[Senna]

I can't believe I'm making a thread like this...Well damn.

As much as I hate to say it, after actually testing a vampire that ISN'T fastens on the test server, I learned that vampires are quite bad. Why is that? Comparing the other races, they struggle to even use their own racial without facing many struggles. 

As they are now, they're just humans lite.

In this game current era? Damage is quite high. It's a death wish to end your turn literally right next to your foe unless you're running Narcus. This applies in both PVE AND PvP...Which is really bad.

You know you're down bad when PvE is kicking your ass too...

So, what's the problem with vampires? Their kit is somewhat lackluster and struggles to synergize with each other. To use their passive, they have to put themselves in danger and due to banquet changes (It doesn't help if the person is a mage or any other class that isn't a duelist), individuals NEEDS to be stacking hit to even land a bite if their target isn't a tank.

Vampires suffer three problems.

• The lack of options to constantly gain more essence.
  

• The racial being quite hard to activate without the risk of taking a large amount of damage as well as how easy it is to run out.
  

• The racial either doesn't do enough or uses too much essence to operate.
  

Suggestions?

Allowing vampiric effects/Life steal/FP stealing effects to restore essences based on healing/Stealing. This effect doubles with Life drain. If they have the fasten trait, this effect is negated. Allowing some effect that lets Banquet easier for people that aren't duelist to use. (Or just make it a autohit)

Two traits

Full-fledged vampire: Sanguine Crest will always be active however they get +10%(?) more holy damage. In the nighttime, essence usage is cut in half. (Needs 30 san)

Energized Vampire: If Sanguine Crest is active and the vampire has full essence, if they try to use Life drain or Banquet again, it grants a status called Blood Rush which lasts for 3-5 rounds. This doubles the effect for Sanguine Crest and dismisses the essence drain for Lunar Lunatism during its duration. (Needs 30 san)


Fasten

I would suggest allowing Graymist's healing to be player level x2 considering how little it's healing already...As well as other racial that is in the game that heals similar to the suggested for a lesser cool down.

One trait

Blood Reminder: When Greymist was used, they gained a status called Blood reminder. The fasten vampire, for 3-5 turns gains access to Lunar Lunatism. Instead of San, it will scale with half character's level. The drawback? If Lunar Lunatism was used, the vampire gains a temporary holy weakness that's half effective. (Requires Fasten)


Of course, these suggestions/Balancing suggestions won't exactly make vampires top tier but instead, allow them to work hand in hand with their kit a bit better...ESPECIALLY vampires that build SAN that isn't duelist.

[Perdition]

Another one has finally seen the truth.


I've written about vampires many times so I won't really say much other than lightly expand on their problems:

Racials use SAN for scaling, however, vampires are now encouraged to basic attack with Banquet being required for most of their race benefits. This is a problem because most of the time trying to both have a decent amount of SAN and basic attack is just impossible. The only time this really ends up working is with Redtail and Corbie, but these races get hit (and in the case of the former, choice of crit, evade, crit evade, even status inflict/resist etc) that scales with their SAN investment. Making SAN boost similar stats for Vampires would also help them imo.

Another big point of contention is that mage vampires suffer heavily when it comes to maintaining or stacking essence. Life Drain can trigger Sanguine Crest, but honestly Crest ends up being a detriment more than anything else 90% of the time. Even if you trigger your crest, without banquet you have NO way to boost your essence. Lunar Lunatism currently heavily benefits mages more, since they can afford SAN investment. However, many mage builds don't have good hit. On top of this making your banquet likely to miss against anyone with even semi decent evade, Banquet has fixed STR and SKI scaling, so you're burning 3 momentum to get a 10-20 damage hit in and 20-30 essence if you're lucky. Oh, and all of this has to be done after you get in melee range.

I actually ended up typing more than I intended, but this race has a lot of frustrating issues so ye.

[Snake]

Calling them 'humans' is rich.

Humans have a hell lot of extra bonuses that makes them, even with the blandest and most stock theme ever, stand out better and more comfortable than Vampires.

Vampires have no way of versatility, they lost their only worth or 'stand out' effect which was their boat load of bonus statuses which allowed them to be effective on multiple areas, and turned into a 'SKI-based basic hit or bust'. With those woes, they fell out of relevancy quite quick beyond being mages. But why be a Vampire mage when you can be a Glykin?

Really. I believe that minor buffs would get them super far without having to change them completely, and it doesn't need to involve touching their kit any significantly.

Sanguine Crest's stat bonuses are just for show. +2 is -really- insignificant. Remove that and swap for the following effect:

Sanguine Crest 
80% Poison Resistance, +3 Move, +15% PDR/MDR, (Holy Weakness, lowered healing, etc. not changed). While not Badly Beaten, being reduced to 0 HP automatically uses Silvermists if you have enough Essence.

Crest Burn-Out 
-3 Move, -15% PDR/MDR. You cannot recover or heal HP while it is active and skills/spells cost 15 (-1 per 5 SAN, min. 0) extra FP to use.

Additionally, they'd need a few QoL touches, so they're not streamlined into only having "Basic Hitting builds". No race currently does this, and for a good measure, to give players freedom to play their characters the way they want without having to be 'meta'. SO, slide these along:

Essence 
- Healing at an Inn will fully recover your Essence, if you are not Fasting (ICly, you'd take your sweet time to bite someone before resting).
- Gaining Essence while it is at maximum will reduce the duration of negative status effects by 1 round.

Banquet 
- If used on a target that is Charmed, Immobilized, Flatfooted or Clumsy, it will automatically hit. Hitting Banquet will prolong all beneficial effects you have by 1 round.

[HaTeD]

Banquet being as important as it is for vampire racials to gain essence shouldn't be a basic hit, at any levels of scaling. It forces a player to lock in multiple stats to be able to apply the racial which will take away from player customization. This makes all vampire builds quite..'samey'. The scaling could be edited, seeing how many things scale swa, it would be easier to use a swa scaling at lower levels. (by far nothing over 100% swa.) I propose this as a start so when players decide to play this race that they are also given the opportunity to take their own unique spin on a stat line and we could see a plethora of different vampire setups.

[Snake]

I've reflected a bit and... well. Even if it won't get a solution, and Dev's words about "I don't want to buff things anymore, since there are things that need nerf.", and going by that condition, I'd rather just change slightly how things work, so it englobes more playstyles, instead of making Vampire stupid once again.

Here's another pitch: Why not make it fall in line with the likes of Argentyle Bite but unique on their own way? Character LV pierce physical damage, and if it triggers Evasion, the Essence restored/drained is reduced by 50%. (If done from behind, it will ignore the target's Evasion and protection.)

That's one issue fixed, at least. What seems to be the most crucial in my eyes, too.