Some suggestions for Werewolves...

Panderbander · March 2023

As a dedicated werewolf player in both PVP and PVE I find there are quite a lot of situations where werewolves are incredibly lacking in comparison to their "normie" brethren while in (nearly) no case are they considered the best for something or even among the top of the list. In light of that, I have some suggestions for how to change things to help werewolves out without completely overpowering them (as I know a lot of people are afraid will happen with them).

To preface, I am a longtime werewolf in ESO, having started playing during the beta (got my monkey and everything), took a break for a few years then came back and have been playing consistently ever since. I run a YouTube channel almost entirely dedicated to werewolf content in this game and spend an inordinate amount of time theorycrafting and testing both on the live server as well as the PTS. Fun fact, I was the first to bring to light how the Burning Light passive would benefit werewolves during the first week of that particular PTS cycle. I have completed an array of hard mode PVE content as a werewolf and actively PVP in the proc-enabled campaigns on PCNA, attaining the rank of colonel or better on every class, gaining and holding emperor for multiple campaigns, and even going so far as to create a strong tri-faction werewolf PVP guild that has gained a reputation amongst the population of the Blackreach campaign (for better or worse).

Enough about me, this is about werewolves and how they might be improved:

Remove the second cast of Pounce (as Carnage) from the game and make the Pounce itself apply the Carnage bleed. As it exists in the game now there are many issues with this ability that range from the ability bugging and not morphing into Carnage (preventing the dot from being applied and causing you to Pounce a second time) to Brutal Carnage (the AoE morph's bleed) requiring a target in range and targeted to cast but is also an AoE and will only affect targets within its area making server latency often cause the ability to fail to fire for an extended time then when it does fire not actually hit the target that made it castable in the first place. This is, of course in addition to the prohibitive cost associated with keeping a single 10 second bleed up, costing somewhere around 8000 stamina for a middle-of-the-road DOT.
Allow Claws of Life to apply the Minor Lifesteal debuff. Werewolves are clearly intended to run with other werewolves (see the Call of the Pack passive) but offer no group utility that isn't offered by other classes in a better or stronger manner. Minor Lifesteal on Claws of Life could help to give some much needed group utility so that it actually makes sense to run a pack of wolves rather than just a Pack Leader in a group of normies while also giving a pseudo heal over time that the playstyle is lacking.
Allow Hircine's Fortitude to heal an additional TRANSFORMED werewolf for a percentage of the initial heal (similar to Polar Wind). As stated above, werewolves lack group utility despite being incentivized to group with other werewolves. This would aid greatly in allowing werewolf groups to be self-sufficient. On a similar note:
Change Hircine's Rage to scale off Weapon/Spell damage or max Stamina rather than HP. Werewolves are forced to invest significantly into health to have a heal that can make up for the lack of a proper heal over time spell, leading to situations where a werewolf has to be tanky just to stay alive longer than a few moments and complaints of "unkillable 45k HP werewolves". It sucks for us, it sucks for enemy players, it just sucks. Giving us a WD scaling heal would allow werewolves to build less tanky without having to worry about falling over the moment someone breathes on them.
Remove the 100% HP requirement to proc Major Berserk. This is already a thing for Fortitude as it gives the minor recoveries regardless of your health pool when used. Additionally, a single point of damage prevents this portion of the ability from working at all. The 5% damage taken thing can stay, I know it's already been stated that it should have a downside due to the 10 second duration.
Change the Savage Strength passive to grant Minor Resolve at rank 1 in addition to Major Resolve at rank 2. Everyone can get this buff now without changing anything about their build thanks to the Resolving Vigor change. Let's just be fair about it.
Remove the facing/feared requirement for the damage bonus on Howl of Agony. This morph does not apply a synergy like its alternative (the ability to self-synergize with it is a great change by the way, good job on that one ZOS) but very rarely do you get to take advantage of this extra damage in pvp because fears are nearly instantly broken and simply running away gives a werewolf's target a 20% damage reduction. In PVE content, this facing requirement forces you to stand directly in front of a boss to have decent DPS off the ability. I don't know of a single MMO where standing in front of a massive murder monster with the tank is a good idea.
Fix the Ferocious Roar morph of the fear to give the heavy attack speed bonus on the first heavy attack. This requires werewolves utilizing the skill to hold left click to benefit from it at all, meaning you can't weave in abilities and just generally leads to non-interactive gameplay.
Alter the Pack Leader's Bone Broth to provide cost reduction to abilities as well as the transformation. We don't need an ultimate cost reduction. We don't need more werewolf themed (presumably werewolf focused?) sets that give ultimate generation. We have not needed that in a LONG time; the original incarnation of the Shapeshifter's Chain really proved that in that it was a functionally useless item for werewolves prior to the cost reduction granted to werewolf abilities as well being added. If I remember correctly, originally the Bone Broth DID apply a slight cost reduction to abilities, though this was stripped away from it when they fixed the bug giving us the ultimate cost reduction only while transformed.

Making these changes wouldn't make werewolves OP. It wouldn't get anywhere close to that, in fact. Much of this is quality of life improvements or simply making up for power creep that has consistently lead to werewolves being more and more of a meme choice rather than a valid playstyle.

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_Kevin Any chance any of this could become reality?