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With the release of 6.1.0, the Vampire skill line will be an abject failure of game design.

MotownMurder
MotownMurder
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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.
Edited by MotownMurder on July 15, 2020 4:07AM
  • Vevvev
    Vevvev
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    I couldn't have said this any better myself, and I mean that for real. You literally covered every single issue the vampire skill line has, formatted it, and presented it in a well thought out post.

    The sad part though is this...

    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?

    At the end of the day it really does feel like their goal is to kill vampires so hard their population hits "lore acceptable" levels. Either that or they're so terrified of actually making vampire good that it must come with debuffs so horrible only crazy people like myself ((because I want to play a vampire in a Elder Scrolls game)) would ever pick it up. I really hope they don't go through with this new update on the PTS and actually start addressing the issues with vampirisim that makes a pure vampire build using all the abilities a near impossibility.
    PC NA - Ceyanna Ashton - Breton Vampire MagDK
  • SlimeBro1
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    I can agree with all of this! Your post is amazing and outstanding. I absolutely love that someone FINALLY speaks the truth.


    Another point you should add, though:

    Why do NPCs have way cooler abilities and a proper skill set than we do? They have various blood magic spells, the ability to summon swarms of bats, and the ability to teleport in a cloud of bats. I wish I could be those NPCs instead.

    Also another thought: Why is there no RANGED option for eviscerate? Are we expected, as a squishy light armor wearer, to be in melee all the time?

    And furthermore: Why is a now seemingly melee focused line not providing a gap closer? As magcro I have literally no way to keep up with my enemies. When I turn into Blood Scion? They just run away.

    What this skill line could benefit from ability-wise:

    An ultimate that isn't just a steroid and Perfect Scion actually being useful.

    Ranged option for Eviscerate and NOT being made into a useless ability by cutting off healing.

    Blood Frenzy needs to be removed completely and should instead be the unique charged-up bat swarm gap closer the greymoor NPCs have. Seriously check it out. That ability looks so damn cool....

    Vampiric drain actually did damage pre-pre PTS. It did around 6k every tick or so and healed for like 40% missing HP. Then they gutted it before it even hit live servers. It either needs to be reverted back to that OR simply make it a tether that stays on the target if you're close enough.

    Mesmerize becomes way less cool when you realize they just moved the stun from Vampiric drain and put it into a standalone ability. It NEEDS to do something else besides stun. Apply a dot. Something.

    Mist Form needs to be changed back to how it was. Elusive mist used to give a 70% UNIQUE movement speed bonus, now it just gives major expedition. Blood Mist needs to be changed to 'swarming mist' and the entire morph should turn your player into a swarm of bats. 0 reason why this skill turns you into a cloud of blood that randomly damages people and sounds like you're hitting them with a wet noodle. Also being made into an actual damage ability would be great.

    Optional add-on: Throw that one bat-swarm ability that has a cast-time, but places a huge AoE swarm of bats on a target that follows them. WHY are we, as Lamae's line, not able to do things with bats? Part of the lore is her bloodline is very good at summoning them.

    I didn't go into any of the passive detail here because you covered it well and the abilities are my main focus. With the changes I've suggested, vamps would have a complete kit that could be built around on every class if the player wanted. It wouldn't be best in slot, but the important thing is the OPTION would be there.

    OVer all, can agree. They failed with this rework and those that say otherwise should really look at the numbers. Here on the forums I see tons of people that dislike the skill line. Every single person I've ran into in game and spoken to them about the skill line say they dislike it. People on the reddit dislike it. I've genuinely yet to meet a single person in game that likes the skill line.
  • Faulgor
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    Well said.

    The new Feed passive that increases skill cost and lowers vampire cost with increasing stages really feels like the hinge to all this.
    You can only justify increasing your stage by using more vampire skills, but there isn't enough synergy between the different skills to use more than one, maybe two in your setup. So you can only stay at Stage 1 and treat vampire like any other skill line where you use some skills to complement your setup.

    Even so, Perfect Scion could have been the factor that makes it work in the end, but its high cost and weak benefits compared to the other morph make it irrelevant.

    This patch doesn't release until the end of August, so there's still a lot of time for changes, but really, what feedback could we give that didn't happen in the Greymoor PTS cycle? What do they expect us to do?
    Alandrol Sul: He's making another Numidium?!?
    Vivec: Worse, buddy. They're buying it.
  • Lord-Otto
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    Yup, sums it up nicely!
    d(^_^)
  • Rake
    Rake
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    We are still in vampire themed year so its only natural to nerf vampires.
  • Spectral_Force
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    Well-said! My motivation to really break down Vampire mechanics in detail is just about gone, so I'm happy you put the time and effort into writing this.

    I agree on every point, except I must make a correction for the sake of fairness: mechanically-speaking, Blood Frenzy and Mist Form are not mutually exclusive - you can toggle Frenzy and then toggle Mist to have them both on. Can be useful if you want to increase the tooltip on Blood Mist, I guess. But if you meant this in terms of function/purpose, i.e. one is supposed to mitigate incoming damage at the cost of preventing you from doing damage while the other increases your tooltips while also doing damage to you, then I agree on that as well - there are barely any situations where you'd want to have them both on at the same time since they are actively working against each other.

    ZOS is really dropping the ball on this. And to think I was so excited when I saw the pre-PTS footage.
    Edited by Spectral_Force on July 15, 2020 7:32AM
    I've unearthed the Legendary Antiquity of Mêlée Island and all I got was this stupid T-shirt!
  • Rtzon
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    Totally agreed!! It makes no sense to nerd BfB, just increase range on the mag morph instead. Hope someone at ZOS will read this
  • Princess_Ciri
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    Cannot agree more.

    the nerf to blood for blood is so disappointing. A lot of magicka classes at the moment are viable because the blood for blood spammable allows them to sustain. If sustain gets killed (which it has, for templar, dk, warden) then you are going to lose a lot of class diversity at end game in PvE which is really sad.

    This patch has been really great for (magicka) DPS diversity. I have a group with wardens, dragonknights, templars, necros, sorcs, nb and for the most part there is not a massive difference in the dps and all the classes bring something useful.

    I have also heard class reps say things like 'everyone was using blood for blood, it is over performing, it needs a nerf'

    - in the current patch, most necros and sorcs at end game do not use blood for blood.
    - if you are going to nerf blood for blood to make it more balanced, make it so that the damage is only slightly higher than elemental weapon or force pulse. Having it remove any healing for 5 seconds is a guarantee that nobody will ever use this skill.
    GM and raid leader of Hot Girls Play DPS, the cutest guild EU
  • Captain_OP
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    I actually tried to play the Vampire the way they designed it. Because i love Stamina and Melee Comabt i tried to make a build based on Blood for Blood, Blood Frenzy with the healing morph and the Ultimate. The Drain was as healing backup always on my bar. My items i build around doing and avoiding damage. The new Blackrose Prision dual wield 2 set seems to be perfect. So i did the grind, build my stuff and then tried it.
    Well, if they wanted to deliver the feeling of making no damage, sometimes instandly healing my self or dieing on porpuse was, then they did a good job.
    Its like everything you menthioned. The Drain is usless, because Frenzy and the Ult is a better way to heal yourself, but without losing much damage. Blood for Blood doesnt scale anything close to acceptable with stamina and weopon damage.

    At the first impression i got their idee of what the Vampire feels like, but on my own test i just was underwhelmed. This was the Vampire rework i have been waiting for 3 years?
    It doesnt feel like a Playstyle, it just feels like a Roleplayer gimic, where you just run open.

    I hope the Developers doesnt see this Thread as another we hate what you did post. I hope they see it as a oppertunity to accept that they can do better. Yes the feeding cycle and the healing and consequence stuff is cool and fit, but not like this. Its simply no fun to play.
  • XomRhoK
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    All the problems which appears with vampire skills were predicted and described at first PTS, almost 3 months ago, maybe expect Blood for Blood will become mandatory in PvE, because of sustain. Seems the guy who designed vampire skill line can't look two steps forward, and completly ignore feedback.
    The problem with previous iteration of vampire skill line was useful regen passive with little drawbacks, so most players were vampires. The answer to this problem for me is obvious, focus on vampiric gameplay, feel, mechanics, iterations, interesting and meaningful feeding with about 5-10% less overall power, so only who interested to play as a vampire will play them. Otherwise it always will be swings between overtuned vampire skill(s) and all playing as a vampire and undertuned vampire skill(s) and no one will play as a vampire. But once again they stuffed new vampire skill line with different stat buffs which will be impossible to balance and that will lead to described above swings, with almost non existence vampiric gameplay, at least in my perception.
    For me personally, the biggest shock were change of old vampire skills visuals and direction of new visuals, they so out of place in colors, brightness, feel, in my opinion. I am literally don't want to use any vampire skill now, because of esthetic reasons. I hoped for cool animations for new vampiric item sets in new DLCs, but i am not impressed either, better then nothing, but not very good.
    I started to play this game, because of possibility to play as a vampire and "realistic" visuals of the world and vampire skills in particular, i have only one character, vampire 1200 CP, and i stopped playing, because i don't know how to develop my char anymore, he is vampire, but all vampire skills looks like trash now.
    And if you miss all the Greymoor PTS vampire buzz and joined only recently here my Point of view on vampire skills, mechanics and stages of vampirism one of many suggestions by different players, which were completely ignored by ZOS.
  • LukosCreyden
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    I don't play vampire and judging from all I've seen, I doubt I ever will. However, I definitely think more folk need to draw their attention to this. The vampire skill lie upgrade was mean to be a huge focal point of Greymoor and right now, it does NOT sound good at all.
    Struggling to find a new class to call home.Please send help.
  • Everstorm
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    Haven't read all responses but I would just like to add how much I'm disappointed in the new line from a stamina build perspective. There is nothing there to justify increasing the cost increase of my skills. Losing the regen passive is one thing but extra cost is just insult to injury. So after five years my stamblade is probably going to get cured soon. Will be a sad day for me.
  • Nirntrotter
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    Well said. I'm not even a vampire player, I occasionally play werewolves, but even then I'm sad to see people who're stuck with this great basic gameplay idea that they want to build a character around, only to be given a kit that doesn't even synergise well with itself, let alone the rest of the game. Way to botch a massive rework that was used to advertise the new chapter even...

    TBH just treat Vamp and WW as their own classes already. :/
    Grand Warlord Arodel, Gryphon Heart
    <Serenity>
    AD MagDK, *2014, PC-EU | 49k+ achievement points
  • Spectral_Force
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    ethuiliel wrote: »
    TBH just treat Vamp and WW as their own classes already. :/

    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.
    I've unearthed the Legendary Antiquity of Mêlée Island and all I got was this stupid T-shirt!
  • Nirntrotter
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    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.

    That's what I was trying to say. :) Basically more reworks (as tedious as they are, but the status quo is not exactly desirable) to make them an innately working class-like build that synergises not only with itself but also with the rest of the game(play).

    Grand Warlord Arodel, Gryphon Heart
    <Serenity>
    AD MagDK, *2014, PC-EU | 49k+ achievement points
  • Ragged_Claw
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    Thank you for taking the time to write this out. I've already given up because you usually just get met with 'well it's supposed to be a curse!' and 'but everyone was a vampire'. I was so excited when they announced the shake-up, because I've always wanted to be able to use actual vampire skills and I've been a vamp since launch. I assumed they would keep things pretty much the same, but add in a couple of new skills that were more useful (not OP, just useful) and give us a nice ult so we could stomp around as a vampire scion, more like the ww ulti, where you keep feeding to stay in form. But, oh dear. I still don't use the skills and I'm weaker than ever.

    I get that we can't be OP, but I do not feel like I'm a powerful creature of the night, I hit like a wet noodle, die quicker and run out of resources quicker so all I can do is stand there weakly waving my staff. I haven't cured myself yet, but if I want to take my main back into trials I think I would have to.

    I get that there have to be drawbacks, I get risk vs reward, but all I'm getting is the risk part. At the end of the day, it's supposed to be a game, it's supposed to be 'fun', but I think the fun factor got lost somewhere along the way.
    PC EU & NA
  • kylermacdb16_ESO
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    Vampire is little more than a self inflicted debuff at this point.
    Edited by kylermacdb16_ESO on July 15, 2020 3:32PM
  • buttaface
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    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 tanks 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.
    Edited by buttaface on July 15, 2020 6:41PM
  • Vevvev
    Vevvev
    ✭✭✭✭✭
    ✭✭✭✭✭
    buttaface wrote: »

    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.

    Did you even read OP's post? Probably not since you complained about it being too long in the first sentence of your reply. If you had you'd know that OP said this in regards to making a 100% vampire build.
    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.

    He's not saying its mandatory to make a 100% vampire build, but its expected by the devs because of the way they designed the non-vampire cost increase debuff. Also your supposed debunking of the the cost of the ultimate being okay has one flaw associated with it. By equipping vampire lord, or in your case back barring it, you're bringing the cost of the skill down to how it was on the PTS before the 6.0.3 patch. That was the original cost ZOS had wanted the vampire ultimate to be, and scaled the effects of the ultimate around that cost. Using up a 5 piece set to make the cost of an single ability within acceptable parameters is really bad in ESO, also that set once you flip to it is even further debuffing you with more flame damage and even more expensive skills on that bar that are not vampiric.

    One last thing I'll add is the only vampire skill that improves sustain at all is Eviscerate and its morphs. You won't be spamming mesmerize, you won't be spamming vampiric drain, you can't regenerate magicka in mistform, you're using non-vampire heals to keep up with the cost of blood frenzy, and the ultimate doesn't restore magicka or stamina unless you're a Dragonknight. Just increases the max values.
    PC NA - Ceyanna Ashton - Breton Vampire MagDK
  • SlimeBro1
    SlimeBro1
    ✭✭✭✭
    buttaface 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.

    Imagine complaining about length and therefore not reading the whole post. So naturally I'm going to say this to your post:

    HARD DISAGREE! Way too long and full of deck stacking to boot!


    Also take a quick gander, you're the only one on this thread that disagrees. And you can't even read the entire post OP made, [snip]

    OP is absolutely right. It's time for you to face the facts. Just because YOU like the rework, doesn't mean everyone else does. [snip]

    [edited for baiting]
    Edited by ZOS_FalcoYamaoka on July 15, 2020 7:41PM
  • buttaface
    buttaface
    ✭✭✭✭✭
    Vevvev wrote: »
    Did you even read OP's post?

    As my post was plainly and directly responsive to OP's post, not reading further than the above.
  • Nova_J
    Nova_J
    ✭✭✭✭
    buttaface 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.

    @buttaface
    Omg lol here we go again with you.
    First, that ult you are praising is supposed to be waaay cheaper than even 164ult cost. They made a stupid last minute decision to nerf the vamp skill reduction cost because they lowered the non-vamp skill cost increase from 5%-20% to 3%-12%. They never adjusted the cost to the of the vamp skills to the new reduction system. That's why blood frenzy, the ult, drain and mesmerize are so expensive. They should all be up to 16% cheaper than they actually are. That set that you are praising, technically isn't even working as intended. Not to mention that ult doesnt restore anything other than health. It just increases the max amount of resources you have, so if you pop it when you have no resources, you're still going to have no resources. That's why people compare to Bone Goliath so much, because its really just a health boost/"oh shi!" button.

    And idk what kind of tanks you've been talking to, but people who tank will use the most reliable CC or one with the most utility. Mesmerize has none of that, all it does is stun when it wants to. I have no problems with bone totem or gripping shards doing that. And not only do they do their job but they also provide secondary effects that can benefit me or the group.

    And I'm sorry, but drain is an absolute joke. The fact that you are even defending that skill is hilarious. I cant imagine anyone just stooping their rotation to use that skill to build ult 😂😂. That's so clunky.

    And mist form? It's okay, but you are hardly ever actually in it long enough to take advantage of the 75% dmg reduc that much (unless you are in pvp). Elusive mist isn't actually that elusive, and blood mist is actually really bad. It doesnt do enough tick damage and it requires you to sit in the mist to use it effectively. It's okay agaisnt trash mobs but outside of that? It sucks.
    Blood frenzy... just no.
    Edited by Nova_J on July 15, 2020 6:58PM
  • jan.denaanb16_ESO
    jan.denaanb16_ESO
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    Really well said and it completely reflects the reality of vampirism ingame... God knows what Zos was thinking with this.

    I cant believe that every point of feedback given on this topic is in the exact same direction... And yet they ignore it.
  • Fur_like_snow
    Fur_like_snow
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    Current vampire ultimate is nothing like the dynamic ult generation vampire of old how can you even compare? If I see someone use that awful ultimate in PvP I just walk away from them till it ends which at that point they die from the long animation stun which is more than enough time to burst. Other than PvP gankers and BfB dummy parsing vampire is a gimped skill line.
    Edited by Fur_like_snow on July 15, 2020 7:07PM
  • RobZha
    RobZha
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    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.
    Edited by RobZha on July 15, 2020 8:40PM
  • karekiz
    karekiz
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    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.
  • Vevvev
    Vevvev
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    karekiz wrote: »
    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.
    PC NA - Ceyanna Ashton - Breton Vampire MagDK
  • SlimeBro1
    SlimeBro1
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    Vevvev wrote: »
    karekiz wrote: »
    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.

    Yeah feels like we're playing as a blood fiend, not a vampire that was TURNED by Lamae Bal herself. A literal daughter of coldharbour.
  • NagualV
    NagualV
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    I'll just leave my two cents here -

    While not perfect, vampire is MUCH better now. Pvp perspective.

    You can build around the cost increases and put together a nice build with great sustain. Someone else mentioned already how blood frenzy can be used together with bats, damage mitigation from mist, increased damage out of mist......

    Not EVERYONE thinks it's bad, all I'm sayin...
  • Ryuvain
    Ryuvain
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    RobZha wrote: »
    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.

    Can't really compare vampire to werewolf at all. One main upside to vampire is being able to mix in class skills with extra vamp skills. Werewolves can't use anything else than their preset bar.

    They can also run out of being a werewolf completely.
    Edited by Ryuvain on July 16, 2020 2:47AM
    That one khajiit obsessed with werewolf behemoth and vampire lord. Lady Thorn is bae, dont @ me.
    Werewolf behemoth=vampire lord>blood scion>werewolf>vampire.
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