Wargs Stance/Builds for 1v1s

[Gryf]

Hello wargies! I've been playing around with some builds/tactics and stances in varies 1v1s. I've had all sorts of success (And failures but to those! ). So I decided to put this page together to find out what you guys use (Traits, stances, tactics ect.) USUALLY. I'm quite aware that 1v1s really just depend on the class, skill ect. but what do you roll with the usually?
Currently, after talking to a great warg on my server, I have been using this build; HfP2, 3 Crit Ratings, 2 Crit defense. Now when the crit defense was brought up, I was a bit skeptical but this has turned out to be a fairly good flayer build, despite only having around 15,800 HP. It's not too bad for shadow, but you probably want to ditch the critical defenses for a mastery or two just to get your base DMG up. so you can melt that squishy target (assuming it is a squishy target).
So, to help any new wargs playing the game, I would ask you to share your build, what stance you use for different classes, maybe even throw in a skill rotation.


Thanks guys for the help!

~Atsg of BW
Beware the Yellow Snow of the 'Moors Freeps!
(To any new wargs that really need help, http://theartofwarg.com/ is a great site to help you learn the class).

[Umbrarg]

First - you need a good solid base upon which to work on. A 12 pack of miller lite will do the trick.

After a few skirmishes, and you determine that the fight needs some concentrated wargie action to mix things up, pop a six pack of Guinness.

Depending on how that goes - I heartily reccommend Macallen 12yr old single malt. If it went REALLY badly, chase it with another bottle of Macallen.

By now you should have had a great time soloing!

If things start going really bad for the Creeps, and you feel that without urgent action on your own part, everything will turn blue - I suggest drinking everything listed above, followed by some real Strongbow cider. Open a raid and unleash, well, it doesn't matter what you unleash - but have fun with it anyway!

Once you have obliterated your foes - some nice fight club action at GTA with red wine or perhaps a cognac, and a fine cigar.

I've been doing this for years - and I find that this works for me 100% of the time.

[Hendos]

I run exclusively as a solo roamer with a little 1v1 action at GTA when it takes my fancy.

Currently I am running 3 x critical rating, HfP2, HfD2, DfP2 which gives a good chunk of morale and doesn't sacrifice too much damage either. I used to run a critical protection but for the %'s it was giving me I decided to change over in the end with the view of the Flayer bubble being better and I am happier with this build.

I used to use some masteries but since the OP's tend to be flipped so often (or sit in freep hands because they wont pitch battle without having at least 3...) I found the fluctuating mastery rating to be of little use. Crit rating is definitely the way to go in my opinion.

With regards to Class traits I run with:

Armour Boost
Enhanced Skill: Stealth
Long Strides
Shadow Fang
Enhanced Skill: Disappear
Advanced Skill: Flayer
Enhanced Skill: Eye Rake

Racial traits:

Foe of the Light
Pack Alpha
Pack Elder
Howl of the Unnerving
Four-Legged Foe

Battle tactics I could write an entire essay. A few decent pointers are too remember that Howl of the Unnerving will not break your stealth but will break your foes with the fear...very useful in fights against burglars.

Always move around without a stance and then choose based upon what foe you find. In general all light and medium armor classes will require Shadow stance. I use Flayer for a heavy armor class unless you can tell they are squigey (low ranked and check how their armor looks..learning what the audacity armor looks like it good practice so you can decide if you can burn them down really quickly which is always preferable to a longer fight where you might get interrupted.

Flayer stance activation has a long animation, cut it down by hitting Eye Rake immediately after clicking Flayer to get straight down to business.

Make sure to de-buff early in a fight after initial positional damage and always cripple inside the stun time for classes like the Rune-keeper because if they slow you before you slow them they will kite and force you to use Sprint (which is hard to control assuming it isn't on CD).

I will edit this up with more info on stance and class tactics later if there is sufficient interest

Dap

[MrWarg]

I am currently using this build. Having tested various combination of damage orientated corruptions I settled on this build as a good compromise between damage output and morale. You will get more damage from other builds it is true, but in my testing that extra damage wasn't much higher and it came at the price of a significant drop in morale.

So far this build seems to be working out quite well for me and a number of other wargs on my server are using similar setups. One nice feature of this build is that it seems to work equally well with Shadow or Flayer stance.

[stoney530]

Flayer seems to have been silently nerfed with the last update that changed crit rating/defense for freeps. I used to love using Falyer for 1v1's, as longer fights usually mean better fights. But against a well geared freep, with tactical mitigation maxed out and a healthy chunk of crit defense, you might as well be smacking them with the fluffy part of your tail.

I now run Shadow 95% of the time with these corruptions:

-HfP2
-Crit Rating
-Crit Rating
-Crit Rating
-DfP2
-Crit Defense

This gives me around 22% base crit rating, with Frenzy bumping it up to ~25%. Add to that Shadow stances godly ability to crit all the time, I usually find myself critting with Claws about 80-90% of the time on freeps.

As far as tactics go, the single most important thing you can do is maintain positional damage as much as possible. The extra 50% damage from positional damage can easily be the difference between a win and a loss. So remember pups, mouse turning is your friend!

P.S. - Has anyone had any success with dropping Shadow damage? I've talked to a few high-ranked reavers who no longer trait fire damage and seem to be doing quite well. The theory is that freeps in the Moors max out their tactical mitigations while leaving their physical mitigations untouched. So they actually have higher mitigation against Shadow/Fire damage compared to common damage. I haven't tested it yet on my warg, but it would be nice to free up an additional class trait if it works.

[Gryf]

P.S. - Has anyone had any success with dropping Shadow damage?
-I myself have talked to reavers that have been dropping Fire DMG. One said that he feels that he does more DMG (slightly) with fire damage, whilst the other who plays freepside says that with some freeps mits it is not worth the slot. I have not currently tried to unslot shadow DMG but I will give it a try and see how it alters my outgoing DMG.
For right now I will say it is probably safe to un-slot and use another trait in it's place for a pack/group play, for 1v1s I'm not so sure. This could make for an interesting read MrWarg. (I would slot for PvE).
Thank-you or the replies!

[spelunker]

P.S. - Has anyone had any success with dropping Shadow damage? I've talked to a few high-ranked reavers who no longer trait fire damage and seem to be doing quite well. The theory is that freeps in the Moors max out their tactical mitigations while leaving their physical mitigations untouched. So they actually have higher mitigation against Shadow/Fire damage compared to common damage. I haven't tested it yet on my warg, but it would be nice to free up an additional class trait if it works.

Reavers have sundering blow, which is a 1 minute armour debuff on a 10s cooldown, so they are easily able to maintain it all the time on their target. Since we don't get this important debuff, especially solo the general rule of thumb is you will do more damage to a light armour class with common damage, a medium armour class will depend on gear and virtue choices, with some targets taking more or less with each damage type (glass cannon type mediums will usually take more damage with tactical, but not always). Heavies will always take more damage from tactical without the -armour debuff. Also, you'll find against many 'glass cannon' type heavy armour classes you will do absolutely abysmal damage compared to shadow.

I personally stay with shadow damage unless I know I will only be fighting tactical classes as the negatives of trying to fight a heavy class with common damage far outweight the positives you gain from common on a tactical.

If you will be running with a reaver who is always on the same target as you, definitely drop shadow damage though.

[MasterHobbit]

I run a Shadow build in all non-1v1 instances. IMO, the added survivability of Flayer is just not worth the drop in dps, especially with all the crazy crits freeps can put out these days. Unless the raid/group leader needs a root, I'm more useful in Shadow.

That being said, my Shadow build is as follows:

HfP R2
DfP R2
4x Crit rating

I find crit defense to be pretty much useless, as there are more useful corruptions to slot. If you're gonna be squishy, might as well get the most bang for your buck! In my server, we usually maintain a 2-2 OP balance, so that takes care of my mastery needs, leaving me free to slot an extra crit rating.

In 1v1s, Flayer has proved to be invaluable against those tougher freeps. My build is the same as in Shadow, except with one of the crit ratings swapped out for HfD R2. This is for bigger Flayer bubble heals without overly compromising dps. I once had a 10+ minute battle of attrition with an all-out glory champ which I would never have been able to win without Flayer's defenses and bubble heals. Just a tip for all fellow wargies, the "Crippled" effect that is added with the slow when you use Crippling Bite gives you a chance to stun an enemy with Pounce even if out of stealth. Such stuns, coupled with a liberal use of Topple, are paramount to inflicting the maximum amount of postitional damage possible. Note that using Brutal Fangs for the bleed removes the chance for a Pounce stun.

So that's my two cents, I really hope it helps!

~Ark

[Arathaert]

Okay, so the other night I did a small bit of testing and I'm pretty befuddled.

What I'd been running with was:

Mastery x3
Crit Rating x2
Damage for Power 2

I'll call this the "glass cannon" build.

I tested two others:

Crit Rating x1
Mastery x3
Damage for Power 2
Morale for Power 2

(the "Laurelin Build")

and

Crit Rating x3
Health for Power 2
Health for Damage 2
Damage for Power 2

("Bulky")


The effects weren't quite what I expected. I tested for one minute in Shadow stance against the light armour dummy spamming claws the whole time, starting in stealth. I'm a r7 with 10 aud.

So:

Build Morale DPS Avg. Claws Hit Biggest Hit Claws Crit %
Glass Cannon 14,252 578 1129.1 1588 67.9%
Laurelin 15,677 588 1141.5 1559 75%
Bulky 17,245 569 1147.1 1511 81.5%


Later that night, I did a couple 1v1s using the bulky build. I lasted a whole lot longer than normal and brought a r13 hunter down to 800 morale. (woulda beaten him except the fact that I really suck, have a laggy computer and hadn't played in a month ;P) Lasted a while vs. a guard too--that extra 3k morale helped soak up a lot of bleeding and gave me the time to bring him down quite a ways myself. I didn't test the Laurelin build live.

So--the Laurelin build is definitely better than my old glass cannon build. I'll take a dps increase along with a 1.5k health increase any day. Question is: which is better between Laurelin and Bulky? On the one hand is basically better autoattacks and higher crits while on the other is more health and more crits.

Anyone else want to test/weigh in on this? I'm leaning toward the Bulky build myself - the positives seem to me to outweigh the negatives. And when I finally do get Flayer it'll be better as well.

(I tried formatting this all nicely with a table and everything, but after one post got erased cause I "wasn't logged in" and the other rejected the table y'all ended up with this. Sorry. :P)

[Insane979]

Raking Claw Brute bonus debuff, Torn Muscle, brutal savage fangs. they all over-write each other in that order. Since you all seem to care about the warg you should /bug it. Attack speed debuffs were one of the great things about flayer wargs, now raking claw brute bonus takes priority and we are debuffing champion inductions.

[Arathaert]

I run exclusively as a solo roamer with a little 1v1 action at GTA when it takes my fancy.

Currently I am running 3 x critical rating, HfP2, HfD2, DfP2 which gives a good chunk of morale and doesn't sacrifice too much damage either. I used to run a critical protection but for the %'s it was giving me I decided to change over in the end with the view of the Flayer bubble being better and I am happier with this build.

I used to use some masteries but since the OP's tend to be flipped so often (or sit in freep hands because they wont pitch battle without having at least 3...) I found the fluctuating mastery rating to be of little use. Crit rating is definitely the way to go in my opinion.

With regards to Class traits I run with:

Armour Boost
Enhanced Skill: Stealth
Long Strides
Shadow Fang
Enhanced Skill: Disappear
Advanced Skill: Flayer
Enhanced Skill: Eye Rake

Racial traits:

Foe of the Light
Pack Alpha
Pack Elder
Howl of the Unnerving
Four-Legged Foe

[subsequent awesomeness edited out for sake of space]

Just a couple thoughts: have you considered swapping out HfD2 for a HfP1 corruption? Seems like you'd gain a chunk of damage for only a small loss in health and power. I'll be testing this out soon myself but was wondering if anyone else had previously invented that wheel.

Also, why not swap out Enhanced Eye Rake for Element of Surprise? For those fights when you do go Shadow it seems like it'd be the better option. And also a much greater chance of critting on the initial pounce for the knockdown. Thoughts?

[Sariela]

I use flayer *a lot* when I run. I find it's ability to grab fleeing freeps to be invaluable when in a group situation. If I'm running solo or in a pack, I'm in shadow a lot more often. IMO, it makes sense to still have shadow damage traited. My testing has generally found damage is better with shadow than common damage even with the tact mit changes.

I'm trying out Mr Warg's suggested build. Will let you know what I think

[MrWarg]

In terms of shadow vs common damage I am still coming down on the side of using shadow damage for the best results overall. Having said that I would like to do some proper testing to get hard data on the situation.

[spelunker]

I am currently using this build. Having tested various combination of damage orientated corruptions I settled on this build as a good compromise between damage output and morale. You will get more damage from other builds it is true, but in my testing that extra damage wasn't much higher and it came at the price of a significant drop in morale.

So far this build seems to be working out quite well for me and a number of other wargs on my server are using similar setups. One nice feature of this build is that it seems to work equally well with Shadow or Flayer stance.

[editors note: the suggested build is mastery heavy with 1 crit corruption]

have you tried a crit heavy build and adjusted your damage 'rotation' to reflect this?

My testing of a skill selection 'rotation' that reflects a near capped crit rate was significantly superior to more mastery focused builds.

[MrWarg]

have you tried a crit heavy build and adjusted your damage 'rotation' to reflect this?

My testing of a skill selection 'rotation' that reflects a near capped crit rate was significantly superior to more mastery focused builds.

I did try a more crit heavy build, but overall I didn't like it very much. It was useful against some classes, but against anyone with a modicum of crit protection it didn't seem to work very well. My current build may not always be outputting the highest possible damage in every situation, but overall it seems to even out. Of course this is just personal opinion, your mileage may vary.

[Hendos]

Just a couple thoughts: have you considered swapping out HfD2 for a HfP1 corruption? Seems like you'd gain a chunk of damage for only a small loss in health and power. I'll be testing this out soon myself but was wondering if anyone else had previously invented that wheel.

Also, why not swap out Enhanced Eye Rake for Element of Surprise? For those fights when you do go Shadow it seems like it'd be the better option. And also a much greater chance of critting on the initial pounce for the knockdown. Thoughts?

Firstly, sorry for the late reply I somehow missed seeing your reply in here!

I have now amended my build again making it more aggressive as I have abandoned Flayer for the time being, it just doesn't seem to be as effective as it used to be, I'm not sure if this is freeps continuing to increase in power relative to us.

I am now running 4 crit corruption, HfP2 and DfP2 with the Flayer class trait replaced by Enhanced Sprint... and and I have been enjoying myself hugely lately!

With regards to Element of Surprise, Eye Rake is just too useful a skill to not have it traited for me, apart from being an interrupt that is essential in some fights it also breaks longer animations, Scratch and Snip/Rallying Howl/Flea Bitten and Pack Hunters to name the ones I use it in conjunction with.

On top of that I have tried traiting it and can honestly say that having that extra chance just on the first strike from stealth isn't all that strong really there is still more chance you won't crit than will. The only way I see it being useful is if it guaranteed a critical so that Sudden Maul would always activate the -25% attack duration effect...if you get this on your opening Maul it is a total game changer for that encounter.

Talking of guarantees on our skills, I would really like to see pounce always inflict a stun if the target is crippled, I hate having fights with minstrels for example, where it lasts forever because the stun never materializes and they pot the silence or just kite until it wears off and beat me via attrition

[Eryniell]

Im only a rank 3 warg so far, but whenever I spar my rank 4 group member I always win. So I'm doing pretty good so far (hey, I haven't said anything about freeps yet!). However, I do have some tricks. Shadow Stance is a must. Absolutely amazing. Buff that up with a few Health traits and a few Damage for Power traits, and two Mastery traits, and I have it done. I have not gotten the traits yet except for mastery, but as a warg I do not use that much power. I rarely go below 3/4. This cannot be said for a Blackarrow though. Disappear trait is incredibly useful when you are getting mobbed by a burglar and/or hunter and loremaster. When the burglar stops pinning you and drawing dice over your head and generally making you look like an overstuffed teddy bear, I use disappear and then sprint. So for low rank wargs, this works quite well.

[Gray]

I always play Full DPS glass canon build:

DfP2
2 Mastery
3 Crit

Class:

Element
Armour
Stealth
Sprint
Vanish
Eye Rake

Racial:

Four Legged
Pack hunter
Howl
Pack Alpha
Pack Elder

I play most of my time solo, as a res farmer, poping on litteraly everything except class i mathematically cant bring down. (like blue traited wardens)
I play Common damage because on my server, The only Heavy class players i can't bring down with common, i just can't do it in shadow either. And since i need massive sustain to keep mins on pressure to be able to kill them solo, i stick with common.

[ratjat]

Here are the corruptions I've been using; 2 crit boosts, 1 mastery, DfP2, HfP2, HfD2. I've been using this build for a while and I really like it. I have tried glass cannon

builds and a much more survival traited approach, but for me this build seems to be a good balance between health and dps. Your mileage may vary.

[grapez]

Need at least a little defence when fighting 1vs1. In most 1vs1 I use flayer(except when I fight squishies with low aud etc or I expect inc).

In most 1vs1 fights I use these corruptions:

Crit boost x3
HfP2
HfD2
Crit prot.

One crit prot make some difference in 1vs1 but can be swapped for something else ofc. At r12 with racial trait and Frenzy my crit is almost capped with 3 crit boosts. In some fights you might wanna swap one crit boost for another morale trait.

[Leopoldio]

I'd suggest for wargies, especially lowbie ones - to go into full dmg mode.

So the build would be:
- D4p2
- D4h2
- 2x crit rating
** for newbie: H4p2
- either one more crit rating or mastery boost

Shadow stance for most 1v1s, but warden/champ/guard. For those guys I'd suggest trying to mix shadow/flayer stance with using HPS and sprint.

You can try slotting crit prot - but I think it wont do much difference, so i prefer to do more dmg -> faster kill -> less dmg u take. Which also means to correlate your racial/trait corruptions to produce as many dmg as possible.