Vevvev wrote: »

Elusive mist used to come with a unique 60% (or was it 70%? I forgot) movement speed buff instead of major expedition which it has today. People were using it as the ultimate kiting tool since they ignored 75% of all damage and couldn't be CC'd during the 3 seconds it was active per cast.

It was definitely around there! I had fun Ring-Around-The-Rosies with everything. Until Time Stop and people figured out how to time it just right to get me right as I was coming out of Mist Form. That's when I'd get dragon-leaped to death. Not just by one, oh no. There was usually three or four.

DT-ARR wrote: »

Correct me if i’m wrong, perhaps there are factors im not taking into account, but my mag NB concealed weapon tooltip is the same as eviscerate . And this is without the zero (0%) health recovery, +12% regular ability cost, and increased flame damage taken, and an inability to be healed by others in group content...to say nothing of the outright annoyance of regular merchants refusing to talk to you when at stage 4 unless youve got a particular skill/morph slotted.

So it seems like its simply on par with other magicka melee spammables and elevated over standard range attacks of most classes because of the additional risk of being in melee range and the lack of flexibility that comes with it.

And you're not wrong, although it really depends on what class you are (race also ties in too if you're minmaxing or reducing skill cost). Nightblade, by far, is the most optimized class for Vampirism. For something like Magicka Necromancer however really isn't if we're talking about spammables. So we have to look at Staging.

Stage 1/2 are probably the most optimal if you plan on using a class spammable, however after that you have to really start considering what kind of impact your spammable will have on your resources. Since Blood for Blood was easily offset by healers, this was the optimal morph because it was essentially free and they could min-max health pools to reach rather efficiently. That's what made Vampirism BiS for about a week or two until it was nerfed into the ground along with Blood Frenzy (it's ramping cost of 20% health/s). Arterial Burst also received a nerf, but a little smaller. The further you advance your Staging, the cheaper these things are. Without Blood Frenzy or potions (just Max Health/Magicka foods).

After that, it's a matter of damage for the class. For me as a Magicka Necromancer

• Ricochet Skill (cost = 2592 at Stage 4 for me), for my current set up, it's base is 8882 and every third cast will be 10,658. Can proc Burning.
• Hungry Scythe (cost = 2851 at Stage 4) is 7,463.
• Crushing Shock (cost = 2332 at Stage 4) is 8598 all split between all three ticks of damage. (Procs status effects and enchants)
• Elemental Weapon (Cost = 2622 at Stage 4) is 9778. Procs Burning, Concussion, or Chill.

Arterial burst (cost = 1465 at Stage 4) with 10,886 since I'm using heal modifiers in my CP (as I'm playing with the ring off and on). So in all cases, it's overall a better spammable for single target damage. I could very well go higher, but at that point I'd be sacrificing those modifiers or crit. With no health recovery, it doesn't help, but in a group I don't use anything that cuts me off of healing anyways since I like my group buffs. So it's on par and sometimes better with the other spammables I have access to. So while ranged does play into it, for getting the most damage possible out of my spammables that I have access to, this one comes up on top for me.



Now Blood Frenzy does has it's issues as I'm starting to notice. Smart Healing still targets people with the "can't be healed by another person" mechanic, which means that even in my groups where they don't care that I run these things? I'm still getting targeted by the heals (but not being healed, nor getting the buffs) which means it's not going to the rest of my group who needs them. I think this is a massive oversight that really should be addressed in future threads going on, but that's probably better for a new post entirely (though I don't even think they'll look at them).

Edit: And that last part could just be me overthinking it, but it really felt like I was getting hit by some of the rando-target heals more than the others in my group was based on my health thresholds. Not sure if anyone else can confirm that or not, but it didn't sit well with me.

Where the real problems with vamp are:

-Lowest level of vampirism has deficits, right away makes it not worth taking. If they added a vamp 0 status (satiated perhaps) where you are unable to use vamp abilities other than the ult for example, would be a lot more flexible
-health costs too high without ring of pale order for every health cost ability

Remove the debuff of health recovery.. Not fair too much downside @ZOS_BrianWheeler

Sephyr wrote: »

Vevvev wrote: »

The healing unhealable targets must be an oversight... But then again when I used Arterial Burst and Sated Fury together in group content it was nice to turn Blood Frenzy off and immediately receive the heals. Sadly that's the only beneficial situation as Blood for Blood and the Ring can't simply just stop their effect in combat, at least not instantly.

When comparing spammables you have to take into account passives. Like Destruction staff skills ignore 10% of a target's spell resistance which is why it deals a little less damage, and Elemental Weapon has the spell orb passive that procs after 5 uses consecutively. I've seen that orb hit for pretty hard and it seems to be worth half of a spammable in terms of damage. (Of course that's over simplifying things)
The vampire spammable doesn't benefit from many passives since the vampire passives are more focused on the experience of being a vampire than boosting the skills themselves. Why I stay as a Dragonknight since that class synergizes with melee abilities very well with boosting their range to 7m over 5m.

You're right, we do have to take into account passives. But we also have to take into account the nuances of classes as well. What may work for a Magicka Dragonknight won't always work well for a Magicka Necromancer due to how the classes are designed. Death Gleaning as a passive only works with high mob density. We get Undead Confederate which gives us 200 Magicka/Stamina Recovery when Blastones/Skeletal Mage/Spirit Mender is up and it doesn't stack with each other. Mystic Siphon only restores 1295 Magicka over 12 seconds. Self-synergizing is a thing with Undaunted passives, but not everyone is going to have that. Arguably not enough to justify the resource costs at Stages 3-4, which is where I operate from. DoTs for the class cost around 3.4k-3.6k and if you're running the Skeletal Mage, you're pushing 3.9k-4.1k at those Stages. Running anything BUT the Vampire spammable cuts into those along with their uptimes. Why do I run it so high? Undeath and with my health regen I may as well just run Stage 4 anyways because in combat, it's negligible.

So it really depends what you want to sacrifice and why based on class, race, and what you want to run. But that's commonplace in anything excluding vampirism as well.

Quick Ninja Edit here; With the above my premise is also for the people who use the "Now you have to BUILD a vampire argument" when I know most of them are just staying at Stage 1 to take advantage of the freebee Dark Stalker passive. So I do, in fact, build for vampirism. Just using unconventional stuff that works.

Arterial burst is worth it on magicka warden (imo) as it gains so much raw damage boosting to magic damage and damage in general. Specifically in the case of pvp. Its nice to have the extra burst damage on your spammable. It's instant as well as opposed to elemental weapon or SCR which are delayed. As you're constantly taking damage in pvp, you'll gain at least a couple of percent of bonus damage. While it is melee range, you can offset that by also running SCR sort of like people used to, like a ranged delayed direct damage skill.