Why don't Vampire builds use Vampire skills?

SilverBride

I am a Magika Sorcerer who plays mostly solo. I played a Vampire on release, but for some reason I now regret I was "cured". Now after all this time I decided to become a Vampire again, so I have been looking at builds.

I am confused that most of these builds only use one or two skills from the Vampire active skill line. Do Vampires rely more on the passives? I don't want to just be a Sorcerer with red eyes.

I appreciate if you can help clear this up for me.

Ryuvain

Most class skills have more going for them with either numbers or synergy with their class. Vampire is most often used to band-aid their build with whatever they're missing or is just better. Vamp passive can also be used with your class too.

Vevvev

The new vampire skill line isn't complete and is lacking many things that'd make it competitive. The reason you see so many vampire builds using only one or two abilities is because those abilities are the only usable skills, and the rest of the non-vampire stuff is to fix the issues being a vampire presents.

I'm sure you've also probably seen most, if not all, of the builds use Eviscerate and its morphs as the spammable. Reason for this is its one of the best ways to counteract the non-vampire cost increase that's forced onto us by the devs to try and encourage using more vampire skills.

Problem with that thinking is you can't do much with a single damage dealing skill, a terrible heal/DoT placed on a channel, a stun that only stuns (Unless you pick the morph that makes it snare afterwards), A channel that drains an insane amount of your health for 660+ spell and weapon damage, a channel that makes you take 75% less damage, and an ultimate that gives 10k health, stamina, and magicka as well as a 15% life siphon on all damage done for 20-ish seconds.

That's not a build and its lacking a lot of stuff like the brutality/sorcery, resolve, and breach/fracture effects that boost survivability and damage. In fact some of those effects like the brutality and sorcery buffs can actually increase the power of blood frenzy so its almost required to use non-vampire stuff if you wanna push a vampire build to the limits.

SilverBride

I was hoping for a more immersive experience. I found one build I am using as a rough template, but changed up some of the skills to those that seemed more in tune with my play style. I will give it a try and see how it goes.

Vevvev wrote: »

The new vampire skill line isn't complete...

I am hoping this means there will be more to come?

Vevvev

SilverBride wrote: »

Vevvev wrote: »

The new vampire skill line isn't complete...

I am hoping this means there will be more to come?

No.... sadly the devs feel like this constitutes a complete skill line and have even gone out and said crazy things like "Blood Frenzy ticks all the boxes of what it means to be a vampire!" I'll link the video where that is said down at the bottom of this post. I honestly have no idea where ZOS wants to take vampire because it feels like a bunch of ideas haphazardly thrown at a wall in hopes it'll all stick. Some things did like Blood for Blood, but they're nerfing that on the PTS and making it basically a dead skill if that change goes through.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkI9UYcM_ZM

SilverBride

I don't remember everything about how I played Vampire before when ESO had just released, but I do remember that it was a very different experience from what I am finding now. Were these changes supposed to be an improvement?

Well if you have any advice on a good build, I would appreciate it. Right now I am loosely using this build.

https://arzyelbuilds.com/magicka-sorcerer-vampire-pve-build-baelnorn/

Vevvev

Nothing wrong with that build and I can easily tell its a PVE build not by the title but due to where Sated Fury was placed. If you ever choose to bring that skill into PVP its going to be very difficult to find a good time to use it, but if you do you want to keep it on the bar you're going to be spending a lot of time on. Reason being is because you can turn it off if you ever get hard CC'd, which happens a lot in a PVP environment.

I'm a Dragonknight player and moved off Sorcerer a long time ago so I can't really give many pointers onto a good Sorc PVE build. I'm also more of a PVPer instead of a PVEer so I don't see builds the same way sadly. Like for example if I was using my Sorcerer I'd swap out Structured Entropy for Power Surge so I don't have to rely on Spell Power pots for my Major Sorcery buff and get healing.

SilverBride

Vevvev wrote: »

Nothing wrong with that build and I can easily tell its a PVE build not by the title but due to where Sated Fury was placed. If you ever choose to bring that skill into PVP its going to be very difficult to find a good time to use it...
...
if I was using my Sorcerer I'd swap out Structured Entropy for Power Surge so I don't have to rely on Spell Power pots for my Major Sorcery buff and get healing.

I don't plan to PVP, so that wont be an issue. And I will make the swap you suggested and see how it goes.

Thanks for the great advice!

Djennku

For a pure vampire build, might I recommend Xynode's The Vampire? It utilizes all vampire skills, and is a sorcerer, which your toon happens to be.

idk

The new vampire line relies on actually using skills as there is a cost to being a vampire including all skills have an increased cost just for being a vampire. That does not mean vampire builds should use all the vampire skills all the time. Heck, some of the skills have purposes other than doing damage or healing so it would not make sense to have all the vampire skills slotted all the time.

StarOfElyon

I like what they tried to do with vamps. But it's really punishing if all you want to do is be a vampire. I can deal with the low health recovery and extra fire damage taken but the +3% skill cost is brutal unless you're a Breton.

I really want my character to be a vampire and use some of the skills, but of course I use more non-vamp skills so it's handicapping me a lot. I think the +3% skill cost is unnecessary at level 1.

StarOfElyon

StarOfElyon wrote: »

I like what they tried to do with vamps. But it's really punishing if all you want to do is be a vampire. I can deal with the low health recovery and extra fire damage taken but the +3% skill cost is brutal unless you're a Breton.

I really want my character to be a vampire and use some of the skills, but of course I use more non-vamp skills so it's handicapping me a lot. I think the +3% skill cost is unnecessary at level 1.

In addition to this, I'd like to tell ZOS that at stage 1, vampirism is nothing but a huge debuff. Stage 1 should be a spot where people can dip there toe into the vampire life but not feel pressured to go all the way. It's like it's all or nothing at stage 1.

SilverBride

Djennku wrote: »

For a pure vampire build, might I recommend Xynode's The Vampire? It utilizes all vampire skills, and is a sorcerer, which your toon happens to be.

I will take a look at that one, because I've really had to tweak the one I'm using a lot. I can't get the hang of sated fury, and end up killing myself every time, so I've not been using it. It will take a lot of practice if I choose to stick with it. With the tweaks I've made, I'm only using a couple of skills from the Vampire line. I am using all the passives, though.

EDIT: That's a PVP build? Is there a PVE one, because I don't PVP.

ManM

Online builds are typically intended to be viable for group content. The new ESO Vampire appears to be intended to be an overland solo experience.

Build wise, get an inexpensive set of Winter's Respite gear from a guild trader. You can go to the tamriel trade center website to find it. Pair it with the other sets as you like. Using it with a set of Julianos will be fine. With that gear, here is your one-bar stage 4 vampire build:

Sated Fury / Unstable Wall of Elements / Blood for Blood / Hypnotize / Blood Mist / Swarming Scion

Crouch into sneak. Start Sated Fury. Use Wall of Elements (which procs Winter's Respite under you). From there, use Blood for Blood to kill things. After a few seconds, turn off Sated Fury so it doesn't kill you. If you are in trouble, you can use hypnotize and blood mist to escape and quickly recover. For bosses, do sated fury, wall of elements, swarming scion, and then spam blood for blood. You will see big numbers and feel big, strong, and invincible for a few seconds.

You might notice that this has nothing to do with you being a sorcerer. The point of high stage vampire is that you lose your previous identity, like a bloodfiend. If you mix in more of your class skills, you will have sustain issues. Most people give it a try and realize they do better with their class skills, so they drop to stage 1/2 and only use blood for blood and maybe mist on their bar.

Still, in overland solo play, stage 4 vamp makes things really smooth. You can sneak and bite people, invisibly run past mobs that annoy you, and burst mobs easily.

exeeter702

ManM wrote: »

Online builds are typically intended to be viable for group content. The new ESO Vampire appears to be intended to be an overland solo experience.

Build wise, get an inexpensive set of Winter's Respite gear from a guild trader. You can go to the tamriel trade center website to find it. Pair it with the other sets as you like. Using it with a set of Julianos will be fine. With that gear, here is your one-bar stage 4 vampire build:

Sated Fury / Unstable Wall of Elements / Blood for Blood / Hypnotize / Blood Mist / Swarming Scion

Crouch into sneak. Start Sated Fury. Use Wall of Elements (which procs Winter's Respite under you). From there, use Blood for Blood to kill things. After a few seconds, turn off Sated Fury so it doesn't kill you. If you are in trouble, you can use hypnotize and blood mist to escape and quickly recover. For bosses, do sated fury, wall of elements, swarming scion, and then spam blood for blood. You will see big numbers and feel big, strong, and invincible for a few seconds.

You might notice that this has nothing to do with you being a sorcerer. The point of high stage vampire is that you lose your previous identity, like a bloodfiend. If you mix in more of your class skills, you will have sustain issues. Most people give it a try and realize they do better with their class skills, so they drop to stage 1/2 and only use blood for blood and maybe mist on their bar.

Still, in overland solo play, stage 4 vamp makes things really smooth. You can sneak and bite people, invisibly run past mobs that annoy you, and burst mobs easily.

You mean it's for RP purposes. This is the problem, for a brand new player this might be fun, but for anyone even remotely seasoned in the game, overland builds are completely redundant outside roleplaying because nothing poses a threat. On paper the vampire skill line might make sense but in practice, not so much.

Kittytravel

The vampire skill line needs to be reworked again with the goal of making it synergise with it's own spells and have it be it's own "complete" kit centered around its theme like Werewolf is. That is not to say make it a transformation but there are a multitude of paths they can take to make Vampire both useful and risky to play; things like empowered damage while afflicted by Blood Frenzy buff; making you reliant on your own heals and no one else to keep you alive. This could be used to play around mechanics like damage increase while low on HP and allowing you to carefully control when it's okay to be low and when you know you need to heal up. The drawback of not being able to be healed means playing carelessly would result in your untimely demise but playing well is rewarded with the extra damage output. The extra damage output would apply only to vampire skills to prevent any bad tasting class line mixing from occurring.

You just change it to risk/reward play style basically. The issue is that they keep making vampire mix with other skill lines for stat purposes despite knowing what worked for werewolf is making sure none of it mixes at all.

Grianasteri

SilverBride wrote: »

I am a Magika Sorcerer who plays mostly solo. I played a Vampire on release, but for some reason I now regret I was "cured". Now after all this time I decided to become a Vampire again, so I have been looking at builds.

I am confused that most of these builds only use one or two skills from the Vampire active skill line. Do Vampires rely more on the passives? I don't want to just be a Sorcerer with red eyes.

I appreciate if you can help clear this up for me.

Then those are not actually Vampire builds per se. They are builds that use vampirism and some vampire skills. There is a difference, because the use of 5 vamp skills is off meta. If you want to have a full vampire experience that requires a certain play style and you can have great fun with all the skills on your bars, it would probably fall into the "themed" category of build, rather than one that is particularly practical.

That said I have found combining Magblade with Vampire makes for a really good vampire themed build and works really well together. As well as being fun, its also pretty effective, outside of end game content, which I have not tried it in yet and its probably not practical to do so. Certainly I can solo stuff like Skyreach, many normal dungeons and some vets