Guild Wars 2

Right now I’m playing a variant of Noscoc’s celestial signet build, however I am swapping out curses for blood magic to have some extra sustain and team support in exchange for weakness, fury, an extra corruption and condi transfer.

I’m not entirely sure if blood magic works much better, but I think I have identified one weak link. The trait blood bond would sync up very nicely with this build because it casts a signet on a relatively low cooldown that is an extra boon corrupt, might, and some healing.

However because I am not going into curses and I am using dagger/warhorn and staff, its not that easy to get the 4 stacks of bleed needed to trigger the trait. It does happen fairly often, but only because I run geomancy sigils, whereas something like leeching would normally be better for my build. A weaponswap and then either mark of blood or dark path or sometimes a condi transfer, will be enough to trigger the trait, but it still feels a bit cumbersome and situational, the act of setting up 4+ stacks of bleed just to proc the trait isn’t fluid, making it a clunkier choice than it should be for a hybrid or power build, when in theory, it works so well with signets of suffering, which is the cornerstone of the hybrid necro build right now.

Therefore I think that the the trait should be adjusted so it only needs 3 stacks of bleed (a geomancy or dark path) to activate, this makes it easier for hybrid, or even power signet builds that wish to use the trait to actually get to activate the trait. To compensate, the cooldown untraited should raise to 25 from 20 seconds (16 from 20 if traited) since this change would make the trait much more useful in celestial and power builds.

I think this fix would make the trait work a bit better. I would honestly take the revive speed trait instead if I didn’t use signets of suffering, since that works a bit better with transfusion.. but I’m glad to hear what opinions you guys have to offer about this.

I think 4+ stacks is good, it gives you control over when you want to use it. I just think the effect should be buffed a little to make up for the effort.

The Wizland.8435:

I think 4+ stacks is good, it gives you control over when you want to use it. I just think the effect should be buffed a little to make up for the effort.

Well I can see your argument, but I just feel that if you don’t play a pure condi spec, it won’t be that easy or worth the effort to apply 4 stacks when you could be doing other things, (like not waiting for mark of blood to come off cooldown). But yeah I can see your argument, but since most classes have boons up, and its such a low cooldown effect, it’ll be useful no matter what, and with the way that boon corruption works in terms of priority being random, the best time to corrupt is anytime you can make use of the signet’s active.

Also needing 3 stacks instead of 4 would give you control over when to use it since it would let you trigger it with geomancy or dark path, and you wouldn’t need to worry about mindlessly spamming mark of blood or adding them together when you want the effect to be instant.

If it was buffed to be worth the effort, I’d be okay with that, like maybe if it gave you a 2K self heal to represent about half of the normal vamp signets active? Because it gives half of the normal vamp signets stacks of possible lifesteal, with 12 instead of 25, and it wouldn’t work in DS anyway so it’d be “balanced”.

Its really easy to activate on my MM, honestly. You get Mark of Evasion baseline, so from there all you need is to land Dark Path, and these abilities combo with each other very easily with DP→dodge. You can also take staff, dagger OH, sigils, runes, transfers, there are a lot of ways to easily proc it.

3 might be okay, but you start to lose control over activating it.

Dodge roll to trigger Mark of Evasion, then do staff 2 and you have 4 bleeds.

Probably better to do the dodge roll first because when you get the trait to proc you want to be facing your target so it’s easier to make sure that happens if you roll first and then do staff 2. You can also do staff 2 first if that works better for you.

I really don’t think its a good idea wasting a precious dodge on a necromancer just to proc the trait. But anyway this post was my late-night theorycrafting outlet. After some more thinking, I feel like curses is better than blood with cele anyway, in part because plague sending is easier to use and more useful blood bond in my opinion, and that the team siphoning is really a bit negligable compared to the extra corruption and weakness. I’ll only really miss transfusion, but I can manage.

I run curse, spite, bm with 2 signets on bar and 2 wells. I guess it could be a little difficult to get 4 stacks without curses…. but at the moment I have no trouble proccing it, and in fights I’m usually sitting at around 15-25 might.

nearlight.3064:

I really don’t think its a good idea wasting a precious dodge on a necromancer just to proc the trait. But anyway this post was my late-night theorycrafting outlet. After some more thinking, I feel like curses is better than blood with cele anyway, in part because plague sending is easier to use and more useful blood bond in my opinion, and that the team siphoning is really a bit negligable compared to the extra corruption and weakness. I’ll only really miss transfusion, but I can manage.

You can always wait until you need to dodge and then follow up with a staff 2.

Not sure why you’re so hung up on this one trait. The rest of blood magic is awesome.

Bhawb.7408:

Its really easy to activate on my MM, honestly. You get Mark of Evasion baseline, so from there all you need is to land Dark Path, and these abilities combo with each other very easily with DP->dodge. You can also take staff, dagger OH, sigils, runes, transfers, there are a lot of ways to easily proc it.

3 might be okay, but you start to lose control over activating it.

Do transfers apply to this even though they are not yours?

I’m almost sure they do because I’ve noticed getting procs when I haven’t done anything to proc the trait, but it is hard to test without help.

I also believe that you don’t have to apply all 4 yourself, you simply have to make the number of bleeds on your enemy go over 4. So if someone else applies 3 bleeds, you only have to apply 1 to proc that trait. Someone should test this out, it shouldn’t be hard you just need 2 people.

Transfers def work. Not sure about adding to other people’s bleeds but it could be possible. You could also take scepter over dagger, but in a cele build that could be problematic.

What they need to do first is to fix the bug with this trait.

Blood Bond: The healing part of this trait doesn’t work in DS. Since the healing of the active of Signet of Vamprism works in DS. The actual CD on “Lesser Signet of Vampirism” is 30sec and 24sec with SoS trait, but the Tooltip said 20sec and 16sec with SoS trait. The trait will fail if you are not facing your target.

Would’ve been easier if they hadn’t nerfed barbed precision…

Bhawb.7408:

I’m almost sure they do because I’ve noticed getting procs when I haven’t done anything to proc the trait, but it is hard to test without help.

I also believe that you don’t have to apply all 4 yourself, you simply have to make the number of bleeds on your enemy go over 4. So if someone else applies 3 bleeds, you only have to apply 1 to proc that trait. Someone should test this out, it shouldn’t be hard you just need 2 people.

This is correct. It actually doesn’t matter how many bleeds you yourself applied, so long as you add a stack and that pushes the total stacks to 4 or higher.

What they should buff is Staff #2 to apply 3 stacks of bleeding.