High-percentage Bloodlust and Regrowth are pretty good too. They allow you to regain health on trash mobs.
8-10% for Bloodlust and 4-5% for Regrowth (Normal).

Improved Guard, above 20%, is good too, especially against Rat Ogre, since you have no choice but to block it.

I agree, Bloodlust and Regrowth is a very potent combination for healing if you are melee focused, or at the frontlines. However, for the Waywatcher class, I will not trade my current traits for them for reasons already mentioned. When you do Cataclysm and ammo refuse to spawn, and you hear your snipers saying they are out of ammo is a scary thing. It means you can get screwed when Specials come during the next crescendo horde. Scavenger has proven to be useful in those situations a few times for me. I do not have a useful 3rd trait on my melee, but I do not mind Regrowth, since it is very effective on melee.

I do have Regrowth on my bow and it's very effective on Nightmare and below for recovering from hits and maintaining high health. You've played a few games with me last night, and may have noticed I use my bow a lot, primary for that reason and did not need to use healing items. On Cataclysm, 1 hit does too much damage and with the scarce ammo, means my Regrowth is given a handicap, sometimes it's better to conserve ammo for Special kills.

Improved guard may be more preference of playstyle, I tend to try and drop aggro instead of having to block an Ogre by dodging and targetting rat adds around the Ogre before hitting the Ogre again. I try to leave the tanking to the shields, but I still have that one good full block before I drop aggro which helps.

The ogre has 3 different attacks I believe. Ground Slam is just knockback with no damage. Downward Swipe can be dodged. But Side Swipe is only blockable? Im not sure on this, maybe you can add to it. What are the exact full mechanics of Rat Ogre?

Its also very difficult to sniper Specials when there's a horde nearby while you are using Trueflight. The arrows don't often fly the way you want and its very difficult to get the red outline to stick for auto-aim. So there are pros and cons of using Trueflight.

I recommend Bloodlust/Regrowth on melee because when fighting a horde, the heal is fast, while you can save arrows for specials. At low-action times, the scattered stragglers are easily dealt with via melee attacks anyway. Arrows for them seem to be situational or positional. Sometimes they are worth it, sometimes not. If they are directly in your path, you might as well melee kill them. (Even better if you have Bloodlust/Regrowth, you heal off the rats without wasting ammo.)

However, if you unlock a low-percentage Bloodlust/Regrowth, it sucks. So you can only get lucky with that.

Ideal weapons traits for melee WW weapon for me would be:
Bloodlust 8-10% chance or Regrowth (Normal Attack) 4-5% chance.
Improved Guard 25-30% chance.
Swift-Slaying (Normal Attack) 3.5-4% chance OR Devastating Blow.

What I've found out about WW is that her Sword+Sword and Sword+Dagger attacks have good knockback/flinching when your hits connect with the rats.
Thus, Swift-Slaying can be good because of how fast WW attacks with Sword+Dagger. Making her attacks even faster just means more knockback/flinching from rats and prevents them from randomly poking you through your attack when they swarm.


In Nightmare/Cataclysm, 90% of the damage you take will come from exposed flanks and getting poked by random rats. When the horde swarms, all that matters is that you can defend your FOV and your teammate defends your back.

The most deadly rat is Packmaster because it splits your team up and exposes flanks.
Gas Rat is strong only if it hits (seldom because you can see his projectile from afar) and even then, a lot of its damage can be mitigated by the right trinkets.

All of the Ogre's attacks are dodgeable as long as you fight him in the open.

Which is why, you need to learn to rely on normal shots and not only on the auto aim. Example, if a Packmaster tries to grab you, there's barely enough time to change to your bow and shoot, no chance to get off an auto aim shot, especially since they like to hide around corners and doorways.

Nightmare and Cataclysm tactics can differ greatly. While in Nightmare it's still possible to defend against a horde by turtling up flanks in the open, it's better to turtle up within choke points on Cataclysm. That way when a Packmaster kills one, the other 3 can still survive. A waywatcher is not going to be able to hold his ground and defend his FOV against more than 4 rats without staying mobile, and definitely not against a horde. The minimum is to always have 2 players defending a direction or traveling together.

With the larger hordes on Cataclysm, turtling however can be as much an advantage, as well as a risk. Sturmvermin, Globadier, Rattling Gunner and Packmasters are just as equally deadly, though the first two pose the threat of wiping the entire team in 1 hit. The Packmaster has crazy range and can grab you through anything and from any direction, but while deadly is a higher threat if your team is holding ground in the open. You may be able to see a Globadier's gas grenade and avoid it, but by doing so and breaking formation, you will get hit by rats, and in Cataclysm, you do not want to get hit at all. In that manner, Globadier can wipe your team without even hitting you, simply by throwing a grenade and splitting the group. Which is why Globadier is sort of a first priority to take out while others can be held off a bit.