powerset Just for Fun: Vampiric Melee / Assault powerset concept

[Varkarrus]

Link to the full writeup here!

 

This powerset is focused around draining the health of your victims, shutting them down with damage and crowd control, all while sustaining yourself on their essence!

 

Melee Powers:

 

• T1: Bloody Tear
  Deal damage to a target and inflict DoT. Standing near a bleeding target heals you.
• T2: Arterial Slash
  Like Bloody Tear, but with less initial damage and a longer, stronger DoT.
• T3: Ravage
  Loads of damage and DoT, and you still heal by being near a bleeding target. However, this ability costs health!
• T4: Drain Blood
  Attack a target, holding both you and them for 2 seconds. In addition to dealing high damage, you heal for a significant portion of damage done.
• Stalker: Assassin's Bite
  An Assassin move that deals less damage, but can heal you for lots of health if you use it while hidden. It also teleports you behind the target, but as it's already a melee attack, that's more for show than anything else.
• T5: Shadow Warp
  Replaces abilities like Taunt, Confront, and Placate. This ability teleports you, inflicts a PBAoE fear, and has an additional effect per archetype. Tankers and Brutes deal minor damage, with Tankers also taunting foes, and Brutes gaining Fury and +Regen. Scrappers gain +DMG and +Recharge for a while. Stalkers placate nearby foes when using the ability, and become hidden after teleporting, but they don't fear targets with it.
• T6: Nightfall
  A PBAoE attack that deals damage to targets, draining their health and burning their endurance. Each target hit gives you a buff to recovery! Stalkers get Assassin's Bite at an earlier level instead.
• T7: Enthrall
  A ranged attack that deals high psychic damage and makes targets sleep. Furthermore, Enthralled targets will walk towards you while sleeping, and Drain Blood has increased effectiveness on them!
• T8: Fell Assault
  Smash down in the target location and temporarily become Slightly more monstrous, giving your T1-T3 attacks an AoE effect!
• T9: Biting Swarm
  Turn into a swarm of bats, becoming basically immune to everything except AoE, as you bite targets in a wide area. Deals very high lethal damage over the 6 second duration.

 

Assault Powers:

 

• T1: Sanguine Strike
  Shoot pressurized blood at a target, dealing high damage but costing a bit of health.
• T2: Bloody Tear
• T3: Arterial Slash
• T4: Hellfire
  Shoot three fireballs in a ranged cone attack with a wide arc. Deals decent damage, but can only target 3 foes at once.
• T5: Drain Blood
• T6: Shadow Warp
  Dominators heal themselves, and gain a buff to damage and lifesteal as their archetype specific bonus. (This is to help make up for their comparative lack of lifesteal abilities compared to the melee variant)
• T7: Summon Bats / Bat Strike
  Using this first gives you a trio of bats that surround you, increasing your defense against ranged attacks. It then turns into Bat Strike, which is a very fast attack that turns one of your bat buffs into an untargetable pet that damages foes and heals you before expiring.
• T8: Enthrall
• T9: Biting Swarm

[Leogunner]

An interesting set.  I like it.  I feel there are some references to Castlevania in there too.

 

Seems like it would be a set low on damage (kinda like Ice Melee) but makes up for it with sustain which I believe Savage Melee was going to have that angle but they just chopped it off and released the set, which is a shame because I like the animations of Savage but the effects are milk toast and the overall damage feels low for no reason.  I think a lot of people wouldn't play the set for that reason though, because with IOs, nobody cares about sustain as they can get some of their defense soft capped and a good chunks of resist.  Personally, I'm not a min/maxer so if the set is moderate on damage and good on sustain, I can just pair it with a set that needs the sustain or has supplementary damage.

 

Some things:

What damage typing is this? I think I saw some psi damage in there for one attack but you didn't mention the other attacks.  I opened up your .doc and so I guess that answers some of it.  A bit of a pet-peeve of mine is I'd rather just read the idea on this forum instead of google docs, mainly because of how bright the screen is.  There's probably a "night mode" option somewhere but I just tried to finish reading it quickly instead.

 

Some interesting ideas but I'd say it's quite over-designed.  You've got a semi-seeker drone power in there, a teleporting attack with T1-T3 attack modifiers, a PBAoE with defense bonuses, a self+foe hold heal/attack, Heal over Time aura if near target, a single target sleep+taunt walking mechanic, plus ANOTHER teleporting attack that has varying effects depending on AT.  You could take 1-2 of those ideas and expand that into an entire set!  Basically, to avoid over-complexity and confusing players as well as not over-shadowing every other set, sometimes simple is best.

 

In the vein of the above paragraph, I'd say drop the Taunt/Confront/Placate replacement.  It might seem like a useless power but when you start cutting them while other sets still have to be bogged down by it, it's like leaving the other sets with 8 powers while this set gets 9.  If this is a staple power, replace it with the other teleport power.

 

For Enthrall, I'm not really sold on it.  It's rather easy to break sleep.  Unless you really just want to have a sleep to break, Disorient works just like you'd want it, just add a taunt that causes the foe to want to move toward you and it won't be easily broken.

 

Not sure about Assassin's Bite.  How often do you go to use AS with low health?  I'm not sure the utility of a healing AS is worth losing damage.  Maybe instead of healing, it'd be Absorb?  Either way, I'd probably just prefer to have regular AS effects, personally.

 

I read stuff in there about life-drain.  If you mean heal depending on how much damage, I don't know if that is a mechanic that exists.  If it does, it must be rare.  All effects I've seen have static damage and heal amounts that have to be enhanced separately.

[Varkarrus]

Yeah, the lifesteal is based on how much damage you deal. I feel like there'd need to be some finaggling there or else a level 50 player could one-shot a level 1 enemy and heal to full instantly. That's probably why the mechanic isn't currently used at all. But I feel like the idea is slightly central to the kit...?

 

I think you're right that it may be a little overdesigned and complicated, I guess I had a lot of ideas to throw out there! I guess the T1-T3 could be reworked to just deal flat damage with lifesteal, and no DoT. That'd help reduce the complexity. I feel like Drain Blood is fine the way it is, you can just kinda imagine it as an attack that's performed with a very long animation!

 

I like the idea you have for Assassin's Bite giving Absorb instead of health, I might just incorporate that in!

 

Shadow Warp was fused with the Taunt/Confront/Placate stuff because I didn't want to take away one of their powers to add another non-attack. But I ended up not using Build Up so maybe it would have been fine. Kinda unsure what power I should remove if I want to split it back up again. I'd remove Enthrall but I don't want to take away a ranged power from the Dominators. Could be Enthrall for the Dominators and Nightfall for the melee-ers, but Nightfall is one of their few AoeS.

 

As for Enthrall; the bonus applies even if the target is woken up before you attack them, so the follow up Drain Blood shouldn't be TOO hard to pull off!

Edited August 18, 2019 by Varkarrus