Ulysses wrote on Dec 19
th, 2018 at 2:52am:
Ok sorry for the delay but here's my update. I'm now level 15 and it's starting to get strong....real strong.
Early levels I was super weak especially on defense. I wasn't smart enough to take some undead and just heal through everything until i was like level 8. Since the EK tree gives so much universal spellpower (way over 100) the undead healing is really strong.
Anyways the imbue scaling is real. At level 9 i started to feel decent strong, at 12 I started leading kill counts. Just hit 15 and it's one more die and it's a ton of dmg.
For numbers I'm at 478 acid spell power at level 15. My imbues are 5d8 or 22.5 base average dmg. Times this by 5.7 and I average 130 dmg per swing (on elite). Now 2 wpn fighting with 2 two daggers with 60% offhand strike chance (impr 2 wpn figting only due to low BAB) and about 45% dbl strike and the imbues are doing a ton of dmg.
However, the scaling I'm about to hit is just nuts. At 18 I go to 6d10 or 33 base dmg (50% over what i'm currently at). Then 20 will get me 7d12 or 45.5 base for damn near another 50% increase. I'm pretty much giddy thinking about it being over twice the imbue dmg i'm doing right now AND that doesn't account for the temporary boost which should put it just into crazy high land.
I'll update once i hit cap but right now this thing is about as strong as my monk/druid wolf which I would've never thought possible. Early levels no way as strong but man does it come on at the end.
Running wiz, full int based, right now have EK maxed out and int to hit (but str to dmg) and just one level of KTA and the 20% doublestrike from Vistani. Running in Vampire shroud and just power healing through R3 content solo with little problem. Well, light casting mobs ARE a problem and I have to play carefully around them.
If you're running vamp I'd say SWF is the better way to go. Especially since you can grab the extra 20MP and SWF is less stat based as far as leveling goes. Additionally vamp favors both the attack speed and PSFW for scoring the neg level vorpals. Granted they aren't massively useful in higher skulls but every bit helps.
If anything you should try to juggle your AP costs and grab wraith. That's a full 30% incorp without the extra light vulnerability.
If the devs act on my suggested feedback over the years and the thread I cannot see anymore in the PC forums, then there's a good chance Vampire will get scaling lifesteal. What it scales with is up for debate at this point, but we can hope for it and hope further they won't lock that vampirism in the T5 like it currently stands.
I'd love to see your final thoughts on the capstone though. The idea I'm having for the Sorc version means you have to give up the vistani goodies either way to get the 18 core from EK as I'm in agreement with you that damage increase would be massive. As well as the fact you'd need to give up on SWF/TWF and just run S&B to get the temp HP from shield striker. Even that anemic amount of temp HP is the difference between life and death on a squishy melee build like this.
Of course if you're doing a dragonborn sorc as I'm thinking, you can get by with draconic and making sure to take Draconic Hunger. Still not amazing temp HP but it stacks and would help. Additionally by running S&B you'll atleast have PRR and MRR to offset the fact you don't have an innate defensive stance such a druid or fighter.