The latest changes in patch 1.0.7 have pretty well ruined the vampire dynamic for me as a PVE player.

For one thing I like to heal dungeons, and my build used a combination of the heavy armor Immovable buff and my vampire stage to reduce the cost of Drain Essence, to save magic for heals while also protecting myself against heal aggro and things that would come to beat on me.

This is no longer viable I am finding, as the insane nerf to ability cost reduction has me OOM before most large AOE pulls are finished.

Stage 2:
From 20% to 7% vampire ability cost reduction.
Same 25% health regen reduction.

Stage 3:
From 40% to 14% vampire ability cost reduction.
Same 50% health regen reduction.

Stage 5:
From 60% to 21% vampire ability cost reduction.
Same 75% health regen reduction.

So I have to go to stage four and suffer a 75% reduction in health regen just to get the near useless 20% vampire specific ability cost reduction that I used to get in stage two, for what? Because some d-bags in PVP were exploiting something completely unrelated?

So instead of doing something practical, like changing the way abilities work in PVP zones or against other players, they decide to take the lazy quick path and ruin the play style for legitimate players.

If ZOS wanted to be modern about it and not just another MMO company that ruins PVE because they are too lazy to balance PVP for the whiners separate from the way abilities work against non-players and in non-PVP zones, they would have simply made the reduction not apply to ultimate, or apply less to ultimate.

This feels more like they just phoned in some wrist slap "OK, people are crying about PVP exploits? Lets wreck the play style in question and get back to the cocktails and steel drums."

Bat Swarm should never have stacked with itself that is true, yet the ability to still be healed while in mist form which was the real problem to begin with still hasn't been addressed as far as I can tell. Nevermind the legitamate bugs like passives ceasing to function on death, or Drain Essence not activating half the time or doing so with a 1-2 second lag.

But what the hell is the purpose of this movement speed nerf to Mist Form other than to just be rude?

The vampire ability cost reduction nerf makes vampire stages essentially pointless and a penalty rather than a trait that makes the play style unique. As a PVE player, I loved that aspect of the game. I have mods installed to track my stage so I know when I need to feed to update my buff to keep it where I want it based on the situation.

You took something that gave the class a unique feel and experience and turned it into little more than a cosmetic gimmick and a health regen penalty, all to NOT fix half the problems in PVP that should be handled completely separate from the way things work in PVE.

Yeah, this patch is almost as big a disappointment to me as the army of bots.

EDIT for semantics.