CP5 wrote: »

Just going to list off the things I noticed in the OP

1.) Love the fact that a vampire suggestion thread outlined the new skills they want rather than just providing a vague concept.

Thank you. I try to make all of my suggestion posts as well-thought and detailed as possible

2.) The stages could become very broken at stage 4, we likely remember why vampires were heavily nerfed and the 60% reduction with 20% bonus damage would be insane. Also the sun damage concept would not work in an mmo setting.

The 60% damage reduction and 20% damage bonus would only work at night. that's 1.5 hours out of 6. It's just my opinion, but vampires (especially hungry ones) should rule the night. Furthermore, the only reason the 60% decrease was broken was because people used it in tandem with other ultimate reduction skills and gear to make bat swarm which at the time was extremely powerful, nearly free to use. The change to bat swarm I've suggested should completely negate this as it not only works completely differently but also decreases your vamp stage so you lose the bonuses as soon as you use it.

Also, I don't understand why you think the sun damage wouldn't work because of the MMO setting as it is very easy to mitigate by simply feeding

3.) Go to the Grahtwood Fighters Guild, and unless they removed them there is a vampire, clear as day, clad in their armor standing with them. People think that the fighters guild are heroic banishers of the night but the only reason their skill line is dedicated to killing undead and deadra is because they were hired to fight Molag Bal. An there are no systems in place in game to remove guild skill trees and the content from those two guilds is in no way equal to the single quest that vampires and werewolves get along with each skill line.

What few people seem to remember is that the vampire and werewolf skill lines were designed with late-game play in mind, which is why the vampire and werewolf NPCs only spawn in each alliance's final area. However, because of bite-sellers and the ease of the quests themselves, people were able to get the skill lines very early on. If the vampire and werewolf quests were redone so that they were very difficult if not nearly impossible to complete prior to level 40, which is after most people complete the fighters and mages guild quest lines, there should be little issue with loss of content.

4.) Skill Reworks

• Drain Essence - the 3 target cone an interesting idea that adds a nice amount of variety to the line but extended drain's range is insane. 28m in cryodiil becomes 36m, now if it was something like 15m I would see it as a bit more reasonable.
  
  You have a point here. I'm going to edit this in the OP
  
• Mist From - The restrictions on the skill but change to a toggle could make it a nice skill all around, and with healing mist only buffing health regen you make vampires want to stay stage 1 a bit more. A toggleable major expedition buff could be a bit crazy, but again with the provided restrictions I see it as, interesting.
  
  Yes, it is a togglable expedition buff, but because of the restrictions, it should only only be able to remain active for just over 30 seconds at a time and would really mainly be used to mad dash to the nearest feeding target or to an indoor area.
  
  
• Bat Swarm - The changes here go a long way in making the skill less likely to be "over used" and I can see it becoming a valuable skill for people who don't use normal gap closers to gain some mobility. With your changes to the feeding stages and current ease of feeding make the feeding component of the skill make it helpful if someone wants to head to town. They would only need to hit an enemy with this then they would be able to go without being attacked.

5.) Passives

• Savage feeding - could be fun to try your luck on npcs in town or other players in cryodiil. Just like that change.
• Supernatural recovery - the stronger buff at night (with night only being 33% of the time) would be less useful, but would fit the lore of this type of vampire where they get stronger at night.
• Undeath - bugged out passives aren't good for anyone and having the passive function better seems common sense.
• Unnatural recovery - see supernatural recovery
• Dark Stalker - this change would likely generate some resistance but making vampires harder to detect would be interesting.

6.) New skills
*3 new abilities would give vampires 6 actives, like all other lines it would likely be best to limit the number of actives to 5

• Vampires sight - love the concept, adds both flavor and usability, something most vampire suggestion threads lack. A very well rounded skill I would bet people would be interested in using and a good alternative to the common toggles.
• Vampires seduction - interesting cc skill, would likely only find use in small scale pvp or solo pve but nice to have. However I don't agree with the idea of the Thrall morph. There is no way in game outside of scripted quest to get mobs to join you, the amount of coding that would go behind keeping the thrall with you would be a lot and the skill as a whole has "bugged" and "potential for exploit" written in the warning label right under "fun to use" and "interesting".
  
  You have a point here. Not sure what I would replace it with, but I'm thinking an armor/spell resist debuff
  
• Embrace of shadows - not liking the idea behind this skill since it just effectively turns every class into a pseudo nightblade. Its duration would need to be balanced with a massive cost (keeping in mind the potential 60% reduction), and night runner giving major expedition at night for being slotted is a very powerful buff. I think with the suggested changes to mist form, some very good ones at that, that this skill is redundant, threatens the meaning of other skills and could easily be seen as op. I would suggest dropping this skill if any so the vampire skill line, like all other combat skill trees, will only have 5 actives.
  
  Every class can already be a pseudo-nightblade with invisibility potions. In fact, many of the high dmg single target weapon abilities deal much more damage than the NB's specific stealth attack. I do agree that it should have a high cost, but massive seems to be going overboard as once again, the cost reduction only applies at night and IMO at night, vampires should have the ability to easily slip in and out of the shadows at night. I agree that the major expedition buff for night runner may be overpowered. I'm considering changing it to a minor buff.
  

Overall, like he intent and ideas, just some wouldn't fit in the current game play environment but others would work in my opinion very well.

stimpy986b14_ESO wrote: »

CP5 wrote: »

stimpy986b14_ESO wrote: »

CP5 wrote: »

Just going to list off the things I noticed in the OP

1.) Love the fact that a vampire suggestion thread outlined the new skills they want rather than just providing a vague concept.

Thank you. I try to make all of my suggestion posts as well-thought and detailed as possible

2.) The stages could become very broken at stage 4, we likely remember why vampires were heavily nerfed and the 60% reduction with 20% bonus damage would be insane. Also the sun damage concept would not work in an mmo setting.

The 60% damage reduction and 20% damage bonus would only work at night. that's 1.5 hours out of 6. It's just my opinion, but vampires (especially hungry ones) should rule the night. Furthermore, the only reason the 60% decrease was broken was because people used it in tandem with other ultimate reduction skills and gear to make bat swarm which at the time was extremely powerful, nearly free to use. The change to bat swarm I've suggested should completely negate this as it not only works completely differently but also decreases your vamp stage so you lose the bonuses as soon as you use it.

Also, I don't understand why you think the sun damage wouldn't work because of the MMO setting as it is very easy to mitigate by simply feeding

3.) Go to the Grahtwood Fighters Guild, and unless they removed them there is a vampire, clear as day, clad in their armor standing with them. People think that the fighters guild are heroic banishers of the night but the only reason their skill line is dedicated to killing undead and deadra is because they were hired to fight Molag Bal. An there are no systems in place in game to remove guild skill trees and the content from those two guilds is in no way equal to the single quest that vampires and werewolves get along with each skill line.

What few people seem to remember is that the vampire and werewolf skill lines were designed with late-game play in mind, which is why the vampire and werewolf NPCs only spawn in each alliance's final area. However, because of bite-sellers and the ease of the quests themselves, people were able to get the skill lines very early on. If the vampire and werewolf quests were redone so that they were very difficult if not nearly impossible to complete prior to level 40, which is after most people complete the fighters and mages guild quest lines, there should be little issue with loss of content.

4.) Skill Reworks

• Drain Essence - the 3 target cone an interesting idea that adds a nice amount of variety to the line but extended drain's range is insane. 28m in cryodiil becomes 36m, now if it was something like 15m I would see it as a bit more reasonable.
  
  You have a point here. I'm going to edit this in the OP
  
• Mist From - The restrictions on the skill but change to a toggle could make it a nice skill all around, and with healing mist only buffing health regen you make vampires want to stay stage 1 a bit more. A toggleable major expedition buff could be a bit crazy, but again with the provided restrictions I see it as, interesting.
  
  Yes, it is a togglable expedition buff, but because of the restrictions, it should only only be able to remain active for just over 30 seconds at a time and would really mainly be used to mad dash to the nearest feeding target or to an indoor area.
  
  
• Bat Swarm - The changes here go a long way in making the skill less likely to be "over used" and I can see it becoming a valuable skill for people who don't use normal gap closers to gain some mobility. With your changes to the feeding stages and current ease of feeding make the feeding component of the skill make it helpful if someone wants to head to town. They would only need to hit an enemy with this then they would be able to go without being attacked.

5.) Passives

• Savage feeding - could be fun to try your luck on npcs in town or other players in cryodiil. Just like that change.
• Supernatural recovery - the stronger buff at night (with night only being 33% of the time) would be less useful, but would fit the lore of this type of vampire where they get stronger at night.
• Undeath - bugged out passives aren't good for anyone and having the passive function better seems common sense.
• Unnatural recovery - see supernatural recovery
• Dark Stalker - this change would likely generate some resistance but making vampires harder to detect would be interesting.

6.) New skills
*3 new abilities would give vampires 6 actives, like all other lines it would likely be best to limit the number of actives to 5

• Vampires sight - love the concept, adds both flavor and usability, something most vampire suggestion threads lack. A very well rounded skill I would bet people would be interested in using and a good alternative to the common toggles.
• Vampires seduction - interesting cc skill, would likely only find use in small scale pvp or solo pve but nice to have. However I don't agree with the idea of the Thrall morph. There is no way in game outside of scripted quest to get mobs to join you, the amount of coding that would go behind keeping the thrall with you would be a lot and the skill as a whole has "bugged" and "potential for exploit" written in the warning label right under "fun to use" and "interesting".
  
  You have a point here. Not sure what I would replace it with, but I'm thinking an armor/spell resist debuff
  
• Embrace of shadows - not liking the idea behind this skill since it just effectively turns every class into a pseudo nightblade. Its duration would need to be balanced with a massive cost (keeping in mind the potential 60% reduction), and night runner giving major expedition at night for being slotted is a very powerful buff. I think with the suggested changes to mist form, some very good ones at that, that this skill is redundant, threatens the meaning of other skills and could easily be seen as op. I would suggest dropping this skill if any so the vampire skill line, like all other combat skill trees, will only have 5 actives.
  
  Every class can already be a pseudo-nightblade with invisibility potions. In fact, many of the high dmg single target weapon abilities deal much more damage than the NB's specific stealth attack. I do agree that it should have a high cost, but massive seems to be going overboard as once again, the cost reduction only applies at night and IMO at night, vampires should have the ability to easily slip in and out of the shadows at night. I agree that the major expedition buff for night runner may be overpowered. I'm considering changing it to a minor buff.
  

Overall, like he intent and ideas, just some wouldn't fit in the current game play environment but others would work in my opinion very well.

I appreciate the feedback and have modified the OP based on some of your concerns, but some of these notes seem to be looking at each of my points individually rather than the big picture. I've included my responses in the quote.

Again, I enjoy the fact that this thread goes into detail as to both the problems and viable in game solutions for the skill tree and making the choice of vampire or werewolf or neither matter more is in my opinion a great idea.

The reason why I said sun damage would be bad is because a majority of the time in game is day, and if you logged out at night then back in during the day it would become a chore to run off, during the day, with a varying amount of resistance from npcs, to find someone to feed on. This could easily become nothing more than a tedious chore, however with the changes to bat swarm to provide feeding, and perhaps to drain essence, then it would become less of an issue.

My main reason against sun damage is the same why I am against forced werewolf transformations. It is a timed event that is hard to know outside of the game and unless you logged into an alt ahead of time to know what the situation is you could easily be thrown into a very bad situation and simply denied the ability to do anything with that character. A penalty for your choice to be sure but in my opinion a little harsh.

That's actually exactly the point of it. Vamp stages don't advance while you're logged out so the only way a vamp would get caught out in the daylight at stage 4 is if he/she forgot to feed before going afk or intentionally did not feed so they could stay at stage 4 (which in this system, is deadly during the day and with zero benefit). The intention of this system is to encourage feeding so that the experience is more immersive. That being said, I just noticed a glaring issue that vamp stages are not reset upon death and will now be fixing this in the OP.