Vampirism and tank: viable?

Grimreaper2000

Due the increase cost of regular abilities a vamp tank shouldn't be viable anymore.
But what with the 30% damage migitation, the drain and stun skill and the ultimate you get as a vampire? Doesn't it pay off? Cant you easily build around the -8% regular ability cost? (as a stage 3 vampire).

Shortly, I'm not convinced its a bad choice for a tank. So I would like to read your opinions and maybe see some tank/vamp builds.

Hotdog_23

Tank really need to us warhorn on one bar and barrier on the other bar and not the vampire ultimate.

zvavi

The stun is not consistent enough (mobs need to look at you) so it ain't a plus.

Drain is bad cause it can't function as emergency heal (cause cast time, no block) essentially taking the space of skills that are just better (unless you are Templar tank, then you have nothing as it is).

The ultimate doesn't add anything to group. Barrier will usually just be better for you and the group.

The only advantages I see are undeath and maybe mistfirm. Which are just not enough to justify 8% of ability cost increase. I would be reluctant to get the 3% increase just for 1 skill out of 12 (mist form).

If you are building for fun, sure, you can do whatever you want, but I wouldn't be happy as a vamp. (If you are building for fun and no content that actually can kill you for not paying attention for 1 second, you could even try using sated fury).

Fur_like_snow

Barrier and war horn are the two ultimates a tank wants on his bars. None of the vampire skills are better than something you couldn’t get from a class line without increasing the cost of your other skills. I don’t see any use for the passives assuming you understand mechanics and can block when necessary. Vampire bis for RP or DPS dummy parses.

bmnoble

I just drop back to stage 1 when I want to tank on my Vampire, I have toyed around with a vampire themed tank for fun(it was not fun)

The skills just don't really benefit my tank in any way, the stun is not reliable since it needs enemies to be facing you in most cases where there is a lot of ads in a fight the damage dealers will kill them off quick enough before the stun can play any real role.

The ultimate, while fun just adds nothing to the group your better off with Warhorn, if your playing a tank the benefits of the bat scion ult are just not really as needed compared to a lower health damage dealer.

And the other morph's benefits are not really that important on a tank, you should have already built to mitigate the extra fire damage and compensated for the hit to your abilities cost.

Blood frenzy is not something I would consider using in group content regardless of role using it on a tank its just asking to be blamed for a wipe.

Vamp drain, requires you to drop block and does not fill the role as an emergency heal, as for ult gen if you have time to use this you may as well use heroic slash to debuff the boss with minor maim instead.

Eviscerate just feels to annoying to me to use as a spam able and on a tank you have other priorities you should be dealing with before trying to add extra damage to the group.

Blood mist I really like its like the 5th piece of leeching plate or bahara's curse on demand in a large area but only good in a few dungeons even then I feel like slotting other stuff instead, since you need your magic for a lot of other skills in most cases.


The un death passive is nice it was the main reason my tank became a vampire long before the revamp but as it was before I rarely needed it, it was not often my tank hit the required health lost threshold to benefit for it.

As it is now with it activating based on how much health you have lost without needing to be under 50% health to gain a benefit, I personally don't feel its needed that much on a tank, before I only bothered with it as a source of panic damage mitigation for lack of a better term.

As it is now I no longer feel I need that panic mitigation any more, the other negatives required to have the passive active are not worth it to me, might be worth it on a magica damage dealer but to me my tank at least has good enough mitigation without really noticing the absence of the passive.


At best the Vampire skills are fun to screw around with when playing solo but just don't feel that good in group content, feel free to screw around with it though, I wasted plenty of gold toying around with the idea but in the end it was not worth it in my opinion.

CMDR_Un1k0rn

Viable? Yes.

Worth pursuing? No, not really.

My tanks are actually werewolves of all things.

Nova_J

Unfortunately tanking with the new vampire skills just kept me asking myself why? Why use this when I already have skills that do much more?? Especially when you run something like a debuff tank (which relies on maximizing the utility of all your skills), the vamp skills just dont provide enough utility or synergies. The stun just stuns, the heal is over a damn channel and the rest of the skills provide no benefit to the team via buff nor debuffs. If you're not in any real serious content you can use whatever you want. Outside of that mistform is the only thing that has much use, and that's only because it purges.

Vevvev

Many people have already said it but the vampire abilities just don't really help tanks. I did some experimenting in veteran dungeons with the different abilities and only really found mistform of any use. Vampiric Drain due to it being a channel got me killed and my group agreed I shouldn't use it, even for ultimate generation.

The ultimate is pretty good if you want to be tankier, but it adds nothing to the group and most people don't need the ultimate to tank well. I wish I could say the stage 3 passive is worth it but if you're going up against a boss who uses flame attacks just forget about it, especially if their one hit KO heavy attack does flame damage. The damage mitigation only works when you're injured, not at full health.

Sargesgaming

Viable as in what, what would you be getting from it? Did you even read what the vamp skill does or the passives you get from it would do for you, or did you just coming full rage into a forum just to ask this question?

ccfeeling

I cured all my tanks, thx zos