99.9% of ZoS comments are about comments being removed. The 0.1% is ZOS_Adrikoth liking your funny post.

I suspect the real goal was taking vampire out of serious consideration for grouping, while adding flashy visual skills that add overland flavor for solo play. They probably could have met those goals without obliterating the consistency of the lore. At this point, I'd be really shocked if they bothered changing anything else. They have moved on to their spreadsheet standardization and stat reworks. Vampire is irrelevant, and the few people who care will eventually stop making noise about it.

They know our displeasure on the subject and the feedback has been all over the place. Still there are people who use it, and people who see it as an improvement over the old system. I honestly don't agree with them since it feels like they took vampiric drain and split it into two different abilities, added a spammable, threw on a vampire transformation to please the people who had been begging for one for years, and then struggled to find a way to incorporate vampire's blood lust into the game so just made it a health drain channel and called it a day.

Then to top it off they didn't want players to just grab vampire for the passives and threw on a debuff they knew could not be ignored, the non-vampire cost increase. As much as I love criticizing the devs whoever thought of that debuff knew just how much sustain matters in this game, and realized that something like that would drive a stake into all plans to use the skill line for the passives.

Honestly I never saw an issue for taking vampirism for the passives since you were still sacrificing something. If they got rid of the unnatural resistance passive to make the health recovery detriment -0%/-25%/-50%/-75% instead of -0%/-0%/-25%/-50% the "You're getting the 10% stamina and magicka regeneration for free!" crowd wouldn't have had as strong of a platform to stand on. Still find it funny how they ignored how at stage 2 you still took 15% flame damage, 20% more damage from fighter's guild abilities, and could be hurt by prismatic weapon glyphs. The amount of damage you took at that stage was actually worse back then!

At the end of the day all I ask for is for stage 4 to have the health recovery detriment at -90%, Vampiric Drain to receive some sort of buff like the healing scaling with offensive stats, and for feeding to heal you. These three things alone would make playing a vampire more enjoyable for me since it would relieve the major pain points I have with the skill line.

Thematically, the increased skill cost makes sense because you become more like a bloodfiend. The part where it breaks down is where they try to convince you in game that you get stronger by feeding. They got it backwards, and it really breaks the experience. Every other vampire in the game is punished if they don't drink blood, lore wise. Player vampires are punished if they do drink blood. It's really a jarring break with the lore, and one that's really hard to even roleplay.

Yea, I'm a vampire and all, but not one of those blood drinking vampires, because if I were to actually drink, I'd lose my mind, abilities, and looks! Feeding feels more like a poor life choice than a requirement of a cursed existence.

Skill balance aside, the fact that they got the experience and feel of vampirism so wrong is really concerning to me. The fact that they are apparently done with this in spite of significantly negative feedback is also concerning. There was a poll on the PTS forum when this all presumably still had developer attention, and the vast majority of respondents told them the rework was bad and needed work. Since that wasn't enough to warrant change, I think there is little hope.

Honestly, it would make a world of difference if someone from Zos would acknowledge the significantly negative feedback, and put out a definitive statement letting us know whether they intend to do any further work on vampires.

I use it for the stealth speed passive. For me it's worth the negatives, since I can stay at stage 1.

Actually, I find it to be less useful for a magblade, since they can spam cloak and not worry about run speed reduction in stealth.

Of course, bow gankers are also making use of an otherwise garbage skill (frenzy).

And then there's those that use mist form.

Ultimately, it seems like all the benefits are PvP related, and for PvE it's worthless.

Nomadic_Atmoran wrote: »

They learned a long time ago that responding to player feedback almost never goes well for them. People attack them whether they are right, wrong and often times about completely off topic things. Why address your feedback if theres going to be mudslinging regardless of how they respond? Might as well look it over, take it into consideration and just not acknowledge the players while doing it.


You can't demand communication when the community itself doesn't have the self-control to handle bad news or answers they don't like without it turning ugly.

It doesn't have to rise to the level of point by point responses to each specific player idea, of course. However, it would be a respectful courtesy to indicate that yes, they are listening to their players and do in fact plan to consider changes, or conversely, they are satisfied with their efforts and vampire in practice is working precisely as intended.

Communication between dev and ops is one of the critical underpinnings of modern development efforts, after all.

And another one.

I want so much to have vampirism and use vampire skills. But no matter what i do, there are always better alternative skills. Especially on a magblade. And also class passives are generally way better.

Vampire spammable = 2cm range, and an extremly bad and boring animation.

Drain... literally useless. it does next to nothing damage, while it puts you at high risk of getting interrupted and stunned.

The damage buff thing costs way to much to use for the little amount of spelldamage given and i get deleted. useless.

Mezmerize is not good at all, as it only seems to land like 1 out of 5 uses... Nightblade fear is simply a better option.

Mistform= might be the only somewhat usefull skill in the set but seeing as i cant heal myself at all while in mistform and it locks me out of literally any action i am not using it. Bloodmist is my favorite morph but its heal is far to weak and movement is too slow. so not using that...

The ultimate is the only skill i am using on the characters that have vampirism. And my ganker only uses the passive from stage 2 and stealth movement speed...and thats it..

I generally only play PvP.

Ulthlian wrote: »

I think that skill line needs some tweaks here and there to make it viable and fun choice for magicka and stamina damage dealers at least.
Here is a list of what should be changed/added IMO:

• Blood for Blood scales from highest offensive stat, and get more crit chance for every 10% of missing target health for bonus execute damage in melee range; also increases healing received from vampiric abilities and passives by 10%, reduces healing from other sources by 75% for 5 seconds after cast.
• Arterial burst is 28 meters ranged, procs burning and chilled status effects (blood boil and blood freeze) with 10% chance at full target health plus 10% chance for every 10% of target's HP missing.
• Sated Fury gives you a shield for 33% of the total health cost you spent while it was toggled on (but 60% of max HP is the cap for micromanagement for burst/save phases). Duration is 8 seconds.
• Simmering Frenzy reduces damage taken by 10% when toggled on in addition to existing effects.
• Drain Vigor becomes a single target tether with 22 meter range, scales with stamina, heals for 75% of the damage done and increases stam regen by 100. Duration is 10 seconds. You can press the button again to rush in a swarm of bats to the target dealing some damage and healing yourself, but tether duration is reduced by 2 seconds.
• Exhilarating Drain becomes a single target DoT with 28 meter range, scales with magicka, heals for 75% of the damage done and affects target with minor lifesteal. Duration is 10 seconds.
• Hypnosis and Stupefy get a new effect: ability damages all affected targets when stun ends (or target breaks free) and heals you for 30%/100% of the damage dealt respectively.
• Blood Mist and Elusive Mist give you minor expedition when toggled and for 3 seconds after leaving mist form.
• Swarming Scion affects all targets damaged by the bat swarm with minor lifesteal.
• Perfect Scion give you minor intellect and endurance when slotted.
• Feed heals you and reduces HP regen penalty by 10% for 1 hour. Stacks up to 2 times.

Something or maybe everything may seem imbalanced, but its just ideas.

I agree with most of what you wrote but still seems a little bit weak for me as how a Vampire with noxiphilic sanguivoria is suppose to be. The Exhilarating Drain for me need to heal for 100% the damage done btw. Hypnosis and Stupefy should heal for every single damage you deal on the enemy during the stun. And bruh you almost fixed the entire skill line. Oh and the Sated Fury giving shield i don't think this looks like a vampire thing, the Sated Fury should give more damage and not kill ourselves when doing it, it should be like a 10s skill with 15 cd.

Vevvev wrote: »

Ulthlian wrote: »

• Feed heals you and reduces HP regen penalty by 10% for 1 hour. Stacks up to 2 times.

I agree with everything on the list, but that little part about the feeding would be amazing! Hits home with the feeding makes you stronger, incentivizes you to keep on feeding, and is long enough to be noticeable without going over the 4 hour stage timer!

Maybe have it degrade by 1 stack every hour so both stacks combined equal 2 hours ((50% of the time on a stage)) so it isn't too fleeting of a buff.

Seconded! This was one of the things I sent as /feedback on the PTS when it was overhauled and mentioned in a couple of threads way back when so I'm happy others are coming to the same idea! The degrading idea's pretty well balanced too.

I like most of this,
i would have had a Base set of each at Vampirism 1 that increased with each lvl of Vampirism. Vampirism Degrades back to 1 over time making you weaker if you don't feed through these blood-based abilities. Each Time you use them builds up your vampirism on a progression bar, once you max it out you go into a Blood Fury doubling the Skills you use.
Personally i think there needs to be something for everyone built into the Vampires.
and These idea's you presented give alot of that.
a Morph for DPS and for tanks and Healers, i think that vampires should be more in siphoning, this whole negative stat idea is the worse thing anyone could have come up with in the end results.