XomRhoK wrote: »

I waited for some vampires update for 3.5 years, anything thematic skin, skill, set, not at last we will get vampire centric chapter. But by now my exitment gone. Before this update i used 3 vampiric skills for my casual questing, solo world bosses and solo normal dungeons, i love their visuals and how they feel and i used them all: Invigorating Drain, Baleful Mist and Devouring Swarm. After the update i am not only will not recieve any new interesting mechanicaly or good looking skills, for my taste, but i will lose those three i used before. How ZOS managed to mess up like this...
Vampirc drain:
Before it were very vampire themed skill with good blood flow visuals and sound, with good damage. Now it will lose half of the damage and will look like this(at top left curent version of Invigorating Drain skill):

All glow, all sparkles, colors have nothing to do with vampire theme.

Baleful Mist:
At old one i am not very like green tint, but i like non-flashy tones of visuals, new one also don't look that bad, but become more flashy. I used this skill in encounters with several enemies, to damage them by thematic vampir skill, now this skill also will lose half of the damage, and will become pure heal skill.


Devouring Swarm:
I will not use Blood Scion ult, because it looks so out of place, nothing similar to a vampire at all.
This skill also will lose 40% of it's damage inflicting by bats.

New skills:
Overall i don't like purple pink colors they chose to almost all vampire skills. I like more blood themed or calm, "realictic" effects.

Eviscerate
At current state of animation and sound effects this skill looks like fairy's slap not a vampire claws hit, almost no sound and pink and purple effects. Overall may become good spammable.

Blood Franzy:
Pale visuals and absolutly not interesting skill, in my opinion. Another stat stick for minmaxers and gankers. No interesting gameplay around it, player will not use it at all, because of big HP loss or will easily mathematically calculate and compensate it's drawbacks by some healing set and will toggled it on for full duration of the fight.

Mesmerize:
Again purple pink effects, nothing interesting to play with in combat, just a mass stun. PvPer will be happy.
I like interaction between merchants and stage 4 vampire through this skill.

So in the end visually i can accept Blood Mist and Mesmerize, at some degree Eviscerate. ZOS ruined 2 out of 3 skills for me and give almost nothing in return.

Hope they will change visuals, because i can adapt my playstyle, build, sets, by i can't change visuals and feel of vampire gameplay. The most comical that all new vampire NPCs have cool, interesting skills and blood themed, moderate effects with nice sounds, even Necromancers will envy to some bone effects. As if skills for vampire NPCs and vampire skill line, both mechanically and visually, were designed by absolutely different teams.

P.S. I like new feeding animations and stimulus to feed.

WhyMustItBe wrote: »

I do not see this as a viable balancing strategy. Rather it is a playstyle limiting strategy.

First of all why would the devs care that people are having fun being vampires so much that they have to go out of their way to take it away from them? I think that is an illogical assumption to make about the dev's motives. Professional game designers don't go around saying "what are people enjoying, and how can I mess it up and make it not fun anymore?"

The problem is that the majority of people who play vampire do it for solo purposes, yet still want to run dungeons, trials, and PVP. The normal behavior is to rank your vampire level down to avoid the extra fire damage (losing access to other passives by doing so), then ranking back up for solo play. This is the same as WW choosing not to transform in PVP.

However what they have created here is a system that TAKES THAT OPTION AWAY. You will no longer be able to just rank down for dungeons, trials, and PVP, because even with no passives or benefits active, you STILL get a flat 5% cost increase on ALL your skills.

This is not only unfair compared to WW, but totally ruins the playstyle of the majority of people who enjoy vamp.

Now instead of just changing rank for different activities, I need to stack regen gear thus nerfing my damage for again no reward at all at lower ranks, introducing a huge hassle of inventory management and constant gear swapping let alone upgrade cost, or just drop a favored playstyle altogether because of an arbitrary change.

The solution is pretty obvious. The skill cost penalty should be 0% at stage 1, 5% at 2, etc.

There is no way a 5% skill cost penalty for no reward at rank 1 should go live as it will simply destroy the playstyle of most people who enjoy passively being a vampire for solo and RP purposes but still want to do dungeons and trials or PVP without having to constantly respec or micromanage inventory and gear just to counter a negative for which they gain nothing.

It comes down to unnecessarily limiting choice. Werewolf can choose to not slot the ultimate or shape shift and have absolutely no penalty for that. They can play as normal, and add the ult to their bar when they CHOOSE to play WW. No constant respec, no gear set swapping, no counteracting a negative for which they gain no positive.

The vampire passives as they are remove that choice disproportionately from one group of players.

It should not be difficult to see how that sort of bias is unacceptable.