Why Werewolf is the Best Class post-Subclassing

Erickson9610 · July 30

A "class" is a subset of mutually exclusive skills that define a playstyle.

In order for the idea of "multiclassing" to make sense, there needs to be a sense of there being multiple classes. For example, why do we say that Templar and Warden are separate classes? The shortest answer is that we would normally never be able to use abilities from both at the same time. Note that the "Class" (capitalized) we pick is an internal value each of our characters have which determines things like which Class abilities we have, but the general concept of a "class" (lowercase) depends on which mutually exclusive skills define a playstyle.

As mentioned before, a class needs mutually exclusive skills. With this logic, we can say that the Two Handed skill line is a separate class from the Dual Wield skill line. Both of those skill lines are mutually exclusive from one another, but you can switch between them via bar swapping. The "class identity" of Two Handed and Dual Wield in this example is diminished by the fact that you don't even need to run Weapon abilities on either bar, but it's not completely destroyed as you can never use Weapon abilities for the wrong weapon type on your current bar. A Two Handed bar will never use Dual Wield skills, and vice versa — those are two separate classes, just as a Templar will never use Warden skills.

This brings me to the main point of the post: Werewolf is, by far, the best class in the game.

You cannot use Werewolf abilities while not transformed, and you cannot use non-Werewolf abilities while transformed. It is the most locked-down playstyle, but its limitations and visual consistency make it the most engaging class by a large margin.

While Class abilities are no longer mutually exclusive (i.e., you can now use Templar and Warden abilities together) you cannot ever use them in Werewolf form. In order for someone to use Werewolf abilities, they must give up all of their other abilities — essentially swapping their "class" (subset of mutually exclusive skills that define a playstyle) to Werewolf. Note that their Class (internal variable that each character has) remains the same, as do their combination of Subclassed skill lines — what matters here is not their passives, but how their playstyle changes. A person transformed into a Werewolf will always use Werewolf abilities. It's not like how you're given the option to not use Weapon abilities for a Weapon-based playstyle; you must use Werewolf abilities if you're transformed, and you'll never be able to use Werewolf abilities when not transformed.

So, if you're feeling disappointed that build diversity is gone, or if you're looking for a playstyle with interesting limitations to build around now that Subclassing has demolished the barriers between Classes, I implore you to give Werewolf a try. Please actually take it seriously — it will never be the meta for PvE or for PvP, and it's got arguably even more limitations than Pureclass builds do, but there is still a meta specifically for werewolves! Yes, werewolves play differently from every other playstyle because it still has mutually exclusive abilities! No one will blame you for working with what you have; as a Werewolf, you cannot use the current meta abilities everyone else is using.

Don't like Subclassing? No problem — Werewolf plays the same whether you Subclass or not. If you did want to Subclass, all you need to spend Skill Points on are very few Class passives; it's the cheapest way to benefit from Subclassing. If you did want to play a Pureclass Werewolf, I'd recommend Templar Werewolf for damage dealing and Sorcerer Werewolf for a general PvP build. Of course, that is until something changes the meta again, like the third Class Set or a Werewolf Grimoire with support for Class Mastery. Maybe if Pureclass builds get a buff for keeping all three original Class lines, it'll carry over into Werewolf form, giving you more build options.

I personally really enjoy this playstyle — despite it being far from the meta — and reading all of the complaints about the death of build diversity gave me the idea to pitch the Werewolf playstyle to the community. It would also really help if more people played Werewolf — maybe ZOS would take notice and give it more quality of life features that everybody else has, like sneaking, Scribing, and appearance customization. Huge respect goes out to those of you who continue to play Werewolf despite it being an inferior playstyle to whatever the meta has become in this post-Subclassing environment.

Vulkunne · July 30

Had thought about this but been too busy lately. Will check this out. Thanks for the update.

Mathius_Mordred · July 30

Our SRS Wolf Pack event last night, hunting Havocrels in The Deadlands.

Great post, just to clarify, some WW abilities can be included on non-WW setups to make use of their "while slotted" passives.

We have been asking for so many QoL features for WWs for so long, only recently there was a big thread about it here, maybe you participated:

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/8342593#Comment_8342593

What irks me is that we already have the behemoth style in-game, players can even use it as a memento and in Stone Garden, but we can't select it as an outfit style (obviously it would need to be smaller, although I'm fine with it staying big lol).

You can still utilise subclassing with it, though. Many passives from other classes work with WW. I have seen some increase in damage from mine, which now pulls up to 80K on the atronach, still 20K down on my pet sorc and way below the meta.

Sigh, I just keep hoping they will address our pooches soon with all the things noted in your thread and in the one I linked.

tomofhyrule · July 30

I feel like your analysis is flawed.

Yes, there is a large faction of people (which seems to be much larger than ZOS anticipated) who do not like Subclassing and prefer Class Identity. In most cases, it's because these players have had up to 11 years to build their characters the way they want - their backstories, their skillsets, etc.... and now Subclassing is essentially saying "thou must discard everything about thy character to adopt this one setup which does not fit with the character at all!"

And the solution is... to adopt a different setup which may also not fit the character at all?

People aren't frustrated because they want to play any random character with a single Class worth of skills. They want to play their character with their Class that they built their character around at a level that's not leagues behind everything else. Just saying "well, a pure class exists so you can still play that!" isn't affecting the fact that that also is not what players designed their character as!

Let's also not pretend that werewolf is a 'pure' class either. Anyone who plays werewolf knows that you have to Subclass your werewolf to make sure the three Class lines you choose give you passives that are available in werewolf form, specifically things like Storm Calling (Capacitor, Energized, and Amplitude) and Aedric Spear (Burning Light and Balanced Warrior).

So yes, werewolf exists. It's actually a really fun playstyle too, even as memetically underpowered as it is. But it does not solve the main problem a lot of people have with Subclassing. Heck, I've got two wolves in my roster, and even though they're brothers they couldn't be more different - one is an Arcanist who doesn't like his wolf form because it goes against his Skaal beliefs, and then his younger brother is a Warden who considers any second he doesn't spend furry as a moment wasted. And yet, neither would work best with the idea of "let me throw away 2/3 of their human-form lines so they can play stronger when they're in were form" since their Classes are inexorably linked to their lore.
(Especially since one is a white werewolf and the other is a brown werebear according to their lore, so the only one that looks right after transforming is the one who doesn't like to in the first place)

The other main issue with werewolves to solve the "Subclassing ruins my RP" problem is simple: you can't customize a [snip] thing about them. Werewolves have exactly 5 skills (no, the transformation ult doesn't count since it's just the on/off switch) and that's about all they have going for them. No costumes, no polymorphs, no fashion, no nothing. Even their efficacy is linked completely to their fur color, so you better like being black or white (or grey, but what idiot other than me would want to keep it unmorphed for aesthetics).
Again, if the idea is "Subclassing is bad because I'm forced to play something that ruins my character lore and forces me to play a specific setup!" the answer is not "hey, you can instead remake your character in this other specific setup that is basically a meme and also you don't have your fashion anymore either!"

I really need ZOS to give some things for werewolf in general

Buff Werewolf as if it were a Class on its own and not an addition to a Class
Buff Werewolf to consider that it cannot use an ultimate
Give Werewolf a Grimoire for Scribing. Even one extra skill would give a lot of different ways to customize your builds
Different Skill Styles for the transformation, for the love of God. Let people have more than two (okay, three) colors to customize their wolf!

Now to that last point, I'm dying to see other werebeasts come in as options as well. There's no logical way we could get whole new lines for any other beasts, but we could easily get some that essentially act as 'polymorphs' if they were added as Skill Styles and maybe even changed the sounds a bit. After all, we have polymorphs for human form that can turn us into more varied things like Minotaurs, Spriggans, Atronachs, and even Molag Bal himself.
It would be great to give similarly-shaped alternative werebeasts (in the store! I'd pay bank!) so we could further customize our werebeasts. I'm talking about the common ones we've seen in the lore previously: wereboars like we had back in Daggerfall, and werebears from Skyrim:Dragonborn. The other strains have only been mentioned in the lore and not seen, save for non-transforming werebats in ESO which don't fit the skeleton. Heck, we even have implications that werebears exist in ESO with Dagrund the Bulky and his Bearfang clan in March of Sacrifices.

I would pay bank if ZOS finally let my werebear be a werebear. Heck, that's the #1 thing that I want to change about him, even above buffing the skill line itself - if he at least looked right, then I can live with being a meme. But as of now, he's a meme and isn't right in the first place, so I mostly play him human since his beast form is just all kinds of wrong.

Cooperharley · July 30

Still very weak relative to other playstyles and completely lacks any customization whatsoever. Itemization, build variety, role variety and the like are very, very limited. I understand your adoration and love for the werewolf style, but for werewolf to be attractive to the masses, it needs a CONSIDERABLE amount of work.

Regardless of the fact that I enjoy it quite a bit, there's no world where I would choose it over regular subclassing because it's significantly weaker. I'd love to have my mind changed, but with how slow we see our combat team moving with GOOD changes to our combat system and a complete lack of changes to werewolf for YEARS (substantial changes to clarify), I'm not holding out hope. I had a werewolf character that I loved a while back and haven't touched it in years now.

Erickson9610 · July 30

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Let's also not pretend that werewolf is a 'pure' class either. Anyone who plays werewolf knows that you have to Subclass your werewolf to make sure the three Class lines you choose give you passives that are available in werewolf form, specifically things like Storm Calling (Capacitor, Energized, and Amplitude) and Aedric Spear (Burning Light and Balanced Warrior).

Before Subclassing, I could confidently call Werewolf a subclass of your regular Class. Now that "subclass" means something entirely different, I can't describe it the same way.

Werewolf is an extension of your Class. Or rather, an extension of your Subclassing setup.

I would argue that — of course you can choose not to Subclass for a Werewolf build — but I'm completely forgetting that you don't really have to play a Werewolf, either. That is to say that you could just never use the Ultimate at all, which then brings you back to the "Is Subclassing actually necessary?" argument of old.

As far as having three skill lines with applicable passives while Pureclassing, several Classes did that for Werewolf and continue to do so; that's why Sorcerer Werewolf was the Werewolf Meta for damage dealing for so long.

So, to reiterate, I am not saying all Werewolf builds are Pureclass builds. "Pureclassing" means "not Subclassing", which you can still do on a Werewolf build if you wanted to — Pureclass Templar Werewolf is really good for an all-rounder build this patch, for instance.

Mathius_Mordred wrote: »

Great post, just to clarify, some WW abilities can be included on non-WW setups to make use of their "while slotted" passives.

I was aware of this when making this thread, but I was mainly concerned with how the abilities cannot be cast while in the wrong form.

Cooperharley wrote: »

Regardless of the fact that I enjoy it quite a bit, there's no world where I would choose it over regular subclassing because it's significantly weaker.

I acknowledge that Werewolf is weaker than regular playstyles. It was weaker than everyone else before Subclassing was a thing; the problem only magnified now that everyone got disproportionately stronger than Werewolf even though Werewolf can somewhat utilize Subclassing.

I do want to stress that Werewolf is not the fix to the RP/balance/thematic issues that Subclassing caused. I know it's not a solution to tell you to switch your already struggling Pureclass build for a build which was already weaker than Pureclass builds to begin with. Despite Subclassing, there is still one "class" which will never have its abilities used by other classes.

My mission statement for this thread was this:

Erickson9610 wrote: »

reading all of the complaints about the death of build diversity gave me the idea to pitch the Werewolf playstyle to the community. It would also really help if more people played Werewolf — maybe ZOS would take notice

In other words, my goal is to get people to recognize Werewolf as a legitimate (not a meme) playstyle that they could consider playing if they were fed up with how Subclassing made Classes meaningless — with the hopes that if people start appreciating Werewolf more, the playstyle and skill line would get more attention from ZOS.

Reading all of your responses, I know I'm not alone in wanting more for the Werewolf playstyle. It's not a temporary transformation — me and other likeminded players spend literally hours consistently transformed when playing Imperial City, Cyrodiil, the Infinite Archive, and even just hanging out in Hunter's Glade or by the werewolf shrines in The Rift, Bangkorai, or Reaper's March. We can complete entire Dungeons, Trials, and Arenas from start to finish while transformed. Time spent developing for Werewolf is not time wasted; there are players who see and care about every little detail about Werewolf, as there are players who truly care about how their Class plays.

So, like many of you have said, Werewolf needs a lot of quality of life things. I like the suggestions for Werewolf appearances like the Werewolf Behemoth, Werebears, and other werecreatures. Of course a Werewolf Grimoire/Scribing ability is a must. I appreciate the suggestions you all have shared.

My concern is getting Werewolf to be a little more popular so that we see more frequent additions to it.

Grizzbeorn · July 31

Erickson9610 wrote: »

My concern is getting Werewolf to be a little more popular so that we see more frequent additions to it.

Saying this as someone who has 16 werewolves in their band of characters, Werewolf is probably not going to get more popular until ZOS starts paying them more attention FIRST (including adding wereBEAR to the game).
Trying to get it to happen the other way around is probably an infinite Catch-22.

tomofhyrule · July 31

Grizzbeorn wrote: »

Erickson9610 wrote: »

My concern is getting Werewolf to be a little more popular so that we see more frequent additions to it.

Saying this as someone who has 16 werewolves in their band of characters, Werewolf is probably not going to get more popular until ZOS starts paying them more attention FIRST (including adding wereBEAR to the game).
Trying to get it to happen the other way around is probably an infinite Catch-22.

This is kinda where I am.

You're never gonna make more people like werewolf if it's still a meme. ZOS needs to make werewolf better first, and then more people will like it.
(also just a lot of people playing it doesn't mean it'll get more love either - remember that PvP used to be almost exclusively roaming packs of wolves and that didn't mean they got more love in the combat department unless by 'love' you mean 'epic nerfs')

But if ZOS did add more things to werewolf, it would inspire more people to play it. And let's face it, ESO is about customization. Giving us more fur colors (some free) and werebeast polymorphs (paid) would do wonders to get more people to play it, and a Grimoire would mean people might actually be able to have fun customizing their build.

And let's face it - balancing the passives versus demanding specific Subclasses as well, considering that out of 21 skill lines there's one that has your character as a beastmaster and that line has zero passives that work when you're actually in beast mode.

Erickson9610 · July 31

I want people to look at people doing things only a Werewolf could do (such as using a Werewolf Grimoire, using Skill Styles for Werewolf Transformation to look like a Werebear or some other cool appearance, or anything else mutually exclusive to werewolves) and want to play Werewolf for themselves.

It's great that we have groups of people doing content like PvP together in Werewolf form, but given the success rate against coordinated ball groups of human players, it's not exactly inspiring. Of course nobody is going to see large groups of werewolves in PvE content like Trials because that's instanced (and coordinated beforehand). Though, I remember a time where some werewolf guilds would go around the overworld causing havoc — the player responses we got were priceless.

tomofhyrule · July 31

Yeah, it would be nice to see more people excited about werewolf.

I know the silly trials where we have a group of wolves just running through are so much fun. I've taken my weretank through a bunch of dungeons with friends and it's incredible despite missing a lot of necessary skills. I even love just running through the world in beast mode sometimes because it just feels so much fun to do so. It's a great playstyle. But it is a meme.

People aren't going to want to run it if ZOS doesn't give it love first. That's what needs to happen.

And honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if the cosmetic end even ends up more important, especially in a game like ESO. Sure, werewolf needs buffs, that's not even a question. But even if they buffed werewolf to be a 300kDPS machine, then you'd get a lot of "ugh I'm forced to play it" complaints like you currently do with Arcanist and Fatecarver.

But if we got customization like new fur colors and new wereforms and a Grimoire? People would jump for it.

Here's a thought experiment: count how many Warden bears you see in game today, and note their color. Then do the same on Wednesday next week. I can almost guarantee that the release of the polar bear skin (which is probably going to be like 2500 Crowns) will get a lot of sales and you'll see every other person with a polar bear for like a week or two after. Same with werewolf - if we get a werebear or something, everyone and their brother will be playing around with it for a bit.

Customization is king in ESO. There is no reason we shouldn't have the three standard fur colors as (free!) styles at this point, and then even a handful more, particularly the alternate forms we saw in previous TES games like wereboars and werebears.
Seriously ZOS, you make a brown werebear and I will pay a lot of money. Tell that to your execs.

BXR_Lonestar · July 31

Mathius_Mordred wrote: »

Our SRS Wolf Pack event last night, hunting Havocrels in The Deadlands.

Great post, just to clarify, some WW abilities can be included on non-WW setups to make use of their "while slotted" passives.

We have been asking for so many QoL features for WWs for so long, only recently there was a big thread about it here, maybe you participated:

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/8342593#Comment_8342593

What irks me is that we already have the behemoth style in-game, players can even use it as a memento and in Stone Garden, but we can't select it as an outfit style (obviously it would need to be smaller, although I'm fine with it staying big lol).

You can still utilise subclassing with it, though. Many passives from other classes work with WW. I have seen some increase in damage from mine, which now pulls up to 80K on the atronach, still 20K down on my pet sorc and way below the meta.

Sigh, I just keep hoping they will address our pooches soon with all the things noted in your thread and in the one I linked.

I've always wanted to do something like this - make a werewolf hunter pack to go decimate dungeons and other content. But its really hard to get people to commit to making a specific build for this that has little to no end-game utility (WW's aren't exactly the greatest asset in trials).