Q: Nightblade Spellcaster - Vampirism worthwhile?

srfrogg23 · May 2015

I'm playing as a NB in full light armor, destruction/resto staves, and I have gotten my vampirism up to level 4.... and I'm not seeing the benefit to be received from vampirism outside of the boost to magicka regeneration and maybe the undeath passive down the road. Oh, and the ability to sell a vampire bite once every 7 days. NB skills are pretty "vampiric" on their own. What will vampirism offer me in the long run that I can't get from the NB skills aside from the boost to magicka regen and a severe dislike for fire?

1. Does Drain Essence simply not work on Dungeon Bosses? It's pretty potent, but when I try to use it against enemies that can't be stunned it doesn't seem to do anything but take up a slot on my action bar, unless there's something in this equation that I'm missing?

2. Mist form is nice, but it prevents healing ("no easy mode for you!"), and that seems to defeat the purpose of having aside from maybe getting through an area of persistent ground AoE? Not sure what else I would want to use it for?

3. I haven't gotten the Bat Swarm Ultimate yet, but it looks (as of right now, haven't seen the morphs yet) far less effective than Veil of Blades (higher Ultimate cost, lower duration, slightly higher damage in the short term). Is it worth taking the time to rank that ability up for the morphs?

4....And finally, is all of this really worth the +40% fire damage taken tradeoff?

I'm trying to decide if I want to keep vampirism and level it up, but every time I run into something that shoots fire at me I feel like a bit of a scarecrow and I'm not really sure if there is much other than a passive benefit to keeping that. Any suggestions, ideas, information would be helpful. I want to make sure I'm not missing some key strategies before I make a decision.

Thanks!

Trollwut · May 2015

I have played a Vampire Nightblade a long time.

Before introducing Stamine abilities, I went as a full magicka melee Nightblade.

Pros:

Some passives you won't recognize when they work (like Undeath)
Fast sneaking! Awesome!
Vampire ultimate (will declare it later)

Cons:

Fire damage everywhere - Undeath won't compensate the burning
Very slow HP reg due to vampirism stages
If you're Argonian like me, you will be a white sausage

Now I played a melee Stamina Nightblade.
It has the same pros and cons as the one above.

Except for the fast sneaking, you won't get this much advantage for the disadvantages.

But the Vampire ultimates (each morph) are VERY strong. If you have them up, you're unkillable for that time.

Devouring Swarm: You damage enemies around and heal for each enemy hit. Basically you won't drop below 90% HP for that time. Awesome.
Clouding Swarm: You will get invisibility for the time and you damage enemies (not healing yourself). Basically you won't die again, as enemies just can't see/target you.

Despite of that, Vampires do have really big flaws with decreased HP regeneration and increased fire damage taken.

As a Magicka user you may utilize some of the Vampire spells, but mostly only Mist form and the ultimates are the skills to go.

I recently switched to WW, as fire damage killed me everywhere.

srfrogg23 · May 2015

Good times, I started off as WW because well, "why not"? The extra stamina regen out of WW form was nice for Break Free and Dodging but I wasn't using WW form for anything other than occasionally screwing around while soloing (got it to Rank 10, though). I even switched to a stamina based melee dps setup for a while but still found I wasn't using WW very much due to the short duration of the transformation. Healing/Ranged Dps are where my heart is in this game, so I switched back and picked up Vampirism because it was supposedly much better for spell casters.

I think I'm going to level the Vampirism up to 10 and give it a go with a full compliment of skill points to see if that really brings the shining aspects of the skill line into a more favorable assessment.

I guess the pertinent question now is:

-As a Wood Elf Nightblade Healer/rDps (started off as a medium armor/bow/dual wield dps, don't judge me) is there a way to counteract the downside to being a Vampire without nerfing the hell out of my ability to Heal/Dps?

Resipsa131 · May 2015

Use sneak and kill stuff from stealth with surprise attack and whirling blade most everything dies before you get hit, killers blade for healing. Rally or vigor can work for heals over time.

reften · May 2015

Vamp is terrible for Vet dungeons and PvP, just too much fire damage in those areas, otherwise it's excellent.

Problem is...in the vet dungeons and PvP is hard, everything else is ultra easy no matter what you're running with.

hence, I dropped vamp

srfrogg23 · May 2015

Thanks for the feedback guys. I went ahead and dropped vampirism after seeing what people had to say. I cannot begin to describe how much easier things got after I got rid of it, lol. It was cool from an RP perspective, but pragmatically it just wasn't working well with my favorite pass-times in the game.

LegacyDM · May 2015

Sorry you dropped. For pvp, One thing to consider is the sneak bonus speed. I went vamp and never went back. Add the sneak bonus + concealed weapon and you will be practically sprinting while in sneak mode. Add reduced sneak cost bonuses from skill lines and gear and you can nearly sneak while sprinting indefinitely. This is an awesome bonus for NB game play.