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Vampire: Moving In The Right Direction, But Not There Yet

Tyrobag
Tyrobag
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Ok, so now its possible to be a vampire, you just haven't given a good reason to be one yet.

Now blood frenzy can't be kept up indefinitely by heavy heal-as-you-go classes (though they still have a significant advantage), but you fixed half the problem by making the other half worse. Now it can't really be effectively used anywhere but pvp, since its all fast burst damage and they don't rely on healers. The better way to fix it would be to knock the whole thing down a few notches: Make it a 50% cut to ALL healing, reduce the power buff, reduce the base health cost (especially important with the new change). This way it can be useful/usable for everyone, and not OP for any one small group of people. Another thing that could help would be adding a passive major prophecy while slotted. This way it can be used in place of inner light, since with the current set up the only imaginable way to use it is to toggle it on before dropping ult, which isn't worth loosing a damage ability for.

Eviscerate is still incredibly lack luster. Its another one that's nearly useless in pve since you if you're in a situation where your health is low enough to make a difference you are definitely not attacking, and certainly not at melee range. Not to mention that the animation looks like a Pokemon ability, so very out of place in an Elder Scrolls game.

As for the feeding passive, it is a definitive improvement. One serious issue though is sticking with the 100% health regen debuff at stage 4. It makes it ridiculously and unnecessarily annoying to do things like falling a short distance. Just make it a 90% debuff, or even 95%. Just leave something so we don't have to keep looking at our decreased health after stubbing our toe.

Vampire needs to be designed so anybody can take it or leave it. As it is you'll still have RPers just taking the stage 1 debuffs for nothing in return, and a new breed of magicka gankers in pvp who take it. And everybody else leaving it.

Current Vampire Outlook: All except for my Vamp-NB (has to stay, since vamp is part of his identity) are still going to be cured. (For perspective: If vampire was done correctly, I would have 3 current vamp chars staying vampires, and the other 4 getting cured)
  • wild_kmacdb16_ESO
    wild_kmacdb16_ESO
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    Good points, and just as an aside, I do feel like this whole 'kamikaze' combat style approach to vampire is just kind of bizarre. When I think of vampires, I don't think of creatures that push themselves to the brink of death each battle... vampires are known for self preservation, with the whole living for centuries thing.

    But I guess it's too late to change directions now.

    So playing the hands we have been dealt, the biggest thing I want to ZOS to consider is the new Blood Frenzy health drain. I understand you want to make it more of an 'active' skill by not being able to just toggle it on and leave it on, but the drain cost is too significant and increases too dramatically in a short span of time. I would like to see it being able to be kept up for 20s before the player starts sweating, and you can tweak the bonuses accordingly; 20s being inline with several other major buffs.
  • Vevvev
    Vevvev
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    I had an interesting idea of taking the Materialize ability off the clouding swarm ultimate on live and turning it into a morph for Eviscerate. Its a spammable that also acts as a gap closer, and even has a cool blood magic styled attack animation to boot! So you're not going to be punching someone with your staff when you use it.
    PC NA - Ceyanna Ashton - Breton Vampire MagDK
  • Hooded_1
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    If you go watch TheAsianGod's video on 6.0.3 he makes a very good argument as to why the change to health cost will widen the skill gap more than it already has. I have personally found on parsing (note, parsing, I have not personally tested in real content yet, and won't till this goes live) that running Sated Fury on for example a stamplar is still worth it. Each time it falls off, it pops you back to full health, and then the next time you go to your backbar to cast hail you can cast sated fury at the same time, since it's off the GCD. It is still an effective boost in power, but they have most certainly made it more dangerous to run in actual content.
  • Jeremy
    Jeremy
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    I guess...

    It's easier to use your regular abilities in stage 4 now. So I guess this is a nice change for those people who wanted to play in stage 4 and take all that extra fire damage while they use their regular rotations so badly. /shrug

    Frankly I think it's a step backward because the new Blood Frenzy is crap. At least before this change The Vampire offered some nice utility and gave players a good damage buff in exchange for a modest health sacrifice. Now it's so risky it's not even worth using in my opinion. At least not on anything that does damage. The amount of health it starts to drain is just ridiculous to the point you have to constantly turn it on and off. And that's all this game needs - especially in PvP - one more thing that's going to kill you if you lag. Yeah, think I'll take a hard pass.

    This is a good change for players who didn't want to have to give up their regular rotations for access to Unnatural Movement though. I will admit that.
    Edited by Jeremy on May 12, 2020 3:29AM
  • Narvuntien
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    Yeah, these changes are. better but we are missing the cohesiveness necessary to make a vamp based dps.

    Eviscerate is definitely the key to vamp dps (And it still makes no sense that it is melee magicka ability in the context of how this game works)

    And the second dps ability should be the channelled drain, that they deliberately reduced the damage on what should be one of the vamps main dps skills.
    Edited by Narvuntien on May 12, 2020 3:47AM
  • Merca
    Merca
    Well, there 's definitely no way without Lord Vampire 's kit to keep track of it as a kraft set. Now you have to limit yourself to light armor.
  • DarthBetty
    DarthBetty
    Soul Shriven
    Tyrobag wrote: »
    Ok, so now its possible to be a vampire, you just haven't given a good reason to be one yet.
    As for the feeding passive, it is a definitive improvement. One serious issue though is sticking with the 100% health regen debuff at stage 4. It makes it ridiculously and unnecessarily annoying to do things like falling a short distance. Just make it a 90% debuff, or even 95%. Just leave something so we don't have to keep looking at our decreased health after stubbing our toe.

    This.
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