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Now with all of the number crunching and planning out of the way, it's time to play the Werewolf! Playing a Werewolf is not overly difficult, thanks to the insane amount of life that a Werewolf can gain as well as the huge life leech and massive damage. A Werewolf will be basically played in a similar way to a Melee Paladin or Barbarian, but with a few crucial differences.  The first major difference is Feral Rage. When you start up in an area, I suggest charging this thing up to full as quickly as possible. That way you get a huge bonus to your life leech and run/walk speed and can fly through the area. Once this skill is charged up, then switch to Fury to rampage through the hordes of hell! However, remember that Feral Rage must be used at least once every 20 seconds to keep it charged up. To take care of this, I normally will attack monsters with the following method: Start of Battle: Usually when you first approach a group of monsters they will be more strung out. Thanks to the very fast running speed of a Werewolf, it is easy to close on the monsters before they can bundle up into a group. Thus, I usually run up and hit the first monster with Feral Rage once and then switch over to Fury for the main portion of the battle. Most of the Battle: Now that you are using Fury, you can tear through all of the approaching monsters. Sometimes when playing multi-player, you will find yourself with monsters that you don't seem to be hitting for some reason. This might be because of a slight desynchronization between your game and the game's server. To deal with this, you can employ the same strategies as a Zeal-based Paladin: Just press shift (to make yourself stand in place) and click to use Fury on some area no where near the pack of monsters. This will make your Werewolf target the nearest monster with Fury and so you can take down the monsters with ease. If the battle seems to last a long time, it is often a good idea to switch to Feral Rage for a short period of time to make sure that it doesn't run out on your during the heat of battle! Tactical Retreat: Now, sometimes you will find yourself in a situation where there are too many monsters for you to effectively tank, even with good life leech levels. At times like these, don't feel bad if you are forced to retreat from the pack of monsters back into an area that you have already cleared. This will tend to break up the monster pack a little bit, making it easier on you. Remember to try and not retreat into an area you haven't cleared, as then the monster pack might just get bigger and the bigger the pack, the more chance of desynchronization and so early death for your Werewolf! Now, there actually is more to running away than one might expect. The secret is to run far enough away, fast enough that only about 1/2 the monsters follow you all the way. This way, you can reduce their ranks and then kill them in smaller, more manageable groups. I have found that running away about one and a half or two screens quickly and then turning around to fight whatever has followed you (with 20-40% Faster Run/Walk boots) works quite well. Sometimes, however, even just initial separation from the monsters can be enough to turn the battle in your favor as the monsters take about a second to attack you once they reach you. End of Battle: With most of the monsters killed and the threat to your Werewolf significantly reduced, now is a good time to take a couple last shots with Feral Rage to make sure that it is charged up after the battle so that you then have 20 more seconds to find the next group of monsters to recharge the Rage with. =) Finally, there are some types of monsters that are particularly annoying to a Werewolf that deserve extra consideration.   In particular, Yetis and Urdars are especially annoying to a Werewolf. If you are not using a very fast attacking weapon and a lot of Faster Hit Recovery equipment, monsters with stun can cause a very slow death as you stand there stunned and they whittle away at your enormous life total. I have found that, with a slow weapon, even three or four of these monsters can be enough to leave a Werewolf nearly stunlocked. In a situation like this there are two things you can do: Shift-Click with Fury - Just pray that your attack is fast enough to occasionally get a hit off on the monsters to slowly whittle them down. Be careful to try and not let Feral Rage run out, though, or you'll find yourself in an even worse situation. If this doesn't work, go on to the next option... Run Away - Hey, it even happens to the best of us. If you find yourself in a bit of a jam, don't feel bad about having to run away. Think of it as a tactical retreat as described above! However, the best way to handle this situation is to never get into one! Make sure that you have a good amount of hit recovery (at least 48% though it is best if you have enough charms to push it up to 125%!) so that the stun's duration is much more limited.  These guys are a pain. Werewolves that use Two-Handed Weapons tend to have somewhat bad resistances so mage monsters in Hell can tear them up. This is where a solid strategy can come in handy. When you initially run up to a group of monsters, check to see what the group is composed of. If it's all mages, then run up and smack them down before they can do much to hurt you. If it's a group of mostly mages, but some melee attackers, run past the meleers and kill the mages as before, and then target the meleers. It can even be beneficial to use Feral Rage here, since it won't tie you up with the Fury attacks on the group of meleers when they invariably walk up next to you while you're taking down the mages. This way, you can keep the mages from pounding on you as you engage the melee monsters. This is an especially sound plan if you are facing Oblivion Knights as their Iron Maiden curse can spell almost instant doom to a Werewolf with little Damage Reduction (though Feral Rage's life leech helps quite a bit here). However, in groups of mostly melee monsters or 50/50 splits, it can often be difficult to target the mages initially. Another strategy is required. The "Tactical Retreat" - As before, you can take advantage of monster AI's by running away from the mob as detailed above. This will cause the melee monsters to follow you (and perhaps one or two ranged monsters). Now you can Fury the group and kill whatever melee monsters remain. Thus, when you run forward to engage the rest of the group, it will likely be mostly ranged attackers and you can take care of them as detailed above. These guys are a pain. Since a Druid cannot cast Elemental spells while shape-shifted, physical immune monsters can stop a Werewolf dead in its tracks. If you are dead set on killing the monster, the best advice I can give here is to find yourself a very fast attacking weapon and use elemental damage from the weapon, charms, and possibly Fire Claws to whittle down the monster's life. Remember that Fury here will greatly increase your attack speed, so if you use a lot of elemental damage charms and a fast speed Fury weapon, you can deal a lot of elemental damage in a relatively short period of time. Good weapons to switch to in this case are Baranar's Star for massive elemental damage or a 6-Shael Phase Blade for massive speed, where you can get your elemental damage from another source. In both of these cases, Tiamat's Rebuke is a great shield to use as it adds additional elemental damage to your attack, allowing you to knock down the monster that much quicker. Again, Fire Claws is actually fairly decent in this situation, so if you have put points into it, this is where it will shine. Just make sure that you don't run out of mana with no other source of elemental damage equipped (Percent Damage taken goes to Mana is great here!). Basically, use your common sense. If a battle suddenly turns against you, don't feel the need to tank the whole group just retreat to your advantage and possibly cast some minions for the group to engage while you back off for a second (if you didn't go the solo route). Also, when facing Andariel, Mephisto, Diablo, and Baal, don't feel like you can't move around. If you've just been hit by a hard attack, it can often be useful to disengage from melee for a few seconds, re-group, and let health potions take effect. If you have spent points on summonable animals, this is where they will be extremely handy, allowing you to disengage whenever something big is coming (like Diablo's Firestorm or Lighting Blast attacks) and not have to worry about the boss following right on your heels. Special Note for Lister - These guys are a pain. If you use a Holy Freeze or Act 3 Cold Mercenary, they will help quite a bit here, slowing or stopping the group so that you can pound them down. Otherwise, see if you can tempt a few monsters to attack you just a couple at a time. If need to, retreat backwards toward the start of the level (which you hopefully cleared!) to try and break up the group a bit. These guys are basically like the stun monsters from before, but with more life and harder blows! =) Hopefully your hit recovery is good for this battle. Finally, let me end by saying that your tactics should probably be changed slightly as your attack rate changes. A very fast attacking Werewolf can run the risk of staying in a battle until the last second before disengaging, while a slower attacking Werewolf should probably play it more safe, leaving combat sooner. This is why I tend to favor the faster weapons as they allow you more flexibility in battle, allowing you to back off and re-group should the tides of battle turn against you. I hope that this guide will leave you with the basic information and ideas necessary to create a Werewolf that can take on the darkest, deepest pit-spawns of hell and still come back for more!. If you have any comments/suggestions about this guide, feel free to email me at akrinke@u.washington.edu. Continue onward to the Thanks/Links/Miscellaneous page. |
