Werewolf unique armor, vulnerabilities, and balance concerns

Panderbander

To start, I'm gonna go ahead and tag @ZOS_BrianWheeler @ZOS_GinaBruno and @ZOS_Kevin that perhaps someone can see this or pass it on to someone that can take a look at it. Now, on to the meat of this.

Some patches ago werewolf had a unique 10k armor passive that, following the abuse of a very specific interaction of sets and werewolf, was taken away and replaced with a generic Major Resolve buff, both preventing werewolf from gaining Major Resolve from other sources while also removing its only unique mitigation method (not counting the unique 10% reduction from Pack Leader which, while it is mitigation, is tied to a specific morph of the transformation ultimate and thus is not a werewolf-universal mitigation). Subsequently health recovery was also hit in PVP, being cut in half via Battle Spirit making the stat nearly useless as a survivability stat, especially compared to other non-nerfed sources like maximum health.

This leads us to where we are now: Werewolf, with zero unique mitigation passives also carries a poison vulnerability, causing the user of the skill line to take a whopping +25% increase to the poison damage they take while transformed.

It occurs to me that this vulnerability was implemented at a time when both health recovery was a relevant stat and we had a unique 10k armor (a roughly 15% damage mitigation). While this vulnerability could be considered the trade-off for receiving increased weapon damage, stamina, and some movement speed, the number is presently too high for the benefit offered. To support this I offer the comparison to the other side of the curse-coin: Vampires.

Presently, stage 4 vampirism inflicts the user with a 20% fire vulnerability. This on its own is 5% less vulnerability than the werewolf one, and one that is further offset by vampire's unique damage mitigation in the form of Undeath. An argument may be made that vampire also carries a penalty to the cost of abilities but this doesn't hold water; the penalty is clearly intended to be incentive to use vampire abilities over normal ones, to the point that the reduction in cost is double the penalty applied to other skills. Further, Undeath appears to be intended as a replacement to health recovery, making it the vampire equivalent to the health recovery stat (since stage 4 removes all health recovery).

So, with this in mind, why is the vampire vulnerability to fire at stage 4 only 20% while werewolves receive a 25% vulnerability to poison? The unique 15% mitigation from 10k armor would translate the extra damage taken from poisons to approximately a 21% vulnerability which is slightly higher but much too close to the 20% fire vulnerability vampires "enjoy" to be a coincidence.

To this end I would make the following suggestions:

• Leave the 25% vulnerability as it is but return the unique 10k armor to werewolf, or
• Reduce the vulnerability to at most the level a vampire experiences at stage 4, or for a fairer balance somewhere between stage 2 and 3 (the stages more commonly used than stage 4), particularly considering the extra value that armor provided for mitigation of other types of damage.

This only addresses armor, however, and health recovery is still a problem. Lore-wise werewolves are known for their supernatural regenerative ability while the werewolves in ESO experience nothing of the sort. Health recovery for a werewolf is no different than the health recovery of anyone else, and is hit just as hard by Battle Spirit as it is for everyone else. It previously functioned as a sort of pseudo heal over time for werewolves (a skill line with no access to proper heal over time abilities), though with the Battle Spirit hit it may as well be a blank stat line.

To fix this, I would suggest adding a +100% modifier to health recovery while transformed. This would return health recovery to a useable state for a spec with no heal over time spells without returning it to its previous state for non-werewolves, and requiring no change to the Battle Spirit passive itself.

While neither of these changes would fix all of the longstanding issues werewolf has been experiencing (such as no access to Minor Resolve, a now-universal buff thanks to Resolving Vigor), they would certainly improve the werewolf player's experience without having a major impact on the game as a whole.

Micah_Bayer

Panderbander wrote: »

To start, I'm gonna go ahead and tag @ZOS_BrianWheeler @ZOS_GinaBruno and @ZOS_Kevin that perhaps someone can see this or pass it on to someone that can take a look at it. Now, on to the meat of this.

Some patches ago werewolf had a unique 10k armor passive that, following the abuse of a very specific interaction of sets and werewolf, was taken away and replaced with a generic Major Resolve buff, both preventing werewolf from gaining Major Resolve from other sources while also removing its only unique mitigation method (not counting the unique 10% reduction from Pack Leader which, while it is mitigation, is tied to a specific morph of the transformation ultimate and thus is not a werewolf-universal mitigation). Subsequently health recovery was also hit in PVP, being cut in half via Battle Spirit making the stat nearly useless as a survivability stat, especially compared to other non-nerfed sources like maximum health.

This leads us to where we are now: Werewolf, with zero unique mitigation passives also carries a poison vulnerability, causing the user of the skill line to take a whopping +25% increase to the poison damage they take while transformed.

It occurs to me that this vulnerability was implemented at a time when both health recovery was a relevant stat and we had a unique 10k armor (a roughly 15% damage mitigation). While this vulnerability could be considered the trade-off for receiving increased weapon damage, stamina, and some movement speed, the number is presently too high for the benefit offered. To support this I offer the comparison to the other side of the curse-coin: Vampires.

Presently, stage 4 vampirism inflicts the user with a 20% fire vulnerability. This on its own is 5% less vulnerability than the werewolf one, and one that is further offset by vampire's unique damage mitigation in the form of Undeath. An argument may be made that vampire also carries a penalty to the cost of abilities but this doesn't hold water; the penalty is clearly intended to be incentive to use vampire abilities over normal ones, to the point that the reduction in cost is double the penalty applied to other skills. Further, Undeath appears to be intended as a replacement to health recovery, making it the vampire equivalent to the health recovery stat (since stage 4 removes all health recovery).

So, with this in mind, why is the vampire vulnerability to fire at stage 4 only 20% while werewolves receive a 25% vulnerability to poison? The unique 15% mitigation from 10k armor would translate the extra damage taken from poisons to approximately a 21% vulnerability which is slightly higher but much too close to the 20% fire vulnerability vampires "enjoy" to be a coincidence.

To this end I would make the following suggestions:

• Leave the 25% vulnerability as it is but return the unique 10k armor to werewolf, or
• Reduce the vulnerability to at most the level a vampire experiences at stage 4, or for a fairer balance somewhere between stage 2 and 3 (the stages more commonly used than stage 4), particularly considering the extra value that armor provided for mitigation of other types of damage.

This only addresses armor, however, and health recovery is still a problem. Lore-wise werewolves are known for their supernatural regenerative ability while the werewolves in ESO experience nothing of the sort. Health recovery for a werewolf is no different than the health recovery of anyone else, and is hit just as hard by Battle Spirit as it is for everyone else. It previously functioned as a sort of pseudo heal over time for werewolves (a skill line with no access to proper heal over time abilities), though with the Battle Spirit hit it may as well be a blank stat line.

To fix this, I would suggest adding a +100% modifier to health recovery while transformed. This would return health recovery to a useable state for a spec with no heal over time spells without returning it to its previous state for non-werewolves, and requiring no change to the Battle Spirit passive itself.

While neither of these changes would fix all of the longstanding issues werewolf has been experiencing (such as no access to Minor Resolve, a now-universal buff thanks to Resolving Vigor), they would certainly improve the werewolf player's experience without having a major impact on the game as a whole.

I'd say having a class that innately has bonus dmg vs everyone in pvp is why they don't raise the fire dmg further. DK as we all know is overturned, and having 5% more fire dmg on top would just he insane. But, yeah i agree with most of your points. Just tone dk down a bit before touching vampire, and reduce undeath to like 20%.

Erickson9610

I really hope that the combat team listens to these concerns about Werewolf. Werewolves don't have the same build freedom that human builds have — so every patch that skips over the Werewolf skill line specifically is another patch that offers nothing to address these ongoing concerns.

Is it because no one seems interested in the playstyle that no one is aware of how out of balance the playstyle has become? This game is massive, but Werewolf players have been asking for balance changes and bug fixes for years at this point. We can't simply slot a better skill from our other skill lines to remedy the balancing issues with Werewolf.

Panderbander

Micah_Bayer wrote: »

Panderbander wrote: »

To start, I'm gonna go ahead and tag @ZOS_BrianWheeler @ZOS_GinaBruno and @ZOS_Kevin that perhaps someone can see this or pass it on to someone that can take a look at it. Now, on to the meat of this.

Some patches ago werewolf had a unique 10k armor passive that, following the abuse of a very specific interaction of sets and werewolf, was taken away and replaced with a generic Major Resolve buff, both preventing werewolf from gaining Major Resolve from other sources while also removing its only unique mitigation method (not counting the unique 10% reduction from Pack Leader which, while it is mitigation, is tied to a specific morph of the transformation ultimate and thus is not a werewolf-universal mitigation). Subsequently health recovery was also hit in PVP, being cut in half via Battle Spirit making the stat nearly useless as a survivability stat, especially compared to other non-nerfed sources like maximum health.

This leads us to where we are now: Werewolf, with zero unique mitigation passives also carries a poison vulnerability, causing the user of the skill line to take a whopping +25% increase to the poison damage they take while transformed.

It occurs to me that this vulnerability was implemented at a time when both health recovery was a relevant stat and we had a unique 10k armor (a roughly 15% damage mitigation). While this vulnerability could be considered the trade-off for receiving increased weapon damage, stamina, and some movement speed, the number is presently too high for the benefit offered. To support this I offer the comparison to the other side of the curse-coin: Vampires.

Presently, stage 4 vampirism inflicts the user with a 20% fire vulnerability. This on its own is 5% less vulnerability than the werewolf one, and one that is further offset by vampire's unique damage mitigation in the form of Undeath. An argument may be made that vampire also carries a penalty to the cost of abilities but this doesn't hold water; the penalty is clearly intended to be incentive to use vampire abilities over normal ones, to the point that the reduction in cost is double the penalty applied to other skills. Further, Undeath appears to be intended as a replacement to health recovery, making it the vampire equivalent to the health recovery stat (since stage 4 removes all health recovery).

So, with this in mind, why is the vampire vulnerability to fire at stage 4 only 20% while werewolves receive a 25% vulnerability to poison? The unique 15% mitigation from 10k armor would translate the extra damage taken from poisons to approximately a 21% vulnerability which is slightly higher but much too close to the 20% fire vulnerability vampires "enjoy" to be a coincidence.

To this end I would make the following suggestions:

• Leave the 25% vulnerability as it is but return the unique 10k armor to werewolf, or
• Reduce the vulnerability to at most the level a vampire experiences at stage 4, or for a fairer balance somewhere between stage 2 and 3 (the stages more commonly used than stage 4), particularly considering the extra value that armor provided for mitigation of other types of damage.

This only addresses armor, however, and health recovery is still a problem. Lore-wise werewolves are known for their supernatural regenerative ability while the werewolves in ESO experience nothing of the sort. Health recovery for a werewolf is no different than the health recovery of anyone else, and is hit just as hard by Battle Spirit as it is for everyone else. It previously functioned as a sort of pseudo heal over time for werewolves (a skill line with no access to proper heal over time abilities), though with the Battle Spirit hit it may as well be a blank stat line.

To fix this, I would suggest adding a +100% modifier to health recovery while transformed. This would return health recovery to a useable state for a spec with no heal over time spells without returning it to its previous state for non-werewolves, and requiring no change to the Battle Spirit passive itself.

While neither of these changes would fix all of the longstanding issues werewolf has been experiencing (such as no access to Minor Resolve, a now-universal buff thanks to Resolving Vigor), they would certainly improve the werewolf player's experience without having a major impact on the game as a whole.

I'd say having a class that innately has bonus dmg vs everyone in pvp is why they don't raise the fire dmg further. DK as we all know is overturned, and having 5% more fire dmg on top would just he insane. But, yeah i agree with most of your points. Just tone dk down a bit before touching vampire, and reduce undeath to like 20%.

So I'd like to point out that I'm not advocating changes to Vampire in this post. This is purely using vampire as a tool to highlight disparities between the curses that have lead to werewolf existing in a very nearly unplayable state.

That said, it is worth noting that DK also has an inordinate amount of poison damage compared to other classes, and thus hurts werewolves just as well if not more than vampire considering our lack of any unique mitigations, heal over time spells, or ability to cleanse negative effects from ourselves. Add in the obscene strength of sniping using a bow (not to mention the ultimate) and the ubiquity of weapon poisons and werewolf will generally be more likely to see significant poison damage in any random fight than a vampire will see significant fire damage.

Necrotech_Master

i see more people using WW in IC than cyro, mainly because of the lack of ranged dmg

but i also understand all of the points that you bring up, especially the point about the poison dmg, as that is the primary focus of a bow ganker (scavenging demise + swamp raider is a heavy hitting poison dmg, and swamp raider giving a heavy buff to anything poison dmg lol)

while i have seen people playing WW somewhat effectively, they still die pretty easy especially to bow users, a good toxic barrage with scavenging and swamp raider is almost guaranteed to kill the WW

maras balm can help cover a lot of the WW weak points for sure, but still requires a set to even make it remotely playable