Guild Wars 2

Blood Magic is clearly a defensive line, but siphon also does additional unmitigated damage.

So, anyone know how much damage siphons can contribute to actual overall dps on a power build? I mean, how much percent dps increase I can expect from the leeching traits?

Is this leeching damage from Blood Magic noticeable and comparable to, say, stacking some might from Spite line?

I’m talking here about Vampiric + Vampiric Presence dps. And we can add Vampiric Rituals too for well dps.

if youre talking about leveling you should always take blood magic first regardless just because it provides you quickening thirst, a 25% movement speed increase for holding a dagger (read: always) in the first tier and banshees wail, a reduction for warhorn which provides you perma swiftness in the second tier. i dont see any reason to not take blood magic as the first spec. vampiric presence is simply outclassed by perma swiftness from banshees wail for leveling purposes as youre running more than fighting.

edit: great that u completely edit your first post to not at all be about leveling.

It depend on your weapon. If you use staff or use frequently the DS, all that siphoning damage contribute to more or less 0.5% (if you in Ds crit for 4k and add 100 of damage by wiphon it grant you only a 0.25% more damage…).
If you use dagger+horn5+wells, the damage and healing that you obtain, expecially against a good number of enemies, can be more or less 5-8% of the total damage.

Blood Magic provide team support without sacrificing all DPS.
Of course depending of what you choose.
Blood Bond, Vampiric Presence and Vampiric Ritual. provide the “max DPS” with support (heal + protection)
It’s a good trait line that’s not overpowered.
I like to take it for hard fight but switch to Spite when all matters is fast DPS.

as the others have said, its entirely based on your weapons
i use dagger+warhorn on a wellomancer and i love love LOVE blood magic siphons :-3

warhorn 5 alone hits 5 targets around you every second for 10 seconds (50 hits)
so when you have 3 different traits offering you about 150 health stealing total it really adds up!

tldr: if you’re ticking off lots of damage then life siphons are great, if not, then avoid it.

Blood magic on its own is lower dps then running soul reaping (although not by much), however blood magic has the only unique group damage modifier in necromancer. As long as your in a group where you can buff at least two other people then blood magic is mandatory since the group dps gain outweighs any personal ones.

Onerios.4962:

Blood magic on its own is lower dps then running soul reaping (although not by much), however blood magic has the only unique group damage modifier in necromancer. As long as your in a group where you can buff at least two other people then blood magic is mandatory since the group dps gain outweighs any personal ones.

This depends on your build and it you have HoT or not. Reaper+dhuumfire > vamp aura in terms of total DPS unless your group is doing an unrealistic amount of hits per second.

Sigmoid.7082:

Reaper+dhuumfire > vamp aura in terms of total DPS unless your group is doing an unrealistic amount of hits per second.

Not necessarily, I think. Dhuumfire requires shroud camping and I´m pretty sure that RS with dhuumfire < Dagger #1 and Gravedigger below 50% spam in power builds, generally speaking (I´m not 100% sure about the actual rotations yet).

The 5% modifier is comparable to vampiric aura. So most of the time soul reaping is slightly better for damage than blood magic. But blood magic gives group sustain and lifesteal is armour ignoring. So the damage balance shifts on high toughness mobs.

Skoigoth.9238:

Sigmoid.7082:

Reaper+dhuumfire > vamp aura in terms of total DPS unless your group is doing an unrealistic amount of hits per second.

Not necessarily, I think. Dhuumfire requires shroud camping and I´m pretty sure that RS with dhuumfire < Dagger #1 and Gravedigger below 50% spam in power builds, generally speaking (I´m not 100% sure about the actual rotations yet).

You are wrong about this because of the difference in weapon strength. In actuality RsAuto = GS auto ~= dagger auto ( within 1%) . Adding dhuumfire to this actually make RS auto the strongest of the lot.

Sigmoid.7082:

Skoigoth.9238:

Sigmoid.7082:

Reaper+dhuumfire > vamp aura in terms of total DPS unless your group is doing an unrealistic amount of hits per second.

Not necessarily, I think. Dhuumfire requires shroud camping and I´m pretty sure that RS with dhuumfire < Dagger #1 and Gravedigger below 50% spam in power builds, generally speaking (I´m not 100% sure about the actual rotations yet).

You are wrong about this because of the difference in weapon strength. In actuality RsAuto = GS auto ~= dagger auto ( within 1%) . Adding dhuumfire to this actually make RS auto the strongest of the lot.

Note, RS1 is only equal to GS auto in terms of coefficient per second with Reaper’s Onslaught traited. Otherwise it’s slightly lower, although even with that Dhuumfire probably pushes it back up.

Son of Urza.1692:

Sigmoid.7082:

Skoigoth.9238:

Sigmoid.7082:

Reaper+dhuumfire > vamp aura in terms of total DPS unless your group is doing an unrealistic amount of hits per second.

Not necessarily, I think. Dhuumfire requires shroud camping and I´m pretty sure that RS with dhuumfire < Dagger #1 and Gravedigger below 50% spam in power builds, generally speaking (I´m not 100% sure about the actual rotations yet).

You are wrong about this because of the difference in weapon strength. In actuality RsAuto = GS auto ~= dagger auto ( within 1%) . Adding dhuumfire to this actually make RS auto the strongest of the lot.

Note, RS1 is only equal to GS auto in terms of coefficient per second with Reaper’s Onslaught traited. Otherwise it’s slightly lower, although even with that Dhuumfire probably pushes it back up.

How much coeff/s burning is worth depends on how many non vulnerability damage mobs you can get. But it does make them roughly even with just dhuumfire alone.

Sigmoid.7082:

Skoigoth.9238:

Not necessarily, I think. Dhuumfire requires shroud camping and I´m pretty sure that RS with dhuumfire < Dagger #1 and Gravedigger below 50% spam in power builds, generally speaking (I´m not 100% sure about the actual rotations yet).

You are wrong about this because of the difference in weapon strength. In actuality RsAuto = GS auto ~= dagger auto ( within 1%) . Adding dhuumfire to this actually make RS auto the strongest of the lot.

Actually I was only talking about Gravedigger spam sub 50% health, not GS auto.

What I found to be working best for me personally last BWE was going Spite/BM/Reaper with Dagger/x + GS. My rotation looked roughly like this: Above 50% health I kept on camping Dagger + using Warhorn #5 or Focus #4/VampSig/Wells/RS #2 and #5 on cd, below 50% spam Gravedigger (no GS/RS autos unless I missed the target) + GS #4/VampSig/Wells/RS #5 on cd and I occasionally mixed in GS #3, RS #4 and Lich Form when appropriate.

As I said, I´m not sure if this is anywhere close to optimal (I didn´t do much calculating, mostly just testing and gut feeling), but in the group I played with last BWE this is what had the best results with. Soul Reaping is most likely the better choice in solo situations, because you want to stay in shroud for the might and vuln stacking, but in decent groups Blood Magic is the way to go I think (a year ago I´d never thought I´d actually recommend BM, ever, good job Mr. Gee lol).

As a side note, I also expect the devs to tune down burning a bit with HoT, which would probably rule out Dhuumfire as a DPS boost in power builds. But that´s just speculation on my part of course. I guess we´ll have to wait and see how things pan out =)