(Bloodmoon) Why Vampires rule all (in Off-topic)

And what, it's 9 out of 10 of the top 10 characters are Vampires currently are they not?

It's all down to Willpower, and it's special attack.

Come on GL, it's not that bad, you can easily make up the gap, and hey the other races get extra stats as well.

They are just not as important as Willpower, as it's utterly binary in nature, where the others are not.

Consider this;

Two opponents face off, both have equal stats. It's an equal fight, and luck determines the winner.

Now we add in the racial stats, and assume we're getting an arbitrary amount. Say 50.

Hunters get Dex. And as we've all seen, this isn't really noticeable. You could have 50 more Dex than your opponent, and they could still hit you every time, and you could miss three hits in a row.

Werewolves get Strength, and as above, it's just not noticeable.

Vampires get Willpower, and if your Will is higher, it's *your* special that goes off, not the opponents. Even if you hit for only 100 (unlikely with 50 extra Willpower), that an automatic hit for 100 extra damage that your opponent no longer gets.

And it's not random. Your higher Willpower will *always* activate and always deal extra damage.

And while other races can pump more into the stat itself, due to the increasing cost this isn't as efficient all round as keeping stat costs equal.

You could pump an extra 50 into your will to match the Vampire. But for the cost, they could spread more around Str/Dex/Con and have overall better stats to finish you with once the 'special' attck does nothing.

I'm starting to feel a little jaded with Bloodmoon after this.

All the 'clases' are equal in power.

No, they're not.

Willpower is the be all and end all of Bloodmoon, and with it being tied to Vampires, so are they.

Oh well.

All of the Top are there because they were Beta Testers. When I joined they were already well into 30+ levels at the end of the day they were level 40. Personally I think beta testers should restart but that's just me.

All the beta testers were Vamps?

I'd have thought they would have beta'd all the races.

But maybe not, as they would have found out how much better Willpower is...

All of Clan Bloodmoon were there when I jumped on shortly after the announcement from dudemus on S&F. There were others but not long before me as they were barely in their teens.

Point still remains.

They all chose Vampire for a reason. And the top ten is almost all vampire (IIRC).

And Willpower is the best stat in the game as it's a binary Win/Lose.

Dex is too RNG to be useful.

I'm starting to go Con over WP. The only reason to go WP is if you're going to get the first attack and I don't think I will in the long run.

Currently I just switched 47 WP into 53 Con. I gained 3.5k health and only lost 2k on my purify. Essentially I gain 1.5k health from that and with more Con, I'm alive longer getting to use STR/DX.

Still I do think the willpower bonus Vampires get right now is a bit overpowered. Hopefully it will be balanced at some point.

Thing is, if you don't go full Willpower, you might as well just drop it.

But then you can't do that, as having no Willpower means the other guys 'special' will one hit you.

I just don't like the binary nature of Willpower.

You have to have it, to stop you being OHKO'd, but if you don't prioritise it, it does nothing and is just wasted points.

/bleh

Bad design is bad.

Maybe everyone should get to use thier 'special' attack at the start.

Yes they chose just like we did, there is no way to Meta-Clan/Order/Pack.(I would have gone Wolfie myself >:-D) It must be one of the three or you just play by yourself. They just happened to be able to choose much earlier, which once again I feel is unfair they get to keep them.

I just tried it out. It can work not focusing on Willpower. I just fought a Vamp with 300 more WP than me and I only lost the fight by 1 hit (2k health) and this Vamp is 4 levels higher than me.

He had 20k health, I had 27k health. He hit me for 17k with his Willpower but I was doing more damage than him and my DX created a dodge (only 1 with a 100 advantage).

They could also just make DX better, or really just more consistent.

If they were Beta testing, then they already had an insight into how the 'classes' worked.

If *no* other races were beta tested, and they knew they would get to keep their characters, then why not go Vamp?

If other beta tested the other races, why isn't the top 10 more diverse.

Zen, just saying the top ten are beta testers is no reason behind the disparity in obvious power.

Vampires are better than the other two races, because Willpower is a more powerful stat.

17K free damage versus the extra health you got form Con.

How much health would 300 con give?

(Also, we should note that Con builds benefit from having the potion of Vitality)

Actually after reading the German forums for hours the other day high Str/Con builds with a moderate WP trump straight WP builds.

The way WP damage is calculated, the damage done depends on your WP vs theirs. So if you have enough WP for them to not completely 1 hit you, you stand a much better chance of beating them later in the fight.

I just got about 37 Vitality form a point of Con (including Order bonus?), so 300 Con would net me about 11.1K extra Health.

Not good enough if 300 Willpower deals 17K damage.

I'm not arguing that point GL. What I'm saying is that it would be more mixed at the top if not for the beta testers still hanging around.

willpower seems to mean less the higher you go and armor becomes more important. i think it is still too early to say for sure how it will all play out but i think we will know much more when the guild wars get going.

Well, even here Vampires and Werewolves (either free Will so you can concentrate on STR/CON, or free STR so you can concentrate on WIL/CON) will be better than Hunters...

But I still think pure Wil is the way to go.

Hitting is too RNG atm. Purity/Roar/Curse is guaranteed.

To put it in another light, I can beat vamps in the arena easily because I have such high WP, I get first attack, and I have a moderate sized Dex and Con. However I've lost to a crap ton of wolves that went heavy Con Dex Str and had less then half my WP.

i am ignoring stats on items and going for the highest armor. right now i get 53% reduction on level 45 enemies. this can make willpower mean much less!

I have 460 CON, for 27k Health.
He had over 700 WP with a 37k special that my WP lowered to 17k.

If I had 700 CON it would have been quite a different fight. I obviously don't and wouldn't have that much but I can also put points in STR for cheaper than continuing to pump one stat. Also because of our bonus to DX we can create misses. I'm with you on the DX being oddly inconsistent but if that changes then I'm perfectly fine with how it is set up.

Top 10;

1: Qus (Willpower Vampire - 1426 Willpower)
2: Kraij (Willpower Vampire - 1064)
3: DamonSalvatore (Willpower/Dex Vampire - 834/807)
4: Stu1981 (Willpower Vampire - 1010)
5: Red (Con/Dex Vampire - 773/501)
6: Alia (Con/Dex/Willpower Vampire - 817/732/706)
7: Enki (Willpower Vampire - 739)
8: Ale (Str/Con Vampire - 754/720) - Eclipse
9: Godric (Willpower Vampire - 467)

So out of the top 9 Vampires, 5 are pure Willpower builds and only 2 don't prio Willpower at all.

:(

Notice they are all in the same Beta Tester Clan. Aside from the Beta Testers what do you have listed?

Yes Zen, but that's not relevant.

how long has the german server been up?

class balance will be much more important in this game than in s&f due to the way guilds are set up. if there is an imbalance they will have to rectify it fairly quickly i feel.

their games are fairly actively developed. so i am not really concerned at this point...unless the people from the german server have been playing for months and are seeing much further into the game than we are here.

GL: It is perfectly relevant they are ahead so they will automatically seem more powerful. Rule them out and then take a look, the ranks after the Beta Testers are much more varied. Everything is dependent upon build and luck of the quest and acquiring weapons/armor.

German server has been up long enough for people to be in the mid 100 range already. How long exactly I don't know.

I've been over there looking up info a lot, and there are ways to get around pure WP builds.

Like zen said, everyone from that one clan is in the top 10 for two reasons. 1.) They were the first people in the game, 2.) All of them have been burning BSs the entire time.

Must give it time for things to balance out as levels get higher and higher.


And I agree with Dudemus, don't neglect AC!!! It has a HUGE amount do do with the damage you receive.

i dont think WP is that OP, i already met 2 persons where my purify hits for 7K, so a small 2K reduction from armor and enemy WP. yet they still win cause of their HP nuking.

Zen and Xeno, it's not relevant.

Please read up.

Either Vampires where the *only* race beta tested, or all three were beta tested and they just don't compete.

And if Vampires were the only race beta tested, then not only does that show that Werewolves and Hunters haven't had enough development time, but that Vampires were probably chosen because they were the better class/race.

Whatever the excuse is, there is no reason for 9 of the top 10 to all be Vampires unless they are inherently better than the other two.

i have to disagree. they could all be people that played the same game like s&f. one got on there early on opening day and told his friends. they all had to be vampires to play together, just as we had to choose one class.

if our guild had gotten started pretty soon after the server started for the u.s. we would likely be the ones people would be discussing. as it is we are only a day late! ;)

9 of the top 10 have been in the game longest and they have done the most missions. Can we agree on that?

They're all Vampires for the same reason we are all Hunters. The only way they could all be in the same Guild is to be the same class. They chose Vampire. Had they choose Werewolf or Hunter then 9 of the top 10 would been those classes and this discussion would not even be happening.

Or Beta testers had a head start and they chose vamps via rock, paper, scissors. There is more than one explanation for them being at the top GL can't you see that?

Aside from this I have creamed my fair share of Vamps but tend to get creamed by anyone who has a better build than me. To drive the point home it was not all WP driven ones either.


However if you insist then let time speak for itself. if you are completely right I will publicly apologize to you. Fair Enough?

Notice I said they were the first people in the game, I do not at all think they were beta testers.


^ This explains it best. Someone with a top guild on S&F got wind of the game opening, and they beat everyone to the punch and have been burning bloodstones the whole time to stay up top.

Has nothing to do with race, it has everything to do with the fact that they got to the game first, and as a clan they all had to be the same race.

If this were like S&F and you could be multiple races in one guild, we'd see a much more diverse set of top 10 characters.. but they'd all still be from that clan.

They were in the 40's by the time all of us even started, they have a huuuuge headstart over anyone else because of this.

Oh btw, why I dont think they were beta testers is because all the beta testing was done on the German servers. US server opened the same day for everyone.

i remember looking sometime saturday and the top player was level 21 a that time. i cannot remember what time it was though and how soon after i started playing. if the server opened early enough friday, i think that is probably pretty doable given the use of bloodstones.

I'm betting a lot of people view it the same way you do GL and that is why, even though they aren't Vampires, they are focusing on Willpower because they think they need to. Or, they are simply picking Vampire because they think Willpower is too strong.

In reality, I think it is much more balanced than it appears and eventually that will show. I see plenty of balance at equal ranks. Looking at strictly the top isn't really the best way to see balance since none of those people can attack each other because they chose to be in the same guild and class.

i also think rank means little right now, both guild and character wise.

guilds aren't really attacking and at least for me the only time i attack anyone in the arena is when someone with a lower level than me happens to get high enough to show up on my screen!

^ Funny I fight upwards in the arena ;)

Nah, I mostly wait for someone lower/equal level to me. But so far the best I've done is take out someone 4 levels higher then me.

He was a vamp.. go figure.

i probably should be more of a risk-taker but i don't like losing the endurance! ; )

I was getting quite a few fights in a day at first because even if I lost it bumped be down to lower level/honor people I could beat and would come out ahead on endurance. Now its gotten a lot more bunched up where I am fighting in terms of honor and even when I drop I don't really gain many new targets.

Do you think its safe to assume your Purity (or Roar/Curse) value is the amount of damage it deals, which is reduced by your opponents Willpower/Purity and Armour?

If so, Qus does 99,869 damage in that opening attack. Lets assume 50% armour reduction, so ~50K damage.

With nearly 700 Con and a Potion of Eternal Life, he has 61K vitality. So before Willpower reduction, at least he can't one shot himself. ;)

Someone on the forum has been advertising when he's Gravedigging, and removing his weapon for easy loses.

Doesn't effect him in any way, but lowers his score so when he's fighting again he has easy pickings to regen Endurance.

Its something along those lines.

Based off what I could make from the German forums the calculation for WP damage is something like

Your WP * (level+1) - Opponents WP * (opponents level+1)
If its positive you strike first, if its negative they do. At least I think that's how it works, though I could be wrong.

Armor doesn't affect purity/roar/curse, only regular damage. But assuming you don't get one shotted by someones special (I have yet to be) it makes ALL the difference in the melee portion of a fight.

I donno mate.

If you went up against Qus and had his 60K Health, with no Armour reduction you'd need a Willpower higher enough to reduce his 90K damage to at least 59K. ;)

Then you've got a sliver left versus the usual RNG hit/miss routine.

And you've got to take out his 60K...

Either Armour needs to reduce the special attack (maybe) or both parties get to use it. Or something.

And Dex needs to be made more important or Vampires and Wolves with mixed STR/WIL/CON builds will always dominate.

Oh well, at least we can take succour from choosing the hard mode I suppose. ;)

Yeah, and don't discount the WP reduction. Even 450 WP removes 20k from his Curse. And he has really low Con. You could theoretically have 900 into every stat and have a chance against him because of the Con, DX, and str advantage.

There are at least 2 people that unequip. Mark and lie. However, I get 1 or 2 endurance for beating them instead of the typical 5 I would get for beating everyone else. Which is probably why they don't get farmed down more. Not worth moving up in honor and losing easier targets who give more endurance from your list.

(Qus also does 20K a hit normally. ;) But at least that's reduced by armour! :P )

This is what I'm seeing; choices are to pump WIL or to go STR/WIL/CON.

I'm going to be going DEX/WIL/CON in the hopes that I can stay alive long enough for the DX miss probabilities to work out in my favor.

So Josh, you're really looking at having 900 Willpower to reduce his Curse to a more manageable 50K hit, then having 900 Con to have a ~90K Vitality.

Which would leave you at 40K and dead in 4 hits.

I suppose as long as your STR was enough to deal 40K a hit (he's got about 50% Armour reduction), so around 1400, you could win.

So him;

Strength: 700
Will: 1400
Con: 700

Total: 2,800

You;
Strength: 1400
Will: 900
Con: 900

Total: 3,200

/meh

Curse/Roar/Purify not being reduced by armour seals it.

It, and by extension Willpower, and Vampires are the best thing in the game.

Hands down.

Well currently Qus is 20 levels higher then our highest guy, and he's 30 levels higher then I am right now and I have half his WP. IF I were the same level and matched his WP, he'd do no damage with that attack.

If I had 1k WP and matched his level then damage would be something like this:

1k * (70) - 1.4k * (70) = -28,000 damage on his opening hit

If I had 500 WP it would be 63000 on the first hit, but if I only have 500wp then obviously I can invest those other 500 points into something else like Con + Str then out survive his curse attack and beat the crap out of him afterwards.

Well, I just got creamed by a STR/CON build quest NPC. ;)

But.

He had 1577 stat points (557/216/125/679 - 24496 life)

Compared to my;

1139 (193/247/467/232 - 8796 life)

Both level 35, so that was a *tad* lop sided...

My Purity did about 12K to him.

This is all speculation as I don't know for sure what 900 would get you but this is an example:

900 STR w/ weapon does say 25k damage
900 DX means you get the first melee attack (which really, is the most important part of DX. If you aren't going to get your special off you better get to attack first) Also higher chance to dodge than him.
900 WP means likely cutting his special attack in half
900 CON means 90k health

He hits you with his special, 90k HP - 50k = 40k

You hit him, 60k - 25k = 35k

He hits you, 40k - 20k = 20k

You hit him, 35k - 25k = 10k

He hits you, 20k - 20k = 0k

Yes, you lost in that scenario. However you are supposed to be more likely to dodge than he is. One dodge and you win. Armor will result in more attacks helping you with the damage advantage you have over him more. And it ended 20k - 20k, maybe I'm off a little and you actually live with really low health, you next attack would kill him and you win.

also, once our guild upgrades get too expensive we can invest in the guild vitality bonus as well.

Problem is that 63K isn't reduced. But your STR damage is reduced by his 50% armour.

It's unbalanced.

To beat him, you'd have to invest in more stats than him to have a chance.

they already have since they are ahead of everyone else. ; )

GL you've been donating a heck of a lot of your money early on, that's why the stats are lop sided to you.

Not knocking you for donating a ton early, it helps immensely for everyone in the long run and we all thank you for it! The unfortunate side effect is that you yourself don't get as powerful nearly as quickly.

I'd say don't worry about donating for awhile and focus on your stats and help yourself catch up :)

i am not seeing that. are you keeping in mind that a more balanced build will have higher stats due to the cost curve?

I too have been completely ignoring the fact that highest DX gets you first melee attack. But that can be as good or better than Willpower.

A scenario where DX is better than WP:

If willpower is close but you have less your opponent does almost no damage to you, but if you have higher DX than you get your melee off first which can do 5x the damage his WP did.

Josh, you're swaying me. ;)

A full equal x/x/x/x build does look promising. But it all revolves around the RNG of dodge.

Which I think we can all agree on isn't reliable enough.

I still think the special attack needs to be reduced by armour though. ;)

Yeah, but if I were the same level there is a strong possibility that I would have the same amount of armor. Making his attacks vs me far less effective due to the fact that he's got really low stats in everything else compared to what he's put into WP.


Btw... just so everyone knows.. I did choose Vamp first >_>.. just saying is all.

I think things will prove to be slightly more balanced in the long run... but we honestly have yet to see. Trust me you aren't the only one who has been saying WP is OP/The only way to go, lots of people over on the german forums were saying the same and others kept chiming in proving that assumption to be inaccurate.

Not trying to argue with you btw, just trying to help us all understand the game mechanics a little better.

Oh, not worried about that. ;)

I usually cream all the NPCs. I just through that out there about a STR/CON build needing vastly more stats than me to beat me. I lost by a single hit in that fight.

Fo' Sho!

Wouldn't have it any other way! ;)

If it's viable, then presumably the 'best' build would be to keep each of the 4 stats equal ( I regret spending any cash on Charisma), and just chose the gear that gives you the most stat increases overall.

Most bang for your buck.

You keep the upgrade costs as low as possible, and squeeze the most from your items.

Maybe...

Dude, that's mitigated somewhat by Vamps free Willpower. ;)

That's one of the major points.

Had many many many Quest fights go South by a string and a lucky blow.

That might be best. I don't know if there really will be a "best" strategy other than be the biggest. If you're close in size you can counter one person but then maybe another counters you. Much like CB.

It is pretty much what I am doing with my strategy. Though, I've recently been focusing on STR/CON gear, ignoring DX gear, and getting rid of WP gear since my whole build was WP before. I didn't lose anyone I could beat before that I noticed and did gain one or two while being more competitive against a couple others (close losses, usually coming down to one more hit).

Vamps basically get the special attack advantage.

We get the advantage of first melee attack unless you're just completely ignoring DX.

Wolves get more damage which can make up for no getting the special or first melee attack.

Classes are pretty even to me.

I should point out. When I say I got rid of WP gear. I didn't lose all of it. For the most part my gear is pretty even STR/CON/WP. I was just pointing out that I lost WP for STR/CON and got better.

Also, with even stats into everything and more STR/CON I haven't failed a quest since the switch when I would occasionally before.

The only thing that bugs me is Vamps get the advantage of unmitigated (by armour) damage. The other two's are based around hits that can be reduced.

Plus the binary nature of the special doesn't sit right.

Vamps will always get it, and the rest might just as well right it off. And as it goes first, it lessens the potency of DEX giving the first Melee hit.

not really as we get free stuff too so that is a wash. if they focus on wp they will have less stat points to distribute than someone with a more balanced build.

i think this is one reason the costs go up so dramatically in both games.

It's not unmitigated. It's mitigated by your opponents WP which is why you can't/shouldn't write it off.

A Hunter and a Wolf who pump WP and train everything equally with a Vamp would have a chance.

Vamps special would be bigger, so he would get his attack off, but for almost no damage.

The Hunter would then get first melee for more damage than the special did.

The Wolf would do more damage every round possibly for a total more than the special did and a coin flip on first attack.

It still comes down to how your gear and build matches up against another person's gear or build. It's pretty balanced.

If you were to put it on a chart(or whatever this is) in terms of stat importance per class it would look something like this (Ignoring charisma obviously):

Hunters:
Str:+++
Dex:++++
Will:+++
Con:++++

Wolves:
Str:++++
Dex:+++
Will:++
Con:+++++

Vamps:
Str:+++
Dex:+++
Will:+++++
Con:+++

What the heck does this mean? I have no idea, I found it on the German forums.. crazy Germans (JK JK, no offense to any of our German friends)

Its just a general rule of thumb when concerning builds, nothing is concrete about it obviously. Hunters seem to be the mid point between the two other classes.

Makes sense to me, of course I am used to TT RPGs though......lol

I've been paying a lot of attention to the quest that I've been doing, and I'm noticing all the monsters that I lose to are ones with very even stat distribution or huge Str/Con ratios.

I've got 700 WP, I've been focusing on a high WP build to test it out, and I was wiped out by something that only had 200 WP but like 500str and 600con. Our dex was exactly the same and I've got 42% AC.

Just goes to back up what I was saying earlier about certain builds will be able to trump others. Only time will tell.

I was going to make a post with a question CON because I have 20 less CON than someone but they have 6k more health. Then I dinged and answered my own question cause I gained 600 health just by dinging.

From this I determined it is going to be hard to win a CON battle against people with a higher level.

I'm going to try and pay attention to my other stats when I am close to leveling to see how much they go up by.

Does anyone happen to have the formulas though? I like how in S&F you can just hover over and see. I might check German forums later.

Check the German forums, they have almost every calculation figured out so far.. its just kind of hard to decipher what they are saying sometimes. (Thanks google translator!)

If no one does it before me I'll browse over there and see what formula's I can come back with.

Oh btw who are the top 4 hunters? Oh yeah, that's right, its us!

1. Zen (20)
2. Dude (21)
3. Me (23)
4. Josh (26)

Numbers in the ( ) are total rank as of this posting.

Honorable mention to Freed for being on the first page for hunter rankings.

Didn't like where I was so now it's Zen, dude, me 20-22 and you fell off!

I'm on guard duty for another 5ish hours... then I'm burning adrenaline all day ;) I'll catch up

I'm sticking as a hunter. ;)

Purely aesthetic reasons, as Dex is currently the worst stat (I had 100 lower Dex than my last Arena opponent, and still hit first *and* suffered no dodges... go figure...).

I just prefer Purity, in name and animation, to Curse.

But I prefer one of the Vampire Avatars. :(

And just had a lol-fest versus a NPC.

I've got 70 more Dex (same level) and we kept missing each other.

LoL.

Dodge, Dodge, Dodge, Dodge. /yawn