Vampire has never been bad. They have great passives, and the downsides are easily able to be avoided if you build for them. I play most of my characters at stage 4, and the extra fire damage is not noticeable. Mist form is a really fun skill, and great for the extra damage mitigation, even on a stam toon.
It's all up to you what you prefer with skills. I would mess around with them and see which you enjoy more.
My main is a vampire stamblade, and I like to be at stage 4 the whole time. I use the health+ recovery food for the sustain and extra survivability, and I can spam skills for days with a couple heavy attacks in between. I've also used a magicka setup with the same kind of food with mag recovery instead, and I get the same sustain on it.
I also like to take advantage of the passives, especially Undeath, which is one of my favorites. I've always played at stage 4, and have had not issues with the negatives at all. Again, it's how you build your character.
[snip]
WhereArtThouVampires wrote: »Vampire has never been bad. They have great passives, and the downsides are easily able to be avoided if you build for them. I play most of my characters at stage 4, and the extra fire damage is not noticeable. Mist form is a really fun skill, and great for the extra damage mitigation, even on a stam toon.
It's all up to you what you prefer with skills. I would mess around with them and see which you enjoy more.
My main is a vampire stamblade, and I like to be at stage 4 the whole time. I use the health+ recovery food for the sustain and extra survivability, and I can spam skills for days with a couple heavy attacks in between. I've also used a magicka setup with the same kind of food with mag recovery instead, and I get the same sustain on it.
I also like to take advantage of the passives, especially Undeath, which is one of my favorites. I've always played at stage 4, and have had not issues with the negatives at all. Again, it's how you build your character.
[snip]
Vamp is trash. And badly designed. That's the harsh truth. Especially on a stamblade. Feel free to post your build and what content you do in order to prove me wrong. But objectively stamblade does not work with vampire unless you are purely just blood frenzy poison shot/snipe spam ganking in PvP.
[snip]
Also, objectively your stamblade would be way more effective if they weren't a stage 4 vampire due to all the weaknesses and downsides presented with such. Not to mention not being able to use any of the skills in the kit aside from Blood frenzy.
[snip] Because as someone who has also tested stam and magicka variants of vampire, I can tell you magicka is and will always be better
WhereArtThouVampires wrote: »Vampire has never been bad. They have great passives, and the downsides are easily able to be avoided if you build for them. I play most of my characters at stage 4, and the extra fire damage is not noticeable. Mist form is a really fun skill, and great for the extra damage mitigation, even on a stam toon.
It's all up to you what you prefer with skills. I would mess around with them and see which you enjoy more.
My main is a vampire stamblade, and I like to be at stage 4 the whole time. I use the health+ recovery food for the sustain and extra survivability, and I can spam skills for days with a couple heavy attacks in between. I've also used a magicka setup with the same kind of food with mag recovery instead, and I get the same sustain on it.
I also like to take advantage of the passives, especially Undeath, which is one of my favorites. I've always played at stage 4, and have had not issues with the negatives at all. Again, it's how you build your character.
[snip]
Vamp is trash. And badly designed. That's the harsh truth. Especially on a stamblade. Feel free to post your build and what content you do in order to prove me wrong. But objectively stamblade does not work with vampire unless you are purely just blood frenzy poison shot/snipe spam ganking in PvP.
[snip]
Also, objectively your stamblade would be way more effective if they weren't a stage 4 vampire due to all the weaknesses and downsides presented with such. Not to mention not being able to use any of the skills in the kit aside from Blood frenzy.
[snip] Because as someone who has also tested stam and magicka variants of vampire, I can tell you magicka is and will always be better
TBH, most that I see playing a Stamblade vampire really only use Stage 4 for the invisibility dash - there's really not much going for it build wise aside from a playstyle that heavily leans on using Blood Frenzy and pew pewing with a bow from stealth and maybe some light mist form trolling. Riveting gameplay. /s
I guess my 300+ hours of theorycrafting, sinking 3.8 mil on materials and gear, 50+ hours of grinding dungeons for gear and transmutes, and reading up on hidden mechanics of the line that plays with gear procs... Gee. I guess I don't know how to play anything.
WhereArtThouVampires wrote: »WhereArtThouVampires wrote: »Vampire has never been bad. They have great passives, and the downsides are easily able to be avoided if you build for them. I play most of my characters at stage 4, and the extra fire damage is not noticeable. Mist form is a really fun skill, and great for the extra damage mitigation, even on a stam toon.
It's all up to you what you prefer with skills. I would mess around with them and see which you enjoy more.
My main is a vampire stamblade, and I like to be at stage 4 the whole time. I use the health+ recovery food for the sustain and extra survivability, and I can spam skills for days with a couple heavy attacks in between. I've also used a magicka setup with the same kind of food with mag recovery instead, and I get the same sustain on it.
I also like to take advantage of the passives, especially Undeath, which is one of my favorites. I've always played at stage 4, and have had not issues with the negatives at all. Again, it's how you build your character.
[snip]
Vamp is trash. And badly designed. That's the harsh truth. Especially on a stamblade. Feel free to post your build and what content you do in order to prove me wrong. But objectively stamblade does not work with vampire unless you are purely just blood frenzy poison shot/snipe spam ganking in PvP.
[snip]
Also, objectively your stamblade would be way more effective if they weren't a stage 4 vampire due to all the weaknesses and downsides presented with such. Not to mention not being able to use any of the skills in the kit aside from Blood frenzy.
[snip] Because as someone who has also tested stam and magicka variants of vampire, I can tell you magicka is and will always be better
TBH, most that I see playing a Stamblade vampire really only use Stage 4 for the invisibility dash - there's really not much going for it build wise aside from a playstyle that heavily leans on using Blood Frenzy and pew pewing with a bow from stealth and maybe some light mist form trolling. Riveting gameplay. /s
I guess my 300+ hours of theorycrafting, sinking 3.8 mil on materials and gear, 50+ hours of grinding dungeons for gear and transmutes, and reading up on hidden mechanics of the line that plays with gear procs... Gee. I guess I don't know how to play anything.
That sounds about right. Contrary to what @Djeriko says, the vampire community HAS tried to make vamp work. Some have gotten it to work, yes, but all agree they are gimping themselves and would be doing better if they weren't vampires.
Cause, shocker, the line is bad.
So I've cured and been re-bitten. I've tried to play other classess/specs, but I just don't enjoy stuff as much as I enjoy my Stealthy NB Vampire character.
So, advice on how to make the best of it?
I really wish that one of the Eviscerate morphs was ranged. I really kinda want to play a Vampire Mage kind of character, but that's more difficult when the Spammable (Arterial Burst) is melee range, and does a lot more damage and costs a lot less than my Class Ranged Spammable(Swallow Soul). For reference, my Swallow Soul IV tooltip is 5594, and my Arterial Burst II tooltip is 6083 for over 600 less Magicka at Stage 2. I know those aren't super high numbers because I gear is not great yet, but the difference is still noticeable.
So people who have been stubborn like me and still play Vampires despite the changes, how are you making the best of it? What is the conventional wisdom on how to successfully manage Vampire now? (on a side note, I'd love to see a video from ESO Devs, explaining in detail their vision for how they prefer Vampire to be played)
All general suggestions/advice welcome.
I saw a build on Alcast's website that doesn't use bfb at all, it uses Swallow Soul as the spammable. I might start with that, and tweak it to my personal preferences. (like, I legit just don't like the Frenzy skill, I tried using it and I just can't make the best use of it, like other people can).
Swallow Soul imo, is the only real feasible alternate spammable, mainly because it heals and it is so cheap even at stage 4 compared or every other spammable in the game.
The second is the fear Alcast uses. Hypnosis and Mesmerize are pretty flashy, however there's one thing that he neglects to mention to you. Your target has to be directly looking at you and it doesn't seem to be a conical view despite the animation of Mesmerize. I found that Mass Hysteria and my shade were better alternatives to it and it just really seems poorly done.
The second is the fear Alcast uses. Hypnosis and Mesmerize are pretty flashy, however there's one thing that he neglects to mention to you. Your target has to be directly looking at you and it doesn't seem to be a conical view despite the animation of Mesmerize. I found that Mass Hysteria and my shade were better alternatives to it and it just really seems poorly done.
I want to add onto this and give a visual on why its so hard to land this thing. So you have a very small cone in front of you that stretches out 10 meters. Your target has a cone as well, but you cannot see this cone as it is invisible and it is this cone that dictates whether you stunned them or not.
Here is a picture of the cone with red lines making it easier to see.
As you can tell that cone is very small. Now lets put a target in here to show why they won't be mesmerized. Here we see a target that on our screens is clearly looking at us but because they're probably jumping, cast spells, struggling to keep the reticle on us, and all other manner of things, their character model according to the server isn't looking at us as their cone is offset from our position.
I could have put the cone even closer to the center of our position and you'd begin to see where the issues begin to form. Your target could be looking just a hair too far to the left or just a hair too far to the right and the stun will not land.
Here is an obvious example of them not looking at you and I'll stick it in a spoiler since its painfully obvious this won't work.
What you're looking for is the target to blatantly be starring you dead in the eyes, not strafing, and with some distance so they fall inside the cone.
This ability is incredibly hard to land because of this issue. Hypnosis is a bit better, but you're still fighting with getting your enemy's cone to line up with you. I feel like a good fix ZOS could do is keep this cone system, but for the enemies inside of the cone that have us targeted it should land on them even if their model is not facing our direction.
I imagine in PVP I would use Mass Hysteria instead, if I were to use a Fear. But Hypnosis in PVE seems to work well.
I've never used the other morph, seemed like it would be too difficult to land reliably(as you have demonstrated), so I chose the AOE one.
WhereArtThouVampires wrote: »I imagine in PVP I would use Mass Hysteria instead, if I were to use a Fear. But Hypnosis in PVE seems to work well.
I've never used the other morph, seemed like it would be too difficult to land reliably(as you have demonstrated), so I chose the AOE one.
Hypnosis in PvE automatically becomes useless if you are not a melee damage dealer.
In my experience, if you're using an AoE fear that does nothing else but fear in PvE something might be wrong cause that isn't a good use of mana as a damage dealer. If you're a tank or support, sure.
I'm using the Bat Swarm Ultimate, but I'm curious...is there actually a usage case for Perfect Scion?
Like, why would you use it instead of the Bat Swarm?