Warden Rework?

Radiate77 · February 27

It’s about that time again! After seeing how our first rework is landing, I’m quite curious to see where people stand with Warden. What Skill Line do you guys feel is too strong, too weak, or too weird?

Poll is anonymous, but if any of you feel strongly about your pick I would love to hear why!
Ex. Frozen Gate should be a Frost spammable because of XYZ… ect

Jestir · February 27

Animal companions is dominate in PvP

Green balance is mandatory on a healer in group content

Winters embrace is also mandatory in group content on a tank

The class is a jumbled mess of themes with some of the strongest passives and skills in the game. I feel it really just needs some cleaning up (thematically) and buffs as a group DPS when compared to others

LunaFlora · February 27

i chose Green Balance, because it has no Damage. But really all lines need some help.
it really needs Poison or Bleed in some morphs
- Corrupting Pollen, hostile name.
- Leeching Vines, hostile name.
- Lotus Blossom?
- one of the Vine Grasp morphs should pull enemies towards you.
- Enchanted Forest ultimate could be a frosty forest that deals Frost Damage.

i hope the Animal Companions skills that deal Magic Damage will deal Frost instead.
Netch and Falcon's Swiftness need more distinctly different morphs. could be Damage, Shielding, Healing.
Growing Swarm will likely become similar to Fatecarver, like Dragonknight's Engulfing Dragonfire. Swarm is already an area of effect that goes forward so it just needs to become channeled.

Winter's Embrace needs more Frost damage and more distinctly different morphs.
i like the morphs of
- Arctic Blast and Polar Wind
- impaling Shards and Winter's Revenge, but Revenge needs to not require Destruction Staff.

Warden does not have any skills i can imagine being shuffled around.
The skill line themes are there, now they should amplify the themes and overlap the damage throughout the class instead of it being confined to each individual line.

Radiate77 · February 27

I really hope that Animal Companions gets a visual overhaul that severs the tie between Warden and Vvardenfell.

ZhuJiuyin · February 27

To be honest, I'm somewhat glad that Warden was reworked before Sorc. This allowed Warden to test how to fit three different themes into the same class, since Sorc is also a class that simultaneously has three themes.

The biggest problem with Animal Companions, in my opinion, is that it's almost impossible to see any connection to animals in the skills, except for Bear and Netch. Other skills are almost entirely animations, rather than depicting animals with health bars or physical forms. Many have also mentioned why it's limited to Vvardenfell animal forms. While Vvardenfell and Skyrim historically had disputes over the ownership of Solstheim and there was some exchange between the two regions, limiting a Solstheim druid class to using Vvardenfell animals is indeed too narrow. If the skills could have different animal transformations—for example, one of the bear morphs could become a wolf or Bristleback, one of the cliff racer morphs could become a bat, one of the scorch morphs could become a Duneracer, etc.—allowing Warden to use different animals from different places would strengthen its image as a guardian of nature.

Winter's Embrace needs an spam skill, and Frost Cloak needs more meaningful morphs than two similar skills. Frozen Gate is arguably the most useless skill in this line and needs a complete rework.

Green Balance lacks offensive skills. While this specialization was good in the past, given the New-DK paradigm, this line undoubtedly needs several offensive skills. Living Vines and Nature's Grasp should be reworked into offensive skills because both are rarely used.

With the New-DK example in place, the rework of other classes is indeed something to look forward to. My only complaint is the slow pace; it will take us two years to rework all the classes, which should have been done before the subclasses were released.

Zodiarkslayer · February 27

Radiate77 wrote: »

I really hope that Animal Companions gets a visual overhaul that severs the tie between Warden and Vvardenfell.

You mean VVARDENfell? 😂

I bet the Dev that came up with this pun is still giggling.

Apollosipod · February 27

As much as I like the skill lines of the Warden, I have always felt the class is incredibly janky. I understand that they wanted the class to feel like some kind of "master of the seasons" (at least that's what they said in the skill refresh topic), but it always felt like three wildly different skill lines with no shared theme. The closest to a theme the warden has is "Vvardenfell" and it even falls short of that.

Green Balance: None of those skills really relate to Vvardenfell.
Animal Companions: All of them relate to Vvardenfell except for the ultimate for some super weird reason. There aren't even any bear NPCs in that region! Why, for the love of the Divines, did ZOS decide that the ultimate skill should be a random animal completely absent form the island every other creature in the skill tree is designed around?

Winter's Embrace: An ice skill tree somehow thematically meant to be in line with the most volcanic location on Tamriel.

SneaK · February 27

Animal Companions IMO gives away too many majors/minors. Shalks and Swiftness both give away a Major/Minor at the same time. Not very common but even Dive could net you 400 additional WD/SD. Why does every skill in this tree have some special buff/debuff…

Then you have some of the highest percentage buffs buried in passives on two main stats, recov/crit damage.

Animal Companions is by far one of the most overperforming skill lines in the game (PvP). It offers too much.

They also need to get rid of Charm sig script, it is absurdly broken.

tomofhyrule · February 27

I mean, based on DK, we know all three lines will end up getting a rework.

Winter’s Embrace does already have a lot done to it to make it have skills for damage and support. I’d guess that they might not need to do too much to that.
I will say that I know Frozen Gate is a constant target for rework proposals, but the pull version is really useful in niche circumstances (like when you have those adds that put up ice walls that seem to override chain targeting). Polar Wind is also a bit overloaded and the wrong morph got the nerfhammer (a burst heal conditional on not having nearby enemies is… certainly a choice)

But based on the plan, Green Balance will need to end up getting some damaging abilities and passives, and Animal Companions will need some support stuff. I wouldn’t be surprised to see something like Shalks turned into a debuff only and the burst damage being sent to the plants or something to that effect.

I don’t think they will need to do too much of an animation rework though. The DLC Classes already have unique animations for all of their skills, as opposed to the basegame Classes that mostly reused each others’ animations.

CatalinaWineMixer2 · February 27

I liked the class just as it was before subclass. It could handle end game in all 3 roles. In all content. They still do accel at healing, as they should. I do not want to see Dps on green balance. Dps skills need to stay on Dps skill lines. Breaking down crucial support lines for more dps or attempting to eliminate support roles will cause more people to leave the game.

Furthermore, it is not the job of healer's to cause more dps in any content. Buff them, yes so the group (and actual dps) can. Defend themselves, sure. If you go as pure class, it's a non issue moving forward. There is way too much dps as it already is. All of the content in the game was cleareable with roughly half of the dps that exists today. And still is. Ossein Cage might be the only exception.

All classes need to be designed around functioning as a pure class, not how they will be disassembled and cherry picked by subclass. I can already hear the gatekeepers rubbing their hands together about what they will try to force on the supports next. They should start doing mechs and stop trying to cheat the system.

For the record, I reject povs and clears from end game content in my guilds. We do not want or require them and never will. Everyone can run with us and actually learn to do it with people who really want to play with them. I will MAKE time to run content with my own guild members. For their sakes and mine. I dont need carried by dps to do it either.

I truly hope the new trials moving forward are designed around strategy, not just more dps. It's boring.

Certain classes are expected to be better in some roles than others and that's normal. Can you heal as a Dragonknight? Sure. SHOULD you heal as a Dragonknight? There are better classes for that like Warden and Templar. That's normal as it should be. This applies to tanks as well. Should you tank with a Dragonknight? Absolutely! Its expected they're good tanks. Should you tank with a Nightblade? Compared to the Dragonknight, of course not.

The decisions they make with these need to be done very carefully. They should have at least redone the characters before they even considered subclass. Now they're attempting to solve the problems they created by working backwards.

Jestir wrote: »

Animal companions is dominate in PvP

Green balance is mandatory on a healer in group content

Winters embrace is also mandatory in group content on a tank

The class is a jumbled mess of themes with some of the strongest passives and skills in the game. I feel it really just needs some cleaning up (thematically) and buffs as a group DPS when compared to others

I agree with Jestir on this.

I hope they consider adding a cleanse to Green Balance. For the sake of pure Warden tanks and pure Warden healers, not any other reason. I am OK with the Vvardenfell theme on the Warden. Ive said before they should institute in game surveys so they can hear from the whole audience, not just the test surver. Id like to hear what everone has to say about thematics in the game regarding classes (Warden in this case).

I truly cherish this character and have been hanging on by a thread in the game bc it has been wrecking balled by subclass. My primary character is my Warden (formerly the DK until Warden release). Its the only character I want or need. It knows all of the recipes and housing praxis' and I should be able to play my main character without being forced to Subclass it or play on a different character I do not enjoy.

The Warden being a superior healer is my primary concern. Warden being a top end tank as the second. I truly miss my frost dps as well but it's no where near as important as its function in support roles and preventing dwindling and tired supports from hanging it up (and they have been in large numbers since last summer).

noblecron · February 27

I feel like all 3 lines are weird in general. It's a mix of so many different themes that doesn't feel like it meshes well. On top of that you got animal companions that dont make any sense. It's all morrowind creatures with a bear slapped on

Radiate77 · February 27

I have a feeling that this poll will be more balanced than any of the future Class ones and that just goes to show why Warden is #2 for Rework.

This class needs to really buckle up and drive home a theme, and at the moment it’s just all over the place.

Soarora · February 27

Voted Green Balance because it has so many dead skills. Off the top of my head, the only useful ones are budding seeds and maybe the ultimate. Can’t wait for lotus flower to be redone!

Destai · February 27

There's some pain points for me that fall across all skill lines. Right now, we have 1.5 damage skill lines. There's so much room to grow in this class. The passives overall are great, but I find other classes are a little easier to build out. I'd love to see GB have a full-fledged damage skill suite; could really into the druid fantasy there. I'm thinking poison builds. I'd like there be a frost spammable (other morph could be a taunt). The Swarm skills are very unreliable from a casting perspective; they could turn into the Warden "beam" like some others suggested.

ESO_Nightingale · February 27

This is a strange poll because of how wide the question is, but my pick here is green balance. As far as i can see, it is the single most specialised skill line in the entire game and will need the most work to make it fit into the new identity of class skill lines. It needs damage passives and damage skills because it doesnt have a single one.

We already started work on winters embrace a long time ago.

The_Meathead · February 27

Just don't ruin Polar Wind, please.

That's the biggest request I have, outside of nuking Charm from orbit. (And I say this as a Warden.)

IviRo · February 27

LunaFlora wrote: »

Growing Swarm will likely become similar to Fatecarver, like Dragonknight's Engulfing Dragonfire.

Oh, I was thinking about the Winter’s Embrace line.

LunaFlora · February 27

IviRo wrote: »

LunaFlora wrote: »

Growing Swarm will likely become similar to Fatecarver, like Dragonknight's Engulfing Dragonfire.

Oh, I was thinking about the Winter’s Embrace line.

would also be nice, but i cannot think of any existing Winter's Embrace skill that is similar to Fatecarver already

BasP · February 27

I voted for Green Balance as well mostly because that skill line really needs to become more useful for DPS. It's completely useless for a "pure" Warden damage dealer in PvE, which is a too bad. But it could probably become more useful for tanks too - one morph of Nature's Grasp, for example, could become a pull that taunts the enemy and has some other benefit.

The other skill lines would benefit from multiple reworked skills and passives as well, however, in my opinion. The Animal Companions skill line doesn't have a good spammable, both morphs of Swarm are underwhelming, and its damage output in PvE depends on the bear too much (though the bear isn't suited for a lot of fights). Besides, it only has one decent passive for DPS: Advanced Species.

Winter's Embrace is arguably in a more balanced state, but I think both morphs of the Ultimate are lackluster, one morph of Frozen Gate could become less niche, both morphs of Frost Cloak are too similar and both the Icy Aura and Frozen Armor passives are a bit underwhelming as well.

Aside from that, I'd also love to see some skill styles for the Animal Companions skills that turn the abilities into non-Vvardenfell related creatures. I think it would be nice if the cliff racer could become a hawk, similar to Aerie's Cry's proc, for example.

Radiate77 · February 27

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

This is a strange poll because of how wide the question is, but my pick here is green balance.

The wide net approach is great for helping to illustrate which Skill Lines need the most attention.

tomofhyrule · February 27

Radiate77 wrote: »

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

This is a strange poll because of how wide the question is, but my pick here is green balance.

The wide net approach is great for helping to illustrate which Skill Lines need the most attention.

Correct me if I’m wrong though - you aren’t personally doing the overhaul though, right? This is just a thought experiment. And as such, it’s considering things differently from how the Combat team is, so the point is misleading.

We know all skill lines will get attention when the Class is done. It’s not like the Combat Team will come up to any Class and say “eh, forum user @N00bSlayer69 considers Siphoning a low-attention line, so let’s just leave it alone and not touch it for the rework.”

I realize that you don’t like the idea of considering a Class a whole rather than three individual modular Skill Lines, but the idea that we’ve seen from the DK rework is that they’re doing all three lines simultaneously to give each tools for each role. Therefore considering which of any Class’s lines “needs” attention “more” than others is a moot point. The better consideration would be something like how each line would be addressed, i.e. by adding support skills to lines that are exclusively damage oriented or vice vers, or highlighting passives that are over- or under-powered (like the ones for NB

Radiate77 · February 27

@tomofhyrule 100% a thought experiment, and these polls have been going longer than the Reworks. As someone who has frequented this forum, I would expect you to recognize the format.

I don’t think we should write off @N00bSlayer69 either.

Part of the stated goal of this rework is to make each Skill Line more modern and visually appealing, who knows if the reason he picked Siphoning had anything to do with the aesthetic.

Radiate77 · February 27

I’m going to reiterate from a previous poll:

Everyone playing ESO has different values. Some people prefer a more well rounded experience, others prefer not having to overthink. Some people prefer more muted visuals while others prefer more flashy.

Bottom line is this, what Skill Lines are people MOST unhappy with. That is the thought experiment. I’ve done a more rounded Poll for classes in general and whittled that down before the official announcement of Reworks, and I’ve made one of these for Dragonknight post announcement… as I will for Sorcerer after Warden.

Nemesis7884 · February 27

I would like to see winters embrace skill line be reworked into "elements" that utilises all 3 damage types fire, ice, lightning which i think fits the warden theme better

Emeratis · February 28

I have some gripes with all the warden skill lines so it was hard to choose. I also have worries about my characters' identities since my wardens are probably my second most diverse in terms of thematic of characters (behind nightblade). I also have a character that heavily depends on warden subclassing for her thematic.

Characters for context into that so some of what I say below makes sense:

imperial stamden dps/pvp bruiser-he is a melee fighter/ranger with an affinity for ice magic. loosely wanted him to play like frost dk from wow
nord healden-meant to be a nature witch who honed her magic to react to skyrim's tundra
bosmer tank-a devotee of y'ffre who focuses on plant/animal magic
my bosmer sorc/warden hybrid-priestess of y'ffree healer/dps, focuses heavily on nature magic and geomancy with the sorc dark magic crystal motif+green balance to fit her thematic better

Green Balance:
Starting here since it's probably the line most impactful for me thematically for a lot of characters. As others have pointed out, this line has many dead skills and redundant morphs. I'd love to see more tank and dps morphs in this line, and it'd probably be easy to do. I also would like to see more of the healing skills/morphs seem useful/rewarding.
Some things I'd like to see here:

Corrupting pollen turned into a damage aoe
nature's grasp have at least one morph maybe considered for a tank skill/pull (I know concern of redundancy with gate but I think there is a case that could be made for this)
Living Vines having a dps morph at the very least would be nice
something to make lotus flower useful, animation is gorgeous but it feels kinda niche/useless compared to other similar skills. also as much as I would love the light attack to heal skills to be good (shout out to our other forgotten fave mend wounds), the sad truth is most heal skills in eso are valued by what buffs they give more than their raw healing output so cool skills that just heal or heal more don't often see play much
would love to see grove, which I find to be one of the most beautiful ult animations in game and I like the general feel of the skill, feel more valuable/useful than it is. as others have pointed out, it's pretty niche atm at best
somewhat controversial take-I always hated toughtness getting removed from war horn and given to warden. it made it so through various metas "there must always be a warden healer" which felt very anti-play your own way. while I liked healing on a warden sometimes, I preferred other classes. this also restricted warden tanks and dps from thriving as it was a very healer centric buff. even now, this feels archaic as necro or other class unique buffs have sources in other ways in game but warden's toughness, which wasn't originally theirs, is still a last holdout? It's frustratingly silly.
if green balance is getting more diversity the passives need to be more than just stacked buffs to healing obviously

Winter's Embrace
Oh, this one is complicated. Winter's Embrace has been requested to have more of a dps lean for a while, as both ice mage enjoyers and elementalist enjoyers have wanted to use it for their builds. While it's had some mileage in doing that, it could go farther. I would also not mind seeing more healing perks here. I know some people have asked for ice dps to stay magic but due to my character above and for more diversity of concepts I would prefer if warden dps more readily used arcanist's "max/min stat" system so that I can have my ice knight and other people can have their ice mage and we can all be happy (same for other lines so martial/stam heavy rangers can have their fantasy while nature mages can also have theirs). My biggest disappointment with the dk rework was this, especially with the fire beam being mag only for channel or stam only for the more spammable version (I really wanted a mag spammable version personally, still do). Either way, not to go too much off topic with that but I think it's something to factor in here
Some things I'd like to see in this line:

again kill redundancy in frost cloak, so a morph is freed up for other stuff
add in more damage skills that feel good to use, I sadly don't have more detailed suggestions here since it's been a hot minute since I used this line for anything other than pvp. I will say there is a risk of while cc on damage skills is useful in pvp, in pve it's sometimes an annoyance for grouping so similar to dk stuff that might need to be thoguht about here
deal with potential redundancy in crystallized shield
frozen gate is going to be a bit of a tangent. first, I want to say I agree with Tom pointing out that the unique trap method that frozen gate uses to pull is very fun when it works and interesting and I would love to see it kept in some capacity. traps deserve a place in things and it shows an example of how trap based mechanics can work in pve especially (see the nightblade feedback thread where I go into wanting traps higlighted more in nightblade than they are). The other side of the skill, is a teleport. I love teleport skills in this game (nightblade shade, arcanist gate, sorc streak), but they are in a weird spot in general and need some help. Mobility is a heavily underrated stat in pvp and all of these skills shine better there, but in pve their uses are often niche or out of combat utility or cheesy flex moments. It would be cool to have frozen gate be the start of seeing teleport based skills get a little more love and rewarding the fun factor of those of us who enjoy using them. There are a few ways this could be gone about, no strong preference from me, but I would love for the discussion to be on the table at the very least.
not as egregious as green balance, but most winter's passives are very tank oriented with some dps mixed in

Animal Companion
Biggest complaint of animal companion right off the bat is that the animals are more Vvardenfell themed. While some of my wardens are mercenaries or travelers, it feels kinda bad to have the animals in this line more related to one region. I can handwave some as exotic pets but it would be nicer to have a more general representation of Tamriel's animals and then have skill styles give us a more unique aesthetic (see the crow styles for warden, very good addition).

Animal Companion has always been clunky to use in pve and similar to nb suffers from the whole "high burst but then damage peters out" problem. Similar to other lines has redundant morphs problem.
What I'd like to see:

look at potential redundancy in dive and fetcher, possible to offer a heal morph here to make up for the damage morphs added in green balance
as I mentioned above, really want to see netch be a more generic animal with netch as a morph, also potentially look at this versus other regen skills that work (nb siphoning attacks) since it doesn't feel amazing, could potentially offer a support/damage morph split more instead of mag or stam, etc
this skill used to be more value but it feels like the buffs it offers are too common and similar to netch it feels like this could potentially have existing morphs put together and a new morph added for more diversity
for a damage line, a lot of the animal companion passives are more utility and resource based, that can be okay but maybe adding a little more damage oomph to the passives would help some, or if looking at other passives in other lines and diversifying this could be where the real legwork happens

Just a bit of loose thoughts/ideas. I'm more a warden casual I'll admit. I've wanted to play the class more and like it but I admit I play it less than I'd like to due to it feeling clunky and awkward since it's inception. It'd be cool to see it's versatility matter more in a gameplay/role sense for the lines while still preserving a robust amount of themes. I think this can be done. I'm hoping the warden rework makes it more exciting/interesting to play since I do like the themes for my characters, just not the gameplay.

spartaxoxo · February 28

Zodiarkslayer wrote: »

Radiate77 wrote: »

I really hope that Animal Companions gets a visual overhaul that severs the tie between Warden and Vvardenfell.

You mean VVARDENfell? 😂

I bet the Dev that came up with this pun is still giggling.

Omg I'm just now getting that lololol

spartaxoxo · February 28

I hope Frostden DPS becomes more of a thing

Radiate77 · February 28

Green Balance is really taking off.

IviRo · February 28

I hope I'm wrong, but I think that to understand how classes will be reworked, you need to look at the DK's abilities in his line and what abilities are available there.

There is one skill for healing in each of the two lines.
One skill for DD in each line.
Two for defense.
Two for control.
The rest have morphs for healing, defense, or damage.
Ultimates are also divided into damage and group buffs or self-defense.

I think the other classes will be reworked in roughly the same format as the DK.
When I look at Warden, it's hard for me to imagine what skills will be redesigned and changed in accordance with the new DK.

The main question is what abilities each class will have to perform certain functions and correspond to their identity as defined by ZOS.

But what interests me most in the class descriptions is the Necromancer, who, judging by the description, will be a summoner and controller of pets (undead).

aspergalas4 · February 28

Would love to see dd skills in Green Balance to play into the druid archetype. Frost feels out of place in the class in general. Animal companions need to be decoupled from Vvard theme and highly customisable with a range of skill styles (different animals)

Radiate77 · February 28

IviRo wrote: »

I hope I'm wrong, but I think that to understand how classes will be reworked, you need to look at the DK's abilities in his line and what abilities are available there.
There is one skill for healing in each of the two lines.

One skill for DD in each line.

Two for defense.

Two for control.

The rest have morphs for healing, defense, or damage.

Ultimates are also divided into damage and group buffs or self-defense.

I think the other classes will be reworked in roughly the same format as the DK.
When I look at Warden, it's hard for me to imagine what skills will be redesigned and changed in accordance with the new DK.

The main question is what abilities each class will have to perform certain functions and correspond to their identity as defined by ZOS.

But what interests me most in the class descriptions is the Necromancer, who, judging by the description, will be a summoner and controller of pets (undead).

Thank you for the blown up pictures of each Class Identity! I’m going to add the Warden one to the OP.

The Elder Scrolls Online

Warden Rework?

Warden Rework? 34 votes