As a member of the wolf school, you do not rely on your signs as much as those from the Griffin school... You do not mindlessly attack and head straight into battle like those from the Cat... You have learned to take their focuses and hone them into a truly dangerous weapon for monster or human alike.
The main focus of this build is that your signs do not do the bulk of your damage, and you can't charge head on in without using them... Balance is the key here. Learning that a quick shot of igni will melt the armor of a nearby enemy so your swords do extra damage, or hold down for a longer fire stream to do some burning damage to get a DOT and have some crowd control.
The total amount of points in the skill trees that are used are 46 though my level is 35, thanks to the places of power you can finish this build before you are extremely high level.
Combat Tree
The key focus here is Fast Attack. It is your bread and butter for combat and will lead to your greatest weapon. Of course we will put points into other things, because a. Variety is useful. b. the adrenaline point gain is never not appreciated. And c. You needed more points somewhere to get to the next row of skills.
Muscle Memory: Fast Attack damage increased... Self explanitory. 5/5 Precise Blows: Increase critical hit chance and critical hit damage for fast attacks. Again, self explanitory. 5/5 Whirl: This is the true weapon of your build. Spinning blades strike all foes in the surrounding area. 5/5 Strength Training and Crushing Blows are the same as Muscle Memory and Precise Blows, except for strong attacks. 3/5 for both Fleet Footed: Damage from hits recieved while dodging is reduced. This is useful as taking the least amount of damage will keep you in fights longer. 5/5
Signs Tree
Melt Armor: Damage dealt by Igni also permanently weakens enemy armor. 5/5 Firestream: Emits a continuous stream of fire that damages enemies. 5/5 Igni Intensity: To be honest, I only took this cause I had the points saved up and didn't want to waste them. 2/5 Sustained Glyphs: Increase sign duration, number of standard mode charges and alternate mode chargers. 2/2 Exploding shield: Quen shield pushes opponents back and deals damage when it breaks. While not needed it is always useful to fall back on. 2/3 Active Shield: Damage absorbed by the shield restores player vitality. Your primary source or healing. 3/3 Delusion: Only so you can get the most out of dialogue and a nice amount of exp every now and then. 3/3
Gameplay
When fighting, your game plan is as follows. Activate standard Quen before combat starts and then switch to igni. When your stamina reaches full again head close enough to the enemy so that you can hit them with igni and weaken them. You then switch to yrden and wait for stamina to come back, luckily it is pretty fast. You then cast it and dodge the slower attacks, go for back stabs for crit chance and damage. Whirl to get the highest amount of DPS possible on your target that is too slow to move and dodge or block.
If you are injured, the best thing to do is hold the alternate mode to quen and wait for the enemy to strike to heal yourself.
Gear
I went for Mastercrafted Wolf armor and weapons, it provides the best buffs for both sign intensity and sword fighting together. The only downside to it is the rather large level cap for the armor. For the crossbow I went with ursine... No real reason as I never used my crossbow and it did abysmal damage with my build anyways. For potions I used Superior Swallow and Enhanced Thunderbolt. I almost never used them but when needed they help out in a pinch. Bombs that were used are enhanced Dancing Star and Northern Wind. Again, not needed, but when i felt in need of a bomb, freezing the enemy in place for crowd control and burning them for DOT were my go to choices.
Views on Monsters
Typically for the Wolf school you are to accept jobs to help people, be it to find someone or protect something, or to hunt down something, but never do it for free... But... If you find out the thing you are doing is against the law, such as fisstech smuggling or you are hunting a peaceful monster that is just trying to find a way to make a living, try to always do the non violent and peaceful option. The job of a Witcher is to kill the harmful monsters, so the ones that wish to live in peace can.
Overall, this is a rather powerful build that in my opinion is a blast to play. The damage, debuffing, and self healing through magic without making one the pure focus is a nice playstyle. May you all have luck on the path fellow witchers.
As a member of the wolf school, you do not rely on your signs as much as those from the Griffin school... You do not mindlessly attack and head straight into battle like those from the Cat... You have learned to take their focuses and hone them into a truly dangerous weapon for monster or human alike.
The main focus of this build is that your signs do not do the bulk of your damage, and you can't charge head on in without using them... Balance is the key here. Learning that a quick shot of igni will melt the armor of a nearby enemy so your swords do extra damage, or hold down for a longer fire stream to do some burning damage to get a DOT and have some crowd control.
The total amount of points in the skill trees that are used are 46 though my level is 35, thanks to the places of power you can finish this build before you are extremely high level.
Combat Tree
The key focus here is Fast Attack. It is your bread and butter for combat and will lead to your greatest weapon. Of course we will put points into other things, because a. Variety is useful. b. the adrenaline point gain is never not appreciated. And c. You needed more points somewhere to get to the next row of skills.
Muscle Memory: Fast Attack damage increased... Self explanitory. 5/5 Precise Blows: Increase critical hit chance and critical hit damage for fast attacks. Again, self explanitory. 5/5 Whirl: This is the true weapon of your build. Spinning blades strike all foes in the surrounding area. 5/5 Strength Training and Crushing Blows are the same as Muscle Memory and Precise Blows, except for strong attacks. 3/5 for both Fleet Footed: Damage from hits recieved while dodging is reduced. This is useful as taking the least amount of damage will keep you in fights longer. 5/5
Signs Tree
Melt Armor: Damage dealt by Igni also permanently weakens enemy armor. 5/5 Firestream: Emits a continuous stream of fire that damages enemies. 5/5 Igni Intensity: To be honest, I only took this cause I had the points saved up and didn't want to waste them. 2/5 Sustained Glyphs: Increase sign duration, number of standard mode charges and alternate mode chargers. 2/2 Exploding shield: Quen shield pushes opponents back and deals damage when it breaks. While not needed it is always useful to fall back on. 2/3 Active Shield: Damage absorbed by the shield restores player vitality. Your primary source or healing. 3/3 Delusion: Only so you can get the most out of dialogue and a nice amount of exp every now and then. 3/3
Gameplay
When fighting, your game plan is as follows. Activate standard Quen before combat starts and then switch to igni. When your stamina reaches full again head close enough to the enemy so that you can hit them with igni and weaken them. You then switch to yrden and wait for stamina to come back, luckily it is pretty fast. You then cast it and dodge the slower attacks, go for back stabs for crit chance and damage. Whirl to get the highest amount of DPS possible on your target that is too slow to move and dodge or block.
If you are injured, the best thing to do is hold the alternate mode to quen and wait for the enemy to strike to heal yourself.
Gear
I went for Mastercrafted Wolf armor and weapons, it provides the best buffs for both sign intensity and sword fighting together. The only downside to it is the rather large level cap for the armor. For the crossbow I went with ursine... No real reason as I never used my crossbow and it did abysmal damage with my build anyways. For potions I used Superior Swallow and Enhanced Thunderbolt. I almost never used them but when needed they help out in a pinch. Bombs that were used are enhanced Dancing Star and Northern Wind. Again, not needed, but when i felt in need of a bomb, freezing the enemy in place for crowd control and burning them for DOT were my go to choices.
Views on Monsters
Typically for the Wolf school you are to accept jobs to help people, be it to find someone or protect something, or to hunt down something, but never do it for free... But... If you find out the thing you are doing is against the law, such as fisstech smuggling or you are hunting a peaceful monster that is just trying to find a way to make a living, try to always do the non violent and peaceful option. The job of a Witcher is to kill the harmful monsters, so the ones that wish to live in peace can.
Overall, this is a rather powerful build that in my opinion is a blast to play. The damage, debuffing, and self healing through magic without making one the pure focus is a nice playstyle. May you all have luck on the path fellow witchers.
Great job Bryn, I like it very much. Whirl is hands-down the most fun skill I think. I tried making a montage of it and overlapping Tchaikovsky's Waltz of the Flowers. Got bored, gave up.
It sounds like it.
Great job Bryn, I like it very much. Whirl is hands-down the most fun skill I think. I tried making a montage of it and overlapping Tchaikovsky's Waltz of the Flowers. Got bored, gave up.
The one sign I haven't tried is ironically the second most used sign I used in witcher 2.... Aard. Mean while, signs like yrden and axii, ones I never or rarely touched, now are ones I love to use.
The one sign I haven't tried is ironically the second most used sign I used in witcher 2.... Aard. Mean while, signs like yrden and axii, ones I never or rarely touched, now are ones I love to use.
Great work Byrn, I love the screenshots (gotta love next-gen consoles for not sucking and actually letting you take Screenshots/Videos). I think this is basically the set-out for most of our Witcher Builds (Though take a look at the Skill Calculator) and beyond that it's a damn good but still pretty simple build.
Great work Byrn, I love the screenshots (gotta love next-gen consoles for not sucking and actually letting you take Screenshots/Videos). I think this is basically the set-out for most of our Witcher Builds (Though take a look at the Skill Calculator) and beyond that it's a damn good but still pretty simple build.
It sounds like it.
