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As a vampire, you take a handful of negative aspects in order to gain some bonuses in return. There is clearly some debate among players on whether the boons or the negatives weigh heavier. The most notable negative is the whole window of fiery death, and it's counter balance being the few minutes of being max stats. As a vampire, good portions of the game are made unavailable to you 50% of the time unless you'd like to experience 400+ fire damage every few seconds. A few of the perks that you do receive, are resistances to various elemental attacks. While being undead does grant you a slightly increased health pool, it comes with a sip penalty as well as a decrease in the regeneration from boar/moon tattoos. Now, Sapivi was aimed at making the class tolerable to bash in, and a lot has changed.
Prae who chose Sapivi received +1 to con, removed their sip penalty, healed a bit more with mending, and were slightly more proficient in avoidance. The cons to this, were -1 str, weaker minions, and weaker frenzy.
Currently, Prae has received some pretty substantial negatives in their bashing. Sapivi was essentially removed (now only gives 3 abilities), meaning we have a lower health pool, sip penalty, and receive no bonus to avoidance. While these changes are frustrating, alone they might be tolerable. On top of these changes, there have also been more tweaks. Currently, our defensive audits are now tied to how low our blood levels are. To achieve 10% reduction in damage, I believe my blood had to hit 60%. While this change itself wouldn't be too terrible, blood levels have also been changed. every 2% loss in blood levels now reduces the effectiveness of serums/elixirs, moss/kidney and regeneration. Meaning if we wish to maintain the previous benefits, we now need to take a 15% reduction to almost all healing effectiveness (on top of all the other negatives we can't circumvent just to bash). Further hindering hunting, the mitigation that we relied on to make us viable (since we had some of the weakest offense in game), has been completely reworked to only work on allied players. If you want to take advantage of the mitigation, you now must split experience with an ally. For all of these downsides, PVE has gotten a -slight- boost to frenzy damage, and we get our natural +1 str back that was lost when we chose Sapivi.
I understand that this is a new change, and there will likely be kinks worked out in the near future. But as someone who just recently transed two of their class skills (Corpus and Sanguis), Having hunted with these new changes I'm now considering a new class, and wondering why anyone would be a Vamp aside for roleplay , and the damn good comrads. Because the benefits of being a Vamp are very quickly being outweighed by the penalties.
1) Are Praenomen (mainly the Bloodborn people) going to get a free reincarnation? As some are balance based for the great bashing it had and Praenomen if it's like the old needs to be eq based and that's like 100 credits just to use the class to see if it's any good.
2) Them who had the class just for Bloodborn/rituals, is a lessons refund going to be handed out or are we just going to be stuck with Praenomen and like it?
Oh one other, Whats going to happen with the artifacts we have which are for Bloodborn only, phial, tablets etc?
Sorry if coming across assy but don't mean to be. @Keroc @Razmael
I imagine Xaanhal might be rougher, though, since it's mostly elemental.
09:16:55 +-- Resistances ------------------------+-- Avoidance -------------------------+
09:16:55 Cutting | 20% 0% 50% 40% Dodge Chance | 0% 0%
09:16:55 Blunt | 20% 0% 42% 37% Divert Chance | 27% 27%
09:16:55 Magic | 15% 0% 0% 15% Divert Block | 15% 15%
09:16:55 Fire | -24% 0% 0% -24% +--------- Miscellaneous -----------------+
09:16:55 Cold | 12% 0% 0% 12% Experience Bonus | 20%
09:16:55 Electric | 12% 0% 0% 12% Crit. Chance | 24.57%
09:16:55 Poison | 12% 0% 0% 12% Celerity | 2 r/p.5s
09:16:55 Psychic | 0% 0% 0% 0% Health Drain | 0
09:16:55 Asphyxiation | 12% 0% 0% 12% Mana Drain | 0
09:16:55 Spirit | 0% 0% 0% 0% Willpower Drain | 0
09:16:55 Shadow | 10% 0% 0% 10% Endurance Drain | 15
09:16:55 +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
09:16:55 Resistances: Defences, Miniskills, Armour
09:16:55 Avoidance: PvP, PvE
09:16:55 +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
These are my audits currently, with a bit more than class skills.
I'd just like to clarify, I don't dislike the changes as a whole. I can tell a great deal of effort has been put into it. The minions now being tied to the corpse is a flavor I rather love. Bashing has just become unpleasant. To the point It's almost better for me to just fish levels. (That and I'm a little sad I can't master spear via Sanguis anymore, but that's just me having an unnatural love for spears that I can circumvent elsewhere in skills.)
and for electric etc you need resistance rings and, transcendent in the minis.
My audit is pretty high for prae at moment, 55/55 cutting and blunt with not so good armour (i didnt augment it yet) and my minis are above 40 but unsure if I have resistance rings or not.
The changes really shouldn't effect bashing asI guess MEND is still a skill only thing we lose is affinity unless you can still do that to the things we raise as from the AB it looks more like its people only.
I just barely achieved enough lessons to trans two of my class skills. (Thanks to a very lucky spider boots drop from a stocking.) But I will be working on minis after I hit a few more key skills (finally got overkill, which has made life a fair bit nicer). Though for me to have the defenses I have, requires my blood be at 50%, which is a 25% reduction in sip, regen, and kidney slice effectiveness. Mend used to have a 10% buff, and Affinity no longer works on minions. So If you bash with it, you have to split experience.
Edit: @Talfinel - it's worth mentioning that if you're running full orbs with red amulet/sip amulet and vigour defence (apocroustic serum), you can attain a high enough physical audit that you should be able to bash areas that deal primarily physical damage fairly ok still. Don't forget to use feed to bring your blood levels back after you throw up your defences, and all of the ones with a constant blood drain you can safely keep turned off while bashing. It might be slower but should still be doable.
Abhorash says, "Ve'kahi has proved that even bastards can earn their place."
In xaanhal I got hit for just close to 2k damage by cold then I was hit by 4k damage by cold.. Still unsure as to why that happened.. since I had insulation up both times.
"spinal_rip", "smashed_throat", "ripped_groin", "ripped_spleen", "ripped_throat", "head_bruised", "limb_bruised", "limb_damaged", "limb_dislocated", "limb_mangled", "limb numbed", "destroyed_throat", "cracked_ribs", "crippled_throat", "crushed_chest", "crushed_elbows", "crushed_kneecaps",Abhorash says, "Ve'kahi has proved that even bastards can earn their place."
Scythe stance is gone and we will now wield a shield and most likely a one handed weapon
Frenzy is now the main hunting skill
So why would I need or want to keep my charged rune of empowerment?
My reasons for having it have been taken away and it would be appreciated if I could get a refund.
Sooo what say you admin?
Case in point, I am artifacted to the teeth with defensive and curing artifacts, have a 55% blunt audit and yet I'm still getting hit for 2000-2500 (if not higher) in the Vortex, consistently.
A chaos worm lunges at you, performing a battering attack that drains away some of your strength.
Health Lost: 2185, blunt, none
I get removing maluses to make the game a little more even, but removing affinity that helps with tankability that quite a few classes have, is beyond me. So again... what was the reason for Blood affinity being removed from the minion, beyond just "We wanted all three paths to have three skills"?
EDIT: Solution - Keep the Paths as they are and just re-institute the ability to attach affinity to the minion as Insidiae. Due to the fact that every vampire can change paths whenever they please, this will cause 0 issues in whats been put in place and it will give people who enjoy bashing that same tankability as they previously had. The arguments for this could be made that this will make Insidiae a bashing path much like Sapivi was... which is fine. Because you can still perform the abilities and PK finishers that was so greatly necessary with pre-Praenomen revamp. If it comes down to it, I will very likely input a liaison report, just to make sure there's that in-game papertrail.
Mind you I am speaking as a third party who has made observations over a significant length of time, so I may very well be incorrect, but I would imagine that one of the people who worked on the class can give better insight on why such a change was made.
I think more of an effort should be made to buff peoples pve experience rather than nerfing it. Almost every time I hear someone (who isn't a darkie main) talk about Praenomen bashing and the loss of affinity all I hear is something similar to "good now they suck like everyone else."
I by no means meant to have that come off as snark in my statement, and maybe we could work on bolstering our PvE environment as a whole, I am certain @Zsadist can bring in good feedback on bashing being one of the top bashers in the game by ranking, that being said, I would like to see what considerations are put into PvE changes when they are made.
tl:dr Frenzy is reeeeeeeally slow.
Edit: Also, while audits are important, more goes into bashing than the numbers on your audit sheet.
Werecroc doesn't have the best audit in the world, but after the slash buff, attacks are pretty damn fast and painful. So with faster slashes and shriek healing, I enjoy bashing with it artifacted out. It feels really worth it.
Prae was tanky, but slow, like luminaries (who aren't all that slow with artifacts) or cabalists. Now they're a lot less tanky, missing affinity covering all the weird resists, but still slow.
IDEA 110
Abhorash says, "Ve'kahi has proved that even bastards can earn their place."
Do I take hits harder than I used to? Yes. Because Pre-revamp Praenomen were able to have a flat 25% dmg decrease through Affinity. They are still one of the strongest PvE classes out there when you consider that since their Audit is still among the top (it's higher than everything except, maybe, Teradrim. Maybe.) If you combine the fact that they have an on-demand heal that heals me for 1k-2k hp every 30-ish seconds..
Anyway, the griping hurts my head, or maybe my headphones are too tight. I'll do some real testing in a bit, throw my Audit up there (mind you, i am Azudim, I have my miniskills trans'd, and I make consistent use of resistance rings. The last, by the way, are accessible for everyone.
Besides, the best bashing classes in the game is a toss up between Templar, Cabalist, Teradrim, Praenomen, and Carnifex. (Monk is a heavy 'maybe')
And don't worry. I'll switch class to PRaenomen, adjust my enhancements, and post everything for the world to see. I have no defensive artifacts, just omni-trans and resistance rings, so take it as you will.
Unenhanced audit as a Typical Azudim, Lv. 115. This is BEFORE I decide whether I want to be super tanky, and this is with 4957 hp. (15 con, forgot about my starchart :P but eh, it happens)
+-- Resistances ------------------------+-- Avoidance
Cutting | 30% 0% 51% 48% | Dodge Chance | 11% 14%
Blunt | 30% 0% 49% 47% | Divert Chance | 30% 30%
Magic | 35% 24% 0% 51% | Divert Block | 12% 12%
Fire | 29% 24% 0% 47% +-- Miscellaneous
Cold | 30% 24% 0% 47% | Experience Bonus | 10%
Electric | 20% 24% 0% 40% | Crit. Chance | 47.23%
Poison | 20% 0% 0% 20% | Celerity | 2 r/p.5s
Psychic | 10% 24% 0% 32% | Health Drain | 0
Asphyxiation | 10% 24% 0% 32% | Mana Drain | 0
Spirit | 10% 0% 0% 10% | Willpower Drain | 0
Shadow | 20% 0% 0% 20% | Endurance Drain | 0
+--------------------------------------------------
I have 44/42 Scalemail, 33/32 Shield, fully buffed. (currently at 97% blood)
Forgot to note that I do have Miasma, which adds 10% to everything. (forgot about that one too!!)
With Potence on, at 14 str, Typical Statpack, I do 1059 dmg (roughly 100 more than I did before) at 2.90 balance (bal enhanced, of course) which is roughly .03-.08 seconds faster than I was pre-revamp.
I'm not even making use of Elusion, which would up my dodge by 3%, which makes 17% pve dodge chance.
Naturally, when I enhance everything, my resistances, avoidance chance, health, all go up. I don't see what all the fuss is about, especially for the artied out people. I have no hunting arties, no defensive arties, and I do plenty fine especially since I have mend which is a .99s EQ balance with a cd of 25 seconds and it heals me for (1:1474, 2:1754, 3:1575) between 1200 and 1900 health. Just to give you some ideas, I heal for roughly 600 - 1000 off Analeptic and roughly 500 off kidney.
Perhaps I'm missing something, but all I can see is Affinity is missing and we're all feeling it hard. At least we still bash better than literally every lifer class in the game. (Correct me if I am wrong, but I am pretty sure we do when you combine Full Audit + Bashing strength)
Teradrim and Shaman are the only other classes that have something related to Affinity, and it is only 10%.
All this having been said, if we get Affinity back like pre-revamp Prae, I will not complain in the slightest.
(Extra!!)
Just for the sake of testing, I dropped my blood levels down to 2%. This is what popped up.
+-- Resistances ------------------------+-- Avoidance -------------------------+
Cutting | 40% 0% 51% 55% | Dodge Chance | 11% 14%
Blunt | 30% 0% 49% 47% | Divert Chance | 30% 30%
Magic | 35% 24% 0% 51% | Divert Block | 21% 21%
Fire | -10% 24% 0% 17% +-- Miscellaneous ---------------------+
Cold | 50% 24% 0% 62% | Experience Bonus | 30%
Electric | 40% 24% 0% 55% | Crit. Chance | 47.23%
Poison | 40% 0% 0% 40% | Celerity | 2 r/p.5s
Psychic | 10% 24% 0% 32% | Health Drain | 0
Asphyxiation | 30% 24% 0% 47% | Mana Drain | 0
Spirit | 10% 0% 0% 10% | Willpower Drain | 0
Shadow | 20% 0% 0% 20% | Endurance Drain | 4
Strength went up +3, Int went down -3. My defenses stopped being altered when I hit around 20% blood.
I have the following enhancements that weren't there in the previous test.
Stats
- Constitution
Speed
- Balance
Protection
- Cutting
Stamina
- Experience (2x)
Augmetic
- 2% Max Health
--------------------
Some food for thought... and for the comment on how we use blood.. Feeding is a thing. We can replenish blood on the fly, nobody else can. And on a last note, if you want to PvE as Praenomen, pick Phreneses. Enrage is the only Path ability that holds usefulness in PvE as well as PvP, even if it is a small boost, unless you want to Affinity bash with a friend.
(Testing Mode Deactivated)
Basically, you're only highlighting the positives, and ignoring the negatives.
30% will give you +1 str and -1 int
I believe it was 20% gives you another +1/-1.
So for +2 str you can have a 40% reduction in healing, regen, and kidney/moss. Which is four times the value of a level 1 sip malus.
Damage done by mobs in Xaanhal and in Volcano. I purposely did not use Vortex mobs for this testing as I know they are designed to hit harder than the average mobs found in the normal Planes.
A merciless Xorani warrior chants in a series of hisses and rumbling growls, "Minal sik tim al ka."
A merciless Xorani warrior twirls his staff in a startlingly graceful move, a crackling rush of
violet power pouring forth to slam into you, crackling through your body painfully.
Health Lost: (2000-3000), electric, none
A wiry Xorani guard chants in a series of hisses and rumbling growls, "Kisklikan'ta shiximal ta."
A wiry Xorani guard spins his staff in a graceful twist, and brilliant sapphire light screams
outward, brutally searing through your body.
Health Lost: (1200-1500), magic, none
A large earth elemental throws one of its massive hands at your side, and your arm cracks loudly
under the force of its momentum.
Health Lost: (1800-2500), blunt, none
You gag and splutter as a large smoke elemental slips one of its arms down your throat.
Health Lost: (1500-3000), asphyxiation, none
With a swift movement a large fire elemental slams one of its arms into your chest.
You spontaneously catch on fire.
Health Lost: (1800-2500), fire, none
A lava daemon slams one of his rocky fists into your shoulder.
Health Lost: (2000-2450), blunt, none
A lava daemon draws in a deep breath before releasing a blistering torrent of air towards you.
Health Lost: (1600-2300), fire, none
Kidney heals: 900-1100 hp
Analeptic heals: 1500-1900 hp
Mend heals: 1800-2400 hp at 0.93s (bal enhanced)
Bashing speed: 2.92s (bal enhanced)
Bashing damage Frenzy: 2236 (fully buffed with artis + orbs)
DPS: 765.75/s
Bashing damage Scepter: 1597 @ 2.5s (fully buffed)
Audits/enhancements/Stats
Audit:
+-- Resistances ------------------------+-- Avoidance -------------------------+
Cutting | 35% 0% 57% 54% Dodge Chance | 0% 0%
Blunt | 35% 0% 56% 54% Divert Chance | 30% 30%
Magic | 50% 24% 0% 62% Divert Block | 30% 30%
Fire | 33% 24% 0% 50% +-- Miscellaneous ---------------------+
Cold | 36% 24% 0% 52% Experience Bonus | 200%
Electric | 26% 24% 0% 44% Crit. Chance | 50.73%
Poison | 26% 24% 0% 44% Celerity | 6 r/p.5s
Psychic | 15% 5% 0% 20% Health Drain | 0
Asphyxiation | 16% 24% 0% 37% Mana Drain | 0
Spirit | 15% 0% 0% 15% Willpower Drain | 15
Shadow | 25% 0% 0% 25% Endurance Drain | 0
+------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
Shield:
Cutting protection: 35 (23% resistance)
Blunt protection: 33 (22% resistance)
Scalemail:
Divert bonus: +2% Dodge malus: -2%
Cutting protection: 43 (28% resistance)
Blunt protection: 43 (28% resistance)
Enhancements:
Stats
- Strength
- Constitution
Speed
- Balance
Stamina
- Experience (2x)
Augmetic
- 6% Max Health
- 6% Max Mana
- Faster Movement
- 1.5% Increased Critical Rate
| Strength : 19(+5) Dexterity : 13 Timeout : 60 minutes |
| Intelligence : 15(+3) Constitution : 18(+5) Statpack : Typical |
My bloods levels consistently stay above 90% because I need to be ready to fight at any given moment and I refuse to be caught with less than that so I can fight properly with 0 maluses, regardless of any sort of bonuses they can give.
And counter to what Satomi is arguing, I am constantly having to Shift/run due to the sheer damage output that the mobs are producing and I have quite high audit factors. Yes, I can tank a hell of a lot of damage, but never since I have been lvl 90 vampire, have I had to run from a xorani/elemental/daemon. Yes, some classes are weaker than Prae and take a hell of alot more damage (should probably do some testing with those to help them out
From what I've seen, the whole reason that Praenomen had affinity was to augment a low DPS with tankability, as how every class should be (either low DPS with high tankability, or high DPS and moderate tankability). No class should have to suffer with being unable to bash because of crap damage/DPS or crap tankability. Again, I am artifacted to the teeth with a whole bunch of artifacts and am still taking a ton of damage like it means jack squat.
In the end, the removal of Affinity has really proven to be more detrimental than helpful because it means we're even squishier than we used to be. So, because I like constructive criticism and the admins/liaisons really put alot of work into the revamp, I love the new road that it has taken and really love the time put in to make Praenomen an actual viable to class to play as. But I'd still like to see affinity re-instated in the carnation is was pre-revamp to help with bashing tankability.
All that having been said, though, every single class I've bashed in for Shadow (except Prae) has had to run from mobs in Xaanhal, and occasionally in Tiyen. Those are the places I bash heaviest. Even Cabalist, with a 10k health pool, I've had to shield-spam/run in Xaanhal. While I agree that losing affinity sucks massively, I guess my argument is why should Praenomen exclusively be immune to the crap of bashing? (Though I will agree that being one of the best bashing classes to being thrown into the middle-upper middle(arguable) bashing classes is jarring enough to cause a bit of whiplash.)
Praenomen was the only class I could achieve something akin to auto-bashing/sleep-bashing without using shield or running, ever, unless I smacked into a group of hostiles (or a cutter. Yuck)
Hate me if you will, I'm just playing devil's advocate here.
I'll check on the strength gain/int loss again. It's very possible that a +1 got added into my strength, though I have no idea how since I use my starchart for con exclusively and I don't use my enhancements for str anymore... Maybe I got a blessing or something by magic that didn't affect my int. N.F.I.
As to the rest, @Zsadist ,
Also, I'm not upset that anyone is playing devil's advocate. I'm upset that everyone is arguing for more of the same. Bashing sucks, is boring, and completely uninteresting. I wouldn't mind being forced to watch what I was doing if there were any more interesting mechanics beyond kick mob > spam gallop/dash direction > heal up > gallop back > rinse repeat, or spamming sip health/stick analeptic when I have black out.
I'd much rather everyone be elevated to at least Praenomen level bashing (pre-rework) rather than everyone being brought down. -That's- why I have issues with the PvE nerf, and I know everyone doesn't feel the same way as me, but eh, there you go.