Which of these external factors should matter in Werewolf form?

Erickson9610 · April 16

External factors are anything that isn't sourced from the Werewolf skill line. As an isolated playstyle that every non-Vampire character can access, you might argue that none, some, or all of the following should influence how you build for and play Werewolf in ESO:

Your currently equipped Item Set bonuses
Your currently equipped enchantments, traits, base damage/armor, and poisons of weapons, armor, and jewelry
The passives for Armor and Weapons
Your character's racial passives
Your character's Class, including passives and Class-specific factors such as Class Sets, Class Flourish, and Class Masteries
Your Champion Points
Consumables with cooldowns, like potions or Skill Scrolls
Food/Drink buffs
Mundus stone buffs
Alliance War, Guild, and World skill lines
Other miscellaneous skill lines like the Crafting skill lines and Emperor

How much of these should apply? Should it be all or nothing, or is there a better way to determine which external factors make sense while the others don't?

YandereGirlfriend · April 16

If I am being honest, only these:

1. Your character's racial passives
2. Your Champion Points
3. Consumables with cooldowns, like potions or Skill Scrolls
4. Food/Drink buffs
5. Mundus stone buffs
6. Alliance War, Guild, and World skill lines
7. Other miscellaneous skill lines like the Crafting skill lines and Emperor

I would use Skyrim as the most recent touchstone for it. In the OG Skyrim, when you ended your transformation, you would be completely naked, which clearly indicates that you do not use or wear your previously equipped items at all in Beast Form. Later versions have an automatic re-equip when Beast Form ends but under the hood you still de-equip all your gear while transformed. So that is like direct textual evidence that cuts against WWs using or benefiting from their human form gear. It also makes zero sense to get the Critical Chance from, say, a Dagger, when you are obviously not actually holding one.

For class attributes, it is perhaps more difficult. From my view, while transformed you "go feral" and are more beast than what you were before. So like your galaxy brain Arcanist forgets their scholarship and reverts to nature. Which, in my eyes, would also cut against retaining class bonuses. You are not some galaxy brain beast who could calmly do lab experiments while transformed. You are a raging, wild animal who has no mind for such things.

It also makes it heaps easier to balance because you do not have to consider all of the unintended interactions and edge-cases that will inevitably arise once you permute WW against all of the nearly infinite gear and class combinations. And that last part, perhaps even more than lore, is probably the most important consideration of them all.

Erickson9610 · April 17

I believe that fun should be placed over realism.

For instance, Item Sets. Why do we get Item Sets in Werewolf form when we're not visually wearing armor? It's because the gameplay loop of creating builds and testing them is fun, and there is additional challenge when building around Werewolf's limited toolkit. If I wanted to play without Item Sets, I'd go play Vengeance.

This video sums it up perfectly:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGpFEv1-mAo

Freelancer_ESO · April 17

I'd probably keep it roughly as is.

Realistically, removing some of the stuff might make more sense but, it isn't worth the complaints.

If you add the stuff that isn't in play you'll likely need to nerf it to compensate and you'll run into the issue that the WW turns into just an Oakensoul build with a Polymorph.

Arunei · April 17

Everything that currently does should continue to count. Even in a different form they're still the same character with the same loadouts, and taking things away when WW is locked to a 1bar build and can ONLY have WW Skills only hinders what they can do. Which goes against the whole point of the rework. WW is already limited by design, it shouldn't become even harder to work with. We've already had WW be in a bad state for years.

Also I too am of the mindset that realism shouldn't trump fun. What's the point of WW-based Sets and Mythics if those items would just vanish off our bodies into the aether upon transforming and not give their bonuses? And if we want to go into lore and such, there ARE instances of intelligent transformed WWs in ESO that can not only talk (like Falchou or the dude in the Hunting Grounds that explains to you to pray to the Hircine statue who's name I NEVER remember) but some of them can do magick too (it's a Dungeon iirc but again, can't remember the name lol).

Does that mean every single WW is going to be sapient and self-aware and such while transformed? No, but there's no reason our characters can't be one of the exceptions. Because lorewise, there's only ONE Vestige, and given everything else the Vestige winds up doing, being a smart pupper could easily be one of them.

Ataskir · April 17

Why would anyone want to remove class passives and sets from werewolves unless they actually hate them? Seriously, you want to remove build diversity from WW players and have them all do the same thing?

Werewolf in ESO is fun because you can, to some degree, customize what you can do with it through sets, class passives, and now masteries. You’re able to express yourself and play style instead of being generic werewolf #32

Let’s keep wolfin’ out fun, yeah?

LunaFlora · April 17

All of the above.

Your Champion Points
it would be awesome if Werewolf and Vampire got one or more Champion abilities, a buff perhaps

The Elder Scrolls Online

Which of these external factors should matter in Werewolf form?

Which of these external factors should matter in Werewolf form? 22 votes