the theme build of Frost Warden... or, well, Winter's Embrace dps.

I eagerly awaited any kind of changes, since we were told that zos was inflating Piercing Cold to 15% frost damage done while they work on long term solutions for frost damage skills, like adding more of them. We didn't see any more changes for the rest of the year, but now that they're doing the class refreshes, it seems obvious to me that the warden refresh is exactly where the long term solutions will be coming in.

While today is the first day of these changes and there are many issues with them, including bugs, removal of certain features the community liked (eruption and poison damage) as well as significant DK tuning issues, I'm hopeful that many things will be addressed given the significant communication improvements as well as the extension of the PTS cycle by 2 weeks.

Pain Points and ideas for the Warden Refresh

For the sake of keeping this post shorter and readable, i'll consolidate my pain points and ideas into bullet points.

Pain Points

My Pain Points for the Refresh:

There is no gameplay specific class identity(DoTs, Corpses, Crux) on the warden class, just a bunch of damage skills. There could be through seperate and distinct Bleed and Frost damage playstyles.
There are too many damage types on the class. Consolidation of Damage types and the removal of poison/magic damage from the kit to better support the new vision and so that other classes may utilise them better. Replacing Magicka costing skills with Frost damage and Stamina costing skills with bleed.
Introduction of new damage abilities. Bleed dmg skills in Green Balance and Frost damage skills in Winter's Embrace
Reworked base animals for animal companions skills away from vvardenfell theming (returned for free via skill styles)

Specific skill Ideas:

We need a payoff, or Delayed High Burst Damage frost damage skill utilising the chilled status effect, probably within the winter's embrace skill line.
frost shalks! or honestly replace the shalk visual for ice wraiths.
A morph, or multiple morphs of green balance skills could deal bleed damage. corrupting pollen or leeching vines seem like good candidates.
Turning a morph of nature's grasp into a tank pull and completely remove frozen gate and start again from scratch with that ability, allowing different morphs to specialise for different roles.
reworking a Frost cloak morph with an added damage buff or damage component, possibly a rework into an execute or melee spammable that still gives the major resolve bonus to the group.
reworking a morph of feral guardian that keeps the "guardian's savagery" part, but discards the double slotted passive bear pet.
remove the annoying healing condition for Arctic Blast
replace the destruction staff requirement for Winter's Revenge
make the growing swarm mechanic part of swarm and fetcher infection, rework 1 morph to stun on impact and the other to deal slightly more damage.
make the Falcon's Swiftness morph passive slot bonuses work regardless of the bar they're on.
add some useful damage component to lotus blossom

Pain Points and ideas for the Destro Staff Refresh

As 2h recieved some major visual overhauls and a little balance work, i figured that could also mean touching the destro staff at the same time as warden!

Pain Points:

Update the Ice Staff to be a competitive damage weapon (but allow damage bonuses to be swapped for tanking oriented ones so you can have either but not both.)
The visuals of the destruction staff skills are quite dated now. they need new and updated visuals.
I think there should be stronger differentiation between Shock/Ice/Flame Staff skills

Specific skill Ideas:

Update Ancient Knowlege to allow the frost staff to swap between tank and dps mode, preferably offering crit chance bonus. could be achieved through checking the user's max hp and assigning block bonuses if the max hp is above a certain threshold while removing damage bonuses unless below the hp threshold.
Give Force Shock a pure damage based on staff type morph, swap master's staff effect with asylum and rework asylum staff.
Rework Destructive Reach into a proper unique Single Target DoT with unique effects based on staff type.
Rework Elemental Susceptibility by shifting the status application to base skill, and turning it into a skill that applies staff type's status effect every 4s and gives a unique (caster only) staff damage type buff.
Replace the Icy Rage root effect with something that increases damage or uptime. possibly reduced ult cost.

Thanks everyone! shorter post today, had a bit of writers block so it took me hours to write.

LunaFlora · January 13

awesome post!
i agree.

i also wish Warden skill morphs were more distinctly different and that the class focused on Bleed and Frost.

hoping the Frost staff will indeed be a more damaging weapon.

you make good posts about frost and warden

icefyer_ESO · January 13

Do those block bonuses include being able to use magicka to block instead of stamina? I do enjoy being able to use my higher mana pool to block instead, so I hope that wouldn't go away.

ESO_Nightingale · January 13

icefyer_ESO wrote: »

Do those block bonuses include being able to use magicka to block instead of stamina? I do enjoy being able to use my higher mana pool to block instead, so I hope that wouldn't go away.

I would keep that as part of the weapon somehow.

AzuraFan · January 13

I'll say up front that I don't care about frost. I don't use frost on my warden at all. My warden is all about animal companions.

It would be nice to get rid of the requirement to slot the bear on both bars. I'm fine with the Vvardenfell theming but would be okay with them moving away from that. Also a good idea for Falcon's swiftness. I despise the two-bar mechanic in ESO, and one reason is the silliness of passives and such disappearing if you switch bars. And having to double-slot on both bars so things like bears don't disappear when you switch.

Honestly, all I care about is that they don't screw up or minimize animal companions.

ZhuJiuyin · January 13

My concern is that, based on the New DK model, New Warden might also have a certain gameplay style removed to maximize class characteristics, so it's possible that either pets or frost will be removed. According to the previous class characteristic list, New Warden is described as fighting using the power of the four seasons, so it's highly likely that frost wardens will be removed while animal wardens will be retained. At least, based on the premise of the power of the four seasons, there probably won't be a pure frost warden.

AzuraFan · January 13

ZhuJiuyin wrote: »

My concern is that, based on the New DK model, New Warden might also have a certain gameplay style removed to maximize class characteristics, so it's possible that either pets or frost will be removed. According to the previous class characteristic list, New Warden is described as fighting using the power of the four seasons, so it's highly likely that frost wardens will be removed while animal wardens will be retained. At least, based on the premise of the power of the four seasons, there probably won't be a pure frost warden.

I would think it could be the other way around. Winter is a season. Frost is winter. When I read "the power of the seasons," I immediately worried about Animal Companions.

ZhuJiuyin · January 13

AzuraFan wrote: »

I would think it could be the other way around. Winter is a season. Frost is winter. When I read "the power of the seasons," I immediately worried about Animal Companions.

But frost is limited to winter, while different animals can represent different seasons; for example, birds represent spring, insects represent summer, rabbits represent autumn, and bears represent winter, and so on.

At least, based on the description of the power of seasons, a pure frost Warden would likely be difficult to achieve.

ESO_Nightingale · January 13

AzuraFan wrote: »

I'll say up front that I don't care about frost. I don't use frost on my warden at all. My warden is all about animal companions.

It would be nice to get rid of the requirement to slot the bear on both bars. I'm fine with the Vvardenfell theming but would be okay with them moving away from that. Also a good idea for Falcon's swiftness. I despise the two-bar mechanic in ESO, and one reason is the silliness of passives and such disappearing if you switch bars. And having to double-slot on both bars so things like bears don't disappear when you switch.

Honestly, all I care about is that they don't screw up or minimize animal companions.

I think this is fine. Afterall i think that zos should create 2 seperate pathways (frost and bleed) on warden that you can combine if you want, but can otherwise be viable seperately. Sounds like you'd be into this hypothetical bleed playstyle.

AzuraFan · January 13

ZhuJiuyin wrote: »

AzuraFan wrote: »

I would think it could be the other way around. Winter is a season. Frost is winter. When I read "the power of the seasons," I immediately worried about Animal Companions.

But frost is limited to winter, while different animals can represent different seasons; for example, birds represent spring, insects represent summer, rabbits represent autumn, and bears represent winter, and so on.

At least, based on the description of the power of seasons, a pure frost Warden would likely be difficult to achieve.

You could have fire for summer, shock for spring, earth for autumn (or something like that). I guess we'll have to see what they have in mind. Hopefully they won't ruin the preferred warden (animal companions, frost) for anyone.

Soarora · January 13

Like I’ve done a few times before, I’m throwing in my disagreement on completely reworking gate. Right now, both morphs are used— the one that doesn’t teleport people is used in content such as black rose prison and the one that does teleport is used for social interaction (such as trolling friends or teleporting strangers into hard to reach areas). I would be in support of making the pull feel better to use but not in the removal of the teleport synergy from the game. If the teleporting morph is reworked to another damaging ability, then I would like the ability to teleport players added to a global skill with the same functionality of placing down a portal. Maybe a psijic or mage’s guild one.

I think with ele sus, can keep one morph as applying all 3 debuffs (it’s great for supports for applying minor vuln & brittle and also has good synergy with baron zaudrous) and have the other morph be damage-focused (would love to see it used for lightning and fire themed builds too, so I like your idea there).

100% agree on consolidating damage types to magicka = frost and stamina = bleed. As for visuals, magicka skills can have a frosty appearance while stamina skills can be thorny vines & animals.

And yes. Please. Omg. Remove the healing condition from blast. It’s a headache.

ESO_Nightingale · January 13

Soarora wrote: »

Like I’ve done a few times before, I’m throwing in my disagreement on completely reworking gate. Right now, both morphs are used— the one that doesn’t teleport people is used in content such as black rose prison and the one that does teleport is used for social interaction (such as trolling friends or teleporting strangers into hard to reach areas). I would be in support of making the pull feel better to use but not in the removal of the teleport synergy from the game. If the teleporting morph is reworked to another damaging ability, then I would like the ability to teleport players added to a global skill with the same functionality of placing down a portal. Maybe a psijic or mage’s guild one.

I think with ele sus, can keep one morph as applying all 3 debuffs (it’s great for supports for applying minor vuln & brittle and also has good synergy with baron zaudrous) and have the other morph be damage-focused (would love to see it used for lightning and fire themed builds too, so I like your idea there).

100% agree on consolidating damage types to magicka = frost and stamina = bleed. As for visuals, magicka skills can have a frosty appearance while stamina skills can be thorny vines & animals.

And yes. Please. Omg. Remove the healing condition from blast. It’s a headache.

If they dont completely rework frozen gate, it'd be conceptually very easy to combine retreat and device into 1 morph to repurpose one for damage dealing. I suggested what i did to give a tanking skill to green balance.

Twohothardware · January 13

I'm just hoping that they finally give Destruction staff the buffs it needs so that double daggers stops being the DPS meta for ranged casting skills.

ESO_Nightingale · January 13

AzuraFan wrote: »

ZhuJiuyin wrote: »

AzuraFan wrote: »

I would think it could be the other way around. Winter is a season. Frost is winter. When I read "the power of the seasons," I immediately worried about Animal Companions.

But frost is limited to winter, while different animals can represent different seasons; for example, birds represent spring, insects represent summer, rabbits represent autumn, and bears represent winter, and so on.

At least, based on the description of the power of seasons, a pure frost Warden would likely be difficult to achieve.

You could have fire for summer, shock for spring, earth for autumn (or something like that). I guess we'll have to see what they have in mind. Hopefully they won't ruin the preferred warden (animal companions, frost) for anyone.

Hopefully so. I understand theres different factions of warden players. They could lean into that with seperate bleed vs frost playstyles.

ESO_Nightingale · January 14

Twohothardware wrote: »

I'm just hoping that they finally give Destruction staff the buffs it needs so that double daggers stops being the DPS meta for ranged casting skills.

Yeah i really hope they touch the destro staff alongside warden.

noblecron · January 14

I really hope destro gets buffed too

I'm honeslty kinda worried sorc will lose shock just cause pacts with daedra. As is I prefer using an elementalist build over standard sorc just cause not all of my sorcs like to summon daedra and one of them would rather shoot than summon one.

The season theme does have me interested though. Wonder how they'll do it and hope we could get some hints please

MindOfTheSwarm · January 14

I agree generally, but I do not agree with Warden being the Bleed class. I think that should go to NB especially with its Siphoning line. I think Poison fits Warden better due to its bugs and plant based skills. As for the Stamina Bear… it doesn’t have to be a bear at all. It could be some other Poison based pet.

I think Warden and DK are being done first, because the vision and therefore work has already been pretty much solidified as for as ZoS is concerned. So whatever is planned, is most likely how it will be regardless of feedback at this point.

For me personally, I think Necromancer is the one class that needs a monumental overhaul. I think it should be purely Frost and Disease as those two damage types fit perfectly with that Death Mage feel.

I hope to see more Frost on the Warden and I think the Magic Morph Bear could definitely fill that role. But I do not see Fetcherflies working as Frost. They should be Fire with the Vaardenfell theme.

Unless they ditch Vaardenfell theme altogether or reduce it, allowing for Frost Wraiths instead of flies. But I would be sad to see the flies go. I like the bug side of things.

Perhaps they could keep the bug morphs for the Stamina Side or even try a Mixed Elemental style for Animal Companions. Fire Flies, Frost Bear, Shock Bird etc etc. Frost Shalks and Frost flies just doesn’t fit with the established lore.

In short, I do not see Animal Companions working as 100% Frost UNLESS they ditch Vaardenfell theme altogether and replace the bugs for more Frosty animal styles. But it seems like so much work, I doubt it will happen that way.

It might, but if so… the work has already been done or well on its way to being done in either case.

Turtle_Bot · January 14

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

Twohothardware wrote: »

I'm just hoping that they finally give Destruction staff the buffs it needs so that double daggers stops being the DPS meta for ranged casting skills.

Yeah i really hope they touch the destro staff alongside warden.

Enjoyed the read/breakdown. Imo, destro staff would be ideal work alongside either Warden (because of frost) or Sorc (because of shock) but probably more likely Sorc due to Sorc being the original "mage" class of ESO and staves being the mage weapon of choice (thematically anyway).

I'm also going to be writing up something similar for Sorcerer at some point, so will be taking some inspiration from this, hope that's ok.

ESO_Nightingale · January 14

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

Twohothardware wrote: »

I'm just hoping that they finally give Destruction staff the buffs it needs so that double daggers stops being the DPS meta for ranged casting skills.

Yeah i really hope they touch the destro staff alongside warden.

Enjoyed the read/breakdown. Imo, destro staff would be ideal work alongside either Warden (because of frost) or Sorc (because of shock) but probably more likely Sorc due to Sorc being the original "mage" class of ESO and staves being the mage weapon of choice (thematically anyway).

I'm also going to be writing up something similar for Sorcerer at some point, so will be taking some inspiration from this, hope that's ok.

not a problem. go for it.

Soarora · January 14

MindOfTheSwarm wrote: »

I agree generally, but I do not agree with Warden being the Bleed class. I think that should go to NB especially with its Siphoning line. I think Poison fits Warden better due to its bugs and plant based skills. As for the Stamina Bear… it doesn’t have to be a bear at all. It could be some other Poison based pet.

I definitely think it’s going to be ice/bleed warden and magic/poison nightblade or ice/poison warden and magic/bleed nightblade. Argument could easily go either way for both of them, but I’ve seen more people suggest ice/bleed for warden than ice/poison (I’ve suggested one or the other but I think I’ve mentioned ice/bleed more).

Stamina bear should stay, I have a friend whose a stamden main and he loves his bear. So much so, that he named it. I love his bear too. Not that bears are particularly poisonous but it’s a magic bear so whatever.

robpr · January 14

I'd be rather concerned that Warden already has distinct dps-heal-tank lines and majority of Tank tools are in the line you desperately want to be a dps line instead. Where you would switch them around to even make any sense and make room for frost dps? Armor buff to Living Vines? Enemy pull to Nature's Grasp? Should the pure healing line get a damaging skill too?

DK could this because its rather thematically consistent, Warden is such a mess of a design.

tomofhyrule · January 14

robpr wrote: »

I'd be rather concerned that Warden already has distinct dps-heal-tank lines and majority of Tank tools are in the line you desperately want to be a dps line instead. Where you would switch them around to even make any sense and make room for frost dps? Armor buff to Living Vines? Enemy pull to Nature's Grasp? Should the pure healing line get a damaging skill too?

DK could this because its rather thematically consistent, Warden is such a mess of a design.

Honestly, yes.

They did say that the idea of moving to a theme-based system instead of a role-based system was their goal in a post-Subclassing world. That will then make people have to make choices (choices in an RPG?! Say it ain't so!) instead of just going "derp, let me just stack DPS lines and then I'm cracked lol."

The Winter's Embrace line should absolutely have damaging effects and tank effects and healing effects. The Animal Companions line should absolutely have damaging effects and tank effects and healing effects. The Green Balance line should absolutely have damaging effects and tank effects and healing effects.

I'm betting that's why they chose the order they did: DK was their "proof of concept" as something that they could use as a template for everything else - it was a basegame line that was mostly muddled but honestly in a pretty good state. Warden second as it's pretty role-delineated, but there is already a lot of damage in the 'tank line,' so they could just start to muddle those lines together, even though Animals and Green Balance will need a bit of work to get them other skills. And then once they get those, then they get to the other lines that need more help like Sorcerer, and then saving Necro all the way to the end since it needs a lot of help.
Unfortunately doing Arcanist last does mean that subclassing is always going to be better than pureclassing until the end of 2027 since Herald being overloaded is one of the huge problems.

Soarora · January 14

robpr wrote: »

I'd be rather concerned that Warden already has distinct dps-heal-tank lines and majority of Tank tools are in the line you desperately want to be a dps line instead. Where you would switch them around to even make any sense and make room for frost dps? Armor buff to Living Vines? Enemy pull to Nature's Grasp? Should the pure healing line get a damaging skill too?

DK could this because its rather thematically consistent, Warden is such a mess of a design.

Does it really, though?
Frost line is very tank, yes, but…
DPS uses frost line and animal companions,
Healer uses frost line and plants.

And savagery/prophecy is on lotus flower, so yes, I use the “healing” line on my DPS. I can’t wait for them to redo lotus flower.

In my mind, it should be like this:
Tank: frost & vines
Magden: animals & frost
Stamden: animals & vines
Healer: animals & plants

Radiate77 · January 14

I wonder if they plan on keeping Winter’s Embrace similar because it fits within the new framework of every line should do everything?

noblecron · January 14

I think the biggest concern and question I have is will entire skill lines be removed. Like is sorc''s lightning going from sorc to Warden to fit the nature theme?

Radiate77 · January 14

noblecron wrote: »

I think the biggest concern and question I have is will entire skill lines be removed. Like is sorc''s lightning going from sorc to Warden to fit the nature theme?

I doubt they would simply remove the Lightning, if anything, I could see Sorcerer getting their hands on all three elements to play around with.

Soarora · January 14

noblecron wrote: »

I think the biggest concern and question I have is will entire skill lines be removed. Like is sorc''s lightning going from sorc to Warden to fit the nature theme?

It better not. I main sorc tank partly because it fits in with Maormer roleplay. While Maormer have been seen to summon storm atronachs, they’re more lightning than daedric summoning.

noblecron · January 14

Soarora wrote: »

noblecron wrote: »

I think the biggest concern and question I have is will entire skill lines be removed. Like is sorc''s lightning going from sorc to Warden to fit the nature theme?

It better not. I main sorc tank partly because it fits in with Maormer roleplay. While Maormer have been seen to summon storm atronachs, they’re more lightning than daedric summoning.

Hope not too cause I love my elementalist build. I did remake one of my sorcs as a warden though just cuase I tend tojump the gun and like being safe instead of sorry. The protectors of nirn and season theme does have me curious though

LunaFlora · January 14

noblecron wrote: »

I think the biggest concern and question I have is will entire skill lines be removed. Like is sorc''s lightning going from sorc to Warden to fit the nature theme?

i doubt it.
Poison in Dragonknight was not in the name of any skill line, it was only in a few morphs.

Winter's Embrace and Storm Calling are in name about frost and shock.

ESO_Nightingale · January 15

Radiate77 wrote: »

I wonder if they plan on keeping Winter’s Embrace similar because it fits within the new framework of every line should do everything?

Theyll definitetly touch it but theyll very likely incorporate a healer morph or 2 and another 1 or 2 dps morphs.

CaptainVenom · January 15

IMHO they need to rework Heavy Attacks to be either a charged, more powerful Lightning Ball (something like Skyrim's Chain Lightning, that hits hard and shocks nearby targets) or a channeled Flame/Ice Beam, as Staff HA is really inconsistent right now. And should ZOS choose to pick a charged lightning ball for Lightning Staves, they need to make all staves HA to not break stealth and invisibility. This is simply because all other weapons HA don't.

Ice Staves can be used for damage if you got a Critical Chance/Damage build btw... there's still Minor Brittle.

noblecron wrote: »

I think the biggest concern and question I have is will entire skill lines be removed. Like is sorc''s lightning going from sorc to Warden to fit the nature theme?

Highly doubt it. We still got subclasses.