Overview

Wargs are the stealth melee classes, hit and run are their specialty as well as pouncing freeps and siabling minstrels with interrupts and silences.  The warg also makes an excellent scout with their speed and stealth, use them liberally to watch critical approach corridors to set up ambushes for roaming freep groups.

Skills

Traits

Class Traits

Recommended Corruption Traits

[Chenobyl, Elendilmir]

As a warg, you want to do a great deal of damage from stealth in a short period of time then get out of there before being killed.  As such, slot anything that gives more damage such as Damage for Power, Health for Power, and Damage for Health.  For the last two traits, consider slotting Physical Resistance and Tactical Resistance.  Those two together boost each 5%, handy in resisting loremasters more frequently

[Roktata, Brandywine]

Damage trated is definately a fine way to go. However, wargs tend to become hated pretty quick, and the more reputous ones will become focus fodder pretty in no time. As the known pack leader of Brandywine, I'm on the top of everyone's list. So I have traited myself completely with health, Health for Power ranks one AND two, as well as Damage for Power ranks one and two. Just so my damage wasn't nerfed completely, I then went with damage for power rank 2. I do not reccommend that every warg use this, I have only traited myself as such due to massive amounts of focus fire, and this gives me a better chance to live through it and keep leading my raid.

Tactics

[Vyxe, Elendilmir]

From the raid leader perspective, Wargs are the scouting and melee crowd control class of the creeps.  With the enhanced stealth trait and a full set of maps, they can observe even heavily tracking freep groups and keep tabs on them.  Disperse them freely to find contact points with the enemy but remember to recall them back to the fight as they bring valuable skills to the battle. 

In raid against raid combat, a warg excels in the following

• First Strike:  The shock of an immediate attack right on top of you can make the enemy suddenly turn to run, expecting a larger attack.  This works with smaller groups
• Lockdown:  The Pounce stun + Tendon Shred gives about 8 seconds of stun time, enough time for the raid to catch up and to apply DPS to destroy the target before it can run away or use an escape mechanism (last stand, feign death, desperate flight, etc).  Wargs are also critical in pursuit with their sprints and cripple/pounces to prevent the enemy from running away.  They should cripple/pounce an opponant then try to catch another one, letting the slower raid behind them crush whatever they have slowed.
• Silence:  While minstrels have a skill to remove silence and LM stun immunities cure silence, enough applications by wargs of silence can either very temporarily or for a reasonable duration cripple the minstrel's healing capability. 
• Harrassment:  Their escape skills allow them to operate away from the main raid and in the back of the freeps where their minstrels are often found. 
• Ranger Duty:  Wargs can severely reduce the ability of rangers to operate with stuns and interrupts.  Sometimes it is worth detaching a warg to deal with rangers attacking your healers

[Roktata, Brandywine]

An alternative method of creeping for wargs is the warg pack. As a pack leader, I have found many tricks and tango's that one has to learn. Being part of a mixed raid and a warg pack are two separate concepts, and the difference between is almost like night and day. In order to be a good pack warg there are things you have to learn, how to deal with lack of heals, how to focus and move quickly, and all in all be a much sharper player than usually necessary. The following is my guide on warg packing, this is written from a leader's perspective but gives good insight on how to be a good pack warg.

1. Heals:

Managing without a healer is pretty tricky, as you know at rank 5 wargs get rallying howl, a HoT that heals the whole group and stacks with itself. So having 3-4 howlers in a single group (meaning 3-4 rank 5's) is ideal, but of course not always possible. Once you start getting a steady group of higher ranked wargs, (at least 5 and up) you can start to rely on having a decent amount of howlers to keep you alive. I usually have my howlers use their howl immediately after the first kill, that way you can use it again soon after when the 30s cooldown is up. Since its pretty easy to run out of power, at least for me because I tend to spam my claws, having a mana pot is good for when you've killed something and don't have enough power for the howl. Howl costs about 120 power, the lowest based mana pot is enough to give you this, so no need to blow all your money on higher pots if you don't feel the need to, just have the pot there so you can use it for your howl. That way you aren't wasting your mana pot just to spam claws some more.

2. Targetting Priorities:

Targets are tricky at times, when I'm in a fight I usually try to take down the LM's first. The success of a warg pack is completely based on the amount of LM's are in the opposing group, they throw down that tar, use that AOE stun that incapacitates an entire pack, mass roots, etc. They make wargs hurt, so killing them first is the ideal choice. I've wiped full freep raids because we took down 2 lm's before the freeps even knew wtf was going on, then killed the other 2 before they could do too much damage. After LM's Its typically minnies or hunters. If they don't have a lot of minnies go for the hunters, they are squishy, easy to kill, and if they have no DPS they cant kill you. After that its usually champions, pretty easy to kill, and like hunters its taking out dps. Then you can go for the captains, though they probably will just pop last stand, if they do just switch to a different target and come back to them later. I usually save guards and burglars till the end of the fight. Guards do no damage and take a long time to kill, and burglars have too many escape skills to bother with till the end of the fight. Guardians before burglars, then you can take a whack at em. I'll tell you how we take down burglars later.

3. Taking Keeps:

Taking keeps is something you might wanna hold off on till you get some expierence, and till you can get a bigger pack. Even taking LC or isen takes about 3 groups min (at least if you want to take it without anyone dying). Once you feel confident enough to start taking keeps start with Isen and LC, and eventually work your way up to the bigger keeps. Always, I repeat, ALWAYS, warg pull the CG or kill the first marshals before you fight the CG. If you fight them WITH the CG, you are going to get yourself killed. If you don't know how the warg pull works (not saying you don't just never know) have a warg who has dissapear drop group, unstealth in front of the CG (do not attack it) run away, have another warg hit the CG and the CG only, pull it aside, and have the original warg who was running away dissapear. All the other mobs will reset, but now you will have the CG by himself off to the side where the pack can safely take him down. You are always going to have to have some weak mobs nearby (coldfell hunters, champions, cave claws, etc) that you will have to pull in the middle of the fight and kill to let the howlers get their heals off. Another reason why you will need a decent of howlers if you hope to run an efficient pack.
Once you are fighting a CG, (I do this with Goldi and Gulloval and An as well) you are going to want to get as many bleeds on the target as you can. It does tremendous damage, they stack, and plus its just really cool to see 2-3 bars of bleeds ticking away under a mobs health. Follow these guidelines and LC and Isen are cake, TR and Lug are a bit trickier, trying to get to the top and take down the CG without the freeps noticing is a challenge, but its also a lot of fun. As of yet I've not successfully taken TA with the warg pack, we tried twice the other night, first time a group of freeps came in while we were on the CG, and the second time we would have taken it but a troll came and helped us out. So it didn't really feel like we did it by ourselves.

4. Unity-

Nothing gets under my skin more than a warg who thinks he can do his own thing. This is NOT a normal raid, wargs need to stick together at ALL times unless the pack leader tells someone to go scouting for the pack. Pouncing targets without permission, following the creep raid instead of the warg pack, not staying on target during intense fights, all of these are NOT helping out the warg pack. One pounce, 23 claws out of stealth, dead freep. You only need ONE pounce, as the pack leader I usually designate myself as the pouncer, everyone else can claw out of stealth. Wargs tend to get a little frisky at times and will pounce people and run away, I call these playful pounces, but often times a warg will do this and either A) get killed, or B) the person he was pouncing was the target I wanted to kill and not everyone was in position. Early pounces offers escape for the freep, don't get pounce happy out there folks, the pack needs to work as one, 24 wargs, one mind. (Or how many wargs there are in the pack, :D)

5. Other tips-

A. Killing freeps in general-

Pounce is your best friend. To be most effective, have a single warg pounce, and everyone else after claw out of stealth. As you know, claws out of stealth do more damage, and pounce takes away their ability to block, evade, and parry. I always have the pouncer on crippling bite duty, after the pounce has hit, that warg then puts the crippling bite on the target. If you have the whole pack using pounce out of stealth you will literally stun them into immunity, what with DR and all. Much more efficient to have one pounce and the rest claws. Make sure you make it VERY clear that savage fangs is NOT allowed. Bleeds are fine on NPC's, but there's nothing more frusterating than when someone bleeds a freep and they end up getting away because the crippling bite was taken off. Not to mention crippling bite allows for another pounce when the temporay immunity period is up.

B. Killing burglars -

Burglars are a bit different. I bet many people tell you NOT to pounce burgs whatsoever. This, however, is not as bad a thing to do as it seems. Burglars are almost always going to use their find footing when you pounce them, fair enough, just keep attacking them, but have one warg stay in stealth for when the temp. immunity status is up, and pounce him again. Now they are stunned and their Touch and Go is useless, (remember when I said stun negates any ability to evade parry or block?) this is when the whole pack spams their claws like crazy. Bingo, dead burg. If the burg is already low on health and you know they haven't popped their find footing yet, just claw them down. Better that then having to beat them back down again because of the full heal they get. Some burgs, however, are smart enough to use dissapear as soon as they pop find footing. No need to fret about that, they just popped 2 of their escape skills to get away, whether you got the infamy or not, you won. However, if they are a hobbitt, you can track them. I usually keep about 20 hobbitt trackers on me at a time (the ones that track in stealth). I usually only use them to find a burglar that just hipsed on us, once I see his red dot on the map, I will sprint to him to attack him, otherwise they might just go back into stealth and break your track. If its a man burglar, however, you are out of luck. Another good habit to try and do is to bleed burglars, ONLY freep anyone is allowed to bleed. If they hips, the bleed will knock them out of it after a few seconds.

C. Killing freeps in a big fight -

The previous two notes were primarily notes when ganking a target, but when fighting in a big cluster of freeps its a bit different, because you only have the advantage of surprise at the very beginning when your stealth is yours, but after that you have to work with what you got. For every target you see, crippling bite + pounce for the stun is ideal. I physically call these out, "Lets get a crippling bite on him please, ok now everyone pounce." Once he's down he is not gonna be jumping around like a juiced up frog on a hot bed of coals, making it harder for you to kill them. Tendon shred is also Ideal for this, its quicker than crippling bite + pounce, but not everyone has that, its also on a 5 min cooldown. But out of the 24 that I usually have, at least one has their tendon shred up. Throat rip is ideal on minnies and LM's, especially when you are trying to kill an LM, because this blocks a bunch of their skills that they use to stay alive. Its usually pretty consistant, you get a bunch of wargs on one target and they are gonna run around like a chicken with their head cut off, they want to make it as difficult on you as possible. They will run through tar, blow aoe stuns (if they have them) minnies will feign death, captains will pop last stand, champions will blow sprint. It is very, very important that you keep that crippling bite on them at all times. If a minny feigns death, switch targets. If a captain blows last stand, switch targets. Sometimes you'll just be unlucky, usually if 2-3 targets in a row use an escape skill of some kind forcing you to switch targets, that will be the death of the pack. I usually like to go for a hunter once any target uses one of these, because they are quite easy to kill. Of course they may df, making it even more important to stun them and take them down quickly so you can get your howls up.

D. Captain and Guardian Protection - Captains and guardians will both use their protection skill to save minnies (I once saw a guardian use it to protect another guardian, was kinda funny.) They have two different icons, so you have to pay attention to the buff/debuff bar under their name. If you see the blue shiny shield of captain protection, might as well switch targets, because the captain will just pop last stand just like if you were on the captain himself. If you see the green rock thingy of guardian's shield wall, however, just keep burning through the target, because the guardian is taking all the damage based on the TARGET's ability to block/evade/parry. So if you are hammering on a minny with shield wall on them, that 4k guardian is going to go down like butter. Then you can kill the minny as well.

Last but not least I would like to enforce the importance of listening to the pack leader. There is usually one, and only one, pack leader, and people must realize this. I, myself, usually name a luitenant to help me out, to rally on when I am dead and coming back from the rez, or when I am AFK. But if anyone else starts shouting out orders, I tend to get a little cranky. It is my wish that every warg should experience the excitement of a warg pack, its not for everyone. Some people just don't care for it, nothing wrong with that. I will say this, warg packs do not get as much infamy as the main raid, but almost every warg I've had under me says its much more fun.

[Tchaikovsky, Elendilmir]

Operating Unraided
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The following guide is written from my experience operating as an unraided warg in numerous situations.  Note that this guide assumes that an out of game voice communication system like Ventrilo is utilized by the solo warg and the general creep population alike.  It may be effective to be outside the raid without such voice communication, but if in-game voice is the only option, some players may find the voice communication difficult to sacrifice in exchange for the benefits of running solo.

First I would like to make the case for unraided wargs with a list of reasons why being unraided is a good idea:

1. The number one spot goes to the fact that you can exit combat and restealth much more often than you can in a raid.  If even one NPC remains alive and attacking the raid you cannot restealth.  If you can't restealth you're almost useless.  You can still cripple, silence, and tendon shred, of course, but you lose the element of surprise which is so important to the warg.  Wargs are not really meant to be played like reavers and when it comes down to it, we need to use our stealth as effectively as possible.

2. Create space in the raid.  Often there are too many wargs in one particular raid and the overall effectiveness of that raid decreases because of that.  Raids specifically designed to be operating as warg packs are of course an exception, and a few wargs in a standard raid are welcome.

3. Now for some selfish reasons.  You get to operate exactly how you want to operate.  You can leave a losing situation as you see fit and search for freeps elsewhere.  You can scout for the main raid and report freep sightings around the map.  You can instantly respond to others' reports without orders from a raid leader.  In otherwords, your mobility and response time become instant because you are not obligated to assist the main raid at all times.

Assisting the Main Raid
--------------------------

Even though you are not obligated to support one raid or another, fighting with the main raid is often a good idea for infamy and excitement.  There are many ways to play your solo warg alongside a raid, so I'm just going to list a few general archetypal strategies.

1. Whack-a-mole

Whack-a-mole is when you wait patiently in stealth near the front lines waiting for an ambitious freep to overstep their boundaries.  Often this will be a brave champion coming in to blow their horn, or a hunter over-extending himself to get in firing range.  Most often, however, burglars are the ones moving forward.  Whenever you see a good target overextending, you move in for the pounce and alert the raid to what you're doing (Ventrilo is so useful here).  Hopefully the leader will decide to attack your target of opportunity.  Don't be discouraged if your prey gets away, just restealth and wait for the next opportunity.

An alternative to this strategy is to listen for the target of the main raid (again, Ventrilo) and time your pounce to coincide with the main attack.

2. The DF Game

If you're in a very heated battle where two well-balanced raids are engaged, you will be able to be selective of your targets.  In this situation I often go for hunters, regardless of what the main raid is targeting.  Many times minstrels will ignore hunters in favor of more important freep classes and I've been able to get 100% infamy kills this way.  As you work through the hunters (assuming this is a looong fight), the DPS of the freep raid decreases greatly and often this will help turn the tide of the battle towards the creep raid.  Alternatively, of course, you can select any freep you want, but picking on minstrels is a dangerous game if you do it at the wrong time and unassisted (don't get me wrong, though, there are times for minstrel harassment).  Champs are often high on the heal list and are tough to take down solo in the middle of a raid.  Captains... last stand.  You get my drift, hunters are squishy and have the best chance of either giving up (DF) or dying to you.

3. The Minstrel Cycle

Harassing minstrels is not a bad idea, but as you probably know they are precious to freep raids and attacking them often gets a lot of attention.  You probably won't kill a raided minstrel without assistance, but you can annoy them.  Obviously, a good stun and run at the right moment can mean the diffrence between life and death for whatever freep just missed their heal.  If minstrels are stun-immune, remember to use your silence skill at similarly appropriate times.  Since there's a one minute cooldown on this skill, you have time to do other things, but always remember that you should put your silence skill to use as often as you can, but at the same time don't just use it randomly.

4. Burgling Burgs

Annoying burglars is something that's always been fun for me.  Although we have fewer skills to annoy them with than they have to annoy everyone else with, we can still make a difference.  If you notice burgs annoying healers or others in the raid, you can make a difference while sacrificing your own infamy gain.

What I like to do is pick a burg, pounce, cripple, and pull out to restealth.  You give the healer some time to get a heal off and get some distance from the burg, and unless the burg uses a wound pot, they are slowed 25% for 30 seconds.  Once restealthed, pick another burg or even the same one to reapply cripple as needed.

This of course also works with champs who are on healer-annoyance duty.

5. Retreat!

There are ways wargs can help in retreat situations.  If the creeps are retreating, try to cover them with pounces to help them escape.  Depending on the situation it can be a good idea to pounce LMs, champs, hunters, and burgs.  When in doubt, pounce whatever is close and whatever is doing DPS or CC to the retreating forces.  Use your best judgement to decide whether you can help at all or if it would be more effective to get out fast and deny the freeps the chance to take you *and* the stragglers down.

When the freeps retreat you have a few choices.  For maximum infamy, stick with the raid and pounce/claws whatever target they are on.  For maximum contribution to the overall effort, move past the first couple of obvious targets and pounce/cripple some of the freeps who otherwise might have gotten away.

In both situations, use your sprint and disappear as needed.  Sprint is great to chase down that last freep and disappear is good to get away after helping a straggling creep escape.  Do what you can but don't sacrifice yourself to the freep raid, possibly giving them one extra kill they wouldn't have otherwise.

6. Catch the Straggler

One of my favorite past-times in the moors.  This goes hand-in-hand with scouting, but in this case your ultimate goal is to get a kill.  Often as the freep raid moves around, someone is left well behind the group playing catch-up.  Be patient and wait for the right moment and the right freep.  Often they will not stay and fight once pounced, but will attempt to run towards the freep raid (while probably calling them back to get you).  During this window when their back is to you and the raid is coming to get you, you have to make the kill.  In reality, you have up to the point where you die to get the kill, so even as the freeps surround you, decide whether you have a chance to get the kill within the few seconds it will take for the raid to kill you.

Sometimes you will be very lucky and find a freep who has lazily run into unfriendly NPCs or is so far away from the raid that they probably won't bother coming to help them for a warg who will probably disappear anyway.  These are the real opportunities that you're looking for.

Pure Solo
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There are some classes that wargs can pick apart 1v1, and some that we can't.  Here are some of my favorite juicy targets:

1. Hunters - Stay behind them, keep moving.  If they stay and fight, convert your cripple to a bleed for better DPS.  Try to use tendon shred at a point before the hunter DFs and at which you can kill them within 5 or 6 seconds.

2. Lore-masters - The fight is tougher than with a hunter, but it is winnable.  Convert cripple to a bleed if they stay and fight, try to stay behind them, use health and power pots often. 

3. Champions - A difficult fight, but against some champions it's winnable.  Look for how much morale and experience they have.  Some newbies might immediately start to run, at which point you can slow them and whittle them down, using stuns as necessary.  If they stay to fight, convert cripple to a bleed and hope for the best!  Use disappear offensively, don't hold anything back.

4. Burglars - A tough, scary fight for many, but winnable.  If you find a single burg, open with pounce and see if they use Find Footing.  If so, do your best to avoid them for 30 seconds to let the evade bonus wear out.  Use the terrain to avoid taking as much damage as possible during this period.  Do the same when they pop their other 30s evade bonus.  Convert cripple to a bleed at all times and focus on hitting them with claws and auto attacks while trying to stay behind them.  Use a stun pot to get out of the 8s stun, but don't waste one trying to get out of the equivalent to tendon shred, as stun pots don't cure it.  If they burned Find Footing on the first pounce, consider using disappear offensively and combining it with tendon shred for the lock down.  If they HiPS and they're a hobbit, burn a tracker and open your attack with claws.  If they HiPS again it means they've used "ready and able", which resets find footing and most of their other skills, so beware.

Never expect to win this fight 100% of the time, but do expect a fun and challenging engagement.

As for the other classes in the game, you can use many of the above tactics, although some fights are just too difficult.  Minstrels, with their healing, are difficult for wargs to solo.  Guardians and captains are possible, but tend to be tough fights.  Be sure to judge morale levels, experience/rank of the freep, and of course the level of the freep before committing to an engagement.

As a last note, there's something to be said about honor.  If you choose a fight, stick around until one of you is dead as long as the fight remains fair or tipped in your favor.  I do not disappear and run from a fight that I picked, but ultimately that is your choice.  On the other hand, if another freep joins the fight I may decide to escape the situation or try to get NPCs involved.  If another creep joins the fight, and it was a fair and obvious 1v1 I will disengage and /tell them about the 1v1.  If it was not an "obvious" 1v1, I'll take all the help I can.  This gets into a grey area that each of us must decide on in each situation.

The Delving
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For a change of pace, get to the delving before that third keep flips blue (crude Lug + sprint should do the trick), after the third keep flips red, or simply log out down there after a day of PvP on the surface.  If you're lucky you'll find a blue map when you log back in. 

However you get there, you'll find some great opportunities to wipe freep groups while they fight bosses.  Go for healers and tanks at opportune times.

Conclusion
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Well, that does it for my wargie guide, I hope you've taken away something new and valuable from my playing experience and preferred play style.