Blight Wolf melee comparison and bugs

[SpartanKiller13]

Ok, so I recently ran a 11/8/1 Barb/Druid/FvS melee Winter Wolf and had a lot of fun, so I decided to try it with a Blight Wolf (11/8/1 Blight/Barb/FvS) to see how it does.

First off, Blight Wolf isn't using Natural Fighting. This is a big problem.

Per Torc in Preview 1 (link):



But as you can see from the following image I'm getting 12 Doublestrike, Melee Power, and PRR in Plague Wolf that I don't get in Blight Wolf:



Also even with Extra Wild Empathy (T1 Nature's Warrior) you don't get any uses of Wild Empathy = you can't use Flight. This is really awkward because you can't even pick the alternate "blightcaster" options (Dead Nerves T1 and Play Dead in T2) without having a point in Blightcaster, so you're forced into a dead enhancement if you want T3 Fight. Pretty sure this is a bug, or at least non-WAI?

Otherwise here are my thoughts from leveling 15-32, as a comparison between Blight Wolf and Winter Wolf. By no means comprehensive and obviously flavored by me running a T5 FB build not a pure Blightcaster Wolf build.

Pros:

• +10% Profane HP is pretty nice!
• Blighted Bite gives +3 Imbue Dice with any imbue, pretty nice.
• Acid/Poison Bite imbues are pretty nice early on where it's easier to scale spellpower.
• Blightcaster temp HP on-kill is really strong for leveling, although pretty useless in epics (since I'm moderate Wis and frontline it isn't a large shield and doesn't last long).
• Being a plant is pretty neat, +100 Fort and Immunity to Stun(tm) also you get Plant Growth instead of Animal Growth which is funny.
• Jaws of Doom is a +10[w] attack compared to Jaws of Winter which is only +6[w].
• Disease and Poison Immunity mean you don't have to carry those pots?

Cons:

• Winter Wolf gives 10+Druid level% MS (vs flat 15% of Blight Wolf). Since you're minimum 11 levels in that's at least -6%.
• Winter Wolf gives 20% Attack Speed (vs 10% of Blight Wolf) and +2d6 Sneak Attack (eh whatever). Losing the Attack Speed hurts, and even in a build with T5 Nature's Warrior you only get 25% vs 30% of Winter Wolf.
• No access to Flight from Nature's Warrior is really lame, that's a nice defensive clicky to lose for basically no reason.
• Requiring 11 Blightcaster (vs 8 Druid) limits multiclassing options a bit.
• No option for Bear form makes leveling a lot worse as you lack AoE options. WWA helps a lot, but it's not in the same league.
• Jaws of Doom is a Necromancy spell for the instakill part, I'm not sure how this could be more useless. A DC build might swap into Wolf to use this, but there's no way I could think of to get reasonable Necromancy DC's to kill normal mobs and the usual low-save suspects of Undead/Constructs are explicitly immune.
• Jaws of Winter has a 20s CD (vs 30s of Jaws of Doom) and the DC scales with Stun, something that's a lot more reasonable to gear as a melee. Also hurts T5 Nature's Warrior builds using it to power Jaws of the Wolf.
• Blight Wolf is a plant so you can't use Magic Fang
• Snowslide is a strict upgrade to Blighted Charge; it feels smoother, gives a sprint boost, and Freezes based on Stun DC's instead of helpless based on a Necro DC (again maybe ok for a DC caster but not ok for a melee wolf).
• Not getting immediate heals like Cure Wounds feels bad for party play.

Overall:
As far as I can tell Winter Wolf is better in ~every way possibly aside from off-tanking (10% HP and +100% Fort are nice). Don't play a Blight Wolf. Maybe try swapping through Blight form for Jaws of Doom & Blighted Charge on a Necro Blightcaster? I'm going to go raiding for a while and will report back, but I'm not impressed and would recommend against it