How to play as a vampire lord at high level?

[OwNzOr]

So i started dawnguard pretty late in my campaign. I'm level 70+ and with my enchanted gear i can easily take everything on at legendary difficulty. However when i transform into a vampire lord my life drain and claws barely damage a common bandit. And to top it off i get killed by about 3-4 arrows.

I'm guessing vampire lord doesn't really scale well on legendary difficulty? Any ideas on how to make it more balanced with mods or console?

[marstinson]

Feed on a lot of people and build out the perk tree.

At lower levels, enemies tote a lot of iron weapons (not great for fighting vampires or lycanthropes) and aren't real skilled. At level 70+ they're toting stuff that can put a real hurt on you and have skills to make that happen.

I don't take the Vampire Lord fork of Dawnguard, but painful memories of getting one-shotted by Whiterun guards when I take too long to start the Companions questline means "get the heck outta Dodge" is the better strategy until the perk tree gets filled out.

[Perplex]

It is the same as Werewolfs, they are useless on Master and Legendary level.

[OwNzOr]

Well even as a werewolf my damage seems okay since it does 100% extra damage with perks. As a vampire lord i don't see a single perk that will actually increase my damage.

[marstinson]

The claw damage you get while in vampire form is kind of meh to start with. It scales up with your level, so it does get better. If you factor in the player nerfing that goes along with the higher difficulty, it's not so hot. For example, you're doing quarter-damage on Legendary, so you're only getting a fourth of those leveled bonuses, and that's one of the reasons why I don't do the vampire fork.

That being said, it synergizes well with the the Necromage perk on the Restoration tree (70 skill level required) because you are undead. But there there are three perks that inflict damage. Poison Talons (+20 points of poison damage) is the only one that directly increases the damage you do, but I'm not sure whether that's subject to difficulty nerfing. The other two are kind of indirect damage. Night Cloak is on a par with the elemental cloak spells in the Destruction tree, so I don't see it as adding anything that you couldn't get by non-vampiric means, but it's good for RP purposes, I guess. I'm not sure what to make of Vampiric Grip since the choking damage is minimal, but dragging targets off of high perches and letting the fall damage take care of the rest is kinda fun.

[OwNzOr]

I don't think i have that necromage perk since i'm using Ordinator. Either way i think i'm leaning towards changing my enchantments and armor/weapon upgrades in order for me to do a lot less damage while taking more on lower difficulties. I'll first test to see if the vampire lord does decent damage if i reduce the difficulty.

[Janthis]

It's a problem with level scaling and scaled enemies. The same thing happens with the werewolf. I did the Companions questline around level 30ish and got that quest to clear out the Silverhand fort. I could manage them fine using my regular equipment, but as a werewolf I barely did any damage and they wiped the floor with me. Apparently you're supposed to find weaker enemies at first and level up your perks.