Proposed Vampire Skill Tuning.

MindOfTheSwarm · May 2023

Related to an earlier post. Here is an idea for a retuning of some Vampire skills to allow them to perform well with both Stamina and Magicka based builds and push them further into the Vampire fantasy. This post will ignore skills that I feel are fine as is.

Ultimate: Perfect Scion: Added bonus. Increases the duration and increases the damage of your vampire abilities while active by 20%.

Reason: Perfect Scion just cannot compete with Swarming Scion right now. It needs more to help it compete.

Eviscerate: Change to Bleed Damage and skill costs Stamina.

Arcane Claws: Renamed from Blood for Blood but function remains the same and still deals Magic Damage.

Arterial Burst: Applies a Bleed DoT that can stack up to three times. At maximum stacks it applies the Hemorrhage status.

Reason: The skill is literally ripping into the flesh of the target. It makes sense for it to deal Bleed Damage. Blood for Blood change is to allow a Magicka Morph.

Sated Fury: Added bonus. Allow it to heal for a percentage of damage when dealing damage with Vamp skills while active.

Reason: Simmering is very good and Sated while nice to gain health back in emergencies, is generally not needed most of the time. Sustained healing while active will buff it up into a competitive position.

Vampiric Drain: Change to Bleed Damage. Healing remains. (Appearance is more in line with Vamp Feed effect.)

Soul Drain: Changed from Drain Vigor. Deals Magic Damage as well as giving Ultimate while channeling and applies Overcharged with every tick.

Exsanguinate: Deals Bleed Damage. Deals up to 400% more damage to targets under 50% health.

Reason: Draining Blood from a host is literally Bleed Damage. Soul Drain offers a Magicka alternative.

Hypnosis: Make this morph the base ability. But reduce its maximum amount of targets to 4.

Charm: Increases the stun duration to 6 seconds and applies Minor Maim to targets hit for 20 seconds even if they are immune to the stun effect. Bosses are taunted for 20 seconds.

Ravage Mind: No longer stuns but applies the Overcharged status to enemies hit every second for 20 seconds.

Reason: The current skill and morphs are lackluster when there are superior options in available. This change improves the skill and gives it one tanking and CC morph and one morph that deals passive Magic Damage through Overcharged to fit in with the Vampire Magic theme while also giving Magicka builds sustain.

Blood Mist: Deals Bleed Damage.

Reason: Same as above. It is siphoning blood according to the tooltip. It makes sense for it to deal Bleed Damage.

That’s basically it. To reiterate the goal is to open up Vamp skills for both Magicka and Stamina specs while also buffing some skills to make them more competitive.

ElementalDud · May 2023

Some cool ideas here and I liked your other thread too, but after the many years since Greymoor I've kind of given up on hoping ZOS will do anything significant and positive for vampires. The whole line is un-thematic, feels bad, looks bad, and doesn't play nicely with many other skills - or other players for that matter. Even other vampire themed things are terrible, like the Vampire Lord armor set.

I was hoping the rework of blood mist (mind you, AFTER they butchered it in PVE) meant they were taking another pass at the line, but this most recent update, unless I missed something, has done nothing for vampires again. It's just a shame that it's been neglected for so long.

Vaqual · May 2023

It sounds a bit like you already decided to wear Blooddrinker when you came up with these suggestions.

MindOfTheSwarm · May 2023

Vaqual wrote: »

It sounds a bit like you already decided to wear Blooddrinker when you came up with these suggestions.

Not really, I don’t even have the set. But the theme of the skill line is heavily blood based. It just made sense to me to have at least a few morphs accommodate the theme and Stam players.

MindOfTheSwarm · May 2023

ElementalDud wrote: »

Some cool ideas here and I liked your other thread too, but after the many years since Greymoor I've kind of given up on hoping ZOS will do anything significant and positive for vampires. The whole line is un-thematic, feels bad, looks bad, and doesn't play nicely with many other skills - or other players for that matter. Even other vampire themed things are terrible, like the Vampire Lord armor set.

I was hoping the rework of blood mist (mind you, AFTER they butchered it in PVE) meant they were taking another pass at the line, but this most recent update, unless I missed something, has done nothing for vampires again. It's just a shame that it's been neglected for so long.

I see what you’re saying. Same goes with Destro staff being split up into three lines. Something people have suggested in place of getting a completely new weapon skill which ZoS I seem to remember have stated is never going to happen. A crying shame, as although new classes are all well and good, a new weapon skill line or at least splitting the Destro staves into three reworked and separate skills would really open up build diversity.

elfman236b14_ESO · May 2023

These changes seem interesting.

I’d like to see perfect scion recover your mag and stam completely.

Eviscerate should deal crit on targets health. I understand the thematic nature of the design it doesn’t work well. Considering PvP you basically won’t want your health.

And Drain should be a tether and not a channel. Just to help with the flow of combat.

Most form could be a bit smoother, the animation sped up a bit. I’m comparing it to streak and it’s just eh rough feeling. Sluggish almost.