Werewolf in PVP is absurdly overpowered

Sanctum74

Ww hasn’t been op for almost 2 years. Slot a hot, cc, and any burst combo will usually kill them the first time.

ecru

The reason ww seems good in nocp is due to the healing nerf, which didn't hit their heal as hard since their heal is based off of max health. Combine this with major defile and the chance to proc minor defile with infectious claws and you have a serious imbalance in heals, since major defile can drop vigors to sub 1k if they don't crit.

The point? When heals are nerfed as they have been, % based heals reign supreme, and major/minor defile becomes more powerful due to heals like vigor being total garbage. This is the same reason Stamcro is good.

Snowgoons

TBH Just give us a proper "silver bullet" in the fighter guild line.

Should be if you use this skill, land it, maybe 30-45% chance werewolf form time reduced.

SOMETHING like that.

Rianai

ecru wrote: »

The reason ww seems good in nocp is due to the healing nerf, which didn't hit their heal as hard since their heal is based off of max health. Combine this with major defile and the chance to proc minor defile with infectious claws and you have a serious imbalance in heals, since major defile can drop vigors to sub 1k if they don't crit.

The point? When heals are nerfed as they have been, % based heals reign supreme, and major/minor defile becomes more powerful due to heals like vigor being total garbage. This is the same reason Stamcro is good.

Health scaling heals are affected by the healing nerfs in the same way all other heals are affected (only exception are dmg based heals).
And while the wolf heal might be more powerful than other health based heals, it is offset by the huge cost and lack of additional heals (healing on Claws of Life is pitiful and not worth mentioning). The defile from Claws is also very strong obviously but still less powerful than a stamcro's blastbones (lower dmg, higher cost, small range).

Werewolves can be pretty strong in 1vs1, but there are certainly non ww builds that can match them easily (and personally i haven't met a single ww so far that i couldn't beat 1vs1 - on open world magblade). For 1vX or group play other builds tend to be much better. And even if there are some crazy op builds arround - the gear should be looked at first as that's what carries like 90% of strong builds nowadays. This applies to pretty much any "class", not just ww, with stamcro probably being the only exception.

Snowgoons wrote: »

TBH Just give us a proper "silver bullet" in the fighter guild line.

Should be if you use this skill, land it, maybe 30-45% chance werewolf form time reduced.

SOMETHING like that.

WW requires you to build arround it, which typically results in a rather weak human form. So a skill that could force a player out of ww form would basically hardcounter the entire build. Does not seem reasonable.

ZOS_ConnorG

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ZarkingFrued

Please don't allow players to bait you into being abrasive on this thread. Many will be upset that we are calling out this absolutely absurd skill line because they know how broken it is. Have a civil discussion and go in depth into why you think it is or isn't overpowered. I myself find myself losing every single duel against players on WWs who literally can not get my health below 50% on any other build they have. I'm not an expert on game design, I just play the game daily and know when something comes out that is invincible and still hits insanely hard. That's why I made this thread, maybe someone will have insight into what needs adjusted. I myself would like to see a hard limited uptime, not infinitely in ww form

ZarkingFrued

Major and minor defile, savagery, you can literally build into sustain and defences and still kill anyone

ZarkingFrued

Sanctum74 wrote: »

Ww hasn’t been op for almost 2 years. Slot a hot, cc, and any burst combo will usually kill them the first time.

You realize they changed ww drastically this patch, right? It's unkillable and unsurvivable. Check your patch notes, I'm not a bad player. I know that's the first assumption, but I'm not even remotely bad at this game.

Chrlynsch

Being a werewolf main I will not comment on them being op or not op as I am biased. But I will list some pain points that I have as werewolf.

The Werewolf's build dilemma
Werewolves are in heavy need of added survival, as their primary self heal scales off of max health; this means that werewolf ultimately has to sacrifice its damage in order to gain survival, unlike other dd that gain survival and damage when they ramp up their primary stats.

This leads to werewolves being especially good at recovering from burst damage, which is the counter to today's meta that is used to being able to burst down their lower health targets. Werewolf's can not survive sustained damage as well as other classes can, that is unless they again reduce their damage in order to gain more magic sustain to heal often enough. The werewolf heal is one of the highest costing heals in the game.

Now what you are left with is a tank low damage werewolf. The opposite of what most werewolves would like to be. Which is a quick and deadly enemy, that has reactive and rewarding game play. But without a snare removal tool in our kit, we are usually left to a crawling pace that due to the natures of snares in pvp is almost always prevalent.

After all these tweaks to the werewolf to get over our shortcomings we are left with a build that is mildly viable in werewolf form and just awkward in human form.

These high health werewolves are using the kit that they were given, the heal they have is a tank heal, is scrales off of

The Common Counter
Werewolves have weakness that are easily accessible to the majority of stam builds (Warden, Necros, DKs, Bow Skill line), poisons, fighter's guild, and enchants, to be exact, most if these are chosen by players before factoring in their effectiveness against werewolf players. In an open field fight who do you think is going to be targeted by the bow user that is packed full of poison damage, once I pop my wolf it as if every single lethal arrow on the field auto locks onto my pelt. This last patch has been very painful for my werewolf in pvp due the popularity of the Venomous Smite set.

Solo Scraper vs Pack Paradox
Most of these short comings can be overlooked in 1v1 situations, as a werewolf, once on their target can apply enough pressure to an opponent to keep them on the defensive, this is why a werewolf is so strong in duels. It really doesn't provide the average player enough time to properly counter a wolf.

So if werewolves are so strong at 1v1 why aren't we seeing whole groups of them taking over Cyrodiil? The truth is that a werewolf is a pretty awful group mate, they really provide no utility or survival to a group. This last patch has helped them some, pack leaders with minor courage, and deafening roar with a minor maim. For the most part if you are fighting 10 Werewolves, you are fighting 10 individuals players, each relying on their own heals for survival. Unlike other groups that can stack aoe healing, cross heal, purge, synergies and ultimate bombs.

Our paws are too clumsy
A lot of times as players we look at the strength of something without taking into account what weaknesses they are overcoming so let me list off some of the things werewolves can't do.

-Can't Stealth
-Can't Mount
-Can't chase down quick moving targets due to the pounce rework
-Can't Place Siege
-Can't make use of weapon passives
-Can't use abilies other than werewolf ones
-Can't heal allies
-Can't apply ranged pressure
-Can't make use of most Guild, World, or Class passives.
-Can't Purge
-Can't remove snares

Werewolves are in a constant state of needing to attack something in order to remain in wolf form.

Absurd
One thing I agree with and have been saying for years now since the original rework of their heal, was to make it scale like all other DD heals off their primary stat, I will gladly take a 25% more powerful vigor or warden heal that costs 25% more. These high health werewolf's have been a bad design from day one, and would much rather prefer Higher damage, Higher survival, and Higher mobility, like what can be provided by well built stam DD's.

ecru

Rianai wrote: »

ecru wrote: »

The reason ww seems good in nocp is due to the healing nerf, which didn't hit their heal as hard since their heal is based off of max health. Combine this with major defile and the chance to proc minor defile with infectious claws and you have a serious imbalance in heals, since major defile can drop vigors to sub 1k if they don't crit.

The point? When heals are nerfed as they have been, % based heals reign supreme, and major/minor defile becomes more powerful due to heals like vigor being total garbage. This is the same reason Stamcro is good.

Health scaling heals are affected by the healing nerfs in the same way all other heals are affected (only exception are dmg based heals).
And while the wolf heal might be more powerful than other health based heals, it is offset by the huge cost and lack of additional heals (healing on Claws of Life is pitiful and not worth mentioning). The defile from Claws is also very strong obviously but still less powerful than a stamcro's blastbones (lower dmg, higher cost, small range).

Werewolves can be pretty strong in 1vs1, but there are certainly non ww builds that can match them easily (and personally i haven't met a single ww so far that i couldn't beat 1vs1 - on open world magblade). For 1vX or group play other builds tend to be much better. And even if there are some crazy op builds arround - the gear should be looked at first as that's what carries like 90% of strong builds nowadays. This applies to pretty much any "class", not just ww, with stamcro probably being the only exception.

Snowgoons wrote: »

TBH Just give us a proper "silver bullet" in the fighter guild line.

Should be if you use this skill, land it, maybe 30-45% chance werewolf form time reduced.

SOMETHING like that.

WW requires you to build arround it, which typically results in a rather weak human form. So a skill that could force a player out of ww form would basically hardcounter the entire build. Does not seem reasonable.

I understand that heals based on max health were nerfed by the same amount, but it's easier to stack max health with less sacrifices than it is stam or mag IMO, which gives those types of heals a slight advantage. It's really the defile here that's the problem, with heals being bad, major+minor is simply too powerful. Major defile is too strong right now for it to be something you are able to have 100% uptime on.

I don't think WW is actually seriously OP, maybe in BGs or nocp in certain situations, I can't say for sure, it's really just the defiles that make it seem like an outlier right now IMO.

Merciful17

You just gotta counter it right. If you're a DK you can just spam your poison dots and see how the werewolf just spams their pathetic heal and ends up dying. If you're playing any other stam class you can use a bow with posion injection and lethal arrow. Otherwise you can run sets like sheer venom and Venomous smite which you already see all the time in PvP.

Not to mention as soon as you turn into a werewolf everyone will be focusing you first.

Werewolves are very strong in 1v1's unless you have the right tools to counter them.

Weesacs

.

Chrlynsch wrote: »

Being a werewolf main I will not comment on them being op or not op as I am biased. But I will list some pain points that I have as werewolf.

The Werewolf's build dilemma
Werewolves are in heavy need of added survival, as their primary self heal scales off of max health; this means that werewolf ultimately has to sacrifice its damage in order to gain survival, unlike other dd that gain survival and damage when they ramp up their primary stats.

This leads to werewolves being especially good at recovering from burst damage, which is the counter to today's meta that is used to being able to burst down their lower health targets. Werewolf's can not survive sustained damage as well as other classes can, that is unless they again reduce their damage in order to gain more magic sustain to heal often enough. The werewolf heal is one of the highest costing heals in the game.

Now what you are left with is a tank low damage werewolf. The opposite of what most werewolves would like to be. Which is a quick and deadly enemy, that has reactive and rewarding game play. But without a snare removal tool in our kit, we are usually left to a crawling pace that due to the natures of snares in pvp is almost always prevalent.

After all these tweaks to the werewolf to get over our shortcomings we are left with a build that is mildly viable in werewolf form and just awkward in human form.

These high health werewolves are using the kit that they were given, the heal they have is a tank heal, is scrales off of

The Common Counter
Werewolves have weakness that are easily accessible to the majority of stam builds (Warden, Necros, DKs, Bow Skill line), poisons, fighter's guild, and enchants, to be exact, most if these are chosen by players before factoring in their effectiveness against werewolf players. In an open field fight who do you think is going to be targeted by the bow user that is packed full of poison damage, once I pop my wolf it as if every single lethal arrow on the field auto locks onto my pelt. This last patch has been very painful for my werewolf in pvp due the popularity of the Venomous Smite set.

Solo Scraper vs Pack Paradox
Most of these short comings can be overlooked in 1v1 situations, as a werewolf, once on their target can apply enough pressure to an opponent to keep them on the defensive, this is why a werewolf is so strong in duels. It really doesn't provide the average player enough time to properly counter a wolf.

So if werewolves are so strong at 1v1 why aren't we seeing whole groups of them taking over Cyrodiil? The truth is that a werewolf is a pretty awful group mate, they really provide no utility or survival to a group. This last patch has helped them some, pack leaders with minor courage, and deafening roar with a minor maim. For the most part if you are fighting 10 Werewolves, you are fighting 10 individuals players, each relying on their own heals for survival. Unlike other groups that can stack aoe healing, cross heal, purge, synergies and ultimate bombs.

Our paws are too clumsy
A lot of times as players we look at the strength of something without taking into account what weaknesses they are overcoming so let me list off some of the things werewolves can't do.

-Can't Stealth
-Can't Mount
-Can't chase down quick moving targets due to the pounce rework
-Can't Place Siege
-Can't make use of weapon passives
-Can't use abilies other than werewolf ones
-Can't heal allies
-Can't apply ranged pressure
-Can't make use of most Guild, World, or Class passives.
-Can't Purge
-Can't remove snares

Werewolves are in a constant state of needing to attack something in order to remain in wolf form.

Absurd
One thing I agree with and have been saying for years now since the original rework of their heal, was to make it scale like all other DD heals off their primary stat, I will gladly take a 25% more powerful vigor or warden heal that costs 25% more. These high health werewolf's have been a bad design from day one, and would much rather prefer Higher damage, Higher survival, and Higher mobility, like what can be provided by well built stam DD's.

Thanks for that mate that was an interesting read 👍 However as a magplar, what would you suggest is the best counter to them? 40k health with heavy bleeds and defiles is hard to play against due to their insane pressure.

Vanagrand

Zodi53 wrote: »

Sorry but Magsorc and MagDk are currently godlike with tankiness and dps output. Let’s focus on them before WW

Stam sorc if far more dangerous.

Skoomah

Chrlynsch wrote a well thought out post that clearly defines the strengths and weaknesses of a werewolf from top to bottom. Not sure anyone can honestly say werewolves are OP after reading that.

For all the other posters to this thread, It’s not fair for you to judge an entire playstyle based on what you perceive is powerful based on a single metric. If you wish to continue arguing that werewolf is op, please set your argument against greater context and give it greater depth.

I’m finding a lot of these rage bait posts to be shallow and insufficient.

ZarkingFrued

Skoomah wrote: »

Chrlynsch wrote a well thought out post that clearly defines the strengths and weaknesses of a werewolf from top to bottom. Not sure anyone can honestly say werewolves are OP after reading that.

For all the other posters to this thread, It’s not fair for you to judge an entire playstyle based on what you perceive is powerful based on a single metric. If you wish to continue arguing that werewolf is op, please set your argument against greater context and give it greater depth.

I’m finding a lot of these rage bait posts to be shallow and insufficient.

It's not a perception of power, it's a build that can run 40k health and still 1vX, and win every single duel. No good player should ever lose a 1v1 on a Werewolf. It's a well known fact among good players.
This post is not bait, this post is a thread to discuss why.

Skoomah

ZarkingFrued wrote: »

Skoomah wrote: »

Chrlynsch wrote a well thought out post that clearly defines the strengths and weaknesses of a werewolf from top to bottom. Not sure anyone can honestly say werewolves are OP after reading that.

For all the other posters to this thread, It’s not fair for you to judge an entire playstyle based on what you perceive is powerful based on a single metric. If you wish to continue arguing that werewolf is op, please set your argument against greater context and give it greater depth.

I’m finding a lot of these rage bait posts to be shallow and insufficient.

It's not a perception of power, it's a build that can run 40k health and still 1vX, and win every single duel. No good player should ever lose a 1v1 on a Werewolf. It's a well known fact among good players.
This post is not bait, this post is a thread to discuss why.

Not sure which werewolf you’re talking about. The majority of people who slot werewolf are quite honestly pretty bad at it.

Which werewolf that is running 40k hp are you honestly dying to? To get 40k hp, the werewolf gives up a ton of damage and must equip 2 tank sets and a tank helm. If you’re dying to that, I’m not sure it’s the werewolf’s skill that is to blame for your deaths.

1vX? Are you serious? 1 good werewolf vs 2 good players equals 1 skill bar vs 4 skill bars. The good players win most of the time.

In terms of dueling... dueling is not a good measurement of overall PvP. Duels don’t take into account line of sight and sustained fighting among a large group of players. What happens when the it’s group vs group or mechanics like towers and other factors... dueling is not real PvP, not even close

Chrlynsch

Here is what a 40k health werewolf build looks like in no-cp.

https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Special:EsoBuildData?id=264769

Running Mighty Chudan, Fury, Desert Rose

-40k health
-24k stamina (had to put 64 points in heath)
-35.6k resists (Chudan)
-8.4k heal (can be cast every 4.5 seconds (Desert Rose, Resolve, Mag recovery, Mag potion) or 1,866 heal/second without crits or over healing.
-19.9% weapon crit
-4.7k weapon damage (Fury at max stacks)
-Fortitude Regen added
-Tri pot buffs added

Notes: this build has relatively low damage using only 1 damage set, and having to move 64 points from stamina into health. After you crack the werewolf's magicka reserves (1 ult combo should suffice) you will need to provide 3k dps of pressure in order to break them. Of course major or minor defile will decrease the dps needed to do so.

Skoomah

Let me add... werewolves suck in cyrodiil open world. You lose form traveling across the map and you are terrible group mate because you don’t provide any group buffs, healing, or other meaningful support.

Werewolves suck in extended fights because once the magical poll runs dry, werewolves no longer have any healing.

Werewolves are screwed once they are snared or immobilized. Fighting slows down to a crawl.

Werewolves don’t out perform any other good player on any other class in the game. Mag sorc, mag warden, stam cro, stam warden, mag templar, etc. all can compete just as well or better than a werewolf.

Only in this patch has werewolf been passable as a playstyle. Before that... werewolves were terrible for like 3-4 patches straight. Crappy healing, crappy damage...

ZarkingFrued

We're talking about a 1 bar build that stays in Ulti forever. They have everything that any build will need, sets to fill the gaps, and do not ever have to leave their ultimate form. Players who abuse it will obviously defend it, they know if it's gone they will be forced to take damage again. It's not just WW, it's the meta tank builds that have been made for it. It takes all of your burst with ult included to get one down to 40-50% then one heal for them to be topped off again. They have no weakness, there is no counter. They even have a leap of you try to outpace them, and maxed defile to make sure you can't heal. Maybe the real culprit here is defile CP and WW up time. The Ult should be strong, but not never ending super tank dps 1 bar needed carry madness.

Chrlynsch

ZarkingFrued wrote: »

We're talking about a 1 bar build that stays in Ulti forever. They have everything that any build will need, sets to fill the gaps, and do not ever have to leave their ultimate form. Players who abuse it will obviously defend it, they know if it's gone they will be forced to take damage again. It's not just WW, it's the meta tank builds that have been made for it. It takes all of your burst with ult included to get one down to 40-50% then one heal for them to be topped off again. They have no weakness, there is no counter. They even have a leap of you try to outpace them, and maxed defile to make sure you can't heal. Maybe the real culprit here is defile CP and WW up time. The Ult should be strong, but not never ending super tank dps 1 bar needed carry madness.

From the example I showed, "the super tank dps" isn't a thing. A werewolf at 40-50% health can't just heal one time to get up to full, they would need major mending and major vitality in order to do so.

I do understand the common player's frustration of fighting against a well built and played werewolf. It just isn't the same fight as against 98% of the population.

I highly recommend building a werewolf and take it out to pvp in all environments, BGs, Open World solo, duels, CP, No Cp. If it is as easy as you state it is you will master it very quickly and shouldn't take you much time at all. But I guarantee it isn't going to go like you think it will, and you will come to experience counters to werewolf first hand. Learn your enemy from the inside out and exploit those weaknesses.

Mortiis13

I tryed myself an stamsorc berserker ww in no cp, 1 sustain set/2 defence sets. Against average players you feel God like with it. With over 40k resistance and over 3k health reg, the base dmg + major Defile is enough to shred those in seconds. But outside of ww Form im a tank hitting like a wet noodle.
It's an 100% aggressive playstyle, once u get pressured into defense it gets critical even in a full defense setup I run.
When u can't flip the coin asap, your will have a hard time to get back into offense.
The heal cost more when 5k magicka and I have 15k with 1.3k mag recovery so I can outheal 1 burst combo and that's it.

So yes against average player it's very powerful as they mostly don't know how to counter once they get under pressure, but against good players it's well balanced.

Tommy_The_Gun

I just wanted to point out that WWs have no way to cleanse / purge negative effect. They also do not have any CC / snare immunity tool in their kit. This is probably their biggest weakness.

Kadoin

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

I just wanted to point out that WWs have no way to cleanse / purge negative effect. They also do not have any CC / snare immunity tool in their kit. This is probably their biggest weakness.

It's true, defile is the best counter to them. Works wonders...though its the best counter to any build right now on live ...

TequilaFire

AAAAAHHHHHHHHHOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!

erio

Iki wrote: »

WW is not overperforming, you are underperforming.

There is overperforming set combinations that can make also werewolves look OP, but the real issues is those sets/builds, not ww itself. Probably biggest reason why many ppl struggle when fighting WWs is that the cc-type they got in roar is fear, traditionally buggiest cc in the game that can be slow at best and impossible at worst to break free from. If one ends up spamming break free for 3 seconds to no avail even ww with modest dps can kill one, but if we exclude issues with break free, ww really isn`t unbeatable opponent.

Sure howl can hit hard with powerful build, their burst-heal is strong, but requires hefty investments to magicka&magicka-sustain to be able to be used a lot. And we also need to keep in mind that ww can`t setup burst combos as some classes do with delayed dmg and burst-ultimates, against ww you can get hit by strong howl every gcd while having modest dot ticking on you but thats it really. It`s not much different than getting hit by powerful dizzy swings every gcd, if that alone kills you, you also need to take a look in the mirror and consider ways to improve your own defensive-play.

Ww got access to good amount of dmg mitigation, especially if one chooses packleader-morph, but difference to other non-ww builds with capped resistances and access to minor and sometimes major protection is small. And WWs usually doesn`t have major evasion, have very modest healing over time or not at all and no purge.

Zos did good job buffing WW in greymoor and they are finally pretty fun to play, but I honestly can`t see how WW itself would be too strong, they got power but also weaknesses, they got acces to even more effectiveness, but that comes with significant trade-offs. Just get yourself ww-bite, take a look at the morphs of ww-skills to see their trade-offs, go to cyrodiil and see if you can become god of pvp just by transforming to werewolf...

Literally just watched 2 dudes in imperial physiche or whatever facetank like 15 dudes at once

EmEm_Oh

I've come across a few really OP WWs but that was extremely rare and most are ok. I tend to avoid the OP WWs unless I'm in a (smart) group.

EtTuBrutus

Lol theyre are some ridiculously OP ww builds using imp physique.

Chrlynsch

EtTuBrutus wrote: »

Lol theyre are some ridiculously OP ww builds using imp physique.

You could argue that most builds become OP with Imperial Physique, because you know, Imperial Physique is designed to be OP.

EtTuBrutus

Chrlynsch wrote: »

EtTuBrutus wrote: »

Lol theyre are some ridiculously OP ww builds using imp physique.

You could argue that most builds become OP with Imperial Physique, because you know, Imperial Physique is designed to be OP.

Ww scales incredibly well with tri max stat. Better than any class.

Pauwer

They should make the howl healing something you can interrupt. Also like breath of life and all skills like that. Not all players like to to use dots. All those insta spammable heal skills are evil.