Here is my take on it, make it into an actual escape move which can be used to break melee range when needed.

Mist Form

- Increases movement speed by 50% and grants immunity to snares and immobilizations

Morph 1

- Now also Grants Major Protection

Morph 2

- Now also siphons Health from nearby enemies.

Base Skill 8 meter Dash, removes snares/immobilization and grants immunity for 2 seconds.

Elusive mist morph - adds major expedtion for 4 seconds

Blood mist morph - siphon health from enemies you pass thru with the dash (like streak does damage, blood mist will heal on enemy hit)

inspired by @TX12001rwb17_ESO

Brought this up weeks ago here -> https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/604578/mist-form-outside-of-pvp#latest

Honestly, and maybe an unpopular opinion: I thought Mist Form was fine the way it was. You generally wouldn't use it in four person content. It was largely used by either solo players doing dungeons, or tanks in large group content (i.e. Rockgrove, more specifically it was that one place). It was an option to mitigate a substantial amount of damage in the form of health scaling DoTs/Bleeds, but results in a significant drop-off for buffs and debuffs, all while still costing magicka to keep active (obvious note that you could use infused magicka reduction, thus making it cost almost nothing). The fact that you also couldn't be healed made it so Oblivion-like mechanic damage made using Mist Form a no-go since it would still do a percentage of your health regardless of Mist Form's mitigation.

Sure, it wasn't being used for its "intended" purpose as a way to "disengage." Which, by the way, was only said much later. Counter argument: I've also seen people in PvP not use it for its "intended purpose," instead using as a way to face-tank large groups of players, so why was it made into a purely PvP ability and allowed to be abused the way it is? I'm confused. Why not just completely rework it for PvE and PvP instead of just making it a one-or-the-other. It's still getting abused in PvP, so by ZOS's own logic they should gut it in PvP as well.

Now, for PvE there are a few things to discuss as to why Mist Form became the go-to or "meta" for most groups running Rockgrove, or for solo players doing veteran DLC dungeons. I won't go into most of it, but I will touch on one thing:

Health scaling damage. More specifically, bleeds/DoTs.

For Rockgrove, it was used because of ZOS's penchant for health scaling DoTs as of Stone Garden. These are, more broadly, unavoidable and unpurgeable. These were, in my view -- whether this was right or wrong -- ZOS's answer to make healers feel "needed." Only it doesn't make them feel needed it makes both healers and tanks feel frustrated due to a lack of counterplay, or a tank needing a "pocket healer" or a "babysitter," and at the same time potentially Guard. I know some people don't care and the tank is there to take damage and the healer is there to heal, but this is simply lazy design.

It's a shame that ZOS didn't see Mist Form use as a protest for this style of, quite frankly, unfun content. They're making the same mistakes with Dreadsail Reef. If Mist Form were still a thing, you can bet it would be used throughout the new trial as well. Instead of saying "These players are using Mist Form to mitigate all the damage we wanted to throw at them, let's make the ability useless," a better approach would have been "Let's see why they're using it; it's because of all the damage we're throwing at them, maybe tone that down and they won't use it?" Which, sure, they did 6~7 months later. Too little, too late.

Mist Form had its own downsides and wasn't even a fun or engaging way to play. It's a bit more nuanced since it wasn't just "oh it costs this much" and "oh you can find ways to keep it up almost indefinitely." You would taunt and then go into Mist Form. 13 seconds later, you come out of Mist Form and retaunt. There was no Stagger from a DK tank. Crusher was placed on healers. Minor Courage was spotty. No Alkosh... since they gutted that as well. I hated having to use it in Rockgrove. Mist Form had a right to get gutted under the circumstances, though it would have been better to simply fine tune the content. But that leads onto another point.

They've made PvE tanking more and more unfun and undesirable over the years. Defensive power creep for tanks is almost non-existant compared to 30k DPS being "pro level" in Morrowind (Update 14) and "lol if you can't do 100k DPS on the trial atro you suck" now (Update 33). With 125k~135k being "easy" for the higher parsing players in the top groups. Defensive power creep simply isn't there. It's stagnant. Not only that, but it has been significantly nerfed in the next update.

But no, let's gut Mist Form instead and make it completely useless in PvE. Though... if we gut it in PvP, we'll never hear the end of it, so let's just leave it alone there?

Instructions Unclear.

Added Persistent Chaosball DoT Effect on Vampires while outside during the Day.

Lailaamell wrote: »

Like mist form pve ban is basicly saying it was never really intended for use outside solo.

In ZOS's own words, it was never intended for anything outside of disengagement -- something only said a full seven years after Mist Form/Vampirism was added in early 2014, coupled with the revamp (no pun intended) with Greymoor two years ago. Disengagement isn't really a thing in PvE. Most things outside of dungeons will reset if you just run far enough away from them, and nothing requires Mist Form or Streak or anything else to do that. Solo players doing dungeons weren't using it for disengagement, they were using it for mitigation.

From what I've seen in PvP, it is used very much against ZOS's design philosophy of disengagement, comapred to, let's say, Sorcerer's Streak ability in very much the same way that PvE players were using it.

That also marks a seven year long misunderstanding from ZOS of how they want Mist Form to work (75% mitigation has always been there, and some of us used it long before Rockgrove came along, though the healing added with Greymoor made the ability incredibly potent with PvP against groups of players as you could outheal the incoming damage, it only became infamous in its use because of Rockgrove). For the PvP side, to really drive home the ability being used as a form of disengagement similar to Streak or others, it would have to make the following (or similar) hard hitting changes which make it not necessarily desirable to run just because you can, but rather as a last ditch effort to get away:

• Ramp up magicka cost, similar to Streak, every second it is toggled on (can tweak this for +50%/+75%/+100%/etc. as desired for balance, so as at most you could realistically only keep it up for around 15 seconds with full infused magicka cost reduction, and 8-10 seconds without)
• Give the ramping a cooldown of 10 seconds so that you can't just drop out of Mist Form and go immediately back in at the base rate
• Disable ultimate generation, as Mist Form is used as a means to stall (not disengage), gain ultimate, do a combo with ultimate, then back into Mist Form, repeat
• Reduce the damage done by Blood Mist and, thus, the healing Blood Mist gives
• Due to the hard hitting nature of the changes, the mitigation ramps up with the cost, from 75% mitigation up to a maximum of 100% mitigation the longer it is toggled

At that point, it would be easier to simply turn it into a Nightblade Shade style teleport ability instead, as that serves a better method of disengagement.

Vaoh wrote: »

Really the solution is not complicated...

Mist Form reduces damage taken from players by 75%.
Just have it also reduce damage from non-players by 40%.

Is that too much? Drop to 25-30%.
Too little? Increase to 45-50%.

It was ridiculous for them to remove the mitigation entirely.

This, so much this. Such a simple fix.

Elvenheart wrote: »

Vaoh wrote: »

Really the solution is not complicated...

Mist Form reduces damage taken from players by 75%.
Just have it also reduce damage from non-players by 40%.

Is that too much? Drop to 25-30%.
Too little? Increase to 45-50%.

It was ridiculous for them to remove the mitigation entirely.

This, so much this. Such a simple fix.

To me it felt like a complete overreaction.

A quote from Lady Thorn came to mind when I first read about the 'nerf', The absolute gall! Little people, coming into my home and destroying my creations! You will pay!

Lailaamell wrote: »

As a disengage wow really it makes you slower and fact that you can disengage better by just running is making me confused about the reasoning

You're not alone in your confusion. I was baffled when I first saw it. It would have been better to make it a form of Streak or Nightblade teleport Shade if disengagement was genuinely the reasoning. It doesn't get used to disengage in PvP, it gets used to stall. So by ZOS's own logic, they should butcher it in PvP as well.

Instead of butchering an ability, they should really just look at their combat/encounters design decisions and reflect on why people are using it.

ApoAlaia wrote: »

To me it felt like a complete overreaction.

A quote from Lady Thorn came to mind when I first read about the 'nerf', The absolute gall! Little people, coming into my home and destroying my creations! You will pay!

It was absolutely an overreaction. As I said before, there were a multitude of ways they could have handled Mist Form being used or abused. Instead of going with those options, they hammered in a large "No Fun Allowed!" sign (reference to Rich saying "Enjoy it while it lasts" from his stream) and called it a day -- as though to say Mist Form was actually "fun" in PvE anyway, it was used because it was felt to be necessary, and that is where the issue is. We know they can tone down the damage thrown at us because they did it at the same time when they took Mist Form away. They simply elected not to do that and instead make an ability useless which was only made infamous through Bahsei.

Lailaamell wrote: »

It will probly stay pvp skill and its very likely any vamp skill becoming meta in pve will be reciving same treatment

Their reasoning behind the vampire toggle is a prime example of this. Their reason for nerfing it:

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.

"People who use it are really good at the game, have good knowledge of mechanics, classes, and overall skill."

The message? "We don't want people to be good at our game."

I'm surprised they haven't butchered Invigorating Drain on tanks, specficially necro tanks, who use it for fast ultimate generation with either War Machine or Saxhleel's Champion (depending on the content). I suppose I shouldn't give them ideas.