Guild Wars 2

So, since I had a chance to watch the maybe 2.5 minutes on siphon changes, I was interested in having a short conversation about it.

From what I could tell, the support style blood heals are scaling now, and seem to have higher base values. This is fine, and I think it was a nice change.

Siphon on the other hand, I am a little sad to say (at least based on the limited information), seems to have been adjusted UP on base values, but otherwise unchanged in terms of how it happens and when it happens. I was hoping for a completely rework of how it happened, but oh well.

I see this as having three possible outcomes:

1. If the upscale is enough to make it valuable with NO healing power, people may trait for it now, but at the end of the day the standard condition build is going to ask… would i rather have longer fears and spectral armor, or the siphon traits?

2. If the upscale buff + healing power, makes its viable for sustain, it will open up a whole host of possible build choices, including Apoc and celestial etc, hybrid, etc.

3. Even upscaled it may not be enough to provide sufficient sustain.

I hope very much for 2. Only the patch will tell though.

You must be at work I was about to look for you online and ask you what you thought.

I could have swore I heard Roy say they bumped the scaling but it was kind of at the same time as when Karl was talking.

If it is 1. it could be similar to how healing signet was buffed for warriors. I have to look at the stream again.

These are Dulfy’s notes from the stream

Necromancer

Life force bar now show you exactly how much Life Force you have left so you don’t have to guess anymore.

Transfusion – F4 will heal your allies more. Deathly Invorgation – heals you for a small amount when you leave Death Shroud.

Vampiric changes – Bloodthirst changed – reduced to 20% increase but increased base life steal of many abilities/traits (increased to 80% of what Bloodthrist was)

Change to Vampiric Master – now deal damage to enemies it siphons from. Siphon reduced by 16% at the base level.

link to the stream/video for those of us who aren’t subscribers?

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

link to the stream/video for those of us who aren’t subscribers?

http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2/c/3084198

So looking at the stream

At 360 Healing Power

Transfusion healed – 3276

Deathly Invigoration healed – 639

For comparison at that 360 healing power currently pre patch.

Deathly Invigoration – 382

Deathly Invigoration looks, to me, like it would be better off as a minor trait than a major. Compare it to the Guardian heal-on-dodge trait.

http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2/c/3084198

That is a link to the recording showing off all the classes with a small peek of changes that are incoming to traits/skills and some of the new floaters and targeting changes.

As for the changes to Necro im not really sure what to make of them, from what I gathered about this patch from previous posts it was to help with the siphoning.

But the minion siphon was reduced and the bloodthirst % was reduced but until tested its hard to say how much of an impact it will have as the damage for minions now works and the base for bloodthirst was increased. Deathly Invigoration is in a tree that has alot of really good traits and for me the heal didn’t look impressive enough that it would find a way into any of the builds I use. The changes to Transfusion is very welcome as its a skill I use currently use in a party.

Im also assuming that the boost to minions will also be present in Necro’s and that will hopefully help MM Necro’s and their pets survivability. Overall I think judgement will be reserved until such times as the changes can be tested to see if its a positive or negative effect to our health siphoning.

The pet HP boost will be present in PvE/WvW minions, and will make them have pretty massive HP pools for a summoned creature.

But I think the siphon change is good. Minions now deal their damage (as well as heal), which is a decent buff, and to my knowledge all of the siphons now have Vampiric-like scaling. Plus they have had minor buffs.

I think overall this will make everything much nicer. To respond to your points individually though
1. That is an option they can take. But now they also have the choice of dropping 20 from SR, and putting it into Blood Magic for sustain and/or team support. I’m sure most won’t take it simply because “omg need longer fears”, but that doesn’t mean its the best answer. I think it’ll open up condition-support builds more too, they can not only use a lot of condition spam, but now should have viable self-sustain and group-support. I could see Apothecary gear becoming quite nice (also the new deathly invigoration + 30 into SR and the Foot in the Grave + 7s DS could be very nice for support/bunkers).

3. The beauty of balance is that if they haven’t hit the sweet spot yet, we’ll just see another buff later on. I’d rather they take it slow rather than Dhuumfire us again.

oZii.2864:

Life force bar now show you exactly how much Life Force you have left so you don’t have to guess anymore.

At least!

oZii.2864:

Transfusion – F4 will heal your allies more. Deathly Invorgation – heals you for a small amount when you leave Death Shroud.

This one is pretty nice for support

oZii.2864:

Vampiric changes – Bloodthirst changed – reduced to 20% increase but increased base life steal of many abilities/traits (increased to 80% of what Bloodthrist was)

This one feel pretty dumb for me. Feel like they style wanna have zerker with high survivability, while HP build drop down. Good thing is that this trait won’t be a “must have” trait anymore for siphon build.

oZii.2864:

Change to Vampiric Master – now deal damage to enemies it siphons from. Siphon reduced by 16% at the base level.

Good thing for minion masters, that’s a huge dps boost here. I’m already earing all the whine coming.

Feel like this time we won’t be nerfed but it probably won’t last long. For me it’s not the right answer to necromacer’s flaw.

From what was said in the stream, base life stealing will increase to 80% of the Bloodthirst-boosted value. Bloodthirst itself is now reduced from a 50% to a 20% boost to life stealing. Using these numbers, here’s a before and after look at some life stealing traits:

Vampiric (before 10-15-2013)

Heals for 25 health per hit at level 80. Increases to 38 health per hit when traiting Bloodthirst (25 × 1.5 = 38 with rounding).

Vampiric (after 10-15-2013)

The devs said post-patch base life stealing will be increased to 80% of pre-patch Bloodthirst-boosted life stealing. What isn’t clear is if this simply 80% of the total amount or if this 80% will be added to the existing base.

If the former, then Vampiric will heal for ~30 health per hit at level 80. Previously, Vampiric + Bloodthirst would heal for 38. So, 38 × 0.80 = 30.4 (I rounded down to 30; maybe they’ll round up to 31). If traiting Bloodthirst (now reduced to only a 20% improvement to life stealing post-patch), Vampiric’s life stealing will increase to 36 (30 × 1.2 = 36).

If the latter, then Vampiric will heal for ~55 health per hit at level 80. Previously, Vampiric + Bloodthirst would heal for 38. So, 38 × 0.80 = 30.4 (I rounded down to 30; maybe they’ll round up to 31). The pre-existing base life steal of 25 then increases to 55 (25 + 30 = 55). If traiting Bloodthirst (now reduced to only a 20% improvement to life stealing post-patch), Vampiric’s life stealing will increase to 66 (55 × 1.2 = 66).

Vampiric Precision (before 10-15-2013)

Heals for 31 health per critical hit at level 80. Increases to 51 health per critical hit when traiting Bloodthirst. This is more than a 50% increase, but those are the numbers.

Vampiric Precision (after 10-15-2013)

The devs said post-patch base life stealing will be increased to 80% of pre-patch Bloodthirst-boosted life stealing. What isn’t clear is if this simply 80% of the total amount or if this 80% will be added to the existing base.

If the former, then Vampiric Precision will heal for ~41 health per critical hit at level 80. Previously, Vampiric + Bloodthirst would heal for 51. So, 51 × 0.80 = 40.8 (I rounded up to 41; maybe they’ll round down to 40). If traiting Bloodthirst (now reduced to only a 20% improvement to life stealing post-patch), Vampiric Precision’s life stealing will increase to ~49 (41 × 1.2 = 49.2).

If the latter, then Vampiric will heal for ~72 health per critical hit at level 80. Previously, Vampiric + Bloodthirst would heal for 51. So, 51 × 0.80 = 41 (I rounded up to 41; maybe they’ll round down to 40). The pre-existing base life steal of 31 then increases to 72 (31 + 41 = 72). If traiting Bloodthirst (now reduced to only a 20% improvement to life stealing post-patch), Vampiric’s life stealing will increase to ~86 (72 × 1.2 = 86.4).

I desperately hope it’s the latter scenarios I’ve presented above that are put into effect post-patch. If, instead, it’s the former scenarios, we’ll see a slight improvement to our base life steals, but an overall decrease in life siphoning for those of us who trait Bloodthirst. Previous disappointments with regards to changes to the Blood Magic line do not instill me with hope for tomorrow.

Unfortunately there was no information on how siphon will scale of power/healing power exactly, which is where the devil in the details comes in. If 1000 healing power buffs up the siphon by a good chunk, it could be something really fantasic, yet still not overpowered as it still doesn’t heal in DS.

Also the scaling on the other two DS flavor heal skills will be something two…

It’s the 15th here now… When will you crazy Americans stop living in the past N give me my patch?!! :-)

Bweaty.9187:

It’s the 15th here now… When will you crazy Americans stop living in the past N give me my patch?!! :-)

Since it’s already the 15th for you, could you be so kind as to tell me the winning numbers for tonight’s lotto drawing? I’ll split the winnings with you 50/50

8493, oh crap, that’s my pin number, can I have half my $ back?

Vampiric is ticking for 34 damage on the Developer Preview without Bloodthirst (Deathly Invigoration, Transfusion and Vampiric Rituals were taken). The tooltip on Vampiric Rituals states that they do 55 damage and 52 Healing, without Bloodthirst. I assume this means that Rituals and Precision both got the Vampiric treatment. This is either going to be a direct overall nerf due to their kittenty number tweaks, or a completely moot change in a heavy siphon build. Any changes to Dagger #2 remain to be seen, which scares the everliving crap out of me given the ridiculous nerf to Bloodthirst. Edited in: Assuming Dagger #2 gets the same treatment, it’s getting brought down ~20 HP/Tick. Not enormous, but it’s not like it’s necessary. A bit ridiculous, if I was to be asked.

Vampiric Master was, frankly, a complete nerf. The damage component should have been in-game from the start, being a siphon. It was a bug fix coupled with a nerf to the sustainability.

Gut feeling tells me that they were attempting to make siphoning “viable” without having Bloodthirst be an absolute necessity. First impression makes it appear as they though missed the mark by a rather large margin, once again. Good thing nothing was expected.

watching some of the “notes” i would almost say it’s a nerf..

but i’ll wait to see..

So these aren’t that impressive still it appears. Our max sustainability hasn’t gone up since after the changes you still get the same if you take bloodthirst. Minion Masters perhaps come out a bit better.

The only kind of nice thing is that if you don’t want bloodthirst you can still get 80% of the previous max siphons and still pick up something like Mark of Evasion.

On another note, maybe ‘per hit’ or ‘per crit’ is too simple of a way to go with these traits, and they should change them to something a bit more reactive or skill based. As right now they certainly seem to fear if they bump per hit siphon up to high it will simply become a near passive way to be to sustainable without no effort other than attacking.

They might work better siphoning much bigger chunks of health but on more specific and longer triggers.