I miss the previous feeding stages. The reverse doesn't really make sense, both mechanically and lore wise. And aesthetics wise I preferred the bluish tint to skills from before, not this neo pink we got now. Some stamina morphs to skills would be nice, since my only vampire atm (rp reasons) is a stam blade.

I do not believe that Perfect Scion is "utter useless". It depends. Perfect Scion is better morph if you want to stay at range - damage boost through +10k magica, no cost increase of your ranged class/weapon spammable anymore (psijic line has Clairvoyance, but still, we use other skills too), helps sustain blood frenzy and its morphs.


I didn't like the vampire, because to use all his passive skills, you have to be in the fourth stage, and it causes some inconvenience. It is necessary to adjust the original build of the character to it, and in the end I felt like some kind of limited necromancer and limited vampire.I will try someday again, when i get false god and some monster sets, but I will still feel myself gimped.

IMHO a vampire (and a werewolf) should be presented in the game as a class and the prologue for them should tell how you got to such a life, then they will have three branches of skills like everyone else and on this one could build a good vampire gameplay not spoiling the original character class. People would play pure vampires and pure werewolves and feel like they are, and not someone in between.

EDIT: I don't really care about looks of the scion. I do not like the fact that I am automatically transferred to the third person view after transformation and I can not go back to the usual first person view.

Just want to clarify: werewolves aren't like npcs either. They can use magic, stay in form, and also have behemoth.

Also werewolf lords using claws if anyone remembers.

ccfeeling wrote: »

Who will slot vampire ultimate?

Why dev create something no people interested?

A vampire.
There are people interested.
Vampire can be interesting strong solo build.

I like a lot about the new vampire but there are many things I dislike about it too.

The feeding reversal was a mistake. Gameplay is a form of storytelling and has a narrative purpose. By letting players become vampires, you give people access to experience what it's like to be a vampire in the Elder Scrolls universe. The feeding reversal makes it so that you do not get to experience what it's like to be a vampire, but rather a very specific brand of vampire. Now that was the case in previous games too, but not to such a drastic extend. Mechanically it rarely mattered if you are from the Berne clan or a Volkihar. Lamae's clan functions fundamentally different from all the others because of her experiments! Some people prefer it that way, and they are free to do so, but enforcing a niche to become the mainstream is kind of defeating the narrative purpose that gameplay serves. Any future update to vampirism should allow us to make a choice if we want to be a standard vampire or one of Lamae's guinea pigs.

Furthermore it is a pain to switch between the vampire stages because there are no ways of lowering your stage without Bloody Mara and when you are stage 4 and can't interact with NPCs you need to wait or waste a skill point. In the old system you could feed to lower your stage and use vampire skills to increase your stage. I get why this wouldn't work for the new system, but the stages were a lot easier to manage before.

The stages of vampirism are too binary for what should have been a quarternary system.
Vampires get all the benefits to vampirsm at advanced stages but only little benefits at stage one, yet all of the drawbacks are already present at the first stage. This makes Stage 1 undesirable but the drawbacks without the boni of the late stages are not worth it, so you either go all the way to stage 4, or you get yourself cured. Stage 1 vampires should get no drawbacks aside from additional fire damage taken, but no further benefits aside from access to the passives and skills. That allows people to be a vampire for roleplaying purposes without damaging their effectiveness in any other content. Starting at Stage 2, the weakness to fire should become progressively worse, just like now, but instead of skill cost increase, vampire skill cost reduction and health regeneration reduction vampires should get a penalty to healing received from non-vampire abilities.
Whether Health regeneration should be put to 0 or actually increased is up to debate. There are good arguements for either side. Perhaps it should be put to 0 out of combat, but jump up whenever you've dealt damage?
As for the passives, Strike from the Shadows should be active at stage 1 and scale with your stage, either in duration or amount of weapon/spell damage granted. Unnatural Movement should also scale, allowing you to become invisible after sprinting for 12/9/6/3 seconds depending on stage. These little changes already dramatically change the vampire experience for the better and help to distinguish your build from its mortal counterpart without impacting its effectiveness.

There is more to be said about the active abilities than I have the time for right now, so I might add something later. I just find it a criminal offense that vampires do not get to apply "major lifesteal" anywhere on their kit and that they only heal from damage inflicted when using ring of the pale order or activate their ultimate.

Vampire is designed to be its own class instead of being a suplement to it.
The cost increase to your regular skills is the biggest thing that's holding vampirism back. I get why becoming a vampire would make me a worse Templar but there is absolutely no reason it would make me a worse necromancer. Why does my necromancy get more difficult if I want to be a vampire? There are plenty of great vampire necromancers around.
Vampirism is supposed to add a twist to each class, instead what we get is that you have to design a vampire build and use as many of the vampire skills as possible to be efficient as a vampire. That makes absolutely no sense and makes all vampire builds feel the same. While this design makes sense for the werewolf transformation and would make sense for a vampire lord transformation in the style of the werewolf, it doesn't for your average untransformed vampire. I get why we cannot let vampirism make your average skills cheaper anymore, but making them more expensive is just wrong.

Ratzkifal wrote: »

I like a lot about the new vampire but there are many things I dislike about it too.

The feeding reversal was a mistake. Gameplay is a form of storytelling and has a narrative purpose. By letting players become vampires, you give people access to experience what it's like to be a vampire in the Elder Scrolls universe. The feeding reversal makes it so that you do not get to experience what it's like to be a vampire, but rather a very specific brand of vampire. Now that was the case in previous games too, but not to such a drastic extend. Mechanically it rarely mattered if you are from the Berne clan or a Volkihar. Lamae's clan functions fundamentally different from all the others because of her experiments! Some people prefer it that way, and they are free to do so, but enforcing a niche to become the mainstream is kind of defeating the narrative purpose that gameplay serves. Any future update to vampirism should allow us to make a choice if we want to be a standard vampire or one of Lamae's guinea pigs.

Furthermore it is a pain to switch between the vampire stages because there are no ways of lowering your stage without Bloody Mara and when you are stage 4 and can't interact with NPCs you need to wait or waste a skill point. In the old system you could feed to lower your stage and use vampire skills to increase your stage. I get why this wouldn't work for the new system, but the stages were a lot easier to manage before.

The stages of vampirism are too binary for what should have been a quarternary system.
Vampires get all the benefits to vampirsm at advanced stages but only little benefits at stage one, yet all of the drawbacks are already present at the first stage. This makes Stage 1 undesirable but the drawbacks without the boni of the late stages are not worth it, so you either go all the way to stage 4, or you get yourself cured. Stage 1 vampires should get no drawbacks aside from additional fire damage taken, but no further benefits aside from access to the passives and skills. That allows people to be a vampire for roleplaying purposes without damaging their effectiveness in any other content. Starting at Stage 2, the weakness to fire should become progressively worse, just like now, but instead of skill cost increase, vampire skill cost reduction and health regeneration reduction vampires should get a penalty to healing received from non-vampire abilities.
Whether Health regeneration should be put to 0 or actually increased is up to debate. There are good arguements for either side. Perhaps it should be put to 0 out of combat, but jump up whenever you've dealt damage?
As for the passives, Strike from the Shadows should be active at stage 1 and scale with your stage, either in duration or amount of weapon/spell damage granted. Unnatural Movement should also scale, allowing you to become invisible after sprinting for 12/9/6/3 seconds depending on stage. These little changes already dramatically change the vampire experience for the better and help to distinguish your build from its mortal counterpart without impacting its effectiveness.

There is more to be said about the active abilities than I have the time for right now, so I might add something later. I just find it a criminal offense that vampires do not get to apply "major lifesteal" anywhere on their kit and that they only heal from damage inflicted when using ring of the pale order or activate their ultimate.

Vampire is designed to be its own class instead of being a suplement to it.
The cost increase to your regular skills is the biggest thing that's holding vampirism back. I get why becoming a vampire would make me a worse Templar but there is absolutely no reason it would make me a worse necromancer. Why does my necromancy get more difficult if I want to be a vampire? There are plenty of great vampire necromancers around.
Vampirism is supposed to add a twist to each class, instead what we get is that you have to design a vampire build and use as many of the vampire skills as possible to be efficient as a vampire. That makes absolutely no sense and makes all vampire builds feel the same. While this design makes sense for the werewolf transformation and would make sense for a vampire lord transformation in the style of the werewolf, it doesn't for your average untransformed vampire. I get why we cannot let vampirism make your average skills cheaper anymore, but making them more expensive is just wrong.

I do agree with most of what you said, but your changes to passives and stages would break balance again.

The scaling passives with no cost increase downside sound amazing, but at that point why would anyone NOT be a vampire? You get all passives and skills at level 1. Fire damage doesn't exist in all content.

but..but..blood frenzy ticks all the boxes as to what it means to be a vampire!

Ryuvain wrote: »

Ratzkifal wrote: »

I like a lot about the new vampire but there are many things I dislike about it too.

The feeding reversal was a mistake. Gameplay is a form of storytelling and has a narrative purpose. By letting players become vampires, you give people access to experience what it's like to be a vampire in the Elder Scrolls universe. The feeding reversal makes it so that you do not get to experience what it's like to be a vampire, but rather a very specific brand of vampire. Now that was the case in previous games too, but not to such a drastic extend. Mechanically it rarely mattered if you are from the Berne clan or a Volkihar. Lamae's clan functions fundamentally different from all the others because of her experiments! Some people prefer it that way, and they are free to do so, but enforcing a niche to become the mainstream is kind of defeating the narrative purpose that gameplay serves. Any future update to vampirism should allow us to make a choice if we want to be a standard vampire or one of Lamae's guinea pigs.

Furthermore it is a pain to switch between the vampire stages because there are no ways of lowering your stage without Bloody Mara and when you are stage 4 and can't interact with NPCs you need to wait or waste a skill point. In the old system you could feed to lower your stage and use vampire skills to increase your stage. I get why this wouldn't work for the new system, but the stages were a lot easier to manage before.

The stages of vampirism are too binary for what should have been a quarternary system.
Vampires get all the benefits to vampirsm at advanced stages but only little benefits at stage one, yet all of the drawbacks are already present at the first stage. This makes Stage 1 undesirable but the drawbacks without the boni of the late stages are not worth it, so you either go all the way to stage 4, or you get yourself cured. Stage 1 vampires should get no drawbacks aside from additional fire damage taken, but no further benefits aside from access to the passives and skills. That allows people to be a vampire for roleplaying purposes without damaging their effectiveness in any other content. Starting at Stage 2, the weakness to fire should become progressively worse, just like now, but instead of skill cost increase, vampire skill cost reduction and health regeneration reduction vampires should get a penalty to healing received from non-vampire abilities.
Whether Health regeneration should be put to 0 or actually increased is up to debate. There are good arguements for either side. Perhaps it should be put to 0 out of combat, but jump up whenever you've dealt damage?
As for the passives, Strike from the Shadows should be active at stage 1 and scale with your stage, either in duration or amount of weapon/spell damage granted. Unnatural Movement should also scale, allowing you to become invisible after sprinting for 12/9/6/3 seconds depending on stage. These little changes already dramatically change the vampire experience for the better and help to distinguish your build from its mortal counterpart without impacting its effectiveness.

There is more to be said about the active abilities than I have the time for right now, so I might add something later. I just find it a criminal offense that vampires do not get to apply "major lifesteal" anywhere on their kit and that they only heal from damage inflicted when using ring of the pale order or activate their ultimate.

Vampire is designed to be its own class instead of being a suplement to it.
The cost increase to your regular skills is the biggest thing that's holding vampirism back. I get why becoming a vampire would make me a worse Templar but there is absolutely no reason it would make me a worse necromancer. Why does my necromancy get more difficult if I want to be a vampire? There are plenty of great vampire necromancers around.
Vampirism is supposed to add a twist to each class, instead what we get is that you have to design a vampire build and use as many of the vampire skills as possible to be efficient as a vampire. That makes absolutely no sense and makes all vampire builds feel the same. While this design makes sense for the werewolf transformation and would make sense for a vampire lord transformation in the style of the werewolf, it doesn't for your average untransformed vampire. I get why we cannot let vampirism make your average skills cheaper anymore, but making them more expensive is just wrong.

I do agree with most of what you said, but your changes to passives and stages would break balance again.

The scaling passives with no cost increase downside sound amazing, but at that point why would anyone NOT be a vampire? You get all passives and skills at level 1. Fire damage doesn't exist in all content.

Originally I just wanted to make a quick post, but it just kept growing. I'll have to come back again to look at the balance of my ramblings. The reduction to healing received can make a difference in some content though, so perhaps it should be there from the start? For example you wouldn't want your vampire to do tombs in Lokkestiiz due to that. But compared to how it was before the rework, vampire was free stats. With my suggestions it only offers niche boni at stage 1 but also no downsides, unless you plan on using the skills, in which case it's still awesome. I feel that's still better than vampire being must have. That way the only reason it could ever be a "must have" is if one of the skills was broken and overpowered.