skelitun wrote: »

WW Snare Purge

It seems to me that with werewolf's 30% passive movespeed, it's meant to be a fast class that survives with skillful movement, getting kills with hit-and-run attacks. This is certainly what I think werewolf should be, and (against players without snares) this playstyle is fun and effective. The problem arises when you are hit with a snare though. Werewolf is the only "class" that cannot reliably remove snares from itself. Every other class in the game can pop RAT and remove snares, getting major expedition in the process, letting them run just as fast as a werewolf with no way to slow them down. Without a snare purge you can easily get bogged down in a group of enemies, and without the ability to flee your only choice is to spam heals. Hircine's fortitude is easily the most expensive burst heal in the game, not to mention the secondary effects are useless with oakensoul. (it used to give unique, unnamed recovery, not any more) Werewolf has no relevant heal over time, unlike every other class that can let vigor tick while they spam their mag heal in high pressure situations. Claws of life got nerfed so hard it basically does nothing, even on massively damage stacked wolves, and health recovery Isn't really worth stacking anymore. Most classes can hit ~2k health per second with high damage using vigor, and you would need 8k hp recov to get that much health per second on a wolf. I am not asking for werewolf to get more heals, as I don't believe that's the core problem with the "class," and I find troll tanky werewolves to be boring to play as and fight against. Werewolf is so close to being balanced right now, but the key weakness in its mobility makes it feel pretty useless in high level PvP. I can reliably win 1v8 + fights on DK, where I have both forward momentum and charging maneuver to keep me from being pinned down, (yea, yea overpowered class or whatever, I've mained it for almost 4 years now and It's what I'm good at, you can get comparable results on most classes if you invest the time to master their kit) while werewolf crumples like wet paper against any more than 2 or 3 enemies without the ability to kite them.

Enough complaining though, I have some potential solutions. Obviously my core point here is that werewolf needs some love when it comes to mobility, and a snare purge has to be included in the kit, but where? The most obvious place I can think of is the heal, it's already incredibly expensive, so why not let it do *just* a bit more? I would be totally fine with a snare purge on the heal only granting up to 2 seconds of snare and immobilize immunity to prevent the skill from being too good, though if 4 was deemed balanced I would obviously take it. A snare purge could also be added to roll dodge as a werewolf passive, similar to the way bow gives major expedition on roll dodge. (maybe ww can have major expedition too?) Those are my best two ideas, and I'd love to hear any other suggestions. I've also toyed with the idea of werewolf having passive snare resistance like warden and redguard, and maybe having those all balanced to add up to 100% or something close, though that seems far more restrictive and less intuitive to newer players than I would like.

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Other Thoughts

This is less relevant to my core problem with ww but I think its also worth mentioning that the poison vuln feels entirely irrelevant in the current meta. In days past when werewolf could easily hit resistance cap in 5pc medium with alessian armor giving huge health recovery, a weakness like this was warranted, it forced you to be a little more cautious with stamDK and stamden, and keep on high alert for bow nbs. Nowadays though, DK builds are generally getting less of their damage from poison DOTs, and I dont think I've seen green shalks in PvP in over a year. The only source of poison damage that actually does enough to be affected by the boost in any meaningful way are bow ult + scavenging maw combos, which are just... miserable enough without the vuln. the DOT from bow ult alone (DOTs are unblockable and if one tick of the ult connects, you get affected by the entire DOT for full dmg and duration) can easily average around 8k damage per second against a werewolf... why is this necessary.

I would also like to see werewolf gain the ability to generate ultimate while already in form. This would make full-time wolf builds suffer a lot less after losing form if they had been in wolf form for long enough previously to have a full ultimate ready, and potentially make tactically leaving wolf form to activate some class buffs far more viable. I understand that this is probably more of a consistency thing with the other transform ults like vampire lord and bone goliath, but those obviously serve different functions to werewolf, so this restriction seems unnecessary.

Final point: I think oakensoul should give minor expedition. This would be a massive help not only to werewolf builds, but to all oakensoul users in general (other than melee magblade ig :P) which are definitely underperforming at the moment. I don't want oakensoul to be the menace it was at launch, but it feels lacking right now, like the rewards you get aren't quite worth what you're giving up. Adding minor expedition would help the item perform better in PvP without directly increasing the damage done by oakensoul builds. If the PvE players can get slayer, aegis, and empower, is minor expedition for PvP really that big of an ask?


This is my first ever forum post, I registered this account specifically to have a discussion around the current state of PvP werewolf, and any input would be greatly appreciated.