Guild Wars 2

Without biases, blood fiend needs a buff. Its performance is very lack-luster and it just needs some all around help being useful. It currently acts very similarly to Healing Signet but has some major downsides that goes with it. I understand healing signet isn’t the most liked heal in the world, but I’ll use it for the basis of comparison, anyways.

Healing Signet:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Healing_Signet
- 392 healing each second. Scales at roughly .05.
– At 1500 healing power it heals for 75 more, 467 HPS.
– (Side note) Can be coupled with Adrenal health for an additional 120 hps that scales for .15 of healing power.
- On use can heal for 3275 health, after used it doesn’t require a re-cast time. (Is rarely triggered)

Blood Fiend:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Summon_Blood_Fiend
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Blood_Fiend
- Heals for 927 health on attack every 3 seconds. (309 hps) This portion of the heal doesn’t scale. This attack also have a very obvious tell.
- Can Deal about 80 dps in *perfect conditions (never killed, never LOSed, never CCed, and so forth.)
- Can be sacrificed for 3960 health, and requires a 1.5 recast time once it’s off cooldown, plus time to re-latch onto its target. Again, this sacrifice is rarely if ever used, just like the signet, thus often unfactored.

Passive Cons of the fiend:
- Killable
- CCable
- Doesn’t heal when the enemy stealths.
- *Doesn’t heal when the necromancer uses their defense (Death Shroud), while healing signet and other heals continue to heal through blocks and other defensive mechanics, including simply having heavier armor.
- Able to be Line of Sighted.
- Evades cause massive dips in healing.
- Can take a while to initiate combat, especially when roaming.
- Less healing than Healing Signet despite the downfalls, in perfect conditions.
- (Side note) It lacks Consume Condition’s full condition removal (lacks any).
- (Rarely) Will sometimes not attack.

Please keep this topic clean. This is not a discussion about peoples’ unwarranted hatred for AI. So please, no AI discussion.

The suggestion I had:

To reduce its impact when evaded, I thought it’d be a good idea to make it attack in 2 second intervals instead and slightly increase its healing per second to:
- 700 healing per attack. (350 per second. Still much less than signet, especially factoring in Adrenal Health.) In addition, every 3rd attack would remove a condition, if successful. (1 condition every 6 seconds if it hits. This swing could have a minor glow in the tentacles to give a tell when a condition will be removed if not avoided.)

It’s damage would be reduced from 240(ish) to 140, so its damage would be a bit less than it previously was so that it could be a better heal.

What do you think?

No, minion masters are strong enough and necro death shroud hp/s added to that hp/s puts your regen on top of warriors.

Ryan.9387:

No, minion masters are strong enough and necro death shroud hp/s added to that hp/s puts your regen on top of warriors.

Minion master are “good” against not very skilled players in 1v1 settings. If you have a gander at the top-ranked players, other than myself, its probably pretty likely you won’t find many if any other MM who actually main/play MM in high tier pvp, and there are reasons for that. While on paper and versus not skilled players they SEEM over powered, they have some really large downfalls, and if you request I’ll link you my large MM thread so you can read it. Though things you need to consider:

Minions can die, miss a lot and the melee ones don’t have very good up-time on their target. Additionally, none of this heals while we’re in death shroud, which is essentially our version of a block. You’d be surprised how much protection, blocks and stability (indirectly, but it keeps you from taking hits to the face) increases your effective health total on top of having heavy armor. All of which doesn’t prohibit healing, mind you. Additionally, blocks/evades scale directly with number of enemies, while “facetanking” which Death Shroud allows us to do negatively scales with more enemies throwing hits at you. Not to mention Life Force has to be raised, we don’t start fights with 100% and if our big LF attacks are evaded we can sit at 0% life force for quite some time, at least long enough for us to miss a very important Doom. So when you factor ALL of that onto Warrior’s heavy armor, blocks Adrenal health and pure power, you’d see why that isn’t the case. Not to mention the buff I suggested is very minor, and even includes a nerf in the fiend’s damage.

Also; you have to realize this is a heal. Heals aren’t spec-specific, currently even when specced entirely for minion master MOST times Consume Conditions is better than the blood fiend, and would likely still be a high contender.

Blood Fiend is never taken by non-MMs, and is even a rare choice for MM builds because of how unreliable it is. I think that’s evidence enough that it needs help.

I think no.

You have less effective healing, however, what you do have makes up for it.

You have: Up to six minions, all of which can remove a condition.
Death Shroud
Great access to Fear
Condition pressure

Warriors have: Well. uh. To be honest you only mentioned the Signet, you didn’t attach any actual build. We know you’re running a Minion Master build, though it must be a very poor one if you aren’t taking the trait that allows your minions to get rid of conditions.

You can’t only take into account the Signet, you have to compare the overall builds. You can’t simply compare one heal to the other and say one is broken because it performs better on paper. Each heal for each class has different functions and in the same way each class has different strengths and weaknesses, so do the heals.

Why exactly is it bad that Healing Signet slightly outperforms your Minion’s heal (do note we aren’t talking about your minions siphoning health for you) when you have access to Death Shroud, which by itself is better than our ability to block damage? If a Warrior wants to block they have to run certain weapon sets by the way, which means he’s gonna have to sacrifice some kind of damage potential. The only exception being a sword/sword+longbow Warrior, but even that build is sacrificing the ability to deal raw damage in favor of condition damage. What exactly do you sacrifice for Death Shroud again?


Also, the main reason I don’t use Blood Fiend on my MM Necro when I play is due to the massive condition spam in the current meta. Without that the Blood Fiend does pretty well in my experience, at least in combination with a proper build.

You forgot to mention the fact that it doesn’t regenerate health out of combat. That’s one of the things that really annoys me. If some guy gets it to 10% or so with splash damage, the necro is stuck with two choices. (1) Sit there with a heal that can be forced on CD without giving anything the next fight. (2) Sacrifice it and hope you don’t need it while it recharges.

Seriously, let it regen health out of combat. I’ll ignore the other healing issues because of Vampiric Master. Why doesn’t it regenerate? It doesn’t make sense.

Zanryu.3417:

I think no.

You have less effective healing, however, what you do have makes up for it.

You have: Up to six minions, all of which can remove a condition.
Death Shroud
Great access to Fear
Condition pressure

Warriors have: Well. uh. To be honest you only mentioned the Signet, you didn’t attach any actual build. We know you’re running a Minion Master build, though it must be a very poor one if you aren’t taking the trait that allows your minions to get rid of conditions.

You can’t only take into account the Signet, you have to compare the overall builds. You can’t simply compare one heal to the other and say one is broken because it performs better on paper. Each heal for each class has different functions and in the same way each class has different strengths and weaknesses, so do the heals.

Why exactly is it bad that Healing Signet slightly outperforms your Minion’s heal (do note we aren’t talking about your minions siphoning health for you) when you have access to Death Shroud, which by itself is better than our ability to block damage? If a Warrior wants to block they have to run certain weapon sets by the way, which means he’s gonna have to sacrifice some kind of damage potential. The only exception being a sword/sword+longbow Warrior, but even that build is sacrificing the ability to deal raw damage in favor of condition damage. What exactly do you sacrifice for Death Shroud again?


Also, the main reason I don’t use Blood Fiend on my MM Necro when I play is due to the massive condition spam in the current meta. Without that the Blood Fiend does pretty well in my experience, at least in combination with a proper build.

1) Minions can’t remove conditions. A trait does that costs 30 points transfers our conditions to our minions, which with the wonderful stealth nerf four months ago courtesy of ANet, means they sit there permanently, either to kill our minions more quickly, or make them even easier to kite, less DPS, etc.

2) Yeah, my power build has great condition pressure. You’ll really be terrified by my 40 DPS bleeds. MMs have vulnerability, poison (assuming Death Nova, which means no condition removal, or greatly reduced minion damage), weakness (again, Death Nova only, otherwise no), cripples, immobilize, and chill. Every single one of those, however, is dependent on traits, or weapon choice, and will not exist in a realistic MM build, unless you are going condi MM, which isn’t nearly as common as power.

3) Great access to fears? An MM build has 2 fears, Doom and if using staff, Reaper’s Mark.

You don’t even need to compare it to Warriors. Look at the Elementalist or Thief passive heal. Both are vastly better than Blood Fiend. Why are all of these better?
More reliable passive healing
Actually scales with Healing Power (Blood Fiend is absolutely worthless in any build with high healing power)

There is no point in taking Blood Fiend into PvP unless you already planned to run the one build he’s good in, which requires 0/0/20/30/0, Soldier Amulet, and at least one of: Staff, Dagger Off-hand, and Lyssa or Melandru runes. If all of those conditions aren’t met, you are better off running either Consume Conditions, or Well of Blood.

blood fiend could use some buff.
the minion can be easily killed anyway right?

Summon a blood fiend that transfers health to you on each attack.
Damage: 239
Healing: 926
Range: 900

The Blood Fiend attacks approximately every 3 seconds, healing its master for 926 health on each attack. Healing in this way is not affected by healing power.

3 seconds per one attack seems very slow.
what if we make it attack faster.

1 attack per 1 second.
heals 350 per attack.
unaffected by healing power.
increase the range to 1,200 from 900
lower base damage to 150 maybe?

only successful attacks that hit counts.
blind, block, evade, dodge etc does not trigger healing.

The damage would have to be lower if it attacked each second, might even take way from being able to dodge it (less counter play) but I’d still be fine with it attacking faster. But its damage would have to be really low if it attacked every second. Something like 80 if it hit every second would be on par with now.

oh ya hor i forgot about the damage haha.
what if we lowered the base attack to 60 if 1 attack per 1 second?
and heals 350 per successful attack.

Your warped logic is demonstrated by your comparison to Healing Signet. Healing Signet is largely considered to be overpowered and in need of a nerf. Super strong passive skills that don’t require players to interact do not belong in competitive PVP.

This game is already suffering from autopilot/passive abilities. Anet should be nerfing passive abilities rather than buffing them.

healing signet was too weak previously, it is balanced now.

by the way, blood fiend is not passive play.
the blood fiend minion can be easily killed.

Given that it can be dodged and killed and poisoned/blinded/etc, it should be more powerful than Healing Signet.
I think it should give Necromancers at least 500hp/sec healing.

1) If the minions die instead of you I’d call that a good thing. I’d rather have my minions go down first than be dead. Them taking conditions off of you is a good thing, you’re getting up to six conditions removed in 10 second intervals. That’s not bad by any means. If your minions die you bide your time and re-summon them to start the cycle all over again. Minions are meat shields, and them taking conditions is definitely a great function.

2) The Bleed DPS is roughly 4 times what you stated, assuming you only get Mark of Blood off without stacking any other bleeds. MMs have Vulnerability, Poison, Weakness, Bleed, Cripple, Immobilize, Knock Down, Fear, and Torment. I recognize the fact that these are far weaker than the Condimancer’s, however they aren’t the main source of damage. They add on to the raw power of the Necromancer and the damage his minions do to put even more pressure on the target. A few hundred condition damage doesn’t seem like a lot until it’s negating that “overpowered” Signet Warriors have or causing the final amount of damage needed to secure a kill.

3) Two fears is still better than any other class realistically, considering that a Warrior’s is on a 60 second (48 when traited) cooldown, a Ranger’s is on a 45 second cooldown, and a Thief has to steal theirs from the Necromancer in the first place. Let’s not forget that Doom’s fear is on a 20 second cooldown and Reaper’s Mark is on a 40 second cooldown. Both of which are far shorter than the other Fears mentioned. Oh, and aside from a weaponset the Necromancer gives up nothing to obtain these Fears. Oh, and they could still sacrifice one of their minions to get yet another Fear while retaining near all of their MM build’s usefulness. Yeah dude.. I have to agree, Necromancers really don’t have good access to Fear.

4) I already covered this, MM Necros have a mini army of pets to take some of the hits for them as well as take their conditions. Even though they have better passive healing the other heals aren’t necessarily that much better than Blood Fiend.

The other classes aside from Warrior have barely over half the HP of a Necromancer, without taking Death Shroud into account. Warriors are tied, however they lack Death Shroud and rely on CC or Blocks to negate damage and their CC is easily countered by blind. That’s assuming they run a build that utilizes their CC, there are plenty out there that only run with Bull’s Charge. In order to Block they have to use a Shield which is more of a defensive weapon than anything. I already covered this though.. so I don’t know why I’m repeating myself.

I really didn’t want to involve myself in this whole argument but my hand was forced. Thanks person that knows who you are.

^ You’re missing the part where it can die easily from cleave, especially in team fights. A dead heal doesn’t always mean they didn’t hit you most. Its just a drawback. Also its hps is much lower than signet due to the evades/ccs and death time. Yes, you get some HPS from minions, but that requires a very specific build (minion master build specifically) and warriors have a higher hps signet and adrenal health. So if you want to factor in Traits, often warrior still has better survivability. Also, this heal should be suitable for non-mm. It’s a heal…

ronpierce.2760:

^ You’re missing the part where it can die easily from cleave, especially in team fights. A dead heal doesn’t always mean they didn’t hit you most. Its just a drawback. Also its hps is much lower than signet due to the evades/ccs and death time. Yes, you get some HPS from minions, but that requires a very specific build (minion master build specifically) and warriors have a higher hps signet and adrenal health. So if you want to factor in Traits, often warrior still has better survivability. Also, this heal should be suitable for non-mm. It’s a heal…

If you’re running a Minion Master build that’s the risk you take. The minion is pretty sustainable in smaller fights such as 1v1 or 1v2, regardless if the Necromancer is or not. I don’t see why ANYTHING should be able to sustain damage from an entire team from very long. If it dies, tough. The Necromancer in question chose to run that specific build with that specific minion.

It was stated in the OP that we’re talking about a MM build. People don’t use that minion outside of MM builds because Consume Conditions has the benefit of, well, consuming conditions. It’s superior because of that and requiring no investment in any trait line to use. That doesn’t make the Blood Fiend useless, it just has a special niche suited more towards smaller fights and fights without large amounts of conditions coming at you.

Even if the Warrior has better survivability than the Necromancer that’s no excuse to increase the effectiveness of a skill that, overall, seems to be around where it should be anyway.

Blood fiend is a heal. Traiting for leeching is part of building to be somewhat tanky. I’ll let you know siphons even as MM aren’t nearly as effective as stability/protection/regen boon spamming, having blocks and heavier armor. It’s just not, and gets worse with the more enemies you fight, as to where protection/stability/evades/blocks become stronger (because they block more damage versus more enemies where siphons are fixed). Also as far as it dying. It is a problem because that is one of the MANY drawbacks (the others you’re ignoring) that bring it down. Signet can’t be killed no matter how many people you fight. And it heals for more, and scales. I don’t see how you can possibly not see that this heal is inferior and needs help.

- Lower hps
- *Evadable
- Dies
- *CCable
- *Long cast time after use OR death.
- *Doesn’t regain its hp outside of combat so you’re often forced to reset it, thus killing it and not having it for the next fight.

Yes its a choice to run with it, and that’s the problem. You’re saying well you chose to run with it. That shouldn’t be a problem it should be viable… But it’s really not for so many reasons that you’re dismissing. It being killable is a DOWNSIDE not an upside in ANY way imaginable.

Zanryu.3417:

snip

You are the one who decided to press the reply button, don’t act like anyone forced you to.

What you are saying isn’t wrong in and of itself. It is, however, completely unrealistic. You’re listing everything accessible to an MM as they decide to make their build. What you aren’t listing is what they actually end up with when they are done, because many of the things you bring up as issues are mutually exclusive to each other; I can’t have it all in one build.

And yes, Blood Fiend is bad in all but one very small set of builds, otherwise you’d see him more. Consume Conditions is generally better, because it frees up a lot of your condition removal, and cannot be denied to you nearly as easily, and Well of Blood is just completely better in every sense if you have the Healing Power to support it.

Also, stop pretending like Necromancers are some gods of defense. The only time that is said is when people are either asking for Necro nerfs, or denying buffs. There is a reason you haven’t seen a single competitive Mid-Point Necromancer bunker build for high level play. They don’t exist.

Blood fiend sadly does need a buff it is not attractive enough vs consume conditions. That being said AI builds are just…….it would be hard to drum up support for this given the current game environment/meta without expecting some nerfs overall.

It’s interesting that you say I ignore drawbacks, while you and the OP ignore the drawbacks of Healing Signet. It has a large weakness to sustained and burst damage, and coincidentally MM Necromancers are able to dish that out.

Blood Fiend is viable, just not against condition spam. Its drawback is that in larger team fights it dies easily, but its pro is that it allows the Necromancer to get a pretty substantial heal while it’s around. For smaller fights that’s a pretty good thing to have.

It’s up to the user to decide which skill to bring. There are plenty of times I don’t run Healing Signet in favor of Adrenal healing. Just saying.

While people hate AI (though there are ways to fix it, people just don’t do, se my signature) they’re not so bad in high tier pvp. In fact I could count on one hand the amount of MM in high-end play, and it has been this way for a long time. It’s because AoE wrecks them, full mm has no stunbreaks except a pre-casted one that requires sacrificing the minion for, no stability, no evades, only decent healing/self sustain versus a single target, and has a lot of very glaring downsides even though yes it has a few upsides. MM is already not what some would considered “viable”, and just a little strong in 1v1. I actually wrote a big long post about how MMs are too susceptible to AoE but their single target dps is a little too high from minions, so I’m not playing biased. I want balance in the game, but they’re far from OP. They’re just a top say 80% 1v1 build, but not even the worst. People simply get overwhelmed when they see more than 1 enemy and it causes them to choke.

And I know it isn’t saying too much since leaderboards just reset, but having only lost twice I’m currently at rank 13 on the leaderboards if you want to ensure I’m a reliable source. I’ve played MM for many many months now, before they were ever even considered decent to have around. When I first started and entered tPvP I literally got laughed at. :/

ronpierce.2760:

While people hate AI (though there are ways to fix it, people just don’t do, se my signature) they’re not so bad in high tier pvp. In fact I could count on one hand the amount of MM in high-end play, and it has been this way for a long time. It’s because AoE wrecks them, full mm has no stunbreaks except a pre-casted one that requires sacrificing the minion for, no stability, no evades, only decent healing/self sustain versus a single target, and has a lot of very glaring downsides even though yes it has a few upsides. MM is already not what some would considered “viable”, and just a little strong in 1v1. I actually wrote a big long post about how MMs are too susceptible to AoE but their single target dps is a little too high from minions, so I’m not playing biased. I want balance in the game, but they’re far from OP. They’re just a top say 80% 1v1 build, but not even the worst. People simply get overwhelmed when they see more than 1 enemy and it causes them to choke.

And I know it isn’t saying too much since leaderboards just reset, but having only lost twice I’m currently at rank 13 on the leaderboards if you want to ensure I’m a reliable source. I’ve played MM for many many months now, before they were ever even considered decent to have around. When I first started and entered tPvP I literally got laughed at. :/

I have to take exception with this post. Blood fiend flat out is not good enough a heal to carry. End of story. That being said MM is not OP it is very very cheap. The counter to it is obvious AoE which players kitten about as it is. The counter to builds like that are more annoying builds or as per your description of a class counter is to play a warrior in a meta build. For everyone else its basically an uphill fight. And this Necro we have no dodge bs is exactly that. You mat not have vigor but you have access to Energy sigils and DS as another health bar. So lets not play let me defend my build while asking for a buff game.

Blood fiend needs a buff.
MM does not.

Well, you didn’t read what I said, I’ve said I have a long post elsewhere on buffs AND nerfs MM needs. I do care about balance, but MM has issues. If you play one at high-ranks its very obvious. They are very powerful 1v1 in low ranks, but once that’s out the window and you’re playing stronger players it becomes a build about trying to lock down your enemies to allow best uptime while pressuring them. They’re only “cheap” in low tier against players who don’t move around much. Don’t go off the chain about how MM is cheap, it has some very huge draw backs which people don’t understand unless they’ve played it in high end. I’ve literally only met 3, maybe 4 MM who’ve ever seen top 100. The “cheese” factor of MM wears off drastically the higher you go.

That kind of thinking is what got us into this mess in the first place. The OP skills/traits need to be nerfed, not buff other kitten to power creep level.

Acandis.3250:

That kind of thinking is what got us into this mess in the first place. The OP skills/traits need to be nerfed, not buff other kitten to power creep level.

Blood fiend is just a bad heal all around. That’s the thing. Blood fiend has almost never (if ever) been in a good build. Always completely outshined by Consume Conditions. I was just stating all the downsides Blood fiend has in comparison to the signet. Based on all the drawbacks over a course of a game it probably heals for 2/5 the healing a signet will. OR less. Not even an exaggeration.

I agree, we need to buff one of the hardest to play specs/classes……..
I mean if one minionmancer forces a 2v1 on home point just to kill him surely he needs more viable choices for utilities.

Minionmancer is one of the strongest far point assault builds available right now.
MM should not be a viable spec, it should be an under performing spec.

Bad players? Don’t even joke a good MM can win 1v1 against almost any tournament specced player…

This is in my eyes just as bad as asking for buffs to Prismatic understanding mesmers.

ronpierce.2760:

Acandis.3250:

That kind of thinking is what got us into this mess in the first place. The OP skills/traits need to be nerfed, not buff other kitten to power creep level.

Blood fiend is just a bad heal all around. That’s the thing. Blood fiend has almost never (if ever) been in a good build. Always completely outshined by Consume Conditions. I was just stating all the downsides Blood fiend has in comparison to the signet. Based on all the drawbacks over a course of a game it probably heals for 2/5 the healing a signet will. OR less. Not even an exaggeration.

Yes, but that speaks to how OP Consume Conditions is (because it really kittening is).

I don’t disagree in your saying that Blood Fiend is super weak, but the fact is MM necros are already pretty strong, and simply buffing BF without nerfing the rest of the build to compensate would put that spec in a dangerously OP pedestal.

Zanryu.3417:

It’s interesting that you say I ignore drawbacks, while you and the OP ignore the drawbacks of Healing Signet. It has a large weakness to sustained and burst damage, and coincidentally MM Necromancers are able to dish that out.

That is exactly the same thing Blood Fiend is weak to. Our issue with the skill is that it has every drawback associated with a passive healing skill and then more on top, while being strictly weaker than all of the others.

And how do you say MM would be OP? You do realize that currently no MM runs Blood Fiend seriously, right? All of the strong, “borderline” OP MMs (how strong are they if they’ve seen 0 effective high tier tournament use?) don’t run Blood Fiend, they all use consume conditions. It isn’t a strict buff to their build.

People don’t understand that buffing underused parts don’t buff the main spec, it just increases options. Literally, I’ve come to realize people just don’t get that concept.

Not every skill works with every build. Of course you don’t see power or condition Necromancers using Blood Fiend or Well of Blood when Consume Conditions is 10x better, but you might see well built Necromancers using Well of Blood or MM using Blood Fiend. Next you should make a thread asking for Healing Breeze to be good on a zerker build or complain when Ether Renewal gets interrupted without Armor of Earth. Maybe Backstab thieves want to start using Signet of Malice so lets buff it to 1,000 health per attack and forget about multi hit attacks.

Blood fiend isn’t even the best (nor close, really) heal for an entirely full MM specced necro… CC all day or well in zergs, that’s the life of a necro.

Acandis.3250:

ronpierce.2760:

Acandis.3250:

That kind of thinking is what got us into this mess in the first place. The OP skills/traits need to be nerfed, not buff other kitten to power creep level.

Blood fiend is just a bad heal all around. That’s the thing. Blood fiend has almost never (if ever) been in a good build. Always completely outshined by Consume Conditions. I was just stating all the downsides Blood fiend has in comparison to the signet. Based on all the drawbacks over a course of a game it probably heals for 2/5 the healing a signet will. OR less. Not even an exaggeration.

Yes, but that speaks to how OP Consume Conditions is (because it really kittening is).

I don’t disagree in your saying that Blood Fiend is super weak, but the fact is MM necros are already pretty strong, and simply buffing BF without nerfing the rest of the build to compensate would put that spec in a dangerously OP pedestal.

Consume Conditions is weak, lol, right. It’s a 25 sec cd condi clear heal with an easy to interrupts cast time.

It’s also the only available condi clear besides putrid mark for power necro specs.