This vampire overhaul would have been a wonderful time to introduce Major Lifesteal into the game, and Blood Frenzy would have been an ideal skill introduce it with.

If you want to have a toggle skill skill cost health/sec while preventing us from being healed by anyone but ourselves, that's
fine--just make our attacks heal for x/sec when dealing damage and cap the health cost of keeping the ability toggled.

If "Blood Frenzy ticks all the boxes of what it means to be a vampire" by turning the character into a self-destructive beast, then have it operate mechanically similar to Werewolf; Do you want to keep the ability on without dying? Keep dealing damage!

I've been playing on my vampire magNB in PvP for about a week since the patch and man alive are these changes a mixed bag.

Having a health-cost spammable is very cool except that as a vampire, magNB in non-CP PvP you have basically no way to counteract the constant draining of your health from its use. Now, some of that is the ill-considered impact of the additional healing nerf in non-CP but the skill could be made much more actually usable if it restored a percentage of the damage done to the enemy to your health. Frankly, I'm amazed that it doesn't as the effect would be quite vampiric. What others have said about having a ranged morph would also be nice.

Lack of a gap-closer is also quite noticeable. MagNBs have Lotus Fan, but other classes don't (like my vampire magSorc, magWarden) and in any case I would choose a vampire gap-closer over a class option to keep with the vampire theme.

Blood Frenzy is not really a usable skill in non-CP outside of mindless gank builds, the health cost is simply far too high. To actually get use from it, your build has to stack hard into the Prismatic Ability Cost Reduction glyphs and likely Heavy Armor as well. That is simply far too much pigeon-holing just to use a skill. In a world where Thrassian Stranglers exist, this skill somehow feels more risky to use in combat and it only gives a fraction of the damage of Stranglers.

For Hypnosis, the vision cone is comically small and you usually have to cast it twice to reach the effectiveness of a simple Turn Evil cast. Strongly agree that 360 degrees should be the default and that some additional utility should be placed on the morphs.

Mist Form is... unreliable. Random things in combat break it and it often seems like a dice-roll as to whether or not it will fulfill its role as a survival or breaching tool.

Finally though, the passives are still fantastic. MagNBs clearly get the most use from the Cloak damage buff and the invisibility while running is unsurpassed for open-world escapes and for mundane things like running through delves for Skyshards.

Overall, there's a ton of missed potential in the skill line and it could be amazing with a few minor tweaks.

1337VV4ff135 wrote: »

This vampire overhaul would have been a wonderful time to introduce Major Lifesteal into the game, and Blood Frenzy would have been an ideal skill introduce it with.

If you want to have a toggle skill skill cost health/sec while preventing us from being healed by anyone but ourselves, that's
fine--just make our attacks heal for x/sec when dealing damage and cap the health cost of keeping the ability toggled.

If "Blood Frenzy ticks all the boxes of what it means to be a vampire" by turning the character into a self-destructive beast, then have it operate mechanically similar to Werewolf; Do you want to keep the ability on without dying? Keep dealing damage!

I’m all for the major life steal although the Sated Fury morph that I use heals for 33% of them total health cost spent at the end of use. Major life steal would still be great especially on simmering frenzy which makes it worth keeping it toggled on to maximize damage out put. It would also help combat dying from the skill because the lag sometimes stops it from untoggling even after you’ve pressed the button.

I also think anyone who says playing vamp gimps their damage is most definitely not using it right. You have an extra 960 spell/wep dmg to give yourself on command. I’m touching 4K spell damage fully buffed on my vamp. It’s easy to build over 4k damage builds on stam, but mag is different so I love the fact that I can do that now.

Vamp has been re worked into a play style you have to synergize with now so you can’t just use it for the passives anymore. A lot of people don’t like that but that’s literally what people asked for on these forums.

Main pain points would be

1. when taking damage mist form doesn’t activate right away often times and elusive mist is useless because people can literally sprint and stay in range with you.
2. Rework the drain and add a ranged morph for the vamp spammable.

Paradisius wrote: »

ImSoPro wrote: »

I also think anyone who says playing vamp gimps their damage is most definitely not using it right. You have an extra 960 spell/wep dmg to give yourself on command. I’m touching 4K spell damage fully buffed on my vamp. It’s easy to build over 4k damage builds on stam, but mag is different so I love the fact that I can do that now.

There is some truth in their statements, imo. Sure in 1~5 second bursts Frenzy is an amazing tool (assuming you dont get cced) but in long fights the weapon/spell damage isnt worth upkeeping. Lets assume for a moment that under ideal conditions and not putting yourself too low to die to a rock being thrown at you, on a parse dummy that translates to 50~60% uptime. On paper 50% uptime on high spell/weapon damage seems great right? well..it ends up being the same as just using a dot instead.




Now of course, this discrepancy can vary on the class, but I would argue that it would more or less stay the same, be a marginal increase, or be a marginal decrease versus slotting a dot. Now imo, having to play seasaw with my health while also worrying about a real fight, I would want a much more impactful result than just "roughly the same".

If we talk pvp then thats really where this ability can shine, but against, extreme risk even with sated. If you get cced or miss your burst window, you are nearly dead yourself for no reward. Overall its a matter of not gimping your damage, but breaking even in most cases while being extremely risky to use, the reward is nowhere close to impactful as the risk is.

So basically you’re saying in PVE it’s better to apply a DOT which gives similar results in the long run because you can keep it applied without dying. That’s definitely true. But like you said in PVP it can really shine. It’s based on how you build around it though as with anything. I also run a necro and I don’t have access to a class dot that’s actually useful in PVP. I would run degen for the 20% extra SD or 430 which is 20% of my base spell dmg. I’m somewhere around 2150 unbuffed, but sated fury gives me 660 SD combined with leaving mist form for another 300 SD.

Now that gives you some hefty dmg and sated fury’s heal at the end heals more based on how long it was toggled on(34% of the total HP spent)so that increases the amount of time I’m comfortable with leaving it on to lengthen my burst window. I’m still figuring out the best way to arrange my bars and the best combos to use, but entering a fight I’ve been misting to it then using hypnosis right away when people are guaranteed to be facing right at you as they charge you. By the time I hit the stun my BB is done summoning and at that point I hit sated fury so by the time BB hits I have the full 960 SD bonus maybe more if my weapon dmg enchant is procced. I also started running balorghs.

My point is that even if you can only hit that hard for a few seconds at a time I think it’s worth it to be able to laser someone from 100% hp to 0 or at least around 15-20% HP sometimes before they can get outta their stun. Imagine simmering frenzy on a NB with their insane crit out of stealth+300 spell/wep dmg or a templar which can pop frenzy, toppling charge someone into the ground and combo jab them to death in seconds. The burst vamp now provides can get spooky.

However to your point about the frenzy ability being risky it definitely is a risk ESPECIALLY with lag sometimes causing the game to not acknowledge you toggling off the ability. That’s happened to me a few too many times already and it usually leads to death. Aside from lag though I think it comes down to finding out exactly when to use frenzy and how long to leave it on in the heat of battle. A class like necro with lots of mitigation and heals can offset the health cost until you leave it on for a tad too long, and then even the heals at the end of sated fury aren’t enough while your under pressure from a group of players.

Edit: sorry for the long post. All I’m saying is I think we all need more time to learn that skill specifically and overall how to synergize the skill line as a whole with our classes before writing it off. I’m not perfect with it but the potential is there and I like what I see

ImSoPro wrote: »

Kaliki wrote: »

ImSoPro wrote: »

All I’m saying is I think we all need more time to learn that skill specifically and overall how to synergize the skill line as a whole with our classes before writing it off. I’m not perfect with it but the potential is there and I like what I see

I think people have had more than enough time to test vampire skills.
Its great that you found a way to make your vampire work for ganking in PvP, but I don’t see much use in PvE, aside from Blood for Blood and that is really sad.

I tried to make a vampire build work for PvE and you know what I found? As a vampire, I am more powerful, the less I advance through the stages and the fewer vampire skills I use. What I ended up with was a build using blood for blood as a spammable, smiliar to Alcast’s build. Everything else resulted in a massive damage loss (for example based on Frenzy and Jabs while Vamp ult is active and using the Vampire Lord set).

There are several reasons why the vampire skill line is next to useless:
- There are barely any synergies at all, only drawbacks on top of drawbacks.
The most important vampire skills aggravate each other’s weaknesses. Reduced health recovery AND increasing(!) health cost of frenzy while unable to be healed by someone else AND a spammable that costs health.
Now, you could say that we can use other skills, like templar Jabs to work around some of the drawbacks, but using non-vampire skills is penalised with increasing skill cost.
- The entire concept of sacrificing ones own health for power is mostly unsuitable for PvE. Also, I do not really understand the lore aspect of it. I thought vampires mainly gain power by sucking the life force out of others, not by killing themselves.
- Frenzy is too risky and makes you a one-shot victim in most PvE content. Also: it is much easier to get the spell damage by using sets that have fewer or no drawbacks.
Just compare the bonus from frenzy with Molag Kena. As a vampire I have to sacrifice a lot more for a similar buff plus have to deal with the clunky switching the buff on and off.
- Getting the 300 spell damage from the passive by entering mist form is a bit clunky.
- In general, vampires become only weaker by advancing stages: to get mostly situational/flavor passives, all drawbacks increase and you only gain some vamp ability cost reduction, which is of little use, because you cannot effectively build for PvE damage using mostly vampire skills.
- Even at stage 4, the ultimate is too expensive and too short to make enough of a difference. I tried making a build that uses frenzy and Blood for Blood while transformed, but the increased damage while transformed could not make up for the damage loss plus all the drawbacks while not transformed.

You make some good points and yeah I’ll say the skill line needs to be reworked to be viable in PVE that’s for certain. Right now it’s better suited for PVP I agree. Also while you may have had plenty of time I’m a console player who’s only had access to the new vamp for 7 days now so that was really directed towards console players. I’m still experimenting with different sets and which skills to use. In fact I’d been off ESO for about 2 months prior. I always get bored in the final months leading up to a new chapter.

The vamp changes are mostly geared towards ganking and bomb builds. Outside of that they kinda suck even in pvp. People using frenzy are easy kills once you cc them, people using mist form cant escape combat because it's too slow now, trying to take advantage of the 300 spell buff when leaving invis or sneak is extremely clunky in the middle of combat. Scion is usable in pvp but it's really only a minor annoyance. Alot of times they just get killed while transforming.

Ranged version of Blood for Blood please

As someone stated earlier with the lack of synergies, Undeath is an amazing and an also ironically mostly useless passive as most vamps committing to stage 3 or above are gankers (as sustain is much less of an issue for them), who make very little use of it as they are meant to avoid attacks entirely. Gankers already have low health and armor and nearly kill themselves with the use of Simmering, so just by looking at them they fall over without even being able to utilize Undeath. Makes no sense to pigeonhole vamps into being gankers, yet have an amazing passive and an ult that doesn’t complement the play-style at all.

Simmering/Sated also looks like it’s almost designed specifically for higher stage vamps, yet is hardly useful. Stage 4 vamps receive huge penalties, so the offset would be with being able to sustain Simmering/Frenzy, yet even they still can’t as it constantly ramps up in cost. Unfortunately, there’s just very little reason to go beyond stage 2 and Simmering/Frenzy are far too risky to use for anyone other than gankers.

Me and a friend last night came up with an interesting way to fix vampire drain. Have it deal damage to the target equal to the amount of health you restore. So while Blood Frenzy and Blood for Blood drain health to hurt your foe you can then use vampiric drain to restore health while low, and keep the pressure on them. If you have a really large health pool and got hurt pretty bad the vampiric drain spell with this kind of system would be very rewarding to use.

Top two pain points
1. There is little to no viable self healing in the vampire skill tree. We have a 3s channel that doesn't stun, is interruptable, and hits like a wet noodle. Blood mist, again can't attack, hits like a wet noodle. Swarming Scion is okay, but thats an ultimate.

This lack of self healing is part of what makes it especially painful to go stage 4, which doesn't even have passive health recovery. So this makes many players feel weaker than human counterparts at stage 4, and especially squishy.

This came to mind when I looked at "Ring of the Pale Order", which is clearly meant for vampires, and it would fix them... but for some reason its outside of the tree? Why is ZoS looking to fix vampirism outside of fixing the actual tree?


2. Stamina characters mostly take penalties by going vampire. There is lots of vampire lore, in ESO and outside, of vampirism augmenting their physical abilities. It would be nice for this to reflect in ESO vampires. It almost looks like this was an option, as Vampiric Drain has a sort of stamina morph (unless that was meant to be a throwaway morph?) or a tank morph.

It would be odd for a tank morph, since with the health recovery penalties and increase to fire damage tanks become squishier by going vamp.

But yea, thats my two pain points. Not enough self healing in the vampire tree, and stamina chars have nothing to gain and sustain to lose when going vamp

I would be happy with just the skill cost increase removed but it would be very nice if vampire was made fun to play for both magic and stamina builds and at the same time being strong in end game. I want to feel like a vampire while playing it

The vampire rework makes little sense. It no longer matches the lore at all, so when I'm running around hearing about vampires who are desperate to feed, I don't share that experience at all. I don't feel like I'm going to go insane from lack of blood, which is what Elder Scrolls Lorebooks such as Journal of the Lord Lovidicus indicate: "Entry 8: Two weeks. Two weeks have passed since Luktuv locked me in my quarters. Try as I might, I cannot free myself. I cannot breach the doors! If I don't feed soon, I feel I will go mad." I can't relate at all to the account in the Vampires of Iliac Bay, Ch. 2: "If I did not kill a warm blooded creature once a night and drink its blood, my hunger would gnaw at me, and any wounds I suffered would not heal no matter how much I rested."

So, the experience in ESO is something else entirely. Okay, so it's a new thing. We can have new lore, or nuanced lore, right? Here is the problem, and I'll add some dialog to illustrate:

To sum up, the problem was that vampires weren't feeding, because they wanted to retain their power, while remaining undiscovered. The fix, as described, was to make it so new fancy vampires would grow stronger by feeding, rather than stronger by starving. However, given the current state of vampire passives and skills, feeding makes you weaker. The feel of playing a vampire does not match any of the lore, including the new lore written to justify the new experience. When I get to stage 4, then fall off a small cliff and can't heal, I don't feel stronger. When I can't sustain any of my rotation, I don't feel stronger. Stage 4 feels feral, which is what I think they were going for, but its a weak feral, not a scary feral.

The thing is... I think one small retcon and a couple skill tweaks would go quite a long way to salvaging the rework, respecting the devs work, while bringing the experience back in line with the lore.

1. Reverse the feeding stages, again. Stage 4 represents a feral vampire who has lost their identity. Stage 1 represents a vampire that looks more human, and has a limited capacity to act like they used to. Make ESO vampire lore friendly again, and make me drink to avoid devolving into stage 4. Then, give stage 1 a token buff, such as slightly better health regen, to enforce the sense that a well fed vampire does indeed gain some measure of strength. That one change would bring much of the experience back in line with the established lore.
2. Fix frenzy. Frenzy represents the feral, bestial nature of the vampire coming out. I propose that they change frenzy to boost vampire skill effectiveness at the tradeoff of increasing regular skill resource cost by some prohibitive amount, effectively disabling their use. Perhaps make it a timed skill rather than a toggle, so that I really have to commit to my frenzy. Let frenzy mean that I lose my mind and devolve fully into a feral vampire. Make it scary to have a frenzied vampire in melee range. Morph wise, one can do higher damage, and the other can return a percentage of damage done as health.
3. Fix drain. Drain is currently one of the most useless skills in the game. As a channeled heal, it's crap. As a damage dealer, it's crap. It doesn't feel like anything more than a waste of a time, really. Being a channel, it's always going to remain bad. However, it could be given some real RP flair if it were given the properties of an execute, doing 300-400% increased damage to low health targets. If I'm a vampire against a weakened target, my drain should be the final act of domination. I'd love to see one morph drain stamina and magicka along with health, while the other one only drains health, but has the stun returned.

I think those three changes would go a long way to salvaging the rework. More than the skill changes, though, I want to see ESO vampirism make sense with respect to the lore again.

The increased skill cost for non-vamp skills is terrible. There is currently no blessing to being a stage one vampire, so why are there so many curses?

Increased skill cost + Reduced health regen + increased fire damage taken + no benefits = WHY EVEN HAVE A STAGE ONE VAMP AT ALL?