Exactly 20 health off of getting down to the Avatar as a vamp... sodding cursed, 100% death gaze boss : ( given I prepped and didn't use the transloc scroll (could buy everything without it) and could maybe have won with the subdungeon... such is life...
Anyway, had pactmaker and patches and tower shield, still only hit around 40/30% resists.
Shudder... so it is possible to get some substantial mileage out of the new PM as a vamp but it only really approaches neccessity on those dungeons for which the vamp is reaaaallly badly suited (like DL).