Hunger

When in werewolf or werebear form, bite your enemies to gain life and mana.

Hunger is the Druid's level 24 Shape Shifting attack, requiring Fire Claws; it unlocks nothing. It works in either form. It is a melee bite that trades damage for leech: the hit deals −75% physical damage at every level, and in return it carries its own life steal and mana steal, +72% each at level 1 and +176% each at level 20, on top of whatever your gear leeches. The attack rating bonus is +240% at level 20.

The numbers

• Life steal is calc2 = dm12, a diminishing curve from Param1 (50, "Lifesteal % Min") towards Param2 (200, "Lifesteal % Max"). Mana steal is calc3 = dm34, the same curve from Param3 (50) to Param4 (200). The two lines are identical at every level: 72 at level 1, 125 at 5, 152 at 10, 167 at 15, 176 at 20, 182 at 25, 186 at

1. The Basin writes the curve out as min(50 + 150 × (110 × slvl ÷ (slvl + 6)) ÷ 100, 200): most of the gain is in the first ten levels, and the 200 cap is only touched at level 60 by its table.

• Damage is calc1 = Param5 = −75% at every level, so it is not in the table above.
• Attack rating is ToHit 50 plus LevToHit 10 a level: +240% at level 20, +340% at level 30, the same line the Basin gives as 40 + 10 × slvl.
• Mana is a flat 3.

Every tooltip line reads lvl, so +skills from items raise the steal and the attack rating.

How it works

Hunger is a melee attack that rolls your attack rating against the target's defense (Chance to Hit) and deals the weapon's physical damage through Dealing Physical Damage, then takes 75% of that away. The Basin is precise about where the penalty sits: it applies to the final physical attack damage, after +% damage, so +% damage cannot counter it. Its example: 100 physical weapon damage with +400% damage is 500, and Hunger lands 125 (500 − 500 × 75 ÷ 100). The steal is then ordinary Leech: the skill's percentage is added to your Life Leech and Mana Leech from items, and it takes its share of the physical damage that actually lands, subject to the leech rules against undead, demons and the difficulty's leech penalty on that page.

The leech is a percentage of a hit that has already lost three quarters of itself. +176% of 125 is 220 life, not +176% of 500.

The Basin's notes on speed: weapon speed and weapon increased attack speed are the main factors in the attack rate (Attack Speed), and it warns that at certain attack rate breakpoints only every other attack is actually executed, which is always true for a werebear, so despite a minimum 4-frame attack animation the bear's maximum attack rate is effectively 8 frames.

Synergies and +skills

No synergies: Hunger's row has no synergy calc and its tooltip has no synergy line, and it gives none to any other skill. +skills from items raise the steal and the attack rating like hard points do; the −75% is fixed.

Against players

A player's hit on another player is cut to 17% of its value (difficultylevels.txt PlayerDamagePercentVSPlayer) before anything else, see Player versus Player; the leech then takes its share of that reduced hit. The Basin's page says nothing more about Hunger against players.

Build notes

• The steal line is front-loaded: level 1 to 10 buys +80 points of each steal, level 10 to 20 buys +24, and level 20 to 30 only +10. One hard point plus +skills gets most of the value.
• The −75% never changes and +% damage cannot fix it: the bite is a recovery tool, not a damage skill. The leech rides on the damage that lands, so a big weapon still matters.
• Mana is a flat 3 and the bite returns mana on every hit, so it funds itself.