Guild Wars 2

Signet of Vampirism is an extremely lackluster skill. It is well known among the Necromancer community how much of a nerf the skill recieved shortly before release and, while some of the nerfs were warranted, it really seemed like the balance team took every idea about how the skill could be nerfed and implemented them all without considering that not all of those were meant to be applied together.

As it is now, the biggest issue surrounding the skill is the ICD’s, both on the passive and the active. On the passive, the ICD limits it to a weak version of Healing Signet that can’t be used to actually regain health. Due to the fact that the necro must be hit to get the heal, it is all but impossible for them to actually gain any health from the passive (Mesmer clones notwithstanding). As such, the passive is really only a flat damage reduction that can be weakened by Poison. Removing the ICD would make this actually effective damage reduction instead of the joke it is now.

Alternatively, restore the siphoning on the passive and make the ICD unique to each attacker. This punishes enemies for focusing the necro, but not so much as to make just attacking the necro with bursts suicide. Regardless, leaving the passive as it is just makes the passive completely unimportant.

The active likewise needs to have it’s ICD removed. Adding the 25 stack limit was enough to provide the upper limit of the skill, but adding the ICD per attacker prevents anyone at all from really capatalizing on it. You can’t back off and let one party member heal, and you can’t go all-in to maximize your own heal. In addition, due to the aftercast, the necro himself cannot use more than 4 stacks unless he has a 1/second pulsing damage effect (like wells or Locust Swarm) already in place and hitting the target.

TLDR: The ICD’s kills the viability of the skill. Once removed, then values, activation time, and recharge can be properly analyzed and balanced.

Duuuuuude, i already posted this. Sadly no response.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/Necro-Signet-of-Vampirism

Wow. I didn’t noticed that you had. Still, a bit more elaboration on the biggest offender of the skill (The ICD’s) and why those are bad may help to get the issue resolved.

Then again, 3 hours is not enough time to realistically expect a red response.

Well we shouldnt inspect stuff in a vacuum so lets compare it to similar skills, namely warriors Healing signet, elementalists Signet of restoration and thieves Signet of malice.

While warriors signet still needs some rework (stated by Jon Peters a few hours ago) its still the best one from the above list. It has an icd same as Signet of vampirism, but if you disengage, cc your enemy or your opponent just stop attacking you, you will get some heal passively! As you stated, SoV works more like a damage reduction. You take X damage, you heal back Y. SoV heals more, scales a bit better, which makes sense, it has a bigger CD, but you need to get hit to heal, which is just … dont make sense.

The other two proc on attacks, no ICD and i bet it dont even have an aoe cap for 5 target. So if you manage to not get hit, but able to damage your opponent, you get healed back, which requires some skill, not just disengage, heal back and go back to your opponent as warriors.

The active got the ICD to prevent spike damage from the siphon part, but exactly this and the long cast time prevents you to gain reasonable amount of hp back from it and also it has counters like kite (if you are melee necro) or evade. The 5 second window you have to land you attacks before the stacks expires makes it even worst, so if you are horribly lucky you can land 4 hits, resulting less heal, than Consume conditions, without an extra condi removal, more CD. Again, dont make sense.

Removing the ICD on both passive and active effect would make the skill much much better. Adding the passive damage part to it would be the icing on the cake.
Adjusting numbers and CD is necessary ofc, a party heal combined with added extra damage on a relative low cooldown would be a mess in sPvP, if the numbers get out of hand.

ps: I posted when Jon started to reply on topics, but i was interested in player replies, especially from non-necromancers.

I agree that the new heal skill will never see any use.
Warriors get another invuln.
Mesmers get an awesome passive.

Healing Signet does not have an ICD, it is just a 1/second pulse. ICD’s are only on things that get triggered, which Healing Signet’s passive does not. Even so, the passive per-second heal (base values) on Healing Signet is a higher value and reliably heals at max efficiency without fail. Signet of Vampirism does not heal as frequently due to any delay after 1 second at all reducing your healing/second.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Healing Signet does not have an ICD, it is just a 1/second pulse. ICD’s are only on things that get triggered, which Healing Signet’s passive does not. Even so, the passive per-second heal (base values) on Healing Signet is a higher value and reliably heals at max efficiency without fail. Signet of Vampirism does not heal as frequently due to any delay after 1 second at all reducing your healing/second.

My bad, you are right.
Also i tought about the active part of the skill. It heals more and scales better, which is ok due to the higher cd, but Healing signet passive is so good, that it makes up the loss. Also in a pvp environment warriors usually take adrenaline health too (correct me if not), increasing their passive (did i say passive and no skill involved?) hp regen.
In the case of necro well … If you run MM, Consume conditions is a safer choice, even with Fetid consumption (more heal, lower cd, reliable cleanse). Condi necro would grab CC also. Actually power too. “Bunker” necro can work with it, but it lacks condi removal, so CC wins the fight again.

Actually the main problem of this skill is simple the numbers. For its cooldown (even with signet cd reduction trait) it heals are to weak.

So a cd reduction or a heal increase would help alot.

But even then i think the passiv should be a life leach and not simply a heal on being hit.

Removing the ICD’s would increase the possible healing you can get, so that should be addressed first. The numbers honestly are probably fine. Without the ICD, the Necro could potentially have very hefty damage reduction passively. Actively, there are setups to allow for a very large, but very high risk, heal (which it really should be).

Consider if you got healed for just the base value every time you were hit. 325 health may not seem like much, but that’s 10.8% of a 3k hit. Hundred Blades would have its damage reduced by 2,925 if you ate the whole thing. This is just at base value with 0 healing power (the passive scales at 10% of healing power). It’s some pretty handy (but not overpowering) damage reduction, if only the ICD weren’t there.

On the active, I’m not sure if the necro even could use all 25 stacks on his own. Best I can see is Locust Swarm running (5 hits), activate signet, flash Weakening Shroud (1 hit), drop WoS (4 hits) and WoC (3, possibly 4), then using dagger 2 (9 hits). 23 hits is the highest you could possibly get in a complete bomb, which would be 9016 health siphoned (base values), plus 3960 base heal for a total of 12,976.

That said, to pull this off, your opponent must sit in the well for the full duration, not evade, blind, block, or go invulnerable, and you must be able to hit them that entire time in essentially melee range. Also, to pull it off, you must blow two utilities, your heal, class mechanic, and a 24 second (30 untraited) cooldown weapon skill. Sizeable burst, both in damage and healing, but a lot of dedication to that burst that can easily be avoided.

Simply removing the ICD’s would be enough, I feel, to make the heal viable. The numbers may need some tweaks after that, but with the ICD’s, the skill just isn’t good in any situation.

Actually removing the icd of the passive could make bunker necros impossble to kill, if you keep those numbers ofc. And Anet fears an unkillable Necro so i doubt they will do it.

Muchacho.2390:

Actually removing the icd of the passive could make bunker necros impossble to kill, if you keep those numbers ofc. And Anet fears an unkillable Necro so i doubt they will do it.

Hardly unkillable. Harder, perhaps, but definitely not unkillable. Poison wrecks it, just like all healing, and the average hit you take is still doing more than twice what this negates.

Even so, I wouldn’t mind a small reduction to the numbers if the ICD was removed. At least then it would actually have use instead of being balanced around a situation that cannot happen due to how the skill itself works.

I love this signet and think it is the best utility signet we have!

I do say i used it a total of 2 times and saw it once in spvp.. then i buried that signet along with my hopes.

NB: no such thing as unkillable necro.. then again we have unkillable thieves/warriors/guards/and mesmers.. just because they can stealth and travel 1000+ within the blink of a smiley

Edit: and removing the icd doesn’t matter the heal comes after the damage how would a 8k spike be negated by that heal?

Merlin Dyfed Avalon.5046:

Edit: and removing the icd doesn’t matter the heal comes after the damage how would a 8k spike be negated by that heal?

The 8k spike wouldn’t be negated, but if you survive, the effective damage was reduced. That is perfectly fine, in my book.

The Signet of Vampirism is just badly designed in almost every way. The passive cooldown completely kills any usefulness the ability could possibly have; the active cooldown is also really long and the active itself isn’t very useful and also has another cooldown for each hit that you can heal from on the targeted enemy.

This heal has no condition removal, a really high active cooldown, stupid passive cooldowns and low healing in general. There is simply no reason that I would ever use this heal.

If the signet healed the necromancer when the necromancer hits an enemy rather than when the necromancer gets hit… it could have its passive cooldown removed, because there would never be a time when you would heal the necromancer by attacking them.

Muchacho.2390:

Actually removing the icd of the passive could make bunker necros impossble to kill, if you keep those numbers ofc. And Anet fears an unkillable Necro so i doubt they will do it.

No more unkillable than full regen Warriors…

I mean I know that Warriors are the golden children, but I mean if they can do it why shouldn’t we be able to?

As for Signet of Craparism, if they simply removed the ICD it would be useful. High risk high reward heal, great for promoting skillful play from the necro and the opponent.

Muchacho.2390:

Actually removing the icd of the passive could make bunker necros impossble to kill, if you keep those numbers ofc. And Anet fears an unkillable Necro so i doubt they will do it.

Not unkillable but more attrition based which is what i thought they were going for.

Also, getting hit for 3k+ and having lifesteal heal us for 35 is pretty much a joke.

Lifesteals need to be totally reworked for the necro because as they stand now – they are still useless.

No one will use this skill, until it is made useful. In its current incarnation, it is the worst healing skill any necromancer could possibly bring, and has no use in any build. Not a single one.

Join the protest fellow necromancers. We should not stand for this sort of laziness.

Can’t do that, Mad Queen. I unlocked it so I could create the Facts thread on it.

Now, I still want those skill points back, but…

Yup the Necro community ran the numbers when it came out and the new heal is significantly worse than all other Necro heals.

It’s a completely pointless skill – which is really sad because the new skills were supposed to be exciting new content and a nice Xmas present.

Devs please check the stats and see how many Necros have this in their heal slot.

It’s a shame both for the players and for the devs who worked to develop this! I’m sure everyone wants the skill to be useful!

This skill is bad, and ANet should feel bad for releasing it as is.

Seriously, if anyone actually wants to see how underwhelming the skill is, go back to the livestream where they previewed them all, and watch how excited they were for the other heals. They went through different tests, got all excited, showed off something special about it; but the Necro skill? They were visibly bored. The best thing they had to say about it was that it had a massive and obvious cast animation, and that the opponent could negate it’s entire usefulness if they weren’t brain-dead.

This skill is objectively worse than every other skill we have in every situation in an optimized build.

Bhawb.7408:

This skill is bad, and ANet should feel bad for releasing it as is.

Seriously, if anyone actually wants to see how underwhelming the skill is, go back to the livestream where they previewed them all, and watch how excited they were for the other heals. They went through different tests, got all excited, showed off something special about it; but the Necro skill? They were visibly bored. The best thing they had to say about it was that it had a massive and obvious cast animation, and that the opponent could negate it’s entire usefulness if they weren’t brain-dead.

This skill is objectively worse than every other skill we have in every situation in an optimized build.

You forgot how the golem annihilated Karl while using this signet in the livestream. =3

^ Oh man that was embarrassing. I was so excited loading the video to see our new heal skill.

Every other class got about 5-10 mins of coverage by the devs who were clearly proud and excited themselves.

Then it came to the necro part:

- The Necro runs up to the Golem.

- Floored in 5 seconds flat.

- The devs say nothing and hurredly skip to the active part.

- A 5k heal is demoed and the devs talk about how easy it is to interrupt/stop the necro from healing at all (all Necros watching immediately notice that existing heals do more healing and cooldown faster)

Okay guys now on to the next class!

Bhawb.7408:

This skill is objectively worse than every other skill we have in every situation in an optimized build.

I call kittens, I found at least one super niche scenario in which the skill is more useful than other heals : when you’re doing the molten buckets in dredge fractal, it adds some damage and some healing for your party when you shouldn’t be needing much healing yourself anyway. (Wish I knew if the damage part benefits from his vulnerability, I’m going to guess ‘no’ though…)

Arvid.3829:

I call kittens, I found at least one super niche scenario in which the skill is more useful than other heals : when you’re doing the molten buckets in dredge fractal, it adds some damage and some healing for your party when you shouldn’t be needing much healing yourself anyway. (Wish I knew if the damage part benefits from his vulnerability, I’m going to guess ‘no’ though…)

Due to the cast time its not even worth casting in that situation. The only niche role it has is a weaker heal with slightly less of a dps loss than consume conditions. But that doesnt justify its current state.

Arvid.3829:

Bhawb.7408:

This skill is objectively worse than every other skill we have in every situation in an optimized build.

I call kittens, I found at least one super niche scenario in which the skill is more useful than other heals : when you’re doing the molten buckets in dredge fractal, it adds some damage and some healing for your party when you shouldn’t be needing much healing yourself anyway. (Wish I knew if the damage part benefits from his vulnerability, I’m going to guess ‘no’ though…)

In the time it takes to cast this heal, you could have dealt higher damage with a normal rotation. This heal is literally useless.

Why is it called vampirism when it doesn’t even work the same as all the other vampiric stuff in the game?! Vampiric runes – health when YOU hit something, life siphoning (arguably vampiric), also health when YOU hit something. Even this signets name is sucky.

jakalofnaar.1702:

Why is it called vampirism when it doesn’t even work the same as all the other vampiric stuff in the game?! Vampiric runes – health when YOU hit something, life siphoning (arguably vampiric), also health when YOU hit something. Even this signets name is sucky.

It’s the way they nerf things, switch the cast time with the proc cd, or switch initiative regen from traits to per second..

no real logic, just swapping two time/damage or other mechanics around..

I should probably add that in your average pug the guy on bucket duty does not attack the suit/elemental. Attacking gets you aggro, which derails him from his path, and pugs can not be expected to reliably switch roles on the fly like that. As such, choosing the lower dps but significantly higher rate of success option here results in faster kills on average. (And since you’re not attacking, you easily have time to spend to cast this.)

When on bucket duty, I just run ground targeted wells and Well of Blood. Works very well, in my experience.

That and Battle Roar (I’m Charr) let me directly support my party while I’m running up top.

Well that makes sense if your on bucket duty i guess. But still 2k extra damage for your group when they are hitting for 50k isnt gonna make much of a difference.

I thought people were using it to break doors in WvW, or did they fix that?

Kiriakulos.1690:

I thought people were using it to break doors in WvW, or did they fix that?

People can work that out after a few weeks. Yet they still dont know to use fgs 4 to break down gates?

I’ve never even unlocked this as it doesn’t even come close to our other heals.

He unfortunate thing is that here are many ways that this heal could be improved and they have been on the forums since we knew what the heal was.

Yes, that is the saddest thing. This skill had the potential for greatness. It could have given necromancers a role in PVE. But as it is now, it is just a waste of skillpoints.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

No one will use this skill, until it is made useful. In its current incarnation, it is the worst healing skill any necromancer could possibly bring, and has no use in any build. Not a single one.

Join the protest fellow necromancers. We should not stand for this sort of laziness.

I agree, it has NO situation where it is of ANY use compared to the other heals that we have, Unless you count mindless world boss fights, which i don’t and no one should.

It says alot about the development team that before the thing was even released they nerfed it SO much that they ruined what potential it had, i mean even before it was nerfed it wasn’t exactly stellar but it had ways that it could be useful, Now. It is just a joke.

I would be really interested in what the philosophy behind this skill was.

I suspect it was to provide Necros with a tool for heading towards more of an attrition class. But somehow it didn’t quite work.

I feel like the signet would be better if A) the passive was per outgoing hit, not when I take damage, and the active part applied the signet to myself and players around me, rather than whatever we’re attacking. The latter would prevent it from being wasted by accident.

^ I think changing the passive to heal on hit would be the ideal solution that every Necro would love and it completely fits with Necro lore and even the skill name.

It probably wouldn’t take much dev work either as it’s already in the game.

And it still wouldn’t be as good as warrior’s heal signet which is a guaranteed heal every second.

The problem with that, what about DeathShroud? Does the current even work in DeathShroud? i mean if not then turning it to on attacks will be rather useful for some builds and gaining no health due to the class mechanic would be rather useless….

I feel it works better with the “when hit” passive as it gives us at least some defense against the sport of “necro ball”. We don’t really have huge issues with sustain when we can act anyway. It may be sub-par, but it isn’t unreasonably bad. If we get stunned or dazed, though, we completely lose any sustain. The “when hit” passive at least gives us some defense when we are most vulnerable.

^ The problem with the current implementation of the passive ‘when hit’ is that it’s only really okayish if you are taking small hits spaced out in perfect timing with the ICD.

- If you are taking lots of small hits e.g. 20 × 200 (= 4000 damage) the ICD means you will be healed for 325hp once. A net loss of 3675 health.
- If you take one large hit e.g. for 5000 (very common) will only be healed for 325hp once. A net loss of 4675 health.

Now lets compare the same situation with the necro heal Consume Conditions.
- 4000 damage from small hits – Consume Conditions heals for 5,240 – a net gain of 1240 health.
- 5000 damage in one hit, Consume Conditions heals for 5240 – a net gain of 675 heath.

So even when being ping ponged around, taking one large heal is significantly better than taking signet of vampirism.

Keep in mind, my comments on things like that are assuming the ICD gets removed so the skill is actually useful.

Okay that would make a difference!

It’s not even affected by Bloodthirst or vampiric, and also, Vampiric Rituals +bloodthirst doesn’t affect the siphon from wells…just throwing it out there

Devs are we on the right track somewhere in here?

Or even on the track?

I’ve lost the track.

They COULD easily fix this – The question is do they even want to, considering what the skill was like before it was released and before it was released they even nerfed it.

They should undo the nerf, go back to the preview version and work from that, because trying to make this skill useful is just a waste of time when they could just unnerf it, give it a few weeks and see if they were right to nerf it in the first place and then just rather than nerf it into being totally useless try and balance it so that it is STILL useful.

CMstorm.8679:

It’s not even affected by Bloodthirst or vampiric, and also, Vampiric Rituals +bloodthirst doesn’t affect the siphon from wells…just throwing it out there

Bloodthirst does affect the active portion, though.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

CMstorm.8679:

It’s not even affected by Bloodthirst or vampiric, and also, Vampiric Rituals +bloodthirst doesn’t affect the siphon from wells…just throwing it out there

Bloodthirst does affect the active portion, though.

oh, it does :o

CMstorm.8679:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

CMstorm.8679:

It’s not even affected by Bloodthirst or vampiric, and also, Vampiric Rituals +bloodthirst doesn’t affect the siphon from wells…just throwing it out there

Bloodthirst does affect the active portion, though.

oh, it does :o

I’ve ways felt that bloodthirst affecting this was a negative thing, because it needs to be scaled back to account for this trait. All siphoning needs to be scaled back due to this trait. But that one potential fix doesn’t justify the whole skill being where it is, it’s still weak.