Vampyres, Why do they suck? Can we fix them?

Elder blood binder

Stats
9 damage
6 speed
range 1-3
defense 0
43 hp

Upgrade line 1: sentinel, command dodge, blood magic
Upgrade line 2: murk, still life, dead magic zone:2

Base abilities: preparation
attack: psychic
declare target
ambush

 

I don't agree with this one, sentinel and preparation Mysian lamia already has it, and lethargic? vamps don't get old, why would age make them slow?

 

Lamia would obviously be changed to something stronger, i'll give you a preview of what I think she should be.

 

Mysian lamia

stats
10 damage
speed 6
1-3 range
2 defense
50 hp


upgrade line 1: metamorphosis, majestic 2, restraining aura
upgrade line 2: constrict, antagonize, shrinking gaze,

fearsome hunter, flanking,
attack: psychic

 

Soul collector

Upgrade line 2: fading light, blood magic, dark awakening

 

Folks, that's funny right there. He just can't dumb it down anymore than that for ya!

 

Super where are you going with these ideas? We fairly unanimously agreed just now that the issue is the lack of damage and damage reduction and you've just slapped a load of stealth abilities on everything whilst removing more or less all traces of Life Siphon, Bleed or Blood Magic.

I'm glad that you are contributing but i feel we should agree on one objective for our suggestions lest the thread turn into a cluster**** of everyone's individual ideas.

I was hoping we could keep any suggestions short and punchy, swap a useless upgrade for something like Shroud which would be very useful. Complete reworks are much less likely to be considered as an actual change any time soon.

 

I said in my opinion I think vamps should be based more around stealth as it fits them lorewise. Fw already has shroud options so to keep throwing strong abilities in a theme every time a theme needs something it will make every theme play the same. My ideas were to steer clear from that and go in another direction.

I guess I could make everything the same and throw some shroud in and other cookie cutter stuff, but this is why pox is starting to lose its originality. Most themes are starting play very similar these days.

 

Right i must have missed that, it's just that going by vampyre based lore i think that abilities based around vampiric healing suit them much better. I also find that your logic toward making the themes unique is somewhat backward, we already have a theme which is based at least partially on stealth.

I don't think stealth is the way to go, stealth themes tend to be very tricky with a lot of expensive but squishy champs and they are countered very easily. Not to mention that we already have a stealth theme within Spirits which is already quite well developed. With Vampyres we have the potential for a theme that could be played very differently from what already exists in the faction.
Most FW themes like you said are quite similar but despite their similarities or differences they all share one thing in common, they get destroyed by a good rush. Vampyres are potentially an aggressive early game theme, the champions on average have better stats and abilities for directly attacking the opponent which is something the faction just doesn't have anywhere else.

The thing which identifies vampyres as a theme is their vampiric healing abilities which you would have entirely removed stripping them of anything that makes them what a vampyre should be.

Your comment about shroud is just wrong in every way, we only have two sources of it as it stands and neither of which dictate the playstyle of the themes which they belong to. Furthermore neither of those themes would play anything like an aggressive vampyre bg.

 

Yeah the problem is the healing isn't good lol, otherwise they would be played and competitive. Which theme is based on stealth, spirits hardly revolve around stealth at all and actually were originally designed with phase shift and similar abilities in mind. Phase shift and incorporeal fit spirits perfectly, stealth doesn't even really make sense to me. Stealth themes don't have to be made of expensive, squishy champs though.

My comment about shroud is that if we keep giving every theme shroud eventually all bgs will play very similar. Shroud is a very strong ability and shouldn't be sprinkled around so much as it can very easily become overpowered. Fw already has one of the best anti-range spells in the game in elsarin night, which in my opinion sounds more like vamps or witches than zombies. I'm not a fan of putting shroud or certain abilities in every theme that needs them, if you wanna make vamps aggressive why even give them shroud ? Why wouldn't you give them abilities to quickly navigate the battlefield and lay the hurt, as you said above you don't want another slow theme in fw.

Good post though, and appreciate the thoughtful reply. That was just my take on vamps =), I also thought about something involving psychological warfare because vampyres can play with people's minds and cause fear.

 

I also think a large part of the problem with vamps is their just aren't really enough of them yet, I mean the first vamp was released in expansion 1. We have had 30+ expansions since then and only have a total of 24 vamps 6 of which are naria, which I don't consider vampyres and another 2 of them are in ud and 2 of them are split ud/fw.

 

Actually once you get Greater Vampirism out the healing is pretty good, you are looking at about 8-10 hp per basic depending on which champion is attacking and of course how tanky the target is. The problem that i identified was that particularly in high level play your champions will be easily one rounded and have no opportunity to heal up which is why i'm suggesting more abilities to help mitigate damage. Shroud was just the one ability i picked out of the bag and it's not essential to my ideas for the theme, there are a whole list of abilities to choose from which could fulfill the same purpose, Nexus Aura is actually the one i keep thinking about.

As we are speaking about lore based ideas i'd quite like to see more relocation abilities in the theme such as Pull, Beckoning Guile or Fascinate to emulate the hypnotic powers vampyres often have in lore. I think that would help with their weakness of just standing around looking for an engage.