The PvP area Cyrodiil in the fantasy MMORPG The Elder Scrolls Online is suffering from a vampire plague. A combination of vampire abilities and certain class bonuses turns the nice dragon knight into a nasty Dracula look-alike, able to take on a whole horde of opponents alone.
The Path to Becoming a Vampire
In TESO, it is possible for every player to become a vampire. They just need to be bitten by another player. In Tamriel, the world of The Elder Scrolls Online, one practices tolerance and openness towards vampires. Some bloodsuckers even openly offer the vampire kiss in chat.
But beware: First let yourself be bitten, then pay – reports of scams involving bites are increasing.
Alternatively, one can get bitten by NPC vampires and start their bloodsucker careers with a quest. There is a catch, however: Vampire mafia guilds have teamed up to eliminate their NPC cousins right from the spawn. This allows them to continue selling their own bite at a high price or to trick players into parting with their gold, promising them a bite.
The Vampire in TESO: How to not suck
Vampires possess several traits and skills that distinguish them. One is the ultimate: The Bat Swarm. It is morphed so that the bats also return health points. Even as “Devouring Swarm”, it is still limited to 6 targets that must stand around the vampire to be hit (that’s called PBAE).
According to reports on reddit, the swarm, when used by correspondingly strong vampires, deals 300 damage to each opponent. That’s 1800 health points from the opponents around him, converted into blood bags. This allows a vampire to heal half of his total health points every second. In the mist form, which he can also assume as a vampire, the damage is significantly reduced.
That would be a lot, but that’s why the Bat Swarm is also an ultimate, the strongest skill that can only be used rarely, right? Wrong. The cost of 200 ultimate points per use of the ability can apparently be reduced to a quarter through special class bonuses, armor bonuses from sets, and passive abilities of vampires.
Since the vampire builds up ultimate points every time he is hit, he can keep the feeding bats active constantly. As long as they have something to bite, he walks around in a kind of vampire god mode.
Synergy Effects Make Any Temporary Vampire into Dracula
No special weapon is even required for this combination. Therefore, the vampire can choose whether he wants to use sword and shield to be a decent tank or increase his AE damage further with the destruction staff.
Since these vampires are usually controlled by experienced players who know every nuance of the game, they also use abilities that are currently considered too strong (overpowered) or even broken. This has devastating effects. Individual players can thus attack and destroy up to 20 others.
The combination becomes especially tricky when the ultimate cost reduction is combined with the abilities of an emperor. This truly turns the vampire into Dracula or Draculine and allows him to take on an entire army by himself.
The inherent weaknesses of a vampire, including its susceptibility to fire, can currently be easily countered by appropriate gear.
Garlic Won’t Help
In the English forums, there is heated debate on how to deal with such an over-vampire. The problem is seen in the uncoordinated approach against a high-level vampire. If enough weak players are grouped closely around him, he can regenerate almost indefinitely due to his often significant level advantage.
An effective method to withstand him is best seen in direct hits from a distance with the Silver Bolts from the Fighters Guild skill. Against a concerted fire from a distance, even the mightiest bloodsucker is powerless, as long as no one is close to him. However, this requires attentive orchestration, and up to a dozen players must devote their full attention to the bloodsucker. If he is not alone but has a few buddies with him, it looks bleak.
Many players are calling on Zenimax for an immediate fix for the problem.
Relevance to the Topic: ESO Guide: How to become a vampire.
Mein-mmo says:
The problem lies not only with the vampire but also with the fact that hardcore PvP players have chosen him as their favorite character at the moment. They will exploit and maximize every advantage in the game.
Many must have been looking forward to being something special, making a difference, handling a superior number of opponents alone. That is currently happening, but it is less heroic and more about taking advantage of a large level advantage, item advantages, and a whole range of still “improvable” traits and bonuses.
The vampire has become the first “Flavour of the Month” character. He is the currently popular “Weapon of Choice” for elite PvPers. Those who want to join Team Edward now should be warned: such outriders (or biters, in this case) usually do not last long.
Ultimately, it is an exciting design question how powerful an individual player should be compared to others. Before the release, there was much emphasis on the special status of the emperor. In practice, however, shadows are now also showing: Only one is an emperor, but dozens or even hundreds can be slaughtered by him.
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Update from 1.5: Vampires will have their fangs pulled next week
This comes directly from the developer’s Q&A session about the vampire topic:
Yeah, we are aware of the issues vampires in PvP. One bug fix and two balance changes are in the pipe, and should get to you guys next week. The changes are:
Fixed the bug where multiple Bat Swarms can be stacked on the same Vampire.
Reduced the movement speed bonus during mist form to 30% (which makes it equivalent to the “Boundless storm” morph of Lightning form)
Reduced the Vampire ability cost reduction to 7% per stage
We’ll continue to monitor Vampires in pvp after these changes hit as well.
Roughly translated: Zenimax has also noticed that vampires are too strong in PvP. A bug fix and two balance changes are expected by next week.
The bug fix is (as Lena suspected in the comments) that it was previously possible for a vampire to trigger multiple bat swarms simultaneously. That was not intended, is a bug, and will be fixed. Additionally, the speed bonus of mist form will be reduced to 30%. And the reduced costs for abilities through vampirism will drop to 7% per stage.
