Okay so as we all know vampires are smack bang down the bottom of the list of quality themes, i cant actually think of any worst ones off the top of my head. So was hoping to get some changes to them that would help make them significantly more viable. First of all lets look at the way they play, vampires are supposed to have long drawn out fights with the opponent using vampiric healing to constantly top their health back up. Unfortunately pox now is incredible centric to 1 rounding things so tons of healing wont help that much. Things they could use A defensive phalanx the ability shroud could be extremely helpful for vampyres to help prevent the ranged 1 round turns. Absolutely need better stats if you check a lot of vampyres theyre a lot are pretty low cost because of their low stats, unfortunately this really is a counter synergy with there main playstyle because they need stats to heal and survive long enough to heal. soooo i think just general stat buffs and price increases could be good. Change to a key ability Greater Vampirism, okay we've had this thing go from 100% to 50 % from 15 nora to 8 nora but its about time we realize this ability still doesnt do enough to help vamps so heres my new suggestion. Greater Vampirism: When a unit vampiric heals it will also gain 50% of that healing in HP gain. (13 nora) This could really help out a lot because it gives vampires the ability to start to grow stronger which they have literally no way to do that which is just awful for an fw theme to have no upwards scaling but to also have a weak early game. Explanation since i've likely described it poorly heres an example. Life siphon, attack=12 damage, Vampiric Heal=6 , HP gain=3 New ability suggestion, one more thing to implement with the HP increasing greater vampirism, Incite Bloodlust: Target friendly vampire champion gains Bleed and Strength of body for 4 turns. Obligatory @Sokolov tag
Vampyres are in a really strange spot because the "theme" itself barely exists in terms of mechanics and is almost completely aesthetic. I don't think their issues can just be tackled with some straightforward buffs because the theme itself is kind of thrown together with scraps from other groups. The only thing that ties vampyres together is bloodcrest, which is not going to work with seism around in its current state. Greater vampirism isn't actually a vampyre-enabling skill, it's a life siphon/bleed skill. So you could throw Serkan into the deck and he would fit just as well as any true vampyre and also contribute to the scaling issue (though this scaling problem seems more relative than absolute since the theme still has access to nora gen and the faction bonus). Further, almost half of the vampyres are also witches, and that's something that really blurs the idea of vampyres as a theme. You could make a vampyre/witch hybrid and it would probably end up quite strong (and I think tiny's witches had quite a bit of this going on, with lamias, banshees, and archfiends). So more than anything else, the theme needs some kind of new direction and any buffs that are going to be proposed should be carefully thought through so they actually create good vampyre decks and don't just end up creating modules that make witch/goodstuff decks better. The number one thing for me would be to make bloodcrest work more consistently for the theme. I would love to see seism get reworked to enable this direction but even if the current version remains I still think vampyres should be a more relic-oriented theme to get the most use out of their only unique mechanic. Relic guardian and relocate relic should be available as upgrades on at least a couple of vampyres, and you could go even further with a champ that summons some kind of new relic which could act as a seism screen. This is where I'd start anyway.
I have 5 minutes will try and jab out a few things. Vampires have 0 tanks at all. Most of their durable units rely on vaporize to keep them alive for an extra round or 2. Wouldn't mind seeing the original vampyre changed to fill more of a tank role would even be cool to give him bloodspurt and relocate bloodball and let him keep thirst for battle and blood Magic. Also Lower the speed to 6
I think regarding helping blood crest be better giving it combat awareness would both make it immune to aoes hurting it and the champion at the same time and protect it from Seism (theoretically) a good relic synergy for vampires is the tomb raiders ransack ability is a good refund for a blood crest in a no longer useful position. Obvious solution to the greater vampirism nitpick is to make it only target vampyres. Further more the fw bonus only scales into late game when you have ways to take advantage of it. Vampires of course have no such thing so one can't say that solves their scaling issue and unholy tomb also doesn't solve this issue
Bloodcrest is really the only vampyre enabling theme piece otherwise you just have bleed/bloody and life siphon schticks. If you want them to become a theme I think you need more race based stuff to bring them together. I generally agree with your note that vamps really need to be hardy in order to make combat healing work effectively. I think the spell vampirism could be redone to grant all champs in an AOE life siphon and all vampyre leach vitality for X turns. Another thing I dislike is that life siphon pretty much requires that it be paired with hi damage in order to get good effect. If it was reduced to a flat 4 hp and reduced in cost OR perhaps vampyres got access to a cheaper life siphon options like "life siphon: bloody" or logistics: Life siphon. I would want vamp damage actually to be reduced and their HP increased, as you've said they fight through attrition to bring it more in line with how FW feels.
I actually forgot vampirism works. Note that vampirism is a spell that currently does nothing for vampires. I don't think that would be a bad target for my strength of body idea. Which would also fit your idea of reducing their damage and increasing hp
Vampires are more of an UD theme because they focus on damage and healing from it,in FW they dont work well with the faction bonus because you are meant to keep them alive via healing.
An additional thing is to rework bloodbinder counts ability. the fact that it's dmz related is still one of the dumbest things in the game. change it to affect bloodied units
I just recounted, it's 18 and 16, not 18 18. Whatever, it's not important anyway, just my overly nit-picky side coming out. (Ever heard of 1d4chan? Yeah, I'm a neckbeard.)
ha! vampires suck. Submission hold or constriction would seem to fit theme wise with vamps. Swarm "lesser vampire" on some units? So there are blood vampires, and qi vampires right? why not give some vampires energy thief or punish? Could set up steal life. You want a race to be good that makes blood globes? When demons heal from blood globes, and UD is popular? Better be good at one-turning. A relic that turns blood globes into hate balls? (lose 2 ap when captured by enemy, grants one ap when collected by a friendly)? I dunno.
Poor vampies. But yes, I have long wanted some sort of "lesser vampire" swarm of some kind. I want me some thralls. I'll be posting some of my Vampyre rune ideas in a bit.
Do you think it would be better as a targeted ability, or maybe a targeted AOE? (Without needing DMZ of course)
