Pack discussion of Lycan abilities

[Julcat]

Hello Lycan Brethren,

My name is Julcat, and I thought I would start a general discussion about our abilities. What we use, what we don't, and in general what we think.

I have ran with mentalism, psycology, unarmed, necrology,and at one time tried to work the limited Battle chemistry in. I have no experience with Animal Handling.

Currently my build of choice is Lycan/Mentalism.

I am using the following abiliites;
Skulk. Claw, Bite, Pouncing Rake. and Sanguine Fangs

This build is front load damage coming out of Skulk, using its augments to boost nice and core damage, and using see red as a health regeneration. It is very damage heavy damage, while being a little fragile.

I have been tinkering with Smell Fear replacing Pouncing Rake but am still undecided about it.

Reasons I don't use the following:
Pouncing Rend- Armor removing seems to be overkill for my build and it becomes limited use thereafter

Double Claw- would use but do not like the armor reducing its damage, and it would replace claw (which is my combat Refresh)

Blood of Pack- I really like this but have chosen to use Skulk over it

Shadow Feint- Does anyone seriously use this ability ( honestly I would like to her from someone that does :) )

Pack Attack- Have chosen to use Pouncing Rake over this, with our abilities taking so long to use cannot see an advantage to it at the moment. it may
end up replacing Rake once I get to 70 though.

I look forward to hearing about other Lycan's builds and thoughts on our abilities. :)

If anyone has any questions feel free to ask/tell me and I will give you my opinions/experiences I have had trying stuff.

Happy hunting...Full Moon is coming

[Tsugumori]

I run Lyco/Ment as well, mixing it up between Psych. I prefer playing support Walf. I don't use skulk myself really unless I want to bypass mobs, it does have pretty decent mods but I haven't really experimented all that much.

As far as the other skills go..

Likewise, I use Claw and Bite. A walf's bread and butter really. I think having the AoE mod for bite is a necessity, just very nice to have.

I use Pack Attack because I like the stacking damage. I have considered switching it out like you chose to but I haven't made any changes as of yet.

I use Pouncing Rend too, just as a faster armor shred. Not to mention that its a 'two in one' sometimes, if it happens to shred an opponents armor below 33% it also stuns simultaneously which is handy imo. It also does slashing damage which I decided to take up mainly due to the fact that most of my other skills are crushing, wanted to keep it a little more diverse.

I use Smell Fear as well, just as a rage reducer.

I do use Blood of the Pack, I quite like the AoE buffs it grants, I have a healing over time mod for it as well which isn't bad.

For Shadow Feint it -could- be used well, I doubt you could really play tank as a wolf but it certainly fits for selective pulling. I've tried messing with it but the range is kind of bad on it. Most people prefer to pull with range or just use a tank but if more people played wolf they'd understand the versatility of this skill. For those that don't know what this skill does.. essentially you set a way-point at the spot where you cast the skill. What happens now is, that spot has become a 'homing beacon' of sorts, if you take damage within (xx) seconds, (also you must be within a semi-smallish distance of the spot where you cast the skill), you'll blink back to the initial spot you cast the skill. The skill has decent mods but its a very, very -specific- niche skill.

- - -

As far as my Ment skills go, just run of the mill power/health waves, panic charge for the AoE, electrify for the burst damage and reconstruct to 'maybe' save me if I'm dumb. ^_^

[Hoxard]

I'm Lycan/Ment, which is apparently a popular combination(Not hard to see why though).

My setup is as follows
Sanguine Fangs Claw Pack Attack Bite Pouncing Rend See Red
Mindreave Reconstruct Power Wave Revitalize Armor Wave Pain Bubble


I almost always open with Pouncing Rend, which deals about 800-900 armor damage and usually stuns since few mobs have that much armor. I've tried using Pouncing Rake instead so it's useful more than once per mob, but it just doesn't delete armor as effectively and really reduces my burst. I'm sure it'd be much more useful in more sustained fights, but those are the exception, not the norm.

Sanguine Fangs is my favorite ability and by far my hardest hitter. The initial hit isn't quite as high as Pack Attack, but everything and its mother is weak to trauma damage, and with the right gear you can stack multiple bleeds into just one ability, which is what makes Sanguine Fangs so deadly.

Claw is combat refresh, filler between cooldowns and gets spammed as hard as possible during vulnerable periods.

Pack Attack is only there because it has high base damage, since I don't ever get to group with other werewolves.
Same for Bite really. I don't have any interesting mods for either. I miss the AoE bite mod, but since Pouncing Rend lends itself well to focusing down a single target, I do fine without it.

See Red has some fantastic mods which makes it great for burst, and makes it a powerful defensive ability with melee evasion and lots of health and armor healing. I like to use it before Sanguine Fangs and make things explode(It was REALLY funny combined with AoE Electrify, but I lost all my Electrify mods to the legacy golem and I never cared for the obscene power cost).

Mindreave is specifically for those obnoxious skeletons that reduce physical damage. It's also useful for when I run out of power and can only spam basic attacks.

Reconstruct, Revitalize and the waves are for healing. Not super important since Lycan has a lot of self-healing from mods, but they're nice to have when I need to stall for cooldowns.

Pain Bubble is really useful to help with burst, and functions as a pseudo-rage management option. Pain Bubble>See Red>Sanguine Fangs>Bite/Pack Attack is enough to instantly pop the bubble and kill anything with less than 1500 health. It costs a lot of power and has a fairly long cooldown, but it's extremely effective.
The best part is that the mob doesn't get to generate any rage until it gets blown up, so it's really nice for avoiding annoying rage attacks like ogres and bears.


As for the other abilities, I'm really interested in Skulk, which sounds really fun, and I'd like to replace Pack Attack with Smell Fear for some proper rage management, but the damage is too low to pop Pain Bubble. I might try having it replace Bite instead. Blood of the Pack sounds really cool, but I don't think I'd use it regularly and I can't afford to buy it just for novelty.
Double Claw is just ugh. You'd think the synergy with Pouncing Rend would make it really strong, but it's just kind of lackluster. Doesn't help that the mods suck.
Shadow Feint is just not something I can imagine being useful at all. If wolves could viably play as tanks, I could see it occasionally being useful, but wolves are just too fragile and even paired with necromancy they don't have the threat generation to keep aggro. Plus, all the mods on it are counterintuitive toward tanking. I guess maybe we're supposed to use it to pull and then let the negative taunt effect help the actual tank take over, but I've never seen an opportunity where this might be useful.


EDIT: I checked Sanja and noticed Skulk was pretty cheap, so I've been giving it a try in place of Pack Attack. It's really nice for hunting deer, but the cooldown is kind of annoying. It doesn't really mesh well with Pouncing Rend either. I'm going to give it a try with Rake, but I'm thinking it's more likely to be a fun niche ability than a staple.

[cr00cy]

Well im pretty sure i played every viable lycan build (lycan/ment/psycho/necro/ah/unarmed/bc) and few that were just for experiment sake (wolf with hammer/staff/shield)

Right now im sticking with Wolf/Unarmed, and im pretty sure its strongest wolf build i ever had.

For my skills:
Wolf - Sanguine Fangs, Bite, Skulk, See red, BOTP,
Unarmed - Punch, Cobra and Mamba Strike, Knee Kick, Barrage

6th skill for both changes, since i cant decide whats best. For wolf im usualy using Smell Fear for rage managment, but was expeimenting with Double claw (only upside of this skill is low power cost and relativly low cd) Pack attack (most stuff dont live long enough for its satckign damage to matter), Pouncign rake/rend (not bad but i often found i just dotn need to use them)

For unarmed its Kick or Slashign strike - i still switchign between them

So yeh this is one of very first wolf buidl i tried, backe when i wa sjust startign and i had to abadon it since it was just not good enough (back then you couldnt use all Unarmed skills in wolf form) But thanks to changes implemented durnign last Haloween i decided to try it again, and boy if its strong.

First i focused on 2 things - trauma damge, and bonuses to Core adn nice attacks.

Then (by accident i admit) i discovered how bordeline op Skulk+Barrage combo is. With its high built-in flat dameg boost, Bonuse to Nice at core atacks (barrage is nice atatck), and most of all %increase to dmg for crushign skills, my barrage (at lv 60 with not even all dmg mods) hits for over 3k.

Other than that Unaremd gives me acces to combos. Granted most of them are not very usefull, but there are few that really helps. I mostly use restoration ones - one from pilar in Serbuel that restores 25% of max hp (4 step combo) and lv 57 meditation (65 hp restored, 3-step combo). Other than that i use dmg-reduction mods from unarmed, as well as bonus dmg when my armor is low. At first i was using mods that heavly boosted Maba strike dmg at the cost of increasing its cd, but i lost them when i changed my gear.

Right now most of my burst dmg comes from Barrage and Bite, supported by multipel trauma dots (mainly form Sanguien fangs). With Wolf "passive" mods that boost all trauma dmg i often can kill mobs with just dots alone (there is something very satysfaing in seeing mob die with basicly full armor).

Other than that i use Armor restoration for kicks, Bonus dmg for nice/debuff atatck from Cobra and Mamba (tough i gonna replace that, not really very usefull for my build), Trauma dot for kick and mamab stike. Bot Barrage and Bite are modded for aoe and i tried to get as amny dmg mods for eitehr as i could.

Overall build have very good up-fron burst with Skulk+barrage combo, and good sustained dmg too, with varius stackign dmg buffs, and DoTs. It offers nice surivability with combination of Unarmed combos and shields. Also - wolf metabolism, when modded and boosted by Altar gives some crazy regen.


Now about Shadow feint - i cant count how amany times i tried to fit it in my build - any build really. And it simply dont. No matter what there are other skills that are simply better. Overall See red does just about anything that shadow feint does, but better - and then some.

Recently i started experimentign with what i call hybrid builds - basicly pair up wolf with soem skill you cant use in animal form and then switch between human and wolf form in combat. And i got some succes there - basicly plan was to to go in in wolf form, unload all burst, allow Feint to tp me, and use ths time to heal/buff up and sitch to human form. It works... but then again i can just slot 2 transformation skills, and it will work MUCH better. I think that for this skill to be viable, its cast time had to be removed 1st.

[SassySusie]

I currently run Lycan/Pysch. My build consists of no basic attacks, nothing but heavy damage with Pysch being there for my crowd control and healing.

My set up is Skulk, Sang Fangs, pack attack, pouncing rend, smell fear and Bite.

Let me explain why I run with pack attack, I hunt with a pack most generally, our pack attacks stack and cause major damage. Plus the mod that increases lycan damage by 85% after using pack attack is massive. (Can actually be on a few pieces) I have certain combos that I use to get the most out of my damage. For instance down in GK I use tell me about your mother (enhances epic attack) you were adopted, (triggers vulnerability), pouncing rend (stuns), Pack attack (Big boost on lycan damage) skulk, and then either bite or smell fear, followed by sang fangs and my target is down. (yes this of course is soloing GK not with a group, with a group my combos change up a bit.

Now with that all being said my pysch lineup is tell me about your mother, you were adopted (major damage), cause terror (fear), pep talk (healing and power), positive attitude (healing, power, armor) , inspire confidence (group healing).

I do run with Lycan/unarmed in Illmari when soloing due to the scorpions, really have to have that knockback. I really do like Lycan/unarmed because of the major damage it causes but very big lack of heals.

I have leveled up my mentalism, and playing around with it on occasion, but trying to figure out a set up that works for me.