PTS Update 26 - Feedback Thread for Vampire & Werewolf

Thannazzar

Most Vampire bite animations are great.

The telekinetic lift twist and drain is the exception, it ruins the immersion effect.

RedReign

Alucardo wrote: »

Please fix the NPCs screaming "Guards! It's a mangy werewolf" when you're in human form. I keep getting bounties and attacked by random people even when I'm in my human form and haven't changed.

Maybe they're commenting on our personal hygiene now

ck37090

Blood Frenzy should scale off your vampire stage. Otherwise, there are going to be a ton of stage 1 burst characters using that one skill.

Vevvev

ck37090 wrote: »

Blood Frenzy should scale off your vampire stage. Otherwise, there are going to be a ton of stage 1 burst characters using that one skill.

You have a very good point. With this current set up there is very little reason to go to stage 4.

Irfind

I know its only cosmetic, but can dunmer finally get dunmervamp eyes in stage 1-2 and not humans ?

Tommy_The_Gun

Alucardo wrote: »

Please fix the NPCs screaming "Guards! It's a mangy werewolf" when you're in human form. I keep getting bounties and attacked by random people even when I'm in my human form and haven't changed.

Yep, that is weird. No one saw me transforming into WW, and no one saw me transforming back to human again. All they saw was a random WW and somehow they are able to tell it was me lol....

* Insert Oblivion psychotic guard meme here*

I think part of the problem is that being in a WW is treated as "criminal act". It would work much better if only the moment of transformation (Activating ulti & deactivating ulti) would trigger the bounty if some one saw you.

Of course, best solution would be to make accumulated bounty during werewolf form, to be counted separately and if no one saw you transforming into/back - to simply remove the bounty.

This could add an interesting flavour to werewolf gameplay (looking for safe place to transform) - similar to how Superman always used a phone-booth to dress up into super hero outfit - so no one would know his identity .

xAlucardx92

So where do we start.....

Blood Frenzy.... come on, I mean what did we learn when from "New Moon Acolyte". Nothing good will happen, when it is easy to stack a lot of Weapon/Spell Dmg..... Any sniper gets a wet mouth when he/she see this skill.

Unnatural Movement so at first, invisible is a NB think. Not every class should have easy access to it. And second, Vamp already has Mist Form to run away.

Eviscerate the Skill cost is to low, and dmg is too high when you have in mind what the Morphs do (Will always be a critical Strike if you cast it while under half Health + up to 50% more damage based on your missing Health).

RedReign

Vevvev wrote: »

ck37090 wrote: »

Blood Frenzy should scale off your vampire stage. Otherwise, there are going to be a ton of stage 1 burst characters using that one skill.

You have a very good point. With this current set up there is very little reason to go to stage 4.

Aside from invisibility sprint there is not a single reason to move beyond stage 1 vampirism as it stands. You can't even talk to NPCs if youre beyond a certain stage which is ridiculous considering it takes 4 hours to lower your stage (or hey, you can buy a totally not pay-to-win fountain to do it instantly)

MotownMurder

xAlucardx92 wrote: »

So where do we start.....

Blood Frenzy.... come on, I mean what did we learn when from "New Moon Acolyte". Nothing good will happen, when it is easy to stack a lot of Weapon/Spell Dmg..... Any sniper gets a wet mouth when he/she see this skill.

Unnatural Movement so at first, invisible is a NB think. Not every class should have easy access to it. And second, Vamp already has Mist Form to run away.

Eviscerate the Skill cost is to low, and dmg is too high when you have in mind what the Morphs do (Will always be a critical Strike if you cast it while under half Health + up to 50% more damage based on your missing Health).

These are the few bright spots in the whole vampire arsenal lol, it would be a really bad idea to get rid of them. Like, yes, at stage 4, eviscerate does have a very very low cost, but that's supposed to make up for every other skill having a 20% cost increase. And if it didn't do strong damage, nobody would use it and vampirism really would be useless.

XomRhoK

RedReign wrote: »

Vevvev wrote: »

ck37090 wrote: »

Blood Frenzy should scale off your vampire stage. Otherwise, there are going to be a ton of stage 1 burst characters using that one skill.

You have a very good point. With this current set up there is very little reason to go to stage 4.

You can't even talk to NPCs if youre beyond a certain stage which is ridiculous considering it takes 4 hours to lower your stage (or hey, you can buy a totally not pay-to-win fountain to do it instantly)

You can buy Bloody Mara potion to decrease your stage or use Mesmerize skill on NPC to bypass restrictions of stage 4 vampirism.

lookstwice

I just wish they would move part of the dark stalker passive the sneak speed bonus only to say the Thieves guild passives or Dark Brotherhood. I don't want to have another set of gear just for that.

At this point that's the only thing I want. The crouching speed can remain a Vamp thing for all I care.

Actually not even move that skill, just add a similar passive to Thieves or Brotherhood.

ck37090

MotownMurder wrote: »

xAlucardx92 wrote: »

So where do we start.....

Blood Frenzy.... come on, I mean what did we learn when from "New Moon Acolyte". Nothing good will happen, when it is easy to stack a lot of Weapon/Spell Dmg..... Any sniper gets a wet mouth when he/she see this skill.

Unnatural Movement so at first, invisible is a NB think. Not every class should have easy access to it. And second, Vamp already has Mist Form to run away.

Eviscerate the Skill cost is to low, and dmg is too high when you have in mind what the Morphs do (Will always be a critical Strike if you cast it while under half Health + up to 50% more damage based on your missing Health).

These are the few bright spots in the whole vampire arsenal lol, it would be a really bad idea to get rid of them. Like, yes, at stage 4, eviscerate does have a very very low cost, but that's supposed to make up for every other skill having a 20% cost increase. And if it didn't do strong damage, nobody would use it and vampirism really would be useless.

the problem with the blood frenzy is it needs to scale off the vamp stage. As it is there are going to be a ton of stage 1 vamps abusing this 1 skill for the incredible burst potential. Toggle, burst, toggle off.

MotownMurder

ck37090 wrote: »

MotownMurder wrote: »

xAlucardx92 wrote: »

So where do we start.....

Blood Frenzy.... come on, I mean what did we learn when from "New Moon Acolyte". Nothing good will happen, when it is easy to stack a lot of Weapon/Spell Dmg..... Any sniper gets a wet mouth when he/she see this skill.

Unnatural Movement so at first, invisible is a NB think. Not every class should have easy access to it. And second, Vamp already has Mist Form to run away.

Eviscerate the Skill cost is to low, and dmg is too high when you have in mind what the Morphs do (Will always be a critical Strike if you cast it while under half Health + up to 50% more damage based on your missing Health).

These are the few bright spots in the whole vampire arsenal lol, it would be a really bad idea to get rid of them. Like, yes, at stage 4, eviscerate does have a very very low cost, but that's supposed to make up for every other skill having a 20% cost increase. And if it didn't do strong damage, nobody would use it and vampirism really would be useless.

the problem with the blood frenzy is it needs to scale off the vamp stage. As it is there are going to be a ton of stage 1 vamps abusing this 1 skill for the incredible burst potential. Toggle, burst, toggle off.

That's a reasonable suggestion. I was thinking the fact that the health drain would go down as you go up in vampire stages would've been enough, but if they made the damage numbers scale up too like you say, that would probably be a good change, and hopefully keep it from being a mandatory thing that everyone runs if that's where the meta would be otherwise.

Thannazzar

OmniDo wrote: »

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

[*] How does feeding feel overall?

Now this change was better. Only beef I have with it is one of the animations, where your character spits out some blood after biting the NPC. It isn't moonshine, it's blood. That stuff is LIFE to us, not some bad tasting brew.
.

Must have been an Altmer you bit, takes forever to get the taste out of your mouth.

Cireous

I am sorry for not following the format you might prefer, but my brain doesn't allow me to follow other peoples rules:
What I LIKE about the vampire changes:

• Unnatural movement! This is the single funnest thing about being a vampire now. Except when I stumble on a pebble and lose invisibility. That part could use some work.
• The absolute requirement to feed to remain stage 4 and have access to the funnest thing about being a vampire now. I actually feel like a vampire who has a hunger that needs to be satiated. I love this tremendously.
• The feeding animations. These are seriously awesome. What a great re-work. I love the choice between blade and bite. Fits perfectly into my thieving play style, too.
• I love the animation that transforms you into the ultimate form (growing my body bigger) and that my female character turns into a seemingly female monstrosity. Unpopular opinion, but I don't even hate how my transformed self looks. I also love how powerful I feel in this form: Bat AOE, healing myself while doing damage, all the extra health and stamina and magicka. In its current state, this ultimate will remain on my bar forever.

What I DO NOT LIKE about the vampire changes:

• Having to be a large distance away from an NPC to feed. Indoors, and even outdoors under less than perfect circumstances, this greatly reduces the amount of NPCs available for feeding. I really like taking a private bite inside of buildings, and for the most part, this cannot be done now; the quarters are too close. I would prefer feeding to work at the same distance as blade of woe via a different keybind with the prompt to use either one coming up at the same time. Perhaps decreasing the font size makes sense, to fit both prompts on the screen.
• Except for the ultimate and passives, I have no real desire to use any of the new skills. Vampires are magicka based and magicka struggles enough as it is to stay alive (in pvp and harder content), so I don't need further hindrances here. Also, I need skills with range and I need dots. Melee skills make no real sense for my play style (on any class I play--keep shoving magicka melee skills at me and I will continue ignoring them) and channels take you out of active play and make you feel more vulnerable and less engaged. I wish the channeled heal was a healing dot instead. I wish Eviscerate was a stamina morph (why can't stamina players be vampires too?) and I'd like there to be a magicka morph of this skill that has a 28 meter dot of some kind. As far as mist form is concerned, it still has the same problem it always has, it's never going to be as fast as major expedition from another skill + sprinting + using your healing staff to keep you alive as you run away. Mist form is just not fast enough. It's a death sentence and it never made much sense (thinking of pvp here). The only skill I am considering is the aoe stun/snare, perhaps for pvp, but I dislike that there is no damage component to it at all. Edit: Never mind, seems once you work out the bugginess of this skill, it also forces NPCs to chat with me that otherwise would not because of my late stage Vampirism. This skill is officially beloved and on my bar. What a cool hidden use!
• I run out of magicka extremely quickly at stage 4. Is it worth it just for invisibility sprinting and the ultimate? Probably not, honestly. But I do play Overland content almost entirely, so for now I will likely struggle through the weirdness. Maybe you could create some gear sets that would help out with this? I'd like something with a lot of magcika recovery on it that reduces magicka cost of all skills and also increases movement speed while sprinting, independent of expedition buffs.
• Since when does sprinting take you out of sneaking? I could have swore that I use to be able to sprint while sneaking. I couldn't do it for long because it drains your stamina bar so fast, but I remember it was possible. Seems this cannot be done on PTS or live now. With unnatural movement, I would like to be able to sneak, then sprint while sneaking, go invisible, and once I stop invisibly sprinting, remain sneaking. So, the question begs to be asked, why can't I have all the things?

Cireous

XomRhoK wrote: »

You can buy Bloody Mara potion to decrease your stage or use Mesmerize skill on NPC to bypass restrictions of stage 4 vampirism.

How are you getting Mesmerize to work on NPCs who won't speak to you at stage 4? This doesn't work for me at all, morphed or unmorphed. Would be super fun if it did.

Vevvev

Cireous wrote: »

[*] Since when does sprinting take you out of sneaking? I could have swore that I use to be able to sprint while sneaking. I couldn't do it for long because it drains your stamina bar so fast, but I remember it was possible. Seems this cannot be done on PTS or live now. With unnatural movement, I would like to be able to sneak, then sprint while sneaking, go invisible, and once I stop invisibly sprinting, remain sneaking. So, the question begs to be asked, why can't I have all the things?
[/list]

Sprinting has always taken you out of sneaking. While sprinting you cannot cast abilities, attack, or enter sneak.

Cireous wrote: »

XomRhoK wrote: »

You can buy Bloody Mara potion to decrease your stage or use Mesmerize skill on NPC to bypass restrictions of stage 4 vampirism.

How are you getting Mesmerize to work on NPCs who won't speak to you at stage 4? This doesn't work for me at all, morphed or unmorphed. Would be super fun if it did.

Are they facing you? If not it might not work. If they are facing you its a bug.

Cireous

Vevvev wrote: »

Sprinting has always taken you out of sneaking. While sprinting you cannot cast abilities, attack, or enter sneak.

Are they facing you? If not it might not work. If they are facing you its a bug.

I remember hitting sprint, remaining crouched, and sneaking only slightly faster than normal, with my stamina bar decreasing quickly. Alternatively, while on a character that runs at a normal speed when sneaking (vampire for example), I would sprint while sneaking and it would be at a fairly normal sprint speed. I have been playing since beta, so I have to assume this is something that one could do, but has since been changed. Edit: Duh, I wasn't sprinting, I was just hitting skills that gave me Major Expedition, increasing my run speed (which felt like sprinting while sneaking).

Also, I just logged on to the PTS and mesmerized these NPCs in Solitude from every direction (from the front, the side, and behind) and every distance (in their face, a step back, another step back, etc.) and still I remain a monstrous vampire which the citizen will NOT talk to. So you are telling me you have actually used this skill yourself and it works? EDIT: I've tried more NPCs and it seems it is working on a few of them. It leaves a purple glowyness over their heads. How weird, it must indeed be bugged for many NPCs. Hmm, I wonder if it will work better if I completely rank up the morph. Will go do that now and try it out afterwords.

• It took all day, but I finally leveled Stupify, one of the Mesmerize morphs, to rank 4 and tried it out on all the NPCs in Solitude it wasn't working on previously, and it now works on every single one. So it seems it wasn't bugged, but working as intended. You just gotta fully rank it up. This is actually really cool!
• Okay, I tried even more NPCs and it seems it does not work 100% of the time still. It was working on all the merchants though. So I am not sure if it's intended that non essential NPCs should remain uninterested, or if it is actually bugged in some instances.
• Yeh, it's definitely bugged. I can't even get it to work on the bankers.

ecru

Blood Frenzy will create a divide between classes that have passive self heals and classes that don't. Classes with good passive healing will be able to toggle it on for long periods of time with the penalty of only one bar slot, while classes with little/no passive healing will not be able to sustain it without also slotting and using a heal regularly. I like the idea of the ability but some classes having almost zero passive healing (Necro) will mean they'll fall way behind in DPS compared to classes that still have substantial passive healing (like magblade with swallow soul).

As a necro, I basically can't use this without slotting an unreliable self heal, while if I were a magblade, I'd imagine sustaining it would be as easy as just using Swallow Soul as my spammable. I actually think this plus the tether/siphon change will be enough to make me stop playing necro as the DPS difference will be too wide to justify continuing to play the class.

RedReign

XomRhoK wrote: »

RedReign wrote: »

Vevvev wrote: »

ck37090 wrote: »

Blood Frenzy should scale off your vampire stage. Otherwise, there are going to be a ton of stage 1 burst characters using that one skill.

You have a very good point. With this current set up there is very little reason to go to stage 4.

You can't even talk to NPCs if youre beyond a certain stage which is ridiculous considering it takes 4 hours to lower your stage (or hey, you can buy a totally not pay-to-win fountain to do it instantly)

You can buy Bloody Mara potion to decrease your stage or use Mesmerize skill on NPC to bypass restrictions of stage 4 vampirism.

I'm sorry, excuse my ignorance but are saying that if I use Mesmerize I can bypass the NPCs refusal to speak to me? If thats true I'll change that part of my feedback immediately.

Universe

I'm considering to cure my main character of Vampirism because I find the Greymoor's drawbacks of being a vampire are too harsh... Unless ZOS will make the drawbacks less punishing in the next incremental patches, my opinion will remain the same.

Chrlynsch

https://youtu.be/NR0GvXyjaOg

Vevvev

Cireous wrote: »

I remember hitting sprint, remaining crouched, and sneaking only slightly faster than normal, with my stamina bar decreasing quickly. Alternatively, while on a character that runs at a normal speed when sneaking (vampire for example), I would sprint while sneaking and it would be at a fairly normal sprint speed. I have been playing since beta, so I have to assume this is something that one could do, but has since been changed.

Sprint cancels sneaking but I think you're talking about the vampire speed passive while sneaking. While a stage 4 vampire on Live if you enter sneak you ignore the sneaking speed penalty and do the running animation. You're not actually sprinting but sneaking.

Kilcosu

ecru wrote: »

Blood Frenzy will create a divide between classes that have passive self heals and classes that don't. Classes with good passive healing will be able to toggle it on for long periods of time with the penalty of only one bar slot, while classes with little/no passive healing will not be able to sustain it without also slotting and using a heal regularly. I like the idea of the ability but some classes having almost zero passive healing (Necro) will mean they'll fall way behind in DPS compared to classes that still have substantial passive healing (like magblade with swallow soul).

As a necro, I basically can't use this without slotting an unreliable self heal, while if I were a magblade, I'd imagine sustaining it would be as easy as just using Swallow Soul as my spammable. I actually think this plus the tether/siphon change will be enough to make me stop playing necro as the DPS difference will be too wide to justify continuing to play the class.

as a magblade it is 100% possible to sustain simmering frenzy with only siphoning attacks and grim focus with eviscerate. Even ramped up to 100% more health cost per second it wasn't a problem.

I do hope they can keep this effectiveness and also perhaps make an alteration so other classes with less passive healing like you said can benefit.

However I am thinking of playing around with a high ulti gen necro (vamp drain + necrotic potency) for the blood scion. that might be interesting

Wuuffyy

Werewolf call of the pack passive isn’t working at all, devour synergy for it is only giving you one attempt per corpse, Stam sorc ultimate cost reduction isn’t applying fully to WW. Should be and was 253 at max morph rank, now 270 (only 10% vs. 15).

NocturnalRequiem

Vampire

• If you played with a copied character, did your existing skill line XP progress transfer properly?
  My existing skill line XP progress did transfer properly, However I did have to relevel all the new morphs even though they were similar to the original skills.
• Did you find the justice gameplay fun and intuitive?
  I found the justice gameplay fun and feel like it adds to the seriousness of choosing the vampire lifestyle.
• Do you feel the idea of being a vampire feels reinforced in the game world?
  I feel the idea of being a vampire feels reinforced
• Does the skill line feel up to date with the current modern game?
  I would like to see the ability to extend the Vampire Scion Form during combat, It feels too short sometimes
• Does the skill line fit into your current build and feel useful? Do you primarily play as a Tank, Healer or DPS?
  I primarily play Magicka Based PDS and could see these changes enhancing my gamplay experience
• Does the new direction feel faithful to the lore?
  I believe it does
• How does feeding feel overall?
  Though there are still some bugs with the feeding animations I love the new feel of feeding

Lughlongarm

I spend time playing with the new Vampire skill line, I made some attempts to theory crafted some builds to fit vamps specifically. I really like the new design direction of the vamp(active game-play/trade-offs etc) and overall I think it is very fun. So where are the problems in my opinion?

The more I thought about it I came to realize that the vamp is at its strongest at stage 1, which is the opposite of what the devs were aiming for. Let's break it down:

1) 20% general skill increase vs 40%vamp skill decrease. This ratio do not work for the benefit of vamp for several reasons. Just few weeks ago when we tested changes for LA/HA we also tested an adjusted version for the "Molag Kena" monster set, under the devs comment for this change there was an interesting explanation why the opposite of 8% cost skill increase is worth 20% skill decrease(2.5 ratio). If anything I would expect that the vamp skill discount would be 50%(2.5 ration to the 20% increase). With the current situation, even if the player uses 5 vampire skills and 5 non-vampire skills(best case scenario) the Average skill cost works against the vamp the more stages you have.

2)the 20% increase is to all skills, including block/dodge/break free etc While having no bonus on the vamp side to counter these penalties. This just increase the deficit of the overall vamp sustain which increase the more stages you have.

3)Ultimate cost increase vs Vamp specific ulty decrease. This is basically saying that a stage 4 vamp must play with one specific ulti as its only viable option, so basically removing options for higher stages vamps. On the flip side, this design choice could create a situation of a very low ulti coat build potential for the vamp ulti, which will probably be problematic and will have to be addressed in the future.

4)Stage 1 vampires have access to all the vampire skills and almost none of the penalties and also,the base cost on most of the vamp skill are not even that high to begin with, so why bother? For passives? Isn't Dipping for passives is something you wanted to avoid? Right now a stage 1 vamp can create a cheesy mist form build with high health regen and take only -10% health regen penalty? You know this is gong to be a problem....

What I think should be done:

1) Make the the 20% cost increase to apply only to magicka+stamina active skills. The vamp discount stays at 40% but will not decrease the vamp ulti(adjust the ulti cost accordingly). change the health regen penalty to 25%/50%/75%/100% based on stage.

2)Increasing the base cost of the vamp skill, specifically mist form, 1k toggle before discounts is nothing. You can Mist+block to remove all immobs+snares and gain the 300 wd/sd for almost no cost, after discounts sprinting costs more(should be like 2k base magicka per sec).

3)add the stamina+magicka regen passives base of stage(5%/10%/15%/20%), to adjust to gap between the skills cost increase to the vampire skill discount, and also the increase of the base costs.

4)Lock the vampire active skills behind vamp stages: This will help both with balance concerns and the theme of the vamp actually getting stronger.

Stage 1 - gain - Eviscerate - The basic spammable.

Stage 2 - gain Mist Form + Mesmerize - Both skills are strong and unique both could also considered as a "class fixers", that offer utility to existing builds. That's why I think being locked behind specifically stage 2.

Stage 3 - Blood Frenzy + Vampiric Drain - These skills should be Vampire defining vampire game play(Blood frenzy cost health, Vampiric Drain powerful heal based on missing health). Because Vampiric Drain is locked behind stage 3, you can add to the current effect, the damage it has on live. This will also give a range offensive option to the vampire.

Stage 4 - Blood Scion. This skill is no longer being discounted by the the vampire skill reductions. In stage 4 vamps have 0 health regen, which is a big deal. health regen+mist form was always a thing, stage 4 is the only stage when you cannot take advantage of that. Not to mention the extra fire damage. Blood Sicion is here to compensate. The stage 5 bonus of the Perfect Scion should be added to the base skill. New Perfect Scion is now empowering the vamp skills giving them extra powers. Stage 4 vemps and Blood Scion are tied. You take max penalties on stage 4 but you can offset 100% of it all for the duration of the uliti. This will strengthen both the mechanic and the fantasy of the stage 4 vampire.

I think that the above changes will make the vampire game-play much more cohesive and satisfying.

Thank you for reading.

Ozymandias_13

On the live server, you have to put in the effort to feed to keep your vampire stage penalties low.
It needs to be the same with the new vampire changes. Your feeding should reduce penalties and make you stronger.

To clarify, my suggestion is to reverse the penalty stages to reward the frequent effort of eating, especially given vampirism is inherently criminal now as well. Stage 1 vampire should have the harshest regeneration and ability cost penalties, maybe even harshest fire weakness but that's negotiable. As you progress to stage 4 those penalties should alleviate. If necessary they can reduce the stage transition time to require a little more frequent feeding.

The biggest complaint about the changes is the increased ability costs and -100% regen. Those are terrible, but if it's insisted to be kept then reverse the detriment stages to let us work for our strength instead of having to put in the extra work, intentionally crippling our builds.

bellatrixed

Am I correct in thinking with the changes that vampires as healers is no longer viable? My endgame main is a vamp healer and now it seems like she'll take massive penalties to normal abilities like heals just for being one.

And in my playing I haven't found anything that looks like increased group utility for stuff like healing. Have I overlooked something?

Ozymandias_13

bellatrixed wrote: »

Am I correct in thinking with the changes that vampires as healers is no longer viable? My endgame main is a vamp healer and now it seems like she'll take massive penalties to normal abilities like heals just for being one.

And in my playing I haven't found anything that looks like increased group utility for stuff like healing. Have I overlooked something?

As a vampire healer (on two characters) that's the perception i have as well, and it terrifies me. On my original character, right after launch long before everything scaled, I went from the starter zone to Reaper's March as fast as the game would physically let me and worked my butt off to become infected by a bloodfiend way higher level than me and complete the vampire quest much higher level than me.
I'd hate to think I worked so to be the vampire I am today only for it to rot into something that directly prevents me from playing anymore.