Werewolves and Endgame PvE

Shagreth

So, vampires clearly have no place in vet trials, probably the same can be said for werewolves. I guess the only way for someone to be allowed to run WW in a trial would be to go with a static group of friends. Pack leader seems to be the only truly significant thing they bring to the table but that can be replaced by a certain set. Am I missing anything?

It's a little sad that both (vampire and ww) skill-lines are (probably) deliberately being kept out of PvE, they should, at the very least, be able to adequately replace X role if need be, but probably not be top tier since that would 'force' players to be one.

@ZOS_Kevin something to consider perhaps, maybe both lines could do with a minor rework to finally have a place in 'competitive' play.

NeeScrolls

Shagreth wrote: »

So,

. Am I missing anything?.

Only the other 28957894 threads on exact same topic lol , including this one from yesterday: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/601077/vampire-werewolf

Doubtful things will be changing much anytime soon.

Although, rumor is that Werewolves & Vampires are uber powerful in the new *CARD GAME*

Shagreth

NeeScrolls wrote: »

Doubtful things will be changing much anytime soon.

Although, rumor is that Werewolves & Vampires are uber powerful in the new *CARD GAME*

Lack of new skill-lines and proper balance of vampires and werewolves has always been a big topic for me, it's like -- there's a LOT of people that clearly care for vampires and werewolves and would love to be able to use them for every bit of content, but ZOS doesn't even want to address the elephant in the room, it's just nerf after nerf when something is viable. (or some cases..overperforming)

barney2525

I get vamp for the white dye and the occasional use of moving while hidden. I dont bother with the feeding issues. I dont slot any vamp skills for combat so I dont understand why one would be kicked from a group - just for 'being a vampire'.

Sounds pretty crappy.

UntilValhalla13

They were a thing in trials for literally one patch, years ago. (Wolfhunter, from what I remember.) They were then gutted like a month later.

NeeScrolls

Shagreth wrote: »

NeeScrolls wrote: »

Doubtful things will be changing much anytime soon.

Although, rumor is that Werewolves & Vampires are uber powerful in the new *CARD GAME*

Lack of new skill-lines and proper balance of vampires and werewolves has always been a big topic for me, it's like -- there's a LOT of people that clearly care for vampires and werewolves and would love to be able to use them for every bit of content, but ZOS doesn't even want to address the elephant in the room, it's just nerf after nerf when something is viable. (or some cases..overperforming)

Yep i hear ya loud & clear , particularly since i been both since 2014

My guess is: They (the developers) are struggling with the exact same dilemma SWG's Raph Koster & crew struggled with regarding 'Jedi' ...

Make WW's & Vamps too cool powerful and everyone will want to play them, thus eradicating their inherent lore *rare* factor.

Make them too weak nerfed though and barely anyone will bother playing them, thus making them rare but "useless" in endgame.

Personally, i still have fun playing both.

Morvan

barney2525 wrote: »

I dont slot any vamp skills for combat so I dont understand why one would be kicked from a group - just for 'being a vampire'.

Well if you're not using any vamp skill you're just giving yourself free weaknesses.

RaikaNA

Shagreth wrote: »

So, vampires clearly have no place in vet trials, probably the same can be said for werewolves. I guess the only way for someone to be allowed to run WW in a trial would be to go with a static group of friends. Pack leader seems to be the only truly significant thing they bring to the table but that can be replaced by a certain set. Am I missing anything?

It's a little sad that both (vampire and ww) skill-lines are (probably) deliberately being kept out of PvE, they should, at the very least, be able to adequately replace X role if need be, but probably not be top tier since that would 'force' players to be one.

@ZOS_Kevin something to consider perhaps, maybe both lines could do with a minor rework to finally have a place in 'competitive' play.

A group of people using werewolves managed to clear vAA You can use werewolf in a veteran setting.. you just need to find the rightful combination to be successful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtTy0mXqvnc

Oh and I'm also testing this current werewolf tank build out...
https://thetankclub.com/eso-werewolf-tank-build/

Werewolves do have some use for pve

Jaraal

UntilValhalla13 wrote: »

They were a thing in trials for literally one patch, years ago. (Wolfhunter, from what I remember.) They were then gutted like a month later.

Yep, werewolves were finally made relevant with Wolfhunter, but they pulled the plug on that quick when people who didn't know how to defend against werewolves (yes, they have their weaknesses) started complaining in the forums about getting eaten. Werewolves have never been relevant since, and you see very few in Cyro, IC and BGs like before.

Shagreth

Jaraal wrote: »

Yep, werewolves were finally made relevant with Wolfhunter, but they pulled the plug on that quick when people who didn't know how to defend against werewolves (yes, they have their weaknesses) started complaining in the forums about getting eaten. Werewolves have never been relevant since, and you see very few in Cyro, IC and BGs like before.

Well, that's just depressing.

kringled_1

Jaraal wrote: »

UntilValhalla13 wrote: »

They were a thing in trials for literally one patch, years ago. (Wolfhunter, from what I remember.) They were then gutted like a month later.

Yep, werewolves were finally made relevant with Wolfhunter, but they pulled the plug on that quick when people who didn't know how to defend against werewolves (yes, they have their weaknesses) started complaining in the forums about getting eaten. Werewolves have never been relevant since, and you see very few in Cyro, IC and BGs like before.

There was a significant period after that (I think fall 2019-early 2020?) where they were very frequent in IC and not uncommon in cyro - I think the most common set combination was Alessian Order, Mighty Chudan, and often Crimson twilight. Very high resistance, very high health recovery. Damage wasn't high but survivability was through the roof.
That setup had multiple nerfs - nerfs to the sets, battle spirit applying to health recovery, werewolf lost its unnamed 10k resistances for major resolve.

Jaraal

kringled_1 wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

UntilValhalla13 wrote: »

They were a thing in trials for literally one patch, years ago. (Wolfhunter, from what I remember.) They were then gutted like a month later.

Yep, werewolves were finally made relevant with Wolfhunter, but they pulled the plug on that quick when people who didn't know how to defend against werewolves (yes, they have their weaknesses) started complaining in the forums about getting eaten. Werewolves have never been relevant since, and you see very few in Cyro, IC and BGs like before.

There was a significant period after that (I think fall 2019-early 2020?) where they were very frequent in IC and not uncommon in cyro - I think the most common set combination was Alessian Order, Mighty Chudan, and often Crimson twilight. Very high resistance, very high health recovery. Damage wasn't high but survivability was through the roof.
That setup had multiple nerfs - nerfs to the sets, battle spirit applying to health recovery, werewolf lost its unnamed 10k resistances for major resolve.

Yeah, because one content creator posted a video of himself wearing those sets and standing in front of an IC sewer flag boss getting whacked on while he had the inventory screen open, and not dying. So instead of just one or two things being nerfed, all those things you mentioned got nerfed, anti-resistance sets were introduced, and werewolf went back to being underperforming again.

LashanW

Shagreth wrote: »

So, vampires clearly have no place in vet trials, probably the same can be said for werewolves.

Vampires used to be a thing in score pushing trial groups thanks to toggle and sometimes because arterial burst being a very low cost spammable. Toggle was a high risk high reward thing but eventually ate the nerf hammer.

As for werewolves, I really hate the timer on their werewolf form. It's very annoying because in PvE endgame sometimes you have to wait for a teammate or until raid lead finish explaining something and by the time you start the fight, werewolf form is gone.

NPC werewolves transform at will and they can stay transformed forever if they wish, I don't get why player werewolves have to be so limited by such a timer.

ankerous

LashanW wrote: »

Shagreth wrote: »

So, vampires clearly have no place in vet trials, probably the same can be said for werewolves.

As for werewolves, I really hate the timer on their werewolf form. It's very annoying because in PvE endgame sometimes you have to wait for a teammate or until raid lead finish explaining something and by the time you start the fight, werewolf form is gone.

Assuming they didn't change it from the last time I played a lot as a WW as I only recently came back, you could use ravage health potions to extend the time spent in WW form almost indefinitely as long as you remembered to keep using the potions during non-combat time each time the cooldown expires.

Arunei

Abadd wrote: »

barney2525 wrote: »

I dont slot any vamp skills for combat so I dont understand why one would be kicked from a group - just for 'being a vampire'.

Well if you're not using any vamp skill you're just giving yourself free weaknesses.

Most of the active skills really aren't useful though, even for casual play. Eviscerate and its morphs require you to have less Health in order to do the most damage, which most people find both too risky and too much hassle to balance their Health. Frenzy and its morphs do more damage the more stacks you have, and even though the damage is capped at 10 stacks, since the damage ticks every 2 seconds the skills are toggled on, most.peope have a hard time juggling their Health and their damage. The Mist skills prevent you from being healed at all and and one morph only works on PvP, Vampiric Drain and its morphs do laughable damage and hardly heal you (on top of not stunning like they used to), and Mesmerize and its morphs require enemies to be facing you, so even though it can't be blocked it takes entirely too much effort to use because of positioning issues.

The only reason my main is still a vamp is because she was turned back in 2016 and I never felt like curing her after the revamp. She isn't used for any hard content though, and the Unnatural Movement passive is nice for when I'm pilfering safeboxes in Dhalmora and get spotted by a guard because their fricken detection is all over the board there. One moment you have to literally run on top of them to detect you, the next they're detecting you from halfway across Tamriel. It's annoying.

Kisakee

ankerous wrote: »

LashanW wrote: »

Shagreth wrote: »

So, vampires clearly have no place in vet trials, probably the same can be said for werewolves.

As for werewolves, I really hate the timer on their werewolf form. It's very annoying because in PvE endgame sometimes you have to wait for a teammate or until raid lead finish explaining something and by the time you start the fight, werewolf form is gone.

Assuming they didn't change it from the last time I played a lot as a WW as I only recently came back, you could use ravage health potions to extend the time spent in WW form almost indefinitely as long as you remembered to keep using the potions during non-combat time each time the cooldown expires.

You need to deal damage or eat corpses to fill up the timer, how can poisoning yourself help there?

Shagreth

Jaraal wrote: »

Yeah, because one content creator posted a video of himself wearing those sets and standing in front of an IC sewer flag boss getting whacked on while he had the inventory screen open, and not dying. So instead of just one or two things being nerfed, all those things you mentioned got nerfed, anti-resistance sets were introduced, and werewolf went back to being underperforming again.

Yeah, this has happened a bunch of times with various mmorpgs, X content creator does something that claims is broken (usually isn't) for views, people share it on the forums, everyone goes crazy, even though this will probably never affect them and then devs proceed to nerf out of what seems to be a knee-jerk reaction. What happens then is a bunch average joes get a broken class that they can't enjoy anymore, no-one really wins, only the content creator.

ankerous

Kisakee wrote: »

You need to deal damage or eat corpses to fill up the timer, how can poisoning yourself help there?

Assuming you don't put points into the alchemy passive to not have negative effects from potions, it does damage to you and each time it does damage it refills the bar a little. Maybe the game considers it combat or something, I never thought about it that much beyond it doing what the person who introduced me to using them said they would do.

I don't know if it still works the same but I'll test tonight but I absolutely guarantee that it at least did work because the WW guild I was in all used them and we did multiple trials while in WW mode almost the entire time even when we had to explain mechanics to people new to the trial.

Tommy_The_Gun

Jaraal wrote: »

UntilValhalla13 wrote: »

They were a thing in trials for literally one patch, years ago. (Wolfhunter, from what I remember.) They were then gutted like a month later.

Yep, werewolves were finally made relevant with Wolfhunter, but they pulled the plug on that quick when people who didn't know how to defend against werewolves (yes, they have their weaknesses) started complaining in the forums about getting eaten. Werewolves have never been relevant since, and you see very few in Cyro, IC and BGs like before.

As far as I can tell it wasn't just that. A lot of content creators back then complained that it is "too easy" to play as PvE WW dps, as all you did with blood moon set was LA and you could get 50K dps (terms like brain-dead rotation were used).

If only those players back then could time travel to the future, to present times when people hit for 100+K dps...

CP5

ankerous wrote: »

Kisakee wrote: »

You need to deal damage or eat corpses to fill up the timer, how can poisoning yourself help there?

Assuming you don't put points into the alchemy passive to not have negative effects from potions, it does damage to you and each time it does damage it refills the bar a little. Maybe the game considers it combat or something, I never thought about it that much beyond it doing what the person who introduced me to using them said they would do.

I don't know if it still works the same but I'll test tonight but I absolutely guarantee that it at least did work because the WW guild I was in all used them and we did multiple trials while in WW mode almost the entire time even when we had to explain mechanics to people new to the trial.

How long ago was that? For years that passive has been changed from taking damage to dealing damage.

GarfieId

Abadd wrote: »

barney2525 wrote: »

I dont slot any vamp skills for combat so I dont understand why one would be kicked from a group - just for 'being a vampire'.

Well if you're not using any vamp skill you're just giving yourself free weaknesses.

Not necessarily, undeath is a pretty powerful passive if I'm not mistaken, some people in pvp run vamp just for this passive.

Just a quick edit to say for PvE could be good on a tank for a bit of extra safety providing there's no fire.

DigiAngel

I'm glad I stumbled on this thread....I just managed to get (pretty much by accident, so I didn't grind for it) the Shapeshifter's Chain. After reading this...and not seeing used in practically ANY build online..guess I'll just skip the WW experiment.

kringled_1

DigiAngel wrote: »

I'm glad I stumbled on this thread....I just managed to get (pretty much by accident, so I didn't grind for it) the Shapeshifter's Chain. After reading this...and not seeing used in practically ANY build online..guess I'll just skip the WW experiment.

People run WW because they think it's fun. The only downside to being a WW if you're not using it actively is that it uses up skill points (and you can somewhat get around that if you have a free armory slot). Up to you, I have one I don't use much but I'm in no hurry to cure it either.

DigiAngel

Fun I can get behind.....but my idea of fun in ESO lately is being effective...and I get the impression there's too many minus's for the WW to be effective...sadly

aurorable

As other have mentioned in other threads, if they made WW a toggle it would be a massive improvement especially in vet content. Nothing is more annoying then long mechanics that waste the uptime (Berserker is beyond tedious and runs out to fast).

Also if it was a toggle, they could remove the annoying feed mechanic and It would make activating synergies A MILLION TIMES EASIER! Like no joke, that feed synergy gets in the way so much on bosses with a lot of adds.

Shagreth

Toggle, but they SHOULD keep the feeding in some shape or form. Make it so that you need to consume one corpse every some hours (?) or you get a debuff (wasn't it like this in Morrowind?) that would be much better for both immersion AND making WW more relevant. I would say make them shapeshift every night depending on hunger (risk of getting a bounty in a city) but that's probably not good design for an MMO game. @ZOS_Bill Summoning the gods, may the listen to our plea.

BXR_Lonestar

Shagreth wrote: »

So, vampires clearly have no place in vet trials, probably the same can be said for werewolves. I guess the only way for someone to be allowed to run WW in a trial would be to go with a static group of friends. Pack leader seems to be the only truly significant thing they bring to the table but that can be replaced by a certain set. Am I missing anything?

It's a little sad that both (vampire and ww) skill-lines are (probably) deliberately being kept out of PvE, they should, at the very least, be able to adequately replace X role if need be, but probably not be top tier since that would 'force' players to be one.

@ZOS_Kevin something to consider perhaps, maybe both lines could do with a minor rework to finally have a place in 'competitive' play.

Vampires definitely have a place in endgame PVE. There were some periods where certain encounters could not be tanked without mistform (at least that was the meta cheese). I don't know if that is still the case now, but even if a DPS couldn't cope with the downsides of vampire form, they could control it by eating/drinking the right food.

As far as werewolves? You are probably right. Werewolves do not have enough of a varied offense to contribute to a fight when there are phases where you have to stay away from the boss or attack it from range or otherwise mop up minions without moving from the spot where you can be healed. Even if you can survive on your own in werewolf form, once your back into human form, usually your DPS suffers from lack of an ultimate or lack of raw stats because your geared up to maximize damage as a werewolf. I.E., there is no synergy between a werewolf build from being in human form vs. being in wolf form, so it is a DPS loss.

IMO, werewolf needs a buff, but the werewolf is already pretty strong in PVP, so its probably not going to happen.

kringled_1

BXR_Lonestar wrote: »

Shagreth wrote: »

So, vampires clearly have no place in vet trials, probably the same can be said for werewolves. I guess the only way for someone to be allowed to run WW in a trial would be to go with a static group of friends. Pack leader seems to be the only truly significant thing they bring to the table but that can be replaced by a certain set. Am I missing anything?

It's a little sad that both (vampire and ww) skill-lines are (probably) deliberately being kept out of PvE, they should, at the very least, be able to adequately replace X role if need be, but probably not be top tier since that would 'force' players to be one.

@ZOS_Kevin something to consider perhaps, maybe both lines could do with a minor rework to finally have a place in 'competitive' play.

Vampires definitely have a place in endgame PVE. There were some periods where certain encounters could not be tanked without mistform (at least that was the meta cheese). I don't know if that is still the case now, but even if a DPS couldn't cope with the downsides of vampire form, they could control it by eating/drinking the right food.

Mist form no longer offers any damage reduction in PvE situations.

NeeScrolls

Jaraal wrote: »

Yeah, because one content creator posted a video of himself wearing those sets and standing in front of an IC sewer flag boss getting whacked on while he had the inventory screen open, and not dying. So instead of just one or two things being nerfed, all those things you mentioned got nerfed, anti-resistance sets were introduced, and werewolf went back to being underperforming again.

Yet another example of why so called "influencers" have wayyyy too much, well, influence. (in MMO's, and in society )

Tweaks > Nerfs

ankerous

CP5 wrote: »

How long ago was that? For years that passive has been changed from taking damage to dealing damage.

Early 2021 was the last time I played more as a wolf before I took a break. I don't remember the alchemy pass I've ever referring to dealing damage with potions only taking damage from the negative aspects. I'm not talking about poisons, ravage health is a potion not a poison.

Iron_Warrior

I would love to turn myself into a werewolf but the whole race against time thing with managing your werewolf form makes it frustrating for me so i would like to see 2 things:

1- make werewolf toggle

2- change the outdated look, make them look like the smaller versions of werewolf behemoths