What's with ZOS and Vampire skills that are actually being used?

Vevvev · February 2022

p00tx wrote: »

It also disturbs me that they absolutely don't understand their own game if they think you can stack lifesteal...like, what?

Ring of the Pale Order, Critical Surge, Burning Embers, Swallow Soul, Puncturing sweep, Reaving Blows, Swarming Scion, and any other form of offensive healing falls under the umbrella of life stealing. Not just the buff called life steal.

Kodzy · February 2022

If they could give a vampire pasive similar to "Blood Rage"
WHILE YOU ARE IN "BLOOD SCION" FORM:

When you deal damage, the duration of your "BLOOD SCION" Transformation is increased by 4 seconds. This effect can occur every 5 seconds.

in human form only 2 skills "eviscerate" / "mist form", and the rest after using the ultimate other 3

similarly in a werewolf use Hircine's Bounty / infectious Claws as a humanoid and the rest after using the ultimate other 3

BEING A BLOOD SCION / WEREWOLF YOU CANNOT USE SKILL OTHER THAN THEIRS
It would require reworking the skills of the vampire one by one, but the game would be more fun

themaddaedra · February 2022

GoodFella146 wrote: »

[snip]

Still trying to solve this puzzle.

[edited to remove quote]

Jaimeh · February 2022

It's kind of frustrating because both mist form and toggle were used for certain fights by few DDs and only in certain groups. It wasn't a thing you'd see in the majority of runs. Players found a smart way to deal with Bahsei HM, and mist form got axed, and I get they wanted to keep that fight difficult, but why nerf toggle now too? It's still a niche skill, and it might boost numbers by a lot, but that's not an omnipresent phenomenon, it's still pretty niche. Why do they want to put every playstyle on the same boat and not reward, or at least leave them be, players/groups when they find something cool that they can do.

ajkb78 · February 2022

Remathilis wrote: »

Vampire and werewolf need to either be full classes and balanced like a full class OR be a skin/polymorph cosmetic. ZoS has shown they feel they giving characters any ability that isn't tied to thier class or a long-winded guild grinds is OP and vampire in particular keeps breaking ZoS idea of balance.

Vampire in particular keeps finding synergies that ZoS hates. Apparently they should be suicide bombers who kill themselves to get an extra point of DPS. They have taken their survival mist away, continuously nerfed any healing they might get, and now are cropping away their damage. The point of being a glass cannon is to be a cannon, not to keep breaking the glass.

They have no idea what to do with this, so it will continue to be nerfed every time someone finds a use for it.

The Greymoor vampire rework was an interesting but ultimately unworkable and unfixable experiment. It needs to be killed off and replaced with a proper implementation of vampirism as a proper class with 3 skill lines capable of being competitive in any role without being either OP or subpar. The difference being that vampirism would be a class that you would 'adopt' on top of an existing class (purely for RP, but people are always going to want to be able to *become* vampires rather than having to create them at the outset) and it would replace all the previous skill lines.

CP5 · February 2022

Finedaible wrote: »

Vaoh wrote: »

To me the bad part wasn’t the nerf, but the Dev comment.

“This ability and its morphs are currently enabling incredibly polarizing gameplay; it feeds into an intense risk/reward mechanic that can often be mitigated heavily by specialized classes and builds that stack life steal, paired with deep knowledge of content and combat interactions.”

Is skilled gameplay and understanding combat encounters not supposed to be rewarded? And the Bahsei nerf was also upsetting to see.

I don't even care about the change honestly, but that comment was mildly disturbing. If there's one thing combat in this game is sorely lacking is avenues for player creativity and identity, but they just keep cutting out anything that deviates from the norm. This is why all the classes feel the same and use all the same sets. They are so focused on spreadsheet balance that they can't think of anything else.

Thank you for putting in words something that has been gnawing away at the back of my mind for so long. So many skills hit with the sledgehammer to fit into these "norms" without any intent on them being able to deviate, with something like combat prayer needing to "meet the aoe spammable heal" standards despite the fact that for years it's been used just fine for different reasons. I could go on, but thank you for saying this.

Gamerscape2007 · February 2022

If you focus on cost reduction, at max stacks, you lose 1k of health every 2 second. EXTREMELY Negligible, Assuming you're not in a situation where you need your healer.

For those wondering, I've used the Templar on a imperial, with the vampire lord set, and used 3 infused jewrally with the Prismatic cost reduction.

Faulgor · February 2022

Gamerscape2007 wrote: »

If you focus on cost reduction, at max stacks, you lose 1k of health every 2 second. EXTREMELY Negligible, Assuming you're not in a situation where you need your healer.

For those wondering, I've used the Templar on a imperial, with the vampire lord set, and used 3 infused jewrally with the Prismatic cost reduction.

Just 2 of those jewelries enchanted with damage instead of cost reduction would eclipse the bonus from Sated Fury, without any of the silly penalties.

Vevvev · February 2022

Gamerscape2007 wrote: »

If you focus on cost reduction, at max stacks, you lose 1k of health every 2 second. EXTREMELY Negligible, Assuming you're not in a situation where you need your healer.

For those wondering, I've used the Templar on a imperial, with the vampire lord set, and used 3 infused jewrally with the Prismatic cost reduction.

That's a lot of cost reduction just to make a delayed burst heal work, and because of the cost reduction now the heal will take longer to charge up. I'd rather forgo cost reduction on my build entirely, build pure damage, and just use a single heal over time to keep up with this thing than go through all of that.

J18696 · February 2022

Honestly think the change to simmer was based on dk ember heal letting dks have super high uptime on simmer and nothing todo with the gank build

Vevvev · February 2022

J18696 wrote: »

Honestly think the change to simmer was based on dk ember heal letting dks have super high uptime on simmer and nothing todo with the gank build

Not even DK. I know Sorcs and Templars had means to keep Simmering Frenzy up for far longer than other classes could due to how their offensive heals are set up.

DeathStalker · February 2022

I am a beta player who had been away from the game for about a year and recently come back to play. I was very excited and having a lot of fun. Then the vampire and 2h changes come out and now all excitement is gone. The Vampire or 2h changes affect the majority of my characters. I feel so discouraged by these changes.

It feels like ESO sits back and says " look, they are having fun with these abilities, well we can't have that, Nerf those skills into the ground". How can ESO complain about the players only using a few abilities when every time the players find different skills to use it gets nerfed until it's useless? I am so tired of having to change my builds every patch because we can never have anything nice.

Why can't you just buff the other skills so they are on par with where the ones you nerfed were? The top players are doing 80k-110k DPS before these changes and will still be doing that much damage after these changes. It's players like me at the bottom who suffer, struggle, and feel disenfranchised by changes like this.

Please reconsider these changes to 2h and vampire. Players have made some wonderful suggestions in this thread and others. @ZOS_Kevin @ZOS_GinaBruno please don't go live with the way things are.

MrZeDark · February 2022

SkaraMinoc wrote: »

It seems unreasonable that a player ramping up Frenzy over 20 seconds can no longer receiving incoming healing.

1 stack = 40 damage = No heals for you!

During PO, in trials I could hit 89-95 stacks of this with vamp ult and self heal
Post PO, in trials I could hit 70-75 stacks of this with vamp ult and self heal
On PTS, in trials I could hit 92-98 stacks of this with vamp ult and self heal.... until the most recent patch.

Mind you, I had to be very active - avoid as much dmg as I possibly could, understand the timing of mechanics to know when to switch to ult -- and work very hard to keep my heals ticking non-stop, while balancing my resources so that I could keep doing dmg..

It took skill to use this ability, a lot of skill. Now they clearly state that having skill, is what makes this ability too OP... but the skill was rarefied and took so long to acquire/master to use at a maximum benefit in PvE End Game.

IonicKai · February 2022

It seems the cycle has been buff vamp skill, skill gets used, they decide its too powerful, nerf hammer, dead skill. Still salty that blood for blood got destroyed forever ago though thinking about it now it would have been nerfed with bahsei because people would intentionally flatten their mag and spam b4b as much as possible while under 10% mag.

code65536 · February 2022

Vaoh wrote: »

To me the bad part wasn’t the nerf, but the Dev comment.

“This ability and its morphs are currently enabling incredibly polarizing gameplay; it feeds into an intense risk/reward mechanic that can often be mitigated heavily by specialized classes and builds that stack life steal, paired with deep knowledge of content and combat interactions.”

Is skilled gameplay and understanding combat encounters not supposed to be rewarded? And the Bahsei nerf was also upsetting to see.

I say "Good riddance!" and "What took them so long?".

The truth of the matter was that it was extremely polarizing and unbalanced, and frankly, shouldn't have been there in the first place. The fact of the matter is that the power gap in ESO is higher than it has ever been, and grows every patch, and "risk/reward" is just a more palatable way of saying "let's give more power to the people at the top and raise that ceiling some more, as if it wasn't high enough".

From a game balance perspective, this nerf was long overdue. Period.

Vevvev · February 2022

code65536 wrote: »

Vaoh wrote: »

To me the bad part wasn’t the nerf, but the Dev comment.

“This ability and its morphs are currently enabling incredibly polarizing gameplay; it feeds into an intense risk/reward mechanic that can often be mitigated heavily by specialized classes and builds that stack life steal, paired with deep knowledge of content and combat interactions.”

Is skilled gameplay and understanding combat encounters not supposed to be rewarded? And the Bahsei nerf was also upsetting to see.

I say "Good riddance!" and "What took them so long?".

The truth of the matter was that it was extremely polarizing and unbalanced, and frankly, shouldn't have been there in the first place. The fact of the matter is that the power gap in ESO is higher than it has ever been, and grows every patch, and "risk/reward" is just a more palatable way of saying "let's give more power to the people at the top and raise that ceiling some more, as if it wasn't high enough".

From a game balance perspective, this nerf was long overdue. Period.

Don't like your attitude on the matter but it should've been a whole new ability than a nerf.

People asked for a true DoT or a gap closer instead of it since before the rework even came live.

Instead it'll be a "DoT alternative" but be absolutely terrible at pulling that off. I'm more excited about the health cap no longer increasing into infinity, which will actually make it stronger in my hands because now I can pull it off in PvP while brawling and have yet another burst heal at my disposal.

themaddaedra · February 2022

code65536 wrote: »

Vaoh wrote: »

To me the bad part wasn’t the nerf, but the Dev comment.

“This ability and its morphs are currently enabling incredibly polarizing gameplay; it feeds into an intense risk/reward mechanic that can often be mitigated heavily by specialized classes and builds that stack life steal, paired with deep knowledge of content and combat interactions.”

Is skilled gameplay and understanding combat encounters not supposed to be rewarded? And the Bahsei nerf was also upsetting to see.

I say "Good riddance!" and "What took them so long?".

The truth of the matter was that it was extremely polarizing and unbalanced, and frankly, shouldn't have been there in the first place. The fact of the matter is that the power gap in ESO is higher than it has ever been, and grows every patch, and "risk/reward" is just a more palatable way of saying "let's give more power to the people at the top and raise that ceiling some more, as if it wasn't high enough".

From a game balance perspective, this nerf was long overdue. Period.

This couldn't be further away from the truth. Everything, every class, every tier, every skill, every player, every mechanic, every whatever has been being reduced to a perfectly round and homogenized middle ground in ESO. Because they got their heads stuck on spreadsheet balance. If you think the game is becoming more polarized, i'd say you haven't been around for long. But i'm guessing you actually have. So your analysis is straight up wrong.

WrathOfInnos · February 2022

themaddaedra wrote: »

code65536 wrote: »

Vaoh wrote: »

To me the bad part wasn’t the nerf, but the Dev comment.

“This ability and its morphs are currently enabling incredibly polarizing gameplay; it feeds into an intense risk/reward mechanic that can often be mitigated heavily by specialized classes and builds that stack life steal, paired with deep knowledge of content and combat interactions.”

Is skilled gameplay and understanding combat encounters not supposed to be rewarded? And the Bahsei nerf was also upsetting to see.

I say "Good riddance!" and "What took them so long?".

The truth of the matter was that it was extremely polarizing and unbalanced, and frankly, shouldn't have been there in the first place. The fact of the matter is that the power gap in ESO is higher than it has ever been, and grows every patch, and "risk/reward" is just a more palatable way of saying "let's give more power to the people at the top and raise that ceiling some more, as if it wasn't high enough".

From a game balance perspective, this nerf was long overdue. Period.

This couldn't be further away from the truth. Everything, every class, every tier, every skill, every player, every mechanic, every whatever has been being reduced to a perfectly round and homogenized middle ground in ESO. Because they got their heads stuck on spreadsheet balance. If you think the game is becoming more polarized, i'd say you haven't been around for long. But i'm guessing you actually have. So your analysis is straight up wrong.

I'm going to agree with Code on this one. The fact that Simmering Frenzy is generating such heated debate demonstrates the polarized community. I've done the vamp toggle thing, pushing parses and scores, pretending the other 11 people in group don't exist (turning them invisible with addons), giving the healers a heart attack when my health dips to 1% and their skills do nothing. I don't think it's healthy gameplay at all, it doesn't promote teamwork and coordination, and it's overpowered to the point where many mechanics disappear. There's no choice in builds or vampirism when it outperforms everything else by 20-25%.

I don't even think simmering requires much skill, at least not compared to previous metas like trying to maintain 20 stacks of Siroria through Lokkestiiz hard mode, or lining up a Moondancer + Acuity proc to burst St. Olms while dodging Llothis cones and Felms bombs and tracking the seconds until the next interrupt. Glad it is gone, and missing the days when vamp meant getting a little sustain in exchange for taking more fire damage.

themaddaedra · February 2022

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

themaddaedra wrote: »

code65536 wrote: »

Vaoh wrote: »

To me the bad part wasn’t the nerf, but the Dev comment.

“This ability and its morphs are currently enabling incredibly polarizing gameplay; it feeds into an intense risk/reward mechanic that can often be mitigated heavily by specialized classes and builds that stack life steal, paired with deep knowledge of content and combat interactions.”

Is skilled gameplay and understanding combat encounters not supposed to be rewarded? And the Bahsei nerf was also upsetting to see.

I say "Good riddance!" and "What took them so long?".

The truth of the matter was that it was extremely polarizing and unbalanced, and frankly, shouldn't have been there in the first place. The fact of the matter is that the power gap in ESO is higher than it has ever been, and grows every patch, and "risk/reward" is just a more palatable way of saying "let's give more power to the people at the top and raise that ceiling some more, as if it wasn't high enough".

From a game balance perspective, this nerf was long overdue. Period.

This couldn't be further away from the truth. Everything, every class, every tier, every skill, every player, every mechanic, every whatever has been being reduced to a perfectly round and homogenized middle ground in ESO. Because they got their heads stuck on spreadsheet balance. If you think the game is becoming more polarized, i'd say you haven't been around for long. But i'm guessing you actually have. So your analysis is straight up wrong.

I'm going to agree with Code on this one. The fact that the Simmering Frenzy is generating such heated debate demonstrates the polarized community. I've done the vamp toggle thing, pushing parses and scores, pretending the other 11 people in group don't exist (turning them invisible with addons), giving the healers a heart attack when my health dips to 1% and their skills do nothing. I don't think it's healthy gameplay at all, it doesn't promote teamwork and coordination, and it's overpowered to the point where many mechanics disappear. There's no choice in builds or vampirism when it outperforms everything else by 20-25%.

I don't even think simmering requires much skill, at least not compared to previous metas like trying to maintain 20 stacks of Siroria through Lokkestiiz hard mode, or lining up a Moondancer + Acuity proc to burst St. Olms while dodging Llothis cones and Felms bombs and tracking the seconds until the next interrupt. Glad it is gone, and missing the days when vamp meant getting a little sustain in exchange for taking more fire damage.

Many mecnanics were disappering before toggle, many mechanics will keep disappearing after it's gone too. Most of the people who started playing after Morrowind don't even know what a lunar phase is. That's how score pushing works. Score pushers are, and will always be the cutting edge of combat. And toggle wasn't even sharpening it like you make it sound. In fact, i have yet to see more than 2 dds in a group using vampire toggle. And it's actually a very considerable risk. That's why you don't see everyone running around with it.

No, the game didn't become more polarized because very few score pushers used toggle. Game used to be polarized back in the day where few good groups were farming vicious ophidian while the rest of groups couldn't even get past mantikora, where a handful of groups were farming MoL HM while the rest couldn't even get past the twins (some pugs still fail on it). And weird as it might sound, those were the better days. It's what makes a game fun. For anyone who likes challenge anyway. If you don't like challenge, don't do score push and you have all the options in the world including dding with a sword and shield.

Edit for spelling.

WrathOfInnos · February 2022

I did like the days when trials were difficult, when a vMoL clear or a vAS skin was an accomplishment. To be fair, Xalvakka HM had very few groups clearing for months after its release, so some new challenges are still introduced. The days of anything plain vet being a challenge seem to be over, "vet" now means average difficulty and that's not really a problem as long as HM's remain a challenge and have worthwhile rewards (questionable since they have dropped all the same gear as vet in every trial since Cloudrest, and a weekly piece of vendor "treasure" isn't thrilling).

Anyway, I mostly agree with your sentiment, I just fail to see how Simmering Frenzy was helping any of this. It makes groups less likely to experience mechanics like Lunar Phase, while also making allies more likely to have to rez the group's vampires. Frenzy does seem to be less common now than previous patches, when often 9-10 DPS would all use it (not 8, because replacing support roles is easy once every DPS is using a self-sustaining solo parse build). I will not miss the skill at all when it's gone.

code65536 · February 2022

themaddaedra wrote: »

Many mecnanics were disappering before toggle, many mechanics will keep disappearing after it's gone too.

Translation: "The house is on fire. It will burn down, there's nothing we can do to save it. So what's the harm in dumping these barrels of gasoline on it?"

Endgame complains that power creep has destroyed old content while at the same time complaining when attempts are done to rein in that power creep. Endgame laments the disappearance of interesting mechanics while at the same time chases after every little ounce of power that allows them to trivialize or outright bypass an increasing number of mechanics. Can you not see the blatant contradictions here? You can't have your cake and eat it too.

themaddaedra wrote: »

In fact, i have yet to see more than 2 dds in a group using vampire toggle. And it's actually a very considerable risk. That's why you don't see everyone running around with it.

I know a group that's running Sunspire with 5 togglers, and they're not even a score-pushing group. They can do Yoln HM without separate flare stacks.

themaddaedra wrote: »

If you don't like challenge, don't do score push and you have all the options in the world including dding with a sword and shield.

That's not the problem. The problem is one of balance. You can't design content and mechanics that stand up to such a wide range of DPS levels. You of course need a power gap, you of course need a way to reward skillful play. But dosis sola facit venenum: dosage makes the poison. And that power gap has grown and grown and is today at a level that I've never seen before and is frankly unhealthy.

No, toggle isn't the sole culprit here, but it is one stand-out, clear-cut case: ZOS is 100% correct in their assessment here, and my only complaint is that it took them so long to arrive at this conclusion.

AinSoph · February 2022

Vaoh wrote: »

To me the bad part wasn’t the nerf, but the Dev comment.

“This ability and its morphs are currently enabling incredibly polarizing gameplay; it feeds into an intense risk/reward mechanic that can often be mitigated heavily by specialized classes and builds that stack life steal, paired with deep knowledge of content and combat interactions.”

Is skilled gameplay and understanding combat encounters not supposed to be rewarded? And the Bahsei nerf was also upsetting to see.

Honestly quite a horrifying comment. This basically said, "our players are learning how to play the game, so we're nerfing the tools they used so they can do it again but how WE want them to do it." Doesn't help that the users of the skill were mostly only scorepushers, which is possibly the smallest playerbase in the game.

Vevvev · February 2022

AinSoph wrote: »

Vaoh wrote: »

To me the bad part wasn’t the nerf, but the Dev comment.

“This ability and its morphs are currently enabling incredibly polarizing gameplay; it feeds into an intense risk/reward mechanic that can often be mitigated heavily by specialized classes and builds that stack life steal, paired with deep knowledge of content and combat interactions.”

Is skilled gameplay and understanding combat encounters not supposed to be rewarded? And the Bahsei nerf was also upsetting to see.

Honestly quite a horrifying comment. This basically said, "our players are learning how to play the game, so we're nerfing the tools they used so they can do it again but how WE want them to do it." Doesn't help that the users of the skill were mostly only scorepushers, which is possibly the smallest playerbase in the game.

Same excuse was given with Mistform when you think about it. Players took an ability the devs envisioned for one thing and used it completely differently despite knowing player's feedback on the matter for months was, "Blood Mist looks like a good tanking morph."

Kinda the same with Blood Frenzy where we knew it was a stat steroid. After over a year players got very intimate with the ability and pushed the skill ceiling far higher than the devs imagined. Guess they never watch the speed run and other videos in other games to realize when you make the ceiling infinity high the players will continue to get better.