Guild Wars 2

Am thinking 20 points in BM, with +siphon and siphon on crit traits, then blood fiend, Runes of the Vampire x6 and Sigil of Leeching on OH. Steal on crit food in WvW… and sigil of locust, as that also synergises with the +siphon trait.

I’ve got a spare set of Knight’s gear (weapons and armour) but was wondering if anyone had been experimenting.

From what I’ve seen of this, heavy life stealing is nice, but it won’t replace your active heal or anything. It’s fun, but it can’t be your entire build.

Also, I think that Bloodthirst won’t have any effect on the life steal effects from runes, sigils, or food, just as a heads up.

Bloodthirst does indeed not affect them.

It does affect siphoning though – so the Blood Magic traits (on crit, on hit, wells), Signet of the Locust and Blood Fiend. Blood Fiend alone is about 1k/s with this trait.

OK, so nobody’s tried this. I figure it’ll give:

1k/s from BF attacks
4.5k from Taste of Blood
975 for first hit after ToB
975 for first hit after switch
38 per hit
45 per crit?
Regen at 90%
300/tick for dagger heal (2.4k total)
1.2k per target with Signet of the Locust.

I would suggest still keeping consume conditions, it will be more reliable, in practice it is going to heal more, and it is going to proc your 4-set rune (the steal after healing).

I’ve played around with builds like this, with very high crit chance you can proc a lot of life stealing with dagger/warhorn, and it does deal extra damage that ignores armor, which is nice. You are also, life Softspoken said, going to need more to your build, which is fine since full life stealing still leaves room for other things.

Edit: Also, Blood fiend steals every 4 seconds, so that is more like 250/s

I roamed WVW with a simili Vampire build.

I found it to be viable, nothing amazing like a Shatter mesmer or an HGH mesmer, but it was viable for me.

I had 3 thief jumping me. I used plague elite, ran, and only one still focused on me(was a thief fight).

He was around 75% HP. I was at 10% HP.

I don’t remember exactly how it happened (2 weeks ago). But I just melted him will regenerating most of my HP. I didn’t even use my Heal because it was on cooldown.

I was using both vampire rune and vampire sigil. So I regenerated a lot of HP once I used my well x2 (siphhon on well damages) and dagger #2 + Focus #4 for regen.

I also used Regen food (90 hp tick?). I had full berserk on, so while I was pretty glassy, I regen a lot of HP and dish a lot of damage melee.

But once your well are on cooldown, you can’t take too much damage.

Was a pretty cool fight!

My necro currently runs a Vampiric build:

30 III, IX, XII
0
10 III
30 II, V, VII
0

Zerker gear + Vampirism Runes
D/F and S/D (Sceptre actually does okay damage in zerker gear) Sigil of Blood + Sigil of Accuracy and Sigil of Bloodlust x2

Blood Fiend/Consume Conditions
Signet of the Locust/Bone Minions/Bone Fiend
Become The Wolf as an elite (It’s #2 is a massive Life Siphon, it can, and has fully healed me from 10% health in a single cast, it also cleaves which makes it more usable in PvE)

Works okay, as long as I time my dodges correctly and can keep my minions alive (If they’re up and attacking my target, the target melts and my health won’t budge)

SupahSpankeh.8452:

Am thinking 20 points in BM, with +siphon and siphon on crit traits, then blood fiend, Runes of the Vampire x6 and Sigil of Leeching on OH. Steal on crit food in WvW… and sigil of locust, as that also synergises with the +siphon trait.

I’ve got a spare set of Knight’s gear (weapons and armour) but was wondering if anyone had been experimenting.

I’m currently traited 20 points into Blood Magic with Bloodthirst and Vampiric Precision as my traits.

I’m using full Knight’s gear with Emerald Orbs in the upgrade slots.

Trinkets are a combination of Knight’s with three Ascended pieces with power/precision/toughness.

Weapons are all power/precision/toughness. Main hand dagger and off-hand warhorn both have Superior Sigils of Blood. Staff has Superior Sigil of Energy.

Food/consumables are Omnomberry Ghosts and Master Maintenance Oil.

Healing power = 300

Here are the life-siphoning numbers I’m getting when fighting level 80 opponents:

Direct damage hit with the Vampiric minor master trait but Bloodthirst and Vampiric Precision turned off = 26

Direct damage hit with the Vampiric minor master trait and Bloodthirst turned on and Vampiric Precision turned off = 40

Critical hit with Vampiric Precision turned on but Bloodthirst turned off = 33

Critical hit with Bloodthirst and Vampiric Precision turned on = 54

Life Stealing with Omnomberry Ghost (66% chance to steal life on critical hit; unaffected by traits) = 341

Life Stealing with Superior Sigil of Blood (30% chance to steal life on critical hit; unaffected by traits) = 507

So, assuming I critical hit (currently 64% chance with my food/consumable buffs active) with my dagger and both my Omnomberry Ghost and Superior Sigil of Blood activate, I would life siphon 942 health.

Of course, that’s idealized. In practice, this build gives a low but constant trickle of health to supplement primary healing and – in conjunction with Death Shroud – see me through cooldowns of Consume Conditions. If you’re looking for the vampires of GW1, you won’t find them here (sadly). I find it lacking in comparison to the blood necro I ran for 7 years in GW1.

Within the context of GW2, I guess the build does ok if the opinions of others are a measure of its success. Its often jokingly said of me by my allies in WvWvW that I can solo zergs. Obviously, that’s an exaggeration; but I do seem to have greater survivability than those around me. All the same, I’m just not “feeling” it. I’m too used to the GW1 approach to an attrition class where a blood necro could truly shine in that role. Not so much in GW2.

If you do decide to go this route, I find it works best to be very aggressive with your fighting style. You have to be constantly hitting enemies in order to process life siphoning. If you see a mob of NPC enemies or a zerg of real players and your first instinct is to run or kite or otherwise engage at distance, then this build isn’t for you.

You must be comfortable being a shock trooper in the vanguard, willing to throw yourself into the middle of an enemy group, laying down wells, summoning your Locust Swarm, and slashing away at an enemy with your dagger in order to increase the likelihood of getting in some critical hits to keep you alive.

Likewise, you must also cultivate a keen awareness of when your window of opportunity is about to close. Then you can fall back to recover and recharge your skills that are on cooldown (perhaps switching to staff) while allies push forward into the opening you’ve made for them.

Hey Kraag.

I tried it – albeit with Sigil of Leeching.

I’m used to being the linebreaker – my Deathhammer build is very much a “first in, last dead” build. I actually found it to be a great deal more survivable than the leeech build I tried, as well as hitting much harder.

However, your number analysis is exactly the sort of kittenzle this class needs. Thank you very kindly for your efforts!

Further to the above, tried Sigil of Blood too. Sadly, it procs at most once every 5 seconds, which means you’re probably ebtter off with Sigil of Leeching if you’re swapping every 10 seconds. Also, it doesn’t do damage to the target

In addition to this, often the Vampiric runes wouldn’t do anyhting at all. I found on one occasion I was turned to mist with 0hp left, and was able to run, leave mists (still on 0hp) and heal. Unfortunately, it didn’t work the other 6-7 times I tested it (on mobs with small but steady damage, and in PVP vs burst damage).

Siiiigh. The bugs in this game are many and varied and depressing

SupahSpankeh.8452:

Also, it doesn’t do damage to the target

Sigil of Blood should do 452 damage and 453 + (0.1 * Healing Power) healing when it procs.

Thus making it deal slightly more damage than Leeching if you proc it every 5 seconds, it should do more healing than Leeching if you proc it often and/or have an okay amount of healing power.

In addition to this, often the Vampiric runes wouldn’t do anyhting at all. I found on one occasion I was turned to mist with 0hp left, and was able to run, leave mists (still on 0hp) and heal. Unfortunately, it didn’t work the other 6-7 times I tested it (on mobs with small but steady damage, and in PVP vs burst damage).

Vampirism runes are pretty good, but have their issues:

The 4 bonus is often disabled after repairing, requiring the removal of all pieces of armour and re-equipping.

The 6 bonus shares a cooldown with the trait Last Gasp in soul reaping meaning that if you have that trait you’ll very rarely see the Mist (Last Gasp procs at 50% health rather than the 10% of the Runes)

Bonus that I noticed:

If at 10% health and entering Death Shroud, it’ll still proc off attacks when in Death Shroud. An added bonus also makes it so you can continue to attack whilst in Death Shroud while being invulnerable mist (Haven’t tested since the UI change in Death Shroud, but I assume it still works the same)

I can see this working in pve and spvp. However in wvw you would need AoE. All the items and foods have a internal cool down on the life steal. That means you cannot AoE life steal. Even if you use AoE skills you can only life steal from one target. So this idea won’t work in wvw.

Taril.8619:

SupahSpankeh.8452:

Also, it doesn’t do damage to the target

Sigil of Blood should do 452 damage and 453 + (0.1 * Healing Power) healing when it procs.

Thus making it deal slightly more damage than Leeching if you proc it every 5 seconds, it should do more healing than Leeching if you proc it often and/or have an okay amount of healing power.

Mmm. I tested SoB, it did around 480 healing but did no damage at all. That would be roughly half that of the 10s heal from Sigil of Leeching, which also does no damage, but requires only one hit to proc.

Plus, once your 5s cooldown is off, it could be anything from instant to a few seconds before it procs again.

For my purproses (DF/DW or DW/AF), where I swap regularly, it’s not a great choice.

I checked damage on screen and by reading combat log. Got it to proc a number of times.

IMO Rune of Dwayna is better than Vampirism. Especially if you’re going down Blood Magic. I’m doing an experimental pvp D/D Siphon build focusing on damage first, healing second. I trait 30/0/10/15/15. I get Regen at 90% health. Protection at 50% health, 20% reduction to Spectral abilities. I use Spectral Armor for another 50% health + stun break. Not worth it untraited with a 90 second cd. Siphon on hit. 50% increase in Siphon. Parasitic Bond, and Death into Life. I’m using Knight’s Amulet with Cleric Jewel (27.8khp, and 533 healing). Using Sigil of Blood on main hand, Bloodlust on offhand. Sigil of Fire on Staff. I could use Blood or Leeching if I wanted to. Dagger offhand is not the best choice for “healing”, but it keeps me alive better than focus and horn. It will make you better at 1v1. But still extremely hard to 2v1 as a Necro.

Heavy Life Stealing is nice and trivial but I’ve always found 15 points (or 20 for well users) in Blood Magic for Vampiric and taking either Bloodthirst (for low critical chance builds) or Vampiric Precision (for high critical hit builds) is the best method without wasting strong traits and points.

This is my WvW build and it allows me to heal for silly amounts passively without losing any of the utility or damage of wells. (in PTV armour, Berserker Trinkets, 50% critical chance)

For sPvP, try this build:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQEQNBIhZakRrWPczajeTBIV45pHc7N4QKud3oCID;TwAg0Csocy4kwJrTOnkOtAZ0wmgJGA

Assuming you’re a “good” player, it’ll outdamage most axe builds when played right. It lacks the CC of a fear build but you can solidly lock someone down a full 6 seconds at least if you use your skills properly.

It also is a seriously huge pain in the kitten to kill lol

BTW the regen pie is better than omnom lifesteal~

Andele, not sure about that – the omnom lifesteal has an ICD of 1s, right? That’s ~300hp/s assumping a decent crit rate and a bit of luck. Mango pie is 85hp/s.

SupahSpankeh.8452:

Andele, not sure about that – the omnom lifesteal has an ICD of 1s, right? That’s ~300hp/s assumping a decent crit rate and a bit of luck. Mango pie is 85hp/s.

Remember you have to be actually hitting stuff, also its not a 100% chance on crit to actually steal hp, so unless you have multi hitting abilites like locusts or wells on you wont be getting it more than once pre 3~ seconds (or in the case of dagger pre 2 seconds), Id take the 88 hp pre second from mango pie over Omnoms anytime.

Andele.1306:

SupahSpankeh.8452:

Andele, not sure about that – the omnom lifesteal has an ICD of 1s, right? That’s ~300hp/s assumping a decent crit rate and a bit of luck. Mango pie is 85hp/s.

Remember you have to be actually hitting stuff, also its not a 100% chance on crit to actually steal hp, so unless you have multi hitting abilites like locusts or wells on you wont be getting it more than once pre 3~ seconds (or in the case of dagger pre 2 seconds), Id take the 88 hp pre second from mango pie over Omnoms anytime.

This is true. First you must successfully land a critical hit. Then you have to roll a random number a second time on the Omnomberry Ghost’s 66% chance to steal life on that critical hit.

Short of a 100% crit chance, over the long term I think it could be successfully argued the Mango Pie will consistently return more health than Omnomberry Ghosts.

What it comes down to in practice is your play style. If you’re going for a longer, attrition-style sustain, Mango Pie wins hands down. If you’re charging into a group of 5 + enemies, dropping multiple wells on top of one another, activating Locust Swarm, slashing away with your dagger, and then retreating to recharge, Omnomberry Ghosts will probably give you more health (as well as more damage to those enemies) than the Mango Pie for the duration of that opening sequence.

Five enemies x 3 wells = 15 chances to successfully roll a life steal with an Omnomberry Ghost each second for the wells’ durations of 5 seconds. Five enemies x Locust Swarm’s duration of 10 seconds = 5 chances to successfully roll a life steal with an Omnomberry Ghost each second over the course of those 10 seconds. Throw some dagger slashes into the mix and the odds are quite good that Omnomberrys Ghost’s life steal is going to process several times within those skills’ durations.

Of course, this is all idealized theorycrafting again. In practice, enemies will be dead or attempting to escape from the wells’ AoE and from proximity to you and your Locust Swarm; either of which will decrease the number of opportunities you have to life steal.

You also have to factor in the internal cooldown, as well. As soon as the Omnomberry Ghost steals life, you have a 1 second cooldown before you can steal again. In the 5 seconds of a well storm, I’d have to successfully steal life with the Omnomberry Ghost a minimum of two times to beat Mango Pie’s health regeneration. Likewise, I’d have to process a life steal three times within the 10 second duration of a Locust Swarm to beat Mango Pie. It comes down to playstyle and the cost : benefit of speccing heavily into precision.

Sadly, there’s no way to confirm it via the combat log as life stealing doesn’t display there or I’d post results. Currently the only way to know how often and how much you’re life stealing is to record it and watch the green numbers very, very closely while kiting around to spread the numbers out so they don’t obscure one another due to stacking.

Since in WvWvW I’m part of that initial charge into the enemy ranks, I choose Omnomberry Ghosts. If I were standing in the rear ranks kiting and sniping targets, I’d want Mango Pie. I just wish there was a more practical method to get good data on life stealing to actually put it to the test.

OK LISTEN UP

Sigil of Blood DOES do damage.

It like life steal food ticks off damage in a different way then normal damage. it comes up as very tiny little numbers flying in a different direction then your regular dmg numbers.

After letting the warrior in spvp grounds beat me up, I sat and beat on golems with half health. Sure enough I saw 452 pop up in tiny numbers over the golems head.

For testing purposes, I put no points into blood, only put points in curses but selected no traits, wore rampagers trinket and made sure my food buff wasn’t on. End result was a 452 tick every 5 seconds.

If you test this with a fully fleshed out life steal build you will have so many number popping out of your target it could be very easy to miss.

Lorelei.3918:

OK LISTEN UP

Sigil of Blood DOES do damage.

It like life steal food ticks off damage in a different way then normal damage. it comes up as very tiny little numbers flying in a different direction then your regular dmg numbers.

After letting the warrior in spvp grounds beat me up, I sat and beat on golems with half health. Sure enough I saw 452 pop up in tiny numbers over the golems head.

For testing purposes, I put no points into blood, only put points in curses but selected no traits, wore rampagers trinket and made sure my food buff wasn’t on. End result was a 452 tick every 5 seconds.

If you test this with a fully fleshed out life steal build you will have so many number popping out of your target it could be very easy to miss.

And the news is? They are hashes (and myslef) confirmed it in the release week, its also true/shadow damage that ignores armor (you can damage Jade Maw with vampiric since his “immunity” to damage is just a massive armor buff).

Andele.1306:

Lorelei.3918:

OK LISTEN UP

Sigil of Blood DOES do damage.

It like life steal food ticks off damage in a different way then normal damage. it comes up as very tiny little numbers flying in a different direction then your regular dmg numbers.

After letting the warrior in spvp grounds beat me up, I sat and beat on golems with half health. Sure enough I saw 452 pop up in tiny numbers over the golems head.

For testing purposes, I put no points into blood, only put points in curses but selected no traits, wore rampagers trinket and made sure my food buff wasn’t on. End result was a 452 tick every 5 seconds.

If you test this with a fully fleshed out life steal build you will have so many number popping out of your target it could be very easy to miss.

And the news is? They are hashes (and myslef) confirmed it in the release week, its also true/shadow damage that ignores armor (you can damage Jade Maw with vampiric since his “immunity” to damage is just a massive armor buff).

Read the thread

“Taril.8619:
SupahSpankeh.8452:
Also, it doesn’t do damage to the target
Sigil of Blood should do 452 damage and 453 + (0.1 * Healing Power) healing when it procs.
Thus making it deal slightly more damage than Leeching if you proc it every 5 seconds, it should do more healing than Leeching if you proc it often and/or have an okay amount of healing power.
Mmm. I tested SoB, it did around 480 healing but did no damage at all. That would be roughly half that of the 10s heal from Sigil of Leeching, which also does no damage, but requires only one hit to proc.
Plus, once your 5s cooldown is off, it could be anything from instant to a few seconds before it procs again.
For my purproses (DF/DW or DW/AF), where I swap regularly, it’s not a great choice.
I checked damage on screen and by reading combat log. Got it to proc a number of times.”

Hence my post is reply to this misinformation about blood sigil.

Lorelei.3918:

Hence my post is reply to this misinformation about blood sigil.

Sorry, didnt notice that part, i just go over the important posts pre thread…

Man! I so badly want to get the Daggers/Vampire/Blood archetype working on this class, but with reading this and trying it out…i’m not feeling confident.

Always been a big fan in all games of dumping into damage-increase, and relying on life-stealing for sustainability, but in this game it’s not looking too promising. Life siphon probably isn’t enough to stay tanky…need more than that (vit/tough gear, wells, minions). Wanting to get crit hits, deathshroud and life siphon to compliment and work together nice. something like 0/20/0/20/30. who mants to manage minions anyways? yuck…

Is the dagger wielding, life stealing, dark and sinister vampire just a dream?!?

why doesn’t siphon scale off of healing power, or amount of damage done or something? This game has no mechanic for building to increase attack speed, so you cant increase amount of hits to add to the life siphoned. So really, only thing we have to scale up the power of our life siphoning is just the few traits…

mattbitts.7490:

Man! I so badly want to get the Daggers/Vampire/Blood archetype working on this class, but with reading this and trying it out…i’m not feeling confident.

Always been a big fan in all games of dumping into damage-increase, and relying on life-stealing for sustainability, but in this game it’s not looking too promising. Life siphon probably isn’t enough to stay tanky…need more than that (vit/tough gear, wells, minions). Wanting to get crit hits, deathshroud and life siphon to compliment and work together nice. something like 0/20/0/20/30. who mants to manage minions anyways? yuck…

Is the dagger wielding, life stealing, dark and sinister vampire just a dream?!?

Best i can tell, it used to be. But then someone turned it into a hardened bunker in beta and ANet reflexively nerfed it into rubble.

Hopefully their admission that their attempts as balancing SPVP and PVE as one has largely failed will bring PVE improvements in this area.

mattbitts.7490:

Man! I so badly want to get the Daggers/Vampire/Blood archetype working on this class, but with reading this and trying it out…i’m not feeling confident.

Always been a big fan in all games of dumping into damage-increase, and relying on life-stealing for sustainability, but in this game it’s not looking too promising. Life siphon probably isn’t enough to stay tanky…need more than that (vit/tough gear, wells, minions). Wanting to get crit hits, deathshroud and life siphon to compliment and work together nice. something like 0/20/0/20/30. who mants to manage minions anyways? yuck…

Is the dagger wielding, life stealing, dark and sinister vampire just a dream?!?

This is all unfounded speculation on my part, so take it with a grain of salt:

The life siphoning food buffs have been nerfed. Where they used to have a chance to process with every critical hit, they now have internal cool downs of 1 second after a successful life steal.

Meanwhile, the dagger #2 skill Life Siphon had a recent buff of 5% benefit from healing power.

It is also my belief that the life siphoning from vampiric, bloodthirst, and vampiric precision have been very slightly increased due to ninja updates in which I’m unable to find any supporting documentation in developers notes or update patch notes. However, in 6 months of playing blood necro and only blood necro I’ve noticed these tiny increases. We’re not talking anything major; 1 or 2 points per siphon at level 80 is all.

What I feel this is leading up to is an update or series of updates that will slowly see the blood necro finally come into its own. Previously, with food buffs, other classes could life steal nearly as well as a necro when taking everything into account (not just the life stealing traits specific to a necro but the other professions’ greater mobility and control which permit them to land more hits more often than a necro). They’ve nerfed life stealing food buffs (no more, “Anbody can be a vampire!”) and have started to improve the necros life stealing. The two taken together results in the necro being set up to become the undisputed master of life stealing.

I imagine they will proceed very cautiously in ramping up life stealing, though, since in the hands of a skilled player a blood necro can be nearly unkillable. But I do feel they have started the process of reviewing and improving necros life stealing; albeit slowly.

So is the vampire a dream? Perhaps. Will we someday wakeup to find it has become everyone else’s nightmare? We can hope…we can hope

When it comes to ninja buffs, one should be very careful about making these observations in PVE thanks to the WVW won server wide boons.

I can’t seem to make up my mind of those boons are a good or bad thing. But in a way they make PVE subservient to WVW, as someones performance in WVW impact my performance in PVE while my performance in PVE do not seem to impact anyone’s performance in WVW.

digiowl.9620:

When it comes to ninja buffs, one should be very careful about making these observations in PVE thanks to the WVW won server wide boons.

I can’t seem to make up my mind of those boons are a good or bad thing. But in a way they make PVE subservient to WVW, as someones performance in WVW impact my performance in PVE while my performance in PVE do not seem to impact anyone’s performance in WVW.

For life stealing skills affected by healing power I agree with you. However, the only two skills that life steal and benefit from healing power that immediately come to mind are dagger #2 Life Siphon and Signet of the Locust.

The traits such as Bloodthirst, Vampiric, and Vampiric Precision are unaffected by healing power; so the WvWvW bonuses wouldn’t apply in their case. For example, Vampiric used to life siphon for 25 health per hit. For me, it now life siphons for 26 health per hit (though the damage done to the opponent is still 25). This is in PvE. In Heart of the Mists, it’s still 25 healing. I don’t know the reason for the discrepancy, but it’s there all the same.

As to the impact on performance due to WvWvW, nothing is being taken away from you. If your server has no buffs from WvWvW, then you’re playing with skills and traits at their normal baseline. You only gain bonus modifiers to your abilities due to WvWvW; never penalties. For example, if a skill does 100 points of damage and your server is in 3rd place in WvWvW with no bonuses, you’re not going to do less than 100 points of damage with that skill.

Most (All? I can’t remember if Sigil of Leeching is affected) of the Siphons are scaled with the WvW’s Medic buff. The 1 or 2 points of increased Siphoning you are seeing is absolutely, one hundred percent coming from that buff. It does not scale from anything else.

Blood Fiend’s passive heal is also not increased by Bloodthirst or it would be healing for upwards of 1.5k. It heals somewhere in the low/mid 900s after two (Recent)consecutive buffs and does not scale with any of our stats, just like the rest of our minions. The misinformation that gets around on these forums is disgustingly bad.

Kraag Deadsoul.2789:

As to the impact on performance due to WvWvW, nothing is being taken away from you. If your server has no buffs from WvWvW, then you’re playing with skills and traits at their normal baseline. You only gain bonus modifiers to your abilities due to WvWvW; never penalties. For example, if a skill does 100 points of damage and your server is in 3rd place in WvWvW with no bonuses, you’re not going to do less than 100 points of damage with that skill.

It is more that it makes the output, and testing, of PVE builds bothersome as one day it performs better or worse than the other day (because a buff was gained or lost) without me changing anything.

If i could opt out of WVW buffs i would do so in a heartbeat, just so i could get some stable predictable results.