MotownMurder wrote: »
And worst of all, the few times there actually were good points in the vampire tree, like Blood for Blood and the PTS version of Blood Frenzy, ZOS didn't hesitate to nerf them back down to uselessness. I think that's what bothers me most of all, that ZOS seems to want vampires to suck. That seems like their design goal. It makes them happy. Which, fair enough I guess, but maybe don't tease people with a vampire based expansion, right?
TBH just treat Vamp and WW as their own classes already.
Spectral_Force wrote: »The problem with Vampire is, it doesn't even work as its own class. It lacks a lot of tools (gap closer, DoT, decent AoE and buffs just to name a few) to be its own thing so it needs to borrow from class and weapon skill lines, but you're penalised for doing so with higher ability costs.
MotownMurder wrote: »I know what a lot of people already want to say: "You're just mad because being a Vampire isn't passive anymore, and it's an active decision that you have to build around now."
But that's where you would be wrong. Vampirism being an active decision is exactly what I was excited for before Greymoor launched. It was something I was looking forward to for a long time. But it's time to face facts: What the developers tried--vampirism as an active playstyle--has not worked. A viable "vampire build" is not possible. And now, with the launch of 6.1.0 on the horizon, every single vampire skill will soon be worthless.
- Blood Scion: This is a decent self buff, especially with the Swarming Scion morph, but it's crippled by the fact that it costs so much ultimate to use. This ultimate was originally balanced around the assumption that Stage 4 Vampirism would reduce vampire power costs by 40%. This was supposed to be the "headliner" to encourage Stage 4 Vampirism. Now that Stage 4 only reduces vampire costs by 24%, however, this will always be one of the most expensive ultimates in the game. As such, this ultimate cannot compete with other ultimates that do more for a lower cost, and cannot be justifiably used in anything other than PvP where anything goes. And to add insult to injury, one of the morphs, Perfect Scion, is totally worthless.
- Eviscerate: This was the one bright spot in the whole skill line. Blood For Blood, one of the morphs of this skill, could almost singlehandedly solve a class' sustain problems, provided they had a good source of healing. It felt like the one good extension of the devs' "risk vs reward" concept; where yes you lost health per cast, and yes you're in melee range, but it does a ton of damage. Unfortunately, this will be nerfed into uselessness as of 6.1.0. Not only will the execute percentage be decreased, but using it will now render you unhealable for 5 seconds. Obviously, a spammable power will be used one every 5 seconds, and going without healing in serious content is a death sentence, so Blood For Blood will no longer be useable. There's the second morph, of course, but it will fail to outperform almost all class magicka spammable powers, and also has the drawback of being a melee power with no large upside. Overall, Eviscerate will be generally unviable after 6.1.0.
- Blood Frenzy: This is a power that shared the same journey as Blood For Blood, it just happened to go on that journey before Greymoor launched. The large boost to spell damage caught the attention of a lot of players at the time of 6.0.0's PTS, and a lot of people saw the potential rewards. Having it be toggled on prevented outside healing and drained your health, but it was a constant rate of drain and it was off the global cooldown, making it possible to manage. Before Greymoor launched, however, the skill was nerfed into uselessness by having the health drain increase by 1/5th every second. This was too much to handle for anything except short bursts, which was probably the developers' intention, but neither of the Blood Frenzy morphs provide enough DPS to justify their existence if they're only on for short bursts. As such, this became yet another power nobody uses in any serious capacity.
- Vampiric Drain: This power is an absolute joke. It does pitiful healing for how long it takes, it does virtually no damage, and it leaves you vulnerable as the skill channels. This is probably one of the most worthless skills in the entire game, which nobody will ever find any use for. DPS won't use it because wasting several seconds channeling a heal is a DPS loss. Tanks won't use it because channeling it prevents you from blocking. PvP players won't use it because it doesn't even stun the enemy like it used to! Bottom line: nobody in their right mind would ever use this completely worthless skill. And the worst part of it is, I suspect ZoS sees this as the justification for all the "prevents outside healing" clauses in the vampire powers; they expect that vampire players should constantly be using this skill. I hope I'm wrong about that, because it would prove beyond any doubt how out of touch they are.
- Mesmerize: The one good thing about this power is that you can hypnotize NPCs into talking to you. That is cool from a lore perspective, but it also kind of screws over new players that need to grind to the fourth power on the tree if they made the mistake of becoming Stage 4 too early. Other than that, this is a boring power. It stuns and potentially snares, sure, but the bottom line is that there are other powers that do the same thing but better. I also don't like that one of the five "real" power slots is wasted on something that will only ever be useful for tanks.
- Mist Form: It's nice that it's a toggle now, and I'm sure it's nice for PvP, but it's another power that feels underwhelming. Blood Mist is conceptually cool, but the damage is so low that you would probably be better off just healing yourself with your own power rather than counting on this to save you. You can't even count on this saving you from OHKO's from bosses in serious content, so unless if you're PvPing, there's no good reason to slot this.
Now, perhaps you could look at each of these powers individually and conclude "well all of these powers look ok." And by themselves, maybe they would be. That may have been the developers' exact thought process as they were creating the powers. But what makes it all fall apart is this one simple fact:
You're expected to make a build where these powers are the core of your strategy
There's no possible way to do that! If you remember, all you have to work with in the vampire tree is:
- An ultimate
- A spammable that kills you
- Two mutually exclusive toggles (one of which will kill you)
- A stun
- A self healing channel
That's not a build! There is no possible way to make a worthwhile build out of that! And then we need to consider how many of these powers, like Vampiric Drain, are just complete non starters to begin with. Maybe if you're ok with dying all the time and being no help to your team, then you could run a build focused solely on these powers (in the same way you could make a build out of nothing but Mage's Guild spells I guess), but for anyone who doesn't want to be kicked out of their group, there is no way to make a half-decent build for any role in the game with these powers.
You might say "fine then, just use your other powers instead," but you can't, because the game is designed to penalize you for using other powers by increasing the cost of all the other powers! Maybe that would be ok if you were using your other powers rarely and your vampire powers frequently, but that's impossible. Even if you try to use your vampire powers as liberally as possible, any build that is even halfway viable will be using their non-vampire powers over their vampire powers by a factor of 9 to 1.
Of course you might think "it's fine if I don't use my vampire powers, I'll just use the passives," but you can't do that either, because the passives are locked behind your stage of vampirism! You only get full access to your vampire passives when you're at Stage 4, and each stage increases the cost of your regular abilities by somewhere between 2-4%. And I'm going to tell you right now, there is nothing in the vampire passives that is going to justify wasting 2-4% extra resources per level. The only way to justify going higher in vampirism is if you intend to use the unique vampire powers, and they are so objectively horrible that there's no reason to even try.
What's even more ridiculous is that the whole stated point of this update was to encourage vampires to feed and be stronger, to get players to "embrace being a vampire." That is why the update was an abject failure of game design. Not because of the powers, not because of the passives, but because that objective was not reached. Before the update, vampires didn't feed and stayed at stage 4, and now it's the same: vampires don't feed and stay at stage 1. Only now, I guess the difference is that most of them have probably cured themselves and saved themselves the trouble!
And worst of all, the few times there actually were good points in the vampire tree, like Blood for Blood and the PTS version of Blood Frenzy, ZOS didn't hesitate to nerf them back down to uselessness. I think that's what bothers me most of all, that ZOS seems to want vampires to suck. That seems like their design goal. It makes them happy. Which, fair enough I guess, but maybe don't tease people with a vampire based expansion, right?
And before I end this extremely long post, let me respond to one final comment. One that I hear far too often:
"Vampirism is supposed to be a curse!"
Sorry, but that doesn't fly. I agree that "it's a curse" if you mean it should have some drawbacks, no argument there. But vampires are not supposed to be "cursed" in the same way that lepers are cursed. A vampire is supposed to be strong and capable and feared. Compare that to an ESO vampire, where if they try to use their powers, in the best case nothing happens, and in the worst case they kill themselves faster than the enemy. Vampires have weaknesses, that's what makes it a curse. They are not supposed to be a joke. Lycanthropy is also "a curse" but I don't see anyone saying werewolves should be bad. Then again, werewolves used to suck in ESO too, and these days they're looking pretty good for once. Could the same be true for vampires someday? Maybe, but I'm not holding my breath.
Disagree and WAY TOO LONG, full of deck stacking to boot.
1. Ult = requires too much ult, FALSE. Built correctly, 164- low 2XX ult while keeping the downsides of Vamp Lord set back barred, maelstrom staff on front bar. So that the most powerful ult in the game is "crippled" due to its AVERAGE big ult cost is absurd and hyperbolic on its face. All the big ults have similar cost, no idea what OP is going on about here on a 20 second long large AOE that HEALS the user AND buffs all resources to a greater degree than ANY FIVE PIECE SET IN THE GAME BY A MILE at the same time.
2. Eviscerate, more hyperbole. First, patch is not live and so OP's preemptive complaint is disingenuous to include non-live changes in general complaints about vamp. So since that's OP's only gripe, then why isn't the thread "please don't bring the BFB change live?" Eviscerate is fine as is, advocate against an upcoming patch instead of hyperbole.
3. Blood Frenzy. More hyperbole. Toggling on and off a skill that adds +600 SD/WD without a huge tradeoff is a balance no-brainer, suggesting otherwise, "uselessness" is plain silly. It is made for burst, it is made to be used with the ult, it is made to be used with the passives, it is NOT made as a permanent Raid parse tool, and shouldn't be, that would be absurdly OP. There ARE many possible builds to maximize and compliment the use of this skill. They are emergent and will be very cool and interesting. Blood Frenzy is one of the BEST things about the new vamp and is a great addition to buildcraft.
4. Vamp Drain. Not an "absolute joke." Needs a small buff. Why not just ask for a small buff? instead of the false "absolute joke" claim? The skill and its use is fine at base. I've been using the ult-pushing portion of it for years towards devastating effect in keeping ults up as fast as possible.
5. Mesmerize. The hyperbole continues. Anyone who tanks or pvps in ESO will tell you that ALL of the AOE CC skills in ESO are wonky. Anyone who claims otherwise is in error. It's not really that complicated with Mesmerize, you get bigger range and less resource cost in exchange for the condition. If you don't like that, use another CC. SIMPLE. I think Mesmerize is great and claiming it's only use is on merchants is absurd.
6. Mist Form. Toggled 75% dmg reduction at key times is NEVER "underwhelming" in any game mode. No other skill line has similar, and this alone and how it's tweaked in new vamp makes vamp worthwhile. Oh, in higher stages it's cheap as hell to use. Smart players can ignore tons of red (and fire, hint hint) that don't amount to out and out one shots. Either morph has uses, I prefer the speed. New Mist Form is great, but Mist Form has ALWAYS been a great skill for those willing to master it, just much better now.
7. Who said it was mandatory to make a 100% vamp skill build? NO ONE, and that was plainly not the intent anyway. For comparison, that is as silly as complaining that ANY CLASS must make pure class skill builds. That's not how ESO or pretty much any game with classes works. Spare the straw man.
8. And OP ignores that working the vamp skills into builds REDUCES resource use because they are cheap, this is a TRADEOFF that is working as intended. My higher stage vamp takes are finding Hypnotize FAR less expensive than their old CC to use for one of several examples. BFB alleviates ALL the resource cost of melee range spammables, allowing those resources to be spent elsewhere. IF BFB gets nerfed as in the patch, will it be worthwhile to put on Bogdan instead of a DPS monster set? Maybe, maybe not required. Maybe a better change would be minor defile from BFB? But we don't know because OP wants to do hyperbole instead of advocating against the patch change directly.
MotownMurder wrote: »Now, perhaps you could look at each of these powers individually and conclude "well all of these powers look ok." And by themselves, maybe they would be. That may have been the developers' exact thought process as they were creating the powers. But what makes it all fall apart is this one simple fact:
You're expected to make a build where these powers are the core of your strategy
There's no possible way to do that! If you remember, all you have to work with in the vampire tree is:
- An ultimate
- A spammable that kills you
- Two mutually exclusive toggles (one of which will kill you)
- A stun
- A self healing channel
That's not a build! There is no possible way to make a worthwhile build out of that! And then we need to consider how many of these powers, like Vampiric Drain, are just complete non starters to begin with. Maybe if you're ok with dying all the time and being no help to your team, then you could run a build focused solely on these powers (in the same way you could make a build out of nothing but Mage's Guild spells I guess), but for anyone who doesn't want to be kicked out of their group, there is no way to make a half-decent build for any role in the game with these powers.
You might say "fine then, just use your other powers instead," but you can't, because the game is designed to penalize you for using other powers by increasing the cost of all the other powers! Maybe that would be ok if you were using your other powers rarely and your vampire powers frequently, but that's impossible. Even if you try to use your vampire powers as liberally as possible, any build that is even halfway viable will be using their non-vampire powers over their vampire powers by a factor of 9 to 1.
MotownMurder wrote: »I know what a lot of people already want to say: "You're just mad because being a Vampire isn't passive anymore, and it's an active decision that you have to build around now."
But that's where you would be wrong. Vampirism being an active decision is exactly what I was excited for before Greymoor launched. It was something I was looking forward to for a long time. But it's time to face facts: What the developers tried--vampirism as an active playstyle--has not worked. A viable "vampire build" is not possible. And now, with the launch of 6.1.0 on the horizon, every single vampire skill will soon be worthless.
- Blood Scion: This is a decent self buff, especially with the Swarming Scion morph, but it's crippled by the fact that it costs so much ultimate to use. This ultimate was originally balanced around the assumption that Stage 4 Vampirism would reduce vampire power costs by 40%. This was supposed to be the "headliner" to encourage Stage 4 Vampirism. Now that Stage 4 only reduces vampire costs by 24%, however, this will always be one of the most expensive ultimates in the game. As such, this ultimate cannot compete with other ultimates that do more for a lower cost, and cannot be justifiably used in anything other than PvP where anything goes. And to add insult to injury, one of the morphs, Perfect Scion, is totally worthless.
- Eviscerate: This was the one bright spot in the whole skill line. Blood For Blood, one of the morphs of this skill, could almost singlehandedly solve a class' sustain problems, provided they had a good source of healing. It felt like the one good extension of the devs' "risk vs reward" concept; where yes you lost health per cast, and yes you're in melee range, but it does a ton of damage. Unfortunately, this will be nerfed into uselessness as of 6.1.0. Not only will the execute percentage be decreased, but using it will now render you unhealable for 5 seconds. Obviously, a spammable power will be used one every 5 seconds, and going without healing in serious content is a death sentence, so Blood For Blood will no longer be useable. There's the second morph, of course, but it will fail to outperform almost all class magicka spammable powers, and also has the drawback of being a melee power with no large upside. Overall, Eviscerate will be generally unviable after 6.1.0.
- Blood Frenzy: This is a power that shared the same journey as Blood For Blood, it just happened to go on that journey before Greymoor launched. The large boost to spell damage caught the attention of a lot of players at the time of 6.0.0's PTS, and a lot of people saw the potential rewards. Having it be toggled on prevented outside healing and drained your health, but it was a constant rate of drain and it was off the global cooldown, making it possible to manage. Before Greymoor launched, however, the skill was nerfed into uselessness by having the health drain increase by 1/5th every second. This was too much to handle for anything except short bursts, which was probably the developers' intention, but neither of the Blood Frenzy morphs provide enough DPS to justify their existence if they're only on for short bursts. As such, this became yet another power nobody uses in any serious capacity.
- Vampiric Drain: This power is an absolute joke. It does pitiful healing for how long it takes, it does virtually no damage, and it leaves you vulnerable as the skill channels. This is probably one of the most worthless skills in the entire game, which nobody will ever find any use for. DPS won't use it because wasting several seconds channeling a heal is a DPS loss. Tanks won't use it because channeling it prevents you from blocking. PvP players won't use it because it doesn't even stun the enemy like it used to! Bottom line: nobody in their right mind would ever use this completely worthless skill. And the worst part of it is, I suspect ZoS sees this as the justification for all the "prevents outside healing" clauses in the vampire powers; they expect that vampire players should constantly be using this skill. I hope I'm wrong about that, because it would prove beyond any doubt how out of touch they are.
- Mesmerize: The one good thing about this power is that you can hypnotize NPCs into talking to you. That is cool from a lore perspective, but it also kind of screws over new players that need to grind to the fourth power on the tree if they made the mistake of becoming Stage 4 too early. Other than that, this is a boring power. It stuns and potentially snares, sure, but the bottom line is that there are other powers that do the same thing but better. I also don't like that one of the five "real" power slots is wasted on something that will only ever be useful for tanks.
- Mist Form: It's nice that it's a toggle now, and I'm sure it's nice for PvP, but it's another power that feels underwhelming. Blood Mist is conceptually cool, but the damage is so low that you would probably be better off just healing yourself with your own power rather than counting on this to save you. You can't even count on this saving you from OHKO's from bosses in serious content, so unless if you're PvPing, there's no good reason to slot this.
Now, perhaps you could look at each of these powers individually and conclude "well all of these powers look ok." And by themselves, maybe they would be. That may have been the developers' exact thought process as they were creating the powers. But what makes it all fall apart is this one simple fact:
You're expected to make a build where these powers are the core of your strategy
There's no possible way to do that! If you remember, all you have to work with in the vampire tree is:
- An ultimate
- A spammable that kills you
- Two mutually exclusive toggles (one of which will kill you)
- A stun
- A self healing channel
That's not a build! There is no possible way to make a worthwhile build out of that! And then we need to consider how many of these powers, like Vampiric Drain, are just complete non starters to begin with. Maybe if you're ok with dying all the time and being no help to your team, then you could run a build focused solely on these powers (in the same way you could make a build out of nothing but Mage's Guild spells I guess), but for anyone who doesn't want to be kicked out of their group, there is no way to make a half-decent build for any role in the game with these powers.
You might say "fine then, just use your other powers instead," but you can't, because the game is designed to penalize you for using other powers by increasing the cost of all the other powers! Maybe that would be ok if you were using your other powers rarely and your vampire powers frequently, but that's impossible. Even if you try to use your vampire powers as liberally as possible, any build that is even halfway viable will be using their non-vampire powers over their vampire powers by a factor of 9 to 1.
Of course you might think "it's fine if I don't use my vampire powers, I'll just use the passives," but you can't do that either, because the passives are locked behind your stage of vampirism! You only get full access to your vampire passives when you're at Stage 4, and each stage increases the cost of your regular abilities by somewhere between 2-4%. And I'm going to tell you right now, there is nothing in the vampire passives that is going to justify wasting 2-4% extra resources per level. The only way to justify going higher in vampirism is if you intend to use the unique vampire powers, and they are so objectively horrible that there's no reason to even try.
What's even more ridiculous is that the whole stated point of this update was to encourage vampires to feed and be stronger, to get players to "embrace being a vampire." That is why the update was an abject failure of game design. Not because of the powers, not because of the passives, but because that objective was not reached. Before the update, vampires didn't feed and stayed at stage 4, and now it's the same: vampires don't feed and stay at stage 1. Only now, I guess the difference is that most of them have probably cured themselves and saved themselves the trouble!
And worst of all, the few times there actually were good points in the vampire tree, like Blood for Blood and the PTS version of Blood Frenzy, ZOS didn't hesitate to nerf them back down to uselessness. I think that's what bothers me most of all, that ZOS seems to want vampires to suck. That seems like their design goal. It makes them happy. Which, fair enough I guess, but maybe don't tease people with a vampire based expansion, right?
And before I end this extremely long post, let me respond to one final comment. One that I hear far too often:
"Vampirism is supposed to be a curse!"
Sorry, but that doesn't fly. I agree that "it's a curse" if you mean it should have some drawbacks, no argument there. But vampires are not supposed to be "cursed" in the same way that lepers are cursed. A vampire is supposed to be strong and capable and feared. Compare that to an ESO vampire, where if they try to use their powers, in the best case nothing happens, and in the worst case they kill themselves faster than the enemy. Vampires have weaknesses, that's what makes it a curse. They are not supposed to be a joke. Lycanthropy is also "a curse" but I don't see anyone saying werewolves should be bad. Then again, werewolves used to suck in ESO too, and these days they're looking pretty good for once. Could the same be true for vampires someday? Maybe, but I'm not holding my breath.
Disagree and WAY TOO LONG, full of deck stacking to boot.
1. Ult = requires too much ult, FALSE. Built correctly, 164- low 2XX ult while keeping the downsides of Vamp Lord set back barred, maelstrom staff on front bar. So that the most powerful ult in the game is "crippled" due to its AVERAGE big ult cost is absurd and hyperbolic on its face. All the big ults have similar cost, no idea what OP is going on about here on a 20 second long large AOE that HEALS the user AND buffs all resources to a greater degree than ANY FIVE PIECE SET IN THE GAME BY A MILE at the same time.
2. Eviscerate, more hyperbole. First, patch is not live and so OP's preemptive complaint is disingenuous to include non-live changes in general complaints about vamp. So since that's OP's only gripe, then why isn't the thread "please don't bring the BFB change live?" Eviscerate is fine as is, advocate against an upcoming patch instead of hyperbole.
3. Blood Frenzy. More hyperbole. Toggling on and off a skill that adds +600 SD/WD without a huge tradeoff is a balance no-brainer, suggesting otherwise, "uselessness" is plain silly. It is made for burst, it is made to be used with the ult, it is made to be used with the passives, it is NOT made as a permanent Raid parse tool, and shouldn't be, that would be absurdly OP. There ARE many possible builds to maximize and compliment the use of this skill. They are emergent and will be very cool and interesting. Blood Frenzy is one of the BEST things about the new vamp and is a great addition to buildcraft.
4. Vamp Drain. Not an "absolute joke." Needs a small buff. Why not just ask for a small buff? instead of the false "absolute joke" claim? The skill and its use is fine at base. I've been using the ult-pushing portion of it for years towards devastating effect in keeping ults up as fast as possible.
5. Mesmerize. The hyperbole continues. Anyone who tanks or pvps in ESO will tell you that ALL of the AOE CC skills in ESO are wonky. Anyone who claims otherwise is in error. It's not really that complicated with Mesmerize, you get bigger range and less resource cost in exchange for the condition. If you don't like that, use another CC. SIMPLE. I think Mesmerize is great and claiming it's only use is on merchants is absurd.
6. Mist Form. Toggled 75% dmg reduction at key times is NEVER "underwhelming" in any game mode. No other skill line has similar, and this alone and how it's tweaked in new vamp makes vamp worthwhile. Oh, in higher stages it's cheap as hell to use. Smart players can ignore tons of red (and fire, hint hint) that don't amount to out and out one shots. Either morph has uses, I prefer the speed. New Mist Form is great, but Mist Form has ALWAYS been a great skill for those willing to master it, just much better now.
7. Who said it was mandatory to make a 100% vamp skill build? NO ONE, and that was plainly not the intent anyway. For comparison, that is as silly as complaining that ANY CLASS must make pure class skill builds. That's not how ESO or pretty much any game with classes works. Spare the straw man.
8. And OP ignores that working the vamp skills into builds REDUCES resource use because they are cheap, this is a TRADEOFF that is working as intended. My higher stage vamp takes are finding Hypnotize FAR less expensive than their old CC to use for one of several examples. BFB alleviates ALL the resource cost of melee range spammables, allowing those resources to be spent elsewhere. IF BFB gets nerfed as in the patch, will it be worthwhile to put on Bogdan instead of a DPS monster set? Maybe, maybe not required. Maybe a better change would be minor defile from BFB? But we don't know because OP wants to do hyperbole instead of advocating against the patch change directly.
MotownMurder wrote: »I know what a lot of people already want to say: "You're just mad because being a Vampire isn't passive anymore, and it's an active decision that you have to build around now."
But that's where you would be wrong. Vampirism being an active decision is exactly what I was excited for before Greymoor launched. It was something I was looking forward to for a long time. But it's time to face facts: What the developers tried--vampirism as an active playstyle--has not worked. A viable "vampire build" is not possible. And now, with the launch of 6.1.0 on the horizon, every single vampire skill will soon be worthless.
- Blood Scion: This is a decent self buff, especially with the Swarming Scion morph, but it's crippled by the fact that it costs so much ultimate to use. This ultimate was originally balanced around the assumption that Stage 4 Vampirism would reduce vampire power costs by 40%. This was supposed to be the "headliner" to encourage Stage 4 Vampirism. Now that Stage 4 only reduces vampire costs by 24%, however, this will always be one of the most expensive ultimates in the game. As such, this ultimate cannot compete with other ultimates that do more for a lower cost, and cannot be justifiably used in anything other than PvP where anything goes. And to add insult to injury, one of the morphs, Perfect Scion, is totally worthless.
- Eviscerate: This was the one bright spot in the whole skill line. Blood For Blood, one of the morphs of this skill, could almost singlehandedly solve a class' sustain problems, provided they had a good source of healing. It felt like the one good extension of the devs' "risk vs reward" concept; where yes you lost health per cast, and yes you're in melee range, but it does a ton of damage. Unfortunately, this will be nerfed into uselessness as of 6.1.0. Not only will the execute percentage be decreased, but using it will now render you unhealable for 5 seconds. Obviously, a spammable power will be used one every 5 seconds, and going without healing in serious content is a death sentence, so Blood For Blood will no longer be useable. There's the second morph, of course, but it will fail to outperform almost all class magicka spammable powers, and also has the drawback of being a melee power with no large upside. Overall, Eviscerate will be generally unviable after 6.1.0.
- Blood Frenzy: This is a power that shared the same journey as Blood For Blood, it just happened to go on that journey before Greymoor launched. The large boost to spell damage caught the attention of a lot of players at the time of 6.0.0's PTS, and a lot of people saw the potential rewards. Having it be toggled on prevented outside healing and drained your health, but it was a constant rate of drain and it was off the global cooldown, making it possible to manage. Before Greymoor launched, however, the skill was nerfed into uselessness by having the health drain increase by 1/5th every second. This was too much to handle for anything except short bursts, which was probably the developers' intention, but neither of the Blood Frenzy morphs provide enough DPS to justify their existence if they're only on for short bursts. As such, this became yet another power nobody uses in any serious capacity.
- Vampiric Drain: This power is an absolute joke. It does pitiful healing for how long it takes, it does virtually no damage, and it leaves you vulnerable as the skill channels. This is probably one of the most worthless skills in the entire game, which nobody will ever find any use for. DPS won't use it because wasting several seconds channeling a heal is a DPS loss. Tanks won't use it because channeling it prevents you from blocking. PvP players won't use it because it doesn't even stun the enemy like it used to! Bottom line: nobody in their right mind would ever use this completely worthless skill. And the worst part of it is, I suspect ZoS sees this as the justification for all the "prevents outside healing" clauses in the vampire powers; they expect that vampire players should constantly be using this skill. I hope I'm wrong about that, because it would prove beyond any doubt how out of touch they are.
- Mesmerize: The one good thing about this power is that you can hypnotize NPCs into talking to you. That is cool from a lore perspective, but it also kind of screws over new players that need to grind to the fourth power on the tree if they made the mistake of becoming Stage 4 too early. Other than that, this is a boring power. It stuns and potentially snares, sure, but the bottom line is that there are other powers that do the same thing but better. I also don't like that one of the five "real" power slots is wasted on something that will only ever be useful for tanks.
- Mist Form: It's nice that it's a toggle now, and I'm sure it's nice for PvP, but it's another power that feels underwhelming. Blood Mist is conceptually cool, but the damage is so low that you would probably be better off just healing yourself with your own power rather than counting on this to save you. You can't even count on this saving you from OHKO's from bosses in serious content, so unless if you're PvPing, there's no good reason to slot this.
Now, perhaps you could look at each of these powers individually and conclude "well all of these powers look ok." And by themselves, maybe they would be. That may have been the developers' exact thought process as they were creating the powers. But what makes it all fall apart is this one simple fact:
You're expected to make a build where these powers are the core of your strategy
There's no possible way to do that! If you remember, all you have to work with in the vampire tree is:
- An ultimate
- A spammable that kills you
- Two mutually exclusive toggles (one of which will kill you)
- A stun
- A self healing channel
That's not a build! There is no possible way to make a worthwhile build out of that! And then we need to consider how many of these powers, like Vampiric Drain, are just complete non starters to begin with. Maybe if you're ok with dying all the time and being no help to your team, then you could run a build focused solely on these powers (in the same way you could make a build out of nothing but Mage's Guild spells I guess), but for anyone who doesn't want to be kicked out of their group, there is no way to make a half-decent build for any role in the game with these powers.
You might say "fine then, just use your other powers instead," but you can't, because the game is designed to penalize you for using other powers by increasing the cost of all the other powers! Maybe that would be ok if you were using your other powers rarely and your vampire powers frequently, but that's impossible. Even if you try to use your vampire powers as liberally as possible, any build that is even halfway viable will be using their non-vampire powers over their vampire powers by a factor of 9 to 1.
Of course you might think "it's fine if I don't use my vampire powers, I'll just use the passives," but you can't do that either, because the passives are locked behind your stage of vampirism! You only get full access to your vampire passives when you're at Stage 4, and each stage increases the cost of your regular abilities by somewhere between 2-4%. And I'm going to tell you right now, there is nothing in the vampire passives that is going to justify wasting 2-4% extra resources per level. The only way to justify going higher in vampirism is if you intend to use the unique vampire powers, and they are so objectively horrible that there's no reason to even try.
What's even more ridiculous is that the whole stated point of this update was to encourage vampires to feed and be stronger, to get players to "embrace being a vampire." That is why the update was an abject failure of game design. Not because of the powers, not because of the passives, but because that objective was not reached. Before the update, vampires didn't feed and stayed at stage 4, and now it's the same: vampires don't feed and stay at stage 1. Only now, I guess the difference is that most of them have probably cured themselves and saved themselves the trouble!
And worst of all, the few times there actually were good points in the vampire tree, like Blood for Blood and the PTS version of Blood Frenzy, ZOS didn't hesitate to nerf them back down to uselessness. I think that's what bothers me most of all, that ZOS seems to want vampires to suck. That seems like their design goal. It makes them happy. Which, fair enough I guess, but maybe don't tease people with a vampire based expansion, right?
And before I end this extremely long post, let me respond to one final comment. One that I hear far too often:
"Vampirism is supposed to be a curse!"
Sorry, but that doesn't fly. I agree that "it's a curse" if you mean it should have some drawbacks, no argument there. But vampires are not supposed to be "cursed" in the same way that lepers are cursed. A vampire is supposed to be strong and capable and feared. Compare that to an ESO vampire, where if they try to use their powers, in the best case nothing happens, and in the worst case they kill themselves faster than the enemy. Vampires have weaknesses, that's what makes it a curse. They are not supposed to be a joke. Lycanthropy is also "a curse" but I don't see anyone saying werewolves should be bad. Then again, werewolves used to suck in ESO too, and these days they're looking pretty good for once. Could the same be true for vampires someday? Maybe, but I'm not holding my breath.
Disagree and WAY TOO LONG, full of deck stacking to boot.
1. Ult = requires too much ult, FALSE. Built correctly, 164- low 2XX ult while keeping the downsides of Vamp Lord set back barred, maelstrom staff on front bar. So that the most powerful ult in the game is "crippled" due to its AVERAGE big ult cost is absurd and hyperbolic on its face. All the big ults have similar cost, no idea what OP is going on about here on a 20 second long large AOE that HEALS the user AND buffs all resources to a greater degree than ANY FIVE PIECE SET IN THE GAME BY A MILE at the same time.
2. Eviscerate, more hyperbole. First, patch is not live and so OP's preemptive complaint is disingenuous to include non-live changes in general complaints about vamp. So since that's OP's only gripe, then why isn't the thread "please don't bring the BFB change live?" Eviscerate is fine as is, advocate against an upcoming patch instead of hyperbole.
3. Blood Frenzy. More hyperbole. Toggling on and off a skill that adds +600 SD/WD without a huge tradeoff is a balance no-brainer, suggesting otherwise, "uselessness" is plain silly. It is made for burst, it is made to be used with the ult, it is made to be used with the passives, it is NOT made as a permanent Raid parse tool, and shouldn't be, that would be absurdly OP. There ARE many possible builds to maximize and compliment the use of this skill. They are emergent and will be very cool and interesting. Blood Frenzy is one of the BEST things about the new vamp and is a great addition to buildcraft.
4. Vamp Drain. Not an "absolute joke." Needs a small buff. Why not just ask for a small buff? instead of the false "absolute joke" claim? The skill and its use is fine at base. I've been using the ult-pushing portion of it for years towards devastating effect in keeping ults up as fast as possible.
5. Mesmerize. The hyperbole continues. Anyone who tanks or pvps in ESO will tell you that ALL of the AOE CC skills in ESO are wonky. Anyone who claims otherwise is in error. It's not really that complicated with Mesmerize, you get bigger range and less resource cost in exchange for the condition. If you don't like that, use another CC. SIMPLE. I think Mesmerize is great and claiming it's only use is on merchants is absurd.
6. Mist Form. Toggled 75% dmg reduction at key times is NEVER "underwhelming" in any game mode. No other skill line has similar, and this alone and how it's tweaked in new vamp makes vamp worthwhile. Oh, in higher stages it's cheap as hell to use. Smart players can ignore tons of red (and fire, hint hint) that don't amount to out and out one shots. Either morph has uses, I prefer the speed. New Mist Form is great, but Mist Form has ALWAYS been a great skill for those willing to master it, just much better now.
7. Who said it was mandatory to make a 100% vamp skill build? NO ONE, and that was plainly not the intent anyway. For comparison, that is as silly as complaining that ANY CLASS must make pure class skill builds. That's not how ESO or pretty much any game with classes works. Spare the straw man.
8. And OP ignores that working the vamp skills into builds REDUCES resource use because they are cheap, this is a TRADEOFF that is working as intended. My higher stage vamp takes are finding Hypnotize FAR less expensive than their old CC to use for one of several examples. BFB alleviates ALL the resource cost of melee range spammables, allowing those resources to be spent elsewhere. IF BFB gets nerfed as in the patch, will it be worthwhile to put on Bogdan instead of a DPS monster set? Maybe, maybe not required. Maybe a better change would be minor defile from BFB? But we don't know because OP wants to do hyperbole instead of advocating against the patch change directly.
The only way to make them both vampiric in theme and fluid in build, but not required is to make them Less about max DPS, and more about survival Life Tap themed.
NB gonna be mad tho.
The only way to make them both vampiric in theme and fluid in build, but not required is to make them Less about max DPS, and more about survival Life Tap themed.
NB gonna be mad tho.
The Nightblades will adapt. Vampires have always been about being incredibly hard to kill blood cursed people of incredible intelligence and power. They also excel at stealth and blending into society which is why the stage passives are actually not that bad, but the skills and the cost increase debuff don't fit the theme. More like a rabid creature that's out of control clawing its way through people instead of drawing power from their opponents blood and using it against them.
It's an absolute joke when you look at how good the werewolf skills are in comparison and the lesser penalties they face. I used to get this for the regen passives, undeath, mist form and at times the bat swarm that healed was good too.
Now what do we get? Well the ulti is good at times like the other used to be I suppose, strike from the shadows is a good passive too but only for 6 seconds, and I still like mist form and undeath. But for the cost? No way.
All of the regen is gone, and instead every single skill we use has a cost that increases. By the time I'm able to use undeath my skills cost me +8% to use so unless I'm playing a breton (-7% cost to magicka skills passive) mag character and also have the seducer set on where I can wipe the cost out I'm going to really struggle to sustain at all, seeing as I already have problems sustaining as it is. I could use seducer on any mag character to wipe it out too of course, or have the breton passive deal with it instead but what's the point? Choosing vamp is supposed to be for the benefits, not having your main sustain set bonus taken away just to make it hackable. Or to choose breton and have one of their main passives taken away for it.
But look at the health recovery penalty too if I want to use undeath. -60% regen isn't going to help when trying to deal with procs like unleashed terror where I'd be facing a proc that causes me to "bleed for 5 seconds, dealing 19728 Physical Damage over the duration." Along with whatever other bleed damage is on those builds and the other damage they're dealing.
Imagine facing a MagDK leaping too with that set as all of their flame attacks are doing +13% more damage on top of it.
Blood frenzy is potentially brilliant and I tried it, but that soon fell apart in the Cyro lag. This is one of the worst skills in lag as you might think you've clicked it off but lag stops it, or you click twice in the lag thinking it hasn't worked first time, the lag causes it to turn off then back on again and you're running around with your health draining. So you can either notice it quickly if you're lucky, or notice it when you're about to die if you don't turn it off quickly, but then again the lag might stop that from happening. I almost died once or twice in a similar situation and would no way use it again in there unless lag was completely gone.
The skill line isn't worth the cost I don't think. And it just becomes a joke when you look at werewolves for comparison :
+ 10,000 Physical and Spell Resistance
+ 30% Max Stamina
+ 30% Increased Movement Speed
+ 15% Stamina Recovery
+ 18% Weapon Damage
+ 100% Stamina return from Heavy Attacks
Yes they take heavy damage from poison and fighters guild skills, but I think the 10k resistances might help a bit with that too. Look at that list and tell us how vampire benefits compare at all to that.
There's a chance I'd choose vamp again for mist form, but I'd have to find a slot for the skill when I'm already having problems due to the 10 slot limit as most of us do, and that one skill will cost me -10% health regen, +5% flame damage taken and all my skills with cost +3%. Maybe not worth it. I'd easily choose the old version over this, which is sad because I was really happy to see that they'd finally made it into a proper line of skills when I started playing again recently.
Maybe a future solution is to have vamps turn into vampire form too like werewolves do, instead of having it as a constant state, then rework the skills all over again into a similar mixture of mainly benefits, with a couple of costs like werewolves have too.