Werewolf vs. Vampire - Serious problems on PTS!

WhyMustItBe

Chrlynsch wrote: »

You are missing a couple cons to werewolf.

-Can't heal allies
-Can't stealth
-Melee only
-Loss of the majority of class passives/guild
-Loss of all weapon passives
-Expensive abilities (most 25% more expensive than a human's comparable abilities)
-No snare/root removal

Mostly true, though I was not aware you lost passives from your guilds & weapons. Is this for certain true?

Also, vampire can't heal allies (with pure vampire skills), and is melee only (if strictly using vampire skills). True they are more flexible being in human form, but I wouldn't necessarily call those benefits per say as you really have to be in melee range to use the vampire spammable, and you won't be doing much healing as a vampire since the only heals you could use would be non-vampire abilities which incur the 20% cost increase at rank 4.

Good points though. I am really interested to test now exactly how much more weapon damage I have as WW when transforming from the dual wield bar vs. the bow bar, and whether this is purely from higher total damage or due to the passive that increases offhand damage contribution.

Chrlynsch

WhyMustItBe wrote: »

Chrlynsch wrote: »

You are missing a couple cons to werewolf.

-Can't heal allies
-Can't stealth
-Melee only
-Loss of the majority of class passives/guild
-Loss of all weapon passives
-Expensive abilities (most 25% more expensive than a human's comparable abilities)
-No snare/root removal

Mostly true, though I was not aware you lost passives from your guilds & weapons. Is this for certain true?

Also, vampire can't heal allies (with pure vampire skills), and is melee only (if strictly using vampire skills). True they are more flexible being in human form, but I wouldn't necessarily call those benefits per say as you really have to be in melee range to use the vampire spammable, and you won't be doing much healing as a vampire since the only heals you could use would be non-vampire abilities which incur the 20% cost increase at rank 4.

Good points though. I am really interested to test now exactly how much more weapon damage I have as WW when transforming from the dual wield bar vs. the bow bar, and whether this is purely from higher total damage or due to the passive that increases offhand damage contribution.

100% certain about all of that.

The thing about Vampire is that you still can heal allies and you still can use whatever you want, you can use any abilities that you want. Werewolf is locked into using only the 5 skills and its choice of werewolf form morph.
The % weapon damage gain is kind of a hollow stat as it isn't like werewolf can use any human abilities in form and vise versa.

However when the Vampire takes its ult form it gains 10k magicka and Stamina so the abilities It uses become more powerful human or not, same thing with the ability it has to gain weapon damage and spell damage.

Vampire has a sliding scale of both bonuses and drawbacks, werewolf has an on off switch. They are different, use your time comparing vampire line to the human counterpart. Compare oranges and clementines not apples and oranges.

WhyMustItBe

Chrlynsch wrote: »

The % weapon damage gain is kind of a hollow stat as it isn't like werewolf can use any human abilities in form and vise versa.

This is not actually true though. Weapon damage directly increases the tooltip damage of werewolf abilities. That is why the pounce ability follow-up adds weapon damage: because that DOES increase your damage in form.

So does max stamina. Werewolf abilities scale off all the same damage modifiers as normal stamina abilities.

Chrlynsch

WhyMustItBe wrote: »

Chrlynsch wrote: »

The % weapon damage gain is kind of a hollow stat as it isn't like werewolf can use any human abilities in form and vise versa.

This is not actually true though. Weapon damage directly increases the tooltip damage of werewolf abilities. That is why the pounce ability follow-up adds weapon damage: because that DOES increase your damage in form.

So does max stamina. Werewolf abilities scale off all the same damage modifiers as normal stamina abilities.

But think about it... the devs specifically set the damage of the abilities and how they scale... the 18% could have been taken out and werewolf abilities adjusted to do the same damage. As both the abilites and the passive are exclusive to the transformation, it is a hollow buff, it isn't like you can slot vigor and simply get a stronger vigor heal while transformed vs using it in human form.

YandereGirlfriend

This is definitely a one-sided portrayal of the situation but it certainly contains elements of truth.

WW seems to be pretty over-loaded on a bunch of those skills. I think it's great that they are getting a more well-rounded class toolkit but in no way do they need the random toss-ins like Major Berserk (!!!) and Minor Maim.

But OP seems to approach this post from a purely PvE perspective, as many of the new vampire abilities seem quite good indeed for PvP. I also definitely detect the familiar vampire perspective of "I should have all these buffs with only nominal inconveniences." It was that approach to balancing it that gave us the old OP vampirism that was an outright upgrade over being a mortal. That was awful and it is rightly being killed off in this patch.

Flame damage, as OP stated, is actually reduced versus Live. Furthermore, it is totally mitigated by the 30% passive. Health Regen needs to be eliminated for lore reasons and it is also a trivial consideration for PvE and only a modest drawback in PvP where Healing rather than Health Regen is what keeps players alive. (That said, the Health Regen on Bloody Mara is clearly ridiculous and should be replaced by a buff that is actually useful to vampires.)

So that leaves ability costs as basically the lone substantial penalty for choosing to play as a vamp. I agree that 20% might be too high and that having a 0% penalty at the lowest stage might be a good compromise. As such, a 0-15% scale is likely a fair middle-ground, but certainly it cannot go lower than 10%.

If people are actually serious about having no cost increase penalty, then you must be willing to accept something drastic like +100% Fire Damage and a reduction to the mitigation passive. Yes, that might mean that certain trials are not possible as a vampire and yes that might mean that you get blown up in PvP by magDKs, but that is the trade: power for vulnerability.

That said, I would agree that the WW penalty is quite weak indeed and should be strengthened given all the additional power derived from the new tree. Perhaps increase the Poison damage taken to 50% and then change the Fighters Guild passive to include bonus damage against WW using ANY damage abilities (not simply Silver Shards and Dawnbreaker), say 10%?

There are also probably some quality-of-life tweaks and minor buffs to vampire abilities to be had but overall the theme must remain: power in some areas for meaningful weakness in others, anything else and it's back to the broken "upgrade" format of the past.

WhyMustItBe

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

*snip*

Please don't take this personally, but I have frankly never understood why it was so important to some people to make absolutely certain that vampirism, a sub-class that can be gained by anyone for free in-game, MUST necessarily be weaker in all respects than "normal" characters.

This entire argument seems based on a flawed premise to me, as in terms of lore vampires are immortal and possessed of superhuman strength, with some minor weaknesses to fire and maybe health regen.

Yet it appears ZOS is going out on a limb to satisfy this vocal minority who seem to be on a crusade to make sure vampires in ESO fit their personal idea of how they should be rather than what lore or basic MMO balance logic says they should be, and I don't understand the developers being swayed by this thinking any more than I understand the view in the first place.

That said, I think it is good we can at least agree on a compromise that players should not be penalized at rank 1 for no meaningful combat benefits whatsoever. But whatever position one takes, it can't be argued that werewolf in Greymarch will be far stronger in combat and group utility than vampire, as well as far more diverse in terms of freedom of builds and playstyle.

Which is why I sincerely hope ZOS rethink this normal ability penalty and go with something that doesn't essentially exclude healers and tanks from being vampires. Also, possibly make drain a bat cloud pull with splash damage and mist form a toggle with double damage when in Scion form. Mesmerize could even gain a new animation like the strangulate ability.

Changes like that would make a big difference in terms of the "wow" factor.

RogueShark

Vevvev wrote: »

You speak as if everyone and their brother slots Dawnbreaker. Sure everyone has it but there are cheaper ultimates out there like Take Flight, crescent sweep, and Incapacitating Strike that can function better than Dawnbreaker when utilized correctly. A simple 3% increase to weapon damage is useful but for some they want the stamina recovery over more damage instead. Speaking of Dawnbreaker the Flawless Dawnbreaker morph gives 300 extra weapon damage for 20 seconds when cast, and it sticks even after you bar swap. You can back bar that ultimate for a boost in weapon damage while getting the 15% stamina regeneration buff with the Werewolf ult on your primary bar.

Dawnbreaker is slotted for the passive damage increase on front bar and your actual damage ulti on the backbar. That's a pretty common/typical setup in a lot of cases. So things like Take Flight, Storm Atro, etc are on the backbar. You don't slot dawnbreaker necessarily to use it, though it's not a horrible ulti to use if you need to either.

Wlnamp

A vampire was previously useless trash, but now it has become double useless trash.
I SERIOUSLY don’t understand why so many people want to get useless skills and a set of debuffs, + an ugly appearance.

Chrlynsch

Werewolf abilities may seam overtuned but this is because werewolves only have one bar, so their abilities need get more miles out of them.

Take a look at this video to get a better understanding of how major Berserk and their new ability tweaks have really helped them...

https://youtu.be/NR0GvXyjaOg

You may be frustrated with the vamp changes, but this gives you no right to ask for nerfs to a playstyle you do not understand. Walk a day in the shoes of a werewolf and watch yourself get rolled over in pvp, and kicked out of trial groups before you even get to the boss.

Thevampirenight

Well Fengrush and his Orc Army might be running around as an Orc Pack with Greymoor.
So I do think we might see a pvp meta of werewolves which will be interesting. Now it use to be vampires now its werewolves. Which is kinda surprising the Werewolves becoming the new meta for a change.
Which will be interesting.

Sarannah

Reading the changes to vampires... they should keep them the same as they are now on live. It is fun, no hassle and has downsides already.

Looking at how they are making vampires, they might as well just remove them from the game... that would seem more fun!

WhyMustItBe

Chrlynsch wrote: »

Werewolf abilities may seam overtuned but this is because werewolves only have one bar, so their abilities need get more miles out of them.

Take a look at this video to get a better understanding of how major Berserk and their new ability tweaks have really helped them...

https://youtu.be/NR0GvXyjaOg

You may be frustrated with the vamp changes, but this gives you no right to ask for nerfs to a playstyle you do not understand. Walk a day in the shoes of a werewolf and watch yourself get rolled over in pvp, and kicked out of trial groups before you even get to the boss.

Yep, nerfing things that are doing well is never the way to good balancing. Unless they are legitimately broken, the general rule of "don't try and 'fix' it" tends to apply. Instead you should apply creativity and collaborative brainstorming without attachment to raise up and improve things that are under-performing.

I really enjoyed your video and I am definitely looking forward to werewolf at least in Greymarch.

But holy smokes, 80k DPS? I admit I have been gone for a few months, but it seems like 40-50k was considered on the high end back then. I can't even imagine doing that sort of DPS on any of my current characters. Great job with the build, man.

Props and thanks for sharing.

EDIT: Just realized you're in the grove, where you can keep form up permanently. In real world scenarios this would only really be possible on trash packs with brief lulls as you devour. On a boss fight you will still spend a good amount of your time in "normal" form.

However you still do benefit from the 15% stamina regen when on the bar the ultimate is slotted on, plus no werewolf active abilities taking up space on your normal two bars and no ability cost penalty whatsoever so you can basically do your normal maximum DPS rotation in between transformations.

I have no doubt the output would still come out well ahead of current PTS vampire for this reason.

YandereGirlfriend

@WhyMustItBe Vampirism must be balanced with downsides because otherwise it is not a "subclass" within the game or even an interesting choice to be made but is rather an upgrade over being a mortal and, in an RPG, that makes no sense whatsoever. RPGs are about making interesting choices, choices that have consequences otherwise, again, they are not choices. It is not a meaningful choice to say: "Should I be a vampire or should I nerf myself by remaining mortal?" In that situation, any rational player would choose to be a vampire, and that is awful design.

Out of curiosity, how many Elder Scrolls games have you played because vampirism traditionally has had even harsher downsides than those proposed in this patch. In vanilla Skyrim, vampirism had a +100% Fire malus (which was nerfed to +50% for Dawnguard), in Oblivion and Morrowind it had that same +50% AND you took ambient damage from being outside during the daytime! NPCs also refused to talk to you, which greatly hampered your ability to quest or fast travel.

Now, taking ambient sun damage would certainly be interesting but I can understand why developers did not want to include that (or being shunned by NPCs) in ESO's version of vampirism. But certainly you can see that the breezy +20% malus (which is negated by the damage mitigation passive) is nowhere near the traditional Fire penalty leveled against vampires and it is also missing the additional hardships of the older TES games. The balance of that missing penalty has been transferred into the ability cost increase.

To clarify though, I'm fine with vampire abilities receiving buffs to bring it up to the level of multi-role usefulness that the new WW has received. But I'm not fine with getting power for free with little to no consequences, which means that the better the vampire abilities become, then so too does the negative counterweight that is required to balance it. That goes for WW as well.

@Wlnamp Vampirism was in fact the meta choice for Magicka damage dealers as well as for many Healer and Tank builds. It was also a strong choice in PvP. Calling it "trash" couldn't be further off the mark.

Alucardo

You forgot to mention that Werewolves can't bar swap, and cannot use external abilities. Also their heal is complete jank in PvP. With WW it's either kill or be killed, there's nothing inbetween. The DoT on Berserker is useless, so Pack Leader will no doubt be the best option.
Yeah, Werewolves received some much needed buffs on PTS, but there is no denying that having access to everything you do in human form far outweighs the "benefits" of being a Werewolf.
Besides, at Vampire stage 1 the drawbacks aren't too bad, and you still get probably one the greatest AOE stuns in the game, a fairly decent ultimate, access to a cheap magicka spammable, and good old mist form. On top of that, unlike Werewolf, you can actually put HoTs on yourself and do other things that require opposable thumbs.

Adraeus

Vampire-only ability cost reduction (10%/20%/30%/40% at ranks 1/2/3/4).
Rank 1: Ignore movement penalty of sneak and enter sneak 50% faster (no real combat benefit, RP passive?).

Not sure when PvE became RP... This is amazing for stealth characters running heists, contracts, skyshards, bosses, farming, etc. That passive was my only reason for becoming a vampire on Live. If you want this passive on Live, you need:

- Vampirism Rank 9
- 1 skill point (2 skill points with Unnatural Resistance)
- Stage 4: -75% Health Recovery (-50% with Unnatural Resistance), +25% Damage from Fire, -21% Ability Cost

This particular change would save me a skill point and grant me waaay more Health Recovery. You didn't mention whether PTS Vampirism stages still have +% Damage from Fire and -% Ability Cost properties, but if they're gone, that'd be a fair trade for more survivability in both PvE (vs. fire mobs) and PvP (vs. dragonknights).

darthgummibear_ESO

TX12001rwb17_ESO wrote: »

Vampires are meant for stealth characters.

Given that stealth characters are stamina based, would you care to try and justify how stamina characters are getting completely screwed with these changes?

zaria

Chrlynsch wrote: »

You are missing a couple cons to werewolf.

-Can't heal allies
-Can't stealth
-Melee only
-Loss of the majority of class passives/guild
-Loss of all weapon passives
-Expensive abilities (most 25% more expensive than a human's comparable abilities)
-No snare/root removal

And you need you your ultimate points up so you can transform and you drop out if you have no targets.

Vampires new sneak bonuses looks very nice in PvP, just the go invisible then sprinting
Sneaking is not important in PvE outside of stealing.

WhyMustItBe

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

@WhyMustItBe Vampirism must be balanced with downsides because otherwise it is not a "subclass" within the game or even an interesting choice to be made but is rather an upgrade over being a mortal and, in an RPG, that makes no sense whatsoever. RPGs are about making interesting choices, choices that have consequences otherwise, again, they are not choices. It is not a meaningful choice to say: "Should I be a vampire or should I nerf myself by remaining mortal?" In that situation, any rational player would choose to be a vampire, and that is awful design.

I don't disagree with you. However I feel it is important to point out the alternative is also true, that it doesn't makes sense to say "should I stay mortal or go werewolf, or nerf myself by going vampire?"

The problem I have is when people assume werewolf, vampire, or any other character path MUST necessarily be WEAKER THAN. To my way of thinking, these RPG choices should aim for equality in potential with an emphasis on engagement with the path to getting there, and as much build and playstyle diversity as possible.

Development should never take the path where one choice MUST be weaker than another, like people who seem to believe vampire MUST be weaker than mortals. There is absolutely nothing wrong with vampire being AS STRONG as mortals but no stronger, and that is what I feel the devs should aim for.

Also, never to narrow choices of a particular path to one specific function in one specific type of content.

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

But certainly you can see that the breezy +20% malus (which is negated by the damage mitigation passive) is nowhere near the traditional Fire penalty leveled against vampires and it is also missing the additional hardships of the older TES games. The balance of that missing penalty has been transferred into the ability cost increase.

I think the problem here is that balance has different requirements in multiplayer online vs. solo games. In past TES games (I played and modded for all of them since Morrowind), there is only one player setting the standards for gameplay: YOU. This means you have additional customization options available for your experience, not the least of which being, the DIFFICULTY SLIDER.

It is simply not viable to apply strategies and design concepts that work in that sort of scenario to an online game where the COMMUNITY defines the standards of gameplay and difficulty.

To that end I stand by my original conclusion: There is absolutely nothing wrong with vampires being AS STRONG as mortals but no stronger. I feel the 20% ability cost is simply too far over the top, even compared with performance of the other "sub-class," werewolves.

Making it 0% at Rank 1 and 10-15% at Rank 4 would be much more reasonable, combined with having the Scion ultimate change some of your other vampire abilities temporarily in cool and meaningful ways.

This would require more effort on ZOS's part but would ultimately be far more rewarding.

ScardyFox

Nothing like a good old fashioned, baseless uninformed, hyperbolic post to start the day with. Honestly, I expected this much sooner so I am mildly surprised it took this long. Aside from what @Chrlynsch rightfully said - shall we just remain (as werewolves) every other class whipping-boy or so gimp we get insta-thrown out of veteran content?

We come with a plethora of downsides - showcased in the struggles and historicity of the "class" - while your post is nothing more than a boy calling wolf.

Yes, pun slightly intended.

WhyMustItBe

This is now a werewolf bashing thread! :P

(Just kidding no it isn't LOL!)

Ruder

OP for me you are TYPICAL PVE Player who doesn't have a clue how bad Werewolf is even with the changes on PTS.

In Combat (mainly PvP or solo PvE)
DRAWBACKS:
* HEAL EFFECTIVELY - 6k magicka heal cost HALLO ?
* PURGE SNARES - good luck moving at anything more than 60% speed in PvP
* Purge Dots - you are dead meat for good single target dot builds
* Purge defiles - yeah your Crappy 6k magicka heal that will heal you for 4-5k in PvP will heal you for 2-3k after defiles SO AWESOME !
* 1 skill bar - you have only 5 abilities
* Your gapcloser is slower than a mudcrab on the beach
* Your skills hit like a wed noodle if you don't build glass cannon (in this case you will get wrecked in 1-2 seconds from bursty builds)
* HALF OF YOUR DAMAGE (DOTS) IS PURGRABLE so good luck killing, Necroes and Templars
* Nightblades have a CloackWin button to surpress all of your dots
* And yeah the best thing is that you don't have your weapon passives !

sekou_trayvond

WW is, essentially, a toggle with a timer. You can't stay in form forever. Second, you are locked into five skills in form and that's that.

That's my perspective. YMMV, I suppose.

Noxavian

I'm afraid we got an even bigger problem on the PTS, boss. While the issue you discuss is bad, I have another issue that requires attention:





This ladies and gentlemen is a comparison of the vampire player abilities alongside what the normal vampires (the ones you just see wandering around, nothing special about them) get with the upcoming rework. The NPC showcase starts at 2:02.

Now correct me if I'm wrong, but I think we can all agree that the abilities shown (aside from the bone spike one, that one isnt new and is a necro ability) are very cool and smoothly animated. I think we can also agree that WE as players should get access to what these normal vampires can use, right?

For those that don't want to watch the video, this is what they get in text:

A bat-swarm dash that knocks players over, their life-drain lifts the target up into the air and the animation is blood red with a nice black tint around it, they can summon a shadow fiend imp-creature that provides a buff/heals the vampire, they have various AoE blood magic attacks, a ground AoE updated version of the old bat swarm ult (it looks really really nice), the ability to summon a shadow-blood clone after teleporting that explodes after a duration, and finally their blood scion form doesn't use weapons AND has access to a blood-magic pull.


Now I don't know about you guys, but ^ that sounds like a proper vampire rework for the Elder Scrolls.

WilliamESO

Chrlynsch wrote: »

You are missing a couple cons to werewolf.

-Can't heal allies
-Can't stealth
-Melee only
-Loss of the majority of class passives/guild
-Loss of all weapon passives
-Expensive abilities (most 25% more expensive than a human's comparable abilities)
-No snare/root removal

WW GOT bad heals too

Chrlynsch

Thevampirenight wrote: »

Well Fengrush and his Orc Army might be running around as an Orc Pack with Greymoor.
So I do think we might see a pvp meta of werewolves which will be interesting. Now it use to be vampires now its werewolves. Which is kinda surprising the Werewolves becoming the new meta for a change.
Which will be interesting.

Lol

WhyMustItBe

Noxavian wrote: »

Now I don't know about you guys, but ^ that sounds like a proper vampire rework for the Elder Scrolls.

YES! This is the sort of design esthetic droids I am looking for!

I also see a perfect opportunity for ZOS to deal these sort of changes into the current setup, with a relatively simply change to the Scion ultimate transformation. Basically as I mentioned in a previous response to one of your posts, make transforming change the behavior of various vampire active abilities.

Different Scion morphs could even change abilities in different ways, such that there could be a "tank" version and a "DPS" version.

For example (current skills for reference):

• Vampiric Drain becomes Blood Swarm which looks sort of like the vampire lord swarm in Skyrim, or this dash ability in your video, causing you to dash to your target as a bloody bat swarm doing damage and healing from any enemy you pass through on the way, and temporarily burst in an AOE damage explosion on arrival, all while applying the standard morph effects. A debuff/cooldown could be added to keep the ultimate or magicka generation potential from becoming imbalanced. The tank version could stun and/or debuff.
• Blood Mist becomes Sanguine Squall which now allows casting other VAMPIRE abilities without breaking the toggle and has a cool new ground swarm visual like your video description that moves with your character, and does double normal damage. Tank version could possible slow and/or debuff.
• Eviscerate and morphs work much the same but use a no-weapon animation similar to werewold to make Scion look more like the terrible beast it is (somehow a huge vampiric monster swatting at you with a baseball bat staff seems comical to me). Can be designed so that light attacks weave into the left-right animation seamlessly or that both alternate on the same animation cycle so using either Eviscerate or a light attack will keep up the animation sequence. Heavy attacks can do some really cool animation as well.
• Mesmerize behaves mechanically much the same, only it affects enemies NOT facing you as well. Tank version can also silence ranged attacks after the stun ends.
  
  In addition, normal ability cost penalty at Rank 1 should be 0% scaling up from there, with slightly higher fire vulnerability, capping at 25% at rank 4.
  

Banana

It's werewolves turn to be ok.

Khatou

I do not really agree on this point of view, it is necessary to know that magic is already not badly WTF in this game, in front of the stam, the mages have right has much care of life and shield in addition to stick of care (let us recall that the stam, have no weapon of care) thus to give too much of the advantageous liabilities to vampire will kill much too much the diversity and the balance already well put at evil!

But then we know the principle of ZoS, creating cool stuff during a sale for over time nerf so it's not as fun played...

Suligost

Vamp is ok, keep in mind that when you are in WW you locking yourself from plenty of healing, class resource managment, swaping for weapon sets, etc, etc, etc.

Besides vamp ult is rly cheap and OP. You can build yourself around it and maintain full time upkeap and one morph removes all penalties of being vampire.

Nope, Vampire is propably stronger then WW.

PS: But vamp npces have better toolkit xD

ScardyFox

Banana wrote: »

It's werewolves turn to be ok.

Honestly one of my favorite post here because of the use of "OK". It is indeed our turn not to be a lolspeedbump.