Animal Companions Skill Line

The animal companions line would be very interesting as a temporary pet-based skill line.
For example, instead of beetles attacking with a delay, three wolves are summoned that immediately attack the target for 4–5 seconds.

Faltasë wrote: »

Zodiarkslayer wrote: »

@ESO_Nightingale
I agree to most of your Warden proposals, under one caveat. And this is regarding your very first pain point. Class Identity.
In my opinion Frost damage and the animals/plants/nature theme of the Warden/Druid/Hermit of the Wilds archetype do not fit.

Don't get me wrong. Frost damage is awesome, I love it and I want to have Frost DPS characters in ESO. It is just: Why the Warden?

In my opinion all the idiosyncrasies of the class' identity stem from the fact, that at the time of release of the class, there were little to no sources for frost damage. And so it was slapped on to the latest and shiniest addition to the game. It probably seemed like a good idea at the time, but it hurt the class in the long run.

Frost damage needs its own class! It always did.

To be honest, as much as i hate that thought of having to switch classes again, and with Warden being my favorite, I do think that the class has a massive identity crisis and honestly wouldn't mind just completely upending the frost aspect. I mean even in its naming scheme and its thematics it doesn't feel cohesive (Winters Embrace = Skyrim, Animal Companions = Vvardenfell, Green Balance = Valenwood/ Breton Druid) Because you can't even synergize it properly with the other two lines(at least, in my opinion it feels underutilized)

The frost sets and damage synergies for frost in the game are still lackluster too (one frost weapon, two good frost themed sets, and utilizing it as a stamden really makes it feel... bad)

I do think that the class could benefit from identity consolidation, and if that means removing winters embrace for something equally as good if not better, than I am honestly all for it. That could also give them time to give us proper frost later.

Now the more realistic option which they will probably do is keep it the same, but tweak output. I think personally they should just consolidate damage types at the very least. If they're super determined to keep Ice/Bleed, then maybe winters embrace should embrace bleed(or direct physical damage), or maybe animal companions and green balance should get frost damage in their abilities.

It would be nice but i really dont believe theyll do that

Schlaflos wrote: »

would suggest postponing the Warden’s release in the summer and, instead of releasing the Sorcerer at the end of the year, releasing the Warden and the Necromancer at the same time.

Frost damage would be converted into Disease damage and moved to the Necromancer.

The Warden would receive an entirely new skill line, for example a Shapeshifter line — a true druid concept, but without full transformations.

The Warden has bonded deeply with nature and all living beings connected to it, not only outwardly but also spiritually.

Ultimate Ability

The ultimate would be the Bear, but not as a companion. Instead, the Warden either becomes a bear or is surrounded by a bear’s hide.
• Increased Armor
• Increased Health Regeneration

Additional Abilities
• Tiger Claw
Deals Bleed damage and increases Critical Chance.
• Bear Paw
Smashes the target to the ground, stuns it, and applies Minor Maim.
• Leopard Aura
Increases movement speed for you and your allies.

And so on

would this mean that there wouldn't be a frost damage line at all?

Agreed, I’m looking forward to the warden rework

They made a mistake by making Dragonknight all fire. They should remove elemental and damage type bonuses. Like fire, AoE, Frost, Shock, and Physical. I don't want a class for each damage type. Nor do I want a class that buffs one damage type so they subclass to get all those types. Just remove these buffs.

Dragons don't just breath fire. Engulfing Dragonfire should be Engulfing Dragon Breath and deal fire damage unless you have a shock or Ice staff equipped. They should make disintegrating dragonfire back to poison. Dragons breath All the elemental damage types. Dragonic power and Earthen Heart shouldn't JUST have fire damage like ardent flame does.

They should remove DoT and Direct damage from Staff passives. They should give all destro staffs equal potential for damage like you said and remove dot/direct damage buffs and give them all some weapon spell damage buff or something. I like the idea of Frost being versatile. Perhaps if you have winter's Embrace skill line it just gives you the extra damage and makes it just as good as the other destro staffs for offense while maintaining it's defense bonus.

Without the frost damage buff, you can buff Winter's embrace in so many ways. Ice can turn into shards that would deal crit damage. Maybe they should have a crit healing and damage bonus like earthen heart. Maybe they deal more damage to targets that are chilled. Maybe hefty attack animals would do more damage to targets that are chilled. It's not easy to make it synergize like they did with DK, but for sure the wrong answer is to lean into elemental or type of damage buffs. They need to remove all that from DK, Warden, and Sorc.

Giving frost damage to animal companion makes no sense. Ice Wraiths aren't even animals. They are spirits. And frost trolls/horkers would deal Physical or Bleed damage or Magical damage if they are just like the essence of the animal since why is a horker in Cyrodil?

Schlaflos wrote: »

The ultimate would be the Bear, but not as a companion. Instead, the Warden either becomes a bear or is surrounded by a bear’s hide.
• Increased Armor
• Increased Health Regeneration

Additional Abilities
• Tiger Claw
Deals Bleed damage and increases Critical Chance.
• Bear Paw
Smashes the target to the ground, stuns it, and applies Minor Maim.
• Leopard Aura
Increases movement speed for you and your allies.

As a warden main, this sounds awful. I want my pets, I want my flowers, I want my ice magic. I love my warden wings and running with my bear out. Right now, wardens are essentially water benders from ATLA (blood bending animals, waterbending plants, ice for offence and defence) but even in game it fits together as a storytelling mage. Ice and water can be used as screens for spoken stories given life by magic. It needs tweaks but people in this thread are rewriting the class and I'm worried they're going to listen to the vocal people who want change instead of the quiet ones who like what they have. Biggest change I want is let me use skill styles to change animals

Faltasë wrote: »

Remove elemental damage types on classes? Brother that is the most short-sighted thing I've ever heard. This would be awful as sets have synergies with different damage types. You're essentially trolling at this point.

I'm serious. It is a powerful buff which makes up a significant portion of the value of a skill line. You can't mix that line with every other skill line and feel ok about it, but you're highly encouraged to mix it with skill lines from other classes that synergize. Like Draconic with Storm Calling for bonus damage to Whirling Blades or Pillar of Nirn.

It restricts playstyles while encouraging certain types of subclassing.

Buff the ability damage of each skill. Don't restrict it and create non-synergies even within the class (Molten Whip is still Single Target)

The other option is each class has it's own damage type and element. That would be so restrictive and boring. Nobody should want that.

They did a good job making the class synergistic and balanced, they just need to buff each line more for DD, Tanking, Healing, and PvP because none of the lines are OP now that they are somewhat balanced so they need to make them all OP.

Nemesis7884 wrote: »

My pain points are more thematically warden being frost focused and not having a bear / ursaug or other transformation...

It sounds like you’re describing a Druid, not a Warden.

Faltasë wrote: »

Radiate77 wrote: »

Nemesis7884 wrote: »

My pain points are more thematically warden being frost focused and not having a bear / ursaug or other transformation...

It sounds like you’re describing a Druid, not a Warden.

The warden description is literally akin to the description of a druid from DnD? I mean it's literally a one to one recreation of a druid.

We have actual Druids in ESO. You fight one in Earthen Heart Enclave that transforms into a bear.

While I agree there is overlap, there is a distinction between the two, and that’s why Subclassing is so fun. You can actually make a Druid.

MashmalloMan wrote: »

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

CaptainVenom wrote: »

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.

Minor brittle isnt unique to ice staves anymore, its also a group buff, not a personal one, so every other build benefits from it significantly more.

Every direct damage status effect was reworked to function in 2 capacities, Chilled was the only one forced to use a weapon to get its new effect. I really hope if they rework Warden, they rework Frost staves, and Chilled so its 2nd bonus always applies regardless of weapon.

• Defile = Minor Defile + aoe proc for 40% of the DMG, spreads debuff (4s CD)
• Concuss = Minor Vulnerability + 15% damage done to Concussed targets
• Overcharge = Minor Magickasteal + x Magicka Return on proc
• Sunder = Minor Breach + 100 w/s damage for caster
• Chill = Minor Maim + Minor Brittle (with Frost staff)

Bare in mind, Minor Brittle was introduced to Frost Staves to keep it as a support weapon, that still gave a little more bang for their buck on the DPS side of things. At that time, it was super rare. Since then, all the above changes happened, plus Flame and Shock staves got a buff from 10% to 12% on DOT/Direct, which also applies to Status Effects/Channels. Frost staves continued to get nothing while being watered down from increased sources of Minor Brittle.

In addition to allies applying after Frost staves are reworked, I would actually prefer the secondary bonus change to an unamed effect for the caster instead of Minor Brittle. Give it other access points on abilities so it's not just sets, but make chill more selfish and competitive.

Yeah this needs to be done. Minor brittle used to be unique but it was never brought by frost dps because of the insanely good uptime. It was always a tank and support buff. Since they keep adding sources of minor brittle, they might as well remove the ice staff specific application.

I felt creative today and designed a spammable skill for winter's embrace that is also a payoff skill




I also designed a single target version of the ability that is likely much better balanced

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

I felt creative today and designed a spammable skill for winter's embrace that is also a payoff skill




I also designed a single target version of the ability that is likely much better balanced

I always love seeing these tooltips of new ability ideas you post. I've always wondered how you made them (online tool or just editing software).

Its just editing the html of the eso skillbook website. Its client-side so if you refresh the page it goes back to normal afterwards.

Sometimes I feel like ZOS should split the Warden and move some of its themes and abilities over to the new class.

As usual, I like the ideas for proper Frost Wardens, my biggest issues are with the destruction staff changes because for the most part what you proposed will end up being a nerf and I'm not sure that is needed. We have scribing now for pure elemental spammables so the need for Force Shock to change is lower than ever.

Speaking of Scribing, the Warden class mastery is not it. Charms are not thematic if you ask me and they are incredibly obnoxious in PvP because they are not telegraphed and come from a gigantic AOE. And unlike with other crowd control your character just keeps moving which makes it still to this day very easy to miss during the action. I think this should change and is probably something fun to think about when it comes to reimagining the class.

The other things that needs addressing is the power of Warden in the context of subclassing. Swapping abilities and passives seems to be how ZOS has chosen to address subclassing, so let's think a bit about that.

Netch is a very strong ability that makes animal companions more attractive for subclassing than it deserves to be. I think moving Netch out of Animal companions and into Green Balance alone would already fix a lot, especially because something out of Green Balance would have to move over (Nature's Grasp perhaps).
The other change to Netch that I would propose is that Netch doesn't continously cleanse you but rather cleanses you when the ability ends, cleansing more effects depending on its duration. Think of the way Rally's heal works. I don't like that Wardens can cast Netch and just shrug off effects without needing to use magicka for it at all. Changing its function like this would promote making choices of when to use Netch instead of letting people mindlessly spam Netch while on the run.
I think it would be fair if the ability cleanses 0 effects upon first cast, 1 effect if the ability ends/is recast after the first second has passed, 2 effects after 6seconds have passed, 3 effects after 11 seconds, 4 effects after 16seconds and 5 effects after 21 seconds.
I also propose Netch restores your highest maximum resource, rolling both morphs into one to free up the other morph for some cool new ability/effect maybe.

As for what the Warden's core concept, like Crux or corpses, could be, from the description ZOS gave us, my thoughts were that Wardens go through seasons during combat and abilities undergo slight changes in effect in different seasons. Will that be a mess? Yeah, probably. But it sounds cool, rewards practising your class and could work even with only one Warden skill line present. Think of item sets like Saint and Seducer, Daedric Trickery etc, just with a predictable pattern. Warden could work kind of like that and could have abilities reading "When this ability is cast while in Spring state: It also grants minor mending" or something. Would I prefer if Warden fully embraced winter and only winter? Yes. But I don't think this is on the table for ZOS sadly.

AzuraFan wrote: »

Lekjih wrote: »

As a warden main, this sounds awful. I want my pets, I want my flowers, I want my ice magic. I love my warden wings and running with my bear out. Right now, wardens are essentially water benders from ATLA (blood bending animals, waterbending plants, ice for offence and defence) but even in game it fits together as a storytelling mage. Ice and water can be used as screens for spoken stories given life by magic. It needs tweaks but people in this thread are rewriting the class and I'm worried they're going to listen to the vocal people who want change instead of the quiet ones who like what they have. Biggest change I want is let me use skill styles to change animals

Another warden main here. I'm not keen on the frost aspect of the warden, but I love animal companions and especially the bear. I lean towards playing pet classes in any game that has them (SP and MMO). If they took the bear away, it would ruin the class for me. I'd rather they expand on it and give us more options than the bear, but that's probably wishful thinking.

yeah i wouldnt want to see bear removed.

Destai wrote: »

Long time Warden main here, incredibly vested in how this turns out.

My biggest pain point is the inconsistent themes in the class. I have 3 wardens, and I had wanted them to be roughly a ranger, a frost mage, and a druid. That's not doable because we really only have 1.5 DPS skill lines. The Animal companions skill line is too married to Vvardenfell.

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.

It is. And like @tomofhyrule said, there's this desire to have DPS morphs of the support skill lines. This first came onto radar thanks to SkinnyCheeks, but I see no reason why we couldn't have this. It would reduce morphs per role, and expand the build capabilities of the jack-of-all-trades class. I'm envisioning a DPS line for Green Balance, focused on poison (poisonous plants) and a maturation of the frost damage capabilities

Personally, I don't think bleed is the best fit for Wardens. IMO, that makes the most sense for Nightblades, who are essentially blood mages, as represented in their Siphoning skill line.

I think ZOS needs to align on the core aesthetic for this class. It sounds like "Seasons" is it, but we don't know how that'll actually play out.

i had an idea for the "seasons" concept that i'll repost here for you if you'd be keen to check it out

These would replace piercing cold and a green balance passive.





Payoff Skill examples:










Ultimates would generate Midwinter/Midsummer!