Vampire undeath scaling

KikuNightFlower

Has anyone tested the scaling of the vampire passive undeath? If so please enlighten me as to how exactly it works . I’ve searched for a few hours but couldn’t find anything conclusive. I assume it functions similar to mark of the pariah, which I was able to find lots of test data on.

Thanks!

Datthaw

I'm sure some numbers guy has figured it out. But the problem I find is that there aren't any set numbers for damage mitigation. So like say you have 10k resist, what does that actually mean? What does the 10k do to a 5k attack? I'm sure some people have stood there taking attacks with different gear and figured this out. But that's wayyy more time and effort than most people are gonna put into it.

getemshauna

It scales like every other % damage mitigation, nothing fancy.

ZeroXFF

gethemshauna wrote: »

It scales like every other % damage mitigation, nothing fancy.

Are you suggesting that it kicks in at full strength the moment you go below 50%? I highly doubt it, as that would be. It's more likely that OP is right.

Marginis

Damage mitigation is basically capped at 50% (it can go higher I believe, technically, but it's not worth discussing for this). Resistances and other buffs determine the amount of damage mitigation you get. This passive is one of those things that factors into the formula for determining damage mitigation. There is in fact a formula for this, but the takeaway is that the higher your mitigation is, the less effect any more mitigation gives. This is why a Nord is typically less preferred for tanking than a Redguard, despite a Nord having a straight up buff to damage mitigation.

So what the undeath passive would appear to do is start applying some higher numbers in the damage mitigation formula once you hit 50% health, presumably starting at 1% added resistance when you're at 50% health and going to 33% added resistance when you are near 0% health/a % health that no one has determined yet as far as I know. Either way though, as you add more damage mitigation, the added mitigation has less of an effect due to the formula, and having the cap at 50% mitigation, so you will not likely be able to actually get full 33% mitigation even at 1 health.

For a vampire tank with 33k resistances, for example, if you add on major protection, you won't actually get more than about 2% effective added mitigation. If you add on undeath, it's likely to be down to about 1% instead of your expected 33%. For non-tanks, the effect from undeath will be stronger, but at that point you're not really worrying about staying alive as much, because you don't really have the health to survive without healing anyway. Undeath is just helping out a little bit with one of the deficiencies vampires get.

tl;dr the effect of undeath, while undoubtedly a good thing to use as a vampire, has negligible effect, and so even if the scaling were widely known, it's not the most important thing to know. Otherwise, we know at least that even with linear scaling you'll get diminishing returns, and when you're most concerned about damage mitigation - as a tank - you'll receive the least benefit from undeath.

usmguy1234

Does undeath work on shields?

ZeroXFF

Marginis wrote: »

Damage mitigation is basically capped at 50% (it can go higher I believe, technically, but it's not worth discussing for this). Resistances and other buffs determine the amount of damage mitigation you get. This passive is one of those things that factors into the formula for determining damage mitigation. There is in fact a formula for this, but the takeaway is that the higher your mitigation is, the less effect any more mitigation gives. This is why a Nord is typically less preferred for tanking than a Redguard, despite a Nord having a straight up buff to damage mitigation.

So what the undeath passive would appear to do is start applying some higher numbers in the damage mitigation formula once you hit 50% health, presumably starting at 1% added resistance when you're at 50% health and going to 33% added resistance when you are near 0% health/a % health that no one has determined yet as far as I know. Either way though, as you add more damage mitigation, the added mitigation has less of an effect due to the formula, and having the cap at 50% mitigation, so you will not likely be able to actually get full 33% mitigation even at 1 health.

For a vampire tank with 33k resistances, for example, if you add on major protection, you won't actually get more than about 2% effective added mitigation. If you add on undeath, it's likely to be down to about 1% instead of your expected 33%. For non-tanks, the effect from undeath will be stronger, but at that point you're not really worrying about staying alive as much, because you don't really have the health to survive without healing anyway. Undeath is just helping out a little bit with one of the deficiencies vampires get.

tl;dr the effect of undeath, while undoubtedly a good thing to use as a vampire, has negligible effect, and so even if the scaling were widely known, it's not the most important thing to know. Otherwise, we know at least that even with linear scaling you'll get diminishing returns, and when you're most concerned about damage mitigation - as a tank - you'll receive the least benefit from undeath.

This is so wrong on so many levels. The 50% mitigation cap applies to only resistances. Yes, different mitigation sources stack multiplicatively, so adding different sources yields diminishing returns when you look at absolute values, but the benefit is, you can see directly what it does. If minor protection says it reduces damage by 8%, that's exactly what it does. If you had taken 10k from a hit before it was applied, regardless of the mitigation you had at that point, you will take 9.2k damage with it active. The same applies to every other category of mitigation. The only things that work differently are buffs that modify an existing multiplier (for example things that "increase the amount of damage you can block" etc).

And while I see people dismissing good mitigation, have you tried building a mitigation tank? Because let me tell you, all those mitigation sources that you dismiss as weak add up to the point that you can survive what was designed to be 1-shots with just barely over 30k HP (the nightblade boss in vCoS comes to mind with the heavy attack if adds weren't interrupted). And besides, damage you don't take is damage that doesn't have to be healed, so if you have to sustain yourself, it saves you a lot of resources, and if you rely on healers, you save them a lot of stressful pong games with your health bar.

As for the vampire passive, it incentivises high HP builds. If your HP is high enough that at 50% you're still able to survive all hits a tank is supposed to be able to take, that extra mitigation comes in very handy at improving that ability further. Couple it with DK's Green Dragon Blood that scales very well with max HP, and you have yourself a very self-sufficient tank.

Yakidafi

@Marginis dude... Wtf?
@KikuNightFlower
People interested can check out this topic for more info on mitigation: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/279426/damage-mitigation-explanation-updated-for-summerset/p1

As for exactly how undeath scales I do not know. But for everything except fire and Fighters guild abilities it is worth it

Nevasca

You gain aprox 0,667% damage mitigation for every 1% health you go below 50%. You can use this to calculate your mitigation:

https://jscalc.io/calc/fiasVNPSGsOdmsF6

Includes vampire, resistances, aegis, major protection, maim, everything.

EDIT: Go on Monster Forms, choose Vampire, then Undeath passive and use the slider.
EDIT 2: @usmguy1234 Yes it does work on shields.

usmguy1234

Littlebluelizard wrote: »

You gain aprox 0,667% damage mitigation for every 1% health you go below 50%. You can use this to calculate your mitigation:

https://jscalc.io/calc/fiasVNPSGsOdmsF6

Includes vampire, resistances, aegis, major protection, maim, everything.

EDIT: Go on Monster Forms, choose Vampire, then Undeath passive and use the slider.
EDIT 2: @usmguy1234 Yes it does work on shields.

Thank you!

KikuNightFlower

@Yakidafi Thank you for the link. I'm familiar with the page and have it favorited. Lots of good information there, but as you said it doesn't include how undeath scales.

@Littlebluelizard Thank you for the link, I had found this calculator before, and I think it's a great tool for the flat mitigation values. I see that the creator put in a sliding scale, but it looks like they assumed a linear relationship between the amount of missing health and the damage reduction provided. Mark of the Pariah (and a few other examples) would suggest that this isn't the case. More information on that could be found here:https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/383840/math-pvp-defensive-set-comparison-impreg-brass-pariah-riposte-more/p1

So I'm still looking for the answer, and/or some test data from which we could determine it. Two people should easily be able to test this; scrolling combat damage, strip down so no crit/procs, duel, and just light attack. With no crit we should be able to establish a baseline damage per attack, and then see how that changes below 50%. I haven't unlocked the passive yet, and thus haven't been able to test it myself

Malacthulhu

usmguy1234 wrote: »

Does undeath work on shields?

Yes, so you could shield up and use equallibrium etc, even though no one would ever do this considering the options, you will notice the damage reduction more on a high health build and it depends if you are doing pvp or pve content etc. The point of it was prob to manage the fire weakness which use to be 50% and that weakness is calculated at the beggining of the dmg calc.

Marginis

ZeroXFF wrote: »

Marginis wrote: »

Damage mitigation is basically capped at 50% (it can go higher I believe, technically, but it's not worth discussing for this). Resistances and other buffs determine the amount of damage mitigation you get. This passive is one of those things that factors into the formula for determining damage mitigation. There is in fact a formula for this, but the takeaway is that the higher your mitigation is, the less effect any more mitigation gives. This is why a Nord is typically less preferred for tanking than a Redguard, despite a Nord having a straight up buff to damage mitigation.

So what the undeath passive would appear to do is start applying some higher numbers in the damage mitigation formula once you hit 50% health, presumably starting at 1% added resistance when you're at 50% health and going to 33% added resistance when you are near 0% health/a % health that no one has determined yet as far as I know. Either way though, as you add more damage mitigation, the added mitigation has less of an effect due to the formula, and having the cap at 50% mitigation, so you will not likely be able to actually get full 33% mitigation even at 1 health.

For a vampire tank with 33k resistances, for example, if you add on major protection, you won't actually get more than about 2% effective added mitigation. If you add on undeath, it's likely to be down to about 1% instead of your expected 33%. For non-tanks, the effect from undeath will be stronger, but at that point you're not really worrying about staying alive as much, because you don't really have the health to survive without healing anyway. Undeath is just helping out a little bit with one of the deficiencies vampires get.

tl;dr the effect of undeath, while undoubtedly a good thing to use as a vampire, has negligible effect, and so even if the scaling were widely known, it's not the most important thing to know. Otherwise, we know at least that even with linear scaling you'll get diminishing returns, and when you're most concerned about damage mitigation - as a tank - you'll receive the least benefit from undeath.

This is so wrong on so many levels. The 50% mitigation cap applies to only resistances. Yes, different mitigation sources stack multiplicatively, so adding different sources yields diminishing returns when you look at absolute values, but the benefit is, you can see directly what it does. If minor protection says it reduces damage by 8%, that's exactly what it does. If you had taken 10k from a hit before it was applied, regardless of the mitigation you had at that point, you will take 9.2k damage with it active. The same applies to every other category of mitigation. The only things that work differently are buffs that modify an existing multiplier (for example things that "increase the amount of damage you can block" etc).

And while I see people dismissing good mitigation, have you tried building a mitigation tank? Because let me tell you, all those mitigation sources that you dismiss as weak add up to the point that you can survive what was designed to be 1-shots with just barely over 30k HP (the nightblade boss in vCoS comes to mind with the heavy attack if adds weren't interrupted). And besides, damage you don't take is damage that doesn't have to be healed, so if you have to sustain yourself, it saves you a lot of resources, and if you rely on healers, you save them a lot of stressful pong games with your health bar.

As for the vampire passive, it incentivises high HP builds. If your HP is high enough that at 50% you're still able to survive all hits a tank is supposed to be able to take, that extra mitigation comes in very handy at improving that ability further. Couple it with DK's Green Dragon Blood that scales very well with max HP, and you have yourself a very self-sufficient tank.

Not saying adding mitigation is useless. I'm also aware that 50% only really applies to resistances. I'm saying once you go past 50% it's more a matter of why you should bother, not that you can't.). Especially with high health though, mitigation is great. That's why mitigation tanks are the meta and not sap tanks, for example. But there's a limit to this. The way it's all set up the game incentivizes diversifying stats far more than stacking, especially currently. That's how it works with buffs, where you can now only have one major and one minor buff of a type active at once (they used to stack), how it works with champion points, where you get less overall bang for your buck if you stack all your points into just a few nodes (there are fairly significantly diminishing returns now), and how it works with damage mitigation for tanks.

Sure, you can waste an ability slot on mitigating 600 damage for example, but wouldn't that slot be better off giving you a 10,000 point damage shield, or a good resource recovery option? It's all good and fine to say, "it still does 8%" but if you look at the actual numbers, 600 is a lot different from 2,400. This is why good DPSes use a mix of crit, pen, and damage - they don't just stack one. I mean, I'd take a 30% damage shield over 2% effective damage mitigation any day.

So yeah, use the passive, obviously, because it does something good for you. But when you're building a tank, the benefit is relatively insignificant, especially if you're already stacking mitigation, and if you're not a tank, you're not building for mitigation, so it's just a side benefit anyway.

And for the record, I have made straight mitigation tanks. They are too hard on the healer I've found, in addition to being fairly bland and unadaptable. Not bad by any means, but easily outdone if you actually know what you're doing. Kinda the same as vampire tanks in general too, now that I think about it... not bad, exactly, but not as good as they could be. Amazing DPSes and healers though, vampires.

KikuNightFlower

I have the passive now, if someone would like to come test with me in game, @KikuNightFlower. I’m out of town this weekend, but back Monday.

Alternatively if anybody tests in the meantime, please post your results here and enlighten the rest of us!

Thanks

THEDKEXPERIENCE

I’ve been a vampire for years on my Magplar. I’m not a tank but in Cyrodiil I have 25k health, a 6k burst heal and a 10k shield. Literally the only reason I’m still a vampire is undeath. It’s the exact reason I can get away with nonsense in PVP that I have no business attempting. Without it I’d have to scrap my whole toon. I honestly have no idea what the math is but I can say unquestionably that it’s saved my butt way more than any fire damage ever hurt me.