I was hoping with all the vampire additions the vampiric drain spell would get a second look and maybe improved a bit. It seems pretty worthless after level 10 and could use a serious boost from where its at now:

Currently at:

Stage 1 - 2 health per second cost - 6 magicka per second

Stage 2 - 3 health per second cost - 10 magicka per second

Stage 3 - 4 health per second cost - 13 magicka per second

Stage 4 - 5 health per second cost - 17 magicka per second


Should be more like this imo

Stage 1 - 5 health per second cost - 6 magicka per second

Stage 2 - 10 health per second cost - 13 magicka per second

Stage 3 - 15 health per second cost - 17 magicka per second

Stage 4 - 20 health per second cost - 23 magicka per second


I know the vampire lord version is pretty powerful when Serana is not your follower but this ability should be tweaked a bit so it is a viable option. I wouldn't even mind if it scaled with your level so it can still be used late game to some degree.

****Note: Vampiric Drain spell does not improve the Destruction skill either.

Agreed, its sad that the normal vampire NPC's seem to have a more powerful vampire drain then the player does.

What really hurts this spell is master difficulty, a stage 4 only does 2.5 health per second.

5,10,15, and 20 damage would be decent. Considering the novice fire spell does like 8 damage a second it wouldn't be unbalanced. It's really odd how they included the ability to make the vampiric drain absord health and magicka with the bloodstone chalice, but didn't change the damage it does.

On a side note, using the restoration potion glitch, I managed to make fortify destruction potions that increase destruction magic over 500%.
The vampire drain spell did I think 27 damage a second. Duel wielding it make it actually effective against most enemies, but still not as powerful as the high adept and higher spells. The only problem with this is the Incinerate spell (expert level destruction, 90 flame damage) was doing around 500 damage. So this way would really only be useful for roleplaying. Plus you gotta carry alot of potions on you as the effects only last 60 seconds.

It's not just Vampiric Drain, but Destruction entirely.

True but Vampiric Drain is at the very bottom of the pile and should have been revisited with the vampire content.

yes it should have.
im pretty sure throwing a sweetroll at someones face is more effective than vampiric drain.

I assumed that they would've buffed it as a part of the vampire overhaul. That and getting rid of the backwards feeding.

VIdeoGameMage, I love your avatar. Very reminscent of Yo[censored]aka Amano's work.

Are you kidding me? A Japanese man's name is censored?

Thanks

That's unusual I guess the auto censors thought you were trying to say a bad word?

Get Serana to use the Bloodstone Chalice. Her Vampiric Drain spell damage scales to her level, unlike the player. With the "Blood of the Ancients" buff, Serana can keep spamming Vampiric Drain indefinately, so long as the opponent still has Magicka to absorb. Serana will use Vampiric Drain when she get's low on Health, or when she's fighting an opponent immune to Frost (Like Automatons).

I use Vampiric Drain in tandem with a sword or war axe. So long as I'm not using it all by itself, I really have no problem with the damage output.

Magic in Skyrim is trash, because it focuses more on cost rather than effectiveness. The natural cost is outrageous, and even with perks is still bad. This makes all magic pretty bad, but destruction really gets the shaft. Vampiric drain is probably the worst spell in the game. I can see myself using Clairvoyance before using Vampiric drain. Player vamp spells are really, really, really bad.

Bethesda should make a new spellcrafting skill in the next DLC. The skill should be able to make most of the current spell + some new ones and also upgrade existing ones. That should balance destruction. Vampiric drain should be upgradeable too of course.

Looks like sometime else i will have to get a mod for

I think we were all being too optimistic about that.

Sounds like the forum censors...got to love them!

One other thing I forgot to mention is Vampiric Drain does not improve the Destruction skill which even makes this spell even more worthless! Hope beth throws us a bone here and fixes it in the next patch but I'm not holding my breath.

Im hoping they beef it up too.
im just completely surprised they didnt fix it with the vampire "overhaul".

The whole vampire "overhaul" was just aesthetic, and even that is still bad.

This is one aspect I actually want them to keep the way it is. For RP purpose, on my non-mage characters I usually don't use any magic unless that archetype calls for it. For example, my Khajiit Assassin doesn't use any magic beside Illusion, but he can still use Vampiric Drain since it, thankfully, doesn't level his Destruction skill.

Why would you be thankful about a broken feature? Its not like you are forced to pick Destruction perks, if anything it kills my rp because I have to use other spells to improve this skill.

Vampires just svck in general in Skyrim, because Bethesda can't find out how to do them properly. They need to read http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1392951-an-idea-of-how-vampires-and-werewolves-could-have-been-done/ for ideas.

That's why are i am using this mod on the PC better vampire drain. Oh with this mod and blood chalice vampire drain will be pretty good.

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/7873

I am unimpressed with vampiric drain as well. It should of scaled with the destruction skill and give it an increase as it is this spell is worthless.

vampiric drain is like the absolute worst destruction spell. I NEVER use it.

Why? I can just toss a fireball, or just shoot flames, or lightning, and kill oh so much quicker.

Low on health? It won't help....

The enemy will hit you once before you've even drain 10hp and you'd be dead if you were relying on it. It has no purpose really lol. It looks cool is it.



I was so happy when I saw trailers showing vampiers having powers. But I never use any of em. I just went on and killed all of whiterun as a VL though, didn't save. Just wanted to rampage.