Vampire Buff idea

fenn1539 · November 8

this is a simple one but one i feel needs to happen being that vamps should have the health recovery debuff removed and replaced with a perhaps 2.5% bonus max hp per vampire stage up to a 10% bonus max health. there would still be the cost of the weakness to fire maybe even being increased to be a balancing change and of course, the higher your vamp stage, the higher your ability cost making sustain a *** but really either they need to AT LEAST no longer have the debuff to health recovery and or get a full actual boost to health regen or max health in its place that fits with the fact that no matter the lore, vamps are ALWAYS monsters who are hard to kill requiring specific holy weapons or equipment, silver, or a stake to the heart specifically healing back from any other damage you try to throw at them............

Morvan · November 8

Well, Vampires do already have a tanky passive and that is Undeath, which was so strong before the nerf almost every PvP build would run it, and even now it's still very decent.

Vampire skills are in much more need of attention than their passives, they only have one decent skill and a good situational ultimate.

fenn1539 · November 8

Morvan wrote: »

Well, Vampires do already have a tanky passive and that is Undeath, which was so strong before the nerf almost every PvP build would run it, and even now it's still very decent.

Vampire skills are in much more need of attention than their passives, they only have one decent skill and a good situational ultimate.

yea honestly i feel like they need to decide what they even want vamps to be cause they got the wierd stealth passive T4 that no one runs cause why bother with it and than they have bonus damage on leaving stealth and their mist form which implies they are meant to be burst assassins but than they have undeath and their claw ability which work on taking damage implying tank but they have increased fire daamge taken and no *** health recovery which is a big no go for tanks with blood mist can kinda make up for this but it has to be scaled well requiring good max hp but than their mesmerize sucks when there is a better example in the form of the arcanists charm effect that applies debuffs making it useful with than their sated fury again good for dps but not tanks cause it just kills you to use it but than they have drain which again is a weird channeled ability not offering enough for the cost to use it both in its channel and its just straight up cost.

like full stop, i wish they would just lean into making vamps for tanks and do another total rework with that in mind with maybe stated fury being changed to make it so you take constant damage during it but it boosts your max health, making the claw swipe have a conal execute version scaling with max health and than a single target also scaling with max health that works as a taunt and applies maybe major and minor breach using your health to cast, make mesmerize do minor brittle and vulnerability or maybe minor and or major maim as if you charm the enemies making it hard for them to bring themselves to hurt you and your allies with the vampiric drain should be changed to no longer be a channeled or even just removed and replaced to make it basically the NB's siphoning aoe ability that pulls in blood from around you damaging enemies in an aoe at the cost of hp and applying maybe major cowardice costing a lot of health but drasticly lowering the enemies dps as you inspire fear and maybe lifestealing slightly for each enemy hit encourging its use in deathballs rather than 1v1's. lastly blood mist is just fine and doesnt need a change aside from making it also cost hp as all vamp abilities should just cost hp to use.

beyond that the passive effects of being a vamp should be increased health recovery per stage, increased flame damage taken per stage, increased ability cost per stage (you dont get a cost reduction to your vamp abilities but they all would cast through hp so on a tank with good hp it shouldnt matter), with than lastly would be that you would have reduced magicka and stamina recovery up to 70% forcing you to want to use your vamp abilites more but not neutring you completely like how the -100% health recovery kills the mere idea of ever going stage 4 vamp especially since again, you would be a tank so ideal in heavy armor which improves your heavy attack resource recovery further encouraging tank play.

lastly the passives would be firstly the stalker passive getting left as is to fit with the theme of helping vamps be sneaky enough to get bites off maybe even getting buffed to make all armor count as meduim armor when it comes to the stealth passives under the thought that vamps and the blood mist ability are pretty synonamous so you could just say you make your armor lighter and quieter through magic. beyond that for the first of the actual meaningful in combat passives, the first one could reduce the cost of your next non health ability is reduced every time you case a health costing ability up to 5 stacks with perhaps 15-20% cost reduction per stack. the second passive would be that the lower health you are, the higher your health recovery gets on a percentage up to maybe 7.5-10% bonus health recovery when below 33% max health or maybe even lower than that since i changed sated fury to give you percentage max health stacks for its duration instead of damage to boost your abilites all scaling on max health and boosting your tankiness at the cost of a constant dot that grows in strength over time hurting your health recovery buffs heavily. finally you would have as the finally ability i feel that the last could be that all abilites range is increased by a percentage including even ground aoe's for example BUT all abilites partially cost health to use based on that percentage meaning your magic becomes stronger but costs more of you to use if you take that last passive.

Morvan · November 9

fenn1539 wrote: »

yea honestly i feel like they need to decide what they even want vamps to be cause they got the wierd stealth passive T4 that no one runs cause why bother with it

I do agree that stage 4 is bad, but people do run it a lot, it's pretty useful when you want to skip monsters and don't have cloak from Shadow, it makes going into delves and gathering skyshards much faster, and even on PvP I do often see it.

fenn1539 wrote: »

they have bonus damage on leaving stealth and their mist form which implies they are meant to be burst assassins but than they have undeath and their claw ability which work on taking damage implying tank but they have increased fire daamge taken and no *** health recovery which is a big no go for tanks

One doesn't cancel the other, no skill line needs to be strict to DDs/Tank/Healer, Vampires even the way they are can be used by both tanks and dds, you just don't see it often on tanks due to how niched its usability is, for example, if you're on a tank Exhilarating Drain is extremely strong in easy fights where you're comfortable to channel it, and Mist Form can also be super useful against bosses with strong projectiles (Z’Maja’s heavy, Yaseyla's Bombs...)

Health Recovery is a very low priority stat for tanks, won't make much of a difference having it lower, Flame Damage can be a problem, though as a Tank you want to stay at Stage 1 mainly for the cost weakness, which is the most meaningful weakness for Vampires, so you usually don't want to have Undeath as a tank at all.

fenn1539 wrote: »

blood mist can kinda make up for this but it has to be scaled well requiring good max hp

No, it shouldn't scale with Max HP, Elusive Mist is the obvious defensive morph there, they should buff Major Expedition/Evasion durations on it to make it more worth casting, and Blood Mist could totally get a damage buff.

fenn1539 wrote: »

mesmerize sucks when there is a better example in the form of the arcanists charm effect that applies debuffs making it useful with than their sated fury again good for dps but not tanks cause it just kills you to use it but than they have drain which again is a weird channeled ability not offering enough for the cost to use it both in its channel and its just straight up cost

Mesmerize definitely stinks and it's the worst skill in the kit, I do like how it requires the target to be facing you but it's not nearly strong enough to justify that, I agree they could give it a nice debuff for one morph, and the other maybe give it an AoE spammable damage. As for drain, like I said, the ultimate gen morph is definitely super strong where it can be used, but only on a tank.

Overall, I won't adress every point you made but I agree with some of them, though turning Vampire a tank thing is a terrible idea. They can definitely just adjust a few skills and morphs and make it more useful for all roles, lots of unused morphs there with room for creativity.

fenn1539 · November 9

i wont quote cause i think we are getting into the quote hole making things too long but i will say that the reason i think that vamp needs to be made to embody just ONE thing is because we dont have 3 different skill lines meaning to make it able to work for ANY role ends up meaning each of its abilites has to be TOO strong for the role they are meant for meaning you risk making vamps a jack of all trades and master of all and with how durable vamps are in most mythology and in lore and that being part of their strength like with for example lord harkon in skyrim who literally could only be killed by the daedric artifact, auriels bow nvm the fact that vamps also are made very durable currently still even with the undeath nerfs so it feels like that tank angle is the one to lean into making them almost raid boss durable with their abilites scaling on their max health to encourage this playstyle and while makign their abilies all still hard to hit to make the counter play keeping your distance and locking them in a spot with move slow and CC so they cant lifesteal to heal. basically lean into what they are already strong in cause its not just undeath but also their ult and blood mist all being AMAZING tank abilites even as they are.

Morvan · November 10

Nah you can totally make a line good for all 3 roles without it being broken, just look at Winter's Embrace.

fenn1539 · November 10

Morvan wrote: »

Nah you can totally make a line good for all 3 roles without it being broken, just look at Winter's Embrace.

winters embrace is only good for tanking abilites which sure, all classes could use some survivability in the form of either polar wind for a nice heal or maybe using the frost damage buff but honestly, its still mostly only good for tanks cause its got a projectile damage shield, a pull that also procs major maim, a damage aoe that scales best with its max health morph from my experience, and a major resolve buff that also can grant minor protection if you dont already got it on top of its passives being built specifically for tanks with its major maim reflection when you are hit, its bonus resistances and its reduced snare efficacy with again its only non tanking things are the damage buff for frost damage specifically but almost all frost damage is tied HEAVILY to tanking being the winters embrace and the frost staff both not being suited to dps players as well as its ranged aoe morph that makes it scale with weapon and spell damage and artic blast which is good damage but only in hyper close range with everything else again is something non tanks can use like 1 or 2 abilites of if they want to try to boost their survivability or sustain but its not really anything but a tanking line

ESO_Nightingale · November 10

fenn1539 wrote: »

Morvan wrote: »

Nah you can totally make a line good for all 3 roles without it being broken, just look at Winter's Embrace.

winters embrace is only good for tanking abilites which sure, all classes could use some survivability in the form of either polar wind for a nice heal or maybe using the frost damage buff but honestly, its still mostly only good for tanks cause its got a projectile damage shield, a pull that also procs major maim, a damage aoe that scales best with its max health morph from my experience, and a major resolve buff that also can grant minor protection if you dont already got it on top of its passives being built specifically for tanks with its major maim reflection when you are hit, its bonus resistances and its reduced snare efficacy with again its only non tanking things are the damage buff for frost damage specifically but almost all frost damage is tied HEAVILY to tanking being the winters embrace and the frost staff both not being suited to dps players as well as its ranged aoe morph that makes it scale with weapon and spell damage and artic blast which is good damage but only in hyper close range with everything else again is something non tanks can use like 1 or 2 abilites of if they want to try to boost their survivability or sustain but its not really anything but a tanking line

honestly i don't agree with your take here that winters embrace is "not really anything but a tanking line"

2 damage passives and 2 very strong AoE DoTs and an additional damage dealing ultimate morph make it classify as a damage line as well. it needs more help still (of course), but it's not just a tank line anymore and hasn't been for quite some time.

fenn1539 · November 10

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

honestly i don't agree with your take here that winters embrace is "not really anything but a tanking line"

2 damage passives and 2 very strong AoE DoTs and an additional damage dealing ultimate morph make it classify as a damage line as well. it needs more help still (of course), but it's not just a tank line anymore and hasn't been for quite some time.

thats the thing tho. the first damage aoe is useless quite frankly in is non gripping shards morph cause of how small it is for anything other than pve and even than its still meh compared to its lightning counterpart from storm calling to the point that you flat out should not be using it with the far better morph being gripping shards scales with max health requiring strong tanking levels and though it does movment stun enemies hit by the initial cast, you need pulls to keep them in it long enough to make it properly useful still requiring tanking cause you dont get pulls if your not a tank while meanwhile artic blast is again too close range requiring point blank with no scaling whatsoever and mostly being useful for tanks who want further movement slow and stun to keep enemies in your gripping shards...

hell even the ult is the only one that scales only with weapon and spell damage and even than, its more effective use if you ask me as a guy who plays tanks like victor in deadlock is the movement snare it has cause quite frankly, as a tank, your main job is to pull enemies into you and not let them escape making them easy kills for allies or forcing enemies to stay close to you and be easy to hit with your high as hell damage abilites that have low range and poor accuracy normally meaning again, its really mainly for tanks ESPECIALLY cause its a major proc buff ability that lets you also make yourself able to take the damage of anyone caught in it cause if they cant run, they are gonna try lasering you down to deal with you before you get them killed so the major proc helps tanks further be immune to punishment for using its primary benefit.

ESO_Nightingale · November 10

fenn1539 wrote: »

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

honestly i don't agree with your take here that winters embrace is "not really anything but a tanking line"

2 damage passives and 2 very strong AoE DoTs and an additional damage dealing ultimate morph make it classify as a damage line as well. it needs more help still (of course), but it's not just a tank line anymore and hasn't been for quite some time.

thats the thing tho. the first damage aoe is useless quite frankly in is non gripping shards morph cause of how small it is for anything other than pve and even than its still meh compared to its lightning counterpart from storm calling to the point that you flat out should not be using it with the far better morph being gripping shards scales with max health requiring strong tanking levels and though it does movment stun enemies hit by the initial cast, you need pulls to keep them in it long enough to make it properly useful still requiring tanking cause you dont get pulls if your not a tank while meanwhile artic blast is again too close range requiring point blank with no scaling whatsoever and mostly being useful for tanks who want further movement slow and stun to keep enemies in your gripping shards...

hell even the ult is the only one that scales only with weapon and spell damage and even than, its more effective use if you ask me as a guy who plays tanks like victor in deadlock is the movement snare it has cause quite frankly, as a tank, your main job is to pull enemies into you and not let them escape making them easy kills for allies or forcing enemies to stay close to you and be easy to hit with your high as hell damage abilites that have low range and poor accuracy normally meaning again, its really mainly for tanks ESPECIALLY cause its a major proc buff ability that lets you also make yourself able to take the damage of anyone caught in it cause if they cant run, they are gonna try lasering you down to deal with you before you get them killed so the major proc helps tanks further be immune to punishment for using its primary benefit.

i can tell you right now that winter's revenge is not at all a bad damage skill and the radius is fairly decent especially compared with other similar skills, its not the best at this but it's also not only 4 or 5 meters wide. it's damage per second is higher than most of the other class ground AoE DoT abilities due to it's solid base damage combined with it's extremely high chilled proc rate, which further increases with weapon and spell damage due to glacial presence. gripping shards scaling with health does not even put it close to winter's revenge's output and its also one of the only reliable damaging skills that scales with max hp in the firstplace which means it's not effective for a damage dealer to invest into max hp. i'm not sure why you keep bringing tank utility into the conversation considering i'm talking about damage output for damage dealing characters. arctic blast being close range is a limiting factor, sure. but if you consider that most damage gameplay takes place in melee range in the first place, it doesn't really effect its usefulness as much as you think it does. It's also close to the same thing as winter's revenge in terms of chilled proc rate so it's outputting a lot of raw damage.

do you think we're talking about damage output for tanks? because that's definitely not what i'm talking about here. winter's embrace caters towards both tanking and damage dealing characters.

fenn1539 · November 11

i keep brining up tank utility cause its just blatantly more useful for tanks with more importantly, you dont realize how high you can get your hp and thus how well gripping shards can scale especially since the ice staff is perfect for a max health tank which i currently actually play mind you and i get 1700 dps with it and my build isnt even half done only currently sitting at 60k max hp with in future it will get to roughly 70k base hp before any buffs with its minor toughness and bone tyrant ult bringing it well over and into the 115k hp range. like to say it has bad scaling just shows me you likely only ever have played tanks with like 45k max hp and dont get how good the damage on max health scaling abilites in general can really get especially when if i wanted to min max my hp some more, i would have full front bar shadow abilites which would easily get me to closer to like 150k max hp with everything going.... beyond that an ability needs more than good dps to be useful because again, its so small an aoe and notably more costly than gripping shards is meaning the fact it doesnt full stun them as well is a massive blow to its effectiveness cause something could do 3k damge and sure, getting one or 2 ticks of it is nice but if they get out right after, you have now wasted roughly 10 seconds of the ability and a *** ton of magicka for no real benefit unless you nuke them with everything else you got before they press their heal button once which is why i keep pointing out how the winters embrace abilites work better on tanks who can get pulls to keep enemies cooking in the ground AoEs making the small radius not that big a issue. like legit my guy i keep pointing out winters embrace works better for tanks to the point a tank can easily out dps a dps trying to use winters embrace for damage to show that its abilites ARE NOT *** MEANT FOR DPS....

fenn1539 · November 11

srly to move onto artic blast, part of its problem for anyone other than tank is while yea, most fights are done in melee, it does its damage in pulses for one thing with most melee combat being a lot of moving in and out meaning missing pulses is super *** easy for dps trying to avoid AoEs they cant take and nevermind the fact that many enemies tend to have their own damage pulses so its not to smart to want to be that close in in the first place if you dont have the sutain to take focused agression with its stun being more useful anyways for tanks who can guarantee that they will be close enough to even hit the stun and each subsequent pulse with it also doesnt scale with anything meaning its damage is far more flat than other abilites meaning again, the main reason you would even want to use it is for the stun while clearing trash mob hoards which a dps doesnt wanna deathball into the middle of even if they arent directly targeted cause again, AoEs are a plenty in this game meaning thats liable to take a nice chunk of damage to try to do a little bit in return.

Morvan · November 11

fenn1539 wrote: »

i keep brining up tank utility cause its just blatantly more useful for tanks with more importantly, you dont realize how high you can get your hp and thus how well gripping shards can scale especially since the ice staff is perfect for a max health tank which i currently actually play mind you and i get 1700 dps with it and my build isnt even half done only currently sitting at 60k max hp with in future it will get to roughly 70k base hp before any buffs with its minor toughness and bone tyrant ult bringing it well over and into the 115k hp range. like to say it has bad scaling just shows me you likely only ever have played tanks with like 45k max hp and dont get how good the damage on max health scaling abilites in general can really get especially when if i wanted to min max my hp some more, i would have full front bar shadow abilites which would easily get me to closer to like 150k max hp with everything going.... beyond that an ability needs more than good dps to be useful because again, its so small an aoe and notably more costly than gripping shards is meaning the fact it doesnt full stun them as well is a massive blow to its effectiveness cause something could do 3k damge and sure, getting one or 2 ticks of it is nice but if they get out right after, you have now wasted roughly 10 seconds of the ability and a *** ton of magicka for no real benefit unless you nuke them with everything else you got before they press their heal button once which is why i keep pointing out how the winters embrace abilites work better on tanks who can get pulls to keep enemies cooking in the ground AoEs making the small radius not that big a issue. like legit my guy i keep pointing out winters embrace works better for tanks to the point a tank can easily out dps a dps trying to use winters embrace for damage to show that its abilites ARE NOT *** MEANT FOR DPS....

So, you look at Winter's Revenge, Arctic Blast, and Glacial Presence which all scales with offensive stats and yet ignores it to say Winter's Embrace is not meant for DPS? I guess the 150k+ parses people pull out with it are made of imagination.

You know, this goes well beyond just scalling on skills, in which you'd already lose, aside from attributes you have gear, enchantments, traits, mundus, CPs, buffs, all these variables put you even more farther from optimal DPS, everything you do to boost your HP is a sacrifice made to DPS one way or the other, in PvE you're either a DPS or a Tank, trying to be both just means you'll be mediocre at both.

But of course, either DPS or Tankiness doesn't mean much if you're just playing overland and running random DGs, you can literally build anything and it will work, most of the game is easy enough that it creates the false perspective that what you're doing is optimal.

And by the way, even for Tanks HP isn't everything, investing all your attribute points into it is good, but if you're trying to squeeze more from gear and skills you'll definitely be squishier than a more balanced build, and likely also have less utility to your group.

Morvan · November 11

fenn1539 wrote: »

srly to move onto artic blast, part of its problem for anyone other than tank is while yea, most fights are done in melee, it does its damage in pulses for one thing with most melee combat being a lot of moving in and out meaning missing pulses is super *** easy for dps trying to avoid AoEs they cant take and nevermind the fact that many enemies tend to have their own damage pulses so its not to smart to want to be that close in in the first place if you dont have the sutain to take focused agression with its stun being more useful anyways for tanks who can guarantee that they will be close enough to even hit the stun and each subsequent pulse with it also doesnt scale with anything meaning its damage is far more flat than other abilites meaning again, the main reason you would even want to use it is for the stun while clearing trash mob hoards which a dps doesnt wanna deathball into the middle of even if they arent directly targeted cause again, AoEs are a plenty in this game meaning thats liable to take a nice chunk of damage to try to do a little bit in return.

If being melee was a problem then you'd just never see melee DPS in content, but in reality they're not just the most common, they're also the strongest on average.

Losing ticks of DoT in a fight doesn't serve as an argument for anything, literally EVERY skill can miss ticks, either because you had to move or because the boss moved, this happens all the time, it doesn't magically turn a DPS skill more suitable for tanks.

Would you say that Dual Wield is better for tanks because it's melee and the DPS has to move more often than tanks? This argument makes no sense.

Darkneblade · November 19

I think what vampires need most is something blood related theme, maybe one of passives should make it so you are always Hemorrhaging as a mechanic, then use some abilities to remove Hemorrhaging status temporarily,

Also Eviscerate and morphs should be charge ability maybe, as vampires should be fast. and should be comboed, like you press that ability, then press again but this time it uses your other arm, third time? maybe it should be bite that removes Hemorrhaging effect from target and heals you.

Blood Frenzy could use whole rework tbh, its currently most Risk to Risk power. Not even rewarding.

Mesmerize needs something....maybe Cowardice debuff.