The Blood Theme of Vampire

MindOfTheSwarm

I love playing Vampire, but I can’t help but feel like its blood themed abilities don’t really feel right.
Shouldn’t skills like Arterial Burst, Blood Mist and Drain all deal Bleed Damage?

I get that Vamp is supposed to be the Magicka counterpart to werewolf, but if skills are draining Blood from targets then it only makes sense that they should deal Bleed Damage.

Since Weapon and Spell Damage and Max Stats affect all skills, would it really matter if they were changed to be in line with the theme of the Skill Line?

Also, a few tweaks could be made to allow Magic Damage morphs for those players that want them.

On a final note, shouldn’t the Drain skill and its morphs actually show Blood being drained from targets similar to the Feed Execute? And wouldn’t it be nice if this skill in particular had an execute component added to it?

Soarora

Changing vampire skills to bleed damage would actually be a really cool idea as it could bring some identity back to vampire builds through sets like dro’zakar.

Vevvev

Bleed damage is a physical damage type in ESO that inflicts Hemorrhaging, which comes with the minor mangle status effect that reduces a target's health pool by 10%.

This means that if you made it all bleed damage the blood magic would be doing physical damage, have less sustain due to the lack of minor magickasteal from the magic damage status effect, and go from being mitigated by spell resistance to being mitigated by physical resistance.

While it would be thematic, the fact you're making magical attacks deal physical damage wouldn't really make sense, and also would make sustaining the vampire kit a little harder. I want to be on board with the idea, but I honestly don't see it working out all that well, especially since the minor mangle status effect doesn't effect bosses in PvE.


Although I will agree that vampiric drain's appearance is way too silly and bright, and the base version of the ability looks better than what morphing the ability looks like. I'm sure they made it so incredibly bright to signal to your target you're using an interruptible ability, but it just hurts my eyes... Not sure about the execute part, but it might help in making it more than a pathetic healing ability with halfway decent support additions.

ElementalDud

The appearance of Drain is my biggest non-mechanical annoyances with the skill line, it just looks so awful. The feed animation like you said is quite nice and I wish ZOS would replace the base skill with that, and then for the morphs they could bring in more (subtle) purples/pinks/blues like the rest of the skills have. But instead they chose to go with yellow, orange, and slightly greenish? Why?

MindOfTheSwarm

ElementalDud wrote: »

The appearance of Drain is my biggest non-mechanical annoyances with the skill line, it just looks so awful. The feed animation like you said is quite nice and I wish ZOS would replace the base skill with that, and then for the morphs they could bring in more (subtle) purples/pinks/blues like the rest of the skills have. But instead they chose to go with yellow, orange, and slightly greenish? Why?

I think green would be fine for one of the morphs that dealt Magic Damage, but if the other dealt Bleed Damage and had the feed animation it would be way better than that awful yellow. Total color mismatch for the blood drain theme.

YandereGirlfriend

Changing the damaging abilities to deal Bleed Damage would be an amazing thematic change.

It is not even that odd considering things like the Arcanist where skills use your max or min skill but deal a set damage type so you can easily have situations where a Stam cost abilities deals Mag-type damage or vice versa. With hybrid stats the distinction between Mag- and Stam-type effects no longer really matters.

It doesn't even make sense as to why a skill like Arterial Burst is Mag-type to begin with considering that the animation is obviously a physical claw swipe (cough cough stolen DK animation cough cough) and not a spell of any kind.

TBH, now that we have the Arcanist as a precedent, they really probably ought to change most/all vampire abilities to scale from max stats.

MindOfTheSwarm

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

Changing the damaging abilities to deal Bleed Damage would be an amazing thematic change.

It is not even that odd considering things like the Arcanist where skills use your max or min skill but deal a set damage type so you can easily have situations where a Stam cost abilities deals Mag-type damage or vice versa. With hybrid stats the distinction between Mag- and Stam-type effects no longer really matters.

It doesn't even make sense as to why a skill like Arterial Burst is Mag-type to begin with considering that the animation is obviously a physical claw swipe (cough cough stolen DK animation cough cough) and not a spell of any kind.

TBH, now that we have the Arcanist as a precedent, they really probably ought to change most/all vampire abilities to scale from max stats.

Always appreciate your thoughts Yandere. Constructive.

Baconlad

So...talking strictly about THEME I am gathering.

Bleed damage is meant to be taken from a weapon that causes a Bleed. Like an axe!

The blood magic from vampire skill line is a form of magic, from a lore standpoint. It's based on alteration, and from my understanding it doesn't actually sap blood, but life essence. The magic that gets a man up in the morning is the magic that a vampire uses. This magic can be used by any normal mage that learns it, not just vampires. But vampires rely on it for their sustainence.

There's a few different animations for vampires "feeding" through their synergy. One shows a life drain magic at a distance. Which would be the magic I'm talking about, the same spell used when casting the vampire channeled ability. The second animation is jumping on your target and actually drinking blood. My guess is that as a vampire you need the magical essence of your prey, and you can get that from a spell or directly from the blood, which makes me also assume that the blood carries the essence that you would get from a spell normally.

Hope this cleared it up. I'd rather vampire not go to stamina. They are already very strong. And the bleeding effects aren't the same from a lore standpoint IMHO

MindOfTheSwarm

Baconlad wrote: »

So...talking strictly about THEME I am gathering.

Bleed damage is meant to be taken from a weapon that causes a Bleed. Like an axe!

The blood magic from vampire skill line is a form of magic, from a lore standpoint. It's based on alteration, and from my understanding it doesn't actually sap blood, but life essence. The magic that gets a man up in the morning is the magic that a vampire uses. This magic can be used by any normal mage that learns it, not just vampires. But vampires rely on it for their sustainence.

There's a few different animations for vampires "feeding" through their synergy. One shows a life drain magic at a distance. Which would be the magic I'm talking about, the same spell used when casting the vampire channeled ability. The second animation is jumping on your target and actually drinking blood. My guess is that as a vampire you need the magical essence of your prey, and you can get that from a spell or directly from the blood, which makes me also assume that the blood carries the essence that you would get from a spell normally.

Hope this cleared it up. I'd rather vampire not go to stamina. They are already very strong. And the bleeding effects aren't the same from a lore standpoint IMHO

The suggestions were not meant to imply it went to ‘Stamina’ per se. But a few morphs here and there. Also, Stam and Mag are kind of redundant now that everything scales with whatever is biggest.

Baconlad

That's true! But there are still differences between a stamina and Magick in playstyle. And certain classes like magDK are mostly extinct now.

MindOfTheSwarm

Baconlad wrote: »

That's true! But there are still differences between a stamina and Magick in playstyle. And certain classes like magDK are mostly extinct now.

I have a Mag DK that mixes different skills and elements into one build. It’s kind of unrecognisable as a DK though, it operates more like a witch.