Lycanthropy

[cr00cy]

This is sort of mix between guide and feedback therat about wolves.

First some quick info:
Sub skills:
-best speech - lowers rate wt whcih words in chat are replaced with animal sounds.
- best metabolosm - increase max MEtabolism. Allows eating corpese for boost in HP and power regen. Higher level = longer duration
- Howling - allows to howl. Howling for extended period of time gives buff increasign out- and in-combat hp regen and damge. Bonus sclaes with level of this skill. If multiple wolves howl togetehr you get additional bonus (+2hp regen and +1 dmg)

Skills

1)Transformation skills:
- Normal wolf form - obtained when one became wolf. To become wolf talk with Hary the wolf in Serbuel garden. IMPORTANT: becomign werewolf is PERNAMENT and you NEVER will be able to remove it. SO think cerfully, and/or make alt to test wolf out.
- Winter wolf form - obtained from quest given by Jace Soral located in kur. This form gives bonus to indirect Cold mitigation, but lowers indirect Fire mitigation
- Dark wolf form - Obtained from altar of Norala, after unlocking all lv 60 wolf skills. Cost 3 tokens.

Note that this skill do not share cooldown. All of them cna be placed on side-bar.

2)Attack skills:
I'll also give soem of my toughts about this skils and my personal rating (from 1 to 5)
So first base skills. All of them are learned simply by leveling:





Skill name
Lv lerned
Pwer Cost
Cooldown
Damage
Rating
Additional Info


claw
0
0
2
74
3/5
Basick attack. Deal slashing dmg. Have mods to give minor healing on hit.


Bite
2
30
8
206
4/5
Core atatck. Crushing damage. Has mods to boost nice atatcks damge for several seconds, hp restoration on use and oen that turns it into aoe (but increase cd by 2 sec)Overall very good skill, good damage and power cost is very forgiving.


Pack Attack
3
36
10
237
3/5
Wolf signature debuff ability. Deal crushing damge. Whats special about this skill is taht it debuffs target causing it do atke boinus damage from ALL subsequent packs attacks - even from otehr wolves. Debuff last 30 second so you can stack it 2 times. On top of taht it has mods that additional stackign dmage,a nd boost abse dmage of all wofl skills for some time, or untill you get hit. Thsi make it very good skill in group, where you can abuse stackign damge - especialy whe grouped with other wolves. But for soling its not as good as bite


Pouncing Rake
5
38
10
231
4/5
Deals slashign dmage (and quite a bit of it). Wolfs only cc - when atrgets is at, or below 33% it stuns. Not much else to say - mods are only for damage. It ahs another variant learned from scrolls: Pouncing Rend. It has slighty lower power cost, deal more damage, but only to armor.



Now advenced skill. This skilsl are all learned from Sanja in kur:



Skill name
Min lv to learn
Pwer Cost

Cooldown
Damage
(
Rating
Additional Info


Sanguine Fangs
8
36
12
164 +96 over 8 sec
3-4/5
Wolf Nice attack. BAse dage is rather low, especilay consideirng poswer cost. Hoever dot is direct health da,age and it can be moded to deal signifcant amount of trauma damage(dots, and delayed damage burst) as well as boostign slashign damage tarhet takes. Overall not bad skill, but needs lost of mods to be worth its cost, and wont fit in all builds.


Double Claw
12

7
214
2/5
Slashign attack. Have high base damge and low power cost - that can be lowered even futher with mods. Unfortunatly it dont have many damage-boostign mods, and its damge is reduced by 1 for every 5 armor enemy has remaning(in addition to any mitigation monster might have). All of this results in Double Claw having second lowest damge after Claw. Basilcy only good thing about this skill is its extremaly low power cost.


Smell fear
14
29
8
149
3/5
Deals crushing damge. Not much, but it also reduces rage. Also deals bonus damge(equal to its base damage) to vulnerable targets. Additional benefit is lower power cost compared to most other wolf skills.



And lastly Support skills. Shadow feint is learned trough leveling, rest of them are taught by Sanja



Skill Name
Min. level to learn
Power cost
Cooldown
Effect
Rating
Additional info


Shadow Feint
12
29
20
Marks spot. When you take set numebr of hits (determined by skill rank) you blink back to marked location, if you are withign 40m range
2/5
Well only one support skill you learn when leveling and aslo worst one. There is simple no reason to pick it over any other skill. Its base function si not very usefull. It has mods that restore hp and armor when you teleport, and one that boost armor regen in combat. Other than taht it ahs soem offensive mods - bonus sprint speed and damage on next attack, base dmg boost, and reduction to taunt generated by your attacks. Unfortunatly base damge ends if you are atatcked, detaunt is not that usefull, resttoration mods helps, but if you are out of range for blink tehy wont work, and most notable - its basicly nusable in combat. It takes around 3 sec to cast, and any dmage taken wills top casting. So whiel it looks good on paper - it simply dont work well.


See Red
9
48
30
Boost piercing and(starting on rank 2)slashign damage
5/5
Probably best wolf support skill. Only situation when you could consider not using it is if you dont use any slashign and piercing attacks. But even then it is well worth usign thanks to it mods - it has power, armor and hp restorations ones, bonus dmage on next hit, and melee evasion - basicly only form of tankiness wolf has. Power cost is a bit high but hp restoring mods also reduce its cost so there is little to no reason to not use it.


Skulk
35
36
30
Reduces sprint speed and detection radius. Next attack willd eal bonus damage.
3-4/5
Very good offensive support skill. Offensive mods include increasing damge of nice and core atacks and bonus damge for next crushing attack. Defensive mods are a bit weaker - projectile evasion, universal mitigation (but it ends after 1st atatck...). It has one de-taunt (quite srong) with added a bit of healing. OIverall very good if you often use core and nice attacks, and/or when you ahve soem hard-hitting crushign skill (like Bodyslam). Would be easly 5/5 if defensive mods wouldnt end after 1st attack


Blood of the Pack
30
52
30
Restores hp. Boost Trauma damage for all allies in 20m radius for 10 sec
4/5
Signature buff of wolf. Have best group utility from all wolf skills. Thanks to mods it can boost damge of all skills of every ally in radius, as well as grant them Hp regen. Power cost is rather high, but can be reduced by mods, that also buff self-hel from it. Overall very good skill for both solo and party.



There are 2 more skills:
Howl mode - learned at lv 7. Its toggel skill, taht when actibvted will grant Howl morale buff taht increae hp regen adn gives minor dmage boost. Duration increase the longer its used up to 1h. both buffs and duration are futher boosted when otehr wolves howl nearby.

Hunting speed - learned from Altar of Norala for 1/2/3 tokens. It grants 5/8/12 sprint speed for 30 sec (10 sec cd). Cant be used in combat, and efect ends when you take or deal any damage.

50+ ranks for base skills have to be unlocked from altar of Norala.

[cr00cy]

3) Builds

So i was playign with idea of makign wolf-huamn hybrid build. It would include using wolf and skill that cant be used in wolf form. There are 2 variatiosn i tought about:

1) Select support skill that dont need mods to be effective and can bes ued in wolf form as secondary skill (so either Psychology or Mentalism). Human form main skill would be used to fight in situations when wolf dont work well - so for exampel fire magic to deal with mobs resistant to physical damge, or ones that i dont want to get close to.

2)Secondary skill would be one unusable in wolf form but having some kind of effect that last long time.. I firstly tougth about it when i was doing my necro-wolf. I was looking at way to replace lv 50 neckle needed for wolf to use necro. I never finsihed this build but idea was to summon skeletons(and zombie) in human form and the fight in wolf(since skeletons need only necro skill to be active to persist). Also to change from tiem to tiem to buff/heal pets and amyeb sue some of necro attack skills)
Other wariants i tought about were:
- Shield (for passive mitigation/knockback resistance etc) and active armor restorating/damge reistance skills. Idea was to fight mostly in wolf form benmefitign from increased tankiness form mods and equiped shield, changing from tie to time to use defensive and restoration skills.
- Staff - similar to shield, but more active use of shape shifting. basicly change to human, use delfective/blockign stance/redirect/supress, then turn back to wolf and fight on.
- Druid - again simialr to staff. use buffs/debuffs/heals from druid in human form then change to wolf and kill stuff.

After addition of Skulk and Blood of the pack this started to look even more interseting. Since Buffs from this skilsl persist after tarnsforming i toough about pairign wolf with human-fomr skill in combination where wolf would be mre for buffs - like sword becasue of bonus to slashing damge from sanguie fangs (and quite a bit dots it has) and piercing/slashign damge boost from See red.Or hammer - skulk bonsu dmage to next crushign attack could lead to some nice burst from Pound to slag. On top of that long-lastign buffs for core/nice atatcks that wolf has could potentialy work well too.


Well unfortunatrly i dont have much time to play lately so i couldnt get to make this build(s) - i couldnt even finish my standard wolf+unarmed one. Plus i dont have leveled up any of the human form only skills i mentioned(working on it now). Well, with upcomign lv 70 content i think i would have to postpone this build even futher.

4) WISH LIST

So basicly things i would like to be added/changed:

- Beast Metabolism Regen - it can be quite strong. In fact it can easly make diference between surriving fight or dying horribly. Problem is that since you cant eat corpses in combat anymore i often find myself in situation when i run out of it in middle of combat. And when this happens things can get really ugly, really fast. I would suggest to, instead of completly preventng it from use in combat, to add cast tiem to it (like 2-3 sec or soemthing). That way it still cant be used in middle of fight (unless i manage to cc all mobs i fight with) but still can be used when all mobs are dead but combat didnt ended. This woudl help in situations when regen ended but i really want to reapply it fast - for example when i have few dots tickign on me, or there are other mobs who aggrod and there si no enoug time to wait for out-of-combat regen to kick in. Also maybe add more levels to it? Longer duration could help to.

-Other idea about BMR - maybe add mods allowing to temporaly proc it durnign combat. Also some info under skills tab how it scaled would be nice.

- Howling skill - it would be nice if in skill window it would show how it affetc bonuses from Howl morale boost. Also simlar to BMR - more levels.

-Change Skulk mitigation mods to not end after using attack - seriusly, in this form this mod is next to useless. I understand that up to 40 mitigation might be too much, but you could always make it so it has lower duration than Skulk cd, or lower amount mitigated.

-Change Shadow Feint - problem with this skill is that everythign it does, See Red does better. It gives more reilable damge boost, more burst, more sustain, better tankines. And possibly biggets adventage - it can be re-used in the middle of combat. In order to make it even worth considerign, this cast time have to be removed so it can be used in combat. If not it would have to have some very long-lasting, strong benefits.

But honestly, i think it need total overhaul.
Idea i had was to change it to be sort of "trigger" skill, similar to how BC golem work. It would let you select trigger condition (number of hits atken, total dmage taken in period of time, % of hp remaning, etc), higher ranks woudl elt to select multiple trigger conditions adn diffrent effects (coming from mods) for each. Or Simply make few versiosn with diffrent trigger condition each. Then, when conditions are met set effect triggers.

Other idea i had (but i dont know if it would be possible to do) was to change it to toogle skill(similar to how howl mode works now). base effect shoudl be changed (maybe repalce it with it current mod that restores hp adn armor). After activating it, it would proc on set conditions, with base effect + effects from mods. Keeping it actibe would lower power regen (or consume some power every few seconds for as long as it remain actve) and consuem a bit of power when effect is triggered

- make Hunting speed pernament skill - its basicly mandatory for anyone who woulf like to play wolf more pernamnetly, especialy cosnidering how limited options wolfs have when it comes to boosting speed. And in curremt form its not avible whe its needed most - that is durning full moon.

- change Dark Wolf night vison - Actualy, thanks to response to my in-game made suggestion i know you guys alredy working on it. So i just wanted to make suggestion how it might work: Instead of makign screen brighter it could turn off colors, making evrything black-and-white. Only npc would be highlighted - enemy would have slight red glow, frendly - green. Maybe also add soemthign for objects that can be interacted with(tough it wouldnt make much sense...).

- More non-skill specyfic mods - not only for wolf, but it would be nice if we had more mods that boost all skills (or group of skills). Im talkign about mods similar to wolfs that give all attacks chance to proc trauma dot, or boost trauma damage, or unarmed mods that boost dmage when armor is low.

- One i got after readign last patch notes about removign downside form Finish it skill - it would be actually pretty cool if we had skills that consume our armor/hp and have stronger effects based on consumed/missing hp/armor. Some ideas:
- reduced damge taken teh lower max armor:max hp ratio is.
- Skills restore bonus hp when no armor and belowe certain hp %
- Skill consumes X% of armor/hp and deals bonus damge based on amount consumed

[Oxlazr]

I think the hunting speed could probably be a permanent skill at this stage, especially if mounts are in the works - given werewolves presumably won't have access to this in wolf form.

And yeah, I wasn't aware beast metabolism was changed, but I can imagine that being a nuisance. Longer duration makes sense.

[cr00cy]

TBH i dont mind fact that i can no longer eat corpses in middle of fight - it wasnt really wise to do so anyway. Its more about this annoying situations, when i just killed everything, and see other mobs coming, and even tough icon indicatign im in combat disapered i cant eat because there is alredy mob that has aggro on me.

Or when i have dot on me and have to wiat for it to worn to be abel to eat corpse.

[Tsugumori]

Well tbh the 'not being able to eat in the middle of a fight' makes sense.

Try eating a bowl of cereal while somebody is slapping you. I honestly wouldn't even be bothered. When I think about it actually I'm reminded of 'asdf movie', the clip "I am punching your salad"...

http://stream1.gifsoup.com/webroot/animatedgifs4/1637643_o.gif

For newbie wolves it can be a bit confusing about hunting speed, having to invest in it every month. I think hunting speed should be a permanent skill with a smaller % increase to speed and the altar should grant a buff or buffed version to the skill. Would just make it handier.

[Moki Mofiki]

As far as the eating, I just wish that the aggro would end as soon as something died and not so long after that you kill it, click it, loot it, skin it, etc. and still have to wait to eat it in most cases. Hunting Speed should at least be available through the following Full moon instead of gone before it. You get that gap of time where you are slow and have no way of getting it back until the full moon begins.

[Extractum11]

It's also really annoying how if you try to a corpse while you're still in combat with it (lol), you get an error message and all the corpse options disappear. Then you have to close the box and interact with the corpse again.