[Autumn]

So what, in the end? What do you want out of that argument? I can't understand the reason behind those rebuttals, friend.

Their crippling Healing reduction, Holy weakness and Buff-loss-on-Banquet should stay as is, and they get no compensation for it? It's as if you're not reading beyond what you wanna reap out of my lines as 'factually wrong' instead of building over my ideas. Rood.

Not at all what I said, but if you want to just try to casually strawman out something like that then that's fine. Also pretty rude.

They're currently a race with various unique mechanics and benefits with some large drawbacks, but those drawbacks are mitigatable or actual non-issues if you actually consider what options it opens up. Considering using spirits is still a large part of the meta despite the use of holy weapons, their holy weakness is just an invitation to double dip in that and take some spirits on top for no actual net racial negative. I don't fully believe that that weakness is actually something you can't already build around just by going all in on it with a build meant to punish someone for wasting 3 momentum in the middle of a fight to switch weapons.

How do they get around their masquerade? What mechanical things do they need to do that? They could just not fight in front of people. Doing that would be so unfathomably stupid for someone who wants to keep themselves and their powers hidden. Or they could just start accusing random other people of being vampires if it's actually something that loses people all of their friends and a careless rumor can do that to someone. Once everyone's accused of being a vampire, the accusations mean nothing. Except like I said before, that's not the actual game we're playing and nobody actually cares unless that character is going around biting people illegally outside of duels.

They could use some buffs. Their light weakness needs to be the same as other races if it's not already currently. Their holy weakness needs to be the same as 40% of the playerbase that willingly takes a holy weapon weakness to get impressive bonuses to their DPS for PvE and PvP both (which I think they already are. Do they get double penalized for taking spirits now or something?). Banquet can be made to autohit charmed/immobilized people or something. Cursed blood can give -5% max HP or something. Sanguine Crest sucks but so do most racials people get that aren't their main focus gimmick and SC just seems to be a placeholder buff to trigger other abilities that they tacked a stat bonus onto to make it just a bit more special. Their healing negative can stay because even these minor changes make them already pretty powerful considering the amount of unique possibilities it opens up. They don't need anything huge, and they don't need people waxing poetic about how they need to be the sexier sequel to Dullahans.

When people remark that Vampires should be strong it should be for the a couple of reasons:

1) The inherent risk of playing Vampire and using its racials effectively without being subjugated to the weaknesses it presents
2) The value of its base stats vs its racials.

For example, when I say that I think that Vampires should be strong, I also say it with the same string of truth that I would say that I think that a Shaitan, Lupine or Zeran should be strong, perhaps in a different sense of the word given they're a bit cunning but still.

No one is saying they should be the next Dullahan, or at least, I can assure you I am not saying that as I pointed out in my previous post. What people are saying is that while Vampire fulfills its fantasy, it is currently impractical for its racials, and its base stats do it no better, but because Vampires need to cover a broad range of archetypes given they can be literally any race they want to, its best to just stick them on imperialist-esque stats and beef up their racials in kind. Changing them to be stronger isn't necessary, but updating their systems to be better suited for player understanding or want of retention is generally a smart idea.

Sanguine Crest should be the primary focus of attention, as most of the issues stemming from Vampire are on how difficult it can be to obtain Sanguine Crest, one example of a buff I could present is that Essence no longer can be pooled before a fight, but now you gain a percentage of the damage you deal and take as Essence stored, up to a cap based on your SAN. Sanguine Crest would activate at a certain threshold of Essence and incur the status and all the negative qualities it would also possess, then of course make that a toggleable passive just so vampires can still maintain the on/off switch for Holy that they have at the current moment (Though once you obtain Sanguine Crest you can't get rid of it easily, this should remain.)

One last thing to note, while you are correct in that we should not be imbalancing races drastically on purpose, I also believe that for a successful narrative to be delivered, there should be a power scale of sorts so that there is a bit of stake, Dullahans and Liches present this pretty well, while not being unbeatable for it.