» Mon Sep 28, 2015 10:07 pm Werewolf/Vampire Comparison:
Werewolf Pluses:
1. You can get access to becoming a werewolf almost from the beginning of the game unlike the vampire lord form or even vampirism in general.
2. Werewolves attack very fast.
3. It is pretty easy to activate the bonus or special attack moves/animations as a werewolf over say vampirism, which can be slightly more tricky to do.
4. You can carry an additional 2000 pounds or so in werewolf form so overburden is not an issue.
5. You become a werewolf by becoming an elite member of the companions. So you get a sort of rank and title with it.
6. If you have the dlcs, you can get an additional werewolf only perk tree which you can level up with feeding.
7. Feeding on your enemies' bodies heels you as well as adds to your experience points you can use to get perks as you get enough points.
8. At least with the perk tree leveled up right, you can take on bears in 2 or 3 hits and can even deal with dragons pretty quickly.
9. The werewolf form looks pretty cool.
10. The werewolf form does not effect your human form looks save the few oddball comments from npcs about hair in your ears.
11. You can feed to prolong your werewolf form if you choose.
12. When you get the ring of Hircine, you can change as often as you want (but you still can not control when you change back.)
13. You can howl as a werewolf which is pretty cool.
14. With the right perks, the howl can provide additional bonuses such as the ability to summon 2 more ghostly werewolf buddies to help you in combat or call wolves to help. The totems are needed for this to activate even though oddly enough, if you level up right your perk tree will say you have it. You do not actually get it or get to choose or use them without the totems.
15. Wolves do not usually attack you.
16. You can move very fast across the map. In fact, a werewolf is one of or is the fastest lifeform in the game.
17. You can still open doors at least with dlc, but can not lock pick them.
18. The werewolf form has pretty cool sounds and sound effects.
19. You become immune to disease.
20. You can feed on more than just humanoid creatures with the right perk.
21. The attack animations and power of the werewolf can be fun to watch as he/she goes on a rampage, and you watch your victims flying from a arm swing there or pinned down by the werewolf leap attack move.
22. You can usually out run enemies that you struggle against or if your health gets too low while fighting.
Werewolf Minuses:
1. You can not control how long you are in wolf form save from feeding to prolong it.
2. The vanilla non dlc version of the werewolf is almost useless save as an alternate pack animal or horse for travel given it is much weaker and it’s health is not high enough to offset the nature that it relies on melee combat.
3. You only have 1 maybe 2 opportunities to acquire lycanthropy. This is moot if you make an enemy of Aela or the companions though.
4. You are always stripped of clothing and gear after you change back to human form.
5. When you first get the ring of Hircine, you can not remove it.
6. Summoned werewolves may inexplicably attack your followers.
7. There is no differences in appearance by gender.
8. You can not access the map or inventory as a werewolf.
9. You can only equip one howl perk at a time and the only way to do that is to go to the underforge shrines after the totem quests, which can be a hassle.
10. You can not be both a werewolf and a vampire though some bugs exist that treat you as if you are both though you can only transform into one creature.
11. You have no access to any werewolf abilities while in human form but do have such a thing if you are a vampire in human form.
12. By the time you manage to get the totems and Hircine’s ring, you may have achieved all perks and/or gotten tired of playing werewolf. This is because you will not quite get level experience or skill experience if you are in werewolf form and your perk tree gets filled a bit faster than the vampire even though the vampire perk tree may require fewer feedings.
13. Though, it is suggested moonlight bears an effect on lycanthropy, none is reported to actually activate in game according to skyrim reviews and game site pages.
14. No ranged attacks can make you susceptible against certain enemies.
Vampire Lord Pluses:
1. You change into a cool looking bat like demon vampire lord form with wings, claws, and red glowing eyes.
2. You have access to vampire abilities even in human form.
3. There are noticeable gender differences in appearance between vampire lord male and females.
4. You get immunity to diseases.
5. You get resistance to frost damage.
6. You get immunity to poisons.
7. You can change into vampire lord form and back as quick and often as you want.
8. You can fly. Though it is only a few feet off the ground and certain falls can still cause damage.
9. You can move pretty fast and perhaps as fast as the werewolf.
10. You get a carry bonus like the werewolf so heavy burdens are not much of an issue plus since you can change back and forth at will, it is a much more useful skill on the vampire lord than the werewolf.
11. You get sleeping bonuses such as from the coffin.
12. You get unique furniture option for your home, aka the coffin.
13. You get a bonus to magic.
14. There is a vampire perk tree and it has more perks than the werewolf.
15. Vampire Lords can raise the dead or summon demons.
16. You can get an invisibility power.
17. One perk materializes bats to help defend you and attack enemies in melee combat.
18. You can attack at range or close up melee.
19. Vampire lords have a powerful melee attack which can be boosted more so by the poison claws effect perk power.
20. You can change your equipped powers in vampire lord form on the fly. No need to go to a shrine like the werewolf.
21. You can see in the dark in either vampire lord form or human form.
22. You can heal by svcking health off an enemy which of course damages them and heals you.
23. You can summon gargoyles.
24. You can get a thrall permanent servant.
25. You get a boost to sneaking abilities which can help a lot if you choose to go the route of thief, pickpocket, or assassin or just sneaking up on enemies and taking them down before they even know you are there.
26. You can cure and contract vampirism as often as you want.
27. Your eyes glow red which maybe a cool thing for some.
28. You get a boost to stats like health and magika in vampire lord form.
29. You get a quest that gives you the power to summon a dragon, something you may not be able to do if you side with dawnguard, since the quest is started by Serana to take down her father by getting her mother’s help. Even if you can do that with dawnguard, it will be a bit more difficult since you would have to go to hostile vampire territory to achieve the quest.
30. You get more powerful as your hunger rises and your vampire stages are raised to higher levels.
31. Likewise, if you get the power attack to bite a victim working right, watching the vampire lord form fold it’s wings around it’s prey as it feeds can be entertaining and cool to watch.
Vampire Minuses:
1. The drain spell is pretty weak in human form, though the auto equipped one in vampire lord form can be much stronger with most followers
2. Having Serana with you may greatly reduce your vampire lord ranged attack power.
3. You are weakened in the sunlight and more so as your hunger increases your vampire stages.
4. You become much weaker to fire attacks which can be a slight problem when facing certain dragons, though the frost defense boost actually helps against frost powered dragons.
5. You can look not so attractive in vampire human form and more so as your vampire stages and hunger increases.
6. Your red eyes may not appeal as attractive to everyone who plays skyrim.
7. The Dawnguard will frequently attack you to the point it can be a nuisance and where they attack can be awkward. For example, there are cases where you find Dawnguard inside the Castle as if they were having dinner, but when you enter they start attacking.
8. The Dawnguard often wear armor that may look similar to armor your follower has or that you will give them and that will make your follower hard to distinguish from Dawnguard enemies.
9. Some entries may prove more difficult to pass through in vampire lord form than when you play as a werewolf in werewolf form.
10. The animation to change to vampire lord form is slightly longer than the change into a werewolf and maybe more so to change back compared to the werewolf changing back to human form. The transformation of changing back from a werewolf is actually the fastest of all 4 transformations.
11. Some of your attacks do not work on all enemies.
12. You can only feed on humanoid creatures.
13. It is much more difficult to feed as a vampire than a werewolf. Even if you are cautious and sneak right, your prey can still awake or become aware and hostile. Vampire’s seduction does not seem to work on just anyone either, whether or not there are witnesses nearby. So you are left with relying more on the vampire cattle or blood potions than finding hapless prey as a vampire before you become the target of angry guards at stage 4.
14. The frequent need to feed to avoid becoming the target of hostility may get frustrating especially when it is or can be more difficult to find suitable prey.
Overall it is actually slightly more advantageous and appealing to choose Vampire Lord over Werewolf forms for the following reasons:
A. You can change whenever you want to Vampire Lord or to Human form as often and as quickly as you want. This can be advantageous if you have too much weight to carry, you can switch on the fly to move faster then switch back to fight, talk, interact, or lock pick as needed.
B. You become a Vampire LORD, not a ordinary vampire. But the werewolf is just a werewolf not a Alpha Werewolf. So there is a bit of a difference in prestige to be a Lord over just a werewolf.
C. You have more benefits as a Vampire Lord such as: Resist Disease 100%, Resist Poison 100%, Frost damage boost, sleep bonuses (even if you were denied the well rested bonus like werewolves you can still get the rest bonus in a coffin. I am not sure that the well rested bonus is denied to Vampire Lords, but I have not read that it is.
D. You get bonuses to stealth skill in sneaking. This can help a lot with certain quests especially if your character is lacking in those areas before you become a Vampire Lord.
E. You get boosts to Magic ability.
F. You have access to some of your Vampire powers even in human form where the werewolf has no such attribute other than disease immunity.
To be honest, that sort of makes sense, if for no other reason than the fact that it is a Vampire Lord, they should have more powers and abilities than a regular monster like a werewolf or regular vampire. It might be a neat thing to have hybrid abilities in a future elder scrolls game but at a cost like say, you can be a vampire lord and a regular werewolf but not a vampire lord and a alpha werewolf. Or a alpha werewolf and a regular vampire. You could debate on what other differences that might entail should such a thing be added in the future. As it is, it is a bit unbalanced since, it is a regular werewolf with a slightly smaller perk tree that you can acquire way before the vampire lord ability. Traditional vampire stories like Dracula say vampires can actually take on a wolf form as well which would be a bit more advantageous than a werewolf alone. Werewolves should have some weaknesses like to a moonless sky or silver weapons but none are in this game. They might have different benefits more pronounced compared to vampires than the game has such as, heal faster and is stronger in moonlight. The ability to control transformations should, in all honesty be a perk you get later or only say if you were an alpha werewolf like the vampire lord form ability. Werewolves should have great speed and stamina, but vampires should have great strength as well as the werewolf maybe more strength. Vampires in the game have more or have a magic boost, that is a pretty believable difference. I like that vampires are only weaker in sunlight, just like in Dracula where they are also weaker but sunlight is not fatal to them. It would be nicer to be able to fly higher than a few feet as a vampire lord as well. Maybe you could only fly higher than a few feet when it is cloudy or night time or werewolves could run a bit faster if a full moon and maybe werewolves can leap very far. They could make a few more improved, pronounced, and more unique to each transformation set of benefits and penalties than is in game now. Mainly though, it is unbalanced just by the fact one is a Lord and one is just ordinary. That alone sets it apart and the skills available also spell out a slightly higher advantage to being a lord. This makes sense. It might be interesting to have a separate leveling up in werewolf and vampire form as well such that you could be a level 60 in human form and a level 25 in vampire form. As the perk tree, nice as it is, is still a bit short of the joy of developing abilities the main human form character has.
This makes these forms almost seem more like a distraction than a main or important component of the game. You can max out both monster form trees pretty fast and then what? You can not level them up quite the same way as your human form. It might also make a bit of sense to have certain things available only if human over either monster form but not such that it would turn you off from either. Every set of character traits must have relatively equal measure of good and bad points to balance them out against one another. I might also suggest an in-between compromise too. In some anime, you see former werewolves or vampires, who no longer a monster still somehow retain certain abilities normal humans lack. It is nice to have variety like that. I am not mocking either form, they are great and make the game a lot more fun. Yet the dlc sort of proves, it was a bit incomplete. Both forms are fairly trivial and almost useless or more a nuisance than an advantage before adding the dlcs. Frankly speaking, it makes little sense to me to change an elf, argonian lizard creature, or cat like khajit into either monster form because they are already sort of like that. Maybe something more unique, interesting, and that causes a more measurable change. Maybe if argonians could change into some sort of dinosaur or maybe a chameleon like creature that can also climb trees or the khajits change into saber tigers or the elves change into Orgres or something. The forms are too much one size fits all and as creatures that are already of a fantasy monster like nature, those three species really don’t fit well for me to change into vampires or werewolves.
All that aside, it is a lot of fun even if the non dlc versions are fairly weak or with the imbalanced rank/prestige difference. On another side note, why do we never see Serana change into a vampire Lord form or Aela into a werewolf other than that first time in the under forge ceremony? It makes it feel like neither is actually a vampire or werewolf, but Serana at least can use magic and has red vampire like eyes. Aela other than that first thing and the one from Vilkas, I think it was, in the dungeon, no one changes to a werewolf. I see wild enemy vampires too but I have yet to see a enemy werewolf. It makes the world seem a bit empty as if you are the only true vampire lord or the only true werewolf. Eh at any rate, it is still fun. It is just a few things of course, make little or no sense or that some things do not match with the game lore as if it were missing pieces.
