Warden Battleground Healer For Update 45 - Construye PvP - ESO

While underwhelming in a lot of Cyrodiil scenarios, Warden is the best healer for Battlegrounds. It provides a ton of utility to the group while also having easy class access to all essential buffs. The class's mobility is amazing too. I have played similar builds on 3 other classes (Nightblade, Sorcerer and Templar), and while they all function well in their own right, Warden is the easiest and most effective.

Build features

• Solid healing output.
• Defensive buffs for your team.
• Good survivability.
• Access to all important buffs in BGs.
• Easy rotation.
• Gets rid of enemy debuffs.

First let us look at the sets

• Wretched Vitality is a staple set for carrying sustain. Both its buffs are procced by Ice Fortress, so make sure to refresh that every 15 seconds.
• Curse-Eater is a great set to use in Battlegrounds for 2 reasons. First, it is a set that adds a lot to the team's defense and survivability by getting rid of debuffs. Especially in 8v8s, where MMR doesn't seem to be a thing and you regularly get grouped with potatoes, I've come to prefer defensive sets such as this over more offense-oriented ones like Spell Power Cure. Those 22k health bow spammers need every bit of defense they can get to live long enough for your burst heal to hit them. The second reason I like this set is that it, unlike other defensive sets such as Gossamer and Transmutation, can be one-barred pretty effectively. It allows you to exercise a degree of control over who/when you purge as well, on the off-chance you encounter Plaguebreak. But all in all there is little to no risk of blowing up your team with purges like you might in Cyrodiil. In 4v4, you might want to consider Stendarr's Embrace instead. This set has a much longer cooldown per target (30 instead of 8) but it removes all negative effects from them and is the best counter against anti-healing sets such as Jerall War Chief.
• Death Dealer's Fete buffs our main attribute pools, which is great in general, but doubly so on Warden, where you can HP stack quite effectively, carrying our frontbar health pool from 36k to over 42k (may vary per race).
• One piece of Trainee for extra health.

Skills

• Frontbar: Deceptive Predator is an excellent mobility tool as it removes snares and gives us a 6-second speed buff. It's a pretty cheap skill too, so if you spam this instead of dodge rolling constantly, it makes stam management a breeze. Budding Seeds is an AOE ground heal. This is our flex spot, so you can put whatever you like here. Polar Wind is one of our main heal spammables. Use it to heal yourself when under pressure, or on smaller groups of allies. Ice Fortress gives us and our nearby allies Major Resolve, and also gives Minor Protection to just ourselves. The other morph is a bit more effective to give everyone Major Resolve, but I chose this morph because it triggers both parts of Wretched Vitality in one go. Echoing Vigor is one of our main heal-over-time skills. Keep it up at all times and press twice if you have more than 5 allies around you. Healing Thicket is a ground AOE healing ultimate. Works especially well on flag games, but you can put this cheap ultimate anywhere a big fight is taking place.
• Backbar: Blue Betty is here simply to give us Major Sorcery/Brutality. It also gives us some magicka back, which is nice. Healing Springs is our ground AOE heal, which also boosts our magicka recovery. Put it on flags and other push points along with Budding Seeds to provide a cushion of healing as your team is dishing out damage. Radiating Regeneration is our other heal-over-time skill. Blessing of Restoration is our burst heal for larger groups. If your team gets pulled by Dark Convergence or Rush of Agony, spamming this heal into the group is more effective than Polar Wind. It also has 2 other functions: it gives the Minor Resolve buff, and since we only have Curse-Eater active on the backbar, this heal is the most effective method to get rid of up to 3 debuffs per player (8-second cooldown per target). Lotus Blossom gives us a minute's worth of Major Prophecy, while Replenishing Barrier is mainly there to boost our magicka sustain a little. You can also use it if your entire team is getting dunked on, since it is better at preventing a total wipe than Healing Thicket.

Weapons

In Battlegrounds, I always opt for Sword & Shield + Restoration Staff. Restoration Staff is needed simply because we need some of its skills, and also because a Resto heavy attack is the best way to regain magicka in those rare moments where we run out of magicka. Sword & Shield is, in my view, the best out of several options for Battlegrounds. Some of its passives are similar to an Ice Staff, but Sword & Shield is still the best because it provides an additional bonus to blocking projectiles, and it allows us to move faster while blocking. The latter may not seem like much, but in a lot of cases, moving out of a damage point while blocking is less costly and more effective than dodge rolling out of it. As said, an Ice Staff would also work, but it has no advantages apart from being ranged and is not as strong. Dual Wielded Swords are always an option too, because they give the best healing output, but with the amount of damage you have to tank in your average Battleground, I don't think this is the best choice for this content. Not running Dual Wield means that we won't have access to Major Evasion, but at least on Warden we have Minor Evasion because of Deceptive Predator. That said, I don't think the Evasion buffs are nearly as vital in BGs as they are in Cyrodiil, simply because in the former we don't have to deal with sieges or ballgroups. Dropping either Sword & Shield or several pieces of Heavy Armor just to get access to Major Evasion would therefore constitute a net loss in survivability.

Weights & traits

I won't go over everything as it's pretty self-explanatory, but I run 3 Heavy, 3 Medium and 1 Light in Battlegrounds. This gives me a balance of power, survivability and sustain that I personally feel comfortable with. You can re-arrange this weight distribution to fit your own preferences and playstyle.

I run 2x Swift and 1x Infused on jewelry. You could add more Infused to boost your stats more, but I find that running 2 Swift is goated, because paired with easy access to our speed buff, this means that we are faster than 99% of Battlegrounds players and can easily kite damage when targeted by multiple enemies. So if you ever feel under pressure, keep Deceptive Predator up, and spam Polar Wind as you dance around objects. Especially in 8v8s you will be extremely hard to take down.

Mundus

We use The Atronach because sustain in Battlegrounds is crap.

Race
On this build, I am an Argonian, which is really good for this because of the extra healing done and the potion passive that gives us back a little extra in all 3 resource pools. As always, Breton is also great. You can play this build on any race though, as long as you take care to rebalance the attributes and sustain values where needed.

Attributes
I put 50 into health and 14 into magicka, but as said, this is sort of race-dependent. Just make sure you have at least 35k health with your food buff active but WITHOUT Minor Toughness or Death Dealer's Fete active.

Curse

No vampirism because vampirism is and always has been cringe.

Potions

Use simple tri-stat potions since we already have all important buffs covered.

Food

Orzorga's Smoked Bear Haunch is the best, but you can also use Jewels of Misrule to save a lot of gold and get nearly the same effect.

Changelog
2025/03/10 - Added a paragraph to the guide about weapon choices and made sure the build is fully up to date with Update 45.