UPDATED FOR WRATHSTONE DLC!
Hey Ebony Wolf Pack and werewolf enthusiasts! Our guild has held seminars on werewolf builds in the past in order to make our members stronger. It has drastically improved our group gameplay and I believe that this knowledge should be shared with everyone. So I’m making this post as a recap of all we’ve gone over and more! Now it will be easier for you to build your werewolf character the way you want to! Hope you enjoy this “book” I’ve written for you and I hope it proves helpful!
Werewolf 101:
Werewolf is a stamina-based character build. There are two roles a werewolf can play: tank and dps. While werewolves can automatically be both at the same time, it depends on your specific build to see which one you strengthen. Werewolf grants 15% stamina recovery while the ultimate is slotted. Their passives grant 9966 physical and spell resistance, 100% stamina return from heavy attacks, and 18% increased weapon damage. You just need to decide which wolf to feed.
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1. Pick Your Role:
A tank werewolf should be built more for sustain of resources and survivability. You’re to be the distraction and the meat shield of the group. Heavy armor, tri stat food consumables, and tanking and stamina sets will help with this. You want to build yourself so in werewolf form, your resistances are capped. For those who don’t know, the resistances hard cap at 33k. Also give yourself plenty of resources to survive, stall, and heal. I always keep at least 25k health and 15k magicka. Don’t blow through stamina trying to kill your opponent. You will need it to block, break free, dodge roll, and fear. Resource management is the key to werewolf tanks.
A dps werewolf, of course, focuses more on damage. But thanks to the extra 9966 resistances gained when transforming, you will be more durable than the other dps builds of the game and are still capable of the same high damage. You need to stack weapon damage and stamina while still maintaining some survivability through your healing and utilizing dodge roll to mitigate the damage you take. Medium armor, food consumables, and stamina, weapon damage, weapon crit sets will help to maximize your damage. Medium armor will reduce cost of stamina abilities and dodge roll, increase your weapon damage, and give you increased movement speed. When in a fight, don’t stop moving and dodge roll to avoid big hits.
2. Establish Your Build
Sets:
There are many sets, either crafted, drop, or monster, that would work for werewolf. And each would be good in different circumstances. The tank sets would be good for survivability, healing, and sustain while the dps sets are good for damage, mobility, and damage reduction. Since there are a lot of sets to choose from, I won’t explain what each one does. But I will, however, break them down into tank and dps sets.
CRAFTED SETS:
Tank: Alesia’s Bulwark, Daedric Trickery, Death’s Wind, Fortified Brass, Grave-Stake Collector, Hist Bark, Orgnum’s Scales, Shalidor’s Curse, Torug’s Pact, Whitestrake’s Retribution
Dps: Clever Alchemist, Eternal Hunt, Hunding’s Rage, Kvatch Gladiator, Might of the Lost Legion, Shacklebreaker, Twice Born Star
DROP SETS:
Tank: Beekeeper’s Gear, Black Rose, Brands of Imperium, Coward’s Gear, Ebon Armory, Fasalla’s Guile, Footman’s Fortune, Frozen Watcher, Glorious Defender, Grace of Gloom, Green Pact (requires food consumables), Impregnable, Ironblood, Juggernaut, Plague Doctor, Ulfnor’s Favor, Warrior-Poet
Dps: Armor of Truth, Arms of Relequin, Battlefront Acrobat, Berserking Warrior, Blood Moon (PvE only), Bone Pirate’s Tatters (requires drink consumables), Draugr Hulk, Dreugh King Slayer, Imperial Physique (Imperial City use only), Leviathan, Prisoner’s Rags, Quick Serpent, Ranger’s Gait, Ravager, Salvation, Savage Werewolf, Senche’s Bite, Seventh Legion Brute, Shieldbreaker, Spriggan’s Thorns, Strength of the Automaton, Toothrow, Twice-Fanged Serpent, Tzogvin’s Warband, Unfathomable Darkness, Vicious Ophidian, Viper’s Sting, Warrior’s Fury
MONSTER SETS:
Bloodspawn, Domihaus, Earthgore, Engine Guardian, Mighty Chudan, Molag Kena, Scourge Harvester, Selene, Sentinal of Rkugamz, Slimecraw, Stonekeeper, Symphony of Blades, Thurvokun, Troll King, Velidreth
The First Crescent of the EWP, ErtTheWolf55, states it best when he said that every werewolf needs to have both a tank and dps set. Otherwise the dps become glass cannons and the tanks hit like a wet noodle. And I agree with this. For example, a medium armor dps werewolf could wear Shacklebreaker and Salvation but wear a tanky monster set like Mighty Chudan to increase their resistances. It will take some trial and error to find the right balance. Be sure to use the UESP ESO build editor to develope your build and test different sets. I’ll leave a link here:
http://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Special:EsoBuildEditor
Armor, jewelry, and weapons:
Once you know the sets you will use, you need to know what traits and enchantments are best. Infused, reinforced, and divines are all good traits for armor pieces, but these work best for certain types and pieces of armor. The head, chest, and leg pieces give the biggest values of enchantments and armor rating. Therefore, putting infused on these pieces will give you the most stats from your armor enchants. Reinforced is better for heavy armor than it is medium since heavy of course has a higher armor rating. And divines will be great for any piece and any type since it strengthens your Mundus stone. Of course, if you’re a PvP build, Impenetrable is the best trait. And as for enchantments, Prismatic glyphs (made with Hakeijo runes) will overall give you the most of all three stats so you can move your attribute points around to get more of what you need. If you’re a PvE dps, may want to stick with all stamina.
Jewelry drops in three traits but can be transmuted into one of nine traits. For werewolf tanks, Healthy, Infused, Protective, and Triune are great traits. For werewolf dps, Robust, Infused, Swift, and Bloodthirsty are best. For enchantments, balance between stamina recovery and weapon damage glyphs. However, if using Infused, it would be better to use an odd enchantment such as reduced potion cooldown as the stat increase would be so minimal.
Everyone has two skill bars to use. That means you can choose up to two weapon skill trees to fight with. But some weapons are better than others when werewolf in involved. The stamina weapon trees are two handed, dual wield, one hand and shield, and bow. All of these would be good on the werewolf’s back bar, but to get the best damage, dual wield or two handed can be used on the werewolf bar. It doesn’t matter which type of one handed weapon you use since werewolf claws technically count as wielding fists. Therefore you will get no benefit whether you wield swords, daggers, axes, or maces.
If you choose to use dual wield, keep in mind that both enchantments are halved. So you have to choose between using two enchantments at half their value or only one enchantment with full value on a two hander. For dual wield, your main hand should have nirnhoned with a weapon damage glyph and your off hand infused with any other enchantment. You may use a stamina steal glyph for sustain or even a magicka steal glyph since werewolves have no way to get magicka back aside from recoveries and potions. If using a two hander, trait with nirnhoned and enchant with a weapon damage glyph.
Champion points:
https://alcasthq.com/eso-championpoints-jumppoints/
The Warrior constellations are all about defense. The Thief constellations are about sustain. And the Mage constellations are about damage. In all points you commit, they must compliment your build. If you’re built for crit, go for more crit chance/damage. If you’re built for recoveries, you’ll need to put a lot of points into Arcane, Mooncalf, and Healthy. If you have damage shields, you’ll want to put points into Bastion. Werewolves will benefit from specific constellations as well. So let’s start with the Warrior.
The Lady will be the most important Warrior constellation for werewolves because Hardy reduces your damage taken from poison. The highest percentage reduction you can get from this is 15%, but there are jump points in the Champion system (see the link above). The points you put into any percentage based constellation will only count on whole percentages, not partials. So for a constellation like Hardy that only gives a max of 15%, putting 75 in will give you 14%. But the next 24 points won’t really change your stats until 100 points are committed to give 15%. So instead of wasting 25 points just to get one more percentage, leave Hardy at 75 and divide 49 points between Elemental Defender and Thick Skinned. Thick Skinned is the only thing that reduces bleed damage, since it ignores resistances. Putting 120 points in this constellation also unlocks Unchained, which reduces the cost of your next stamina ability by 80% for 3 seconds after breaking free.
In the Lord, it really depends on your specific build what you should put your points into. Everyone should have at least 10 points in this constellation to get Field Physician, which reduces the damage received while resurrecting another player by 15%. I suggest Quick Recovery, as it will increase the healing received from healers as well as strengthen your own heals. If you’re a heavy armor user, Heavy Armor Focus is another good one. Just remember not to overcap your resistances. If you have a lot of abilities that apply shields, you might put points into Bastion, which makes your shields stronger. If you plan on putting a lot of points in this constellation, getting 75 unlocks Revival, which absorbs 10230 damage for 5 seconds after your are resurrected by another player.
The Steed is going to help the medium armor users and the PvPers. If you use medium armor, you can increase both your physical and spell resistance here with Medium Armor Focus and Spell Shield. Putting 30 points in this constellation will unlock Phase; after using Roll Dodge, your Physical and Spell Resistance are increased by 660 for 3 seconds. It’s not much but you might as well get some benefit. And if you are going to PvP, crit resistance is very important. So put some points into Resistant if you plan on going to Cyrodiil often.
Now let’s look at the Thief. You will definitely want to put 120 points into the Lover constellation. 30 points unlocks Synergizer, which grants 2 Ultimate any time you active a Synergy while in combat. Putting 120 points in unlocks Wind Running, which increases your Movement Speed by 2%. This applies to all types of movement. It also increases Health and Magicka Regeneration by 10% while sprinting. So as I’ve said before, resource management is very important for werewolf builds. The more stats you get back from recoveries and heavy attacks, the better. So you’ll want to put 75 points into Tenacity for heavy attack returns. You’ll also want to put a majority of points into Mooncalf for stamina recovery. If you don’t have much magicka or health recovery, just focus on the stamina and put 75 points into Mooncalf. If you’re a recovery based build, you’ll want to put points into Arcanist and Healthy as well.
There isn’t much of use in the Tower constellation in terms of passives. But everyone can benefit from the reduced cost of break free that Warlord gives. You’ll want to put about half of your remaining points into this skill. The other half can be applied to two choices in the Shadow constellation: Tumbling and Shadow Ward. If you’re a heavy armor user, you’ll benefit more from blocking than you would dodge roll so Shadow Ward is better. Medium armor already reduces the cost of dodge roll for each piece of medium armor so Tumbling would be a better fit. Again, there isn’t much of use for passives in the Shadow other than Merchant Favored, which reduces the cost of armor repairs by 10%. This is unlocked by committing 30 points to this constellation.
And finally, the Mage. The Ritual is going to be a werewolf’s biggest damage dealing constellation. All choices in this constellation are usable in werewolf form. Precise Strikes works best for higher weapon crit builds and Piercing will increase overall damage. Mighty increases the effectiveness of your disease damage like with a werewolf’s Infectious Claws. Putting 75 points in Mighty will increase the damage by 14%. Thaumaturge will increase the effectiveness of damage over time abilities. This also includes Infectious Claws and werewolf bleeds. Putting 48 points in this will increase your DoTs by 18%. And what’s better is that all the passives in this constellation are beneficial to werewolf. Opportunist, unlocked at 10, increases the damage of your next physical attack by 15% after you interrupt a target. Perfect strike, rank 30, increases your Weapon Critical rating by 12%. Exploiter, rank 75, increases your damage against off balance enemies by 10%. And with Last Stand at rank 120, when you fall below 20% Health you gain Major Heroism which grants 18 Ultimate over 8 seconds. This can only occur once every 20 seconds.
In the Atronach constellation, the Master-At-Arms skill increases the damage of your direct damage attacks. Put 56 points into Master-At-Arms to get 20% increased damage with direct attacks. To tell what is considered a direct attack, make damage numbers active in your options menu. Any damage numbers that appear white is considered direct damage and the orange numbers are considered DoTs. Physical Weapon Expert, which increases your damage done with light and heavy attacks for two handed, one hand and shield, dual wield, and bow. This also includes werewolf light and heavy attacks. Since most of your Mage points would go into the Ritual constellation, the only two passive you will receive is Retaliation, which increases the damage of your next Light Attack by 30% after blocking a Heavy Attack, and Riposte. When you block a melee attack, you have a 15% chance to deal physical damage to the enemy. This can only happen once every 5 seconds.
In the Apprentice constellation, the only skill that really benefits a werewolf is Blessed, which increases the effectiveness by any healing done. So put at least 30 points into this skill. Putting 30 points into this constellation unlocks Spell Precision, which increases your Spell Critical rating by 12%. Spell crit is pretty important for werewolves since your heal is magicka based. The higher your spell crit, the higher your chances to crit your heal!
3. Learn your rotation
When playing as a werewolf, or any class, it is important to develope and learn a rotation with the skills you have on hand. While most players can have 10 abilities and 2 ultimates at any time, werewolves are limited to the same 5 moves and no ultimate, since werewolf
is your ultimate. So you’ll have to make the most of them. Let’s talk about the moves, their morphs, and how to use them in your rotation.
Skills and morphs:
As I’ve mentioned at the beginning, the werewolf transformation increases your physical and spell resistance by 9966 when in wolf form. You will fear enemies when you transform and your light attacks also apply bleeds to your target. The ultimate can be morphed into either the Pack Leader or Berserker. Pack Leader can summon two dire wolves that will attack enemies rapidly and will respawn 12 seconds after dying. The Berserker has increased bleed damage. Either morph is good so it really depends on your preferences.
Pounce is a werewolf’s gap closer and it’s morphs are Brutal Pounce and Feral Pounce. Brutal Pounce deals additional damage to nearby enemies. But Feral Pounce adds 4 seconds to your timer when you leap from at least 10 meters away. This is the better morph, especially in solo play. Now that the Call of the Pack passive is fixed, this morph is even more crucial.
Hircine’s Bounty is your heal. It can be morphed into Hircine’s Rage or Hircine’s Fortitude. Both are good and whichever one you choose depends on your preferences. Hircine’s Rage heals for 45% of your max health and grants Major Brutality for 20 seconds. Hircine’s Fortitude heals for 60% of your max health. Hircine’s Rage is better for a dps and Fortitude better for tanks.
Roar will fear up to 6 enemies instantly. Ferocious Roar sets feared enemies off balance. This allows you to get double resources back from your heavy attacks. Deafening Roar will apply Major Fracture to feared enemies for 10 seconds. I personally like Ferocious Roar over deafening for the off-balance heavy attack return but Deafening Roar is a great morph for a PvE dps wolf.
Piercing Howl is your main attack. Both of it’s morphs are useful and depends on your preferences. Howl of Despair adds the Feeding Frenzy synergy, which grants Empower for 5 seconds. The other morph, Howl of Agony deals 30% more damage to feared enemies. For more solo werewolves, Howl of Agony is the way to go. But if you’re part of a group, it helps to have one Howl of Despair in the mix to further everyone’s damage.
Infectious Claws is a cone AoE damage over time ability, dealing disease damage to all enemies hit for 10 seconds. Claws of Anguish applies Major Defile on enemies that are hit for 4 seconds. This skill will wreak havoc in PvP against enemy players as they would have to waste additional resources to maintain their health. Claws of Life will heal you for 50% of the damage done from this move. It’s a great way to get a constant trickle of health back from your enemies in PvE and in PvP. I personally would choose Claws of Life over Anguish but I can see how powerful the other morph could be in the right paws.
Werewolf rotation:
When you are facing an enemy, remember you get a free fear and are immune to damage when you transform. Once in werewolf form, target your enemy by holding down the right stick (Xbox One). Activate your Hircine’s Rage damage buff, if this is the morph you have. Then you’ll want to DoT them with some light attacks for bleeds and Claws of Life. Use two light attacks followed by a howl, two light attacks and a howl. Repeat this until your stamina gets to half then use a fear and heavy attack twice to get double your stamina back. When your enemy’s health gets low, go for a burst rotation. For burst, fear your opponent and use Howl of Agony intermittently with light attacks to animation cancel. Reapply buffs and DoTs as needed. If you’re opponent tries to run away, leap at them with Feral Pounce. Make them waste there resources trying to survive.
Manage your resources! If you’re taking damage and you’re out of magicka, line of sight your opponent. Get behind something and stall. Block and dodge roll out of damage and use your fear and heavy attack to keep your stamina up between dodge rolling. Keep Claws of Life active so you’re getting some health back. In PvP, tri stat potions will help incredibly! And if you find you’re still having problems, talk with one of our stronger wolves. They will be glad to lend you a paw!
And there you have it! This will help you build your werewolf character. Duel often to learn how to fight each class and challenge the Maelstrom arena. And of course, there is always our Werewolf Wednesday events! So go build your werewolf and join us in the fun!
