Fixing Vampire (undeath) and restoring Health regen (somewhat)

Nser

As the title suggests im going to propose some changes I believe could really go a long way in finally balancing Undeath and health regen for an overall healthier mitigation system (pvp).
Its not a secret you want to be stage 3 vampire at all times to take advantage of the undeath passive, up to 30% mitigation based on your missing health, and we can all agree this might be the most overtuned passive in the entire game.
Before health regen got its 50% reduction through Battlespirit, there was actually a choice, Vampire + undeath or Mortal with health regen. We all know how that played out and it eventually came crashing down with the battlespirit health regen reduction, the strongest health regen sets being nerfed and lets not forget mistform. This is when the meta truely shifted towards stage 3 vampire, those who werent before now surely were.
We went from one unhealthy meta straight into the next, from 5k+ health regen to a potential 30% mitigation from undeath

Ive got some ideas on how to fix this, so lets start with Vampire. Not so much a vamp 3.0 but working with whats already there.

First i would start making the stage 4 passive, unnatural movement, part of the base vampire experience(stage 1). Reduce Sprint Cost from 50% reduction to 25% to make up for the accesability.
This passive never felt powerful enough to warrant being stage 4 for.

Move Undeath to stage 4 but reduce the strength of this passive from up to 30% down to 20%. On top of a mitigation loss you would also have to take more penalties from the Vamp stages.
For stage 3 I had the following in mind: Heal for 5% of the damage you cause (lifesteal) and bring back the old recovery passive but downgraded. This used to be 10% magic and stamina recovery at basicly zero downsides. Id suggest 5% magic and stamina regeneration since its tied to stage 3. In short this passive now exists to somewhat counter the negatives as you progress through the Stages but will not completely negate said negatives.
Stage 3 Lifesteal will stack with Vampire Lord lifesteal, combined healing for 20% of the damage you cause. This should help vampire fit the lifesteal theme more. Stage 1-4 buffs and debuffs remain the same.

Health regen:
Remove the battlespirit health regen debuff and CAP HEALTH REGEN at 2500. This, together with undeath being nerfed and stage 4 getting no health regen, should bring that choice back. Mortal for health regen, or vampire, but nowhere near as strong as before.

Edit: It might currently be too hard to reach that 2500 health regen cap, even without being vampire. One would probly need to run outdated and nerfed health regen sets to come close. Perhaps baseline health regen should get improved so its easier to reach or get close to the cap by running for example gold food items such as Orzorgas which grant health regen and gear granting a line of health regen wouldnt feel like a wasted stat.

I also think these changes give more meaning to the Vampire Stages itself since right now, its stage 3 or bust.
Possible combinations of vamp stages + health regen:

Stage 1 vampire that is purely vampire for some skills, while still being able to get good health regen (stage 1 only has 10% health regen debuff).
A vampire for Vampire skills + health regen, but no undeath or lifesteal/regen (less penality taken from vamp stages also means less benefits from vampire)

Stage 2 vampire that makes use of invis or mistform to gain the Strike from shadows passive, while having decent health regen. (stage 2 has 30% health regen debuff)
One might want to be stage 2 for the same reasons as stage 1 with added wpn/spell dmg. Still no undeath or lifesteal/regen but dmg and ok health regen.

Stage 3 vampire mixing lifesteal and being able to still get around 800 health regen, + mag/stam regen, at the cost of higher vampire stage debuffs
Stage 3 that uses health regen sets and other health regen choices to get near or at that 2k+ cap. So gets health regen + lifesteal + regen, at the cost of running a health regen build giving up potential damage sets.

Stage 4 to get Undeath, the up to 20% mitigation, but giving up on health regen completely. all your Ultimates get more expensive and arent counterbalanced by the 5% regen given at stage 3 but making your Vampire Lord transformation cheaper at stage 4, should result in the Vampire Lord ultimate getting more playtime.

Or simply not be a vampire, have no debuffs but able to get 2k+ health regen.

Greymoor Expansion introduced the current version of undeath but at the same time allowed for stupid amounts of health regen. you werent going to be a vampire stage 3 for undeath when u could have 5k+ health regen. Meaning 5k regen was far superior to undeath, around 2.5k probly strikes a balance.
People would play stage 1 Mistform builds to get the best of both worlds. Now with that version of mistform gone (no regens) and the rework coming up + my suggested cap or softcap of health regen and moving the undeath to stage 4, should finally balance undeath vs health regen, mortal vs vampire.




Thoughts?

dsalter

sounds strong on paper but honestly i'd settle for just nerfing it to 25%, reducing stage health regen reduction by 10% for all stages (so stage 4 would be 90%) and reducing the class skill cost penelty per stage by 2-3%.

Vevvev

Stage 4 is powerful enough to be stage 4 for in my opinion. It's the equivalent of a 5 piece set bonus, and it allows you to get around undetected in both PvP and PvE. For PvE content it's the ultimate cheese, and for PvP it allows my Dragonknight to have the same ganking potential as a Nightblade.

It's also very useful for getting around a battlefield in PvP when stuck in combat as it helps stamina efficiency while sprinting, and in PvP it's not like you're going to be caring about health recovery anyways due to the Battlespirit nerf. Part of why Undeath is the meta is due to that health recovery nerf, which due to diminishing returns basically cut the vampire health recovery debuff in half.

Why you see so many people using Undeath because mitigation now is better than building health recovery, and so the stage 3 -60% health recovery is actually -30% due to the -50% nerf on Battlespirit. So by being stage 3 in PvP you only lose 30% of your total health recovery compared to everyone else.

Dr_Con

I would like to at least see a floor on the health regen debuff tbh.

Urzigurumash

Nser wrote: »

Health regen:
Remove the battlespirit health regen debuff and CAP HEALTH REGEN at 2500-3000. This, together with undeath being nerfed and stage 4 getting no health regen, should bring that choice back. Mortal for health regen, or vampire, but nowhere near as strong as before.

I like the idea. Restore HP Regen as a counterbalance to Undeath but reduce the power of both.

About HP Regen sets being nerfed, they were buffed tremendously in 2019/2020 I think (besides Trollking), so many of them are still much stronger (in PvE) than they were in the early years (Note Orgnum's, the original 8 trait crafted set, had only a percentile bonus and no integer source). Also Sugar Skulls, introduced in 2018 or 2019, unbalanced this quite a bit as previously the only food with this much HP Regen and Max Resources were Bergama Warning Fire and Frosted Brains, the only food with this much HP Regen and Max HP was Blood Price Pie. Combined with the buff to Major Fortitude, these 3 changes (Sets, Foods, Fortitude) is what overpowered HP Regen.

For years many of us played with somewhere between 1k and 2k HP Regen, it was a reason to not run Vampire and it wasn't OP, in fact most said it was a "trash stat" before those 3 changes. And, quite notably, Undeath was much different when it only kicked in at Low Health, rather than immediately at 99% Health.

So I think some sort of reversion to the old power levels of these 2 things is a good idea.

Anyhow I just made a closely related poll:

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/628489/dk-needs-a-13-damage-nerf#latest

(on this topic somewhat interestingly, pretty sure the only in-class Major Buff DK has that others do not is Fortitude)

olsborg

I'll basicly agree with everyone who thinks undeath passive should get nerfed. Its been over performing for years.
HP regen shouldnt be flat out reduced by 50% in cyrodiil, that just indirectly ruined alot of nice sets for cyrodiil use. Instead Id say cap it at 2000, and everything above that gets softcapped, meaning every hpregen stat you have over 2k, gets cut in half.

Vevvev

olsborg wrote: »

I'll basicly agree with everyone who thinks undeath passive should get nerfed. Its been over performing for years.
HP regen shouldnt be flat out reduced by 50% in cyrodiil, that just indirectly ruined alot of nice sets for cyrodiil use. Instead Id say cap it at 2000, and everything above that gets softcapped, meaning every hpregen stat you have over 2k, gets cut in half.

Years? It's only gotten as good as it has after the Greymoor update..... actually I guess that is years at this point...

Problem is you'd need to redo the vampire skill line if you nerf undeath as the primary damage dealing abilities are designed around that passive being on to get the most out of them.

The high risk high reward gameplay of being low HP to get more damage. Only way to not instantly die is.... undeath.

Vulkunne

First of all, it cannot be overstated how much of a problem the lack of health recovery or significantly reduced health recovery can be. Every little bit of dmg adds up very quickly.

So undeath is one of those agents that's keeping the lights on as the Titanic sinks. Nerfing undeath would be an enormous mistake as aside from building for Vamp, other than perhaps healing or something specific there's not much else providing a direct intervention to stop your character's health from 'bleeding out'.

I'm going to agree however there is a problem somewhere in the machine. Even with undeath and strong mitigation my vamps lose health noticeably faster than my WWs. As for where to start, I think the health recovery debuff is way too strong and more insight needs to be gained into whether or not this is really necessary. That said, I completely disagree about nerfing undeath as this skill does work to help put Vamp on par with WW resistances. Nerfing it any further will make Vamp even more unplayable.

Iriidius

Which werewolf resistance? Werewolf lost 10k resistance 2 years sgo, it only gets major resolve now, a buff every non transformed class gets by armor buff. WW have even less resistance than mortals, because mortals get minor resolve by vigor and another 3k resi by defending backbar.

The_Titan_Tim

One really easy fix to Undeath would be to have it only apply when you have a Vampire ability slotted.

Nser

The_Titan_Tim wrote: »

One really easy fix to Undeath would be to have it only apply when you have a Vampire ability slotted.

If i recall correctly we had something like this around the Thieves guild DLC and they removed it. Bar space is very tight and the vampire skills itself too underwhelming to justify slotting 1 ability per bar to get acces to this passive. It will result in many builds and playstyles having to drop vampire altogether since they wont be able to slot 1 ability per bar.
Only niche builds and vampire roleplay will have acces to undeath that way, and that would be fine IF health regen got restored (pvp).
I believe if you take away Vampire completely for those builds who cannot afford to slot any vampire skills, there needs to be an alternative to the undeath passive to somewhat similair strength and that is Health Regen

Nser

olsborg wrote: »

I'll basicly agree with everyone who thinks undeath passive should get nerfed. Its been over performing for years.
HP regen shouldnt be flat out reduced by 50% in cyrodiil, that just indirectly ruined alot of nice sets for cyrodiil use. Instead Id say cap it at 2000, and everything above that gets softcapped, meaning every hpregen stat you have over 2k, gets cut in half.

I like that idea of softcapping past 2k, less harsh than a full stop cap.
Would probly like to change it to sofftcapped past 2500 and having 3k as the hardcap. So the final 500 health regen between 2500 and 3k is not easy to get but possible if you build for it

Nser

Iriidius wrote: »

Which werewolf resistance? Werewolf lost 10k resistance 2 years sgo, it only gets major resolve now, a buff every non transformed class gets by armor buff. WW have even less resistance than mortals, because mortals get minor resolve by vigor and another 3k resi by defending backbar.

You are absolutely right. WWs resists have been so gutted alongside health regen which this subclass needs. The WW heal is very strong in tooltip sure, but its your only heal and a burst heal at that.
Any pvp build has a burst heal, some HoTs + undeath while WW just has the one burst heal (which is only truely strong on HP stack, which ruins your damage), Battlespirit nerfed health regen and less armor than your average build like you mention perfectly.

Fixing undeath and health regen might just also fix WW in a way, alongside giving WWs major + minor resolve at all times

the1andonlyskwex

Here's how you fix vampires and dragonknights at the same time: Change Vampire's extra fire damage taken so it applies to all damage instead.

Nser

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

Here's how you fix vampires and dragonknights at the same time: Change Vampire's extra fire damage taken so it applies to all damage instead.

That really does not make any sense. Vampire means gaining power but also weaknesses (fighters guild vampire hunters and flame dmg taken).
By taking more damage from everything you just get weaknesses since you also lose health regen. Undeath would only make you tankier than Mortal when you are like 20% health at that point, while having no health regen vs the mortal potential 2k health regen ( stage 4 vs mortal)
Vampire has always had the theme of getting stronger at lower health in eso, undeath has basicly always functioned similair to how it is now but would only kick in below 50% hp.
Perhaps if nerfing it from 30% to 20% isnt the way, then maybe we should go back to having it only kick in below 50% hp but keep the max value at 30% AND still persist with my suggestion to move it to Stage 4 and restore health regen for pvp as a counterbalance.

Vampire has health regen penalties for that reason, its sposed to be balanced vs health regen and i think my idea reaches a pretty good balance

Nser

Vulkunne wrote: »

First of all, it cannot be overstated how much of a problem the lack of health recovery or significantly reduced health recovery can be. Every little bit of dmg adds up very quickly.

So undeath is one of those agents that's keeping the lights on as the Titanic sinks. Nerfing undeath would be an enormous mistake as aside from building for Vamp, other than perhaps healing or something specific there's not much else providing a direct intervention to stop your character's health from 'bleeding out'.

Imo its not a nerf when you gain something in return. Instead of, as you call it, undeath being what keeps the light on, ive added Regeneration (unnatural regeneration) back and added lifesteal through damage caused for a shared load on what it means to be a vampire.
Moving Undeath from stage 3 to 4 is needed to bring back health regen as a counter balance to undeath, since stage 4 getting the best vampire benefits while also getting no health regen

Vevvev

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

Here's how you fix vampires and dragonknights at the same time: Change Vampire's extra fire damage taken so it applies to all damage instead.

Then apply the same logic to werewolf because that makes no sense in lore. Vampires are weak to fire and have a passive durability against "normal" damage. At least in previous games.

Normal damage was anything that wasn't enchanted metal or magic like steel, bronze, getting hit with a shield/fist, etc. Essentially they were very durable and you needed glass, silver, and magic to bypass that durability.

ESO devs just made Undeath apply to all damage when it probably would've been better to have it apply to physical damage instead.

Sarannah

The vampire stages are mostly fine as they are, the only thing needing a small change is the health regen debuff at stage four should only be 95%. This way falling from small ledges and going through doors regens back, without any negative gameplay consequences.

If anything needs to be changed about vampires in PvP, ZOS should only do so through battle spirit!

Keep in mind, your proposed changes have a huge negative impact in PvE and tanking PvE as well!

Jammy420

Nser wrote: »

As the title suggests im going to propose some changes I believe could really go a long way in finally balancing Undeath and health regen for an overall healthier mitigation system (pvp).
Its not a secret you want to be stage 3 vampire at all times to take advantage of the undeath passive, up to 30% mitigation based on your missing health, and we can all agree this might be the most overtuned passive in the entire game.
Before health regen got its 50% reduction through Battlespirit, there was actually a choice, Vampire + undeath or Mortal with health regen. We all know how that played out and it eventually came crashing down with the battlespirit health regen reduction, the strongest health regen sets being nerfed and lets not forget mistform. This is when the meta truely shifted towards stage 3 vampire, those who werent before now surely were.
We went from one unhealthy meta straight into the next, from 5k+ health regen to a potential 30% mitigation from undeath

Ive got some ideas on how to fix this, so lets start with Vampire. Not so much a vamp 3.0 but working with whats already there.

First i would start making the stage 4 passive, unnatural movement, part of the base vampire experience(stage 1). Reduce Sprint Cost from 50% reduction to 25% to make up for the accesability.
This passive never felt powerful enough to warrant being stage 4 for.

Move Undeath to stage 4 but reduce the strength of this passive from up to 30% down to 20%. On top of a mitigation loss you would also have to take more penalties from the Vamp stages.
For stage 3 I had the following in mind: Heal for 5% of the damage you cause (lifesteal) and bring back the old recovery passive but downgraded. This used to be 10% magic and stamina recovery at basicly zero downsides. Id suggest 5% magic and stamina regeneration since its tied to stage 3. In short this passive now exists to somewhat counter the negatives as you progress through the Stages but will not completely negate said negatives.
Stage 3 Lifesteal will stack with Vampire Lord lifesteal, combined healing for 20% of the damage you cause. This should help vampire fit the lifesteal theme more. Stage 1-4 buffs and debuffs remain the same.

Health regen:
Remove the battlespirit health regen debuff and CAP HEALTH REGEN at 2500. This, together with undeath being nerfed and stage 4 getting no health regen, should bring that choice back. Mortal for health regen, or vampire, but nowhere near as strong as before.

Edit: It might currently be too hard to reach that 2500 health regen cap, even without being vampire. One would probly need to run outdated and nerfed health regen sets to come close. Perhaps baseline health regen should get improved so its easier to reach or get close to the cap by running for example gold food items such as Orzorgas which grant health regen and gear granting a line of health regen wouldnt feel like a wasted stat.

I also think these changes give more meaning to the Vampire Stages itself since right now, its stage 3 or bust.
Possible combinations of vamp stages + health regen:

Stage 1 vampire that is purely vampire for some skills, while still being able to get good health regen (stage 1 only has 10% health regen debuff).
A vampire for Vampire skills + health regen, but no undeath or lifesteal/regen (less penality taken from vamp stages also means less benefits from vampire)

Stage 2 vampire that makes use of invis or mistform to gain the Strike from shadows passive, while having decent health regen. (stage 2 has 30% health regen debuff)
One might want to be stage 2 for the same reasons as stage 1 with added wpn/spell dmg. Still no undeath or lifesteal/regen but dmg and ok health regen.

Stage 3 vampire mixing lifesteal and being able to still get around 800 health regen, + mag/stam regen, at the cost of higher vampire stage debuffs
Stage 3 that uses health regen sets and other health regen choices to get near or at that 2k+ cap. So gets health regen + lifesteal + regen, at the cost of running a health regen build giving up potential damage sets.

Stage 4 to get Undeath, the up to 20% mitigation, but giving up on health regen completely. As all your Ultimates get more expensive and arent counterbalanced by the 5% regen given at stage 3 but making your Vampire Lord transformation cheaper at stage 4, should result in the Vampire Lord ultimate getting more playtime.

Or simply not be a vampire, have no debuffs but able to get 2k+ health regen.

Greymoor Expansion introduced the current version of undeath but at the same time allowed for stupid amounts of health regen. you werent going to be a vampire stage 3 for undeath when u could have 5k+ health regen. Meaning 5k regen was far superior to undeath, around 2.5k probly strikes a balance.
People would play stage 1 Mistform builds to get the best of both worlds. Now with that version of mistform gone (no regens) and the rework coming up + my suggested cap or softcap of health regen and moving the undeath to stage 4, should finally balance undeath vs health regen, mortal vs vampire.




Thoughts?

I can't agree with any of this except swapping undeath and stage 4 passives. You already take a huge hit in survivability, core skill cost increase, and health regen loss.

The negatives are enough, more negatives, plus health regen would just be incredibly tedious to manage.

Not to mention undeath passive doesn't even work well until you are nearly dead. Needing it would gimp vampires even more.

Jammy420

Vevvev wrote: »

olsborg wrote: »

I'll basicly agree with everyone who thinks undeath passive should get nerfed. Its been over performing for years.
HP regen shouldnt be flat out reduced by 50% in cyrodiil, that just indirectly ruined alot of nice sets for cyrodiil use. Instead Id say cap it at 2000, and everything above that gets softcapped, meaning every hpregen stat you have over 2k, gets cut in half.

Years? It's only gotten as good as it has after the Greymoor update..... actually I guess that is years at this point...

Problem is you'd need to redo the vampire skill line if you nerf undeath as the primary damage dealing abilities are designed around that passive being on to get the most out of them.

The high risk high reward gameplay of being low HP to get more damage. Only way to not instantly die is.... undeath.

It has taken years for them to adjust what they destroyed in Greymoor to be even useful, and now it's in a good place and the anti vampire brigade came in again and wants them stomped to dust. Youre exactly right about undeath as well. I do not understand all the complaining what so ever. They would need to buff health regen SIGNIFICANTLY, which would shatter all balance for vampires , and would ruin the whole premise behind the revamp.

Nser

Its like we're playing 2 different games entirely.
Gimp vampire even more? im not sure if you are aware but literally every pvp build is vampire stage 3 for undeath, how is something most played gimped?
i'm asking for options, choices, and since vampire has reduced health regen through the stages, it only makes sense to balance undeath with health regen

Jammy420

Nser wrote: »

Its like we're playing 2 different games entirely.
Gimp vampire even more? im not sure if you are aware but literally every pvp build is vampire stage 3 for undeath, how is something most played gimped?
i'm asking for options, choices, and since vampire has reduced health regen through the stages, it only makes sense to balance undeath with health regen

You clearly were not around for what happened during greymoor.

We lost what little health regen we had
flame damage became higher
we lost unnatural regeneration
we lost our good stun
our drain became useless

Undeath is ONLY useful at very low health, you would have to break health regen entirely to make up for it being nerfed. It is also already balanced.

Low ( almost non existent ) health regen requires high mitigation
Low regen debuff at lvl 1, and no mitigation buffs

Its fine how is. This is a dead horse that has been beat for years. There are even poisons and such that increase damage taken. There are plenty of counters. We dont need vampire to be some mashup of humans and not. The only thing that would make sense is swapping the running buff to 3 and undeath to 4. That is the only acceptable change that wont ruin vampires....again.

Nser

I have noticed an increase of nerf undeath posts on the forums lately, here my 2 cents again

Twig_Garlicshine

As I've said elsweyr:

Vamp stage 3 is more of a Pvp crutch than any gear set ever was.
The advantage is huge, any detriment is ignorable.
Using it to fix a lack of something else (regen) shows that
World of Vamps exists because it is needed crutch, and not because playing vampires is a popular thing to do.
Players are doing it because their freedom of choice, their agency was removed.

There are ways to solve this pvp issue without affecting pve.