Guild Wars 2

The devs are allegedly looking to make this line more team-supportive. Ideas?

Here’s mine: replace all three minor traits.

Blood Is Life: “When your health drops below each threshold, you gain additional Healing Power and brief regeneration. (100HPwr@High%, 200HPwr@Mid%, 300HPwr@Low%)”

Order of the Vampire: “You and nearby allies siphon health on attacking. A small fraction of health siphoned by allies (and all health siphoned by minions) is redirected to you.”

Vigor Mortis: “When you exit Death Shroud while below the health threshold (VeryLow%), you and nearby allies gain regeneration. Regeneration effects you apply also grant brief vigor.”

Here’s my idea: Nerf warrior.

THE GAME IS SUDDENLY FUN AGAIN :O

(Admittedly, that third one is mostly for the pun, since vigor isn’t very necromantic.. It could just as well grant a different boon, or boost siphoning.)

I am very interested on this topic as Blood Magic in GW1 was by far my favorite of the Necromancer’s attributes. Here’s my spin on the idea of making the Blood Magic line more supportive and fixing some issues that I feel haven’t been addressed yet.

Bloodthirst (20% siphoning effectiveness) should become baseline. As it is proposed and further rumored to be, a trait line largely themed on the mechanic of siphoning benefits a great deal through this trait. So much so, that placing this trait in the adept line could create an illusion of choice, as the other two choices: Ritual of Life (creates a Well of Blood when reviving an ally and reduce revive time by 10%) and Mark of Evasion (create a Mark of Blood on dodge), are less useful in comparison. Ritual of Life only becomes useful if you have a downed ally, so the opportunity of use is finite; while Mark of Evasion is only useful if within melee range and is underpowered. Conversely, not choosing Bloodthirst is a decision to make a line that seems more and more focused on siphoning to be 20% less effective. A better opportunity of choice needs to be made in the adept line.

Transfusion (Life Transfer and Soul Spiral heals you and your party) and Deathly Invigoration (heal in an area when going into Death Shroud) in light of the revelation that we’ll be allowed to heal in death shroud seem better than they were previously. However, also in light of developers bringing more support into Blood Magic line through somehow introducing the mechanic of a party wide Vampiric Aura, I have some suggestions…

I like the direction Vampiric Aura is going in, but I’m curious if giving a passive buff to the party is the best means of connecting the Necromancer to supporting the party. What I think would be a neat manner of supporting the party through life siphoning would be not to just copy the life siphoning mechanic over to other characters with a passive buff where their attacks cause life siphon, but rather tag party members with a buff that is connected to the necromancer and transfers a percentage of the necromancer’s life siphoning strikes to party members. Thereby making the Necromancer’s actions more closely tied to the support given to its party members. I’d like to call this idea “Doctor Death”.

I like how the reaper line has three distinct themes for major traits, with the minor traits sort of working with all of them.

The three for blood magic would obviously be wells, movement, and siphoning. I also like the regen and condition removal. Hmm…

I’ll tackle the major well traits first.

• Ritual of Life: replace the auto-well with “Your wells grant regeneration to allies below the health threshold; the duration of this regeneration is doubled on downed allies.” This gives it some use for standing allies, on top of having an active effect for res-ing.
• Transfusion: add the function “Life transfer now counts as a well skill.”
• Vampiric Rituals: this is fine. No change needed.

Now for movement.

• Mark of Evasion: add the function “This skill recharges faster when you have a condition on you.”
• Quickening Thirst: change it to be faster when below the health threshold, instead of above.
• Deathly Invigoration: add the function “and recover some of your endurance.”

And then we have life siphoning.

• Bloodthirst: Make half of the siphon power increase baseline. Change effect to “You siphon 10% more health, and can siphon even if the enemy evades or blocks, or you are in Death Shroud.”
• Vampiric Precision: This is fine.
• Vampiric Rituals: Yep, this trait does double duty, and still doesn’t need to be changed.

That leaves one odd duck in the major league.

• Unholy Martyr: Great in group play, useless in solo. Change life force generation to “whenever you gain a condition” to broaden it out.

And as for the minors…

• Blood Is Life: new trait, as I described in OP. Combines Full of Life and Blood to Power, and staggers effect out as health drops.
• Order of the Vampire: also as in OP, but toned down. “Siphon health when you attack. Minions siphon and redirect the health to you. While you have regeneration, your allies also siphon health with their attacks.”
• Revival: “When you exit Death Shroud, lose a condition and gain regeneration. The regeneration lasts longer for each remaining condition on you.”