Kardrik wrote: »

Hello everyone! First post!


So I have a lot of vampires at this point, largely because I love how playing one is just a bit different than playing said class. (I.E how Vamp Magplar is just a bit diff than regular magplar), and I love the concept, I'm just more than a little unhappy with its execution.
I like playing Vampires in general, I also love playing Vampire hunters too! I just love the stuff in general


So I got some concepts that I am unhappy with and will address them in this order, and many of the problems and proposed solutions overlap!

1. Stealing Life - Vampires steal life from their enemies, but ESO vamps right now are more about stealing life from themselves? Lets introduce some more stealing life into the tree!
2. Squishiness and Durability - Lore about vampires is that they very hard for common weapons and methods to kill, but they are very vulnerable to some specific things. Right now Vamps are just squishier, lets fix that!
3. Vampire Stages - Stage 4 Vamps are too similar to Stage 1 vamps in gameplay, and for most content most of the differences are downsides! The two problems can be fixed together!
4. Blood for Blood - 'Nuff said!
5. STAMINA - Why are they left out of most of the vampire fun! Stamina builds should be able to go Vamp, too! #StamVampsMatter
6. The Minor Complaint - Stage 4 lasts way too long!
7. Summary - The summary! This is where I kinda detail out what I see the end of all these changes turning into!

1. Stealing Life

Vampires are bloodsuckers! They take other living things health to make them stronger or sustain their life, yet in gameplay the ESO vamps are much about being squishy and sacrifincing what little we have for a big burst of damage? I think Vamps need more draining the enemy in their skills!

Arterial Burst - Heal for a portion of the damage done

• I like this idea a bit because having the vamps main spammable steal some health makes sense! Because Vampire, I feel like they should be constantly draining some health! It also gives a little health to the health seesaw that the devs want it to have. It also makes the execute a little harder to get, which encourages you to use stuff like blood frenzy more! Synergy!

Blood Mist - Heals for a portion of the damage done + increase the speed a bit (and I echo that blood mist should have more of a bat effect!)

• This one is dicey, I know. It would have to be super small, but if its small then it would be neat to have without it being a "You can't hurt me while I heal to full", especially with magicka costs in mind.
• I think it should be just as fast as that jog you do when you're not sprinting, and Elusive Mist should be just as fast as sprinting

2. Squishiness and Durability

A concept I like about vampires in general is that they are really hard to kill in most circumstances, but if you know what you're doing they'll downright fold. Take a steel axe and the Vampire will laugh at you, but some silver and fire will change the sound its making at you from a laugh to a cry!
Is there a way to make this reflect in game? Not quite to that extent, that would be unbalanced!

Blood Frenzy - decrease damage taken (or could be just physical/poison damage taken)

• Decreasing damage taken would make it a smidge less risky, and then it would be used more! Combine this with Arterial Burst giving a slight heal and Vampiric drain being useful, this ability would actually see some use!

Passive - Physical Damage taken half of their increased flame damage (at Stage 4 -10% Physical Damage Taken, +20% Flame Damage Taken)

• This makes the damage taken profile for vamps different, not just squishier than a standard character, which I thought was more the point? To make vampires different, not necessarily stronger or weaker!
• This works really well for Blood Frenzy, which easily allows a vampire to die during a stun! Blood Frenzied vamp + stun + flame damage equals dead vampire, doofus whacking at vampire with an axe equals kill happy vampire. Again, vampires are durable to most things that commonly kill a human, but properly fight a vampire and that thing is dead! (I like playing Vampire Hunter characters as much as I like playing Vampires) (Ritual of Retribution nerf hurts me, too )

3. Vampire Stages

Stage 1 Vampires are much closer to their humanity (and whatever Mer refer to their personhood as) than Stage 4 Vampires. Reducing the cost of the abilities was a good start, and would suffice for the Vampire non-damaging abilities! But for the damaging abilities I think they also need to hit harder as you go higher in stage, so that they lean more on them in higher stages than in lower ones!

Eviscerate - Make the damage equal the tooltip for other class spammables, and increase the damage slightly per vampire stage

• That way eviscerate is an option to the class spammables for the Stage 1 vampires that want to play more like a standard class, but isn't forcing them towards either one. Options! They do get more forced to choose the Eviscerate morph of their choice as they feed more and go higher in stage.

Vampiric Drain - Does higher damage and heals more at higher stages than lower stages

• Making this more worthwhile for damage and healing for the stage 4 vampire, combine that with the cost decreases means the Stage 4 would also be using their ultimate a lot more than Stage 1 would if using Exhilirating Drain!
• Making Vampiric Drain give more stamina per stage may make proposed Stamina builds use Vampiric Drain to get their stamina back, more on that later!
• This alongside the cost decreases to higher stages would mean that stage 4 vamps would be using that ultimate a lot more than their lower counterparts with exhilirating drain!
• Like I said, making vamp abilities largely stronger (not just cheaper!) as the stage increases means a real difference in gameplay between a Stage 1(fights much more like a standard class) than a stage 4 (more vampiric!) and even between Magicka and Stamina vampires!

4. Blood for Blood

I don't like that this is carrying the Vampire skill line, and I don't like that nerfing it makes vampires unusable. That being said, I also don't like that it can singlehandedly carry some builds sustain, and I am not particularly fond of it taking health to use, but we can work with that. BfB should not be a free pass for builds with terrible sustain, but it shouldn't make the vamp unusable in group content! Let the healer heal the vamp some, but stll make the vamp more reliant on selfheals.

Reduce the healing done by party members for 3s after BfB, but not eliminate it

• I don't like the idea of adding minor defile because that also reduces the healing you do yourself, no? The idea behind removing all healing done to you for a time after using it is to make the vampire more reliant upon self healing. One of the major problems, which I address a little later, is that Vampires at the moment have straight up abysmal self healing!
• Make the healing done by party member reduced for higher stages.

Make Blood for Blood scale off of max offensive stats

• It neither uses Magicka or Stamina, but its inacessible to stamina builds? No reason for it not to work for stamina builds! Why can't my stam builds have some bloodsucking fun, too?

5. STAMINA

If Vampires are meant to be an addition to the class, why can't stamina builds join in on the fun? Only thing stamina gets much of from being a vamp is the cost increases and the increased damage intake!
Sure you could go vampire for just the non-damage giving skills, like Mesmerize and Mist, but you're biting that overall class cost increase!
This game likes to do magicka and stamina morphs, not a particular fan of that kind of shoe-horning from a game that (at least at first) was kind of a "build your class your way" kinda way, but that leads to a few straightforward fixes for stamina builds.

Make Blood for Blood scale off of your highest offensive stats

• both builds can use eviscerate!

Make that weird stamina giving morph of vampiric drain actually scale off of max stamina/weapon damage

• That will make it actually useful for somebody!
• Of course keep it as a magicka cost, combine this with the proposed damage and healing increases and Stamina Vampires might use drain instead of heavy attack in some cases to regain their stamina!
• That would be a significant difference in play between Magicka Vamps (Exhilirating - using vamp ultimate more) and Stamina Vamps (Regening Stam with Drain)

6. The Minor Complaint

And now something relatively minor that bothers me
The promotion material said basically for the higher stages you need to be dedicated to the vampiric way, draining mortals left and right! Greymoor gets released, and the stages all last... 4 hours? Thats like once a login or more for most players! That's not dedication!
I would think that it would take much more blood to sustain a higher level of vampirism, so if we want to go the gameplay time between feedings route I think Stage 4 should last a significantly shorter time than Stage 2 does.

My idea would be to stagger them!

• Stage 2 - 4 hours
• Stage 3 - 2 or 3 hours
• Stage 4 - 1 or 2 hours

I really want stage 1 to only last an hour, but I think thats the filthy causal in me speaking! For questing and solo content that makes the most sense, but for longer group content that would be quite the pain. I'm thinking for longer raids that run into issues that might be harder to sustain. Into a multihour raid some players would be unhappy if their vamp powers got weaker while waiting for people to go bio!
But at the same time I feel like if I wanna stay stage 4, I definitely need to act more like a bloodsucking monster feeding on NPC's left and right!



7. Summary
So in summary, the way I see the vamps working with all my proposed changes works something like this

Stage 1 Vampires function more or less how they do now except

• Arterial Burst also heals a little bit[
• Frenzy is a little less risky, since it decreases some damage taken.
• Mist is slightly faster, and blood mist heals a little bit
• They take 2.5% less physical (and maybe poison?) damage taken to go with their 5% increase in flame damage taken
• Stamina Vampires can join the fun, too! BfB and that stamina drain are accessible to them now!

Stage 4 Vampires would play a lot differently than Stage 1's

• Regular abilities are more costly, So using Vampire abilities is a must now, but now they're actually better!
• Much more Eviscerate and Drain use!
• For Magicka Vamps (Exhilirating), they become Vampire Lords a lot more often than their stage 1 or Stamina counterparts)
• Stamina Vampires regen their Stamina pool with drain as well, and its viable to do so!
• They take noticeably less damage from Physical attacks, and a lot more damage from Flame and Fighters Guild abilities! So as a stage 4 you are really ducking that DK or those Flame Walls!
  As stage 4, you are a monster! You need to feed! You use lots of Vampire Abilities, and you feel strong on top of the world until some clever sod throws a candle at you!

Now I am not a numbers guy yet, so I know its really easy to unbalance things and make Vampires too strong!
But I think with the conceptual benefits listed above it gives the devs more things to tweak to make them good!
And I think this nudges Vampires right in the stronger direction!

I like a lot of the concepts the devs have for Vampires here, but they need some tweaks for the concepts to make it to gameplay!
What do you all think?
I think I spent way too much time agonizing over whether or not to italicize the contents of the lists!