It's time to revisit Vampire changes, ZOS.

StarOfElyon

Here's the thing, I just want to roleplay a vampire. I'm fine with stage one. I might use mistform or hypnotize, maybe, but those aren't worth the 3% increased cost to other skills just for being a vampire. Please make vampire play less punishing for characters at level one.

Unlike a lot of people, I am mostly fine with the vampire changes. However, as I have said before, Vampire stage one comes with too many sharp penalties just for being a vampire. The extra fire damage taken is draw-back enough. The major reasons most people become vampires is to take advantage of mistform and the passives that come with being level 3 or higher (like the undeath passive and strike from the shadows). The other vampire skills are inferior to weapon and class skills. So my interest in playing a vampire is 90% aesthetics and 10% function. Stage one vampire needs a change: remove the cost penalties and bonuses, please.

Luckylancer

They should balance stage 4 vampire gameplay as well. I think vampire should be balanced only for PvP because:

1. Base game is so easy, players dont need any bonus to clear it in first place. They will be fine.
2. PvE mag DDs have a melee spamable and it is enough for them. They wont go stage 4 unless HUGE cost increase is balanced with tons of dots. I think it will be nightmare to balance that.

Vevvev

Build for it an vampire can be quite strong, BUT I cannot accept the absolutely terrible performance of Vampiric Drain right now. The vampire ability that actually fits the theme of a vampire, as well as vampire's only true on demand dedicated heal, is so terrible I couldn't even use it on my tank despite having a massive health pool.

It does too little damage to be worth channeling, the heal is locked to 23% of your missing health and can't be increased with buffs outside it doing a crit, and the stamina/ult generation of the morphs is too low to reasonably hold the channel. To make matters even worse that low healing is reduced even more thanks to Battle Spirit making it worthless in PVP, any kind of interrupt (including leaving scion form) puts Drain on cooldown, and getting interrupted by an enemy will stun you.

Either they need to buff the damage and have it heal you for the damage done, make it heal max health, seriously buff the missing health heal to fight back the diminishing returns, or make the morphs far more powerful than they are now. The ability really needs a buff to be good at something.

ESO_Nightingale

i wish they made stupify not have that stupid "enemy needs to be looking at you" requirement. lorewise it makes sense, but when i'm trying to use the ability in pvp it's just a waste of resources most of the time. because it's far from inexpensive, and doesn't do anything to enemies in the radius if they're not specifically looking at you.

Ythotha

they cant even balance 6 individual classes properly. i say keep your expectations in check.

Suna_Ye_Sunnabe

I would say I agree, and I do... but everytime zos "tweaks" something awful, it just turns into a bigger mess. So I don't know what to tell you. Obviously I would like to exist as a vampire too without the idiotic cost increase just for being alive, but I can't trust anything to get fixed without something else being crippled.

Red_Feather

I would like perfect scion morph to be a toggle that grants vampire stage 4 passives and a lesser stat boost. It is useless for a stage 4, but it is too expensive for a stage 1. The bat morph isn't great but it's better than the perfect scion by a long shot. They are way too similar.

Bobby_V_Rockit

I miss my bat swarm

Milli_Rabbit

They should probably nerf mistform. 75% damage reduction is broken. Maybe make it reduce direct melee damage by 50% similar to how Protective Plate from DK reduces projectile damage by 50%. 75% damage reduction from all attacks is a bit much and doesn't fit the idea of a vampire. Mistform as an idea is making you hard to hit. However, an elemental attack should burn the entire mist and still do full damage.

BohnT2

The Vampire rework was an absolute disaster.
We went from 2 skills and an ultimate to 5 skills and a new ultimate along with more passives.

However gameplay wise none of those new skills have added any depth or have made actively playing a Vampire a different thing.
The reason people are vampires today is the same they were using it before the rework and that's the undeath passive and access to mist form.

The undeath passive is just one of the most powerful defensive tools in the entire game and the attached cost means little compared to the sheer defensive power it grants to you.
Before the needed nerfs to mistform, it was one of the most overperforming abilities that allowed to stall fights for ages with little to no counterplay.

Both of those things were used previously and neither has made combat more engaging or added a new vampiric flavor.

The other abilities are either hot trash (mesmerize) or are so niche that they can only be used in specific situations using specific builds (vamp drain and blood feast)

This leaves us with the ultimate and a spammable.
Both of those archetypes of skills were already in the game before the rework (although vamp drain was an overperforming nightmare).

Due to blood scions nature of being a high cost transformation ultimate it forces long gaps between its casts which means your "vampire time" is strongly limited on top of the transformation turning you into something very unvampiric.

The last part of the rework affected vamp stages by by inverting you work your way through them and that's it.
An actual rank system should have made you feel instantly that the way your playing Vampire changes everytime your vamp stage changes (and I don't mean you notice that the undeath passive isn't covering your ass anymore when dropping from stage 3 to stage 2)

Ideally not only you feel and see the difference in vamp stages with every action but your opponent should be able to identify in the first 5-10 seconds of a fight that he's facing a Vampire with a high or low vamp stage, and not by seeing his three damage numbers when you drop low.

All of these things have caused the Vampire rework to be the failure it is today.

Vevvev

Milli_Rabbit wrote: »

They should probably nerf mistform. 75% damage reduction is broken. Maybe make it reduce direct melee damage by 50% similar to how Protective Plate from DK reduces projectile damage by 50%. 75% damage reduction from all attacks is a bit much and doesn't fit the idea of a vampire. Mistform as an idea is making you hard to hit. However, an elemental attack should burn the entire mist and still do full damage.

You must never have played Skyrim. Mistform was used to negate 100% of all damage in that game,but due to ESO being an MMO the requires balance they made it 75%. Removing the recovery stats while it's running has already made it far more difficult to use than it used to, and your proposed change would completely kill it. Nobody would slot mistform after that.

Nephthys

Put it back the way it was. The ultimate is an abomination and looks like a deformed nuclear mutation. Give back the beautiful Bat Swarm and understand that many loved to be able to RP at stage one without ridiculous penalty.

JayKwellen

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

i wish they made stupify not have that stupid "enemy needs to be looking at you" requirement. lorewise it makes sense, but when i'm trying to use the ability in pvp it's just a waste of resources most of the time. because it's far from inexpensive, and doesn't do anything to enemies in the radius if they're not specifically looking at you.

@ESO_Nightingale Good god yes please. As it currently stands it's literally, and I do mean literally in the literal sense here, useless.

As I PvP with a class that does not have any sort of on demand CC, every once in a while I get intrusive thoughts about this ability. I think to myself, "you know, maybe it's not all bad", throw it on my bar, and take it out to Cyrodiil.

That usually lasts for a minute or two, then I find someone or a group of someone's and go fight them, and immediately remember that the skill is a trash fire. Like I actually feel embarrassed for myself when I use it.

It's literally better to run turn evil on a mag class that it is to use hypnosis.

It's the perfect example of developers thinking something sounds like a cool idea but not understanding why it's actually an awful idea when put into practice.

Sephyr

Vevvev wrote: »

Milli_Rabbit wrote: »

They should probably nerf mistform. 75% damage reduction is broken. Maybe make it reduce direct melee damage by 50% similar to how Protective Plate from DK reduces projectile damage by 50%. 75% damage reduction from all attacks is a bit much and doesn't fit the idea of a vampire. Mistform as an idea is making you hard to hit. However, an elemental attack should burn the entire mist and still do full damage.

You must never have played Skyrim. Mistform was used to negate 100% of all damage in that game,but due to ESO being an MMO the requires balance they made it 75%. Removing the recovery stats while it's running has already made it far more difficult to use than it used to, and your proposed change would completely kill it. Nobody would slot mistform after that.

^This. Mistform is fine.

That being said, I've mostly given up on the Vampiric Drain getting any buffs (or Vampirism as a whole for that matter). It just feels like a hopeless endeavor since there hasn't been dialogue with the players over it.

GodKingScormxon

I hate the changes to the vampire it cost to much for none vamp abilities it should be the opposite plus it be nice to have a skill bracket and make the ultimate like the werewolves instead with a separate skill bar

GodKingScormxon

And also some Giant bats that are summoned with the ultimate

Starlight_Whisper

Luckylancer wrote: »

They should balance stage 4 vampire gameplay as well. I think vampire should be balanced only for PvP because:

1. Base game is so easy, players dont need any bonus to clear it in first place. They will be fine.
2. PvE mag DDs have a melee spamable and it is enough for them. They wont go stage 4 unless HUGE cost increase is balanced with tons of dots. I think it will be nightmare to balance that.

Selfish PvE would like to be vampires again without ridiculous unbalanced penalties

Abyssmol

Milli_Rabbit wrote: »

They should probably nerf mistform. 75% damage reduction is broken. Maybe make it reduce direct melee damage by 50% similar to how Protective Plate from DK reduces projectile damage by 50%. 75% damage reduction from all attacks is a bit much and doesn't fit the idea of a vampire. Mistform as an idea is making you hard to hit. However, an elemental attack should burn the entire mist and still do full damage.

No. How about cloak. Right now it's100% damage reduction without any penalties. Should ZOS change that too?

Please don't tell me that cloak should be stronger because it's a class ability. 2h dizzy and execute are not class abilities, and they are better than most skills in the game.

ThePedge

Abyssmol wrote: »

Milli_Rabbit wrote: »

They should probably nerf mistform. 75% damage reduction is broken. Maybe make it reduce direct melee damage by 50% similar to how Protective Plate from DK reduces projectile damage by 50%. 75% damage reduction from all attacks is a bit much and doesn't fit the idea of a vampire. Mistform as an idea is making you hard to hit. However, an elemental attack should burn the entire mist and still do full damage.

No. How about cloak. Right now it's100% damage reduction without any penalties. Should ZOS change that too?

Please don't tell me that cloak should be stronger because it's a class ability. 2h dizzy and execute are not class abilities, and they are better than most skills in the game.

How many counters does Mist Form have?

Vevvev

ThePedge wrote: »

Abyssmol wrote: »

Milli_Rabbit wrote: »

They should probably nerf mistform. 75% damage reduction is broken. Maybe make it reduce direct melee damage by 50% similar to how Protective Plate from DK reduces projectile damage by 50%. 75% damage reduction from all attacks is a bit much and doesn't fit the idea of a vampire. Mistform as an idea is making you hard to hit. However, an elemental attack should burn the entire mist and still do full damage.

No. How about cloak. Right now it's100% damage reduction without any penalties. Should ZOS change that too?

Please don't tell me that cloak should be stronger because it's a class ability. 2h dizzy and execute are not class abilities, and they are better than most skills in the game.

How many counters does Mist Form have?

Surprisingly it does. While it negates 75% of all damage once resistance calculations are done this means the only way to do meaningful damage to a mistformer, especially a stage 3+ one, is to stack as many damage over time abilities as you can on them. As a magDK I have 2 flame DoTs, 2 magic damage DoTs, and have a flame damage spammable (but I use the vampire one, which works just as well) and I hit them with all of that while the DoTs cook them. Once they're forced out of mistform to heal I immediately Fossilize them and drop an ult. Done, vampire be dead.

Edit: And sprinting is faster than Elusive Mist, especially when you get the CP passives that boost sprint speed. In non-CP sprinting is still faster so you'll have to do what StarCraft players call "Stutter Stepping" where you attack and move, attack and move.... over and over. Or just cast a single ability that gives major expedition and now you're just as fast as them at base. Against Bloodmist you have better odds since they're moving at normal base speed, and their mistform costs more to keep channeled than Elusive Mist. Just don't stand in the red pool and let them burn themselves out.

Xargas13

Well, I learned how to use vampire well even at stage 4, but it does feel punishing. I suggested it before and will do it again. Make that the less resources you have the more damage you deal, and we will have some sort of balance.

I don't really want vampire to be all that strong, I mean I want it to be strong, but not OP so every player in BG would be a vampire, it would be annoying.

I like vampire at this moment, but still need a bit of tweaking, like the suggestion above. Melee skill that costs magicka is a no no if you want to play range, so I would suggest to make it ranged ability as spamable. And of course life drain, the ability is a joke, I saw some players were playing around with it in BG, and it didn't turn out well for them.

Don't re design the vampire!! Just do a little bit of tweaking.

EDIT: No life regen really sucks and don't fit with vampires at all, vampires should be hard to kill, so they should have high health regen, but again, it would make most players go to vamp. So make high health regen only when its night

Sephyr

Vevvev wrote: »

ThePedge wrote: »

Abyssmol wrote: »

Milli_Rabbit wrote: »

They should probably nerf mistform. 75% damage reduction is broken. Maybe make it reduce direct melee damage by 50% similar to how Protective Plate from DK reduces projectile damage by 50%. 75% damage reduction from all attacks is a bit much and doesn't fit the idea of a vampire. Mistform as an idea is making you hard to hit. However, an elemental attack should burn the entire mist and still do full damage.

No. How about cloak. Right now it's100% damage reduction without any penalties. Should ZOS change that too?

Please don't tell me that cloak should be stronger because it's a class ability. 2h dizzy and execute are not class abilities, and they are better than most skills in the game.

How many counters does Mist Form have?

Surprisingly it does. While it negates 75% of all damage once resistance calculations are done this means the only way to do meaningful damage to a mistformer, especially a stage 3+ one, is to stack as many damage over time abilities as you can on them. As a magDK I have 2 flame DoTs, 2 magic damage DoTs, and have a flame damage spammable (but I use the vampire one, which works just as well) and I hit them with all of that while the DoTs cook them. Once they're forced out of mistform to heal I immediately Fossilize them and drop an ult. Done, vampire be dead.

Edit: And sprinting is faster than Elusive Mist, especially when you get the CP passives that boost sprint speed. In non-CP sprinting is still faster so you'll have to do what StarCraft players call "Stutter Stepping" where you attack and move, attack and move.... over and over. Or just cast a single ability that gives major expedition and now you're just as fast as them at base. Against Bloodmist you have better odds since they're moving at normal base speed, and their mistform costs more to keep channeled than Elusive Mist. Just don't stand in the red pool and let them burn themselves out.

I still find it funny that folks say to adapt to the new Vampire system, yet don't adapt themselves to counter Mist Form. What you said right there is a perfect example of a counter and it works. DoTs and Poisons for myself have been pretty effective in keeping them out of it.

It's also funny you mention the red pool of Blood Mist because they're always standing in mine and I just soak up the health until I can drop my ult to clean house.

ESO_Nightingale

Xargas13 wrote: »

Don't re design the vampire!! Just do a little bit of tweaking.

pretty much this. i think most of the skills are fine when it comes to design, some of them do need genuine tweaks though.

Andre_Noir

Abyssmol wrote: »

Milli_Rabbit wrote: »

They should probably nerf mistform. 75% damage reduction is broken. Maybe make it reduce direct melee damage by 50% similar to how Protective Plate from DK reduces projectile damage by 50%. 75% damage reduction from all attacks is a bit much and doesn't fit the idea of a vampire. Mistform as an idea is making you hard to hit. However, an elemental attack should burn the entire mist and still do full damage.

No. How about cloak. Right now it's100% damage reduction without any penalties. Should ZOS change that too?

100% AoE, ground dots, curses ?

JayKwellen

Abyssmol wrote: »

Milli_Rabbit wrote: »

They should probably nerf mistform. 75% damage reduction is broken. Maybe make it reduce direct melee damage by 50% similar to how Protective Plate from DK reduces projectile damage by 50%. 75% damage reduction from all attacks is a bit much and doesn't fit the idea of a vampire. Mistform as an idea is making you hard to hit. However, an elemental attack should burn the entire mist and still do full damage.

No. How about cloak. Right now it's100% damage reduction without any penalties. Should ZOS change that too?

Please don't tell me that cloak should be stronger because it's a class ability. 2h dizzy and execute are not class abilities, and they are better than most skills in the game.

@Abyssmol you just don't understand. When your plar is surrounded and the snipes are falling from the sky like rain you're supposed to just die! That's how this works! How dare you!

Misting away from the zerg to survive(!) and make them chase you, my god. Have some decency man.

Tessitura

Honestly the new vampire changes are not that bad. Passives are stronger then before and the cost penalty is for sure worth what you get in return. Mistform weaving for wp/sp damage is a engaging mechanic and sated frenzy is pretty powerful in pve and even in pvp on the right class. But there are some things they could improve on.

The spamable is powerful but I think it could be done better. It being melee with no built in slow or catch for the vamp is a bad idea. Giving them a ranged morph or some kind of catch would be all that needs to happen.

The stun they have, hypnotize and stupify needs to have the vision angles adjusted. I tested with a friend and what it considers looking at you is pretty close to a straight line in front of the characters face. If they widened the cone they consider for vision range it would be much more acceptable. I also think giving one of the morphes a root effect could go a long way to making the melee spammable more useful.

The drain ability needs to be thrown out the window and done again. Honestly if it were up to me I would rework this into a magic execute or catch mechanic. Magic execute just does more damage and restores more health based on the targets missing hp. The catch mechanic one would probably be a pull. Pull them to you and apply a slow. Channels last a short period but drains health. Less damage but you can catch people more easily and combo it with the vamp stun. I lean more towards the execute option since magicka classes still dont have a general execute they can use.

In alternate catch mechanic you could give vamp is to remove the Blood Mist form and make it a Bat Cloud. Teleport forward as a cloud of bats and strike a target. Take 75% reduced damage while in the form. You lose most of the defensive utility but you get a gap closer built in. Making melee vamp mage more practical. I favor this over the pull idea since Blood Mist kind of already falls flat compared to elusive. Plus you get a cool bat cloud teleport. Very vampire and even reflects the vampire lord of Skyrim.

As far as the Blood Scion form goes, I would like to see it be more vampiric less demonic. Just take the horns off, give it some vampire hair. Also, you could decrease the size and give it a little hover animation to call back to the Skyrim one. that way you still have close tot he same size profile but look way cooler. People would love it, i promise.

JayKwellen

Tessitura wrote: »

The stun they have, hypnotize and stupify needs to have the vision angles adjusted. I tested with a friend and what it considers looking at you is pretty close to a straight line in front of the characters face. If they widened the cone they consider for vision range it would be much more acceptable. I also think giving one of the morphes a root effect could go a long way to making the melee spammable more useful.

Yes. Even if they didn't want to make hypnotize a 360 degree stun, because then it would literally just be fear (although they did already insult NBs this way with Turn Evil), widening the cone could make it justifiable. Maybe. Make it the inverse of flanking, where essentially anything other than looking the exact opposite direction would work.

Realistically it should just be exactly as mass hysteria is now, and then mass hysteria should be buffed (because class skills are supposed to be better than generic skills right?)

Why couldn't they make it like that to begin with? They gave stamina fear, and made the skill better than NB fear, so why is the mag version such trash? Because 'flavor'? The only flavor hypnosis has is that of putrefying dumpster water.

It would also solve a lot of issues and annoyances magcros and magdens have to deal with in PvP.

Vevvev

Tessitura wrote: »

The stun they have, hypnotize and stupify needs to have the vision angles adjusted. I tested with a friend and what it considers looking at you is pretty close to a straight line in front of the characters face. If they widened the cone they consider for vision range it would be much more acceptable.

Agreed, there is an angle already in the game where if a character has something targeted their head will turn to face them. This angle is about 80-90 degrees to the left and right of where the character is facing while the vampire cone stun as it is now is 45 degrees to the left or right from where they're looking. Opening up the "Looking at you" cone to be how it is with the character model actually being able to look at you would do wonders for the ability.

Milli_Rabbit

Vevvev wrote: »

Milli_Rabbit wrote: »

They should probably nerf mistform. 75% damage reduction is broken. Maybe make it reduce direct melee damage by 50% similar to how Protective Plate from DK reduces projectile damage by 50%. 75% damage reduction from all attacks is a bit much and doesn't fit the idea of a vampire. Mistform as an idea is making you hard to hit. However, an elemental attack should burn the entire mist and still do full damage.

You must never have played Skyrim. Mistform was used to negate 100% of all damage in that game,but due to ESO being an MMO the requires balance they made it 75%. Removing the recovery stats while it's running has already made it far more difficult to use than it used to, and your proposed change would completely kill it. Nobody would slot mistform after that.

Of course they would. 75% mitigation? Why? Where else do you see such a generalized source of mitigation that is also such a large source of mitigation. In every other situation, mitigation has a balancing act. You can mitigate a lot of a limited type of damage or mitigate all damage but a small amount. Examples: Protective Plate - 50% mitigation of projectiles; Major Maim - 10% mitigation of target attacks; Major Aegis - 10% general mitigation; Major Evasion - 20% mitigation of AOE damage. All of a sudden you have mistform with 75% general mitigation. There are ways to make the cost negligible as well.

master_vanargand

Need remove the normal skill cost increase for Vamp stage 1.
Instead, Vamp stage increase fire damage to 1:5%, 2:10%, 3:15%, 4:20%.
And, Vamp stage increase the normal skill cost to 1:0%, 2:3%, 3:6%, 4:9%.

Milli_Rabbit

StarOfElyon wrote: »

Here's the thing, I just want to roleplay a vampire. I'm fine with stage one. I might use mistform or hypnotize, maybe, but those aren't worth the 3% increased cost to other skills just for being a vampire. Please make vampire play less punishing for characters at level one.

Unlike a lot of people, I am mostly fine with the vampire changes. However, as I have said before, Vampire stage one comes with too many sharp penalties just for being a vampire. The extra fire damage taken is draw-back enough. The major reasons most people become vampires is to take advantage of mistform and the passives that come with being level 3 or higher (like the undeath passive and strike from the shadows). The other vampire skills are inferior to weapon and class skills. So my interest in playing a vampire is 90% aesthetics and 10% function. Stage one vampire needs a change: remove the cost penalties and bonuses, please.

Yea, I would love if you could generate ultimate while a scion. I wanted to build for a scion but it only lasts for 20 seconds and you can't build to the next one until after it ends. I dropped the idea as soon as I realized this.