So how about that wombo combo? Oh, and Blood costs are ridiculous.

[Cjon]

Anyone who has recently played a ctf game against a lvl 20 knows what I'm talking about. If someone gets a FB+VS+Leap combo off on you, you die before you have the chance to react. No other build comes even close to this amount of disgusting effectiveness. 20v20 fights comes down to who gets their FB off first.

The biggest problem is that for 6 skill points, you can get these three abilities, but any build that doesn't include these three abilities doesn't even come close to the amount of damage output.

The other problem is that a fully ranked lesser ability will not only do less damage, but also cost more health, and on top of this, requires you to spend multiple skill points on one ability. The idea of increasing percentile-based health costs is ridiculous. When we're all level 40, and have multiple rank 4/5/6 abilities, its going to take away over half our health to cast our abilities ONCE. If this trend continues, then at level 40, every build is just going to be lvl 1 dark binding, lvl 1 Brimstone, lvl 1 Ghost Strike, and lvl 1 fatal burst.

Currently is it overwhelmingly inefficient to rank up abilities. Once hp values are higher, the increase of damage is going to LESS than the increased in health cost.

So basically, you can spend three points in Unholy Force, or for those same three points, you can get Leap. Leap does more damage, and costs less health. So what's the point of leveling up abilities?

INCREASING BLOOD COSTS NEED TO BE REMOVED

Now lies the issue of the inefficiency of ranking up abilities. As it is right now, it is always better to just get the highest level abilities, since you'll end up getting more damage and better side effects for less points. My suggestion, either increase the amount of skill points so that way we have enough to make lower level abilities equal in value to higher level ones; or to lower the amount of skill points, and removed the ability to rank up abilities (except for passives) and instead make abilities scale with your level.

If things remain as they are, this problem will always be there. Right now its Leap and Vermin swarm, later it will be Dark Binding/Brimstone/Ghost Strike. The skill tree is sparse enough, but the current design ensures that the same build will be used by everyone that wants a chance in PVP.

[Darkfader]

You didn't think gems will improve by our level and we mostly will double our blood also at level 40.

[Exion]

It doesn't matter that the blood will be doubled seeing the fact that skills use a percentage of the blood...
50% of a lot of blood is still 50%

[Shuri]

It doesn't matter that the blood will be doubled seeing the fact that skills use a percentage of the blood...
50% of a lot of blood is still 50%

I do fine with my blood(HP) level, Even though I probably have the lowest health for a level 20 with no passive HP pool ability's and full on attack as everyone who's seen me in-game has notice my ridicules amount of attack/damage output, But fader does have a point. Some gems already increase your HP by 125 so if you find an issue with loosing a lot of blood just change your gem build that's what they're there for. However I do agree with you 50% loss is still a 50% loss in health also but you have to keep in mind PvP in itself isn't suppose to be easy in anyway it all comes down to who has better of what no matter what level anyone is, I've seen level 18's literally escape level 20s FB+VS+Leap combo and turned around then killed them, Quiet funny.

However, Down to the real reason I decided to comment. I agree skill ranking shouldn't involve more blood loss at such an early stage in the game. It starts at 16 blood and scales to 32 on rank 2, That's just a bit much. Now if it scaled from 16 to 20 I'd be fine with it, However I'm not I find it utterly useless to be using blood for a skill period there should be some kind of "Magic" pool separation from blood all together in my opinion.

[n00b13st]

I agree that some level of 'efficiency of expertise' should exist. The second level does double damage in a single hit and it costs double blood - I can see the logic there but shouldn't it get a better in a way that reflects you're becoming a "better" vampire? Otherwise it makes more sense to have only first level abilities as much as possible, except for the passive abilities.

[Cjon]

I do fine with my blood(HP) level, Even though I probably have the lowest health for a level 20 with no passive HP pool ability's and full on attack as everyone who's seen me in-game has notice my ridicules amount of attack/damage output, But fader does have a point. Some gems already increase your HP by 125 so if you find an issue with loosing a lot of blood just change your gem build that's what they're there for. However I do agree with you 50% loss is still a 50% loss in health also but you have to keep in mind PvP in itself isn't suppose to be easy in anyway it all comes down to who has better of what no matter what level anyone is, I've seen level 18's literally escape level 20s FB+VS+Leap combo and turned around then killed them, Quiet funny.

However, Down to the real reason I decided to comment. I agree skill ranking shouldn't involve more blood loss at such an early stage in the game. It starts at 16 blood and scales to 32 on rank 2, That's just a bit much. Now if it scaled from 16 to 20 I'd be fine with it, However I'm not I find it utterly useless to be using blood for a skill period there should be some kind of "Magic" pool separation from blood all together in my opinion.

Well increased blood costs won't make the game harder, it will just make it less fun. If damage remains proportional to what it is now, and blood costs go up, then every fight will be decided in the 1-2 seconds it takes to use all of your abilities; essentially, whoever casts first wins.

The other thing about this is that there is no reliable form of health regen. Meaning that most of the time, you won't be able to last more than one fight, which takes away a lot of skill from the game. Half of skill in pvp is staying alive, and 50% costs completely ignores that concept completely. I don't have a problem with the costs as they are for level one, since generally if you're good, you'll be able to get a health powerup by the time you need one. But you can't expect to get a hp-up every time you get into a fight.

CTF is already enough of a stalemate, this would just worsen it, even with proper teamwork.

[Blaquehaaart]

Lawlz yeah, under the current system you use one skill they get one hit by a skill. The game would pretty much equate to no skill and coin toss odds.

[Cjon]

Another thing worth mentioning is how this effects the upcoming Team Deathmatch game-mode. The idea of it is to stay alive as long as you can. But you have to stay alive, which remaining in the middle of the freaking fight at all times. With how abilities are currently (both the insane damage they do, and the ridiculous increasing blood-costs), staying in the middle of the map for more than a matter of seconds is going to be impossible.