Werewolf vs. Vampire - Serious problems on PTS!

xXMeowMeowXx

WhyMustItBe wrote: »

I have spent the last days testing out the new Vampire and Werewolf changes on the PTS and have reached some rather shocking conclusions. There is a very serious problem with Vampirism specifically that, if allowed to go live, will completely destroy the enjoyment of countless players and cause nothing but strife and lost revenue for Zenimax. Allow me to explain.

Let us begin with a simple comparison of benefits and penalties for each class.

Werewolf benefits and penalties:

WEREWOLF BENEFITS

Werewolf ultimate slotted (not transformed):

• 15% stamina recovery.

Werewolf Berserker (transformed):

• Light attacks apply 14k bleed over 4 sec.
• Heavy attacks do 50% splash damage in AOE.
• Max stamina increased by 30%.
• Major Brutality (20% weapon damage) from slotting heal (always).
• Major Savagery (10% crit chance) from slotting fear (always).

Brutal Pounce (gap closer):

• 9.6k BASE damage to target and surrounding enemies (AOE)
• Activate again within 5sec to cast Brutal Carnage:
  • Brutal Carnage causes enemies to bleed for 7k BASE physical damage over 10 seconds, dealing up to 450% more damage based on missing health.
  • Increase weapon damage by 85 for each enemy hit, up to a max of 6 (510 weapon damage).

Hircine's Rage (heal):

• Heal for 7k health (scales off max health).
• If at full health restore 3k stamina & gain Major Berserk (25% damage increase) for 6 seconds (also take 20% more damage).
• Major Brutality (20% weapon damage) at all times for slotting ability.

Deafening Roar (fear):

• Fear up to 6 nearby enemies for 4 seconds.
• Sets up to 6 enemies Off Balance for 7 seconds.
• Applies Major Fracture to feared enemies for 7 seconds (minus 5280 physical resist).
• Applies Minor Main to feared enemies for 7 seconds (minus 15% damage done).
• Gain Major Savagery (10% crit chance) at all times for slotting ability.

Howl of Despair (nuke, group utility):

• Deals 16k BASE physical damage.
• Enemies facing you take 10% more damage.
• Allows allies UNLIMITED use of Feeding Frenzy synergy, granting Empower for 5 seconds (increase light attack damage by 40%).

Claws of Life (AOE, heal):

• 12k BASE disease damage to enemies in AOE plus 12k BASE disease damage over 10 seconds.
• You are healed for 100% of the damage over time.
• Enemies hit by the initial effect are inflicted with the Diseased status effect (15% reduced healing received).

WEREWOLF PENALTIES

• You take 25% more poison damage WHILE TRANSFORMED. There are NO NEGATIVES when not transformed!

Vampirism benefits and penalties:

VAMPIRISM BENEFITS

• 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?).
• Rank 2: When leaving sneak, invisibility, or mist form, gain 300 weapon & spell damage for 6 seconds (marginal usefulness).
• Rank 3: Reduce damage taken by up to 30% based on missing health (no vampire tank active abilities, marginal usefulness).
• Rank 4: Reduce sprint cost by 50% and gain invisibility after sprinting for 3 seconds (no real combat benefit, RP passive?).

VAMPIRISM PENALTIES

• Health Recovery reduced (10%/40%/70%/100% at ranks 1/2/3/4).
• Flame damage taken increased (5%/10%/15%/20% at ranks 1/2/3/4).
• Increase ALL non-vampire ability cost including ultimates (5%/10%/15%/20% at ranks 1/2/3/4).

As you can (hopefully) see, Werewolf gets FAR more benefits for FAR fewer penalties.

At Vampirism Rank 1, just for having Vampirism, you gain NO damage increase or sustain benefits and suffer -10% health recovery, +5% flame damage, and +5% cost of all normal abilities. Literally all downsides and no benefits (in terms of combat.) Compare to Werewolf who get 15% stamina recovery just for SLOTTING their ultimate without even transforming, with NO DOWNSIDES. Literally all benefits.

Obviously then we must ask, what are these new vampire active abilities and how are they so good as to warrant such imbalanced downsides? However on closer inspection, the vampire abilities you gain are mostly RP and utility fluff and give very little actual combat benefit:

• Blood Mist (channeled) does weak AOE damage (1.6k per second) and heals you.
• Hypnosis is an AOE stun of enemies facing your direction.
• Exhilarating Drain is a channel (interruptible) that does weak 2.5k single target damage per second for 3 seconds, heals you, and grants 4 ultimate per second.
• Sated Fury is a toggle that increases spell power & weapon damage by 660 but drains health per second (1152 per second at rank 4).
• Arterial Burst is the only actual damage ability. It is single target, does 10k magic damage (up to 50% more based on missing health) and always crits if YOU are under 50% health.

The ultimate Perfect Scion grants you 10k MAX health, magic, and stamina on activation, but DOES NOT RESTORE THIS VALUE. This only increases your max possible values, meaning if you are out of resources when you cast it you are STILL out of resources after transforming. You then heal for 15% of the damage you do while transformed and can see enemies through walls (again mostly RP, no real combat benefit).

You also temporarily gain all the benefits of Rank 4 with none of the drawbacks (meaning your normal abilities don't cost 20% more while transformed), for 20 seconds. This however is marginally useful as you will typically be resources starved by the time you are able to transform just maintaining your AOEs for 20% increased cost since Vampirism has NO SIGNIFICANT AOE ABILITIES as Werewold does.

Further, the weak AOE vampires do have (Blood Mist) DOES NOT LET YOU CAST OTHER ABILITIES while using it, meaning it works like a channel. Compare this to all other AOEs in the game where you put them down then continue the rest of your rotation, and it is a MASSIVE DPS LOSS to use it, combined with the fact the AOE itself is extremely weak by AOE standards (roughly half the damage of Endless Hail).

The benefits of the vampire skills available are simply not significant to combat and still require all meaningful AOE and damage abilities to come from weapons and class skills thus costing 20% more resources for very little gain. In simulations on the PTS I am routinely doing MORE DPS with a standard build with NO vampire abilities at Rank 1 Vampirism than at Rank 4 using the vampire spammable, toggle, and ultimate, and running out of resources far less often (though you do get 5% increased cost even with NO benefits at all).

Again, compare this to Werewolf:

• 15% stamina recovery just for having their ultimate on their bar without even transforming.
• Powerful toolkit with Nuke, AOE, multiple heals, CC, AND group utility.
• Light attacks apply 14k bleed over 4 sec.
• Heavy attacks do 50% splash damage in AOE.
• Max stamina increased by 30%.
• Major Brutality (20% weapon damage) from slotting heal (always).
• Major Savagery (10% crit chance) from slotting fear (always).
• Major Berserk (25% damage buff) for healing while at full health.
• Access to fear.
• Access to unlimited group Empower synergy (Alkosh, etc.).
• Major Fracture.
• Minor Maim.
• MASSIVE damage further buffed by ability use.

This disparity is so egregious as to be truly mind boggling. The benefits of Vampirism not only do not balance the downsides, but the class has become UNPLAYABLE for the following:

• Tanks: There are NO vampire-based tanking abilities to benefit from the reduced vampire ability cost.
• Healers: There are NO vampire-based healing abilities (for others) to benefit from the reduced ability cost.

Furthermore, damage dealers are punished with 20% increased cost to all their abilities which are the bulk of their damage, minus ONE spammable vampire skill and some RP utility stuff.

This simply CANNOT go to live in its current form as it will seriously harm engagement with the game for people who love vampires, completely demoralizing and destroying a loved playstyle. It does NOT have to be this way! The vampire overhaul COULD be a fun new dynamic that INCREASES people's enjoyment and excitement for the game! ZOS, all you have to do is the following:

REMOVE THE COST INCREASE FROM NORMAL ABILITIES! The 100% health recovery and 20% fire damage is more than enough to counterbalance the very marginal benefits of being a vampire.

Consider all the MANY incredible benefits Werewolf gains, and for all that, their ONLY downside is 25% poison weakness WHILE TRANSFORMED. Now look at the minuscule vampire benefits, and the fact they get almost the same penalty (20% fire weakness), but with 100% health recovery AND 20% ability cost added ON TOP of that?!?

How is the class with LESS BENEFITS getting HUGELY MORE PENALTIES?

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_JessicaFolsom

At the very least there should be no ability cost penalty at Rank 1 Vampirism, 5% at Rank 2, 10% at Rank 3, and 15% at Rank 4, but even this much is TOTALLY UNFAIR based on actual benefits. As I said, I am regularly doing MORE DPS and staying in the fight longer due to sustain running a non-vampire ability build at Rank 1 on the PTS than I am using the vampire spammable, toggle, and ultimate at rank 4. I can post videos on request.

ZOS PLEASE reconsider this normal ability cost increase, at the very least at Rank 1, before Greymarch becomes another Morrowind sustain nerf disaster!

Blessed be.

This is really well written @WhyMustItBe with many great points, that many have missed or do not wish to see.

You should really do something similar on the PTS giving your constructive feedback to the Devs. Nice job !!

ProfessorKittyhawk

The pts has only been up a week. Share feedback on the pts forums and submit bug tickets on the server. The changes and numbers aren't set in stone yet and can still change drastically before ever reaching live.

MartiniDaniels

I agree that stage 1 vampire should have no penalties. As for me it looks like vampire can be useful for PVP, but entirely useless in PVE. So if you want to do both on same character, vampire is not an option.

Rake

Is there any benefit for vampirism with 20% cost increase to non vampire skills?

WhyMustItBe

Rake wrote: »

Is there any benefit for vampirism with 20% cost increase to non vampire skills?

Not really in their current form, sadly.

Healer and tank vampires are basically excluded by the penalty altogether as there are no vampire abilities for these roles. Even at Rank 1 it still imposes 5% ability cost penalty and fire vulnerability along with health regen penalties, so literally all penalty for no benefit.

There do of course exist some niche possibilities, like building to be a PVP suicide bomber.

You could also potentially stack regen sets and rely on the damage bonus from the vampire toggle to bring your spellpower back up to normal levels, but that is a ton of work just to get back to the level of say, a mortal character wearing Julianos + Necropotence or some other such easy combo.

Even if you did that however, you would be suffering a very hectic playstyle of having your health constantly drained, and having to stay below 50% health to do effective damage (since regen sets also nerf your crit), and for all that and even when executed well, you are basically doing a ton more work and incurring a lot more risk just to get back to the same place you would be as a non-vamp in normal sets, which you still won't be able to do without using non-vampire abilities due to the reasons outlined below.

The risk vs. reward simply isn't there with the current 20% ability cost and low health playstyle.

The low health style itself is fine, IF the cost penalty was removed or seriously reduced from normal abilities, which will still need to make up the majority of any viable rotation as:

1) Vampires do not have a viable alternative to non-vampire AOE.
2) Vampires do not have a viable alternative to non-vampire DoTs.
3) Vampires have no abilities that heal others.
3) Vampires have no source of major defenses, taunts, or pulls for tanking.

The idea is cool in theory but the cost increase to normal abilities and lack of cool changes to abilities when transformed to make the ultimate feel meaningful (plus lack of cool animations for the ultimate Scion rather than swinging your weapon in it's huge monster hand like a fly swatter) leave it feeling incomplete at this point.

It really just ends up making vampire non-viable for anything other than niche PVP bomber builds and RP, and eliminates the vast bulk of build diversity for really no reason and not much gain which is really pretty bad in a game advertised as "play as you want."

I am hoping it will fill out a bit more as the PTS cycle continues.

Ragged_Claw

Good points, mate. Couldn't agree more. I'm sad and confused by these changes. I thought the idea was to make people actually use their vampire skills, rather than just getting vamprism for the passives. The skills I've tried on PTS are meh. It's fun turning into a cloud of blood, but I didn't really damage anything and I can't see it being a winner in trials. The ultimate wore off before I could even really see the benefit or even get a decent screenshot and the drain seemed exactly the same as the old one. I'd assumed it would be more in line with the ww, where you have your ulti form with its own set of skills that can be extended by feeding. That's on me for not reading things properly I guess. The penalties are ridiculous, why is there a cost to your class skills? Have they been reading whiners on the forums that truly believe that up until now vampirism had no drawbacks? Flashback to trying to kill Molag Bal in 2014 with that reduced health penalty, no CP points and the flame damage omg.

I'm not a min/maxer or number cruncher and I'm sure theorycrafters will put out good builds, but personally there is nothing that I would put on my bars, the skills I use are already superior for DPS, the ult is so short-lived and underwhelming - I'm certainly not taking off my destro ult for that. So there's no point in remaining a vampire, in fact it's going to be damaging to do so if these changes go live. And therein lies my real problem, my main has had vampirism since launch, I know this sounds stupid, but if I cured her, it wouldn't be the same. As a middling player I'm going to have to, I think, or accept the fact that the more difficult content is now out of her reach.

I'm not cancelling my sub, or pre-order or chucking my toys out of the pram (well a bit), but I am really disappointed. I'll have to go back to Skyrim to get my vampire jollies. The real one.

Jeremy

Ragged_Claw wrote: »

Good points, mate. Couldn't agree more. I'm sad and confused by these changes. I thought the idea was to make people actually use their vampire skills, rather than just getting vamprism for the passives. .

But that's exactly what they accomplished. People who make regular use of their Vampire Abilities are going to love these changes. Those who just chose it for passives aren't.

Vampires can now buff their damage considerably (Blood Frenzy), heal effectively (drain) use Mist Form more strategically and efficiently and even have access to CC abilities. Blood for Blood may need some work, but it's at least interesting and does respectable damage. This is a huge buff to their tool kit and there is just no other way to describe it. No one is going to pick a Vampire now just so they can have their stage passives, and certain builds are going to benefit greatly from these changes.

This isn't to say Vampire is good for every build out there. It isn't. And it probably shouldn't be. It's no longer just a ugly way to get 15% more regen. It's now an actual skill line that players can make effective use of if they wish. But if it's not for you - and your build does not benefit from these abilities - then there is absolutely no pressure now to become one.

What is wrong with that?

Ragged_Claw

Jeremy wrote: »

Ragged_Claw wrote: »

Good points, mate. Couldn't agree more. I'm sad and confused by these changes. I thought the idea was to make people actually use their vampire skills, rather than just getting vamprism for the passives. .

But that's exactly what they accomplished. People who make regular use of their Vampire Abilities are going to love these changes. Those who just chose it for passives aren't.

Vampires can now buff their damage considerably (Blood Frenzy), heal effectively (drain) use Mist Form more strategically and efficiently and even have access to CC abilities. Blood for Blood may need some work, but it's at least interesting and does respectable damage. This is a huge buff to their tool kit and there is just no other way to describe it. No one is going to pick a Vampire now just so they can have their stage passives, and certain builds are going to benefit greatly from these changes.

This isn't to say Vampire is good for every build out there. It isn't. And it probably shouldn't be. It's no longer just a ugly way to get 15% more regen. It's now an actual skill line that players can make effective use of if they wish. But if it's not for you - and your build does not benefit from these abilities - then there is absolutely no pressure now to become one.

What is wrong with that?

That's fair. I obviously need more practice with the skills and learn how to use them effectively. I'm still concerned about the penalties though, I may just cure my main and start a new vampire character from scratch, one that's built specifically to incorporate the new skills and mitigate the costs to non-vamp abilities. I still think the penalties are too harsh, but time will tell I guess.

mb10

In the TES world, vampires and and werewolves aren’t the same lol they don’t have the same power/strength

Werewolves in lore have very few drawbacks

Vampires do but skill cost increase is just a weird one that’s not needed

Chrlynsch

https://youtu.be/C4entlIopV4

https://youtu.be/WWCnypsSpW0

Give a watch to these videos, @T3hasiangod did a great job showing what high end vamps can do, and my video shows what wolves can do. Looks like vampire is currently ahead, there is still a lot that can change this pts cycle.

xXMeowMeowXx

WhyMustItBe wrote: »

Rake wrote: »

Is there any benefit for vampirism with 20% cost increase to non vampire skills?

Not really in their current form, sadly.

Healer and tank vampires are basically excluded by the penalty altogether as there are no vampire abilities for these roles. Even at Rank 1 it still imposes 5% ability cost penalty and fire vulnerability along with health regen penalties, so literally all penalty for no benefit.

There do of course exist some niche possibilities, like building to be a PVP suicide bomber.

You could also potentially stack regen sets and rely on the damage bonus from the vampire toggle to bring your spellpower back up to normal levels, but that is a ton of work just to get back to the level of say, a mortal character wearing Julianos + Necropotence or some other such easy combo.

Even if you did that however, you would be suffering a very hectic playstyle of having your health constantly drained, and having to stay below 50% health to do effective damage (since regen sets also nerf your crit), and for all that and even when executed well, you are basically doing a ton more work and incurring a lot more risk just to get back to the same place you would be as a non-vamp in normal sets, which you still won't be able to do without using non-vampire abilities due to the reasons outlined below.

The risk vs. reward simply isn't there with the current 20% ability cost and low health playstyle.

The low health style itself is fine, IF the cost penalty was removed or seriously reduced from normal abilities, which will still need to make up the majority of any viable rotation as:

1) Vampires do not have a viable alternative to non-vampire AOE.
2) Vampires do not have a viable alternative to non-vampire DoTs.
3) Vampires have no abilities that heal others.
3) Vampires have no source of major defenses, taunts, or pulls for tanking.

The idea is cool in theory but the cost increase to normal abilities and lack of cool changes to abilities when transformed to make the ultimate feel meaningful (plus lack of cool animations for the ultimate Scion rather than swinging your weapon in it's huge monster hand like a fly swatter) leave it feeling incomplete at this point.

It really just ends up making vampire non-viable for anything other than niche PVP bomber builds and RP, and eliminates the vast bulk of build diversity for really no reason and not much gain which is really pretty bad in a game advertised as "play as you want."

I am hoping it will fill out a bit more as the PTS cycle continues.

I hope you’re giving feedback to the Devs because you really have caught a lot of the issues.

Firstmep

Very mild benefit xD You can over 1600 wpd/spd from vampirism, invisibility, mist form is super cheap now, undeath is still there, the new vamp skill line is great I hope they don't mess with it too much.

WhyMustItBe

Jeremy wrote: »

But that's exactly what they accomplished. People who make regular use of their Vampire Abilities are going to love these changes. Those who just chose it for passives aren't.

Vampires can now buff their damage considerably (Blood Frenzy), heal effectively (drain) use Mist Form more strategically and efficiently and even have access to CC abilities.

I'm afraid that after several days extensively testing builds on the PTS with various classes both as vampire and non, as full magic, full stam, or hybrid, these statements simply do NOT pan out in actual gameplay and vampire on a whole is a significant net DPS loss vs. mortal characters, while werewolf characters enjoy the same DPS or even a little more.

What you say is basically the brochure. Sadly the devil is in the details of how these abilities actually work in the real world.

Vampires "buffing their damage considerably" is basically a constant scaling health drain that at Rank 4 and 10 stacks is doing over 2k damage per second to you. The "efficient heal" of drain does not keep pace with this by itself, especially if you are taking ANY damage from other sources. So without specific class abilities to stop and heal or special gearsets that will nerf your damage, this is a constant fear of killing yourself.

To try and heal with drain means you stop doing anything else because it is a channel for 3 seconds, losing DPS, and that 2200 damage per second to your health doesn't stop unless you turn off your damage boost, which then has to build back up to full strength (10 stacks, one per second), so you would basically have to keep doing nothing but draining constantly just to prevent yourself from dying to your own buff. Not really as practical in a real world rotation as it sounds on paper.

The base benefit of the toggle is a roughly 660 spell power boost, maybe a tiny bit more than three gold spell damage enchants on your jewelry. HOWEVER again, this is at Rank 4 with a 20% cost penalty to skills. Even with NB siphoning strikes up 100% of the time, the only way I was able to sustain a rotation was to replace my jewelry with all cost reduction glyphs, so the balance mostly equals out.

Now if you let the damage boost scale to 10 stacks that boost doubles it is true, so you are getting around 1200 spell power total, plus if you block cancel mist form you can eek out another 300 for 6 seconds if you can keep it up in a rotation.

The problems simply outweigh any gains however. The rotation is hectic, clunky, lots of time mist doesn't block cancel, transforming has a roughly 2 second delay on changing into and out of Scion where you completely stop being able to do your rotation, you have to change your gear to compensate for the 20% ability cost penalty which is WAY over the top off the balance map, plus you have no health regen at all and 20% weakness to fire on top of this.

Using Burning Spellweave and Mother's Sorrow with all divines and Shadow Mundus I was able to barely eek out a 28k raw parse (no major fracture debuff on the boss) which was lower than my non-vampire parses on the same class, for a whole lot of hectic juggling and risk of dying and micromanaging cost reduction and keeping buffs up that would otherwise just be passive on my gear and not something I'd think about.

It may be fun for solo and RP as I said. But in real world scenarios there is no way you would survive in PVP with the damage buff up, and the Scion doesn't really do anything interesting other than look cool, so you are really left with mostly WAY over the top downsides (particularly the cost increase on non-vampire skills which is an absolute DEAL BREAKER), for very little if any gain other than that RP reward of being a vampire for the sake of it.

TONS of work and risk for very little if any reward.

The system is in a TERRIBLE place as it currently stands in terms of balance.

That doesn't mean people can't still have fun. It just won't be for serious players interested in competitive content.

ZonasArch

This should be on pts forums tho

Jeremy

WhyMustItBe wrote: »

Jeremy wrote: »

But that's exactly what they accomplished. People who make regular use of their Vampire Abilities are going to love these changes. Those who just chose it for passives aren't.

Vampires can now buff their damage considerably (Blood Frenzy), heal effectively (drain) use Mist Form more strategically and efficiently and even have access to CC abilities.

I'm afraid that after several days extensively testing builds on the PTS with various classes both as vampire and non, as full magic, full stam, or hybrid, these statements simply do NOT pan out in actual gameplay and vampire on a whole is a significant net DPS loss vs. mortal characters, while werewolf characters enjoy the same DPS or even a little more.

What you say is basically the brochure. Sadly the devil is in the details of how these abilities actually work in the real world.

Vampires "buffing their damage considerably" is basically a constant scaling health drain that at Rank 4 and 10 stacks is doing over 2k damage per second to you. The "efficient heal" of drain does not keep pace with this by itself, especially if you are taking ANY damage from other sources. So without specific class abilities to stop and heal or special gearsets that will nerf your damage, this is a constant fear of killing yourself.

To try and heal with drain means you stop doing anything else because it is a channel for 3 seconds, losing DPS, and that 2200 damage per second to your health doesn't stop unless you turn off your damage boost, which then has to build back up to full strength (10 stacks, one per second), so you would basically have to keep doing nothing but draining constantly just to prevent yourself from dying to your own buff. Not really as practical in a real world rotation as it sounds on paper.

The base benefit of the toggle is a roughly 660 spell power boost, maybe a tiny bit more than three gold spell damage enchants on your jewelry. HOWEVER again, this is at Rank 4 with a 20% cost penalty to skills. Even with NB siphoning strikes up 100% of the time, the only way I was able to sustain a rotation was to replace my jewelry with all cost reduction glyphs, so the balance mostly equals out.

Now if you let the damage boost scale to 10 stacks that boost doubles it is true, so you are getting around 1200 spell power total, plus if you block cancel mist form you can eek out another 300 for 6 seconds if you can keep it up in a rotation.

The problems simply outweigh any gains however. The rotation is hectic, clunky, lots of time mist doesn't block cancel, transforming has a roughly 2 second delay on changing into and out of Scion where you completely stop being able to do your rotation, you have to change your gear to compensate for the 20% ability cost penalty which is WAY over the top off the balance map, plus you have no health regen at all and 20% weakness to fire on top of this.

Using Burning Spellweave and Mother's Sorrow with all divines and Shadow Mundus I was able to barely eek out a 28k raw parse (no major fracture debuff on the boss) which was lower than my non-vampire parses on the same class, for a whole lot of hectic juggling and risk of dying and micromanaging cost reduction and keeping buffs up that would otherwise just be passive on my gear and not something I'd think about.

It may be fun for solo and RP as I said. But in real world scenarios there is no way you would survive in PVP with the damage buff up, and the Scion doesn't really do anything interesting other than look cool, so you are really left with mostly WAY over the top downsides (particularly the cost increase on non-vampire skills which is an absolute DEAL BREAKER), for very little if any gain other than that RP reward of being a vampire for the sake of it.

TONS of work and risk for very little if any reward.

The system is in a TERRIBLE place as it currently stands in terms of balance.

That doesn't mean people can't still have fun. It just won't be for serious players interested in competitive content.

Just turn off Blood Frenzy if it's killing you. It's probably better for defensive players who don't have to worry as much about the damage it inflicts. My Templar tank for example loved it. But on my Nightblade I didn't use it nearly as much.

Mist Form is better now. The Drain is better now. You have a CC ability. You can also use you vampire abilities all you want without having to worry about taking a massive fire damage penalty (that alone is a wonderful thing, especially in PvP).

So I don't see how this update can be viewed as anything but a buff for Vampires.

Now when it comes to playing as a Stage 4 Vampire that's a different matter and one I can't really comment on, since I haven't put in the effort to try and create a stage 4 Vampire as of yet. So they may be as impossible to manage as you say. I don't know. But at the base stage my Vampire has done nothing but improve with Greymoor.

santhoranb16_ESO

WhyMustItBe wrote: »

I have spent the last days testing out the new Vampire and Werewolf changes on the PTS and have reached some rather shocking conclusions.

Well utter wrong conclusions.

Werewolf is Werewolf and Werewolf only, you give everything else UP. No class skills. Not even weapon passives.

As soon as VAMP is VAMP only then you can remove else penalties. What you want, is completely free skill line in addition to use for your complete toolset. Wont gonna happen.

Chrlynsch

WhyMustItBe wrote: »

Jeremy wrote: »

But that's exactly what they accomplished. People who make regular use of their Vampire Abilities are going to love these changes. Those who just chose it for passives aren't.

Vampires can now buff their damage considerably (Blood Frenzy), heal effectively (drain) use Mist Form more strategically and efficiently and even have access to CC abilities.

I'm afraid that after several days extensively testing builds on the PTS with various classes both as vampire and non, as full magic, full stam, or hybrid, these statements simply do NOT pan out in actual gameplay and vampire on a whole is a significant net DPS loss vs. mortal characters, while werewolf characters enjoy the same DPS or even a little more.

What you say is basically the brochure. Sadly the devil is in the details of how these abilities actually work in the real world.

Vampires "buffing their damage considerably" is basically a constant scaling health drain that at Rank 4 and 10 stacks is doing over 2k damage per second to you. The "efficient heal" of drain does not keep pace with this by itself, especially if you are taking ANY damage from other sources. So without specific class abilities to stop and heal or special gearsets that will nerf your damage, this is a constant fear of killing yourself.

To try and heal with drain means you stop doing anything else because it is a channel for 3 seconds, losing DPS, and that 2200 damage per second to your health doesn't stop unless you turn off your damage boost, which then has to build back up to full strength (10 stacks, one per second), so you would basically have to keep doing nothing but draining constantly just to prevent yourself from dying to your own buff. Not really as practical in a real world rotation as it sounds on paper.

The base benefit of the toggle is a roughly 660 spell power boost, maybe a tiny bit more than three gold spell damage enchants on your jewelry. HOWEVER again, this is at Rank 4 with a 20% cost penalty to skills. Even with NB siphoning strikes up 100% of the time, the only way I was able to sustain a rotation was to replace my jewelry with all cost reduction glyphs, so the balance mostly equals out.

Now if you let the damage boost scale to 10 stacks that boost doubles it is true, so you are getting around 1200 spell power total, plus if you block cancel mist form you can eek out another 300 for 6 seconds if you can keep it up in a rotation.

The problems simply outweigh any gains however. The rotation is hectic, clunky, lots of time mist doesn't block cancel, transforming has a roughly 2 second delay on changing into and out of Scion where you completely stop being able to do your rotation, you have to change your gear to compensate for the 20% ability cost penalty which is WAY over the top off the balance map, plus you have no health regen at all and 20% weakness to fire on top of this.

Using Burning Spellweave and Mother's Sorrow with all divines and Shadow Mundus I was able to barely eek out a 28k raw parse (no major fracture debuff on the boss) which was lower than my non-vampire parses on the same class, for a whole lot of hectic juggling and risk of dying and micromanaging cost reduction and keeping buffs up that would otherwise just be passive on my gear and not something I'd think about.

It may be fun for solo and RP as I said. But in real world scenarios there is no way you would survive in PVP with the damage buff up, and the Scion doesn't really do anything interesting other than look cool, so you are really left with mostly WAY over the top downsides (particularly the cost increase on non-vampire skills which is an absolute DEAL BREAKER), for very little if any gain other than that RP reward of being a vampire for the sake of it.

TONS of work and risk for very little if any reward.

The system is in a TERRIBLE place as it currently stands in terms of balance.

That doesn't mean people can't still have fun. It just won't be for serious players interested in competitive content.

Looks like vampire will be fine for endgame.

Runefang

Chrlynsch wrote: »

WhyMustItBe wrote: »

Jeremy wrote: »

But that's exactly what they accomplished. People who make regular use of their Vampire Abilities are going to love these changes. Those who just chose it for passives aren't.

Vampires can now buff their damage considerably (Blood Frenzy), heal effectively (drain) use Mist Form more strategically and efficiently and even have access to CC abilities.

I'm afraid that after several days extensively testing builds on the PTS with various classes both as vampire and non, as full magic, full stam, or hybrid, these statements simply do NOT pan out in actual gameplay and vampire on a whole is a significant net DPS loss vs. mortal characters, while werewolf characters enjoy the same DPS or even a little more.

What you say is basically the brochure. Sadly the devil is in the details of how these abilities actually work in the real world.

Vampires "buffing their damage considerably" is basically a constant scaling health drain that at Rank 4 and 10 stacks is doing over 2k damage per second to you. The "efficient heal" of drain does not keep pace with this by itself, especially if you are taking ANY damage from other sources. So without specific class abilities to stop and heal or special gearsets that will nerf your damage, this is a constant fear of killing yourself.

To try and heal with drain means you stop doing anything else because it is a channel for 3 seconds, losing DPS, and that 2200 damage per second to your health doesn't stop unless you turn off your damage boost, which then has to build back up to full strength (10 stacks, one per second), so you would basically have to keep doing nothing but draining constantly just to prevent yourself from dying to your own buff. Not really as practical in a real world rotation as it sounds on paper.

The base benefit of the toggle is a roughly 660 spell power boost, maybe a tiny bit more than three gold spell damage enchants on your jewelry. HOWEVER again, this is at Rank 4 with a 20% cost penalty to skills. Even with NB siphoning strikes up 100% of the time, the only way I was able to sustain a rotation was to replace my jewelry with all cost reduction glyphs, so the balance mostly equals out.

Now if you let the damage boost scale to 10 stacks that boost doubles it is true, so you are getting around 1200 spell power total, plus if you block cancel mist form you can eek out another 300 for 6 seconds if you can keep it up in a rotation.

The problems simply outweigh any gains however. The rotation is hectic, clunky, lots of time mist doesn't block cancel, transforming has a roughly 2 second delay on changing into and out of Scion where you completely stop being able to do your rotation, you have to change your gear to compensate for the 20% ability cost penalty which is WAY over the top off the balance map, plus you have no health regen at all and 20% weakness to fire on top of this.

Using Burning Spellweave and Mother's Sorrow with all divines and Shadow Mundus I was able to barely eek out a 28k raw parse (no major fracture debuff on the boss) which was lower than my non-vampire parses on the same class, for a whole lot of hectic juggling and risk of dying and micromanaging cost reduction and keeping buffs up that would otherwise just be passive on my gear and not something I'd think about.

It may be fun for solo and RP as I said. But in real world scenarios there is no way you would survive in PVP with the damage buff up, and the Scion doesn't really do anything interesting other than look cool, so you are really left with mostly WAY over the top downsides (particularly the cost increase on non-vampire skills which is an absolute DEAL BREAKER), for very little if any gain other than that RP reward of being a vampire for the sake of it.

TONS of work and risk for very little if any reward.

The system is in a TERRIBLE place as it currently stands in terms of balance.

That doesn't mean people can't still have fun. It just won't be for serious players interested in competitive content.

Looks like vampire will be fine for endgame.

Well with simmering frenzy preventing heals from other players its still up in the air I think. In some fights no doubt vampire abilities are going to be insanely OP, there are many where incoming damage can be healed through solo quite easily.

If vampire skills stay as is the skill gap will rise an absolute truckload, players who can avoid damage (generally those with a lot of experience) will now pull even greater numbers.

And 84k is pretty low for a melee build on a trial dummy, WW clearly need a buff here. An increase in crit chance or crit damage would help without changing the PvP balance much. 90k is really the minimum and given most mag builds can hit that I think its fair for all melee builds to hit 95k.

T3hasiangod

Nya I was pinged here.

I really do think that Vampire is overtuned for several DPS specs. People have been able to maintain both Sated Fury and Simmering Frenzy in trial scenarios with relative success (I've seen a few trial boss parses with 80 percent Sated Fury uptime and up to 60 percent Simmering Frenzy uptime).

The way Vampire works as it is right now, it's giving the top end players significantly more power than it is to lower end players. For an experienced player, it is going to be relatively simple to either 1) out-heal the damage through a self-heal (e.g. Swallow Soul, Lotus Flower, healing ghost on Necro) or 2) toggle the ability on or off as needed (it's off the GCD so easy enough to do).

Werewolves, while they got a really nice (and well-deserved) buff, aren't NEARLY at the same level as Vampires, mainly because you need to be in Werewolf form to utilize it, while you can be in non-Vampire Lord form and still be as effective. The downsides of Stage 1 Vampirism aren't that difficult to work around for experienced players.

navystylz_ESO

WhyMustItBe wrote: »

Obviously then we must ask, what are these new vampire active abilities and how are they so good as to warrant such imbalanced downsides? However on closer inspection, the vampire abilities you gain are mostly RP and utility fluff and give very little actual combat benefit:

• Blood Mist (channeled) does weak AOE damage (1.6k per second) and heals you.
• Hypnosis is an AOE stun of enemies facing your direction.
• Exhilarating Drain is a channel (interruptible) that does weak 2.5k single target damage per second for 3 seconds, heals you, and grants 4 ultimate per second.
• Sated Fury is a toggle that increases spell power & weapon damage by 660 but drains health per second (1152 per second at rank 4).
• Arterial Burst is the only actual damage ability. It is single target, does 10k magic damage (up to 50% more based on missing health) and always crits if YOU are under 50% health.

Blood Mist - Is a very strong survial abiity with a heal built in. It's not meant ot be a strong dot. It sucks we don't have one, but for what it's supposed to do Blood Mist is strong.
All Drains - These are heals to sustain your health cost abilites. Because a lot of classes don't need it, you think it's a weak dmg ability, but it's not. It can bring you from near deaht to full very fast. It does what it's supposed to well. Yes, it sucks we don't have a real range DD spell.
Fury. Gives you a crap ton of damage, with a health cost that isn't hard to maintain, even with simmering frenzy. Let's not pretend this is a weak buff.

Also, when comparing to WW. You forgot to mention "have access to all skills" as a vampire strength.

Vanos444

WhyMustItBe wrote: »

I have spent the last days testing out the new Vampire and Werewolf changes on the PTS an
Vampirism benefits and penalties:

VAMPIRISM BENEFITS

• 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?).
• Rank 2: When leaving sneak, invisibility, or mist form, gain 300 weapon & spell damage for 6 seconds (marginal usefulness).
• Rank 3: Reduce damage taken by up to 30% based on missing health (no vampire tank active abilities, marginal usefulness).
• Rank 4: Reduce sprint cost by 50% and gain invisibility after sprinting for 3 seconds (no real combat benefit, RP passive?).

That RP passive, you have been mentioning alot is actually usefull for PvP.

WhyMustItBe wrote: »

VAMPIRISM PENALTIES

• Health Recovery reduced (10%/40%/70%/100% at ranks 1/2/3/4).
• Flame damage taken increased (5%/10%/15%/20% at ranks 1/2/3/4).
• Increase ALL non-vampire ability cost including ultimates (5%/10%/15%/20% at ranks 1/2/3/4).

As you can (hopefully) see, Werewolf gets FAR more benefits for FAR fewer penalties.

At Vampirism Rank 1, just for having Vampirism, you gain NO damage increase or sustain benefits and suffer -10% health recovery, +5% flame damage, and +5% cost of all normal abilities. Literally all downsides and no benefits (in terms of combat.) Compare to Werewolf who get 15% stamina recovery just for SLOTTING their ultimate without even transforming, with NO DOWNSIDES. Literally all benefits.

Obviously then we must ask, what are these new vampire active abilities and how are they so good as to warrant such imbalanced downsides? However on closer inspection, the vampire abilities you gain are mostly RP and utility fluff and give very little actual combat benefit:

• Blood Mist (channeled) does weak AOE damage (1.6k per second) and heals you.
• Hypnosis is an AOE stun of enemies facing your direction.
• Exhilarating Drain is a channel (interruptible) that does weak 2.5k single target damage per second for 3 seconds, heals you, and grants 4 ultimate per second.
• Sated Fury is a toggle that increases spell power & weapon damage by 660 but drains health per second (1152 per second at rank 4).
• Arterial Burst is the only actual damage ability. It is single target, does 10k magic damage (up to 50% more based on missing health) and always crits if YOU are under 50% health.

The ultimate Perfect Scion grants you 10k MAX health, magic, and stamina on activation, but DOES NOT RESTORE THIS VALUE. This only increases your max possible values, meaning if you are out of resources when you cast it you are STILL out of resources after transforming. You then heal for 15% of the damage you do while transformed and can see enemies through walls (again mostly RP, no real combat benefit).

You also temporarily gain all the benefits of Rank 4 with none of the drawbacks (meaning your normal abilities don't cost 20% more while transformed), for 20 seconds. This however is marginally useful as you will typically be resources starved by the time you are able to transform just maintaining your AOEs for 20% increased cost since Vampirism has NO SIGNIFICANT AOE ABILITIES as Werewold does.

Further, the weak AOE vampires do have (Blood Mist) DOES NOT LET YOU CAST OTHER ABILITIES while using it, meaning it works like a channel. Compare this to all other AOEs in the game where you put them down then continue the rest of your rotation, and it is a MASSIVE DPS LOSS to use it, combined with the fact the AOE itself is extremely weak by AOE standards (roughly half the damage of Endless Hail).

The benefits of the vampire skills available are simply not significant to combat and still require all meaningful AOE and damage abilities to come from weapons and class skills thus costing 20% more resources for very little gain. In simulations on the PTS I am routinely doing MORE DPS with a standard build with NO vampire abilities at Rank 1 Vampirism than at Rank 4 using the vampire spammable, toggle, and ultimate, and running out of resources far less often (though you do get 5% increased cost even with NO benefits at all).

Again, compare this to Werewolf:

• 15% stamina recovery just for having their ultimate on their bar without even transforming.
• Powerful toolkit with Nuke, AOE, multiple heals, CC, AND group utility.
• Light attacks apply 14k bleed over 4 sec.
• Heavy attacks do 50% splash damage in AOE.
• Max stamina increased by 30%.
• Major Brutality (20% weapon damage) from slotting heal (always).
• Major Savagery (10% crit chance) from slotting fear (always).
• Major Berserk (25% damage buff) for healing while at full health.
• Access to fear.
• Access to unlimited group Empower synergy (Alkosh, etc.).
• Major Fracture.
• Minor Maim.
• MASSIVE damage further buffed by ability use.

This disparity is so egregious as to be truly mind boggling. The benefits of Vampirism not only do not balance the downsides, but the class has become UNPLAYABLE for the following:

• Tanks: There are NO vampire-based tanking abilities to benefit from the reduced vampire ability cost.
• Healers: There are NO vampire-based healing abilities (for others) to benefit from the reduced ability cost.

Furthermore, damage dealers are punished with 20% increased cost to all their abilities which are the bulk of their damage, minus ONE spammable vampire skill and some RP utility stuff.

This simply CANNOT go to live in its current form as it will seriously harm engagement with the game for people who love vampires, completely demoralizing and destroying a loved playstyle. It does NOT have to be this way! The vampire overhaul COULD be a fun new dynamic that INCREASES people's enjoyment and excitement for the game! ZOS, all you have to do is the following:

REMOVE THE COST INCREASE FROM NORMAL ABILITIES! The 100% health recovery and 20% fire damage is more than enough to counterbalance the very marginal benefits of being a vampire.

Consider all the MANY incredible benefits Werewolf gains, and for all that, their ONLY downside is 25% poison weakness WHILE TRANSFORMED. Now look at the minuscule vampire benefits, and the fact they get almost the same penalty (20% fire weakness), but with 100% health recovery AND 20% ability cost added ON TOP of that?!?

How is the class with LESS BENEFITS getting HUGELY MORE PENALTIES?

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_JessicaFolsom

At the very least there should be no ability cost penalty at Rank 1 Vampirism, 5% at Rank 2, 10% at Rank 3, and 15% at Rank 4, but even this much is TOTALLY UNFAIR based on actual benefits. As I said, I am regularly doing MORE DPS and staying in the fight longer due to sustain running a non-vampire ability build at Rank 1 on the PTS than I am using the vampire spammable, toggle, and ultimate at rank 4. I can post videos on request.

ZOS PLEASE reconsider this normal ability cost increase, at the very least at Rank 1, before Greymarch becomes another Morrowind sustain nerf disaster!

Blessed be.

I agree, the fact that being a vampire, will make your non vampire skill cost increased. Leaving your resource pools dwindle.
In addition, the vampire skills are also expensive provided you are using the Vampire lord gear to tackle that issue, not by a huge margin.
It can also mean, in order to be a successful vampire. It's mandatory to have vampire lord set equipped. Which is bad in my opinion.

All Zenimax as to do, is to revert the non-vampire skill cost and also introduced blood potions that will give boons to the character.

WhyMustItBe

T3hasiangod wrote: »

I really do think that Vampire is overtuned for several DPS specs. People have been able to maintain both Sated Fury and Simmering Frenzy in trial scenarios with relative success (I've seen a few trial boss parses with 80 percent Sated Fury uptime and up to 60 percent Simmering Frenzy uptime).

In order to be viable you need to work around the 5% increase to all abilities which make up the bulk of your rotation, assuming going in you are staying at Rank 1. 20% is obviously unplayable in trials.

Even at Rank 1 this will require a specific class to work. It needs to have access to 1) strong class-based self heals that 2) are reasonably 'fire and forget' in nature so as to avoid having to, for example, spam Vigor every 4 seconds.

By strong I mean they need to be able to out-heal 3400+ damage per second plus 1700 more damage per spammable attack if you are using the Blood for Blood morph, plus any raid damage going around as others cannot heal you. That is A LOT of self healing, which does not come free, and does not come from vampire skill so is all 5% more costly to use.

Also consider that if you are having to use Nightblade Swallow Soul as a spammable just to keep up with the healing, you realize you are losing out on one of the main advantages of a low cost spammable, and also that Swallow Soul will be 5% more costly to use.

This is extremely limiting to the scope and build diversity of the vampire. I don't know of any other build options in the game that actually require you to play one of maybe 3 classes that have the ability to sustain performing at a competitive level.

The cost increase is a whole other matter. It is almost like trying to sustain Kena with high uptime in a trial situation. You are either going to have to end up using regen/cost decrease enchants or gear sets negating much of the damage bonus, or rely on some unique class/race/gear combination to sustain a normal rotation.

Standing at a target dummy and executing a perfect sequence is one thing. When there is raid damage and mobility and mechanics going around it is not really viable to rely on most class-based heals (which proc on light attacks or damage), and the lack of a range nuke option and limited bar space means big dips in performance.

Because of the compensation for the ability cost on gear and enchants, toggling off your damage boost means you are weaker than normal whenever you don't have it on. It also takes 10 seconds to ramp up.

All of this is fine, and I don't doubt that some classes in specific sets with specific enchants and abilities can pull off a rotation with high uptime on the toggle buff at vampire Rank 1, and even come in at a comparable level in terms of damage to a non-vampire character.

My issue is with "risk vs. reward." If I can stand up, walk to the pantry, and grab an energy bar when I'm hungry, or I can stand up, run 4 miles, organize my sock collection by shape, color, and thickness, brush some of the shedding poison oak absorbing fuzz from my crazy cat, and solve world peace, only to have my reward be the same energy bar, which one do you think I'm going to pick?

Normally I would say, the EXPERIENCE is its own reward. However, for that to be true it must actually be a fun experience. I am sure some people like "danger zone" playstyle but I have never been a fan of mechanics that keep me constantly staring at my health bar instead of my surroundings. There is also all the extra clicks of maintaining uptime on potentially multiple extra buffs, and juggling sustain issues with power to basically arrive at the same place only with much more work (and possibly less hair lol).

Can it be done, on certain classes and builds? Undoubtedly. Will some people enjoy that playstyle? I am certain some will and to those people I say, more power to you enjoy the new vampire!

However for me personally, what I am seeing is that without some unique ability effects when you transform into Scion, and with transform taking 2 seconds to turn on and off locking you in place with animations, and with it not really lasting long enough, and with it not having its own unique animations (they basically just rigged it with the stock weapon swing animations on a larger body), I am definitely "not feeling it" enough to warrant the added complexity of battling the low health and resource cost mechanics.

I really hope they do make some tweaks like having the transform last 30 seconds, having it explode in bats to instantly de-transform when it expires so you don't have to wait twice to continue your rotation, and make some of the normal vampire abilities gain extra unique and cool vampire lord-themed effects while you are transformed.

That and some really awesome non-weapon combat animations in Scion form similar to Werewolf.

Alucardo

mb10 wrote: »

In the TES world, vampires and and werewolves aren’t the same lol they don’t have the same power/strength

Werewolves in lore have very few drawbacks

Vampires do but skill cost increase is just a weird one that’s not needed

The only reason for cost increase is probably due to the strong passives, like Undeath at 100% and being able to go invisible for sprinting. Also the 600+ spell damage toggle that you can use for quick burst windows.
They would have to dial these back a bit if there was no serious drawback.

FenrisWolf1136

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.

This... so much this^^^
I've been kicked out of entire guilds just for running a werewolf. It'll be nice to be able to pull it off the shelf again for some pve content. Something i gave up playing around murkmire because of nerfs that were unwarranted. Many of which were constantly pushed by players who didn't fully understand or play ww in general. I don't own a single vampire character, or even so much as have an achievement for a bite from one, so i can't even begin to give feedback on them.

katorga

Vevvev wrote: »

RogueShark wrote: »

As 'easy' as it is to keep werewolf up, you are not guaranteed in every situation to always be able to do so. Vampire passives/abilities are always a guarantee without having to waste or dump your ulti.

As long as you're in combat you are pretty much capable of always being in werewolf form. Feral Pounce and devouring corpses just make it so that timer never goes down, and if you're in a group of werewolves.... well you probably won't even be worrying about that timer.

RogueShark wrote: »

15% stam recovery is not all the time, as it's only on one bar. You lose your weapon damage from dawnbreaker if it's front-barred, which is arguable better than the stam recovery. Get next to no use of it on your back bar. I'd even say you lose out on combat performance, because you either don't get dawnbreaker on your front bar, or you lose out on another high-damage ulti to drop.

You speak as if everyone and their brother slots Dawnbreaker.

If werewolves were everywhere in pvp, everyone and their brother would slot dawnbreaker. Next patch you'll see more vampires and werewolves, so probably an increase in the use of dawnbreaker.

Vevvev

katorga wrote: »

If werewolves were everywhere in pvp, everyone and their brother would slot dawnbreaker. Next patch you'll see more vampires and werewolves, so probably an increase in the use of dawnbreaker.

Magic builds can't use dawnbreaker.

TheInfernalRage

WhyMustItBe wrote: »

I have spent the last days testing out the new Vampire and Werewolf changes on the PTS and have reached some rather shocking conclusions. There is a very serious problem with Vampirism specifically that, if allowed to go live, will completely destroy the enjoyment of countless players and cause nothing but strife and lost revenue for Zenimax. Allow me to explain.

Let us begin with a simple comparison of benefits and penalties for each class.

Werewolf benefits and penalties:

WEREWOLF BENEFITS

Werewolf ultimate slotted (not transformed):

• 15% stamina recovery.

Werewolf Berserker (transformed):

• Light attacks apply 14k bleed over 4 sec.
• Heavy attacks do 50% splash damage in AOE.
• Max stamina increased by 30%.
• Major Brutality (20% weapon damage) from slotting heal (always).
• Major Savagery (10% crit chance) from slotting fear (always).

Brutal Pounce (gap closer):

• 9.6k BASE damage to target and surrounding enemies (AOE)
• Activate again within 5sec to cast Brutal Carnage:
  • Brutal Carnage causes enemies to bleed for 7k BASE physical damage over 10 seconds, dealing up to 450% more damage based on missing health.
  • Increase weapon damage by 85 for each enemy hit, up to a max of 6 (510 weapon damage).

Hircine's Rage (heal):

• Heal for 7k health (scales off max health).
• If at full health restore 3k stamina & gain Major Berserk (25% damage increase) for 6 seconds (also take 20% more damage).
• Major Brutality (20% weapon damage) at all times for slotting ability.

Deafening Roar (fear):

• Fear up to 6 nearby enemies for 4 seconds.
• Sets up to 6 enemies Off Balance for 7 seconds.
• Applies Major Fracture to feared enemies for 7 seconds (minus 5280 physical resist).
• Applies Minor Main to feared enemies for 7 seconds (minus 15% damage done).
• Gain Major Savagery (10% crit chance) at all times for slotting ability.

Howl of Despair (nuke, group utility):

• Deals 16k BASE physical damage.
• Enemies facing you take 10% more damage.
• Allows allies UNLIMITED use of Feeding Frenzy synergy, granting Empower for 5 seconds (increase light attack damage by 40%).

Claws of Life (AOE, heal):

• 12k BASE disease damage to enemies in AOE plus 12k BASE disease damage over 10 seconds.
• You are healed for 100% of the damage over time.
• Enemies hit by the initial effect are inflicted with the Diseased status effect (15% reduced healing received).

WEREWOLF PENALTIES

• You take 25% more poison damage WHILE TRANSFORMED. There are NO NEGATIVES when not transformed!

Vampirism benefits and penalties:

VAMPIRISM BENEFITS

• 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?).
• Rank 2: When leaving sneak, invisibility, or mist form, gain 300 weapon & spell damage for 6 seconds (marginal usefulness).
• Rank 3: Reduce damage taken by up to 30% based on missing health (no vampire tank active abilities, marginal usefulness).
• Rank 4: Reduce sprint cost by 50% and gain invisibility after sprinting for 3 seconds (no real combat benefit, RP passive?).

VAMPIRISM PENALTIES

• Health Recovery reduced (10%/40%/70%/100% at ranks 1/2/3/4).
• Flame damage taken increased (5%/10%/15%/20% at ranks 1/2/3/4).
• Increase ALL non-vampire ability cost including ultimates (5%/10%/15%/20% at ranks 1/2/3/4).

As you can (hopefully) see, Werewolf gets FAR more benefits for FAR fewer penalties.

At Vampirism Rank 1, just for having Vampirism, you gain NO damage increase or sustain benefits and suffer -10% health recovery, +5% flame damage, and +5% cost of all normal abilities. Literally all downsides and no benefits (in terms of combat.) Compare to Werewolf who get 15% stamina recovery just for SLOTTING their ultimate without even transforming, with NO DOWNSIDES. Literally all benefits.

Obviously then we must ask, what are these new vampire active abilities and how are they so good as to warrant such imbalanced downsides? However on closer inspection, the vampire abilities you gain are mostly RP and utility fluff and give very little actual combat benefit:

• Blood Mist (channeled) does weak AOE damage (1.6k per second) and heals you.
• Hypnosis is an AOE stun of enemies facing your direction.
• Exhilarating Drain is a channel (interruptible) that does weak 2.5k single target damage per second for 3 seconds, heals you, and grants 4 ultimate per second.
• Sated Fury is a toggle that increases spell power & weapon damage by 660 but drains health per second (1152 per second at rank 4).
• Arterial Burst is the only actual damage ability. It is single target, does 10k magic damage (up to 50% more based on missing health) and always crits if YOU are under 50% health.

The ultimate Perfect Scion grants you 10k MAX health, magic, and stamina on activation, but DOES NOT RESTORE THIS VALUE. This only increases your max possible values, meaning if you are out of resources when you cast it you are STILL out of resources after transforming. You then heal for 15% of the damage you do while transformed and can see enemies through walls (again mostly RP, no real combat benefit).

You also temporarily gain all the benefits of Rank 4 with none of the drawbacks (meaning your normal abilities don't cost 20% more while transformed), for 20 seconds. This however is marginally useful as you will typically be resources starved by the time you are able to transform just maintaining your AOEs for 20% increased cost since Vampirism has NO SIGNIFICANT AOE ABILITIES as Werewold does.

Further, the weak AOE vampires do have (Blood Mist) DOES NOT LET YOU CAST OTHER ABILITIES while using it, meaning it works like a channel. Compare this to all other AOEs in the game where you put them down then continue the rest of your rotation, and it is a MASSIVE DPS LOSS to use it, combined with the fact the AOE itself is extremely weak by AOE standards (roughly half the damage of Endless Hail).

The benefits of the vampire skills available are simply not significant to combat and still require all meaningful AOE and damage abilities to come from weapons and class skills thus costing 20% more resources for very little gain. In simulations on the PTS I am routinely doing MORE DPS with a standard build with NO vampire abilities at Rank 1 Vampirism than at Rank 4 using the vampire spammable, toggle, and ultimate, and running out of resources far less often (though you do get 5% increased cost even with NO benefits at all).

Again, compare this to Werewolf:

• 15% stamina recovery just for having their ultimate on their bar without even transforming.
• Powerful toolkit with Nuke, AOE, multiple heals, CC, AND group utility.
• Light attacks apply 14k bleed over 4 sec.
• Heavy attacks do 50% splash damage in AOE.
• Max stamina increased by 30%.
• Major Brutality (20% weapon damage) from slotting heal (always).
• Major Savagery (10% crit chance) from slotting fear (always).
• Major Berserk (25% damage buff) for healing while at full health.
• Access to fear.
• Access to unlimited group Empower synergy (Alkosh, etc.).
• Major Fracture.
• Minor Maim.
• MASSIVE damage further buffed by ability use.

This disparity is so egregious as to be truly mind boggling. The benefits of Vampirism not only do not balance the downsides, but the class has become UNPLAYABLE for the following:

• Tanks: There are NO vampire-based tanking abilities to benefit from the reduced vampire ability cost.
• Healers: There are NO vampire-based healing abilities (for others) to benefit from the reduced ability cost.

Furthermore, damage dealers are punished with 20% increased cost to all their abilities which are the bulk of their damage, minus ONE spammable vampire skill and some RP utility stuff.

This simply CANNOT go to live in its current form as it will seriously harm engagement with the game for people who love vampires, completely demoralizing and destroying a loved playstyle. It does NOT have to be this way! The vampire overhaul COULD be a fun new dynamic that INCREASES people's enjoyment and excitement for the game! ZOS, all you have to do is the following:

REMOVE THE COST INCREASE FROM NORMAL ABILITIES! The 100% health recovery and 20% fire damage is more than enough to counterbalance the very marginal benefits of being a vampire.

Consider all the MANY incredible benefits Werewolf gains, and for all that, their ONLY downside is 25% poison weakness WHILE TRANSFORMED. Now look at the minuscule vampire benefits, and the fact they get almost the same penalty (20% fire weakness), but with 100% health recovery AND 20% ability cost added ON TOP of that?!?

How is the class with LESS BENEFITS getting HUGELY MORE PENALTIES?

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_JessicaFolsom

At the very least there should be no ability cost penalty at Rank 1 Vampirism, 5% at Rank 2, 10% at Rank 3, and 15% at Rank 4, but even this much is TOTALLY UNFAIR based on actual benefits. As I said, I am regularly doing MORE DPS and staying in the fight longer due to sustain running a non-vampire ability build at Rank 1 on the PTS than I am using the vampire spammable, toggle, and ultimate at rank 4. I can post videos on request.

ZOS PLEASE reconsider this normal ability cost increase, at the very least at Rank 1, before Greymarch becomes another Morrowind sustain nerf disaster!

Blessed be.

And look, that Vampire overland set actually aggravates your situation as a Vampire instead of giving you ease. They changed it, but because of the Vampire mechanics they made it worse.

Camelord

Why is everyone trying arterial burst on their parses hen they already have around 75-80% crit
slot blood for blood and instead of a max proc of 66k you have an average of 60-70k
With 3 spells, 1 bar you can hit 70k easy with blood for blood

Nissowolf

i love how people complain about the loss that will be vampire, but it just gain massive buff to the skills and the loss of what made it BiS. Yeah, now, you want vampire status, you will have to use it just as werewolves do. It's more roleplay, it's more playable, it has is own identity now. But people complain about the 10% of sustain xD

xryanvb16_ESO

"There is a very serious problem with Vampirism specifically that, if allowed to go live, will completely destroy the enjoyment of countless players and cause nothing but strife" This is great melodrama I love it. Zos don't implement things the way they are the very existence of human life on this planet depends on it.