Vampiric Drain Needs Some Debuffs

Vevvev · April 2021

And not debuffs for using the ability but like applying debuffs to your target. Right now Drain is under utilized due to it's terrible healing, terrible damage, and undesirable additional effects through morphing. While you get benefits from the additional effects nothing really happens to your target and they just take a little trickle of damage that's so pathetic the worst heal over time outpaces it. Also nothing is stopping them from interrupting you making the ability even less desirable to use. So, for those who don't know here are the two morphs!

((Taken from ESO - Skillbook))

Exhilarating Drain
Siphon away your enemies' vitality, dealing 599 Magic Damage, healing you for 23% of your missing Health, and generating 4 Ultimate every 1 second for 3 seconds.
https://eso-skillbook.com/skill/exhilarating-drain

Drain Vigor
Siphon away your enemies' vitality, dealing 599 Magic Damage, healing you for 23% of your missing Health, and restoring 5% of your missing Stamina every 1 second for 3 seconds.
https://eso-skillbook.com/skill/drain-vigor

What I was thinking was adding some of the poison debuff effects to these abilities to make it at least a bit more desirable to try and use them in PVP. (Not sure how to do it in PVE without buffing either the damage or healing but ZOS thinks the ability is good as is right now.)

Candidates for Exhilarating Drain:

Timidity: Consumes 1 ultimate every 1.5 seconds for X number of seconds.
Cowardice: Increases target's cost of Ultimate abilities by 30% for X number of seconds.
Sorcery-Draining: Increases target's cost of Ultimate abilities by 30% while increasing your spell power by 5% for X number of seconds.

Candidates for Drain Vigor:

Damage Stamina: Increases cost of target's stamina abilities by 10% for X number of seconds.
Drain Stamina: Increases cost of target's stamina abilities by 10% while restoring stamina to you each second for X number of seconds.
Enervating: Reduces target's critical damage by 12% for X number of seconds.
Savagery-Draining: Reduces target's critical damage by 12% while increasing your weapon critical damage for X number of seconds.

Reason I list them as candidates is I am not a master of game design and figure the community here would know which one(s) would suit the abilities better. Maybe you all know of some debuffs that'd be better than the ones I've listed above? Would love to hear what y'all have to say.

WhereArtThouVampires · April 2021

I'd love to have drain vigor also drain magicka as well.

Make it a full resource regen/drain ability. would be a nice throwback to the fully buffed vamp drain in skyrim that restored hp, stam, and magicka.

Also before anyone says that draining the target's ultimate or resources is OP I'd like to remind everyone that this ability is easily interruptible and is put on a long CD when it happens.

I'd also like to see some flat damage/healing increases to their pre-pts values we saw in the pre pts footage.

LASTLY the visuals. Dear God the visuals.

The ulti morph should look like it's siphoning blood with maybe some gold particles and the resource morph could look like it's siphoning a mix of green, blue, and red.

Ythotha · April 2021

I think drain is mostly a "flavour" skill. As channeling for 4 seconds for laughable damage and heals is ridicilous. On the other hand to make it worth using the way it is right now it needs to be buffed to being overpowered and that only creates more issues. Only similar skill i can think of is the bow ultimate though it is an "ultimate" so you cant just spam it.

So yeah. Vampire skills are mostly there for the "flavour" imo. Only reason you would go vamp other than having red eyes i think are either the passives or mist form which is very situational. And vampire sucking bananas is worthy of another thread lol

As for your ideas on the morphs i dont think it solves any problems with the skill at all. Increasing enemy ult cost benefits you rarely since you dont know how much ultimate they have in the first place most of the time and at the same time makes it annoying to play against. Same with ability cost increases. It is an unfun mechanic and makes me glad it only exists on poisons.

If it increases your crit, then it does not make sense either since if you are gonna sit channel for 4 seconds how much is crit gonna benefit you with a build that can survive 4 seconds by doing nothing.

Im not saying this to bash you or anything but rather just emphasizing it needs a complete rework or nothing at all since it is "fLaV0uR" skill

Vevvev · April 2021

I'm just throwing out ideas in hopes one catches ZOS's attention. Drain has sadly always been a terrible skill in previous games till ESO when it had a stun on it, but then that stun was taken away. I understand it is a "flavor" skill and I've seen people suggest things like making it a DoT, functioning like Mend Wounds, and several other things but ZOS is content leaving the only true vampiric skill in this abysmal state.

WhereArtThouVampires · April 2021

Vevvev wrote: »

I'm just throwing out ideas in hopes one catches ZOS's attention. Drain has sadly always been a terrible skill in previous games till ESO when it had a stun on it, but then that stun was taken away. I understand it is a "flavor" skill and I've seen people suggest things like making it a DoT, functioning like Mend Wounds, and several other things but ZOS is content leaving the only true vampiric skill in this abysmal state.

The worst part is the NPC variation of the skill is just better.

It locks the vampire in place, yes, but places a pretty solid CC on the target.

WhereArtThouVampires · April 2021

Kinda sad to see this thread die. People are really fine with such a pointless skill existing in the game and clogging up an already limited/very meh skill line?

deleted210809-001958 · April 2021

i think that skill was designed for pve tanks. you can throw out ideas but we all understand that it changes nothing, no matter how good or bad they are. since greymoor launch there were so many threads with fair remarks and interesting ideas, but to change vampires now (<1 year since revamp) is to accept that greymoor vampires are failure (and judging by how often discounts are made for this chapter, vampire revamp is not the only failure with greymoor). maybe there will be some changes with "... to meet standarts ..." sauce. someday.

Sephyr · April 2021

WhereArtThouVampires wrote: »

Kinda sad to see this thread die. People are really fine with such a pointless skill existing in the game and clogging up an already limited/very meh skill line?

It's kind of fitting for the skill line though. Most everyone that I played with on ESO are now over on FF14. Mostly because Yoshi-P is really good about accepting when something's a failure and you know... Fixes it.

Tulshe · April 2021

What if instead of channeling, make drain like necro's syphon ability? It removes the disadvantage of doing underwhelming thing for 4 seconds, and still provides some heal. But you must stay in certain range for drain to work.

AinSoph · April 2021

WhereArtThouVampires wrote: »

Kinda sad to see this thread die. People are really fine with such a pointless skill existing in the game and clogging up an already limited/very meh skill line?

The Soul Shatter passive in the Soul Magic Skill line would like to have a word with you.

Chilly-McFreeze · April 2021

Tulshe wrote: »

What if instead of channeling, make drain like necro's syphon ability? It removes the disadvantage of doing underwhelming thing for 4 seconds, and still provides some heal. But you must stay in certain range for drain to work.

Would you slot it over something actual useful then? I have my doubts.

WhereArtThouVampires · April 2021

Chilly-McFreeze wrote: »

Tulshe wrote: »

What if instead of channeling, make drain like necro's syphon ability? It removes the disadvantage of doing underwhelming thing for 4 seconds, and still provides some heal. But you must stay in certain range for drain to work.

Would you slot it over something actual useful then? I have my doubts.

If they did this and amped the damage to Pre PTS values (around 9k per tick at full "max" build) then it'd be an actual viable skil

WhereArtThouVampires · April 2021

Sephyr wrote: »

WhereArtThouVampires wrote: »

Kinda sad to see this thread die. People are really fine with such a pointless skill existing in the game and clogging up an already limited/very meh skill line?

It's kind of fitting for the skill line though. Most everyone that I played with on ESO are now over on FF14. Mostly because Yoshi-P is really good about accepting when something's a failure and you know... Fixes it.

Oh yeah man, it's crazy how in every other big name MMO the peeps know when something is a failure. If this skill line existed in any of them, it wouldnt have made it out of beta and would have been heavily changed.

WhereArtThouVampires · April 2021

AinSoph wrote: »

WhereArtThouVampires wrote: »

Kinda sad to see this thread die. People are really fine with such a pointless skill existing in the game and clogging up an already limited/very meh skill line?

The Soul Shatter passive in the Soul Magic Skill line would like to have a word with you.

Don't get me wrong, I also believe soul magic as a line in general needs a big rework.

I was very surprised when we didn't get that as a base game feature this year.

YandereGirlfriend · April 2021

I still really support the idea of turning one of the morphs into a genuine fire-and-forget DoT, perhaps with some additional vampiric flavor thrown in (e.g. returns X% of damage done as all-resource return).

Keeping them as channels though... that's tough. I'm of the mind that skills that deal weak, vestigial damage are better off scrapping the damage altogether and instead focusing on the stronger elements of the skill. So for something like Drain Vigor, the skill would benefit from eliminating the damage and then dramatically increasing the resource return from the skill. You could even give it the ulti-gen from Exhilarating Drain without it being OP and that would free up the other morph to be more purely damage-oriented.

ManM · April 2021

Drain would be very awesome in an RP sense if it were given the properties of an execute, and perhaps provided a buff (major expedition for 15 second?) if the target dies to it.

Vevvev · April 2021

ManM wrote: »

Drain would be very awesome in an RP sense if it were given the properties of an execute, and perhaps provided a buff (major expedition for 15 second?) if the target dies to it.

Hmmm... what about Berserk?

ManM · April 2021

A buff to weapon damage on a magicka skill line wouldn't make much sense. What about a resource boost? It would be super cool if it increased health, stamina, and magicka regen for, say, a minute. Bonus points if the health regen worked even at stage 4.

Vevvev · April 2021

ManM wrote: »

A buff to weapon damage on a magicka skill line wouldn't make much sense. What about a resource boost? It would be super cool if it increased health, stamina, and magicka regen for, say, a minute. Bonus points if the health regen worked even at stage 4.

Whoops! Got Berserk and Brutality mixed up. My bad!

Was thinking of Berserk with the minor buff boosting all damage done by 5% and major with 10%.

amir412 · April 2021

The whole skill line is bad and needs to be looked at.
The nerfs to mist was too much, vamp spammable is meh and the stun never works when u need it.

ESO_Nightingale · April 2021

amir412 wrote: »

The whole skill line is bad and needs to be looked at.
The nerfs to mist was too much, vamp spammable is meh and the stun never works when u need it.

spammable is niche but not bad. i use it in pvp

Vevvev · April 2021

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

amir412 wrote: »

The whole skill line is bad and needs to be looked at.
The nerfs to mist was too much, vamp spammable is meh and the stun never works when u need it.

spammable is niche but not bad. i use it in pvp

Same, especially if I have the Pale Order Ring in battlegrounds/duels. In no-proc Cyrodiil I just have to keep Radiating Regeneration up and the health cost Spammable is very nice to use. Arterial Burst is what I take to trials and stuff where I need to be healed by others.

GoodFella146 · April 2021

It used to be a really good skill, then the roll dodge spammers started crying like usual and got it nerfed, just like they did with Soul Assault.