Either in open battles, in keep takes or just in farming the elf camp, warg packs form one of the most crusial parts needed to achive succses in fighting the freeps. They give us an big advantage in battles due to their specific skills that allow them to get kills no regular raid can achive. They usually work hand in hand with the regular raids, as on their own they're usually to weak to facea full freep group on their own, especially couse the have no self healing skills up to rank 5, and even then the heal is very lesser. Their main strength always was and will always stay stealth. They are able to move around unseen, wait to get ready and in a mer second kill the poor nothing suspecting victim. Their play style is very bound to this skill. They get ready, strike, and scatter. Call it gverilla, touch and go or any thing else you prefer, all those names combine this one unique style used by wargs.
The second big job wargs have is as well bound to their stealth. It includes sniffing out the enemies and give constant reports on their movement, numbers, classes... its called scouting.
This guide will describe what traits you need to equip and all other minor things wargs must do to decide the out comes of the big battles.
What a cute little pup!
All big and dangerous wargs have one started the game as little pups, so will you. So before you joining a warg pack or a raid there is a couple of things you should do.
First of all, do not think stealth will save you and you will survive battles. It won't. You should never rely on other classes, War leaders or defilers, couse their priority in healing are war leaders and defilers them selfs, and most important reavers. Of course you will get healed, but if you get targeted by the oppositions RAT you will usually die before you get any heals.
As long as you are unranked you wont be able to get many skills, nor will you be able to pay them as they cost a lot and unless you have another main creep you are less likley to have tons of destiny points. But the first and most important trait you MUST have as a warg, no matter the rank, rating and DP status is deffinetly the trait, enhanched skill: stealth (+3 stealth level, +20% movement speed while in stealth).
Also very important for a green ring warg is to buy as many morale traits as possible (morale for power rank 1 and morale for damage rank 1) becouse with the lower mittigations you have at rank 0-3 you need much more morale to stay alive.
After you bought and equiped those you have 2 options, either try join a raid and start gathering infmay for higher ranks (not advised) or go do quests (advised).
If you follow my advice and go on a questing run you can very fast get enough destiny to buy all your passives right when you hit the needed ranks as well as buying all your active skills. The first couple of quests you should do are the scouting quests you pick up at war-tyrant Akulhun at Grams. They will give you the very basic Grams map with 1 minute cooldown. After you finnished your scouting quests you should have the map complety explored, except some minor points of interest.
Now you should do quests like "capture an outpost", "counter assult","leader of the rat folk & other Hoarhallow quests" to quickly generate enough DP to advance.
When you have aquired enough DP (about 10.000 for begining) you should join a raid or a warg pack and start gathering infamy.
Also its very important once you hit rank 2 you go to the Delving of Fror and farm some DoF stones (glimmering and dull) to buy rank 2 curruptions for the rank 1 ones you had equiped at rank 0 and all the others you wish to equip now.
What the heck are you doing?
Raid behavior, this is a chapter that could be very long, but ill just put down a couple of the point that are important for wargs. First of all you listen to your leader, that means you do not run around on your own, always stay with the group unless the leader sends you on a scouting location.
Keep taking:
When it comes to following the RAT wargs have their owns ways, at the start of the battle you should always stay in stealth, waiting for the RAT to pick up a target, when they charge it you charge in and pounce it. When its stuned you help finishing it off, but then, you do NOT keep charging, you fall back, wait for your stealth to be avalible again and repeat the drill. Wargs can not engage open battles, its one of the most important things to mind if you play a warg. If the raid has pulled NPCs and you are unable to stealth back up, try to stay as much on the ball as you can and stick with the RAT at all times, this way you will get rid of the NPCs faster and you will be able to get back into stealth. If you get attacked while not in stealth you have to life saving skills which you should not use for star hugging but for truly saving your life on such occasions. Those are "disapear" and "sprint". Try to keep either of them off cooldown all the time, if both are on cooldown you might find your self in big trouble. If they are, try breaking line of sight or running out of range when you get hit to much.
Open battles:
At the point where you fight an open battle, no matter the opponents numbers you have other things to mind except sticking with the RAT. Of course you still listen to the leader, but instead of pouncing the target you should pounce minstrels here. Your job in an open battle is it to annoy and prevent their healing as much as you can. You can do that with stuns (either pounce from stealth or tendon shred), silence, and power drain. After you have applied those skills to minstrels, lore masters, or capitans go back to the RAT and reapply on healer when its off cooldown.
This is even more important if you are the ones flanking or charging as you will unite two elements of succes, surprise and awsome damage. Before their support healing classes (Rune Keepers, Capitans, Lore Masters) notice they are getting charged you can kill a lot of hunters or rune keepers if minstrels are silenced and unable to heal.
Hows Lugazag?
I have seen many wargs complain about this, but as soon as you roll a warg you have to face you will take all the jobs in a raid wargs do, if you like it or not. This also includes scouting. for those moments its very important you have many maps to different keeps. You get them by completing 10, 25 and 50 quests for different keeps. Especially important ones are Lumber camp, Lugazag and Tol Asscaren. Tirith Rhaw is also imortant but not as much as Lugazag. Isendeep is usless, if you have to much time having those maps wont hurt but they are not so important.
When scouting its important you map as close to the location as you can, use stealth and take a look.
You always look from far behind, do not go to close to the raid or follow them only a meter behind as they might spot you or leave traps behind.
Also keep an eye out for signs of freeps like light of the rising dawn animation which is visible from far further away then the freeps are and the notifications that a certain NPC died... those are the signs of freep presence and your first job is it to notify the raid leader. After that you sneak closer and look at their numbers, amount of healers, amount of champions and hunters, and report to the leader as well. If your reports are detailed and serious a good leader will know how to take advantage of them. With other words, when you see freeps don't start shouting: FREEPS!! FREEPS!!! FULL RAID!!! on ooc as you will trigger more panic and kaos then with staying calm and letting the raid leader decide what to do when he hears your report.
Dog go to the gym!
After you reach rank 3 or 4 you will notice other wargs at this rank might use other curruptions then you. Here is a description of the curruptions i use to get the maximum damage and still stay alive long enough to deal the damage.
Health for power rank 1 (-5% maximun power, + 5% maximum morale)
Health for power rank 2 (-5% maximum power, +10% maximum morale)
Health for damage rank 2 (-2.5% melee damage, -2.5% ranged damage, -2.5% tactical damage, +10% maximum morale)
Damage for health rank 2 (+5% melee damage, +5% tactical damage, +5% ranged damage, -5% maximum morale)
Damage for power rank 1 (+2.5% melee damage, +2.5% ranged damage, +2.5% tactical damage, -5% maximum power)
This trait set up will sattle your morrale at 5.500 HP unbuffed and give you enough damage to finish off most freeps in spar, solo or raid and warg packs.
As Class traits the following ones should be equiped
enhanched skill: stealth
-(+3 stealth level, +20% movement speed while in stealth)
long strides
-(+5% run speed)
armor boost
-(+990 armor)
enhanched skill: sprint
-(-300 seconds cooldown for sprint)
the element of surprise
-(+20% critical change when attacking from stealth)
shadow fang
-(sets damage of all skills to shadow damage)
*If you are hunting in a pack, that consists of higher ranked wargs, for example more then 4 rank 5 and above wargs in a group, then equip howl insted of long strides. You can replace the long strides trait with either a DP perk on a pot, bartered for the Delving of Fror stones, which gives you up to 20% out of combat run speed. In this case the howl heal skill is very good due to the fact it stacks.
You can buy them next to the tent with the keep taking quests at a big dog called Pashnar.
HOWL!!! ... I guess... I hope... no??
Wargs as mentioned above have 1 self healing skill, its called howl and is avalible after rank 5. Tho to undertsand the use of this skill you have to understand its mechanics, weather to equip it or not is up to you. Of course there are several situations in which you have to know weather to use it or not. The basic heal will add you 320 health points on use, and 83 each 3 seconds for 30 seconds. Now that may sound a lot, especialy if you have 6 howlers. But on the other side the bad part of it is the induction which takes 1.5 seconds and a 3 second root after the use. Basicly the skill roots you for ~5 seconds after use.
Now when "yes" and when "no".
The howl is a smart skill to use in raids. Even this minor heal, together with defilers HoTs and WL heals can make a small difference. Especially if you have more then 1 howler. Since the skill has short cooldown you can use it on almost every third kill. This goes especialy if you fight both the NPCs and the freeps at the same time. But nor is it bad in open battles, tho you have to keep in mind that you have other priorites there first, and only after you accomplise those you are allowed to follow the RAT and help with the healing (silencing, power draining and stunning healers always comes first).
Less appropriate and usefull is the skill in warg packs or solo. Warg packs do not have healers, which means the only heal you have is the howl. But lookin at the plus's and minus's and the actual use of the skill on the battle field it has become obvious that the minus's prevail. The "long" induction after a gverilla kill counted together with the root makes sure that in the time standing still you take much more damage then the heal it self heals you for. There for, unlike pre Moria the howl skill is rather usless right now. After kills in warg pack you run away, its the one and only solution to stay alive. always remember, touch and go. another bad thing about the skill is, it disables stealth for longer then it would first be neccesary after a kill, not only for you, but for everyone who was in range of the heal.
Exception is made here if, you have more then 4 howlers per group. Then the howls can actually keep you alive while you are fighting a group of enemies.
The same goes for playing solo, the root, the time added out of stealth make more damage then good, thats why experienced wargs these days tend to not have howl equiped at all unless in raids, i suggest and encourage the same for any of you who plan to play a warg. you will recive greater benefits from playing without it, with the class traits shown in the earlier part of the text. Any of those traits is worth putting the howl out for.
If you were on the RAT and the target did not die, you can always blame others, but first, before you blame others blame your self. If it diden't die it means you did not use the full potencial of your class. When charging the RAT the first thing you should apply on him is pounce, to knock him over, with chance to over a warband manouver. after that apply crippling bite to slow him down, followed by savage fangs. the combination of those two skills will give him a nasty DoT, a block debuff and a run speed debuff. when applied use maul to apply a second DOT (Maul also stacks). If not on cooldown you can apply rend flesh (+10% incoming melee and ranged damage), rabid bite (drains power over time) and silence on minstrels, rune keepers, lore masters or capitans to prevent them from healing. If the stun immunity runs of while he is still alive u can use tendon shred to knock him down again. When on low morale use claws or swipe.
For the lonely wolves:
As a warg you have to realize you are strong in 1 against 1, so you're favourite areas should be less crowded. That means avoiding EC, South TA bridge and OC will be in your favour. As a warg if you pounce a target that is being hit by others you won't manage to do enough damage for decent infamy, and besides that its less fun and more dangerous, bigger chance to die. You're favourite stalking areas should be around the Elf camp cross roads and up south till the old TR flag point. Also the TR field is a great hunting place and west down to the east ford and the norbogs crossing. Same goes for the whole slope up to Lugazag. You have to know where to hunt tho, if freeps have no keeps its EC cross roads, if they have TR you should tend to stay at the TR field and norbogs to catch the people who died and are returning to Elf Camp. If freeps have Lug then the Lug slope and OC cross roads are you're best friend. This way you will get more infamy, less deaths and more fun soloing freeps.
There are some other tips what wouldn't belong to any of the selected topics so ill just write them down here, they aren't so much a must but are very useful when hunting
Tips for a good rating!
-Natural camoflage: Stealth is awsome, but you have to be able to also use the terrain to your benefit, while in stealth you are less likley to get detected in bushes, behind tress or rock, same goes for out of stealth when trying to brake LoS and re-stealthing
-When going into the freep raid approach them from the flank, that was you are less likley to get hit by AoE.
-Listen to your feeling, if you feel you are going down to fast, its not star hugging, warg die offten enough, its just the fact WLs have better targets to heal then you, same goes for defilers. if u can save your self then do, if not wait for a rezz.
dont be disapointed when you found out wargs die all the time, we have far to low morale to survive charges like reavers and others, also crowd control is certain death for you, always have root/fear/stun pots with you.
-When killing NPCs like the CG stick to using crippeling bite + savage fangs and then pounce... when crippeling bite goes of reapply it, if not in a rush just spam claws between those skill and while they're on cooldown. For smallest power consumption and maximum damage with change to get a warband manouver open this is the ideal chain. The damage will mostly be done by auto attack. If you still run out of power use tendon shred, don't use the skills just because you feel like stunning the mob. If you want to do extra damage and the leader is screaming: "Burn him! Hurry! Freeps incoming! Then you can do more damage by first applying crippling and savage, then pounce then do maul. Spam claws and swipe as much as you can until maul and the savage fangs DoT runs of, then reapply them, don't forget to DoT ALL the time, also pounce each time its off cooldown and in the remaining time spam claws and swipe. Rendon flesh is good thing to use as well.
I HATE CROWD CONTROL!!!
In order to avoid such statments and be a warg always ready for all sorts of action you should always carry pots with you, especialy the following ones are put to good use as a warg:
-odorous salts OR vial of Gundzors breath: both ment for stuns/dazes/knockdowns, the money ones cost morale when used but they're still fine to use if you can't afford the DoF stone ones.
-solvent or painfull freedom OR vial of burzgoths strength: both ment to get out of roots, the money ones cost morale when used but they're still fine to use if you can't afford the DoF stone ones
-stinking poulituce OR blood of man of any rank: morale pots, the DoF stone ones are slighty better but like before, if you can't afford them the money ones do the job as well.
-bubbling potion OR blood of the fair folk of any rank: power pots, he DoF stone ones are slighty better but like before, if you can't afford them the money ones do the job as well.
-Phial of Mazouks resolve: removes up to 3 fear effects, you gain 5 second immunity to fear - used against hunters or minstrels fear effects
-Drought of Mordiriths Ire: (or any lower tier of the same pot that gives 5,10 or 15% speed buff) adds 20% to out of combat run speed - usefull to keep up with mounted raids, combined with the DP 5% speed buff you have almost the same speed as freep horses.
-hobbit tracking talismans: Allows you to track hobbits also in stealth until, you are rank 9 and you get your track skill, track for stealth not avalible till rank 15
-food: any sort of food avalible at your rank, great when you are about to pull a CG in a keep so you dont run out of power and morale so fast when fighting
UI
Here is a picture of my wargs UI at rank 7 as an example:
http://img210.imageshack.us/img210/7968/45418007.jpg
thats about it, for any adds, questions or corrections send an email to p.i.m.p.lukci@gmail.com or reply on this blog.
regards
Aldagash, Stalker Chief Guard of Karn Aanug
