Frankly, I'd say that warriors are so underpowered in a PvM environment designed to challenge tamers that the *need* Vamp Embrace to stay the way it is.

0.02

~M

how do you know they are going to nerf this?

was said a town hall meeting , the one before the last one i think .

Basically Vampiric Embrace takes 99 skill to cast. The people casting it generally only have 35ish necro skill.

How do they do this you ask? Jewelry +30, Ossian Grimoire +10, Bloodwood Spirit +5, Midnight Bracers +20, and then your raw skill +35 gives you 100 i think. There are other variations which let you run with less than 35 skill.

So next you wear all of the geegaws listed above ... cast Vampiric Embrace (vampire form), then remove all of the said geegaws, and then put your normal suit back on and voila you are still in vampire form even though you no longer have enough skill to maintain it.

Most people believe it will be nerfed eventually because it is easy to assume that you would need 99 skill to maintain the vampire form.

You can compare this to the tactics nerf awhile back ... basically you could use a bunch of geegaws to raise your tactics to 90 allowing you to use your weapon primary. They nerfed tactics to require you to have 90 REAL tactics in order to use a weapon primary. Which makes tactics items only useful for bumping you to 100 or 120.

The tactics templates required you to actually wear all of the tactics geegaws, and they still nerfed it for balance. This vampire form template doesn't even require you to wear all of the items. So I would imagine developers are looking at it closely.

This has been available for years. I highly doubt they are going to nerf it due to the fact that even though there are benefits to vamp form, there are also a lot of downsides. Chugging for example.

Edit:
It drops your fire so you need a suit that is corpse skin proof to even think of vamp form in pvp or pvm for that matter since many creatures use fire.

You also need at least 40 real skill in necro for 1 benefit. One might even say its more worth it to have 40 more med/focus/chiv or another skill. Plus you carry around or bank a group of items to get vamp form working (which usually will cost 4-5 million gold - give or take some - for the items.

Most people use vamp form for the resistance to poisons. The regen is only a tiny benefit. You can't use vamp form as a mage due to garlic causing damage. You would need chiv for healing and vamp form causes karma loss.

All and all, it isn't that great. On a PvP dexer, maybe. Mages can't really use it. Realistically it wont get nerfed because not enough people use/abuse it and it has as many negatives as possitives to it.

it has already been said at a town hall meeting that they are going to do something about it ....just didnt say what .

heres the exact quote from the July 26th town hall meeting :

- Instant GMs with items, Vamp form Bushidos working around skill cap: Needs a HARD look, Vamp Form needs a HARDER LOOK and a "kick in the nutz"

i take that as it fixxin to get a nerf .

honestly.. is this any worse than the insta-tamer?
newbie char + jewlery + birds of brit talisman + mask of the travisty = mare riding w/ a young tag..
give it an hour or two of work and you can drag a dragon around..


or heavens forbid they look at the 120 thief with the burglars bandana and shadow dancer legs and 2 pieces of 15's jewlery..


i think the devs need to come to the realization that its an item based game thanks to the devs before them.. and they need to take a diffrent approach to the situation rather than taking content away, or nerfing something into oblivion.. kicking something in the 'nutz' isnt the most diplomatic approach if you ask me.


if they're all about changing the world, how about fixing the bugs that exist rather than looking at one spell that effects one class of character..


and yes, i have a sampire and i like it.. but its not the vamp form alone that makes the template.. its the combination of skills.. the same effect could be achieved with curse weapon.. it just wouldnt be a toggle spell.

All very good points. But your examples are not quite an apples to apples comparison.

It is different from the above described templates because in the templates that you describe the players need to keep the items equipped to have the benefit of their properties.

Remove one item and you can't control your pet. Remove one item and in some cases you can no longer steal. Or at minimum steal at a severely handicapped rate.

With the vamp template you remove the items and retain the benefit of vamp form.

soulstone inscription and magery on, cast reactive armor, soulstone it back off? reactive armor stays when you die, VE doesnt..

you're right, its not apples to apples, but the point i was trying to drive home is its an item based game now.. and the other point i was trying to make is the modest gain you've get from casting ve, versus toting a greater dragon to battle..

the fix for this would be just a check for skill.. and a msg saying you cannot maintain form.. then you come back out of VE.. and if this pushes thru, i'll just cast curse weapon when i need it vs. toggling VE..

while we're on the route to fix things why not fix spirit speak so it doesnt fizzle when you get hit, every other form of healing (@GM) is non disrutpable with protection cast..