Suggestions for the Vampires.

Fizzlewizzle · May 2015

In the past Vampires were OP.
You won't hear me claim otherwise, and you won't hear me say that the nerfs weren't needed... but i think that at this time being a Vampire is more a curse than a blessing. Especially in PvP a lot has changed, which causes the Vampires (after the Initial Nerf which brought them from OP to average) more harm.

The most clear examples of these changes are:
- Siege damage (especially fire damage), going up from 2K to 20K (or higher, depending on your resistances).
- Fighters Guild skills (Expert hunter and Silver Bolt) gaining much higher proc chance against Undead.

With this in mind i would like to propose a few suggestions which might favour the Vampires, and makes playing one (especially in PVP) more do-able.

Skill changes:
Passive skills:
Supernatural Recovery:
Slightly increase the Magicka and Stamina gain from this skill.
75% Health recovery reduction vs 10% Magicka and Stamina regen doesn't seem like a fair trade.
I would suggest 5% Magicka regen and 3% Stamina for each Stage the player is within its Vampire Transformation.

Stage 1: -0% Health Regeneration, +5% Magicka Regeneration and +3% Stamina Regeneration.
Stage 2: -25% Health Regeneration, +10% Magicka Regeneration and +6% Stamina Regeneration.
Stage 3: -50% Health Regeneration, +15% Magicka Regeneration and +9% Stamina Regeneration.
Stage 4: -75% Health Regeneration, +20% Magicka Regeneration and +12% Stamina Regeneration.

Active Skills:
Drain Essence (and Morphs):
Make the stun an optional aspect of the skill(s), not a feature.
Since the stun is a feature you are unable to use this skill on enemies who have CC immunity, or on bosses. Making it an option should allow the Vampire to use this skill on any target (be it only 1 per target, or with enough time in between uses).

Mist Form (And Morphs)
Turn this skill into a Toggle, rather than a short duration skill.
While active it should drain the users Magicka for an X amount per second (will decrease based on Vampire Stage), as well as prevent the player from using any other skills. To use other skills the Player has to (Manually) toggle-off the Mist form skill. Using any other skill will not do this, as it would make attacking from mist form to easy.
With this change they should add that at least Magicka Regeneration is active (Both Magicka and Stamina don't regen while these skills are active).

Trollwut · May 2015

Fizzlewizzle wrote: »

In the past Vampires were OP.

Just because their ultimate were broken to the void.

Mivryna · May 2015

One major issue is the fact that fire is the most common element, with one class that has a ton of intrinsic fire abilities. Among players with staves, it does the most damage altogether. I see far more fire than lightning, and I don't think I've seen a frost staff used in a long time. For this reason, I think ice and lightning should be buffed. Give Lightning more instant damage, and let Fire be the more sustained damage-over-time. Then make the secondary effects of Ice be much more powerful to give people a reason to use it.

Then, give vampires a resistance to Ice and perhaps some of the less common damage types like Necrotic and/or Oblivion.

Anyone who has played Pokemon knows that a resistance doesn't stop a weakness from being a weakness. This way, vampires still have some distinct (and very common) weaknesses, but there are instances where they can shine as well. And with improvements to Lightning and Ice, this would create a much more interesting metagame for mages.

Fizzlewizzle · May 2015

Umbranox wrote: »

One major issue is the fact that fire is the most common element, with one class that has a ton of intrinsic fire abilities. Among players with staves, it does the most damage altogether. I see far more fire than lightning, and I don't think I've seen a frost staff used in a long time. For this reason, I think ice and lightning should be buffed. Give Lightning more instant damage, and let Fire be the more sustained damage-over-time. Then make the secondary effects of Ice be much more powerful to give people a reason to use it.

Then, give vampires a resistance to Ice and perhaps some of the less common damage types like Necrotic and/or Oblivion.

Anyone who has played Pokemon knows that a resistance doesn't stop a weakness from being a weakness. This way, vampires still have some distinct (and very common) weaknesses, but there are instances where they can shine as well. And with improvements to Lightning and Ice, this would create a much more interesting metagame for mages.

Personally, i don't have any problems with DK or Fire staffs, as there are (easy) ways to counter those.
There isn't a tool in any class (or skill tree) which you can use to counter the Fighters Guild skill tree. Flame damage from siege (which seems to be the most commonly used type of siege) also far exceeds the damage any player could do (in person). Trying to bring people their focus on other weapons doesn't change the large amount of tool people still have access to, which are quite devastating against vampires.

Giving them ice resistance, or Necrotic or other types of resist won't really help them in PvP. Personally, i haven't had any problems in PvE with a vampire (where those damage types are a bit more common), it's PvP where the problem is.

Trollwut wrote: »

Fizzlewizzle wrote: »

In the past Vampires were OP.

Just because their ultimate were broken to the void.

I don't think it really was their Ultimate that was broken, it was that the reduced cost of Vampire spells, which also affected the Ultimate skill (up to 60% cost reduction back then). Add a few other bonuses and items against it and you had people who only needed 20-50 ultimate to cast their AOE.

Currently the cost reduction has been lowered (Stage 4: 60% turned to 21%).
The cost of The ultimate (as well as spells) had been increased.
The damage of the Ultimate was decreased.
The "undeath" passive's Reduced damage percentage was decreased (was 50%, now 33%)

Things that affected everyone, though they should not be excluded (i think):
AOE cap was reduced from infinite to 6 people (that was the strong point of the AOE, as it gave you unlimited life)
Ultimate skills no longer generate ultimate (if you only needed 50 ulti, then 1 or two hits with the ulti was enough to pop it again)

Only after all this was done (and a lot of Vampires felt weak already... especially after the WW got a huge boost yet the vampires were ignored (not that the WW didn't deserve a boost)) they introduced the improved Fighters Guild skills, as well as upped the siege damage a large amount.

I probably missed some nerfs/ negative changes for Vampires in my small list, but i think this will be enough to get the picture.

Code2501 · May 2015

Umbranox wrote: »

Then, give vampires a resistance to Ice and perhaps some of the less common damage types like Necrotic and/or Oblivion.

From a historical perspective TES vampire strains are often %100 immune to disease, poison and paralysis and resistant to mundane weapons so there is a case to be had for some resistance to be in the Noxiphilic Sanguivoria strain. However until there is more variety in damage types used in the meta game its a moot point.

IMO a vampire player should be able to counter their weaknesses to a fair extent for general gameplay, but players should also be able to build a vampire slayer character that just eats vampires no matter what.

From a TESO perspective, I think what is needed is item sets that effect undead players in both positive and negative ways, e.g. flame retardant bone armor and silver holy weapons.
Add this to a better balanced meta of damage types and things would be in a good place without requiring much change to Noxophilic Sanguivoria itself.