We had a new game starting last night, so I convinced the DM to let me test out the Vampire. We were level 5. I made a Human Vampire. It turned out to be a fairly good striker and I never had any trouble running out of healing surges. Also, obviously, I took Durable as a feat.
So far I've been very unimpressed with them as a striker, but in fairness they do have some control options. It reminds me of the Oassassin in this way, immense work to get some middling control effects out of it and only average damage when you succeed. Their damage is immensely underwhelming without surges to spare, so I've noticed that non-durable taking vampires are going to struggle hard. In the scenarios I try the vampire often has a lot of difficulty going in and on the default surges just can't function well (Hazards -> Skill Challenges -> Traps before or during encounters). At the same time I can tell you what
really eliminates the problem here and that's durable. Durable makes or breaks the vampire, because as you say you can often get that extra damage feature if you have surges to spare. 4 surges means that you can't have a bad encounter and be screwed, plus can usually spare surges for extra damage (which they
really need).
In some ways I feel the vampire gets a lot from Durable and the other feat to increase surge value. Ironically this means 2 of the races introduced in HoS are not great choices for the vampire. The Vrylokas -2 penalty to surges
really punishes the vampire, who on low HP is basically a walking target (bearing in mind regeneration does *not* function under 0 HP). At the same time the Vryloka's racial can generate a good amount of THP, so if you get it you should be set (combined with the vampires other THP options). A shade vampire is arguably one of the saddest sights in 4E. A shade vampire without durable is practically the most useless character in 4th edition.
Overall though this is pretty much a complete trap option for new players and won't offer enough for anyone who is actually very system savvy. It's hard to figure out who this class is actually for. It's a distinctly underpowered class, which relies heavily on playing it near perfectly (and never ever having a bad day dice wise) to succeed and with a gimmick that is interesting or an achilles heel.
The thing here is that some people like fewer options and less analysis paralysis when character building. It's like the Slayer. I'm not going to want to play a slayer ever; it strikes me as rigid and tactically dull. But there are a couple of players at each of my 4e tables who prefer this over the more intricate orthodox fighters.
The slayer/Knight might be rigid and have few choices, but the vampire is even WORSE in this regard. Slayers and Knights can at least be differentiated a few ways, by stances/weapons and they get more paragon path and utility power choices. There are literally around
seven total vampire builds. That's it. That's not fewer options, that's just phoning it in.
Edit: Of course the genuine irony of the vampire is to abuse Half-Elf, take a vampire at-will with your racial and the feat that makes you count as MCing into vampire (due to taking their at-will). Then just paragon multiclass to steal the vampires best stuff without taking any of the disadvantages. The dominate power is a particularly good target for many cha primary classes.
