Vampiric Weapons Bless?

[Seleucus I Nicator]

Is this bless worth it? 8 blood and four death is a huge requirement. On what nations would this actually be practical? Does anyone have experience using it in multiplayer? I feel like it would be less crazy at 7 blood 4 death, but then at that point it might be too powerful.

[Draken]

This bless was tested out by LucidTactics, Battlemode and DasTactic in a stream.
You should be able to find it on youtube on any of their channels.

My personal take was that it's probably not really worth it on most units.
Like you said, it's pretty expensive. It also seems to only trigger as secondary damage effect, that means if your main attack already killed the target, the vampiric drain doesn't even trigger.

[Count von Bunnyhopven]

I have not tried it, but it seems great on a cheap unit with a lot of attacks. Think Mictlans jaguar warriors or Sacred cavalry.

[Count von Bunnyhopven]

I want to retract that. I have tested it now and it was garbage! It did not work the way I assumed it would.

I though it was an effect like Fire Weapons or Death Weapons. In those cases the extra attack will always trigger and always hit if the first attack hit the target. Not so here. For Vampiric weapons you must also draw blood for it to trigger.

This means that for it to work you must first:
1: Hit the target.
2: Do damage to the target.
3: Not enough damage to kill the target.

If you can do all three of those things then you have a 70% chance to do extra damage due to DNR.

But what about life drain healing? Well, if you hit an indy with 10 HP for 8 points of damage and the Vampiric weapon does the rest of the 2 points of HP then you will heal Damage/2 = 1 HP. Amazing! Not!

I might consider it if it was 5 bless points, B3D2 and not incarnate. But even then mostly because its a magic weapon and bypasses etherealness and mistform.

[Toblm]

Originally posted by Count von Bunnyhopven:

I want to retract that. I have tested it now and it was garbage! It did not work the way I assumed it would.

I though it was an effect like Fire Weapons or Death Weapons. In those cases the extra attack will always trigger and always hit if the first attack hit the target. Not so here. For Vampiric weapons you must also draw blood for it to trigger.

This means that for it to work you must first:
1: Hit the target.
2: Do damage to the target.
3: Not enough damage to kill the target.

If you can do all three of those things then you have a 70% chance to do extra damage due to DNR.

But what about life drain healing? Well, if you hit an indy with 10 HP for 8 points of damage and the Vampiric weapon does the rest of the 2 points of HP then you will heal Damage/2 = 1 HP. Amazing! Not!

I might consider it if it was 5 bless points, B3D2 and not incarnate. But even then mostly because its a magic weapon and bypasses etherealness and mistform.

Now the question becomes, should it be changed or cheaper?
At what bless point is the current effect worth it?
What order of operations would make it valuable?

[junkmail4mjd]

Originally posted by Toblm:

Originally posted by Count von Bunnyhopven:

I want to retract that. I have tested it now and it was garbage! It did not work the way I assumed it would.

I though it was an effect like Fire Weapons or Death Weapons. In those cases the extra attack will always trigger and always hit if the first attack hit the target. Not so here. For Vampiric weapons you must also draw blood for it to trigger.

This means that for it to work you must first:
1: Hit the target.
2: Do damage to the target.
3: Not enough damage to kill the target.

If you can do all three of those things then you have a 70% chance to do extra damage due to DNR.

But what about life drain healing? Well, if you hit an indy with 10 HP for 8 points of damage and the Vampiric weapon does the rest of the 2 points of HP then you will heal Damage/2 = 1 HP. Amazing! Not!

I might consider it if it was 5 bless points, B3D2 and not incarnate. But even then mostly because its a magic weapon and bypasses etherealness and mistform.

Now the question becomes, should it be changed or cheaper?
At what bless point is the current effect worth it?
What order of operations would make it valuable?

i think it should be changed not cheaper as blood already has a butch of cheap blesses.

[Swirler]

Originally posted by Count von Bunnyhopven:

I want to retract that. I have tested it now and it was garbage! It did not work the way I assumed it would.

I though it was an effect like Fire Weapons or Death Weapons. In those cases the extra attack will always trigger and always hit if the first attack hit the target. Not so here. For Vampiric weapons you must also draw blood for it to trigger.

This means that for it to work you must first:
1: Hit the target.
2: Do damage to the target.
3: Not enough damage to kill the target.

If you can do all three of those things then you have a 70% chance to do extra damage due to DNR.

But what about life drain healing? Well, if you hit an indy with 10 HP for 8 points of damage and the Vampiric weapon does the rest of the 2 points of HP then you will heal Damage/2 = 1 HP. Amazing! Not!

I might consider it if it was 5 bless points, B3D2 and not incarnate. But even then mostly because its a magic weapon and bypasses etherealness and mistform.

Yeah that is a tall order for such an expensive bless.

[Count von Bunnyhopven]

Originally posted by Toblm:

Now the question becomes, should it be changed or cheaper?
At what bless point is the current effect worth it?
What order of operations would make it valuable?

I can think of a couple things. Either make it like the Death weapon bless and have it always proc on hit, but make it MR resist. Or make the entire attack Vampiric and add the extra damage on top of the normal damage of the attack.

The first option would still not be worth it. Death weapons is 8 points, this one is 12. I could see it at 9 points though as it is a bit stronger. Death weapons is not amazing.

The second option is stronger. I wonder if it would be worth 12 points. Maybe 10-11 would be fair?

[Seleucus I Nicator]

Thank you, Count von Bunnyhopven, for answering my question! This is even more underwhelming than I expected it to be! Seems like there are better weapon options like Flaming Weapons.

[crawlers]

I think making it cheaper and having it grant the partial life drain tag (first 5 damage steals hp) to weapons is the way to go. Full vampire weapon can result in some pretty wild stuff with some high damage dealing fellows. The current implementation of requiring damage and then leaving enough health left to steal from seems very unreliable.

[Uncle Al]

I'm in the 'just make it apply partial life drain to all attacks' camp. I think cost would be about right at that point. It's still very expensive, but it would pretty much solve your health AND fatigue problems so long as you're fighting things can can be drained.

As it stands I think it's pretty horrible.

[Quillithe]

Also in the partial life drain camp - I assumed that was what it did actually.

[Seleucus I Nicator]

Yeah I have to agree with Uncle Al and Quilithe.

[boozermonkey]

For the cost, it’s not worth it. Something that expensive should be at least as effective as blood vengeance, ethereal, quickness, and all the other higher level bless effects.

Yeah, this one needs to go back to drawing board.

[BNRON]

I agree vampiric weapons should be buffed. I don't think there is a damage reversal bless though. Having a damage reversal bless (as opposed to blood vengeance) would be extremely strong

[Una]

It MIGHT work on Asphodel. They have sacreds that do like 7 attacks, but 6 of the attacks are fatigue-causing tentacles. Scoring a hit with the tentacle and dealing fatigue damage counts as damage for vampiric weapons, and it pretty much never kills the target, so the effect always goes off.