Discussion PvP Vampires: Developer Fix versus Player Addaption

So one of the topics I commonly see brought up is that Vampires are completely broken and needs to be majorly nerfed. However, I also keep hearing the flip side of the argument, saying "Players just aren't willing to adapt and are just whining because its to hard and they just found a good build.

Here's my opinion: If ONE Vampire can push back and take a keep versus 50 players, they need to be fixed by developers. I was on at the time, and with one V10 Vampire, The whole Dawnbreaker campaign was Hard capped by Blue. I don't claim I know anything about what happened, but considering all the stories pointed at one or two vampires, I feel there's a problem.

The article on the resource site breaks down the mathematics of it. Obviously, players could mass "kill it with fire", but most GROUPS struggle with the damage output needed to keep their mere presence from feeding the vampire. And, most VAMPS are learning that Fire = possible death, and are equipping necessary Glyphs to counter-act.

They didn't find a good build, they found a build that doesn't work as intended, and (because of that) bonuses are stacking nearly exponentially. This one personally thinks that one person shouldn't have the firing power to take out an entire platoon of soldiers single-handedly. Or, if they are, it should be based on skill rather than cheap tricks.

I played in my campaign last night. An EP member was the Emperor.. and a vampire. It was the scariest thing EVER. Our entire alliance knew this guy's name and would call out his location because he was unstoppable. He single-handedly halted a 40 man siege on an EP keep and made a counter offensive to destroy all of our siege equipment including our forward spawn.

If it was just a good build I think I might be able to name four or five other builds as good or almost as good, I can't. I fought against a vampire yesterday who was able to keep his ultimate running nonstop, any attempt at melee resulted in almost instant death, and even when fighting at range he could top off his health by charging small clumps of people. Most conversations about unbalanced builds are on a completely different scale; " build X has trouble beating build Y in a duel" or end up being pretty subjective with people playing different classes or builds each thinking the other is OP in some way. When it takes 25 people working very hard in order to kill one player I call that broken. As for skill, running bat swarm full time, charging, and rooting doesn't constitute skillful play in my book.


V.

There's a difference between a powerful build and a build that does not work as intended. Going back to League of Legends, think about AP Yi before the change. Yeah. It was cool to see a skilled Yi player penta-killing in 1v5 fights, but it was also frustrating and not fun to see a poor player able to carry a team by taking advantage of something that was, in reality, a developer oversight. This vampire situation is the same. They wanted to give vampires strong AoE drain and that's great, but they overstepped the intended power level by a long shot. Balance is fickle and developers aren't going to get everything at launch, but this is not a powerful build. This is a developer oversight that will, hopefully, provoke a measured response. I don't want to see vampires stomped into the ground. I want them to be a powerful, viable option.

And that's the thing: Right now, for a lot of people, PvP is not fun. That is a big problem. PvPers are a big part of a game and if they are dissatisfied, they will leave. If they leave, ESO doesn't make money. If ESO doesn't make money, it flops. I really like this game and I want to see it successful.

I'm not saying that vampires are unstoppable, because they aren't, but they are definitely broken in the game. Using an Ultimate ability as often as a regular 1-5 skill is in fact broken. Also gaining that much health per player hit is a bit much IMO.

As I posted in the other thread regarding the topic, the big problem is you have lower-mid range characters (already at a severe disadvantage) attempting to take V5+ vamps that actually know what they are doing. Only a few days ago I was in Cyrodiil and myself (V1), and two others (V2's both of them) took down a V10 vamp that certainly knew what he was doing. I have no disagreement with the fact that adjustments need to be made - but continuing to attempt the same thing seeking different results is never going to work.

A whole GROUP of players goes after a vamp they are feeding him to slaughter them. Duo or trio tops and they are taken down easily enough. On Aradate I have almost no damage capability and we did it to a V10. Until it gets "fixed" stop swarming the bat; likewise, you could get up to at least V1 and notice a much greater difference in your own survivability in Cyrodiil. With a decent healer I can duo any of the resources on the map - ESO is more strategy than a great deal of mmo's out there. Use it to cater to you, not just charge in.