Vampire Lord form is genuinely worse than just using spells

[ScrollsOfTamriel]

I'm on my second Dawnguard playthrough and I keep forgetting why I even bother with the Vampire Lord power. Yeah, the flight is cool for like five minutes, but the actual combat is so clunky compared to just casting destruction or conjuration. Your unarmed damage doesn't scale with anything, the drain spells are weaker than they should be, and you can't use any of your actual perks while transformed.

Plus the camera angle is awful and half the dungeons are too tight to fly in anyway. I end up reverting back to human form mid-combat because I'm getting wrecked by draugr or whatever. Meanwhile my conjuration build just summons two atronachs and watches them work.

Is there a perk tree I'm missing that actually makes Vampire Lord viable or is it just a cool novelty that looks better in theory?

 

[DragonbornVet]

Vampire Lord is pretty much a trap, yeah. The unarmed damage scaling is nonexistent - you're stuck with whatever base damage the claws have, and no perks touch it. Even with maxed Unarmed (wait, there isn't an Unarmed skill anymore lol) you're just swinging wet noodles at anything with decent armor.

The drain spells do scale with Destruction perks at least, but they're so slow to cast and the damage is underwhelming compared to actual destruction spells. And you lose access to literally everything else - no armor, no shield, no perks that matter. You're banking on the flight and the drain life effect to carry you, which works great until you're in a cave or fighting something with 500 HP.

The camera is genuinely awful too, especially indoors. I've had playthroughs where I just never use the form after the first time because it's actively worse than staying human and slinging fireballs. If you want to feel like a proper vampire, honestly the best approach is just staying in human form, stacking Necromage, and using the Necromancer perks - you get way more mileage out of that than transforming ever gives you.