Are we just going to pretend that Werewolf is balanced?

SmackNCheese

Werewolf right now even solo is incredibly strong, with access to malacath boosted proc sets as well as artificially inflated stamina and resistance stats they are free to spec into max HP making one shotting them impossible, and killing them at the best difficult.
Werewolf used to be balanced around a few key facts:
1) High cost ultimate
2) Weakness to fighters guild/poison
3) Lack of ability/damage diversity
4) High cost to stay in ultimate
However the current game state has either minimized or even negated a lot of these weaknesses:
Because BGs are a queue based instance one can simply build the ultimate required to enter werewolf form so you can start the BG in ww form
With the addition of malacath into the game, werewolves can equip a singular proc set (knight slayer, viper, plague slinger, etc) to do the damage for them along with heavy attacks and defiles, while spec'ing their gear into sustain. It doesn't matter how much weapon damage you have, if a werewolf has 35k+ hp a dawnbreaker won't do over 60%. New gear and potion additions to the game also allow them to permanently stay in werewolf form. Currently werewolves can stay in their form for an entire 16-20 minute bg without having to stop to consume a body once, simply by chugging pots/equipping a certain set, and jumping on people.
I think what finally made werewolves feel significantly more oppressive was the inclusion of malacath with proc sets. There were always the niche werewolf builds that could stay in ultimate forever, or could tank zergs using health regen and their heal, but with the inclusion of proc sets and the heavy attack builds they now can do that and still put out insane amounts of damage.

MentalxHammer

Right now werewolf is an insanely overpowered carry. This is actually becoming a huge issue in the Imperial City, the tel var economy is completely controlled by groups of 45k hp werewolves essentially exploiting to stack tel var they could never earn on a real class.

IC used to be my favorite pvp format in this game, it was fun and unique. Now I wouldnt even think of playing in there because of how much pvp has degenerated. Please do something about this ZOS.

Chrlynsch

No one is pretending anything, a search results all these posts on the forum.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/544625/werewolf-is-incredibly-overpowered

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/550228/werewolf-needs-to-be-addressed

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/7030504#Comment_7030504

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/551770/biggest-carry-of-2020#latest

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/7027858#Comment_7027858

The Common theme to all of these post is high health werewolves/health high regen, and proc sets carrying damage.

-Bring the proc sets in line (not a werewolf specific issue).

-Make the werewolf heal scale off of max stamina and max weapon damage, this is something that werewolf enthusiasts have been saying since wolfhunter.

Werewolf gameplay should encourage and reward, quick and reactive gameplay. Not this lumbering, heavy attack, proc set meta that exists today.

Tommy_The_Gun

Chrlynsch wrote: »

-Bring the proc sets in line (not a werewolf specific issue).

Agreed, dmg proc sets are too effective in general. It is not WW specific. It simply works on any class / build.

Chrlynsch wrote: »

-Make the werewolf heal scale off of max stamina and max weapon damage, this is something that werewolf enthusiasts have been saying since wolfhunter.

I am torn on that.

Making it scale with max stam & weapon damage would mean it would cost stamina and will be even more effective than now, even on a 30K health build. Part of WW balancing factor is that a heal cost magicka (on a primarily stamina build) - and that means you need some "dual" sustain (mag & stam).

- Maybe adding a "cap" on max amount of healing you can get would work (so stacking health above 40K would give no benefit at all).

- I am also kinda thinking of making WW heal to cost 2x less, but make it scale with max magicka, spell dmg & spell crit - how it used to be. This would mean that hybridization would be kinda required on a WW. It would also automatically remove 99% of WW complains we have since it wont be used that much in group PvP & PvP in general.

Now look, I played a lot as a WW and I have some experience. I like WW a lot and the last thing I would like to see is "Elsweyr" style heavy handed sledge-hammer nerfs (Back in Elsweyr, WW was basically a "RP meme" - totally useless, even in overland PvE content, that is how much it was nerfed). The last thing we need is to have a repeat of that scenario.

But lets face it - WW will be nerfed. No doubt about that. Next patch, or next-next patch. It is only a matter of time. It is up to us to provide feedback so WW will get nerfed "only where it needs to be" - and not to have it converted to a useless curiosity for RP-ers.

WW is only very strong in:
PvP Group environment, either with the use of proc sets + brutality ring or with use of health & resistance stacking build.

WW is weak in:
Solo PvP 1vX (it is garbage at that). Maybe ok-ish in 1v1, but that does not happen often.

In PvE, it is also usefully - but niche, have not see any complains tbh. about WW in PvE.

Now again, I would like not to see WW becoming totally nullified in the ENTIRE game, and the things that make WW strong (proc sets & group environment) left untouched willy-nilly.

Qbiken

Making it scale with max stam & weapon damage would mean it would cost stamina and will be even more effective than now, even on a 30K health build. Part of WW balancing factor is that a heal cost magicka (on a primarily stamina build) - and that means you need some "dual" sustain (mag & stam).

What prevents it from keep costing magicka? Nothing prevents the heal from continue to cost magicka even if the heal scales of a different resource. All ZOS has to do is rework the scaling so there is less initiative to stack max HP.

Back in Elsweyr, WW was basically a "RP meme" - totally useless, even in overland PvE content, that is how much it was nerfed

The Elsweyr patch is the one patch where werewolf was at its strongest it´s ever been (at least from a PvP perspective and if we exclude the bugged Murkmire patch with Torug werewolfs). People complaining about werewolf now have absolutely no clue how "godly" werewolf was back then. Today´s werewolf is a joke in comparison (not saying today´s werewolf is bad or anything)

relentless_turnip

As you guys said above it is another proc set meta issue imo.

Warden has an near equal amount of complaints and that is largely how well it thrives in a high health/proc set meta. Werewolf also thrives in allessian because of how easy it is to stack resistance.

I think both need class adjustments, but I don't think any changes should be made until we have played a patch with proc sets being changed to scale with stats or something equal to it that makes them useless without offensive building.

All health stacking is due to a complete lack of offensive requirement and this fundamentally is the issue IMO.

ccfeeling

WW still dont believe

precambria

It's pretty similar to 2h sword and board builds, WW's don't DB or leap so as annoying as they are they are less threatening to me, unless for whatever reason I get stuck fighting one the conclusion for that encounter is forgone, that probably should not be a thing but to me it's not much different than 2h sword and board heavy armor builds that get all their pressure from Dswing, it's just more insulting.

Waffennacht

To me it depends on what direction ZoS is going in; ATM WW is a bit of an outlier.

That being said so are a variety of other aspects in PvP, if this is what other sets and classes etc are going to get raised to, then im down. However if they remain outliers than im not going to sit here with a straight face and say its balanced.

Also keep in mind ESO has never been balanced, there are winners and losers, they typically rotate. Proc sets have strangely been hella good for longer than most things tho.

Sergykid

i would fight a werewolf any day instead of unkillable 35k hp tanks that kill with 2x proc sets. At least werewolf has limited survivability.

Fawn4287

Sergykid wrote: »

i would fight a werewolf any day instead of unkillable 35k hp tanks that kill with 2x proc sets. At least werewolf has limited survivability.

They’re the same thing.... the difference is the 35k health non werewolf tank has 10% less flat mitigation, 10k less resists, 30% less stam, 18% less weapon damage and lacks the ability to sprint at horse sprint speed or burst heal for half their health bar.

Kory

Weakness to fighters guild abilities is a good idea. It makes sense. I think the 25% extra damage to poison should be brought down to 15% or something if that was implemented.

Werewolves can stay in that form for a while because they are grouped and constantly aggressive. That's the way ZoS intended. Otherwise they are forced to drop the form, it's a 30 second timer, that can be extended little by little if constantly fighting and feeding (pack leader morph can synergize with other wolves even longer).

"3) Lack of ability/damage diversity" Umm, WW has one bar of abilities and I think it's fine the way it is. It's not like WW can bar swap into combos and healing and damage shields and what not, it's a functional one bar and good passives.

Werewolf is strong right now, but you know what else is strong? Ex. A warden tanking and killing ten 700+ cp players 1vX style, god forbid this player turns into a werewolf, now he's carried and overperforming lol. Or this certain warden gets attacked by 4 WWs and dies, and he's left wondering how his build just died.

A group of tanky players will eventually kill you, a group a tanky werewolves will do it even faster. It's seems reasonable to me, WWs are sort of forced to pressure you.

Lets steer this inevitable WW nerf in a sort of reasonable direction, you can't just die to a group of WWs and come beg for everything about WW to be nerf hammered. I mean you can, but you know.....