Vampire revamp: YAY or NAY

Austinseph1

No

Already cured my vamps in anticipation, I like rp but i'm not hardcore enough to play the bad magicka version of a WW. It's funny that it's the year of the vamp but WW is easily 10x more attractive with none of the downsides if you dont want to use it at the time.

navystylz_ESO

No

Glurin wrote: »

1. There isn't any. It's strictly a mechanic introduced to try and give a little more impact to vampirism. It's fine as long as it stays manageable without turning them into magicka werewolves.

2. I think it's pretty much the trade off for the fact that sunlight based weaknesses just aren't practical in this environment. This one is really only a problem at stage 4 though, where health regen just goes away completely, and even then it's mainly all about making sure you've got a heal slotted for when you stub your toe too many times running to the next objective.

3. The direction on Frenzy is crystal clear. It's not supposed to be something you just toggle on at the beginning of combat and leave on through the whole fight. It's meant for short bursts. As far as the nerf being over the top is concerned, that part may be true. Simple enough to fix though. Wouldn't need much more than a base cost adjustment or a little tweak to how quickly the cost increases while active.

4. It's supposed to be a kind of blood magic strike, but it does feel more like you're just scratching at someone's face with your fingernails.

1. It would have been perfectly fine IMO if they didn't nerf vampire cost reduction so hard in return for lowering the normal ability cost penalty. They made it better to use normal skills and took away the whole point of the skill line, to be a friggin vampire.

2. I can't even say anything against this. This is how it worked in Skyrim. It was super annoying, but at least you could choose to kick around at night. A lot of people might have use Sacrosanct or Better Vampires to get rid of this weakness, but it was there. But in MMO play, just makes having less than 100% health a constant thing. Which isn't necessarily bad, but very much an eye sore. I think what could have really helped this is my mind is if feeding on NPC with the new blade of woe mechanics still healed you like the old feed. Without spoiling, there's a vampire in Greymoor who while escaping left a bunch of bodies in his wake to regen himself after expending power. If I could sneak, feed, kill and regen without having to stop and click vampiric drain, this would be a bit nicer.

3. I almost feel instead of a toggle then, they should have made this into a synergy. Make the click aspect of frenzy something that wasn't broken, but then when you used it you could press X to get the dmg aspect of frenzy for whatever duration they liked, then it would expire and you would be on synergy cooldown.

eKsDee

No

It really seems like two different teams made the passives and actives, which kinda just makes vamp fall apart at the seams. The passives are designed to push you into primarily using and building into vamp, like werewolf, but the actives are designed to supplement existing builds/kits, that are lacking certain tools like a solid spammable, stun, etc. Either way could work, but certainly not both at the same time, which really kills the rework for me.

LuxiasCaelum13

No

They are treating vampirism as a class rather than a feature to make you play in a certain way.
There is no point in playing "full vampire", and the only reason to keep it is for characters that really want the sneak speed penalty removed or for people who really need mist form.

ManM

No, BUT

As a RPer, the rework does not provide any plausible reason for a character to ever want to drink blood. Before, a vampire wanting to fit in would drink blood to continue looking normal. Now, it's the opposite. Okay, so what about the idea of my character drinking blood before going out on an adventure to become stronger? As everyone has been saying, the vampire here is actually growing weaker as they become more vampiric. Increased costs to previously known skill? Can't even recover from a stubbed toe? Oops. Why in the world would a vampire choose to become significantly less powerful by drinking more blood?

The problem is with the fundamental paradigm the developer admitted to working from. The vampiric stages are conceived around the level of obsession about and addiction to blood. If a vampire drinks, they become more obsessed with blood, and forget their previous self. A stage four vampire is just like a bloodfiend at that point, desperate to find blood to sustain their need. They are weak and desperate. Their reward for drinking is to devolve into a single-minded creature who's capstone trait is that they can run away and hide.

So, I've got a vampire now who has precisely zero reason to ever choose to drink blood. Rather, it seems geared around providing the experience of a weak and feral bloodfiend at stage 4. I bet that's why you don't get cool NPC vampire abilities, as well. The target for stage 4 is a bloodfiend simulation. RP and gameplay wise, unless you want to have the skillset and power level of trash mob in world, this update is going to feel horrible.

I voted for a No, BUT, because I think it can be salvaged with three simple tweaks.

1. Get rid of the cost updates to previously known skills entirely. I now understand that it's supposed to try and simulate obsession with blood, but that's doing it by using a rather huge and nonsensical stick, instead of a carrot. Let the drawbacks to being a vampire remain the curse: increased fire damage, social rejection, and so forth.
2. Scale the effectiveness of vampire abilities with vampiric stage. Eviscerate should be a weak melee attack for a stage 1 vampire, but hit like a truck for a stage 4 vampire. Mist form and blood frenzy should be able to be sustained longer for a stage 4 vampire. That ties vampiric strength directly to drinking blood, which is what the stated design goal was.
3. Only allow stage 4 vampires to use the ultimate transformation. There is no reason why my starved vampire should be able to go fully into a horrific monster at the drop of a hat. Make me be at stage 4. Force me to drink blood if I want to use the ultimate in vampiric strength.

I don't hold out much hope at this stage, as the skill developer seems to have decided to bring us the experience of a weak and pathetic bloodfiend at stage 4. That just shows they don't really understand the headspace of why people want to play as a vampire.

BalticBlues

No

Derra wrote: »

Vamp offers nothing. It tries to mimic werewolf - which it shouldn´t imo - and fails even at that.

Exactly.
I wonder what WW players would say if there would be penalties for not being in WW form?
I wonder what WW players would say if all non-WW skills had a cost increase?
I wonder what WW players would say if they had no extra bar for WW skills?
I wonder what WW players would say if they would need to use range skills although most Stam plays melee?

IMHO, the new Vamps (magicka) are tailor-made melee prey for Stam.
So Stam DDs can proudly show off Vampire hunting in their PvP streams...

Shantu

No

No incentive to play one. About as poorly imagined as they can be. ZOS is in dire need of some entertaining creativity.

Aedaryl

Yes

Undead + Breton = good

nikolaj.lemcheb16_ESO

Yes, BUT

Love that you can now have dark stalker at stage 1. This is very useful on two of my chars.

But the blood frenzy is close to useless now. You can only have it on for a few seconds, which means the time you spend clicking it on and off will kill the extra damage you do unless you can kill your target in a few seconds. So only gankers can use it and they will become worse than before.

So worse gankers equals more nb nerfs in the near future.

TX12001rwb17_ESO

It needs more work

They have made it so Blood is basically a drug for Vampires which is not good for them.

Drinking Blood seems to make them sick which may explain why they now look corpse like for drinking it and why they stop healing, they are basically addicts now, consuming blood gives them a high which wrecks contration which would explain the increased cost on normal abilities.

Glurin

Yes, BUT

BalticBlues wrote: »

Derra wrote: »

Vamp offers nothing. It tries to mimic werewolf - which it shouldn´t imo - and fails even at that.

Exactly.
I wonder what WW players would say if there would be penalties for not being in WW form?
I wonder what WW players would say if all non-WW skills had a cost increase?
I wonder what WW players would say if they had no extra bar for WW skills?
I wonder what WW players would say if they would need to use range skills although most Stam plays melee?

They would say "HOLY ***! I love this! Look at all these amazing passives that I get in exchange for a little extra cost on my other abilities! This is fantastic!"

Nova_J

No

Glurin wrote: »

BalticBlues wrote: »

Derra wrote: »

Vamp offers nothing. It tries to mimic werewolf - which it shouldn´t imo - and fails even at that.

Exactly.
I wonder what WW players would say if there would be penalties for not being in WW form?
I wonder what WW players would say if all non-WW skills had a cost increase?
I wonder what WW players would say if they had no extra bar for WW skills?
I wonder what WW players would say if they would need to use range skills although most Stam plays melee?

They would say "HOLY ***! I love this! Look at all these amazing passives that I get in exchange for a little extra cost on my other abilities! This is fantastic!"

Lmaoo new passive aren't even that interesting. I can sprint better? Okay. I can go invisible while sprinting for awhile? Yea okay lol still not sitting at stage 4 for that. This whole thing just feels like a bunch of "cool" ideas thrown onto he table with no thought behind them. The positives dont even match the negatives.

Thaley

It needs more work

It needs more work

The new changes made the vampire much more interesting in my opinion.
Very nice ideas like the mesmerize, the blood cloud and the invisibility mechanism.

BUT i am no fan of the the-more-you-drink, the-weaker-you-are mechanism.

NEW IDEA:
In my opinion it would be better to combine the old way of fading power by using vampire skills (you use up the blood you could say) with the new skills. Perhaps taking fire damage could speed up the fading. By fading i mean going from rank 4 to 1.

And I am sceptical if the 3-second running mechanics is easy to handle. Perhaps a different trigger for the invisibility would be nice, but iI have no better idea at the moment.

SlimeBro1

No

Glurin wrote: »

Some of the vamp abilities might need a little fine tuning to get them dialed in, which is not unexpected, but otherwise I think it's in a pretty good spot overall right now. Probably should wait for a bit before deciding on that fine tuning though. Give people a chance to really dig into it.

Deleted my response to this because I realized how old the thread was mb

SlimeBro1

No

Glad to see the majority of people on here seem to be against the vampire rework/think it needs more attention. Who would of thunk it.

Jodynn

No

Reminds me of a cast time poll I made with 80% against, didn't seem to matter then.. wonder if this will matter now.

MincVinyl

Anyone ever wonder why nb siphoning tree feels more vampire than the vampire skill line?

SlimeBro1

No

MincVinyl wrote: »

Anyone ever wonder why nb siphoning tree feels more vampire than the vampire skill line?

LOL this is the truest post Ive seen in a while.

Jayroo

It needs more work

vampires weren't even considered a "class" to build around as much as a passive buff with ugly side effects. To say you are opposed to the vampire revamp is like saying you are opposed to changes period imo.

SlimeBro1

No

Jayroo wrote: »

vampires weren't even considered a "class" to build around as much as a passive buff with ugly side effects. To say you are opposed to the vampire revamp is like saying you are opposed to changes period imo.

I do think most of the people saying "nay" want the vampire rework to happen, just this version of the rework needs a lot of work

TheImperfect

No, BUT

I'd like the gap closer mentioned by others but I think the current vampire is much improved and only minor tweak if any needed. A more feminine look would also be good for female vampires.

WraithShadow13

No

Jayroo wrote: »

vampires weren't even considered a "class" to build around as much as a passive buff with ugly side effects. To say you are opposed to the vampire revamp is like saying you are opposed to changes period imo.

No one is complaining of change. I haven't seen a single person saying how perfect vampirism already was or how they shouldn't have changed it.

Not wanting change and not liking changes that make things worse are two entirely different things. I think most vampire players were genuinely looking forward to the revamp until we actually saw what we were getting. The changes made make little to no sense or improvements. More so, they don't fit the lore or NPC vampires in-game.


Feeding doesn't heal or have any benefits beyond adding a level of vampirism. Upping the cost of ALL non-Vampiric abilities makes no sense, with the possible exception or radiant abilities. Vampirism, as a whole, seems more punishing against stam builds, which makes no sense because Vampires are usually seen as faster, stronger, more physically capable. The way they changed the feeding/blade of woe, causes more problems than it solves, often breaking the animations (BoW only triggers the throw, which is bad at arms reach, while feeding only seems to trigger the telekinetic feeding which is wierd as a stamvam). I like the invisible sprint but that makes no sense. They don't even behave like they do in the actual trailer showcasing vampires. It's ridiculous and the only thing i can see to explain it was a video clip of the lore master saying that he wanted it to be more punishing to make it something players actually have to think about.


I can't find the specific video where he says it but it was in the promotional stuff before greymoor launched.


Change is one thing but poorly received changes that go against lore are entirely different.

VioletDracolich

Yes, BUT

I personally enjoy the skill line, but obviously it's not perfect. Overall however, I think it is a rather interesting playstyle that can really spice up one's gameplay. I personally main a vampire necromancer ATM and it is super fun using Shimmering Frenzy and Mist Form to get crazy levels of power in short bursts. I do believe they are doing vampire justice, but some ideas are kinda weird.

Why do I get weaker from feed for example? I know it's supposed to mirror the original vampires from Oblivion and Skyrim, but in those games not feeding made you stronger with more drawbacks, heck this is how ESO originally did it. Instead feeding now gives power in exchange for drastic drawbacks. I personally don't mind, but I can see why a majority don't like this. It's similar to the stranglers ATM, there is power, but it's not worth the risk for the average player.

I'm still gonna play vampire, and I personally approve of the current version, but I know for a fact most players aren't even giving vampirism a chance because the changes, mostly the drawbacks, ARE extreme. IDK what they were thinking with the drawback heavy ideas, but they clearly aren't popular.

Kittytravel

No

Vampire rework failed to create a core identity skill line that encouraged builds centered around it like WW (Blood Moon and Relequens WW for example).

If they want to avoid the transformation mechanic (I wholly believe they should) then they need to make REAL incentive and REAL drawbacks for being stage 4. Not remaining stage 1 and getting all the best benefits.

Personally I love the B4B debuff and I'd love if they made that the core mechanic; a vampire that after using the main spammable cannot be healed by allies but receives a X% damage increase to vampire only abilities scaling by vampire stage. Work in more lifedrain into their kit and wallah you've created a real vampire with it's own distinct playstyle that has trouble being used as just a side-skill line.

BahometZ

No

The conclusion that a lot of us have made is that vampirism is now for overland button mashing, Gothic-inclined roleplayers who go heavy on the eyeshadow (I lovingly jest), and mist-forming in PvP. It might also find a place for those theory crafted gank builds that never get put into practice because Strike from Shadows, Frenzy toggle, potion popping for one sweet snipe desynch kill on an afk CP230 is no way to live.

I do like that being a vampire is now a more deliberate choice rather than a default requirement for passive sustain reasons. But as it currently stands I would not be a vampire on most toons in most serious content, and I certainly wouldn't want to be stage 4 for anything. The vampire skill tree simply does not have the variety or effectiveness to justify going level 4.

The ultimate is striking but kind of irrelevant. As many people find it ugly as find it cool. Most people will level it, use it a few times, then move on.

Eviscerate was powerful but risky, costing health and being melee. It was an extra option for some classes. Now it is impotent and not worth the risk. There have been countless threads about how disappointed the player-base feel you've handled this skill. It should have been dealt with like soul trap so that stam could use it, it should have had the scaling reduced so it wasn't excessively strong, it should not have had the 5 second healing negate added. You've yet again done that wonderful trick of introducing a shiny new toy only to nerf it into irrelevance.

The drain is too weak in every sense. If it was a longer (~12 sec) vampiric DoT and not a weak channel it might justify it's use in a vampire bar set-up.

Frenzy, mistform and mesmerize are okay skills, but don't justify themselves as worth committing to the vampire playstyle. If eviscerate and drain were better, then overall the skill line would look more appealing.

I might keep vampirism on a mat farmer for the invis sprint (not that it's needed), and on a trial magblade but won't use any of the abilities in trials. It's only because I can live with the increased skill cost and I can't be bothered curing it in case vamp changes again. He's been a vampire for a long time and I have soft spot for the roleplay, so I'll just keep it as is. I doubt that's what Zos intended for vampire: That it's something to shrug at or "deal with".

Current vampire just feels like another missed opportunity.

Lalothen

It needs more work

The devs managed to find a sweet spot with their Werewolf tweaks, and I think they could conceivably do the same with Vampire whilst maintaining an appreciable level of uniqueness between the two skill lines. I personally think one of the main issues is pushing people to fill their bars with Vampire skills at higher stages, whilst ignoring the fact that people operate with two bars, not one. I understand adhering to a skill line standard of "5 slottable skills + 1 ult", but such a limitation in conjunction with the negative impact on non-Vampire skills is a real killer.

This may sound off-the-wall, but what about a new "blood" staff type (as an off-the-cuff example) that only vampires can use, that provides a new modification to the destruction staff skills? Imagine Blood Clench, Unstable Wall of Blood, Blood Rage, etc, all of which would consequently benefit from cost reductions associated with vampire stage, allowing a Vampire to successfully flesh out their bars whilst incentivising pursuing a higher stage.

Alternatively - or even in conjunction - I wonder how hard it would be to add a third morph option for certain generic skill line abilities that's unlocked by becoming a vampire? Things could get REALLY interesting if, for example, Vampires could morph magelight into a temporary AoE invisibility spell (i.e. essentially corrupting magelight to do the opposite of what it is supposed to).

OmniDo

No

No.
Unnatural Movement is the *only* reason I remain a Vampire, beyond RP-value.
Other than that, ZOS ****ed it up, and whoever made the decision to roll this trash out to live needs to re-evaluate their credentials.

BalticBlues

No

LOVE my new Werewolf.
HATE my new Vampire.

Moreover, the new patch also CRIPPLES a top Templar skill and Sorc Pets.
ZOS, you should not wonder why people now call the game Elder Stamina Online.

JMadFour

I really loved being a Vampire. I had finally found something in game that I really enjoyed and loved being all-in for. I built the entire concept of my main character around being a Vampire.

they they essentially decided, by making us unhealable for 5 seconds after using our spammable (which we use constantly, essentially making us unhealable for almost the entirety of a dungeon), that Vampires are not meant to participate in Group Content.

I haven't logged into ESO since these changes went up on the PTS, been playing other games.

I think I am going to log in the day these changes go live on PC, cure all my vampires, and then log out. I'm not sure yet. I haven't decided it switching to the (decidedly worse) Arterial Burst is worth it.