Do Werewolves need an overhaul?

Iccotak · February 2020

NOTE: This is exclusively discussing gameplay mechanics & the skill line

Feel free to explain your reasoning

FakeFox · February 2020

Yes, they need an Overhaul

The "rework" we got with Wolfhunter was dramatically bad. All it did was change numbers so Werewolf does high damage, but the skill line remained as dysfunctional as before. In my opinion the current version of Werewolf should be completely scrapped and redone.

Noxavian · February 2020

Yes, they need an Overhaul

Iccotak wrote: »

NOTE: This is exclusively discussing gameplay mechanics & the skill line

Feel free to explain your reasoning

I'm down for werewolves getting an overhaul since vamps are getting one. However, I do think werewolves/vampires should be equal in power with very distinct advantages over one another.

snoozy · February 2020

Yes, they need an Overhaul

*growls at everyone voting no*

Lapin_Logic · February 2020

Just some minor changes

They need a graphical overhaul, the model and skin looks very dated especially when you compare it to the werewolf behemoth NPC's, they get cool facial fluffy chops and more muscles, while all 3 player wolves look identical apart from color.

There needs to be more customisation, this is fashion scrolls after all, why cant we have tattoos , face accessories, a difference between the base WW and the berserker morph like more muscles on the berserker

Iccotak · February 2020

Lapin_Logic wrote: »

They need a graphical overhaul, the model and skin looks very dated especially when you compare it to the werewolf behemoth NPC's, they get cool facial fluffy chops and more muscles, while all 3 player wolves look identical apart from color.

There needs to be more customisation, this is fashion scrolls after all, why cant we have tattoos , face accessories, a difference between the base WW and the berserker morph like more muscles on the berserker

Like I said in the OP:
"NOTE: This is exclusively discussing gameplay mechanics & the skill line"

Visuals are a different discussion

starkerealm · February 2020

Need? No. They're playable.

However, they could use some serious love. Right now, werewolves are not particularly viable for endgame content, so they're relegated to being fluff. That's fine, up to a point, but they really should have a viable role, which they currently do not have.

Kittytravel · February 2020

Yes, they need an Overhaul

I'd say the Werewolf Transformation ability itself can stay but it's the morphs that would need changing. One needs to be a morph that thrives in combat and gets bonuses from getting bloodied up, like a wounded wolf becoming more determined and desperate as it gets injured in a fight.
The second could remain pack leader, a pet werewolf type build with possible pet compliment sets in the future.

Skill:
Pounce is fine.
And Infectious Claws I think is fine as is.

Hircine's Bounty should be stam; vampires never had a stam cost skill so it's silly the stamina counterpart had a magicka cost skill. Hircine's Rage is fine as is; Hircine's Fortitude I think should grant a damage reduction on use rather than a larger heal.

Roar's usage imo just needs to go; I know it was kind of staple for PvP werewolf but it doesn't fit well with the rest of the kit. It'd be nice to see it maybe reworked into a group buff; Major Courage would fit the idea of having the giant hulking werewolf fighting on your side and not against you. The morphs could be something like "Also grants the werewolf Minor Berserk" (Not so good for large group play) or the other morph can be one that grants Minor Savagery to only the werewolf.

Piercing Howl makes werewolfs good in PVE with Howl of Despair, I think Howl of Agony could become a werewolf execute ability, dealing extra damage to low HP targets. It'd fit the idea of agony after all.

Passive wise.

Blood Rage is fine.
Bloodmoon's Fine.
Savage Strength is fine.

Pursuit should keep the movespeed, the Heavy Attack stam regen should go into something like "You deal 4% more damage to targets affected by a bleed." or such like that to better match the theme of pursuit.

Call of the Pack I'd rework but I don't have any ideas on how to; it feels really useless to have more than one WW in your group even with my above changes and it'd almost be preferable that this passive got reworked into something that reduced your WW ulti cost like Hircine's Favored or such.

Drdeath20 · February 2020

Yes, they need an Overhaul

Everything about wolfing out is just not as cool as it should be.

Nord_Raseri · February 2020

Yes, they need an Overhaul

We got buffed over a year ago and then subsequently nerf hammered into oblivion not long after.

caperb · February 2020

No, they are fine the way they are

Your poll lacks options.

No, werewolves already had an overhaul recently. It would a bit exaggerated to give them an overhaul again and would leave other parts of the game neglected.

Everyone voting yes only started this year or means something else: werewolves need a buff. Oh and yes, they definitely need a buff.

And please, can we already stop all the werewolf QQ threads in a year that is dedicated to vampires? Yes, werewolves need a buff, but right now I see more werewolf than vampire threads.

caperb · February 2020

No, they are fine the way they are

Can be removed, double post when I tried to fix a typo

Iccotak · February 2020

caperb wrote: »

Your poll lacks options.

No, werewolves already had an overhaul recently. It would a bit exaggerated to give them an overhaul again and would leave other parts of the game neglected.

Everyone voting yes only started this year or means something else: werewolves need a buff. Oh and yes, they definitely need a buff.

And please, can we already stop all the werewolf QQ threads in a year that is dedicated to vampires? Yes, werewolves need a buff, but right now I see more werewolf than vampire threads.

I think the poll covers everything
You either think;
- They are fine the way they are
- Just minor changes
- Complete overhaul

And you give your reasons why you come to that conclusion - which could include the fact they were changed in the Wolf-Hunter update.
If you think they just need buffs then that would fall under "Minor Changes"

If you have no opinion because you don't play werewolves or just recently got into ESO then you don't vote or speak on it as you have nothing to say.

Polls do not need to be overly complicated the deeper nuance is for the discussion

Also No the year is not just for Vampires - as ZOS has said "The Dark Heart of Skyrim" is about Witches, Vampires, and Werewolves (basically anything of the Dark Gothic Genre) as we see in the dungeon DLC which covers all kinds of gothic creatures.

Sephyr · February 2020

Just some minor changes

Bringing them in line and balanced with vampirism for an equal playing field. Also if/when they make overhauls to both? They need to just leave them alone unless something is clearly broken.

starkerealm · February 2020

Iccotak wrote: »

I think the poll covers everything
You either think;
- They are fine the way they are
- Just minor changes
- Complete overhaul

And yet, none of these cover my position.

Werewolves are not fine. Minor changes won't cut it. However, a complete overhaul isn't necessary.

In your defense, I don't think the options are bad, however they are a bit more narrow than you probably intended. The initial question pigeonholes the affirmative response to an overhaul of the skill line. Contrast that to something like:

Do Werewolves need Improvement?

1) Yes, desperately
2) Yes, they could use some buffs
3) They're fine right now
4) No, they're too strong already

In this example, the affirmative and emphatic affirmative don't dictate a single, specific, answer, and instead leave it open to the respondent to fill in the blanks if they choose to.

This is loosely based of a Likert scale. A survey format where you make a statement and the options are Strongly Agree/Agree/Neither Agree nor Disagree/Disagree/Strongly Disagree. (Though, in some cases, the middle response is removed.) Now, granted, I didn't give a strongly disagree option. For your purposes it's fairly irrelevant.

I'm not holding any of this against you, simply saying, there's room for improvement.

Tommy_The_Gun · February 2020

Yes, they need an Overhaul

Poll is kinda lacking. Imho they don't need an compleat overhaul (mechanic wise), but rather some serious buffs. Curently WWs simply do not have a usecase. Unlike vampire, that people tend pick just to have mist form in pvp or more sustain in pve.

Since WW toolkit is "locked" (once you transform, you can only use 5 ww skills only, without ulti) they lack negative effect removal and snare removal skills.
On top if that, they lack sustain (25% more expensive skills & costly magicka heal on a mostly stamina build).
Also, for the most part they lack presure dmg - since ww use primarly bleed for that and bleed dmg no longer bypasses armour and this forces WW to build for yet another thing - penetration.
Another thing is morph choices. There is none. Picking Pack Leader morph does not bring anything that would be worth it. ZOS stated in their dev comment a while back that they want 2 ww morphs to be distinguish. That is why they stripped all
the dmg from Pack Leader and they wanted this morph to provide utility. But the 2 pets are way too unreiable to call it a "utility". This morph imho should be more tank & survival focused and Werewolf Berserker - dps and burst dps focused.

Anyway, As a result of ZOS's "vision" - we pretty much only have 1 WW morph and there are way to many things that you need to build for in order to make a working ww build, meaning that there is no benefit in using WW ulti. Even if you are on a non min-maxing level, you are better of without ww.

Jaraal · February 2020

Yes, they need an Overhaul

Werewolves were great with the Wolfhunter rework, but too many Battlegrounders were crying about being beaten by us, even though they never bothered to learn our weaknesses and how easily we could be defeated. So we got nerfed into irrelevancy, and made to conform to some "standard" by the new combat team.... even though by our very nature we are not any type of standard build.

They said they wanted us to do 30% more damage than the standard, but at a 30% greater cost. So basically a wash. Our damage to resource cost is exactly the same as any other class. But the difference is, we have weaknesses that no other classes are subjected to.

We take extra damage from poison and Fighter's Guild skills. Our skills are limited to a one use ultimate, and five other reusable skills and their morphs, versus the hundreds of other choices available to everyone else. We don't get to use weapon passives, like everyone else does. We have no purge or cleanse skill available, so we are vulnerable to DoTs, debuffs, and crowd controls that other classes can remove, but we can't. We have to stop fighting and eat corpses to maintain our form... no other class has artificial time limits. Our pets are no longer controllable, so they are just random DoTs that aren't even effective against bosses. We have nothing to offer dungeon and trial groups, so are unwelcome in multiplayer content. Our only heal available is not even in our natural resource pool, so it's of very limited use. And with the upcoming Skyrim chapter, we will rack up bounty 100% of the time when transormed in overworld content, where necros only receive bounty if they use certain skills.

There's really no reason to play a werewolf currently, as every other class can do more damage, heal better, and provide support to groups. Almost no one plays it any more, except for role playing purposes. The best thing about being a werewolf today is the free skill points one receives when respeccing to something worthwhile.

mague · February 2020

Just some minor changes

The ability to select the color in the settings. I would like try a white Berserker. Cool would be a additional bear visual for wardens

Faster LA and HA. With equal or increased damage. Doesnt matter, just faster

Some penetration on Savage Strength.

A morph for Bloodmoon.
- Bright Bloodmoon: Allows a bite every 4 days
- Bluemoon: If your max. magicka is higher then your max. stamina the Bluemoon turns 30% of max. magicka into max. stamina

Curious_Death · February 2020

Yes, they need an Overhaul

WW in this game re bad comparing to vampire... coz vamp have their buffs uptime all the time... and WW its just timed waste of ultimate points

starkerealm · February 2020

mague wrote: »

The ability to select the color in the settings. I would like try a white Berserker. Cool would be a additional bear visual for wardens

Faster LA and HA. With equal or increased damage. Doesnt matter, just faster

Some penetration on Savage Strength.

A morph for Bloodmoon.
- Bright Bloodmoon: Allows a bite every 4 days
- Bluemoon: If your max. magicka is higher then your max. stamina the Bluemoon turns 30% of max. magicka into max. stamina

Ignoring for the moment that passives never morph...

Reworking the werewolf abilities so they scale with the larger resource pool would be a good idea.

Faulgor · February 2020

Just some minor changes

For PvE, I think they need to improve two things.
One, the rotation needs to be a bit more involved, otherwise we'll probably never see buffs because light attack spam is considered too simple for viable DPS.
Two, group support needs to be improved.

Keeping bleeds up could be a great Werewolf theme, if there were more of them. To that end, I think Claws should probably be changed to bleed damage instead of disease, and Pounce should have bleed damage added to its effect.
Then, add a part to the Blood Rage passive that increases weapon damage against the target per Bleed (the Dro'Zakar treatment) or apply a debuff like DK's Stagger that helps group members, too.
Additionally, the Feeding Frenzy synergy should probably be improved, either in duration or by applying to more group members.

Alternatively they could add a new debuff altogether, something like an increase to all DoT damage on the target. Minor/Major Trauma sounds pretty nice.

But the specifics don't matter that much, just that their DPS and/or group utility is improved somehow.

Qbiken · February 2020

Yes, they need an Overhaul

If ZOS wants ww to be viable for PvP they need to revert every single change they made after Elsweyr. "The Elsweyr Werewolf" was competitive without being broken. But as someone else said in the comments above, the "BG elite" didn't like off meta specs that challenged their previous unhealthy meta in BG's, so here we are.

In PvE werewolf is decent, but far from top tier, which is fair imo. The real problem for ww lies with PvP where it doesn't add anything to the table.

xXMeowMeowXx · February 2020

Just some minor changes

Would of liked to see more options.

Not a full overhaul, when the new dlc is focusing in on vamps. Also, the WWs already had one. Furthermore they most certainly shouldn’t be on the same footing with vampires in this dlc in anyway.

After the reveal trailer it just wouldn’t be in ZoS’s interest from a sales point, for obvious reasons.

During the WW dlc and after for awhile they were OP af. Don’t get me wrong it was fun, very fun to play.

ZoS then over nerfed as usual from all the crying on the forums. The salt was flowing from players that felt WWs were a crutch, cheeze, no skill LA builds. The aftermath is that we ended up with cute puppies instead of a terrifying WW beastie.

WWs need buffs without a doubt and tweaking.

Only problem is rn on the PTS there are a good number of changes, that would not make this the right time for said ‘tweaking’. Things seem distracted enough and this wouldn’t do the WW justice to bring it back as a fearsome foe once again.

The Elder Scrolls Online

Do Werewolves need an overhaul?

Do Werewolves need an overhaul? 78 votes