Marshal_Lannes
Well-known member
Here is a werewolf build that I took through this season of Hardcore hitting 5000 favor, 10 reaper points, and all the gold treasure. Since this was tested on HC with minimal gearing and obviously zero past lives, performance would only be enhanced on Live. I used three tomes - +1 CHA that I got on a daily die roll (has no effect really) +2 CON for 1750 favor and +5 WIS for 5000 favor.
Concept
Create a fun to play, survivable, werewolf-themed build. Almost all my initial HC builds utilize Iconic characters since you start with more build points and get a gear package at L15. The gear was particularly useful this time around but the Iconic choice in this case opens up Silvanus as a deity a key part of this build. If you're playing on Live you might want to go with Barbarian lives instead of Fighter by using a Lesser Heart. Barbarian gives a higher critical profile.
Starting Stats, Class Breakdowns
Class split is going to be 8 Druid/6 Cleric/6 Fighter. 8 Druid for Winter Wolf form, 6 Cleric for Blessing of Silvanus (Maul crit boosts), and 6 Fighter for x1 Crit profile from Kensai (Barbarian version would take the Frenzy version of this). We are using a Maul and will be using WISDOM as our primary stat. Other stat considerations are CON, always needed in HC and 13 DEX for Precision. Shoot for 16 WIS, 16 CON, 13 DEX then adjust to your personal preference. I put a few points into STR since we won't have WIS to hit/damage until we go up the Falconry tree. Leveling order is specific and does matter.
Leveling Order is as follows.
1 - Fighter (Purple Dragon Knight starting race Iconic mandatory)
2-4 Druid (to unlock wolf form and Natural Fighting)
5-10 Cleric (to get Blessing of Silvanus and the huge Maul boost)
11-15 Fighter (to get Fighter 6 so you can unlock core 3 in Kensai)
16-20 Druid (Winter wolf form)
Feats
1 - Precision, Weapon Focus Bludgeon, Toughness
3 - Empower Healing (quite useful amping up your heal spells in Heroics)
5 - Silvanus
6 - Natural Fighting, Luck Domain (since the nerfs to Animal, the modest boost you get to HPs isn't that attractive anymore for melee-based clerics. I found that Luck is excellent since you get the Displacement SLA. Even though you don't have a long duration time in Heroics, that 30 seconds is huge for tough fights. We take Extend later on and with you getting more caster levels through epic levels we max out at 2:30 Displacement at level 30. Plus it's cheap to cast and easy to refresh from the toolbar and is always apparent when it goes out.
9 - Natural Fighting, Displacement
10 - Blessing of Silvanus
11 - Improved Critical Bludgeon
12 - Natural Fighting
13 - Weapon Specialization Bludgeon
15 - Child of Faith, Tactical Training (I don't love Tactical Training here, but we get a lot of feats and you have to take something. It does ensure you're always tripping things up through Level 29 but it won't make enough of a difference in Legendary Reaper, if that matters to you.)
18 - Extend
21 - Overwhelming Critical
22 - Perfect Natural Fighting
24 - Bulwark of Defense (note - this doesn't seem to work with my Nature's Defense stance. A bug maybe? On Live I'd take Epic Toughness here but I don't have the CON to meet requirements for it.)
25 - Doublestrike
27 - Blinding Speed (another bad level but I guess decent if you have trouble fitting in a Speed item you like)
28 - Deific Warding
30 - Scion of Arborea, Epic Damage Reduction.
Enhancements and Destiny
(this includes +1 racial tome, +1 Destinty, and +1 universal)
PDK - 1 point
Nature's Warrior - 37 points
Nature's Protector - 6 points
Falconry - 26 points
Kensei - 12 points
58 Destiny Points - Fury of the Wild 35 points, Legendary Dreadnought 13 points, Grandmaster of Flowers 10 points. Using Grandmaster mantle which gives us extraordinary speed. It feels like a wolf Ferrari.
Playstyle
Takedown constantly lets you immobilize dangerous targets. That and Ghost Wolf Pack are your two best wolf attacks. Ghost Wolf is outstanding if you aren't familiar with it. The confusion part works all the way up into Legendary and affects Reapers. Strike for the Eyes blinds your target consistently and recharges our wisdom Deadly Instinct trance. We end up with three charge attacks; Go For the Kill, Fast and Furious, and Dire Charge. Combined with your amazing movement speed you are about as mobile as one can get around the battlefield. You also have Haste boost for fights and two charges of Second Wind along with your enhanced Cure Serious.
Spells; Displacement, Nightshield, Aid, Jump, Ram's Might, Magic Fang, Lesser Restoration, and Close Wounds were the most useful. You also have access to Resist Energy if you let your House P buffs slip.
Pros and Cons
Pros; Highly survivable, there is a consistent power increase through crit range expansion and HP metrics as you level up. Lots of melee tactical CC that always hits in Elite heroics and Elite, low reaper Epics. High attack speed. You can run faster than anyone and have a sprint boost in case you ever get in trouble. You're surprisingly tanky with Displacement and an eventual 200 PRR.
Cons; You're using a Maul and that's not always an easy weapon to find on Hardcore. I got Shipbreaker from IoD, but the Barovian Maul is better and that is pretty much the weapon you'll be using from 10 to 20. At 20 I made the Epic Fury of the Flame which is rather underwhelming for an epic weapon and you aren't gonna find much better. An option is to run some Thunderholme and make a Maul. Or you could get really lucky and get the Drow Forged Maul from House of Rusted Blades (I wasn't). At 29 you get the Epic Barovian Maul. So a plus is both the weapons you'll be using most of the time, Barovian Mauls, are free, but the con is they are Barovian mauls and will never be as good as some other weapons available to different fighting styles. Build definitely benefits from Tremor. Aside from that the big drawback on HC is your CC DCs don't work in Legendary Reaper 4. And since you're used to tripping, knocking down mobs for 29 levels that requires a playstyle adjustment. This wouldn't be a problem on Live since you'd have past live boosts, tomes and such, but it is an issue on HC. I wouldn't say I felt naked running to 10 Reaper points but it is annoying that stuff you've been using for over a month suddenly doesn't work.
Conclusion
This werewolf build has just enough abilities to allow you to have some fun without overloading the player with button pushing. Speed, speed, speed is the name of the game. As I said earlier this build feels like driving a Ferrari where you are exhilarated but always on the verge of losing control and crashing until you learn how to adjust to the attack speed and charge attacks. Luckily, Displacement gives you a rather large safety net. Greater heights can certainly be reached with this build on Live, plus you'd have the Rems for War paint. Rarely was I ever in serious danger, the closest I came to dying was in Sorrowdusk going over the winter wolf bridge with the force traps. You're not going to out DPS Blight Druids, but you're also not going to feel weak and many of your tactical abilities make questing for your party significantly easier. All in all, n enjoyable journey.
Concept
Create a fun to play, survivable, werewolf-themed build. Almost all my initial HC builds utilize Iconic characters since you start with more build points and get a gear package at L15. The gear was particularly useful this time around but the Iconic choice in this case opens up Silvanus as a deity a key part of this build. If you're playing on Live you might want to go with Barbarian lives instead of Fighter by using a Lesser Heart. Barbarian gives a higher critical profile.
Starting Stats, Class Breakdowns
Class split is going to be 8 Druid/6 Cleric/6 Fighter. 8 Druid for Winter Wolf form, 6 Cleric for Blessing of Silvanus (Maul crit boosts), and 6 Fighter for x1 Crit profile from Kensai (Barbarian version would take the Frenzy version of this). We are using a Maul and will be using WISDOM as our primary stat. Other stat considerations are CON, always needed in HC and 13 DEX for Precision. Shoot for 16 WIS, 16 CON, 13 DEX then adjust to your personal preference. I put a few points into STR since we won't have WIS to hit/damage until we go up the Falconry tree. Leveling order is specific and does matter.
Leveling Order is as follows.
1 - Fighter (Purple Dragon Knight starting race Iconic mandatory)
2-4 Druid (to unlock wolf form and Natural Fighting)
5-10 Cleric (to get Blessing of Silvanus and the huge Maul boost)
11-15 Fighter (to get Fighter 6 so you can unlock core 3 in Kensai)
16-20 Druid (Winter wolf form)
Feats
1 - Precision, Weapon Focus Bludgeon, Toughness
3 - Empower Healing (quite useful amping up your heal spells in Heroics)
5 - Silvanus
6 - Natural Fighting, Luck Domain (since the nerfs to Animal, the modest boost you get to HPs isn't that attractive anymore for melee-based clerics. I found that Luck is excellent since you get the Displacement SLA. Even though you don't have a long duration time in Heroics, that 30 seconds is huge for tough fights. We take Extend later on and with you getting more caster levels through epic levels we max out at 2:30 Displacement at level 30. Plus it's cheap to cast and easy to refresh from the toolbar and is always apparent when it goes out.
9 - Natural Fighting, Displacement
10 - Blessing of Silvanus
11 - Improved Critical Bludgeon
12 - Natural Fighting
13 - Weapon Specialization Bludgeon
15 - Child of Faith, Tactical Training (I don't love Tactical Training here, but we get a lot of feats and you have to take something. It does ensure you're always tripping things up through Level 29 but it won't make enough of a difference in Legendary Reaper, if that matters to you.)
18 - Extend
21 - Overwhelming Critical
22 - Perfect Natural Fighting
24 - Bulwark of Defense (note - this doesn't seem to work with my Nature's Defense stance. A bug maybe? On Live I'd take Epic Toughness here but I don't have the CON to meet requirements for it.)
25 - Doublestrike
27 - Blinding Speed (another bad level but I guess decent if you have trouble fitting in a Speed item you like)
28 - Deific Warding
30 - Scion of Arborea, Epic Damage Reduction.
Enhancements and Destiny
(this includes +1 racial tome, +1 Destinty, and +1 universal)
PDK - 1 point
Nature's Warrior - 37 points
Nature's Protector - 6 points
Falconry - 26 points
Kensei - 12 points
58 Destiny Points - Fury of the Wild 35 points, Legendary Dreadnought 13 points, Grandmaster of Flowers 10 points. Using Grandmaster mantle which gives us extraordinary speed. It feels like a wolf Ferrari.
Playstyle
Takedown constantly lets you immobilize dangerous targets. That and Ghost Wolf Pack are your two best wolf attacks. Ghost Wolf is outstanding if you aren't familiar with it. The confusion part works all the way up into Legendary and affects Reapers. Strike for the Eyes blinds your target consistently and recharges our wisdom Deadly Instinct trance. We end up with three charge attacks; Go For the Kill, Fast and Furious, and Dire Charge. Combined with your amazing movement speed you are about as mobile as one can get around the battlefield. You also have Haste boost for fights and two charges of Second Wind along with your enhanced Cure Serious.
Spells; Displacement, Nightshield, Aid, Jump, Ram's Might, Magic Fang, Lesser Restoration, and Close Wounds were the most useful. You also have access to Resist Energy if you let your House P buffs slip.
Pros and Cons
Pros; Highly survivable, there is a consistent power increase through crit range expansion and HP metrics as you level up. Lots of melee tactical CC that always hits in Elite heroics and Elite, low reaper Epics. High attack speed. You can run faster than anyone and have a sprint boost in case you ever get in trouble. You're surprisingly tanky with Displacement and an eventual 200 PRR.
Cons; You're using a Maul and that's not always an easy weapon to find on Hardcore. I got Shipbreaker from IoD, but the Barovian Maul is better and that is pretty much the weapon you'll be using from 10 to 20. At 20 I made the Epic Fury of the Flame which is rather underwhelming for an epic weapon and you aren't gonna find much better. An option is to run some Thunderholme and make a Maul. Or you could get really lucky and get the Drow Forged Maul from House of Rusted Blades (I wasn't). At 29 you get the Epic Barovian Maul. So a plus is both the weapons you'll be using most of the time, Barovian Mauls, are free, but the con is they are Barovian mauls and will never be as good as some other weapons available to different fighting styles. Build definitely benefits from Tremor. Aside from that the big drawback on HC is your CC DCs don't work in Legendary Reaper 4. And since you're used to tripping, knocking down mobs for 29 levels that requires a playstyle adjustment. This wouldn't be a problem on Live since you'd have past live boosts, tomes and such, but it is an issue on HC. I wouldn't say I felt naked running to 10 Reaper points but it is annoying that stuff you've been using for over a month suddenly doesn't work.
Conclusion
This werewolf build has just enough abilities to allow you to have some fun without overloading the player with button pushing. Speed, speed, speed is the name of the game. As I said earlier this build feels like driving a Ferrari where you are exhilarated but always on the verge of losing control and crashing until you learn how to adjust to the attack speed and charge attacks. Luckily, Displacement gives you a rather large safety net. Greater heights can certainly be reached with this build on Live, plus you'd have the Rems for War paint. Rarely was I ever in serious danger, the closest I came to dying was in Sorrowdusk going over the winter wolf bridge with the force traps. You're not going to out DPS Blight Druids, but you're also not going to feel weak and many of your tactical abilities make questing for your party significantly easier. All in all, n enjoyable journey.