OK, so I have played Warden for long enough. After getting to Major in PVP and unlocking basically everything I can in PVE, I can honestly say I'm pretty much done with the class, unless it sees some severe improvements.
If you're looking for something casual and fun to play, it's great and I would definitely recommend it. For competitive ESO, go with Sorc instead. Everybody else is anyway.
What I don't like
Gameplay feels slow
The slow gameplay. Everything is delayed. At first I thought it would great, like catching your opponents unaware with a huge amount of burst. Well, no. People are aware of Wardens now to step out of the way of Scorch, and Cliff Racer is way too slow.
I just had a 6 minute fight with a magicka sorc and literally 2 of my deep fissures landed. They saw me cast it, then would streak over me just before they landed making sure I was facing the other way. People aren't stupid ZOS.
The slow gameplay could be rectified by completing overhauling cliff racer. It's the Warden's main spammable, so it needs to be fast like every other spammable ability in this game. I would suggest removing the 15% damage from max range and replacing it with Major Breach, increasing the speed, making it shoot horizontally, and making it dodgeable (not reflectable, like Crushing Shock)
No reliable CC
The only CC wardens have is the magicka morph of Scorch (Deep Fissure). If you're fighting multiple people it only CCs one enemy, so I never really know who it will hit. I believe every class should have a reliable CC, especially classes that rely on burst combos such as magicka nightblades. So not only do we have slow combat, but we have no reliable CC to aid us in these combos, once again relying on Deep Fissure.
Maybe a morph of frozen gate could be reworked. You cast it once and it freezes the target in a kneeling position similar to fossilize. If you cast it on them again while they're frozen they get pulled to you and obviously thawed out. This can go through block
Low damage, no execute
You give the Warden slow damage abilities and no execute. Why? What was the thought process behind this? Trying to close kills on a Magicka Warden is like that feeling you get when you want to sneeze but can't quite get it out. It's frustrating.
You didn't really give us a lot of damage skills to work with, so it's hard to say where to put an execute. You can't add it to the cliff racer because that would be ridiculous, you can't put it into deep fissure because that's AOE. Fetcher infection is an option, but that's just a DoT that can be purged. I don't really know. Maybe if the first point was taken care of and had at least one faster attack we wouldn't need an execute as badly
The Passives
Winter's Embrace needs redoing. Most of the passives in there are just silly. 500 resistances for each winter's embrace skill slotted. Really? Unless you're role playing Sub-Zero from Mortal Kombat you're not going to get much use out of this.
Icy Aura is supposed to dull the effectiveness of snares by 15%, but the thing is, you barely notice it. There's so much snaring you in this game that it always feels the same. Change this to something more useful, or give it an additional bonus of "Increase Physical damage by 6% to at least benefit stam wardens.
Now if you haven't already guessed this is purely from a damage role perspective. I've also healed on a Warden, and it's actually not bad at all. If you're more into support, then this class is brilliant.
But yeah, if you want to be a damage dealer, then the Warden is only useful if your opponent has the IQ and reflexes of a target dummy.
I'll be on my Sorc until you get this mess cleaned up.
)
Anyway, let's stick to talks of builds, funny stories (like the time I got jumped by 8 AD as I rode across the bridge and they bashed me to death as I fell out of my chair laughing), map strategy, which in game snacks you prefer, and of course... Ice trebs.
