Consider changes to Vampirism

Zyaneth_Bal · July 18

NuarBlack wrote: »

Zyaneth_Bal wrote: »

This hurts all players who don’t have insane hots or run in a group with cross-healing. And solo players will be hurt the most because, naturally, when there’s only one target it inevitably takes a lot more damage than anyone in a group or zerg. So this nerf will have a far more pronounced effect in 1vX fights than in 1v1, tipping the scales even further in favor of numeric superiority.
You did mention running in small scale, so I can see why you would crave this nerf so much. Any organized group has a lot of cross-healing and doesn’t make much use of undeath anyway while solo players and less organized groups are going to lose a lot of mitigation, in other words it’s a huge buff to organized groups and good ones are already borderline impossible to deal with.

This is the mentality that got us into the predicament in the first place. Balancing the game around small scale and solo within cyro is a fools errand. Superior numbers and organization is always going to win. Any tools you give small scalers and solo players will be used more effectively by ball groups than solo players. And that includes undeath. It definitely prevents you from securing kills on stragglers and those that stray from the group.

I firmly blame 1vXers for the majority of pvp's problems. Templar used to be the only good pvp group healers except their heal was casted and therefore interrruptable. The 1vXers cried that they couldn't heal like groups could so now everyone has healing like templar and it isn't interruptable cause that was bad for 1vXers who thought they should be able to face tank a bigger more coordinated group. So instead of asking for pvp content more conducive to solo and small scale than Cyro we played this stupid game of a cat chasing it's tail. Gave the 1vXers what they wanted only for the ball groups to use it better. Sure the 1vXers could stomp a group of noobs every now and then due to the knowledge gap but all that did was thin the pvp population cause those players thought pvp was busted, correctly, and soon all you have is the wannabe 1vXers and the ball groups.

And the problem was never solved cause it's fundamental to cyro. The bigger more coordinated group will always win. Only semi effective counter was when siege was good against players.

I fail to see how this is related to undeath and my comment in particular. Another loathing post that isn’t even remotely connected to the topic.

As for the source of your frustrations, that as I understand it are ball groups, I explained very clearly and in an easy to understand manner that undeath is absolutely inconsequential for large scale pvp and ball groups do not benefit from it in slightest, more often than not they aren’t vamps at all. If anything you should agree with me because I stand for nerfs to healing as it is by far the main source of excessive survivability now which is even more true for ballgroups.

StShoot · July 19

Vulkunne wrote: »

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Undeath was disgustingly overpowered compared to any other defensive tool in PvP, one of the main factors in the obnoxious "tank meta" where even full damage builds often stalemate each other. Now if you want to survive like that, you build tanky, you don't get it for free, but you won't have a problem with a good defensive build.

Ok so Undeath is gone now. It wasn't overpowered. It worked when people built to use it.

The problem is people bringing insane amounts of damage to the table. Taking away undeath, is an indirect nerf to defensive abilities for most of the community.

If Undeath is going away, give Vamps Health Recovery or pull this change. Because people are packing so much damage already that Undeath really won't do anything for you to start with because the incoming damage is so intense and abusive.

Undeath, I say again, never did anything for me unless I built defensively. Why am I being punished for building defensively or more importantly, now everyone will just continue building offensively because now there is no defense.

A 5/10% buff is nothing. A 15/30% buff is a little something but in and of itself its nothing. It can never, was never and will never be the sole source of anyone's defense. Its being punished for being misunderstood by people who don't see how someone else is defending.

Undeath actualy helped Zergs and ballgroups to do more Damage. Because if you had enaugh crossheal you could use it as your only defense (to survive burst), so you could stack everything else into Damage. That doesnt work as well in smallscale/1vX because you have less crossheals and if you choose to fight outnumbered the sustainpenaltie actualy hurts (sometimes xD). So players now once again have to invest if they want to be tanky, which will reduce their dmg output, so i would argue this nerf hits where it should.

Moreover old Undeath has become a luxury passive, in NoCp Bgs and Ravenwatch,: Weak classes which struggled with their sustain had a very hard time to fit this passive into their builds, while strong classes with good sustain barely noticed the penalties. So it increased the gap between those classes even further.

StShoot · July 19

HushAzrael wrote: »

The problem with fixing pvp issues is that pve and pvp are inherently and indelibly connected. Nerf healing and you nerf pve, especially end game pve, where healing is important. The same can be said for shields. Nerf healing or shields and you will see waves of pve players quit (again). As someone else rightly pointed out, pve is what makes a successful game long term.

That leaves poking around skills that are primarily used by pvp players. The most over performing passive skill used almost exclusively by pvp players is undeath. It’s also NOT necessary to have. I look at most things ZOS does with extreme side eye, but this is not one of them.

No there is actual that handy buff called Battle Spirit which lets you alter pvp ballance without affecting pve. For example you could limit Crossheals (and crosshields) to 25% of their og pve value and look where the meta would go without affecting pve ^^

Dracane · July 19

This nerf couldn't have come any sooner. It promoted lazy gameplay where people have way too many attempts to survive combos that had otherwise meant their death. I even find this 10% mitigation for so small a price more attractive than the previous one.

I am glad they did this, and would have went as far as to say that Undeath should simply grant Major Protection, maybe both Major and Minor instead of a unique buff.

acastanza_ESO · July 19

Yeah no. If anything they should both nerf it AND leave the Stage 3 requirement.

NuarBlack · July 20

StShoot wrote: »

HushAzrael wrote: »

The problem with fixing pvp issues is that pve and pvp are inherently and indelibly connected. Nerf healing and you nerf pve, especially end game pve, where healing is important. The same can be said for shields. Nerf healing or shields and you will see waves of pve players quit (again). As someone else rightly pointed out, pve is what makes a successful game long term.

That leaves poking around skills that are primarily used by pvp players. The most over performing passive skill used almost exclusively by pvp players is undeath. It’s also NOT necessary to have. I look at most things ZOS does with extreme side eye, but this is not one of them.

No there is actual that handy buff called Battle Spirit which lets you alter pvp ballance without affecting pve. For example you could limit Crossheals (and crosshields) to 25% of their og pve value and look where the meta would go without affecting pve ^^

I'm not against utilizing Battle Spirit more but I think some problems go deeper than some simple number tweaking. Burst heals and the abundance of instant cast ones in particular still just don't have real counters. The worst move ZoS made for PvP happened years ago when they decided to make the templar heal instant and therefore every subsequent heal for every other class ass well. No more counter to heals. Where as before a group with a templar was definitely strong but the templar could be focused and locked down.

ZoS likely will never go back to casted heals cause of PVE but if they did you could dramatically lower damage and cross healing with battle Spirit if there was a way to stop the burst heal when you got someone low. "Kick dodging" is a skill from other mmo pvp that ESO would benefit from immensely.

Outside chance battle Spirit could make heals function entirely differently since they are adding more conditional skills, like when battle Spirit is active this skill has a cast time.

TX12001rwb17_ESO · July 20

Dracane wrote: »

This nerf couldn't have come any sooner. It promoted lazy gameplay where people have way too many attempts to survive combos that had otherwise meant their death. I even find this 10% mitigation for so small a price more attractive than the previous one.

I am glad they did this, and would have went as far as to say that Undeath should simply grant Major Protection, maybe both Major and Minor instead of a unique buff.

Permanent major protection would be better then what ZOS done to it.

TX12001rwb17_ESO · July 20

I don't think people understand how Undeath actually worked.

If you have 30k health and I hit you for 15k damage, Undeath is not going to negate any of that because the damage was inflicted while you had 100% health, at this point if I hit you again for the same amount you will take 12,750 damage because I hit you for a 15k attack and the effectiveness of Undeath being at 50% health meant it negated 15% of it.

Without Undeath this should of killed you but with Undeath you survived and at this point you have 2250 health remaining, of course this is not taking into account mitigation provided by other armor, I still feel 10% is not enough, with 10% you would only have 5% damage resistance after the initial hit that took you down to half health, if you were hit a second time you would only have 750 health left which would be barley enough to survive a single light attack.

It is practically worthless now, why not just remove undeath and give Vampires a health boost at stage 3 or just change the rules of PvP entirely and make it so everyone takes 90% less damage from all sources but they cannot heal.

mmtaniac · July 20

As a templar main i feel undeath on enemies more than other classes. Templar have 0 burst damage and every little chunk of damage i deal to enemy is negated by this buff. Ok as a nightblades maybe person not feel undeath infulence because they burst are on the roof but classes with weaker damage are on losing side.

Skjaldbjorn · July 20

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

I've been running at Stage 1 already, it's very noticeable, 30% is such an obscene number in this game.

I am making a bold assumption here, but I assume mitigation works similarly in PVP and PVE. If so, you should watch some of the videos recently posted about how mitigation actually works, how stacking % modifiers has pretty wild effect on diminishing returns, how the calculations fluctuate to almost insane levels depending on when a modifier is applied, etc.

Basically, long story, you're probably not getting 30%, and it could be significantly less than you think.

Zyaneth_Bal · July 20

Skjaldbjorn wrote: »

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

I've been running at Stage 1 already, it's very noticeable, 30% is such an obscene number in this game.

I am making a bold assumption here, but I assume mitigation works similarly in PVP and PVE. If so, you should watch some of the videos recently posted about how mitigation actually works, how stacking % modifiers has pretty wild effect on diminishing returns, how the calculations fluctuate to almost insane levels depending on when a modifier is applied, etc.

Basically, long story, you're probably not getting 30%, and it could be significantly less than you think.

This is true. Not to mention that people keep saying 30% and 10% like they actually ever get that that tooltip because that would mean having 1% health remaining and the real value is indeed even less.

StShoot · July 20

Skjaldbjorn wrote: »

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

I've been running at Stage 1 already, it's very noticeable, 30% is such an obscene number in this game.

I am making a bold assumption here, but I assume mitigation works similarly in PVP and PVE. If so, you should watch some of the videos recently posted about how mitigation actually works, how stacking % modifiers has pretty wild effect on diminishing returns, how the calculations fluctuate to almost insane levels depending on when a modifier is applied, etc.

Basically, long story, you're probably not getting 30%, and it could be significantly less than you think.

yeah you are not geting the full 30%, because zos made %mitigation multiplicative and decided to round up the damage taken (33.01%=>34% etc). But undeath was still one of the strongest mitgations in PvP. It was incredible frustrating to see someone geting crossheald from 5% back up to 100% after your ulti combo. Because all your follow up skills hit like a wet noodle.

xylena_lazarow · July 20

Skjaldbjorn wrote: »

I am making a bold assumption here

You sure do that a lot. I can forgive you because DR is a very unintuitive and misleading stat.

EHP = HP/(1-DR)

Do your own homework from here.

ToRelax · July 20

Mitigation has worked this way for the last nine years. It's not some sort of secret.

MEBengalsFan2001 · July 20

VixxVexx wrote: »

You could argue that nerfing Undeath but leaving skills like templar beam untouched isn't a very good idea.
The Undeath change is an improvement though. It could be better (not stage 1), but this is already way above my expectations from the combat team.

Players should choose to be a vampire if they want to make use of vampire skills. Not because of a single passive.

That’s the only burst Templar have left. If they fix that skill Templar need other skills adjusted so they can actually burst down a target. With out beam damage Templar might as well be removed from the game.

MEBengalsFan2001 · July 20

StShoot wrote: »

Skjaldbjorn wrote: »

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

I've been running at Stage 1 already, it's very noticeable, 30% is such an obscene number in this game.

I am making a bold assumption here, but I assume mitigation works similarly in PVP and PVE. If so, you should watch some of the videos recently posted about how mitigation actually works, how stacking % modifiers has pretty wild effect on diminishing returns, how the calculations fluctuate to almost insane levels depending on when a modifier is applied, etc.

Basically, long story, you're probably not getting 30%, and it could be significantly less than you think.

yeah you are not geting the full 30%, because zos made %mitigation multiplicative and decided to round up the damage taken (33.01%=>34% etc). But undeath was still one of the strongest mitgations in PvP. It was incredible frustrating to see someone geting crossheald from 5% back up to 100% after your ulti combo. Because all your follow up skills hit like a wet noodle.

It’s closer to 1%. Healing stacking of the same skill needs to be adjusted next. IMO you should only be getting healed by one instance of an ability. Three regen, vigor, scribing skills and polar winds etc is getting old.

Fantalior · July 20

Let's wait and see, maybe the upcoming change to vampire level 3 or undead will bring something and minimize the high efficiency of the permanent tanks...

Furthermore, we also have a solution for the healing problem with the scribing system. The script makes trauma (e.g. trample) more effective by adding damage of the same amount in addition to the healing absorption.

YandereGirlfriend · July 20

Your effective HP continues to scale with every % reduction mod.

TDVM · July 20

It was long overdue to balance, the only thing left is that zos balance the classes normally and start developing pvp

Wuuffyy · July 21

I am so happy for this nerf. This passive was overperforming with little-to-no investment. I'd advise wearing a "tank" set though mitigation of that value should never come from a passive, ever.

Iriidius · July 21

Zyaneth_Bal wrote: »

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

React wrote: »

I'm saying this as a primarily solo player too - this nerf is probably going to hurt me worse than anybody else.

This only hurts players who play too passively and rely too much on face tanking. You'll adapt easily, it's the guys trying to zerg you down that are now gonna be dropping instead of clinging to life at low hp long enough to zerg you.

This hurts all players who don’t have insane hots or run in a group with cross-healing. And solo players will be hurt the most because, naturally, when there’s only one target it inevitably takes a lot more damage than anyone in a group or zerg. So this nerf will have a far more pronounced effect in 1vX fights than in 1v1, tipping the scales even further in favor of numeric superiority.
You did mention running in small scale, so I can see why you would crave this nerf so much. Any organized group has a lot of cross-healing and doesn’t make much use of undeath anyway while solo players and less organized groups are going to lose a lot of mitigation, in other words it’s a huge buff to organized groups and good ones are already borderline impossible to deal with.

NuarBlack wrote: »

Zyaneth_Bal wrote: »

This hurts all players who don’t have insane hots or run in a group with cross-healing. And solo players will be hurt the most because, naturally, when there’s only one target it inevitably takes a lot more damage than anyone in a group or zerg. So this nerf will have a far more pronounced effect in 1vX fights than in 1v1, tipping the scales even further in favor of numeric superiority.
You did mention running in small scale, so I can see why you would crave this nerf so much. Any organized group has a lot of cross-healing and doesn’t make much use of undeath anyway while solo players and less organized groups are going to lose a lot of mitigation, in other words it’s a huge buff to organized groups and good ones are already borderline impossible to deal with.

This is the mentality that got us into the predicament in the first place. Balancing the game around small scale and solo within cyro is a fools errand. Superior numbers and organization is always going to win. Any tools you give small scalers and solo players will be used more effectively by ball groups than solo players. And that includes undeath. It definitely prevents you from securing kills on stragglers and those that stray from the group.

I firmly blame 1vXers for the majority of pvp's problems. Templar used to be the only good pvp group healers except their heal was casted and therefore interrruptable. The 1vXers cried that they couldn't heal like groups could so now everyone has healing like templar and it isn't interruptable cause that was bad for 1vXers who thought they should be able to face tank a bigger more coordinated group. So instead of asking for pvp content more conducive to solo and small scale than Cyro we played this stupid game of a cat chasing it's tail. Gave the 1vXers what they wanted only for the ball groups to use it better. Sure the 1vXers could stomp a group of noobs every now and then due to the knowledge gap but all that did was thin the pvp population cause those players thought pvp was busted, correctly, and soon all you have is the wannabe 1vXers and the ball groups.

And the problem was never solved cause it's fundamental to cyro. The bigger more coordinated group will always win. Only semi effective counter was when siege was good against players.

Undeath was not designed specifically for solo and smallscale players nor given only to them, but designed for and given to everybody who chooses to be vampire. Ballgroups requiere all their members to be vampire stage 3, they also get low and use dmg reduction of undeath before they die. Cross healing doesn‘t change that, it often prevents them from even getting low but still keeps them alive when it really matters and they get low from getting burstet by another group or multiple sieges.

They also don‘t give to 1vXers what they want for ballgroups to use better. ZOS has no intention to prevent ballgroups from using undeath or anything else that 1vXers also use and 1vXers didnt asked for undeath nor do most of them defend it now, we have a few 1vXer who defend undeath and a few who defend nerfing undeath, they are split like rest of PvP players.

Many players nowadays blame everything on 1vXers, probably because their favorite activity is to zerg down solo players that should have no chance to defend and there are few 1vXers left to disagree.
A few years ago you couldn’t take a ressoursse as a group without a 1vXer jumping into your group, trying to kill your weakest group member before streaking/cloaking away or running into tower and as soon as you stopped chasing come back and repeat, nowadays almost all 1vXers have either quittet the game or joined groups, probably because nowadays as soon as you see a group you are already a dead man because you get zerged down on sight without a chance to escape.

NuarBlack wrote: »

Balancing the game around small scale and solo within cyro is a fools errand. Superior numbers and organization is always going to win.

If balancing for solo players is useless anyway why were there so many 1vXers when game was better balanced for solo players before 2020 and majority of them quit the game when game got balanced more for group play?

Iriidius · July 21

Templar not beeing the only good PvP group healer anymore is not a problem, ZoS said that every class should be able to perform every role and actually templar still is best basegame group PvP healer. DK and sorc are only good selfhealers, nb is only decent basegame PvP grouphealer except templar but still worse. But every class introduced with a chapter was designed to be good grouphealer.
But why should 1vXer care about grouphealing?
Probably you want templar be the only class good at any healing like in a MMO strictly following Trinity where 1 player is not an independent unit and cant do anything alone.
Because of crosshealing groups already have much more healing than soloplayers, with templar beeing only class with good heals this would be even more extrem.

NuarBlack wrote: »

And that includes undeath. It definitely prevents you from securing kills on stragglers and those that stray from the group.

This is the only thing you say I agree with. Undeath hurts 1vXers more by preventing them from killing the X than it helps them reduce their own incoming dmg, the cost increase hurts 1vXer also more than the X.

Vulkunne · July 21

Thanks again everyone for your replies, I appreciate the feedback for this discussion. Kind of disappointed at how one-sided it's become but at the same time this is a change that's going to affect alot of people. I think for that reason alone its something that needs to be done very carefully. Undeath has been around for awhile now and while it seems many are all fond of this change, what concerns me more than anything is how it will adversely affect mainly PvP, not just for me but for many people. I disagree with most of the anti-undeath sentiment, and I think its going to create alot of problems that are not being faced due to a perceived negativity surrounding this passive. Sometimes it takes time to reveal these mistakes and Health Recovery is not going to compensate for this loss. What may very well end up happening is Vampirism itself is going to need an overhaul, much the same with WW. I've discussed issues with WW in the past and Vampirism is now going to be problematic along with it.

Also, in a similar manner to ball groups, I will survive and already have identified several methods to compensate for some of the upcoming nerfs in this patch, however many will not and then they are probably going to come here anyways to try and discuss their issues. And it is for them, more than anything else why I am reserved of negative opinion, and I realize that what affects others affects me as well. While there are a few others here that see this, I am disappointed that there are many who are so ready to deal out nerfs without really stopping to think about whether that nerf is really a fix or not. Ideally, there should be no difference between fixing a problem and nerfing an ability. Are we happy that a problem is getting fixed or that an ability that is perceived as a problem is getting taken away. Generally speaking, not just in ESO but life itself once something is taken away it is not returned. I feel I have fought the good fight on this and going forward, we will just have to see where the chips fall but its clearer to me now that there are some larger issues, and you know maybe it will simply take time for those get resolved but obviously experiences shared about the game and insights are not sufficient.

Execute damage will indeed reign supreme and I cannot speak for everyone, but I encourage those of you who are of like mind to not worry so much about these things, but keep looking for understanding, and you do not have to follow the crowd. Always look at what is and how to deal with it rather than getting buried deep in feelings about it. Reason is worth more than feelings.