Guild Wars 2

My blood fiend gets the crap kicked out of it rather a lot, and I can’t seem to find an option to heal it (and it doesn’t seem to have inate out-of-combat regen like everything else) Am I just stupid, or is there not a way to restore minion health?

Staff 2/Focus 4/DS4 with Transfusion trait.

Or renewing blast (Soul reaping XIII), and the runes that treat a percentage of care to the Allies for other minion.
I have not tried but it should work.

Renewing Blast, Transfusion, Deathly Invigoration, Mark of Blood, Well of Blood, and lucky Reaper’s Touch bounces are all ways to heal your minions. There are, of course, other ways (such as sigil of water), but those are all the ways built into the Necro profession.

1) Don’t use Blood Fiend, he’s bad.
2) The best ways to heal minions for PvE is to not heal them. Its simply not worth it.
3) The best way to heal minions in PvP is using a Cleric build with water/dwayna runes, renewal sigil on each set, and Transfusion traited. This build also happens to be the best MM build.

Bhawb.7408:

1) Don’t use Blood Fiend, he’s bad.
2) The best ways to heal minions for PvE is to not heal them. Its simply not worth it.
3) The best way to heal minions in PvP is using a Cleric build with water/dwayna runes, renewal sigil on each set, and Transfusion traited. This build also happens to be the best MM build.

Blood fiend is bad?

I only really use him, because well of blood sucks kitten and he heals me for insane amounts as well as tanks for me. I don’t use any other minions at the moment, as they don’t seem to do very much in terms of damage.

really struggling with finding a decent pve damage build though. dagger dagger seems to give the most damage, but I’m way too squishy to make use of it properly

Blood Fiend does not regerate health out of combat since it can be sacrificed. Transfusion can heal him if traited, and Staff 2 gives regeneration to him along with a lucky Focus 4 bounce. If you want a minion to tank for you though, that is what Shadow Fiend is for.

Also, you can heal Blood Fiend out of combat by hitting critters with Staff 2 while roaming in between fights.

rapthorne.7345:

Blood fiend is bad?

I only really use him, because well of blood sucks kitten and he heals me for insane amounts as well as tanks for me. I don’t use any other minions at the moment, as they don’t seem to do very much in terms of damage.

really struggling with finding a decent pve damage build though. dagger dagger seems to give the most damage, but I’m way too squishy to make use of it properly

He doesn’t actually heal for that much. Its 926 per attack, which is about 3 seconds apart (assuming level 80, its a comparable scaled-down amount for other levels). He also doesn’t tank amazingly well, mainly because he has light armor. Just get friendly with Consume Conditions, honestly, its a much better heal skill in general, unless you have full minions to draw aggro from Blood Fiend.

Shaogin.2679:

If you want a minion to tank for you though, that is what Shadow Fiend is for.

Bone Fiend is actually the best non-elite at tanking. Has basically the same HP as shadow fiend, but higher armor. That + him usually attacking first is why he draws aggro in PvE so much.

rapthorne.7345:

My blood fiend gets the crap kicked out of it rather a lot, and I can’t seem to find an option to heal it (and it doesn’t seem to have inate out-of-combat regen like everything else) Am I just stupid, or is there not a way to restore minion health?

you’ll have to give them regen transfusion (traited) or well of blood. yes it’s kinda stupid to not have your minions heal out of combat. if your really looking for a good heal consume condtions is nice. well of blood ugh well could be good in a group setting where all players stay inside your small aoe of heal. (yah it shouldn’t got nerfed)

for the regen you can swap your off hand dagger out for a focus skill 4 gives regen. bone minion probably my fav minion X D. are not worth healing … summon send them in blow them up (esp if their a fire field yay fre might)

what I say now I go off assuming your new.

dagger main hand is great for physical damage but you really NEED too rely on death shroud too. I helps give you more sustain and life blast can hurt… a lot. a necro should not run into melee more then he needs too. ofc this is harder to do in pve but that makes death shroud all the more important. it gives your more tankiness and gives good dps.

Weren’t there some calculations done a while back that showed that the Blood Fiend has the highest base health of all minions after the Flesh Golem? He isn’t as good a tank as the Golem, sure, but between him, the Golem, and all of your other minions, that’s still a lot of health that mobs need to burn through before their AI finally decides to turn their attention to you. And by then, you’ll probably have resummoned the minions that died early anyway.

As for minion healing, Blood Fiend, Bone Minions and Flesh Wurm are the only ones that do not regen health out of combat. Bone Minions are kinda irrelevant as you should be blowing them up frequently, while Flesh Wurm needs to be destroyed in between battles anyway. For the Blood Fiend, I only bother recasting him if I notice he has less than 1/4 of his health left. He’s usually one of the last minions to be targeted, and stays safely in the back attacking, so he can usually get away with not taking any damage throughout most fights.

Zaxares.5419:

Weren’t there some calculations done a while back that showed that the Blood Fiend has the highest base health of all minions after the Flesh Golem? He isn’t as good a tank as the Golem, sure, but between him, the Golem, and all of your other minions, that’s still a lot of health that mobs need to burn through before their AI finally decides to turn their attention to you. And by then, you’ll probably have resummoned the minions that died early anyway.

Blood Fiend and Flesh Golem have the same HP, either exactly or very, very close. Just like all of the utility minions have very similar HP values. The only difference is Blood Fiend has around 2k armor, whereas Flesh Golem has 2.6k, IIRC (values are on the wiki). So he’s not bad at tanking, but I’d say he’s third on the list, since Bone Fiend is amazing at getting aggro, and has pretty massive armor.

Blood fiend increases dps by siphoning health so of course it would heal bad but it still heals better, now, than it used to and it is not kittenignet of Vampirism because SoV also siphons for teammates who don’t actually care or even notice the heals.

I don’t see why Blood Fiend is so bad. It has about 300 hps, has a quick burst heal. has the fastest cd (faster when traited), does damage and can be traited to blow up and give poison field on dying It can be traited to strip boons, hit harder, siphon more, draw conditions and have higher hp. I would think with all this it would be the most op healing skill. Doesn’t the warrior healing signet heal for 300 hps and that’s all? Somehow, despite all this, not only do players not complain how op Blood Fiend is, most necros still prefer Consume Conditions even when traited for minions. Does this strike anyone else as odd?

Healing Signet heals for ~375/sec with no healing power and cannot be denied (killed).

Part of it is also because Blood Fiend’s sustained healing is actually very poor compared to all other sustained healing skills and on top of that, it can be killed off to deny you healing. On top of that, no other profession can negate their own healing. Consume Conditions is considered a staple for four reasons:

1. Strong heal
2. Reasonable cooldown
3. Total condition clear (very important)
4. Does not ever get even partially wasted by death shroud.

Plexxing.2978:

I don’t see why Blood Fiend is so bad. It has about 300 hps,

Which requires the minion to be alive and hitting perfectly, and doesn’t scale at all with healing power, despite healing power being vital for MM builds.

Plexxing.2978:

has a quick burst heal.

The second worst burst heal we have (tied with Signet of Vampirism, another awful skill

Plexxing.2978:

does damage

A whole sub 70ish DPS

Plexxing.2978:

and can be traited to blow up and give poison field on dying It can be traited to strip boons,

Both of these can’t happen at once, not to mention the boon stripping is absolutely awful and one more poison field on top of 5 others which more than suffice to maintain poison.

Plexxing.2978:

hit harder,

25% additional damage on top of very little damage isn’t impressive (it doesn’t even bring him above 100 DPS)

Plexxing.2978:

siphon more,

He doesn’t siphon, so no you can’t increase his siphoning. You can only make him siphon on hit via VM.

Plexxing.2978:

draw conditions

Not without giving up something you listed above

Plexxing.2978:

I would think with all this it would be the most op healing skill. Doesn’t the warrior healing signet heal for 300 hps and that’s all? Somehow, despite all this, not only do players not complain how op Blood Fiend is, most necros still prefer Consume Conditions even when traited for minions. Does this strike anyone else as odd?

No, because its bad. Healing Signet’s passive scales with healing power. It also gives you 300 per second NO MATTER WHAT. You can’t LoS healing sig, you can’t kill healing signet, you can’t kite healing signet, you can’t block it, invuln it, dodge it, etc. Blood Fiend however is very, very easy to put from 300 HPS to 0, because just one missed attack completely negates his healing for 3 seconds. Also, many of your proposed “benefits” are highly exaggerated (his boon stripping is 1 boon removed per 30 seconds in ideal conditions), impossible to achieve because you need more trait points than you get and also need to equip traits that are in the same GM slot.

Simply put, Blood Fiend is everything that could be done to make Healing Signet awful, on a profession with an amazing skill that is better in every single way. No amount of traiting would make Blood Fiend good, it needs significant work on its mechanics first. Even the one build that could afford the traiting, MM, has so much passive healing that Blood Fiend still wouldn’t be good even if they fixed a few minor issues.

What would make the Blood Fiend a better Healing Skill?

More damage? Better HP scaling? Allie healing?

It needs scaling.

Ironically, Blood Fiend’s attacks actually scale quite well with Healing Power at 65%. The problem is that it is the minion’s healing power.

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

What would make the Blood Fiend a better Healing Skill?

More damage? Better HP scaling? Allie healing?

I had two big suggestions to make Blood Fiend better:

1) Passive heal scales with healing power
2) Change Training of the Master so it isn’t a flat damage buff

The first one just makes sense. It makes no sense that Blood Fiend’s attacks don’t scale with your healing power, it makes him significantly worse, especially when healing power is absolutely vital on MM builds right now.

The second is because a flat 25% damage boost is meaningless to a lot of minions. You don’t just use them for consistent damage. I’ve said this many times, but it should boost the utility you take them for. It should boost damage on relevant active skills, and on minions where their damage is less impactful. For example, if Blood Fiend’s active was changed (when traited) to drop a water field or become a small AoE heal, that’d make the heal far better for MM builds.

I rarely use Blood Fiend but just wanted to remind everyone it damages your opponent while healing you so there is the extra dps to offset the small siphon.

Anchoku.8142:

I rarely use Blood Fiend but just wanted to remind everyone it damages your opponent while healing you so there is the extra dps to offset the small siphon.

It is sub 80 DPS.

1) Blood Fiends’ attack is not a siphon?
2) I am aware you can’t get all the traits to buff Blood Fiend with everything.
3) When traiting with VM, his small siphon along with the others actually makes the build a decent siphon build. All those minion attacks add up too.
4) All minions can get LoSed or killed, some easier than others, why be a minion mancer if you’re not willing to accept this as part of your weakness?

Plexxing.2978:

1) Blood Fiends’ attack is not a siphon?
2) I am aware you can’t get all the traits to buff Blood Fiend with everything.
3) When traiting with VM, his small siphon along with the others actually makes the build a decent siphon build. All those minion attacks add up too.
4) All minions can get LoSed or killed, some easier than others, why be a minion mancer if you’re not willing to accept this as part of your weakness?

1. Nope. Despite being described as such, Bloodthirst does not affect it.
2. Good.
3. It’s not really that noticable of an increase, really.
4. Because no other minion is your heal

The difference is the rest of the minions getting a bit LoS’d doesn’t matter. None of them are based entirely around landing their autos. Blood Fiend on the other hand is absolutely awful unless he lands every single auto perfectly and never dies. His active is bad, he forces you to pick up condi removal and you don’t have a good way of doing it, and overall he is just far too easily countered when you can simply take Consume Conditions instead, which fits the build amazingly well.