The Vampire Problem

Celestially

Undeath…



This is a passive that gives a player up to a 30% damage mitigation (That’s 3 Major Protections!)

It slows the pace of combat dramatically.

It makes new players not wanna play pvp because “how are they not dying and why am I dying so fast”

Anybody who is anybody is using stage 3 vampire.

Put the 2 best pvp’rs against each other same class same build except 1 is a stage 3 vampire and the other is not…The vampire wins every time.

Using this passive with a common set like daedric trickery allows a user to easily access a 40% damage mitigation and that’s not even counting any of their physical and spell resistance.

There’s really no reason not to be a vampire in this current state of the game and I think that’s pretty lame.

It’s been long enough can we please rework this passive.

Possible rework choices/// Magic recovery/// The negation of one of the vampire drawbacks like flame damage reduction/// Gaining major protection when your health falls below 50% for x Seconds///

React

Totally agree, this passive is extremely broken and vastly outweighs the drawbacks. The majority of people who go vampire (which is anyone who is properly building in pvp) do it solely for this passive - most don't utilize a single active ability or another passive.

Something that many people do not realize, is that undeath starts scaling from 99% hp. By the time you hit 50% health, you are already receiving roughly 15% flat mitigation from undeath, which is stronger than any flat damage modifier that exists in the game currently. the drawbacks of being a vampire are not insignificant, but they are nowhere near a reasonable trade off for undeath in it's current state.

I wrote a pretty detailed post about the current tank meta and what I think should change in U37, and undeath was the very first thing that I suggested should be changed. My suggestion for undeath is as follows;

When you reach 30% or lower HP, gain 20% damage mitigation.

This is a flat 10% nerf to the max mitigation, but more importantly it makes it function as a clutch "emergency" mitigation passive instead of an overpowered mitigation passive that is always active. I also think they should revert the change to health recovery where it is halved in PVP, so that there is more of a contrast between the reasons to be or not to be a vampire.

I think they could even compensate for this nerf with some other adjustments to the skill line as well, such as reworking the unused abilities and several of the passives.

• Strike from the shadows - instead of only granting the weapon and spell damage only when leaving mist form or stealth, this should also grant the stats upon any cast of any vampire ability.
• Mesmerize and morphs - this ability is just bad. ESO has severe "location desync", meaning that the server cannot accurately determine location based skill conditions, such as the "when enemies are facing you" condition that this ability has. I'm all for having a globally accessible mag cost hard CC like this, but the location based condition should be removed. One morph could just be a 180 degree cone that keeps the snare component, and the other morph should be the 360 degree circle. The range on these abilities should be 7-8 meters.
• Vamp drain and morphs - Vamp drain used to actually be a good stun, but now it is a weird channel with very niche secondary effects. I'd like to see this reworked into a more globally applicable ability.

Edit: I also wanted to add that they absolutely need to do something about mist form. I've always enjoyed using evasive mist on my DK and Mplar in pvp, but currently the "troll tank" builds that it enables are just disgusting. There are so many people in pvp who build to reduce the cost of mist to 0, with sets that grant them damage shields or have broken synergy with the functionality of mist form, with the sole intention or being totally unkillable so that they can stand on flags/burn siege/troll. The easiest way to fix this is to add exponential scaling to the cost of mist form, so that it increases in cost each second that it is active.

DocFrost72

I think a good tradeoff would be to allow mistform to once again reduce ALL incoming damage. From a PvE perspective, I worry about losing undeath for specific tank builds. Having a once more functional mist form would still require proper timing and skill, but provide an interesting way to interact with content.

Celestially

React wrote: »

Totally agree, this passive is extremely broken and vastly outweighs the drawbacks. The majority of people who go vampire (which is anyone who is properly building in pvp) do it solely for this passive - most don't utilize a single active ability or another passive.

Something that many people do not realize, is that undeath starts scaling from 99% hp. By the time you hit 50% health, you are already receiving roughly 15% flat mitigation from undeath, which is stronger than any flat damage modifier that exists in the game currently. the drawbacks of being a vampire are not insignificant, but they are nowhere near a reasonable trade off for undeath in it's current state.

I wrote a pretty detailed post about the current tank meta and what I think should change in U37, and undeath was the very first thing that I suggested should be changed. My suggestion for undeath is as follows;

When you reach 30% or lower HP, gain 20% damage mitigation.

This is a flat 10% nerf to the max mitigation, but more importantly it makes it function as a clutch "emergency" mitigation passive instead of an overpowered mitigation passive that is always active. I also think they should revert the change to health recovery where it is halved in PVP, so that there is more of a contrast between the reasons to be or not to be a vampire.

I think they could even compensate for this nerf with some other adjustments to the skill line as well, such as reworking the unused abilities and several of the passives.

• Strike from the shadows - instead of only granting the weapon and spell damage only when leaving mist form or stealth, this should also grant the stats upon any cast of any vampire ability.
• Mesmerize and morphs - this ability is just bad. ESO has severe "location desync", meaning that the server cannot accurately determine location based skill conditions, such as the "when enemies are facing you" condition that this ability has. I'm all for having a globally accessible mag cost hard CC like this, but the location based condition should be removed. One morph could just be a 180 degree cone that keeps the snare component, and the other morph should be the 360 degree circle. The range on these abilities should be 7-8 meters.
• Vamp drain and morphs - Vamp drain used to actually be a good stun, but now it is a weird channel with very niche secondary effects. I'd like to see this reworked into a more globally applicable ability.

Edit: I also wanted to add that they absolutely need to do something about mist form. I've always enjoyed using evasive mist on my DK and Mplar in pvp, but currently the "troll tank" builds that it enables are just disgusting. There are so many people in pvp who build to reduce the cost of mist to 0, with sets that grant them damage shields or have broken synergy with the functionality of mist form, with the sole intention or being totally unkillable so that they can stand on flags/burn siege/troll. The easiest way to fix this is to add exponential scaling to the cost of mist form, so that it increases in cost each second that it is active.

Very well said thanks for commenting

Sergykid

did you forget about the downsides? sure maybe the 30% is too much but wouldn't go lower than 20% and that only if the percent of low hp max value is raised from 0% to maybe 25%.

so many players biased towards this just because they can't one shot clap gank like they used to during caluurion oaken nb or before, anymore

kyatos_binarini

1. 30% at 1% hp (or something like that) and about 15% at 50% where execute abilities start working. So it’s not “major protection” x3
2. It has drawbacks (increased regular ability cost and fire damage)
3. Judging by uesp calculator, even 15% at 50% hp will become about 2-3% reduction after all calculations
Tried to play both with and without this passive and realised that difference in incoming damage almost not noticeable (what I can’t say about drawbacks that forces me to sacrifice outgoing damage by putting recovery enchantment on jewellery)

Celestially

Sergykid wrote: »

did you forget about the downsides? sure maybe the 30% is too much but wouldn't go lower than 20% and that only if the percent of low hp max value is raised from 0% to maybe 25%.

so many players biased towards this just because they can't one shot clap gank like they used to during caluurion oaken nb or before, anymore

I appreciate your response, when it comes to the downsides of vampire the only noticeable one is the cost increase which is easily mitigated by a simple jewelry glyph, Munda stone, monster set or even a champion point slotable swap. It is too much at 30% I can agree on that with you.

As for ganking a vampire this point is not exactly valid as a gank tends to be a high value hit from a high point of health so this tends to hit a player before their undeath passive really starts kicking in.

Celestially

kyatos_binarini wrote: »

1. 30% at 1% hp (or something like that) and about 15% at 50% where execute abilities start working. So it’s not “major protection” x3
2. It has drawbacks (increased regular ability cost and fire damage)
3. Judging by uesp calculator, even 15% at 50% hp will become about 2-3% reduction after all calculations

1.) you gotta remember this is mitigation stacking with every other source for example each 25% of health is roughly 7.5% mit for a vampire, we also have 4 different blue cp that add 6% per cp most players run one some run 2, we also have red cp providing percentage based mitigation most people tend to run the 10% on cc breaking and 20% less damage when having dots on you, we also have a soft cap of 33.5k resist which is 50% mitigation most players tend to be at or within a few thousand of that number, on top of that we have major and minor protections, all of these existing allows vampire to make a player super tanky!!

2.)this is true but the only drawback people tend to be affected by is the cost increase as the undeath passives tends to mitigate the fire damage.

3.) this doesn’t add up becausepercentage based mitigation is un-mitagatable unlike physical/spell resist which can be penetrated through with things like breach and sharpened which sort of “breaks” your targets armor.

DrNukenstein

Yeah, it lets some builds eat executes to the face. It's also one of the few sources of mitigation that does not directly have a damage opportunity cost tied to it which which makes it one of if not the most potent enablers of glass cannon builds in the game.

It's definitely an outlier, but if you gut it for the tanks eating executes, the endangered glass cannon players that make the game fun will go extinct.

Instead of gutting it, what could be elevated to make it less of an outlier and even incentivize not being a vampire?

-rework werewolf passives to give competing pvp friendly benefits in human form.
-A new skill tree that requires you to not be a vampire or werewolf to benefit. Possibly designed to counter play styles associated with vampirism and lycanthropy. Some people might really enjoy being a practicing vigilant of Stendarr.
-Make undeath a named buff accessible through some skills or sets (at big opportunity cost, of course). call it grit or tenacity or something not associated with death stuff. Make the special vampire thing be that they can have it all the time with vamp 3 drawbacks as their opportunity cost. Edit: I'm sure there's a lot of other obnoxious defensive stuff on the table that could be reclassified as "grit"
-This goes for everything else with scaling health %s. Give it break points. If it works as advertised, that's gotta be a lot of calculations per second.

Hotdog_23

It should have been reduced to 10% when major protection was changed to 10%.

Remained unchanged for a long time now, and it has been brought up numerous times before on the forums and routinely ignored. Someone as ZOS must love the unbalanced nature of it too much.  It has been almost mandatory for so long now in PVP, you would think they would see the writing on the wall and change it. To me, it has always synergized to well with the NB class vs. the other classes also.

Stay safe

Jabbs_Giggity

I won't agree or disagree, but I will say this...
Yes there should be more drawbacks to being a vamp, such as disabling the fighters guild tree while you are vamp and taking 300% more damage from fighters guild skills. This too easily allows you to build for damage and mitigation currently.
Let me tell you, oil's hurt like a [snip] in cyro as a vamp. Mag DKs hit harder on you.

However, there are far more broken and toxic things in this game than vamps.
Mythics = p2w 100%
Nocturnal set = perma can't use buffs
Proc sets like plaguebreak and scavengers
ICE wardens and perma CC+immobilize+stun+root
And lastly...LAG

[edited for profanity bypass]

Baconlad

You choose vampire in pvp for one or all of three things.

-Mistform. Most OP thing in the entire line
-Batswarm. Also awesome and life saving, great damage.
If a non NB ganker:
-invis passive and sprint passive.

All three of those are miles better than the measly undeath passive. You don't notice a single thing with it. If enemy uses an execute and ur blocking and ur at 10% health you might be able to crutch on the passive, but blocking is the main mitigation here, non undeath. Just a little cherry on top of the low health mitigation.

Pls continue to beg for it to be removed maybe we'll get a better passive than undeath. It's that weak. I run stage 4 vamp and could care less if it was removed.

Also the downsides to vampire are borderline detrimental. I can't even fight DKs any more. Let alone think about being able to sustain breathing.

Stop asking for more downsides to vampire, they are already painfull [snip]

[edited for profanity bypass]

Thraben

Vampires need to be far more vulnerable to fire and warrior guid damage,

but even more importantly, Mist Form must be fixed finally. In NoProc - NoCP, there is no way to defeat a half decently build player who uses it together with LOS break/ shield Ulti within a reasonable time span.

xylena_lazarow

Delete Undeath. Kill it with fire. Purge it from the history books. Replace with some generic damage buff.

xylena_lazarow

Jabbs_Giggity wrote: »

[snip]

All 11 of my characters before I quit were Vampires, primarily to abuse Undeath so I could run full damage sets while never dying and getting accused of being a "hacker" by players who come here and cry for damage nerfs (not directed at you).

[edited to remove quote]

Jabbs_Giggity

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Jabbs_Giggity wrote: »

[snip]

All 11 of my characters before I quit were Vampires, primarily to abuse Undeath so I could run full damage sets while never dying and getting accused of being a "hacker" by players who come here and cry for damage nerfs (not directed at you).

I run all vamps as well, except on my sorc. I don't think vamp passive is as powerful currently as people are making it out to be. Let's look at serpents, 40% damage mitigation with damage increase of more than most flat damage sets from one slot. It's basically a better ancient dragonguard in one slot instead of 5.
Pariah scaling is better mitigation at low health than undeath passive.
Being a vamp has major drawbacks, but gives an option for being able to build slightly tankier while being able to build more for damage.
Historically, vamps are hard to kill. Built that lore into the skill line.

Most vamps that seem like Undeath is the problem are pairing things like sithis' gaze and sea-serpent's into their build and rallying cry for crit resists.
DK's running plaguebreak/rallying cry/serpents/ bloodspawn.

Vamps should have more drawbacks, yes. But Undeath being removed/nerfed, no. Remove the access to fighters guild line while a WW or Vamp, increase the fighters guild damage multiple against both with FG skills.
Vamps should have inherit passives to increased speed, damage and mitigation. Fire damage taken should be increased slightly and increased magic damage taken added.
The problem is they base the entire skill line on "blood power" instead of the actual nature of vampires, speed damage and naturally hard to kill.
Make feeding more frequent to sustain vamp stages like WW line.

[edited to remove quote]

xylena_lazarow

Jabbs_Giggity wrote: »

Most vamps that seem like Undeath is the problem are pairing things like sithis' gaze and sea-serpent's into their build and rallying cry for crit resists... DK's running plaguebreak/rallying cry/serpents/ bloodspawn... Vamps should have more drawbacks, yes.

I can agree with this. The game is simply a mess. Rallying Cry is an abomination. Nerfing Undeath alone would not end the tank meta. I'll also agree that Undeath could instead be nerfed by increasing the severity of the drawbacks, which become insignificant on a meta minmax build. The nerf to their HP Regen is supposed to be what balances out the high mitigation, but since that's irrelevant to PvP these days, it would need to hit their overall Healing Received, and hit it hard.

Celestially

Jabbs_Giggity wrote: »

I won't agree or disagree, but I will say this...
Yes there should be more drawbacks to being a vamp, such as disabling the fighters guild tree while you are vamp and taking 300% more damage from fighters guild skills. This too easily allows you to build for damage and mitigation currently.
Let me tell you, oil's hurt like a [snip] in cyro as a vamp. Mag DKs hit harder on you.

However, there are far more broken and toxic things in this game than vamps.
Mythics = p2w 100%
Nocturnal set = perma can't use buffs
Proc sets like plaguebreak and scavengers
ICE wardens and perma CC+immobilize+stun+root
And lastly...LAG

I’m not so sure that making more drawbacks is the answer to this passive, I think the undeath passive simply needs to be adjusted as a nerf or just completely change the passive into something else more drawbacks could make this way of playing obsolete

However I can’t disagree with anything else u said in your second paragraph these are all real issues within the game but for this post I’m just trying to pin point a specific passive I do hope some of those issues you mentioned are looked into though

[edited to remove quote]

Celestially

Baconlad wrote: »

You choose vampire in pvp for one or all of three things.

-Mistform. Most OP thing in the entire line
-Batswarm. Also awesome and life saving, great damage.
If a non NB ganker:
-invis passive and sprint passive.

All three of those are miles better than the measly undeath passive. You don't notice a single thing with it. If enemy uses an execute and ur blocking and ur at 10% health you might be able to crutch on the passive, but blocking is the main mitigation here, non undeath. Just a little cherry on top of the low health mitigation.

Pls continue to beg for it to be removed maybe we'll get a better passive than undeath. It's that weak. I run stage 4 vamp and could care less if it was removed.

Also the downsides to vampire are borderline detrimental. I can't even fight DKs any more. Let alone think about being able to sustain breathing.

Stop asking for more downsides to vampire, they are already painfull AF.

Not asking for any downsides to vampire, this post is asking for an alternative passive or a nerf to undeath. Yeah you take more fire damage that’s just part of the vampire “rp” like werewolf’s taking more poison damage.

Mist form is something very strong yes but not necessarily “op” it’s really only abused by tank players who just sit on a flag and do nothing but exist in a area, un death being changed would also be a nerf to mist indirectly.

Batswarm I think is strong and a unique ult that isn’t over or under performing

And sprinting into stealth though can be annoying to face, it is directly tied to being a stage 4 vampire coming with the maximum amount of drawbacks, kinda a weird mechanic but I think it can have a place in this game.

Celestially

Thraben wrote: »

Vampires need to be far more vulnerable to fire and warrior guid damage,

but even more importantly, Mist Form must be fixed finally. In NoProc - NoCP, there is no way to defeat a half decently build player who uses it together with LOS break/ shield Ulti within a reasonable time span.

I partially agree with this, more fire damage maybe not but more fighters guild damage could be interesting

As for mist…yeah combined with los and being a knowledgeable player it can def keep you alive for a long time.. nerfing or altering undeath would indirectly make people in mist more squishy, we would just have to wait and see how much it affects it but mist could be looked at I agree with that

Celestially

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Jabbs_Giggity wrote: »

[snip]

All 11 of my characters before I quit were Vampires, primarily to abuse Undeath so I could run full damage sets while never dying and getting accused of being a "hacker" by players who come here and cry for damage nerfs (not directed at you).

[edited to remove quote]

I’m glad you brought up being accused of being a “hacker” by utilizing this…the third point I made on the post was
(It makes new players not wanna play pvp because “how are they not dying and why am I dying so fast”)
The hacker mentality is absolutely coming from a new or uninformed player perspective and it’s not healthy for the game imo!!

Baconlad

I've already stated I don't care if they remove undeath and don't even replace it. It's that weak.

If that removes the heat from the vampire skilline in the eyes of devs I'd call that a win! Just blows my mind at how so many people look at the entirety of the vampire skill line and say undeath is op, then ignore other passives like the stealth passive combined with NBs or ignore mistform. I mean I'm OK with it, I use the crap outa both the skill and the passive and love them....it's almost like, players watched a YouTube video on it and all decided that was what was wrong with vampire.

As if 40k health tanky damage dealers that can drop a player in seconds isn't a problem...undeath passive is the culprit to bad PvP experience...

Side note, saw a 37k health stamblade ganker yesterday. Was two shotting players left and right like it was 2018 and he had 18k health...but undeath is the problem

Silversmith

Undeath isn't a problem. You give up a lot for mitigation that doesn't kick in until you are about to die and at that point it doesn't matter because execute abilities exist. Also Fire DKs are the best class right now and undeath puts you at a disadvantage against them until you are sub 50% then you break even.

Thecompton73

Undeath was a vampire passive long before the current tank meta. Sure it contributes to it but there are so many other facets of the game that all combine to make this meta so boring. Hybridization of healing is huge as everyone can run multiple HOTs as well as having access to class burst heals regardless of which stat pool they draw from. Healing CP's that can stack for +20% healing. Wardens and DK's having major mending baked into their skills/passives. Major protection and major evasion are easily accessible with 100% uptime. Being able to drop block costs or mist form costs below your recovery rate (including recovery from sets, constitution passive, DK class passives..etc), to enable perma-blocking or perma-misting. Damage nerfs to make the large majority of sticky dots do sub 500 points of damage while ticking at half the frequency. Damage nerfs to scaling skills such as Inevitable or Proxy Det. Nerfs to class damage skills. Movement speed stacking beyond the servers capability to track a targets position, making it nearly impossible to line up a melee skill for activation.

Miracle19

Thecompton73 wrote: »

Undeath was a vampire passive long before the current tank meta. Sure it contributes to it but there are so many other facets of the game that all combine to make this meta so boring. Hybridization of healing is huge as everyone can run multiple HOTs as well as having access to class burst heals regardless of which stat pool they draw from. Healing CP's that can stack for +20% healing. Wardens and DK's having major mending baked into their skills/passives. Major protection and major evasion are easily accessible with 100% uptime. Being able to drop block costs or mist form costs below your recovery rate (including recovery from sets, constitution passive, DK class passives..etc), to enable perma-blocking or perma-misting. Damage nerfs to make the large majority of sticky dots do sub 500 points of damage while ticking at half the frequency. Damage nerfs to scaling skills such as Inevitable or Proxy Det. Nerfs to class damage skills. Movement speed stacking beyond the servers capability to track a targets position, making it nearly impossible to line up a melee skill for activation.

Very well said. I think a simple revert to the old dots would fix a lot of the “tank” meta problem as damage would be higher then healing for once. Until that happens, every patch will be a “tank” meta.

Panderbander

Why not rework the vampire skills so they're actually worth running AS A VAMPIRE then tie the Undeath mitigation to how many vampire abilities are on your bar, similar to the WD sorcs get for having sorc abilities on their bar?

MEBengalsFan2001

Celestially wrote: »

Undeath…



This is a passive that gives a player up to a 30% damage mitigation (That’s 3 Major Protections!)

It slows the pace of combat dramatically.

It makes new players not wanna play pvp because “how are they not dying and why am I dying so fast”

Anybody who is anybody is using stage 3 vampire.

Put the 2 best pvp’rs against each other same class same build except 1 is a stage 3 vampire and the other is not…The vampire wins every time.

Using this passive with a common set like daedric trickery allows a user to easily access a 40% damage mitigation and that’s not even counting any of their physical and spell resistance.

There’s really no reason not to be a vampire in this current state of the game and I think that’s pretty lame.

It’s been long enough can we please rework this passive.

Possible rework choices/// Magic recovery/// The negation of one of the vampire drawbacks like flame damage reduction/// Gaining major protection when your health falls below 50% for x Seconds///

Flame enchant along with using kynmarch tends to melt most vampires rather quickly. The debuff and dot from the flame enchant when it proc the burning status effect is fantastic. Another thing to consider is using a flame ability or silver shard both do more damage against vampires.

HiImRex

I’m ok with nerfing undeath, because it is probably too strong, but people dismissing the trade offs as insignificant is very ignorant.

The biggest drawback is cost increase. This is a big deal, more than most players realize. But it won’t impact you much at mid level play, since there’s not many players left in eso that can out sustain to win fights through superior decision making, which is why it’s been downplayed so much.

Then you have increase damage taken from fire damage and 10% more damage taken from dawnbreaker. Yea, undeath makes up for it to a degree, which is why vamp 3 is worth it in the first place.

My point is this, undeath is overtuned but the trade offs for it are more significant than this thread makes it out to be.

To make it balanced, there should be both a nerfing of undeath and easing of the trade offs, or need undeath, keep the trade offs, and then apply an alternative buff to vamp to compensate.

Caribou77

Baconlad wrote: »

Side note, saw a 37k health stamblade ganker yesterday. Was two shotting players left and right like it was 2018 and he had 18k health...but undeath is the problem

^^ Relevant point ^^

Alas, pvp is such an imbalanced, ill-construed mess, I no longer hope for meaningful improvements. I do wish the NB-loving dev would go work somewhere else. Of course there are myriad different perspectives on what constitutes good PVP, but you can draw a line between those who think one-shotting is a fun, dynamic, and challenging play style, and those who think it’s pathetic.

HiImRex

I very rarely get one shot, neither do most of the people I play with.

If you’re getting one shot by a 37k health nightblade maybe you shouldn’t wear 7 well-fitted because some YouTube build video said you don’t need impen.

This game gives you the unique ability to tailor your build to match the meta. If you study what it took to one shot you, you can figure out a way to prevent it next time.

Or why is it that there are players who rarely get ganked and consistently win fights that you can’t win?

You have access to the exact same set of tools they do. If you don’t want to put in the work to achieve the same level of success then don’t come to the forums and claim it’s a game problem. It’s perfectly understandable why someone wouldn’t want to put in the effort in a video game since it’s just a hobby, but there’s a very thick line between what is a balance issue and a learn to play issue.

Caribou77

NB is overtuned at the moment.

Good old “Learn to play.”

Happy gaming, NB main.