Sarannah wrote: »

Nemesis7884 wrote: »

(to normal skills on stage 4) it forces people to either dedicate themselves to being a vampire or not - same as with werewolves... no just slapping on some passive benefits without truly being living as a vampire and also dedicating a character / rping to it and that is GOOD

less non lore friendly shallow min maxing and more dedication to a theme that comes with benefits and drawbacks

Dedicate to being a vampire?... that means if one chooses to become one, that would be all they could realistically do in the game on that character. And still be hindered by the drawbacks, and maintaining the form. It is a game for crying out loud!

Some people who find the game too easy, seem to have used the vampire remake to convince ZOS to use that form to make the game artificially harder. This should never happen. Noone besides the 0.1% who find the game too easy would ever play a vampire again.

I think you're a little off base here. "Dedicate to being a vampire" doesn't necessarily mean filling your bar with nothing but vampire abilities, wearing black tuxedos with frilly shirts and spending your days down in Riften chatting in the emote channel. It just means that it's no longer little more than a free magicka regen bonus. It makes enough changes that it will alter your playstyle, thus becoming something that requires you put a little more thought into it.

Basically, that dedication is just referring to the fact that if you want the benifits, you're going to have to do something to compensate for the drawbacks because you can't just ignore them anymore.

If they really want people who have vampirism to be vampires, then lock each stage behind the number of vampire skills on you bars.

No skills on you bar, you can go no higher than stage 1.
1 skill on both bars and you can get to stage 2.

With the ultimate and two other skills on each bar, you can go to stage 4.

Then all they have to do is make the skills worth having on your bar.

vampire does not have decent heal or a gap closer. drain essence has been nerfed into the ground, you have all these skills that use Health as a resource, but no real way of replenishinhg (unless you want to pay 20% magika more in the heal staff abilities).

if they want you to play with the entire toolkit, then give us a toolkit that works and we can use like Werewolf.

RedReign wrote: »

Nemesis7884 wrote: »

(to normal skills on stage 4) it forces people to either dedicate themselves to being a vampire or not - same as with werewolves... no just slapping on some passive benefits without truly being living as a vampire and also dedicating a character / rping to it and that is GOOD

less non lore friendly shallow min maxing and more dedication to a theme that comes with benefits and drawbacks

Forcing players to dedicate themselves to only being a vampire is objectively bad. Its a support set with only 1 direct damage attack.

That's bad how, exactly? A player made a choice to become a vampire, and then ignored every aspect of it that was "inconvenient", and now that they'll have to actually be a vampire, it's suddenly bad?

ShadowHvo wrote: »

robertthebard wrote: »

That's bad how, exactly? A player made a choice to become a vampire, and then ignored every aspect of it that was "inconvenient", and now that they'll have to actually be a vampire, it's suddenly bad?

Vampirism shouldn't be defined by abilities.

They're not a class, they're a state of being. It should be defined by strengths and weaknesses in equal measure. The "Increased Cost to Regular Abilities" however, spit in the face of build diversity, and in fact ruins the greater appeal of Elder Scrolls. Vampires are renowned as a dangerous predator, master wizards, rogues and warriors. This particular penalty completely disregards that.

It should be changed into something noticeable, a good penalty that is a definite weakness, while not limit build diversity. I.E two good suggestions:
- Change it into "Reduced Healing Received by non-vampire abilities" This is more thematically appropriate to the vampire, and a solid good weakness.
- Change it into "Increased Ability Cost PER Vampire Ability Slotted." This effectively allows the vampire to min-max just how much of a gain and penalty they wish to have in their toolkit, between the decreased cost of vampire abilities and increased cost of regular abilities. (It also allows people to not use vampire abilities at all, thus they don't get the strength nor the weakness involved in ability costs.)

They should very definitely be defined by abilities, abilities are why players chose vampirism, otherwise, there wouldn't be any vampires, if they're not going to gain anything from it.

robertthebard wrote: »

ShadowHvo wrote: »

robertthebard wrote: »

That's bad how, exactly? A player made a choice to become a vampire, and then ignored every aspect of it that was "inconvenient", and now that they'll have to actually be a vampire, it's suddenly bad?

Vampirism shouldn't be defined by abilities.

They're not a class, they're a state of being. It should be defined by strengths and weaknesses in equal measure. The "Increased Cost to Regular Abilities" however, spit in the face of build diversity, and in fact ruins the greater appeal of Elder Scrolls. Vampires are renowned as a dangerous predator, master wizards, rogues and warriors. This particular penalty completely disregards that.

It should be changed into something noticeable, a good penalty that is a definite weakness, while not limit build diversity. I.E two good suggestions:
- Change it into "Reduced Healing Received by non-vampire abilities" This is more thematically appropriate to the vampire, and a solid good weakness.
- Change it into "Increased Ability Cost PER Vampire Ability Slotted." This effectively allows the vampire to min-max just how much of a gain and penalty they wish to have in their toolkit, between the decreased cost of vampire abilities and increased cost of regular abilities. (It also allows people to not use vampire abilities at all, thus they don't get the strength nor the weakness involved in ability costs.)

They should very definitely be defined by abilities, abilities are why players chose vampirism, otherwise, there wouldn't be any vampires, if they're not going to gain anything from it.

Well, for some maybe. Others chose it because they like the idea or the play style. Which, again, is not defined by active abilities and should not be.

I can't actually remember a time in The Elder Scrolls single player games I actually cared about the vampire abilities. Sure Night Eye and Detect life all in one was a nice power in Oblivion but I never once used vampiric drain, and I had specific spells that were better than what vampire had. Even in Skyrim I found myself flinging fireballs and using restoration magic instead of the vampire abilities like the Lord form and Vampiric Drain. Sure the Bloodstone Chalice let the drain spell regenerate magicka but.... you get high enough in destruction and you deal incredible amounts of damage for almost no magicka. Also Fast Healing was superior in every way.

Vampires across pretty much every single game have been played for their passive benefits with the rare case they might have a power you could use. I don't mind a more active approach on vampires that ZOS is trying to take, but when you make the penalty for being a stage 4 vampire so high, and then make it so people have to feed to get there, nobody will ever feed. Some might say this statement is an over exaggeration but that cost increase is devastating in PVP. Moment you fight a hard to kill target you'll be starving for resources because the current vampire toolkit can't handle every single situation. You'll be using other abilities to supplement the obvious flaws in the vampire skill line and its going to cost you dearly.

So, part of the main selling point of the new chapter involves crippling any non-RP vampire characters? Classy move.

I loved playing as a vampire and used a few skills, but I also use destro staves, and psijic, and mages guild, etc.

Cost increase is beyond dumb

Nemesis7884 wrote: »

(to normal skills on stage 4) it forces people to either dedicate themselves to being a vampire or not - same as with werewolves... no just slapping on some passive benefits without truly being living as a vampire and also dedicating a character / rping to it and that is GOOD

less non lore friendly shallow min maxing and more dedication to a theme that comes with benefits and drawbacks

I agree

Vampire is now for players who actually want to play as a Vampire. It's not just a skin with a regen passive attached to it that people wish they could hide.

Imagine how ZOS can market new vampire to new players now " You can become a vampire lord, most powerful undead to roam the lands of Skyrim! Up to 20% weaker at everything, than average man or mer, with cool addition of weakness to fire! You can now also quarantine yourself in game too, by hiding in some dark cave and never going out, because even npc's will refuse to talk to your character! Noone ever will bother you with invites to any endgame content, so you can roleplay as ''strongest' undead ever' all alone! But hey, new animations! Of course, even vampire npc's got better skills and animations than player character, but that is intended, we have year dedicated to vampires after all.

I actually did a test rotation today involving using the bfb, simmering frenzy, blood mist, and swarming scion vampiric abilities with my build. For the equipment I used Zaans, front bar false gods, and full body spell parasite, the intent was to cast simmering frenzy on and off to simulate the idea of not having constant access to it (had 68% total uptime on it) and to bar swap cancel blood mist to take advantage of strike from shadows (44% total uptime). and since my blood mist was only 672 magicka / s it was no detriment to my sustain. This was on a stage 4 vampire but could be replicated on a stage 3 for even better sustain as unnatural movement is not needed. And this is what I came up with:




Even as stage 4, sustain with this setup was very good! When I have time I will test the same setup as a stage 3 vampire, except changing my equipment to use mothers sorrow instead of spell parasite as I feel like stage 3 would not need such extra sustain.

Glurin wrote: »

Jeremy wrote: »

It gets trickier the higher rank you go because the ability cost will start to bite chunks out of your regular rotations. But that's obviously intended, since higher rank vampires are meant to be more concentrated on Vampirism. So I really don't understand what people's beef is with these changes. They can just stay rank 1 if they want to make liberal use of their other abilities. Problem solved and they still get access to better moves. Sounds like a win/win to me.

That's akin to telling werewolf players to "just slot the ultimate and never use it".

When you stay rank one, you get nothing from the passives. No, that's not quite right. What you get is a 5% increase in your ability costs, 5% more flame damage and 10% reduced health regen. But hey, now you can drain your magicka as a ball of mist or drain your health while simultaneously preventing healers from healing you, so it's all good, right?

I think maybe what you might be missing here is that at rank 4, those costs go up to 20% AND the flame damage goes up to 20% AND health regen goes to zero. Not percent, just a flat zero. No health regen at all. The "beef" is that all these changes put together add up to something pretty severe. Perhaps too severe, which is why it's on PTS right now. The devs want to know if that's the case.

But it's not the same as telling players to slot the werewolf ultimate and never use it.

At rank 1 Vampire you have access to all its abilities - where as if you never use the werewolf ultimate it's literally a waste of space. The passives from Vampire are no longer the prime attraction. The developers sought to change that, and they did. People need to stop obsessing over being a high ranked vampire. If they don't like the rank 4 penalties, then simply don't be a rank 4 Vampire. That's why it has different stages. Pick the one that is best for you. And of course if you don't like the Vampire skills, then I wouldn't become a Vampire. But me personally, I love the new Mist Form and Blood Frenzy. But there is also no way I'd ever become stage 4 because for my character/build it's not worth it. Stage 4 seems to be designed for players who concentrate almost exclusively on Vampirism. And I'm fine with that being an option for players.

Glurin wrote: »

Jeremy wrote: »

Glurin wrote: »

Jeremy wrote: »

It gets trickier the higher rank you go because the ability cost will start to bite chunks out of your regular rotations. But that's obviously intended, since higher rank vampires are meant to be more concentrated on Vampirism. So I really don't understand what people's beef is with these changes. They can just stay rank 1 if they want to make liberal use of their other abilities. Problem solved and they still get access to better moves. Sounds like a win/win to me.

That's akin to telling werewolf players to "just slot the ultimate and never use it".

When you stay rank one, you get nothing from the passives. No, that's not quite right. What you get is a 5% increase in your ability costs, 5% more flame damage and 10% reduced health regen. But hey, now you can drain your magicka as a ball of mist or drain your health while simultaneously preventing healers from healing you, so it's all good, right?

I think maybe what you might be missing here is that at rank 4, those costs go up to 20% AND the flame damage goes up to 20% AND health regen goes to zero. Not percent, just a flat zero. No health regen at all. The "beef" is that all these changes put together add up to something pretty severe. Perhaps too severe, which is why it's on PTS right now. The devs want to know if that's the case.

But it's not the same as telling players to slot the werewolf ultimate and never use it. It's not even remotely the same.

You're right. Werewolves actually get more out of it.

At rank 1 Vampire you have access to all its abilities

No, you don't. Several passives specifically say "when at rank x or higher". They do not activate at rank one. As for the active abilities, they are, for the most part, of questionable and/or niche value.

I said at rank 1 Vampire you have access to all its abilities (meaning skills). I was obviously not referring to the passives. But maybe I should say stage 1 Vampire instead. I think that's where we might be talking past each other.

And just what does a player get from slotting the werewolf ultimate and then never using it?