Werewolf Theorycrafting (PvP)

Ace_SiN

It's also a nerf to Werewolf's main source of damage (left click spam) since the bleed doesn't apply on the first hit anymore. I haven't tested it, but that sounds pretty significant in PvP. It would be a welcomed change if they nerfed the cost of the stamina abilities, but that doesn't appear to be the case.

IlCanis_LupuslI

Autsch

IlCanis_LupuslI

Grim Focus: This ability and its morphs will now reduce your damage taken by 3% for each Light or Heavy Attack you use, up to 5 times. Note that this bonus will persist even if the Grim Focus buff fades from you, as it is tethered to the amount of stacks you had while the buff was active. This effect will be consumed when you use your stacks by firing the spectral bow or when you leave combat.
Developer Comment:
Spoiler
The goal of this change is to alleviate some of the pains that were brought up where this ability required a cost and global to activate, but only enabled you to participate in a mini-game before you were able to be rewarded, unlike any other skill in the game. The initial intent was to remove the overloaded nature of this ability where it granted you more passive damage, but then also granted you more burst damage. Now, the focus has shifted for this ability to be tangible with multiple play styles, and can be used by tanks, damage dealers, or even healers with the bonuses it provides. We went with damage mitigation in order to help reinforce the desire to gain the healing from this skill, and wanted to avoid granting more flat damage or resource management.

It sounds like this will carry over to werewolf form. So stamblade werewolf effectivly 15% less damage taken??? hmmmm sounds awesome.

Goregrinder

Chrlynsch wrote: »

So close, that's alessian order not orgnum.

Are those CP 810 stats or No-CP stats?

crazywolfpusher

Dashmatt wrote: »

Can anyone confirm if the Werewolf bleed changes on PTS are as bad as they sound? It seems like a massive nerf to damage output.

Is not a huge nerf for pvp. The duration also was reduced which means each tick will do lot more damage. Pack leader tooltip is around 12K? now that in 4 seconds is a lot of pressure.
Claw initial damage increase is also a buff.

For pve bleed nerf is around 5k dps loss if not more.

darkblue5

I'm thinking of trying out something like these two builds.

One's built around Alessian Order because I love what it does to poor vMA. (Chudan/Alessian/Hulking)
https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Special:EsoBuildData?id=146474

The other is assuming the (carried over?) Grim Focus mitigation is OP enough to run solo with Shackle, Seventh and Troll King. (Seventh still procs Troll King, no?)
https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Special:EsoBuildData?id=146515

Both are on based on wood elf nightblades but needn't be. Also couldn't find a good way to indicate poisons when I thought there used to be on UESP.

Wuuffyy

Right.

darkblue5

I've been following and inspired by this thread for a while I hoped I'd get even a response about whether some of the gear I heard about through this thread would maybe work for those build ideas? Haven't seen many WW build videos lately...
Or critiques of my rough build ideas I largely put together using sets this thread has occasionally talked about.

IlCanis_LupuslI

Im playing around with medium nmg as a ww with desert rose, its quite nice im liking it

Datolite

I'm back looking for a new build for my orc stamplar since she is basically useless after the nerfs in mer form. Any suggestions for a well rounded BG build? Preferably with Kena but I am flexible.

IlCanis_LupuslI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPveZgYfdv4
Hircines Rose
Werewolf stamblade build for Elsweyr
Medium armor
Having tons of fun with it I hope you like it.

IlCanis_LupuslI

The Sword and Bord bug with Physical Weapon Expert Cp is Fixed i tested it just now.

Aznox

IlCanis_LupuslI wrote: »

The Sword and Bord bug with Physical Weapon Expert Cp is Fixed i tested it just now.

Yep, that makes S&B+poison the best WW bar for CP PvP in my opinion, pushing it just above 2H/DW in overall value.

Qbiken

Aznox wrote: »

IlCanis_LupuslI wrote: »

The Sword and Bord bug with Physical Weapon Expert Cp is Fixed i tested it just now.

Yep, that makes S&B+poison the best WW bar for CP PvP in my opinion, pushing it just above 2H/DW in overall value.

Finally, no more reason not to run SnB + 2h.

IlCanis_LupuslI

Agreed already changed on my stamsorc ww^^

Datolite

Aznox wrote: »

IlCanis_LupuslI wrote: »

The Sword and Bord bug with Physical Weapon Expert Cp is Fixed i tested it just now.

Yep, that makes S&B+poison the best WW bar for CP PvP in my opinion, pushing it just above 2H/DW in overall value.

What would you recommend for noCP in that case?

Aznox

Datolite wrote: »

Aznox wrote: »

IlCanis_LupuslI wrote: »

The Sword and Bord bug with Physical Weapon Expert Cp is Fixed i tested it just now.

Yep, that makes S&B+poison the best WW bar for CP PvP in my opinion, pushing it just above 2H/DW in overall value.

What would you recommend for noCP in that case?

In noCP S&B loses 1500 resist and the CP-amplified part of the shield enchant, but it's still tied with 2H/DW.

At the moment I'm using WW on S&B bar in all my PvP builds except duel.

Raudgrani

Could we say Medium armor is turning into meta for PVP werewolves? I run a Nord one with 5/1/1, 5 medium. Over resist cap without really investing into resistance, or picking specific resist sets - except for Mighty Chudan, I might add. I usually go Troll King or Chudan for PVP ww, so I either "health regen" through damage, or try and shut it out.

What would you say about sets like Ranger's Gait or Barkskin on a ww? I can safely say, my biggest concern are first and foremost all snares and immobilizations, and secondly dot's. I have a good way to gain lots of magicka for heals, but the snares I still feel probelematic. Try to be on immovable/savagery/endurance pots 24/7, but immovable itself is just like 10 seconds per pot, of course.

Qbiken

Raudgrani wrote: »

Could we say Medium armor is turning into meta for PVP werewolves? I run a Nord one with 5/1/1, 5 medium. Over resist cap without really investing into resistance, or picking specific resist sets - except for Mighty Chudan, I might add. I usually go Troll King or Chudan for PVP ww, so I either "health regen" through damage, or try and shut it out.

What would you say about sets like Ranger's Gait or Barkskin on a ww? I can safely say, my biggest concern are first and foremost all snares and immobilizations, and secondly dot's. I have a good way to gain lots of magicka for heals, but the snares I still feel probelematic. Try to be on immovable/savagery/endurance pots 24/7, but immovable itself is just like 10 seconds per pot, of course.

Heavy armor werewolf outperforms medium in every single aspect except damage (and you can gain quite alot of damage as a heavy armor ww anyway). Your magicka and stamina sustain is significantly better in heavy compared to medium + your healing and survivability is alot better in heavy.

Is medium viable? Yes. Is it better than heavy? I wouldn't say so atm.

IlCanis_LupuslI

I prefer medium because of the much better mobility since i play mostly open world. I still think medium isnt so much worse then heavy on a ww atm the stam sustain is 10000% better and the mag sustain... well im wearing desert rose for a reason ^^

Qbiken

IlCanis_LupuslI wrote: »

I prefer medium because of the much better mobility since i play mostly open world. I still think medium isnt so much worse then heavy on a ww atm the stam sustain is 10000% better and the mag sustain... well im wearing desert rose for a reason ^^

I remade the build you posted but replaced medium NMG with heavy instead and the stamina sustain is better with the heavy setup (math doesn't lie unless I did mine wrong) compared to the medium setup of the same build, due to how strong constitution + the extra stamina on heavy attack is in heavy.

IlCanis_LupuslI

I can only tell you how it feels like to me(Playstyle wise) Plus the mobility and damage are much better then heavy armor. Expecially in open world where having to run like crazy from a big group is mandatory I prefer medium. Plus as a stamblade with the relentless damage mitigation I'm tanky enough to not have to rely on heavy and I choose to take the superb mobility aand medium armor damage instead.

IlCanis_LupuslI

And tankyness is awesome I had a 2vs3 with me and my buddy also a ww vs 3 stamden, well 2 min 2 permafrost and about 10 dawny and 30 isch beetles later they were dead, medium is working extremely well for me and it synergies much better with me beeing a khajiit vs using heavy armor. Beeing able to use my mobility vs enemies is something I could only dream of in heavy armor. Also the reduced ability cost is quite noticeable.

Chrlynsch

IMO

Medium just currently isn't worth using on a solo open world werewolf.

In order to sustain your healing you will have to use sets such as Desert rose/Prisoner's.

To build up tankiness you have to run pirate or mighty Chudan.

The sustain you gain with medium is a washed out by the fact that werewolf benefits the most from the extra stam return on heavies and constitution.

In heavy you gain more health and recieve more heals both of these help wolf's survival and medium armor offers nothing to aid the wolf in this category.

Seeing as you have to sacrifice 2 sets to aid your survival you gain very little from the 18% increased weapon damage from werewolf line.

Same goes to the % based increase to stamina recovery you gain from medium. Even picking Prisoner's rags that has 2x stamina recovery falls short when you gain no stamina when sprinting. A heavy wolf wearing prisoners at least has constitution passive to restore stamina while sprinting.

Medium shines for werewolf in pve and in group based pvp where you have a pocket healer.

Amdar_Godkiller

I would say stamina sustain is better in medium, but mag sustain is better in heavy. You can still benefit from constitution going 5 medium 2 heavy. This means you are only missing out on the equivalent of 270 stam and mag recovery from Constitution over a 7 heavy build. 5 medium gets you 20% bonus stam recovery and 10% reduced stamina costs. This more than makes up for the stamina portion of what you lose from Constitution. 10% reduced costs alone would be stronger than constitution assuming you use any WW stamina ability every 3 seconds.


Going medium essentially gets you an extra 400 stam recovery in exchange for 270 mag recovery. The bonuses to health recovery, resistances, max health, and healing received are a much bigger deal than the sustain, which can be almost completely negated by simply running the mag recovery mundus.


That being said, mag sustain is the biggest pain point of any WW build, so while Constitution doesn't really lead to better sustain, it does add another attractive enticement towards going full or 5 heavy.

Chrlynsch

Amdar_Godkiller wrote: »

I would say stamina sustain is better in medium, but mag sustain is better in heavy. You can still benefit from constitution going 5 medium 2 heavy. This means you are only missing out on the equivalent of 270 stam and mag recovery from Constitution over a 7 heavy build. 5 medium gets you 20% bonus stam recovery and 10% reduced stamina costs. This more than makes up for the stamina portion of what you lose from Constitution. 10% reduced costs alone would be stronger than constitution assuming you use any WW stamina ability every 3 seconds.


Going medium essentially gets you an extra 400 stam recovery in exchange for 270 mag recovery. The bonuses to health recovery, resistances, max health, and healing received are a much bigger deal than the sustain, which can be almost completely negated by simply running the mag recovery mundus.


That being said, mag sustain is the biggest pain point of any WW build, so while Constitution doesn't really lead to better sustain, it does add another attractive enticement towards going full or 5 heavy.

Let's do an exercise 5-2 heavy, vs 5-2 medium.

I've created 2 builds both of which will utilize the Pirate Skeleton and Desert rose to recreate an open world pvp need for tankiness and massive magic consumption.

We will use a sorc orc as our basis for both builds. Enchants, mundus, attributes and traits have been tweaked to get us as similar numbers as possible.

Medium's 3rd set will be Bone Tatters as it make good use of both medium and werewolf passives.


Heavy's 3rd set will be Seventh Legion as it provides a nearly 100% uptime in combat and Synergizes well with both the werewolf and heavy armor passives.


The Comparison

All numbers are broken down to regen equivalent levels, and proc on cooldown.

Heavy attacks: Done once every 10 seconds
Medium: 1029
Heavy:1286

Stamina Gain: Stamina Regen, Constitution, Heavies
Medium: 2976
Heavy: 3128

Ability cost: Howl of Agony
Medium: 2984
Heavy: 3195

Ability Drain: Howl of Agony Cast every 3 seconds
Medium: -1989
Heavy: -2130

Combat Recovery: Stamina gain - Ability Drain
Medium: 987
Heavy: 998

Total Resistances
Medium: 71707
Heavy: 72369

Magicka Gain: Mag Regen, Desert rose, Constitution, Atro (on medium)
Medium: 2099
Heavy: 2095

Movement speed: Werewolf form, Steed
Medium: +30%
Heavy: +40%

Sprint Speed: Orc, Medium passives, werewolf, steed (heavy)
Medium: 95%
Heavy: 96%

Bonus Healing: Rapid Mending
Medium: 0
Heavy: 8%

Heath Regen: HP regen, Steed, Seventh
Medium: 336
Heavy: 1999

Qbiken

(Disclaimer: Not ranting on anyone´s build, it´s solid, just using it as an example)

Here´s GerWolf´s medium setup re-created in build editor:
https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Special:EsoBuildEditor?id=158665

The stats are fairly accurate to what he showcases in his build video and I think I got all the right buffs attached to it as well.

Here´s the same build but with heavy NMG instead of medium NMG:
https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Special:EsoBuildEditor?id=158671

First thing we´ll notice is that the effective weapon power is noticeably higher on the medium version, which is to be expected. Now lets check the stamina recovery:

On the medium version we sit at 1990 stamina recovery fully buffed while transformed. On the heavy armor version our stamina recovery tooltip is at 1830 with the same buffs.

Constitution gives us (according to build editor) 541 stamina and magicka every 4 seconds when taking damage. This translates to 270 extra stamina and magicka recovery if we were to add constitution to our recovery tooltips, which makes the heavy armor version having better "passive" stamina recovery than the medium version.

The next part is Wind Walker cost reduction vs Revitalize. With a heavy armor setup on a werewolf + off-balance debuff on your enemy, you can easily restore 10-12k stamina on each heavy attack. When I can restore almost my entire stamina bar with 2-3 heavy attacks, I find it hard to argue that medium has better stamina sustain than heavy.

Amdar_Godkiller

Chrlynsch wrote: »

Amdar_Godkiller wrote: »

I would say stamina sustain is better in medium, but mag sustain is better in heavy. You can still benefit from constitution going 5 medium 2 heavy. This means you are only missing out on the equivalent of 270 stam and mag recovery from Constitution over a 7 heavy build. 5 medium gets you 20% bonus stam recovery and 10% reduced stamina costs. This more than makes up for the stamina portion of what you lose from Constitution. 10% reduced costs alone would be stronger than constitution assuming you use any WW stamina ability every 3 seconds.


Going medium essentially gets you an extra 400 stam recovery in exchange for 270 mag recovery. The bonuses to health recovery, resistances, max health, and healing received are a much bigger deal than the sustain, which can be almost completely negated by simply running the mag recovery mundus.


That being said, mag sustain is the biggest pain point of any WW build, so while Constitution doesn't really lead to better sustain, it does add another attractive enticement towards going full or 5 heavy.

Let's do an exercise 5-2 heavy, vs 5-2 medium.

I've created 2 builds both of which will utilize the Pirate Skeleton and Desert rose to recreate an open world pvp need for tankiness and massive magic consumption.

We will use a sorc orc as our basis for both builds. Enchants, mundus, attributes and traits have been tweaked to get us as similar numbers as possible.

Medium's 3rd set will be Bone Tatters as it make good use of both medium and werewolf passives.


Heavy's 3rd set will be Seventh Legion as it provides a nearly 100% uptime in combat and Synergizes well with both the werewolf and heavy armor passives.


The Comparison

All numbers are broken down to regen equivalent levels, and proc on cooldown.

Heavy attacks: Done once every 10 seconds
Medium: 1029
Heavy:1286

Stamina Gain: Stamina Regen, Constitution, Heavies
Medium: 2976
Heavy: 3128

Ability cost: Howl of Agony
Medium: 2984
Heavy: 3195

Ability Drain: Howl of Agony Cast every 3 seconds
Medium: -1989
Heavy: -2130

Combat Recovery: Stamina gain - Ability Drain
Medium: 987
Heavy: 998

Total Resistances
Medium: 71707
Heavy: 72369

Magicka Gain: Mag Regen, Desert rose, Constitution, Atro (on medium)
Medium: 2099
Heavy: 2095

Movement speed: Werewolf form, Steed
Medium: +30%
Heavy: +40%

Sprint Speed: Orc, Medium passives, werewolf, steed (heavy)
Medium: 95%
Heavy: 96%

Bonus Healing: Rapid Mending
Medium: 0
Heavy: 8%

Heath Regen: HP regen, Steed, Seventh
Medium: 336
Heavy: 1999

I only PVP, and heavy attacks aren't really a reliable source of stamina feturn for PVP WWs IMO. Definitely not every 10 seconds because A) it's just not reliable for targeting moving targets, it takes two seconds or more to complete one heavy attack, and C) it requires that you slow down. Once every 25 seconds would be the most you could reasonably expect against good players that understand how speed = mitigation. I only use prisoner's for mag sustain on all my WWs, so my mag recovery equivalence is very high (3K or so, so 1500 per second easily). With arteum or dubious, combined with medium armor and reduced sprint cost, my stam sustain is basically infinte. Leap is my most used stamina skill, followed by claws which must be replied much more frequently due to purge mechanics often. Where medium loses out though is indeed with health recovery and healing, though the WW heal is very nice on any build that runs 5+ prismatic enchants like I always do.

Amdar_Godkiller

I usually run either Darkstride or Acuity with Kena or Troll King as well, and my playstyle is very much about staying at the 200% speed cap by permasprinting, zigzagging, light attack tagging, and defiling my opponents. I beat sorcs by chasing them and being faster than them while losing no stamina in pursuit, so they can never disengage and never effectively target me at range. It's just much more fun than a heavy armor build, and I don't ever run out of stam or mag. With the cooldown on immobilizations, it's really the best way to PVP as a WW right now.

Qbiken

Amdar_Godkiller wrote: »

I usually run either Darkstride or Acuity with Kena or Troll King as well, and my playstyle is very much about staying at the 200% speed cap by permasprinting, zigzagging, light attack tagging, and defiling my opponents. I beat sorcs by chasing them and being faster than them while losing no stamina in pursuit, so they can never disengage and never effectively target me at range. It's just much more fun than a heavy armor build, and I don't ever run out of stam or mag. With the cooldown on immobilizations, it's really the best way to PVP as a WW right now.

The bolded part is where platform matters, and one can't say that a particular playstyle is BiS (since situation matters). Certain stuff that works on console won't work on PC (and vise versa).

The meta is very different on PC and console. For example, targeting on console is alot more difficult than it is on PC (hence why pack-leader is more frequently used on console)

Whenever I evaluate my ww builds I exclude everything that has to do with duels (including 1v1 encounters in open world) and group play (zerg surfing included), because it's easy to make a build for those specific situations. While immobilizations has been reduced in their effectiveness, snares are still a big problem, which you don't really solve with medium armor

And I heavily disagree that you can't rely on heavy attack for sustain. If you build towards a more "brawler" type of build, you can easily survive a few heavy attacks and with Roar no longer causing people to run in every direction possible, my heavy attacks lands more often than they miss (especially if you run immobilization poisons)

And if I were you, try swapping molag kena for slimecraw, the damage output you get is almost identical, but without the downside of having the increased cost from Molag Kena