Hey @ZOS_BrianWheeler

first of all, thank you for tackling the blatant imbalance of the Undeath passive.

I think your idea of reworking the passive is a step in the right direction but I would humbly suggest you to consider some fine tuning.

First of all:
What made undeath so broken in PvP was the lack of real trade offs it had. The extremely high additional damage mitigation should have been countered by a very noticeable cost increase and vulnerabilities at stage 3. This didnt work out in real game application. The main reason was down to the sheer amount of undeath mitigation which allowed players to ignore defensive measures and sets and to use 3-5 pieces of medium/light which countered the skill cost increase again. paired with block and other emergency mitigation methods (dodge+burst heal, lefthanders, strafe jumping etc.) this was sufficient to avoid death reliably. In organised groups, sustain is a non-issue anyway.

So while a normal way of increasing mitigation had a plethora of drawbacks (slotting heavy armour/defensive sets = missing out on a lot of crit and damage), undeath's drawbacks were basically countered by the very thing it enabled: going some pieces medium/light, slotting more offensive sets (which usually come in those weights).


You lowered the entry stage to 1 now and made it a 10% scaling passive which - while being a good tackle of the "overall too much mitigation" problem - also lowers the "counter incentives" a lot. In the end, vampire stage 1 is still a no brainer for 10% unnamed damage mitigation. It is not totally broken anymore (as of total mitigation provided) but still "free" and overpowered damage mitigation.

Simplified Example:
When I need mitigation e.g. as a medium build, I could for example slot a heavy cuirass instead of my full medium setup. I'd "increase" skill cost by missing one medium. I'd gain about 1k resisances which is like 1.5% mitigation.
On the other hand, I could go vamp stage 1, get up to 10% mitigation and have basically the same penalties.
That's unbalanced. And up to 10% damage mitigation in execute range is still a lot in PvP as it is damage mitigation where it matters, is unnamed, activates passively and can be stacked with the other percentual damage mitigation while having no direct counter.

My suggestion for a rework of undeath would be as follows, I tried to make it fit the theme of an elusive creature of the night popping in and out of the shadows, being fast and agile.

UNDEATH
While you are at vampire stage 3 or higher
Reduces your damage taken and increases your movement speed by up to 10% based on your missing health.
When you continuously sprint for 3/6 seconds, you gain Minor Protection for 2/4 seconds which increases by 1 second for every 20/10% of max health you are missing.
When you enter Sneak, Invisibility or use a teleport ability, you gain Minor Vitality for 1 second for every 20/10% of max health you are missing.

This would make undeath still a strong passive but a strong passive for breaking LoS/resetting the fight, not for tanking it out in light/medium.
It would make an injured vampire faster and thus able to break from the fight while giving him the means to heal up again supported by his own kit and build a bridge towards stage 4 with Unnatural Movement which would now build upon the feats of Dark Stalker, Strike from the Shadows and Undeath - especially providing Minor Protecton and Minor Vitality when managing to escape a tight situation by sprinting into invisibility.

It would also making vampire gameplay meaningful instead of just handing out free mitigation.

And it would be fun to use stuff like mist, sprint, sneak and invisibility to get out of sticky situations and give further incentive to actually play actively as a vamp instead of being annoyed to be forced to make every char a vamp.

Thank you very much for reading!