Balancing Vampirism - Actual Feedback and Suggestions Welcome

Lionsden

Disclaimer: I play a Templar Vampire.

We all know the current state that PvP is in and the fact that to compete at the top tier it is felt by many that you have to be a Vampire. The real question is, why is it better to be a Vampire than anything else?

The answer that most people give is Mist Form and Bat Swarm. The 60% cost reduction at Level 4 Vampirism combined with armor sets and certain class abilities make those vampires incredibly hard to defeat.

What seems to be ignored however is the fact that problem doesn't necessarily lie with the DK/Vamp or Sorc/Vamp combinations. It doesn't necessarily even lie with the fact Mist Form is a powerful escape tool and Bat Swarm is fairly cheap cost Ultimate with high return in damage and health gain.

The real issue lies with the fact that there is currently no real penalty for staying at Vampirism 4. The only change we see from Vampirism 1 and Vampirism 4 is the scaling reduction in health regeneration. This seems to affect only passive regeneration and has not impact on healing spells or vampirism abilities that provide healing, such as Bat Swarm. Essentially, anyone who plays a Vampire has no incentive to ever give up the 60% cost reduction that Vampirism 4 provides.

So what can we do about it.

Solution 1: Change the scaling health regeneration to healing received. So as they Vampirism level rises the effectiveness of healing decreases. Vampire players would be forced to make the choice on whether the reduced cost is worth a 75% healing reduction and would prevent Vampire players from soloing large groups as their own abilities would not provide the proper healing return. Bat Swarm capped at 6 targets currently returns around 1800 hp. Under this method it would still deal the same amount of damage but would only return 450 healing. Vampire players could still be threats due to the Ultimate, but they would be far more reliant on other players then be the solo juggernauts we've seen in so many VR10 Vampire videos.

Solution 2: Scale fire damage to increase as Vampirism level rises. Starting at 25% and reaching 100% at Vampirism 4. Not the optimal solution as it would not address the Ultimate cost reduction issue, but it would make sitting at Vampirism 4 far more costly in terms of damage taken vs fire sources.

Solution 3: Buff Werewolves. This option would make Werewolves more viable in PvP. Reduce the Ultimate cost, provide them buffs for running in packs (perhaps a passive that adds damage for each Werewolf in the party), or something of that nature that makes solo Vampirism not the only appealing option. Of course the issue with this solution is that we might end up seeing nothing in Cyrodil but packs of Werewolves clashing with Vampires.

Solution 4: Add a new penalty for not feeding. This could be something such as 10% attribute reduction per Vampirism level above 1, reduced movement due to lethargy, or even reduction in magical resistance. This option might allow for a better balance of Vampirism levels similar to Solution #1, though it would most likely end up requiring more time to tweak and balance correctly.

In any event - The primary issue people should be examining is not the individual Vampire skills or even the Class/Vampire combinations, but rather the issue of why there is no penalty for sitting at Vampirism 4 indefinitely.

Sile

None of those solutions will actually solve what is wrong with vamps, namely Elusive Mist and Devouring Swarm.

Easiest fixes are to put a 0.5s precast animation on Elusive Mist, and cap the amounts of targets affected by Devouring Swarm to 3 - just like the DK inhale. Alternatively, adjust the ultimate cost reduction from vampire levels.

Adding further debuffs to vampirism won't balance out its abilities.

awkwarrd

Balancing?
From reading this it's more "nerf vampires"
Werewolfs need something, they actually get a nerf in craglorn.
And no specific information anywhere about any skill fixes in any of the notes, other than ones that affect AOE, and that had to be posted seperately, because lazy patch notes.

You appear to be missing important information about the 2 class's that are abusing the ulti reduction stacking, that is making vampires stand out.

Not sure if you understand how the current broken skills are being abused for this suggestion to be valid.

There is multiples of passives and broken mechanics here that people are abusing, vampire is just one of them.
Obviously vampire has some broken skills to.
But the 2 class's that benefit most from these broken skills are DK and Sorc, who have more broken skills in their utility belt to make this all work.

So Balancing? or Fixing broken skills?
Instead of "just nerf stuff please, coz im blind, and have no real idea of what's happening"

Also at no point did you make mention of Dawnguard or Fighters Guild, so this thread is effectively a nerf vampire thread.
You should expand your ideas to incorporate everything if you want to make a valid suggestion, you know.. like other things that would directly impact those class's/skills you are basically asking for a nerf for.

kunjal29rwb17_ESO

A 60 second cooldown on ultimates would fix most issues.

Nox_Aeterna

Sile wrote: »

None of those solutions will actually solve what is wrong with vamps, namely Elusive Mist and Devouring Swarm.

Easiest fixes are to put a 0.5s precast animation on Elusive Mist, and cap the amounts of targets affected by Devouring Swarm to 3 - just like the DK inhale. Alternatively, adjust the ultimate cost reduction from vampire levels.

Adding further debuffs to vampirism won't balance out its abilities.

Inhale , is NOT an ultimate , wow right?

So , unless they cap the DK banner to 3 , then we can talk about it ok?

largusmeansb16_ESO

Anyone saying this is not OP and working as intended is just funny. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyZsIDSSGV4

Sleepydan

I just watched that video for the first time. My first thought, was lul. That does seem pretty cheese. If only he was shield bash spamming he would be doing all the flavor of the first month overpowered things!! Much wow such strong.

But he didn't. He just waddled around blocking pretty much the ENTIRE time. Yeah, he had his ultimate up a lot, but he was blocking more. How did he keep his stamina bar that full, when he was clearly tanking many many hits?

Pretty sure all that blocking is what kept filling his ultimate bar so fast too.

The more I watched it, the more I became convinced what was overpowered was much less that he has a persistent aura up that did damage and healed him, as he was able to tank everything thrown his way.

But sleepydan he was only able to tank it because of the uber healing on that ultimate!!!

Doubtful. I don't think I saw him get knocked down once. Could be wrong but I'm pretty sure. That either meant that not a single enemy of his hit him with a single silver bolt, which is possible, or he blocked every single silver bolt from every single enemy over that entire 8 minute fight. Every crystal fragment. Every uppercut. Etc.


Pretty sure that the problem with that specific video was much less that he killed everyone with his ultimate, but that he had a never ending green bar that was mitigating the crap out of all the damage and nullifying every cc thrown his way. He could have killed everyone with endless meteors. The bats are superior because of the pbaoe being harder to sidestep, the range of the pbaoe and of course the healing/ vamp reduction to augment his endless blocking. All he's doing is blocking forever and killing with a better boethias ebon mail from skyrim.


In summary

Endless green bar > the method of execution

Kypho

awkwarrd wrote: »

Balancing?
From reading this it's more "nerf vampires"
Werewolfs need something, they actually get a nerf in craglorn.
And no specific information anywhere about any skill fixes in any of the notes, other than ones that affect AOE, and that had to be posted seperately, because lazy patch notes.

You appear to be missing important information about the 2 class's that are abusing the ulti reduction stacking, that is making vampires stand out.

Not sure if you understand how the current broken skills are being abused for this suggestion to be valid.

There is multiples of passives and broken mechanics here that people are abusing, vampire is just one of them.
Obviously vampire has some broken skills to.
But the 2 class's that benefit most from these broken skills are DK and Sorc, who have more broken skills in their utility belt to make this all work.

So Balancing? or Fixing broken skills?
Instead of "just nerf stuff please, coz im blind, and have no real idea of what's happening"

Also at no point did you make mention of Dawnguard or Fighters Guild, so this thread is effectively a nerf vampire thread.
You should expand your ideas to incorporate everything if you want to make a valid suggestion, you know.. like other things that would directly impact those class's/skills you are basically asking for a nerf for.

Ahh come one mr lolvamplover. Stop to try to defend a broken crap. You know whats happening, what swarm does, how it does, how unballanced it is, like all other knows. Turning into offensive wont help you to hide the facts.

Kypho

largusmeansb16_ESO wrote: »

Anyone saying this is not OP and working as intended is just funny. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyZsIDSSGV4

They just try to defend their easymode. They will turn into offensive and call you everything. They calling you QQer, shouting dont nerf, with tears in their eyes, because they fear from losing their crap lol.

zazamalek

The most important thing for them to do right now is to disable bat swarm in PvP until the issue is resolved. Stop the damage this is doing to their game in its tracks, while they figure this out.

Balance ideas:

• Ultimate cost reduction needs to see a softcap. This will partially work - DK's can still generate enough ultimate to viably spam bat swarm
• Build a time-based cooldown into mist form and bat swarm.
• PvP-specific buffs to fighter's guild abilities (i.e. "X against Undead enemies in other factions", obviously taking into account the WW passive). For example:

Circle of Protection

Creates an area of protection for 17 seconds. Friendly targets have armor and spell resistance increased by 10, and an additional 10 against Undead and Daedric enemies. Enemy Undead targets from other factions have all Undead buffs removed while in the circle and cannot cast Undead abilities.

"Enemy Undead targets from other factions" being players, but in an RP-friendly way.

Mordenkaiser

First off, I like the notions of this thread, i'll address my thoughts to the OP's suggestion and then at the end off offer some of my own. Background, I'm a VR 4 Dragon Knight Vampire

Solution 1: Change the scaling health regeneration to healing received. So as they Vampirism level rises the effectiveness of healing decreases. Vampire players would be forced to make the choice on whether the reduced cost is worth a 75% healing reduction and would prevent Vampire players from soloing large groups as their own abilities would not provide the proper healing return. Bat Swarm capped at 6 targets currently returns around 1800 hp. Under this method it would still deal the same amount of damage but would only return 450 healing. Vampire players could still be threats due to the Ultimate, but they would be far more reliant on other players then be the solo juggernauts we've seen in so many VR10 Vampire videos.

I disagree with this because it effectively makes half the Vampire abilities useless, reducing the effectiveness of our single target drain would mean a wasted channel which would really hurt especially in PVE

--To counter offer--
Actually I think the Stages are backwards, I think you should have cost reduction at Vampirism Level 1, which becomes less as you feed less, this would encourage vampires to go feed and inconvience vampires to make people reconsider. Also Give Vampires Bleed vulnerability.


Solution 2: Scale fire damage to increase as Vampirism level rises. Starting at 25% and reaching 100% at Vampirism 4. Not the optimal solution as it would not address the Ultimate cost reduction issue, but it would make sitting at Vampirism 4 far more costly in terms of damage taken vs fire sources.

As it stands this will really just hurt vampires in PVE and as you said not address the issue, I think a 50% fire vuln is a good middle ground.

Solution 3: Buff Werewolves. This option would make Werewolves more viable in PvP. Reduce the Ultimate cost, provide them buffs for running in packs (perhaps a passive that adds damage for each Werewolf in the party), or something of that nature that makes solo Vampirism not the only appealing option. Of course the issue with this solution is that we might end up seeing nothing in Cyrodil but packs of Werewolves clashing with Vampires.

You nailed it, it wouldn't solve the issue, as it stands both werewolf and vampirism are "Add ons" rather then a class unto themselves, if you jacked up werewolves you'd simply reduce the pure race population even further. I would like to see werewolves actually get a buff to health regen.

Solution 4: Add a new penalty for not feeding. This could be something such as 10% attribute reduction per Vampirism level above 1, reduced movement due to lethargy, or even reduction in magical resistance. This option might allow for a better balance of Vampirism levels similar to Solution #1, though it would most likely end up requiring more time to tweak and balance correctly.

I already outlined my thoughts on feeding above.

In any event - The primary issue people should be examining is not the individual Vampire skills or even the Class/Vampire combinations, but rather the issue of why there is no penalty for sitting at Vampire 4 indefinitely.

I disagree, as it stands vampires have devastating synergies with class abilities such as Talons+Batswarm (ran against a full group of AD doing this today) As it stands all the vampire abilities are broken.

Batswarm is too powerful with Ult reduction, I suggest that batswarm automatically end after the caster recieves too much damage, or make it a channel, this will prevent choke points being tanked by solo vampires. Devouring swarm is the issue, the other morph would only be affected in a minor way (and would become more enticing)

Mist Form needs to not drop target.

Essence Drain needs to have its stun component removed, given the prevelence of stuns used in PVP it means you often cannot execute the ability, you may want to remove the channel from it as well, but not sure about if that would make it too good.

While these may seem like nerfs, it would probably be good once you fix the vampires passives.

Thechemicals

The vampire tree alone is not overpowered but when mixed with other class abilities- they are extremely advantageous. The vampire weakness is fire and gear or racial passives protecting them from it should not be allowed.