Let's talk PvP Vampire Skill line in Cyrodiil....

Duke_Falcon

Thee ole Oakensoul ring is pretty OP, however it does really force you to learn a class and evaluate the important skills on your Bar, so I thought lets give the Vampire Skill Line a fair chance and see if it can be made to work in Cyrodiil. With all 5 vampire skills on my bar, My conclusion is.... I don't think so.

I proc the Sated Fury, tap Blood Mist quickly get my damage up, fire off my Exhilarating Drain to build up the Sated Fury heal, rinse and repeat the whole process so I can get a burst heal off the Sated Fury and a Heal Over Time rolling with the Drain aaaaanndd..... to my disappointment with Pariah, Tri-Stat glyphs, 40k in Resistances, 5.5kish in weapon/spell damage, 39.6k HP and Stage 3 Vampire, its not enough to keep me alive in the chaotic combat of Cyrodiil. Those heals are not enough to cut it.

Vamp I think needs some love, or if you know a better build than me, someone please let me know how to make this thing work?

OnGodiDoDis

Duke_Falcon wrote: »

Thee ole Oakensoul ring is pretty OP, however it does really force you to learn a class and evaluate the important skills on your Bar, so I thought lets give the Vampire Skill Line a fair chance and see if it can be made to work in Cyrodiil. With all 5 vampire skills on my bar, My conclusion is.... I don't think so.

I proc the Sated Fury, tap Blood Mist quickly get my damage up, fire off my Exhilarating Drain to build up the Sated Fury heal, rinse and repeat the whole process so I can get a burst heal off the Sated Fury and a Heal Over Time rolling with the Drain aaaaanndd..... to my disappointment with Pariah, Tri-Stat glyphs, 40k in Resistances, 5.5kish in weapon/spell damage, 39.6k HP and Stage 3 Vampire, its not enough to keep me alive in the chaotic combat of Cyrodiil. Those heals are not enough to cut it.

Vamp I think needs some love, or if you know a better build than me, someone please let me know how to make this thing work?

Those skills aren't meant to replace your entire skill bar with pure vamp skills. All you need is mist form, and arterial burst if you're a magden.

Akinos

Vampire skills are meant to supplement your other skills, not be the only skills you should have on your bar. Much like how proc sets how are a supplement to your regular damage skills, they aren't meant to do it all for you.

geonsocal

for the millionth time - vamp should be "re-vamped" to match werewolf...

transform to a scion and utilize vamp skills...skills which would need to be seriously upgraded or changed altogether...

Akinos

geonsocal wrote: »

for the millionth time - vamp should be "re-vamped" to match werewolf...

transform to a scion and utilize vamp skills...skills which would need to be seriously upgraded or changed altogether...

I agree..something should be done with at least a few of the vamp skills. Only two really get used ever, besides the vamp ult...which is also kinda rare?

Suligost

I don't think that Mist is even usefull anymore. With toggled off resources/healing and absurd dmgs we have now you only delay for 8-10 seconds your own demise. Unless you want to build 20 points of ultimate or something or run away to your teammates.

Duke_Falcon

I like all of your guys ideas. In pve soloing world bosses I am able to sustain heals with just the burst heal off of Sated Fury even though its weak, and the Hot heal from Exhilarating Drain because the incoming damage is not as insane as in pvp. I basically went Max Health, and play the DK passives with my Ult to pull it off.

In pvp the incoming damage is just to insane to pull it off. Its almost feasible if the heals of those 2 skills were just a bit stronger. If ZoS would take the heal from toggling off Sated Fury up to 66% of the total Health cost you spent while active up from 33%, and make the Exhilarating Drain be 50% of your missing Health up from 25% I think it could work.

Some might argue that those percentages are 2 high, but because you still have damage and hard hitting damage in pvp still coming in on you during the 3 Seconds of Channeling Drain, they aren't that high.

xylena_lazarow

Akinos wrote: »

Vampire skills are meant to supplement your other skills, not be the only skills you should have on your bar. Much like how proc sets how are a supplement to your regular damage skills, they aren't meant to do it all for you.

They aren't doing a very good job of being a supplement though. The melee spammable and Frenzy buff impose bizarre build constraints that make them bad on normal specs. The RP facing restriction on Mesmerize makes it unusable in PvP, and a strictly worse version of the generic guild skill Turn Evil. Mist often fails to function as an on-demand active defensive maneuver due to the half second cast delay. Drain simply doesn't do enough to be worth the slot or GCD.

I wish they'd merge both clown form ults into a single morph, then bring back the old Bat Swarm as the other morph.

Duke_Falcon

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Akinos wrote: »

Vampire skills are meant to supplement your other skills, not be the only skills you should have on your bar. Much like how proc sets how are a supplement to your regular damage skills, they aren't meant to do it all for you.

They aren't doing a very good job of being a supplement though. The melee spammable and Frenzy buff impose bizarre build constraints that make them bad on normal specs. The RP facing restriction on Mesmerize makes it unusable in PvP, and a strictly worse version of the generic guild skill Turn Evil. Mist often fails to function as an on-demand active defensive maneuver due to the half second cast delay. Drain simply doesn't do enough to be worth the slot or GCD.

I wish they'd merge both clown form ults into a single morph, then bring back the old Bat Swarm as the other morph.

I do agree the CC/Fear is really tough to use you might have to hit it 2-3 time to fear a pvper, since they don't behave like NPC's, I'd be nice if that just feared no matter where they were looking.

Duke_Falcon

Akinos wrote: »

Vampire skills are meant to supplement your other skills, not be the only skills you should have on your bar. Much like how proc sets how are a supplement to your regular damage skills, they aren't meant to do it all for you.

You know when you play thru the Introductory Quest line to vampire they actually give you the break down of how its meant to be played. I think you can use it to supplement your class skills, but it does seem the skills were intended to flow together, and after trying to play strictly just the vamp skills I can see how they do work in pve.

Duke_Falcon

Reporting in again. So made a 50k Hp Vamp with Oakensoul, Warrior-Poet's, 1pc Trainee, and Order's Wrath to see if I could make the crit heals off of the Drain and the Itty Bitty heal off of the Sated Fury work in a pvp enviornment.....

...and I have to say it doesn't work.

I cannot see anyway to heal yourself in pvp with Battle Spirit and the Increased Damage in there useing Blood Mist, Exhilerating Drain, Sated Fury, and Ults cast by a DK for resouce return. This was the best thing I could come up with, and its not viable.

I've been using Dragon Leap for resource return because I don't have Thrive in Chaos unlocked yet. I was thinking perhaps I could hit Thrive in Chaos and have the heal from that keep me up will I use Drain and Sated fury to do damage and build another ult to just repeat the cycle, but I don't think I could build an ult fast enough in 8 seconds to pull it off.

Duke_Falcon

As I think about this, there just has to be more healing added in to the skills. If the heal from Drain continued for 8 seconds and was more like 50% of your missing health instead of 25%, and if the Burst from Sated Fury was more like 100% of the heals needed to sustain it, then I think it could work. Even then stuns, immobilizes, people pounding on you, would not make what I just described as easy as it sounds.

Please ZoS, give the vampire skills some love.

Zekka

Just give me the old vamp drain back, Mesmerize is pure garbage and I'm sick to death of not having a CC worth *** on magcro outside of Destructive Clench.

Duke_Falcon

Zekka wrote: »

Just give me the old vamp drain back, Mesmerize is pure garbage and I'm sick to death of not having a CC worth *** on magcro outside of Destructive Clench.

Yeah, that old drain with the stun actually fit okay into the Necro's skills, I used it as well.

Vetixio

Duke_Falcon wrote: »

Zekka wrote: »

Just give me the old vamp drain back, Mesmerize is pure garbage and I'm sick to death of not having a CC worth *** on magcro outside of Destructive Clench.

Yeah, that old drain with the stun actually fit okay into the Necro's skills, I used it as well.

Yeah I miss the old drain it was useful and did decent damage/heal now it hits for like 2k damage and healing and the new animation looks worse than the old one! Like Xylena says they should merge the Scion to 1 morph and lets us have bat swarm back! They should change the claw swipe to a ranged spammable or gap closer like that bat gap close some NPCs use cause no one uses the claw.

Urzigurumash

Mist Form is a nuisance. Disable it in PvP also.

Undeath, Unnatural Movement, and Strike from the Shadows are enough reasons for me to run Vampire.

Urzigurumash

Zekka wrote: »

Just give me the old vamp drain back, Mesmerize is pure garbage and I'm sick to death of not having a CC worth *** on magcro outside of Destructive Clench.

Dark Convergence has proven that having a reliable CC on MagCro makes the class OP. Sorry, you don't get the strongest AoEs in the game for nothing.

Duke_Falcon

Urzigurumash wrote: »

Mist Form is a nuisance. Disable it in PvP also.

Undeath, Unnatural Movement, and Strike from the Shadows are enough reasons for me to run Vampire.

To give you some context Urzigurumash, put every vampire skill on your bar with Oakensoul, with some skill, an understanding of how the vampire skills work together, and a good build... you can solo World Bosses.

Take that same build into pvp, you can solo a max level resource, but fight another player and unless they have not understanding of the game you won't beat them.

This is what the forum topic is about. I run vamp and use the passives and maybe one skill per build, but playing the vampire skill line is pretty much useless in pvp.

The point being, a little tweaking of the Skill Line and it could be possible.

Urzigurumash

Duke_Falcon wrote: »

Urzigurumash wrote: »

Mist Form is a nuisance. Disable it in PvP also.

Undeath, Unnatural Movement, and Strike from the Shadows are enough reasons for me to run Vampire.

To give you some context Urzigurumash, put every vampire skill on your bar with Oakensoul, with some skill, an understanding of how the vampire skills work together, and a good build... you can solo World Bosses.

Take that same build into pvp, you can solo a max level resource, but fight another player and unless they have not understanding of the game you won't beat them.

This is what the forum topic is about. I run vamp and use the passives and maybe one skill per build, but playing the vampire skill line is pretty much useless in pvp.

The point being, a little tweaking of the Skill Line and it could be possible.

You're right, no disagreement there, no disagreement that Drain is next to useless. But Mist Form is simply obnoxious on non-dedicated Vamp builds and MagCro really doesn't need any more access to a reliable instant stun, the class is doing just fine as it is.

Those 3 passives I mentioned are quite powerful even without any Vamp skill slotted, more than enough to justify the penalties, in my opinion.

AndreNoir

Akinos wrote: »

Vampire skills are meant to supplement your other skills, not be the only skills you should have on your bar. Much like how proc sets how are a supplement to your regular damage skills, they aren't meant to do it all for you.

Who said that it "meant" ? Everything but mist and spammable are so awful that players forced to use fillers. But even viable skills are mediocre at best

Duke_Falcon

Urzigurumash wrote: »

Zekka wrote: »

Just give me the old vamp drain back, Mesmerize is pure garbage and I'm sick to death of not having a CC worth *** on magcro outside of Destructive Clench.

Dark Convergence has proven that having a reliable CC on MagCro makes the class OP. Sorry, you don't get the strongest AoEs in the game for nothing.

I'm not convinced this is the case. I've tried running Rush of Agony, and before that I tried running Hide of Morihaus. These sets will either pull the enemy into the damage or stun the enemy into the damage and both are ineffective at killing players. Really the only set that effectively suppors a Necro's burst is Dark Convergence. Honestly I think that tells us more about the Sets ability to preform than the class's abilities to preform. I honestly prefer to play stat based builds, use the class skills and not have to rely on specific sets to make a class work.

CharlieFreak

Urzigurumash wrote: »

Mist Form is a nuisance. Disable it in PvP also.

Undeath, Unnatural Movement, and Strike from the Shadows are enough reasons for me to run Vampire.

I use Elusive Mist. Maybe I use it differently than you. I use it in small bursts if I overextend, or even in tower fights if I'm taking heavy focus damage. As soon as they lose interest, I'm back to normal with very minimal resource drain.I use it in zerg fights around keeps on magcro (not bomber) wearing full light armor divines/fhief for big boy damage. The moment I take any focus, I simply Mist back into the zerg or the keep door. I use it to stand in or walk through massive amounts of oil being poured. It's not perfect for every situation, but definitely has its uses for me.

Vevvev

I feel like Drain could potentially have a use if you couldn't get stunned or interrupted while using it. The fact it leaves you so vulnerable on top of doing so little in terms of healing is why it fails time and time again. I'd love to use it more often, but I feel my greatest successes with Exhilarating Drain have been when my opponent was uneducated as to what I was actually using, what it was doing for me, and honestly.... really how to beat me to begin with.

Mesmerize... I want it to work so badly. I love the power fantasy it could be as an ability, but that target must be facing you rule (which is a 90 degree cone in front of the target you have to be standing in (45 degrees left and right).) is so debilitating. My only great successes with Mesmerize and it's morphs have been in disrupting ball groups and nothing more. If I get super duper lucky I can stun them all, but I'd need to be even luckier if said stun actually leads to their demise. I can count only 2 situations where my lucky Mesmerize cast actually killed a ball group out of the years since the vampire rework.... 2.

Blood Frenzy is sustainable, but you have to ask yourself.... why? Amazing in solo PvE, but it takes up bar space and the benefit isn't all that great. Like getting an additional 5 piece set bonus from the Julianos set for a health cost + healing lockout while sacrificing a bar slot. My magDK doesn't really have bar space to give when in PvP, whereas in PvE I can swap out my stun for it.

Eviscerate and it's morphs are honestly fine, although if you don't have the healing for Blood for Blood you'll struggle to use it in group fights. 1v1 is fine.

Blood Scion is great, the Swarming Scion morph is the best, but Perfect Scion is a joke compared to Swarming Scion. Why does Perfect Scion even exist but to mock us into thinking there's player choice? Perfect Scion costs less and removes our weaknesses.... okay, but it doesn't remove the fact I'm still flagged a vampire and Dawnbreaker and Fighter's Guild abilities will still deal bonus damage to me. So it's basically only mitigating Dragonknights... I'd rather have the bat swarm.

Edit: because I forgot Mistform.

Mistform is decent at what it does, Elusive Mist is just an upgrade, but Blood Mist is.... weird. To get Bloodmist to work you need a source of major expedition already on hand or some other form of speed boost. Even then it feels too gimmicky. At least Baleful mist actually dealt moderate damage since the damage tick was every half second, but Blood Mist is just a troll's tool. Blood Mist helps nobody, and it's only real true use was in PvE content, and the devs removed that from Mistform as a whole so.... why is Bloodmist still around? Sure it's one of the few thematic actually vampire things, but I'd rather see it become a bat swarm dash like Sorc's streak or some kind of gap closer. Put it in line with Elusive Mist as a form of mobility for the skill line.

Urzigurumash

Duke_Falcon wrote: »

Urzigurumash wrote: »

Zekka wrote: »

Just give me the old vamp drain back, Mesmerize is pure garbage and I'm sick to death of not having a CC worth *** on magcro outside of Destructive Clench.

Dark Convergence has proven that having a reliable CC on MagCro makes the class OP. Sorry, you don't get the strongest AoEs in the game for nothing.

I'm not convinced this is the case. I've tried running Rush of Agony, and before that I tried running Hide of Morihaus. These sets will either pull the enemy into the damage or stun the enemy into the damage and both are ineffective at killing players. Really the only set that effectively suppors a Necro's burst is Dark Convergence. Honestly I think that tells us more about the Sets ability to preform than the class's abilities to preform. I honestly prefer to play stat based builds, use the class skills and not have to rely on specific sets to make a class work.

You could be right, that it's really just the pull that overpowers MagCro. It seems MagCro was balanced around the 2s delay on Totem's Fear - I can't recall, did DC always stun after a 1s delay or was one of its iterations also 2s on the first stun?

Notably on my server MagCro was very effective with Totem as the CC - for like a month or so before everybody became aware of what that thing was.

Vetixio

Old Vampiric Drain and Bat Swarm need to come back as well as Supernatural Recovery to help against cost increase, that'd help vamp a lot.