Don't reduce WW and Vamp to "just another skill-line" - response to the developers current plans

ShadowHvo · February 2015

I just heard of the "considered" changes to vampires and werewolves from todays ESO LIVE. Whereby you guys at ZOS are considering removing the 40% fire/poison weakness from these monsters, and only make the said weaknesses active for a short period of time, after using a Vamp or WW ability.

Please do NOT make this! It will literally make everyone go vampire immediately as all they get is a reduction to health regen, and then they can simply slot all normal abilities while still attaining ALL of the vampire passive bonuses.

The fire weakness to vampires is -essential- to the experience of being a vampire. We're undead immortal creatures roaming Tamriel as monsters. We get our benefits, but at the same time we must take the weaknesses it brings, which in this case is the current 1.6 40% weakness to fire.

Currently being a vampire is a buff in itself, even without the abilities, especially for stealth characters, and I doubt anyone can complain about the 10% regen for both stamina and magicka. Take away the fire weakness entirely, and you'll force -everyone- into becoming a vampire, just like many currently are feeling forced to become a werewolf because without using the abilities, there is only buffs.

Zenimax, as a vampire loyalist I beg of you NOT to do this. Do not take our weakness away like that. You will just enforce everyone to become a vampire without using the vampire abilities. In the 1.6 PTS the 10% decrease from 50% to 40% already feels really great, and ensures that we vampires can survive for much longer in City of Ash and against fire bosses in general. Rather look at how it goes in live, and then further adjust this percentage, instead of only making the weaknesses active for a short while after using a vampire ability.

starkerealm · February 2015

Well, right now Werewolves are only vulnerable to poison damage while in 9 ft tall snarling deathbeast mode... so, I get the undead whining about how they're permanently dipped in kerosine.

I'd think a better solution would be something like "masque of life," that removes the fire resist but it's a toggle that stays on their bar locking down their other vampire abilities... and disguising their vampiric status.

Troneon · February 2015

I chose not to becomes any of them because the negatives did not seem worth the positives and the whole stuck with it once you choose or change or remove I did not like.

I would say just get rid of all the negatives for both WW and Vamp and just have completely different but balanced positives for both, then people don't have to worry about anything except what would compliment their build and what they prefer.

Right now I don't like either of the choices, so I choose none.

MADshadowman · February 2015

Yeah, i want vampires to be more interesting and versatile to play, but losing the fire weakness would be so unbelievably wrong. Why is this even a thing? Nobody wanted that. @ZOS_GinaBruno please take a look into this thread, where we talked about what we want for vampires: http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/1589029#Comment_1589029

We want more active abilities that are fun and worth using, but we don't want to drop our weaknesses.

OtarTheMad · February 2015

That would really go against lore and kind of spit in it's face. I hope they don't do that at all. They should just give vampires the ability to not take any health regeneration penalties at night and we'd be good. Maybe some new abilities but that's it... leave vamps and WW the way they are in terms of fire and poison damage.

Rook_Master · February 2015

Was this seriously discussed?

I have to go watch the ESO Live now, I can't believe this....

Unbelievable considering the current state of the game.

Elloa · February 2015

I seriously DON'T want to ever been forced into being a Vampire because it will bring me some sort of bonuses and no bad "weakness"
I don't want to be a Vampire for Cosmetic and RP reasons. Now I still have a good gameplay reasons to NOT be one: the weakness to fire! But if you remove that, I'd be stupid to continue to refuse to be a Vampire.

Vampire and Wereworlf are supposed to be special. Something that go togetehr with a certain gameplay. It should not fit everyone. It should be a Choice. It should matter whether you take it or do not take it.

Solanum · February 2015

Personally, I think this is a good change.

My build for the next patch has not got a single Vampire ability on there. Our two actives are underwhelming, and our ultimate, while good, doesn't do what I need in my build at the moment.

But, let's for a moment take a look at the pro's and con's:

Pro - increased stealth speed. Con - Weakness to fighters guild actives.
Pro - faster magicka/stamina recovery Con - up to 75% less health regen.
Pro - undead damage reduction Con - Fighters guild passives (+9% damage)

Based on these, I do not think anyone is forced to go Vampire, without the softcaps I've personally noticed that having 1k health recovery every two seconds is a very nice passive effect. Based purely on this list, Vampire might be nice for a DPS that is not to concerned with taxing the healer a little extra and whom is mostly PVE oriented. In PVP the stealth speed is a very nice bonus, but things like Evil Hunter (now also useful when not facing Vampires!) tend to balance out that factor.

The undead damage reduction could be interesting for PVE, since there is not too much Fighters guild passive stuff happening. But in PVP personally I've experienced that one does not stay long within execute range. And taking increased damage from passives to get there sooner more then balances it out.

Long story short, overall I wouldn't really dare calling it advantageous to be a Vampire so far, but if you like the style and it fits your build, go ahead and sink in ten skillpoints or so.

Now, there is two things I've not taken along in my consideration, first of which is batswarm.
While this currently is an amazing tool, especially for those whom regenerate back to full ultimate in seconds, with the ultimate balance (I'm not going to call it a nerf, because I feel it's a good adjustment, long overdue) batswarm will not be spamable anymore.

so we have batswarm, which currently won't be that much better then any other ultimate, and for using this we balance it out with 40% extra fire damage taken. Pardon me, but that seems like a pretty bad trade.
Not only is fire present everywhere (read, siege weapons, burning oil, destro staves and dragonknights in Cyrodiil, and 80% of the PVE content) 40% is a pretty hefty amount.

All in all, if it wasn't for roleplay/character reasons I'd not play a Vampire in their current state, and would not reroll to Vampire after 1.6 even with the adjustments to the mechanics. But I am very fond of my character concept and thus sticking with my initial choice.

As such, as a Vampire, I'll be quite glad to be able to enjoy content without constantly feeling like playing with a self inflicted handicap/disadvantage which I bought with a dozen of skillpoints.

It's a good change.

MornaBaine · February 2015

Oh cool, now I don't have to make a new thread regarding this nor do I even have to watch the entire ESO Live (not that they aren't fun) because the super nice Devs posted the questions that were answered on the Ask Us Anything thread. So here is the question and answer:

Are you looking at doing anything with vampires and werewolves in the future? If so, what? – MornaBaine
For Update 6, we decreased the vampire and werewolf fire and poison vulnerability from 50% to 40%. Overall, we don’t want you to be unable to complete certain content because of your choice to be a vampire or werewolf. One potential solution to this would be to make vampires vulnerable for only a short time after activating Vampire skill line abilities. That way, if you saw a swarm of bats in PvP, you’d know to use fire-based abilities against them. With this approach, we’d keep that cool interaction, but you could slot different abilities for fire-heavy PvE content.

Okay so now we know exactly what they're talking about.

Now I'll be honest, if this spells the end of me getting one-shotted by the ridiculously huge number of fire-using bosses in dungeons I'll enjoy that part. Vampires have been at a serious disadvantage, despite piling on all the fire mitigation possible, in PvE for some time. SOMETHING needed to be done, I'm just not sure if this was it.

I think what would have been far better would be to make the Stages meaningful because let's face it, right now (and even with this proposed change) there's still never any reason NOT to be in Stage 4. Fire damage should scale, being at its lowest potential to damage you in Stage 1 and its highest potential to damage you at Stage 4, as I believe was the case in previous TES games. THEN you would actually be forced to consider the pros and cons of each Stage and work to maintain the Stage that works best for you depending upon what activities you are engaging in. This would also require an adjustment to the Stage timers because Stage 1 has always been FAR FAR TOO SHORT.

Simply giving vampires an across the board 10% reduction to fire damage really seems as if they took the easy way out. It feels like being thrown a bone, at best. Also, with some of the other changes going down in 1.6, it's going to pretty much make zero difference to PvP and, in fact, PvP looks to be getting a lot tougher for vampires despite this.

I'm a little confused by exactly what they mean with the rest of the answer to be honest and am unsure of what the impact on overall gameplay would be. It's also unclear if this is an actual change that is coming with 1.6 or just something they are still thinking about. But it does seem as if that would be a switch to easy-mode for vampires if, as it sounds like, they'd only be vulnerable to fire damage at all for a short time after using their Ultimate. Please tell me I'm reading that wrong because it just seems wildly silly to me if that's what they are saying.

The way I look at it, the 10% fire reduction is an okay TEMPORARY solution to the larger problems of vampires. Sooner or later, ZOS is going to have to get serious about them and actually do some real work on them.

NotSo · February 2015

I'd be fine with only having weakness after using a werewolf/vampire ability IF that also meant only having benefits after using a werewolf/vampire ability as well.
OR
Keep the weaknesses active at all times and suppress them only when you activate a werewolf/vampire ability (for 4 seconds or so after activation).

MornaBaine · February 2015

NotSo wrote: »

I'd be fine with only having weakness after using a werewolf/vampire ability IF that also meant only having benefits after using a werewolf/vampire ability as well.
OR
Keep the weaknesses active at all times and suppress them only when you activate a werewolf/vampire ability (for 4 seconds or so after activation).

That could be workable but I just don't see the need for this change. There have been so many GOOD suggestions for revamping vamps that I am utterly astonished that this is the best thing they could come up with.

Ommamar · February 2015

OtarTheMad wrote: »

That would really go against lore and kind of spit in it's face. I hope they don't do that at all. They should just give vampires the ability to not take any health regeneration penalties at night and we'd be good. Maybe some new abilities but that's it... leave vamps and WW the way they are in terms of fire and poison damage.

Well you would have to balance that with a reduction in regeneration during the day, another option would be a regeneration boost that is toggled when you "fed" on a person (player?).

I don't like the toggle idea that was mentioned as you can't stop being a vampire just for this situation or that one.

I will search but haven't seen anything about it, how does Vampire and WW fit into the justice system? I know it was hinted that known vampires and WW (i.e. using the skills) would be attacked by guards but I never observed this on test.

Gyudan · February 2015

Solanum wrote: »

Personally, I think this is a good change.

My build for the next patch has not got a single Vampire ability on there. Our two actives are underwhelming, and our ultimate, while good, doesn't do what I need in my build at the moment.

But, let's for a moment take a look at the pro's and con's:

Pro - increased stealth speed. Con - Weakness to fighters guild actives.
Pro - faster magicka/stamina recovery Con - up to 75% less health regen.
Pro - undead damage reduction Con - Fighters guild passives (+9% damage)

From a PVE point of view, it looks like this:

Nobodycares - increased stealth speed.
Pro - faster magicka/stamina recovery
Pro - undead damage reduction
Nobodycares - Weakness to fighters guild actives.
Nobodycares - Fighters guild passives (+9% damage)
Con - up to 75% less health regen.

Being a Vampire is a clear advantage for any role when the content doesn't have fire in it.

[Moderator Note: Edited per our rules on Trolling & Baiting]

Stravokov · March 2015

Are you looking at doing anything with vampires and werewolves in the future? If so, what? – MornaBaine
For Update 6, we decreased the vampire and werewolf fire and poison vulnerability from 50% to 40%. Overall, we don’t want you to be unable to complete certain content because of your choice to be a vampire or werewolf. One potential solution to this would be to make vampires vulnerable for only a short time after activating Vampire skill line abilities. That way, if you saw a swarm of bats in PvP, you’d know to use fire-based abilities against them. With this approach, we’d keep that cool interaction, but you could slot different abilities for fire-heavy PvE content.

ZOS has always been about taking shortcuts rather than solving problems, it is statements like these that solidify my claim. Just like how they nerfed Bat Swarm rather than addressing ultimate generation, just how they nerfed Mist form and the other escape skills rather than giving every class an escape etc. what we have now is a class where non of the active skills are worth using because they are so broken. rather than addressing this problem, they want to:

"One potential solution to this would be to make vampires vulnerable for only a short time after activating Vampire skill line abilities. That way, if you saw a swarm of bats in PvP, you’d know to use fire-based abilities against them."

they haven't been listening clearly, because i cant think of any Vampire player that uses any of the active abilities, and this would only further encourage NOT to use them. here we have the Vampire fan/community saying dont remove our weaknesses, just give us fun abilities that mirror existing skills with Vampire flare (bat form closer, useable drain health, useable mist form etc etc).

it doesn't break balance if the skill we use is mirrored from an existing skill! Nightblades already get a teleport closer, why cant we have the same only with some cool Vampire animations? most Vampire players want to feel like they are playing a vampire. we don't want to be super powered, we just want usable skills that make it emerrsive to play a vampire... why is this so hard to understand?!

like everything they do, SHORTCUTS, SHORTCUTS, FILLER, FILLER, SHORTCUTS! (and on and on it goes....)

WraithAzraiel · March 2015

That's a ridiculous idea!

RIPE FOR EXPLOITATION AND ABUSE!

How about this instead:

When running PvE content (AND ONLY PvE CONTENT) have a window pop up to institute this effect. That way out of dungeons, trials, and DSA you still have all the weaknesses.

Locking this "Feature" or function to strictly instanced PvE would be a better balance.

WraithAzraiel · March 2015

I appreciate you guys listening and all that and I applaud the effort but this is just opening the floodgates for abuse.

@ZOS_GinaBruno please keep us updated on your decisions regarding this topic @ZOS_JessicaFolsom

WraithAzraiel · March 2015

MornaBaine wrote: »

NotSo wrote: »

I'd be fine with only having weakness after using a werewolf/vampire ability IF that also meant only having benefits after using a werewolf/vampire ability as well.
OR
Keep the weaknesses active at all times and suppress them only when you activate a werewolf/vampire ability (for 4 seconds or so after activation).

That could be workable but I just don't see the need for this change. There have been so many GOOD suggestions for revamping vamps that I am utterly astonished that this is the best thing they could come up with.

I nearly flipped my desk when I heard those words fall from Jessica's mouth. My mind immediately jumped to just how much MORE of a cluster[snip] Cyrodiil would become if that idea became reality.

I would certainly like to experience all the content I've been barred from since taking vampire, but not at the cost of losing vampire and not at the expense of it's trivialization.

My wife had an awesome suggestion akin to mine.

Upon entering a PvE instance (Dungeon, Vet Dungeon, DSA, Trail) have a window appear with the option to SQUELCH Vampire/Werewolf. Essentially turning both the benefits and the disadvantages of the skill lines OFF for the duration of the instance.

During said instance you are locked out of those skill lines, the active abilities are visible but unavailable and the passives are rendered null and void until you leave the instance.

Either that or treat Vampires and Werewolves as Mortal until they use an ability from either of those skill lines and for the rest of the dungeon they're treated as such with full benefits and full vulnerabilities. None of this CLAP ON CLAP OFF nonsense.

ZOS please, please please please hit us Vampire/Werewolf Ambassadors up, start a dialogue with us and brainstorm a better approach to this then float it past some of the reasonable yet vocal anti-vampire/anti-werewolf individuals and let us find a happy medium.

I want my choice to be vampire to change my playstyle, not continue to lock me out of content I've been paying for and not experiencing since day 2.

I don't want to be OP, I just want to be competent while playing "how I want".

[Moderator Note: Edited per our rules on Cursing & Profanity]

Gidorick · March 2015

I just saw this on ESO live and this sounds like a TERRIBLE idea!

I think becoming a Vamp or a WW should be a choice you have to commit to! Suffer the consequences as well as reap the benefits.

It seems like they are really trying to just make everyone the exact same. MMO mentality is squashing RPG mentality. Such a shame.

Sheuib · March 2015

I do not want my ww to be changed especially with the new passive that pretty much lets me stay in ww form until the end of a fight. I like ww being an ultimate because when I am in ww form it does feel like an ultimate. If they just made it a regular skill line they would have to nerf all the abilities. I don't want that I want to have my beast mode available.

gurluasb16_ESO · March 2015

I think it's fine as it now.
They shouldn't remove the penalties, that'd make everyone go vamp/wolf

kewl · March 2015

So many other important issues to address. Yet here we are.

WraithAzraiel · March 2015

This thread needs more attention called to it.

I agree with @kewl If it comes down to enacting this proposed suggestion that is NO STOP AWFUL TERRIBAD or paying attention to more pressing issues- I vote the more pressing issues please.

Solanum · March 2015

How about suggestions (and I know plenty of good ones have been thrown out there) on how to balance Vampires, rather then shouting that it's fine, and that we do not want more people to turn Vampires.

Because in my opinion, the skill-line is beyond flawed. And taking 40% extra fire damage, is still too much in addition to the other flaws in comparison to what we receive.

How about granting each passive benefit a direct negative effect, this could range from increased fire damage taken, to healing reduction, to some unique flaws?

In addition, how about rather then on activation of a skill, making the equipping of a skill affect the weakness to fire?

Rune_Relic · March 2015

At the end of the day I think the idea is to stay away from potential vampire places at night.
The same goes for werewolfs at the time of the full moon right ?

So how about rather than a fixed buff/debuff situation.
Cycle buff/nerf on a daily clock for the vampires around midnight (or tamriel equivalent).
Cycle buff/nerf on a monthly clock for the werewolfs being strongest around full moons (if there is such a thing in tamriel with the two moons).

This then adds to the gameplay with vampires weak during the day and werewolves weak around new moon but much stronger at midnight or full moon repsectively.

This then allows Vamps and werewolfs to complete difficult PVE content.....BUT...gives them significant weaknesses too at the appropriate time to hunt and kill them in PVP.

+100% fire damage at midday....+0% fire damage at midnight
+100% poison damage at newmoon....+0% poison damage at fullmoon

Main issue.....TIME ZONES.

MornaBaine · March 2015

Solanum wrote: »

How about suggestions (and I know plenty of good ones have been thrown out there) on how to balance Vampires, rather then shouting that it's fine, and that we do not want more people to turn Vampires.

Because in my opinion, the skill-line is beyond flawed. And taking 40% extra fire damage, is still too much in addition to the other flaws in comparison to what we receive.

How about granting each passive benefit a direct negative effect, this could range from increased fire damage taken, to healing reduction, to some unique flaws?

In addition, how about rather then on activation of a skill, making the equipping of a skill affect the weakness to fire?

I was with you until the last line. Vampires are vampires at all times. This is reflected in the way they look (much of which I ALSO have issues with but have addressed them in numerous other threads) as well as in their fluctuating strengths and weaknesses. Removing the latter while only leaving the former in place is a very bad idea. It makes them less than vampires. We don't want lesser vampires. We want vampires that are more fully vampires.

MornaBaine · March 2015

@ShadowHvo do you think you might consider changing the title of this post? Just looking at the title as it is I think most people will not realize this was a subject actually addressed by a Dev on ESO Live. I don't want to start a new thread on this subject as I feel there's already a lot of good feedback on this one. But I fear the title is causing it to be overlooked by a lot of people.

Solanum · March 2015

The fire weakness was just one method, we could even have a disadvantage for every active skill.

As it stands I'd like to have some use out of my Vampire skill line, some interesting morphs, some fun actives or some really cool passives. And it feels like we are severely lacking that.

I'm a bit annoyed with the penalties outweighing the benefits. Especially with how many options there are to make the skill line a lot cooler.

Heishi · March 2015

I've mentioned this a few times on the forum, but it's relevant here too.

There's always been this big debate about WW vs Vamp. One is always nerfed, or people feel like they have to do one or the other to be competitive, or any number of things.

My solution would require a vamp overhaul, but let's be honest, it needs it.

I suggest remove the full time skills.

Remove the ultimate

Make vampire a transformed ultimate like werewolf where you transform into the vampire lord (as done in skyrim)

While in vampire lord mode, you get a new bar of skills like ww. On this bar would be the skills we already know and love.
Drain, mist, and bat swarm.

You read that right, make bat swarm a regular ability comparable to inferno rather than an ultimate.

Come up with two new skills to round it out.

Maybe for one we have something like the winged twilight's scream ability that does a frontal AoE stun

For a second, maybe something akin to shadow cloak, make use of that sneak speed

While I would prefer to see something like, and ww's transform be a toggle like Overload, to keep it in line with current mechanics, let's have the vampire lord form work on a countdown timer.

Rather than eating an enemy, gain time by feeding on them. With shadow cloak, it's very easy to feed while in combat. Feeding on an enemy can only be done one anyway, so it would really be no different than WW except you do it while they're alive instead of dead.

But won't feeding lower my vamp stage? Nope we're changing that too. While in vampire lord form, feeding does not affect your level. Feeding in non-vampire lord form still acts as normal.

Passives would function like they do with WW.

Make the health regen debuff apply only during the day and only outside

I would like to see the fire allergy go 25%,50%,75%,100% but since ZOS though it would be cool to make almost everything in the game do fire damage, this might be a bit harsh.

I would like to see WW and Vamp get some sort of resistance buff counter to the debuff. Something like.. vampire resistance to poison/disease dmg 75%,50%,25%,0% For werewolf, maybe frost resistance since you know.. they have a fur coat and all.

ShadowHvo · March 2015

Personally I would say that the fire weakness should just scale with the stage of vampirism the player is in.

Vampirism Stage 1 = 10% Weakness to fire resistence.
Vampirism Stage 2 = 20% Weakness to fire resistence.
Vampirism Stage 3 = 30% Weakness to fire resistence.
Vampirism Stage 4 = 40% Weakness to fire resistence.

I believe that would be a perfect solution to the problem. So everytime someone is doing a dungeon with a hard fireboss they should just chuck down on a few mortals to get that counter down. While I still believe the stages too should be longer in themselves. When it comes to the players ability to play the actual content with firebosses, I believe the above suggestion would be the best method of doing it. We keep the sense of danger from fire, as we very well should as vampires. But we can at the same time mitigate that by being well-fed.

Though.. to this:

Heishi wrote: »

Make vampire a transformed ultimate like werewolf where you transform into the vampire lord (as done in skyrim)

I must go in here and be "that guy" who everyone hates. Because as a vampire lore buff I would cry myself to sleep every night if they gave the overly al'mighty Vampire-Lord transformation to players. Vampire Lords is such a godly being by itself, outright a blessing by Molag Bal. The darn' thing can lay siege to castles and towns single-handedly. The vampire lord form is supposed to be legendary and rare. Having all players run around with vampire lord transformation would just nerf the hell out of the vampire lord form, and utterly destory its reputation in lore as this pureblooded legendary monster.

A vampire lord would be much more suitable as a final trial encounter. Something overly powerful which takes many players to beat. Hell, they could even pull Harkon in as he by this time should be relatively young with his newfound pureblood vampirism. He could get a little too cocky' and end up getting his arse kicked, and being forced to retreat by twelve vestiges.

Solanum wrote: »

As it stands I'd like to have some use out of my Vampire skill line, some interesting morphs, some fun actives or some really cool passives. And it feels like we are severely lacking that.

I'm a bit annoyed with the penalties outweighing the benefits. Especially with how many options there are to make the skill line a lot cooler.

While I don't agree with your previous statement about the removal of the fire weakness would be a good thing. (Sure we would be able to beat CoA much easier but lets let our anger for that rest for another time!) I do agree that the morphs could be much more interesting regarding the actual abilities. Because what we have atm is just this:

Batswarm = Health Gain on each Target hit OR stealth.
Mist Form = Extra speed OR aoe poison damage
Drain Essence = Extra speed OR Extra Ultimate.

Those are.. quite boring, and the only one I really find interesting personally is Mist Form with the extra speed, as that is a nice method of escape. I did use the old "Midnight Drain" morph for Drain Essence, but I will no longer as that is sadly now removed. Why the combat devs responsible for the vampire skill-line think it is a super brilliant idea to let the ONLY TWO active abilities we have, morph into extra speed is beyond my imagenation. Midnight Drain gave a sense of risk-vs-reward, we got a huge bonus at night, but nothing during the day. Which was very nice for Vampire play.

In general though, it would be a much welcome change to see more interesting elements added to these morphs.

Though we also have to keep in mind that the fighters guild abilities actually took quite a hit (As I know that was one of your reasons for the cons higher up in the post) Especially Silver Bolt no longer have that big chance to outright one-shot a vampire which it previously had, now it only have 30% to deal -half- of the normal damage as extra. That is quite a nerf to say the least, and thats coming from a dude who was frequently one-shotted by a single silverbolt in Cyrodiil!

Old Silverbolt: Deals around 300 damage, and knocks down undeads for 3.5 seconds. 5% chance to ALSO deal around 1800 extra damage on hit.
New Silverbolt: Deals around 3500 damage, and knocks down undead for 3.5 seconds. 30% chance to deal around 1500 extra damage on hit.

With the new stat increases, I would not even hestitate to claim that the older one is much more dangerous than the new. In fact.. I might stop fearing silverbolts now as a vampire entirely, because it will under no circumstances one-shot me any longer. To us, that is quite a buff in itself when it comes to PvP.

Though it would be super lovely if Zenimax would give some of us vampire loyalists and lore-buffs a chance to talk with them for a hour to bring them some amazing feedback over skype or similar, so you really can get that feeling of the person you're talking too. (Then they will probably realize we're super passionate about vampires!) I certainly, with a couple of others from this forum would be totally up for that. Gathering all of the feedback together, and then discuss it with the devs responsible for the vampire skill-line. Thats naturally a long stretch, but I'll make the wish the next time I see a shooting star.

xaraan · March 2015

I like the idea, but not exactly as it was pitched. I think maybe a 10 or 20% damage from fire all the time and then maybe jump it up to the 40% when they use an ability would be more fair. Vampires don't have to "change" like WWs to get the use of their abilities, and they get more passives that are useful all the time. I do think they need a few new powers though. A toggle that allows them to look 'normal' would be a popular one I think and not really effect balance. There are probably a few other powers like that you could add without effecting balance too much.

Heishi · March 2015

ShadowHvo wrote: »

Though.. to this:

Heishi wrote: »

Make vampire a transformed ultimate like werewolf where you transform into the vampire lord (as done in skyrim)

I must go in here and be "that guy" who everyone hates. Because as a vampire lore buff I would cry myself to sleep every night if they gave the overly al'mighty Vampire-Lord transformation to players. Vampire Lords is such a godly being by itself, outright a blessing by Molag Bal. The darn' thing can lay siege to castles and towns single-handedly. The vampire lord form is supposed to be legendary and rare. Having all players run around with vampire lord transformation would just nerf the hell out of the vampire lord form, and utterly destory its reputation in lore as this pureblooded legendary monster.

A vampire lord would be much more suitable as a final trial encounter. Something overly powerful which takes many players to beat. Hell, they could even pull Harkon in as he by this time should be relatively young with his newfound pureblood vampirism. He could get a little too cocky' and end up getting his arse kicked, and being forced to retreat by twelve vestiges.

That is sound reasoning. Technically I was using vampire lord as a recognizable concept more so than its lore value. There are a couple things in play which can keep it lore friendly. Rather than vampire lord, since that actually is a big thing. Let's call it... ah what the hell, let's call it Nightstalker form because ZOS logic it can walk during the day.

Noxiphilic Sanguivoria is special catered lore made for ESO. They already bastardize vampirism by even making it the way they did, so further bastardizing it with a Nightstalker form is within their capability. It would crap on generally accepted lore, but since they already have, might as well at least do it in a way which will fix issues in the game instead of creating them.

Additionally, of course Harkon is capable of granting "pure-blood vampirism" and is noted as one of the few. Pure-blooded vampires a "blessed" by Molag Bal. Lamae who sets up the ritual for you was not only "blessed" by Molag but is noted as the first. So her power should at least equal to if not stronger than Harkon's

There's a lot of discussable grey space though. Does the Vestige's power come from Lamea (second removed from Molag), does it come from the random bloodfiend who infected the vestige, or does it come from the group draining you at the ritual? Originally Lamea was turning priest and such herself and there's not really any stories of their strength so it's hard to know.

It also brings to light issues of being everyone being "the one". Everyone is the Vestige, everyone beat down Molag, villages raise or fall at the Vestige's hand.

It could be argued that if Lamae knew you were going to take down Molag, why would she hold back in giving you power to stop him and not make you pure-blooded? UESP states:

Lamae Beolfag was the first of her kind but like her successors, she created a bloodline. Vampires of this particular bloodline have Noxiphilic Sanguivoria rather than Porphyric Hemophilia or Sanguinare Vampiris, as a consequence these Vampires do not burn or weaken in sun but rather become more powerful once night falls, they have their own set of abilities as well some shared by other bloodlines such as invisibility. A particular way of acquiring this strand of vampirism is through the Rite of the Scion, in which a mortal's blood is fully replaced by that of Lamae Bal herself. This rite turns mortals into Scions, a more powerful variety of vampires. It is also the only way for a soul shriven to be infected with this strand of vampirism. The exact name of this bloodline is unknown but they were extremely common in the second era and were not limited to any particular areas as they could be encountered nearly all over Tamriel. These vampires don't worship Molog Bal but rather they hate him, this is in accordance with Lamae's will, having new recruits profane symbols of Molag Bal is part of the rite of scion ritual.