Warg Build, Warg Rotation, Warg Guide
I've been asked a bit about my build and I decided to make a thread here. This place has been dead anyway, so why not leave this here? It's not like it will get knocked down by other threads.
Anyway, I use different builds on my warg for different situations, this is a little inconvenient because you have to keep going back to grams to retrait but hey do what you can with what you got.
You can change the builds based on your play style, for creep traits ARE very flexible. However, I don't recommend changing some of these and I'll tell you why on the individual ones. (The numbers in this build assumes you have the +1,600 Armour Class Trait slotted, Foe of the Light, and Pack Elder for 901 Physical Mitigation. The Armour Boost class trait should be slotted for each and every one of your creeps)
The KB-Heal Build
This build is for those solo Wargs who know how to get KBs. You want 6 Critical Rating Corruptions, which has a set bonus that allows you to get a 10% heal for every Killing Blow you obtain. If you don't know what a Killing Blow is, it's when your character gets the hit that reduces the opponent’s health to 0. The last hit. You know you've achieved such by getting a message saying "Your mighty blow defeated [the] x"
Now you may be thinking, "10% heal for a low chance to get a KB? I'm not a BA or a reaver, it's not worth it!" If you're not confident in your KB abilities, it may not be worth it, but understand wargs have very little self-healing capabilities. The skill Rallying Howl is a low end Heal over Time that requires you to get a defeat response. A Defeat Response is a buff you get when a target you've damaged recently has died. You don't need to damage the target if you're in a group with someone that has damaged the dead target or if you have healed someone who has damaged a target that died. This is true for Raids too, the group you're in with 5 or less people have to damage a target for you to get the defeat response, not people in other groups. It does not count if they weren't in your group.
This KB heal will probably safe your life as a warg without any healers in sight, so don't put it off too fast!
What You Need: Finally Right? What you want to trait is 6 Critical Rating Corruptions for the set bonuses, 3 Critical Defense Corruptions for survival, Health for Power Ranks 1 and 2, and Health for Damage Rank 2 to boost your KB heal to a respectable level and to have a decent amount of morale.
These traits are all very important, you can trade them in for DPS (Damage Per Second) traits if you want but I wouldn't recommend it. wargs are already very squishy and their DPS is already high in Shadow. You want to work towards your weaknesses instead of boosting what you already have. If you really must change something, change the Critical Defense, do not touch your morale. The extra morale is what makes this build viable in my opinion, the KB heal will just be too low without it and you'll probably die before you get your KB anyway if you don't have it.
The "I Don't Want to Die" Builds
Notice the plural!? Good, it wasn't a typo. There are multiple builds! Yay! Now, the Warg is a VERY squishy class, there is no getting around this. You can, however, remedy this a little.
What You Need: That was fast. For the first one, you want 3 Physical Mitigation, 3 Tactical Mitigation, 3 Critical Defense, and 3 Morale. (Health For Power Ranks 1 and 2, Health for Damage Rank 2)
This is the general build, it covers all your weaknesses. Without any buffs to Mitigation this will bring your Ancient-Dwarf, Westernesse, and Beleriand (What most Freeps use) Mitigations to around 46%, your Physical Mitigations (Common Damage) to 50% (The cap for Wargs), and your Tactical Mitigations(The ones that Matter) around 43% give or take a few percent. (This is assuming you have the 1.6k Armour Class Trait slotted, Foe of the Light, and Pack Elder for 901 Physical Mitigation. The Armour Boost class trait should be slotted for each and every one of your creeps)
This is a well-rounded build for all around play, as you will have decent morale and defenses. And to top it off you can purchase Fresh Blood of the Stone Folk from Haz the Defensive Potions trader in Gramsfoot for 300 Commendations (Currency you obtain by either doing quests (PvE – Player vs. Environment) or killing Free Peoples. (PvMP - Player vs. Monster Player)) for 5 Potions. The best version, which is available at Rank 6 Infamy, Gives you a buff of +1667 Armour for 30 minutes. The armour will boost both your Physical and Tactical Mitigations.
What You Need v2: 6 Physical Mitigations, and 6 Tactical Mitigations (Please don’t do this, children will cry in the night for every Warg that does)
I would like to say that this does not over cap you on Mitigations. Physical Mitigations (Common) may cap at 50%, but Beleriand/Ancient Dwarf/Westernesse caps at 58% All Tactical Mitigations cap at 60%. So hoorah you’re not wasting traits! Even though you are. If you have 3000 Critical Defense you’re reducing Critical and Devastating Magnitude (The critical Damage you take) by 23%. If you trait 3 Critical Defense you’ll be at 14817 Critical Defense and you’ll have 59.7%! What you’re gaining in mitigation doesn’t excuse what you lose in Critical Defense, and not to mention Morale. Mitigations are useless if you don’t live long enough to make them useful.
What You Need v3: FLAYER.
Flayer is a Rank 10 (I believe) skill that increases your mitigations by a lot. The Class Traited Version gives you +3900 Armour and +1800 Tactical and Physical Mitigations. Let me tell you what this means. With no Mitigation Corruptions slotted in traited Flayer I have 55% Beleriand Mitigation and 53% Tactical Mitigation. (Of course with the Armour Pot I mentioned Earlier) If I untoggle (Remove) Flayer in the same build I will only have 41.7% Beleriand Mitigation and 37.8% Tactical Mitigation. Squishy right? Enhanced (Class Traited) Flayer boosts my mitigations by nearly 15% each! (Over 15% for Tactical)
Glass Cannon Warg
This build is for those wargs that like pain. You know who you are. So let’s jump right into it.
What You Need: 3 Critical Rating, 6 Physical Mastery, 2 Morale, 1 Damage. (Health for Power Ranks 1 and 2, Damage for Power Rank 2). If you’re really masochistic you can go Damage for Power Ranks 1 and 2 and Damage for Health r2.
This build is for those who are confident their healers are awesome, really hate healers, are in a warg Pack, or have their Disappear on a 1m 30S Cool Down. If you are a damage freak you can go this route.
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Rotations/Warg Debuffs and Buffs
Shadow
I am a Shadow Warg, so I won’t be covering Flayer much here, but I’ll do something for it. For most classes and most situations, you want to start with a pounce. This is a guaranteed stun and possibly a Knock Down stun which Freeps can’t pot. (Unless they use their Class Crowd Control Removal Skill or their Brand) The next thing you want to do is use Sudden Maul. You will get -25% Attack Duration buff if it Critical Hits which is very important for your DPS. Next what you will want to do is hit Eye Gouge, rend if you crit, and then Bestial Claws. Eye Gouge is an Immediate skill, and Immediate Skills cut animations of skills. If you have Scratch and Snip you know it takes forever for that skill to do its two hits and during that time you could be hitting other skills. What you want to do after a skill like that is hit an Immediate, such as Eye Gouge. After that first round of rotations you want to spam Claws and Rend for dps. Claws and Maul have the same power cost, but Claws obviously does more damage, so to maximize your DPS you want to hit Claws more than you do Maul. Maul is only used for the -25% attack duration buff.
This isn’t the best thing to do always, you’ll have to make those decisions for yourself in certain situations. Eye Gouge is also an interrupt skill, for certain classes you want to interrupt their inductions. I’m not going to go into detail all the skills you want to interrupt, that’s for another thread or for you to determine on your own. Some things are learned through experience after all.
Let’s talk about situations you don’t want to pounce first. If you’re in a group with reavers and Black Arrows and you’ve found a Burglar, don’t pounce it! They will unlock a skill that will remove the Crowd Control that heals them and gives them a free +50% evade chance. As a Shadow warg your main damage skills will bypass Evade, Block, and Parry, but reavers and Black Arrows aren’t as lucky as you. If you’re alone you can pounce burglars and they’ll likely use it at full morale and waste their heal, and you’ll be able to go through their evade. You want to apply Crippling Bite and possibly Rend before the evade so you can get those debuffs off as they can be evaded. You also open the Burglar up for another stun in which they will have to pot to get out of. Be warned that Burglars can reset their skills and Find Footing, the skill that heals them on Dazes, Knock Downs, Stuns and Conjunctions (Tendon Shred for example) will be up for another use. In general it’s not good to pounce burgs unless you want them to waste that skill.
Let’s talk about your debuffs and buffs. Every time you get a critical hit you open up two skills: Rend (+10% Incoming Melee and Ranged Damage, Debuff for Free People) and Frenzy (+4040 Critical Rating and 5% Evade Chance, Buff for yourself) You have to decide which of these skills to use at which moment. If your opponent is stunned and you’re not being attacked, you don’t have to hit Frenzy immediately, use Rend so you can get the most damage out of your skills on that opponent. If you’re attacking someone who’s attacking you back, use Frenzy for the evade chance. Now you’ll get plenty of chances to use both of these skills since wargs in Shadow stance crit a lot, but this is just maxing your chances.
Rabid Bite (+40% Power Cost, Debuff) and Flea Bitten (+25% all skill inductions, +25% Attack Duration, Debuff) are two diseases you have at your disposal. Keep in mind freeps have heavy resistances lately and can resist these, Rabid Bite can be Blocked, Parried, Evaded, and can miss since it’s a melee skill, and they can both be potted with a disease pot or removed with freep removal skills. Looking at all of this you may ask “what’s the point of using these then,” and that’s not a bad question to ask. These are skills mostly used for tactical healing classes so you can mess with their inductions. Fleas can also be used effectively against melee classes, as the 25% Attack Duration debuff will slow down their skills. Also, to maximize these debuffs, you want to use the one you don’t want first, and then the second. For example, if you want to slow down the inductions on a troublesome Lore Master, you would use Rabid Bite first and then Flea Bitten, so when they use a disease pot, the first applied skill will be removed, in this case, Rabid Bite.
Shadow Fangs. In Shadow this skill is a debuff that gives +25% to all skill inductions and -4444 parry rating. It cannot be potted, like Rend. Stack this with Fleas and you have a +50% induction debuff on a troublesome healer, making their job harder. This skill is also used for an extra bleed, for if you apply Crippling Bite first and then use Shadow Fangs, the target will get a bleed on them. Crippling Bite isn’t just a slow, it’s a way of life for the warg. Crippling Bite applied on the target + Pounce (out of stealth) will be a conjunction stun, and for NPCs this means a Fellowship Maneuver and for Free Peoples it means an annoying stun. The stun chance is not 100%, it’s not guaranteed. Shadow Fangs bleed, however, is.
Silences. wargs have three silences available to them in Shadow, and when the moons align all three won’t be resisted by freeps. (Free Peoples) The first one a warg probably gets is Throat Rip, it’s a melee skill that silences your target for 10s. freeps CAN pot this, so beware of that. Minstrels have a skill called Cry of the Chorus, and they will get two buffs that look the same under their health bar when they use it, be on the lookout for this skill because it not only removes silences but it makes them immune to silences. Learn what it looks like. Lore Master Stun Immunity (Sign of Power: Righteousness) also removes silences, it lasts for 20s and has a cd of 18s. A smart warg will wait until they reapply to apply their stun so the Lore Master cannot remove it via that method.
The next silence you will get is from Snap in Shadow (Melee skill, Rank 10 Skill I believe, debuffs freep Ranged, Tactical, and Melee damage by 10%) if it crits. It’s a very weak silence, it only lasts 3s so it won’t last long at all…In fact I think this silence is more of a hindrance than a help because it will increase the Free Person’s Diminishing Returns, which also lowers the duration of Crowd-Control provided it happens a lot. So not only is the silence gone in under a second, it seems, but it will lower the duration of your longer silences as well. But it’s just something we have to deal with.
The very best silence you have is Howl from the Shadow! It’s a high ranking skill, rank 10 I believe, but it’s an AoE silence that lasts 10s! (4 max targets, 10m radius/range) What’s also awesome is that it can be used while you’re stealthed. Awesome, huh?
The next debuff is Shadow Pack. It’s a skill where you…pee on the ground and mark it. Don’t worry though it’s pretty good! You can reduce up to 4 target’s Physical and Tactical Mitigation by 3939. Here’s the best part though: It stacks. You heard me. If you’re a packer, and you got four wargs you should definitely all coordinated peeing on the ground where a freep is, and then pounce him and murder him. Be sure to have a warg pounce first and then pee so they don’t run away as soon as they see the yellow puddle under them. Defiler Blight has trained freeps to run away at the sight of yellow puddles.
There’s another AoE Howl I don’t trait but it’s 25% chance to fear up to 4 targets, and can be used from stealth. It’s really nice as CC, it’s called Howl of the Unnerving, and it’s a Racial Trait.
Eye Gouge used from stealth will reduce the target’s skill range by 10m if it has a 20m+ range.
So your rotation should focus on those skills. Swipe and Scratch and Snip is nice but they’re not required.
Flayer
Your skills change in Flayer, read your tool-tips! But I’ll save you the trouble by telling you them here.
Bestial Claws (Or just plain old Claws) becomes Raking Claws which puts a bleed on your target that stacks (3) times, and has a 5% chance to place a debuff on the target that increases all inductions by 50%! Low chance though, so be sure to apply Brute (Stealth skill changes to Brute in Flayer since you can’t stealth in Flayer) to yourself which gives you +20% chance to apply brute bonuses.
Eye Gouge (Or the nostalgic Eye Rake) becomes Eye Gash which still interrupts inductions has a 5% chance to apply a Brute debuff to the target that reduces their block, parry, and evade ratings by 808. I personally think that needs to be buffed a little.
Sudden Maul (Maul) becomes Agonizing Maul which applies a bleed and has a 5% chance to apply a Brute Debuff that reduces the target’s incoming healing by 25%...Also needs to be buffed but it’s there.
Shadow Fangs becomes Brutal Fangs which increases the target’s Attack Duration by 10%, reduce their evade rating by 4444, and has a 5% chance to apply a Brute debuff which reduces their armour rating by 1667.
Snap does the same thing but on crits does not silence the target but instead disarms them.
The same is for Howl from the Shadow, it disarms 4 targets instead of silencing them.
Throat Rip becomes Muscle Tear which places TWO (2) debuffs on the target that gives them +33% attack Duration and slows them by 50%. The slow overwrites Crippling, but the attack duration debuff cannot and does not overwrite or stack with Brutal Fangs and the Raking Claws Brute debuff…So use those separately…Thankfully it still stacks with Fleas.
Shadow Pack becomes Pack Flayers, and by its name it’s not a Solo skill. It’s a channeled skill that roots a target for 10s, they can’t pot it or do anything but attack for the duration. They can’t block parry or evade, but you can’t attack or move, either, which is why it’s not a solo skill. You're immune to all CC in Flayer Root so it's basically not interruptable (Thanks to Blakfang/Shadowlily for testing this for me) It’s a great skill to stop the focus target from being able to kite so your enemies can eat them alive.
Disappear in Flayer becomes a knock down called Topple. So BE WARY you can’t disappear while Flayer is toggled, don’t let that get you killed. Topple is a melee skill that knocks down a target for an entire 10 seconds. A Warg’s best CC skill, next to the root imo by far. The reason I don’t think it’s better than the root is because a Freep can use a skill to remove the knockdown or use their Brand.
Rotation should of course be Raking Claws spam. Jk. Not really. I don’t know much about Flayer rotations but you want to cycle your debuffs accordingly. You’re not DPS if you’re in Flayer most of the time but you can still do damage. So get out there and CC/Debuff some freeps!
Traits
Yay finally omg.
RACIAL TRAITS.
Pack Hunters, Four-Legged Foe, Pack Alpha, Foe of the Light, Pack Elder. You can replace one of these (EXCEPT FOUR-LEGGED FOE) with Howl of the Unnerving.
Four Legged Foe is special because it increases stealth speed by 5% and run speed by 5%. That’s +10% run speed in Stealth and +5% run speed when you’re out of stealth but in combat. Movement is very important in this game, and if you’re a veteran you know why. If you’re not you’ll find out why soon enough. Stealth speed is important because you can catch targets faster without sprinting. The other 5% is important so you can out run your opponent if you need to. Situations where your opponent kites you is where your enhanced movement speed will come in handy, so never forget it.
I never even bought Pack Mentality
CLASS TRAITS.
Enhanced Skill: Stealth, (Never untrait this, NEVER) Armour Boost, (Important) Enhanced Skill: Eye Rake, (Very important) Long Strides, (NEVER UNTRAIT THIS) and The Element of Surprise. (Important) These are the class traits you should have traited most of the time. The rest are personal but I use Disappear and Sprint Cool Down. I use those both to get points, I use Disappear to get a guaranteed stun/knock down and I use Sprint to chase down horses…However I do use them to escape the zerg as well. Can you blame me? Flayer is situational, never trait Resistance and that’s about it. Track is situational and Rally Howl is in theory nice if you have 4 other wargs who trait it. Shadow Fang may be becoming important again, but at the same time maaaybe not. Freeps do stack Physical Mitigation more than Tactical so there may be a few that have less Tactical Mitigation than Orc Craft/ Fell Wrought, but it’s just not worth it for the few freeps who do do that. They can easily get both capped either way.
Have fun out there guys. I’ll leave a rotation video here for those few who are interested. Be warned though, sometimes Howl from the Shadow’s animation doesn’t get cut and you’re sitting there howling for 3s.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agFhlchoAU0
*Blakfang assisted me with some false information.
