Guild Wars 2

I am playing My necromancer more since the patch. I am also experimenting with new Playstyles. Currently a DS Build… learning new things.

While Life Steal looks good in theory, I really cannot tell How effective it is. Either as a rune… or as a power in a weapon or trait. I guess what i am forst asking is….if I buy runes that include Life Steal, How good is it untraited?

Secondly, which Armor runes would be best to own for a Life steal type build?

lastly… what Traits make Life Steal a viable build. As I said, the few times I tried to use Life steal, it was hard for me to notice when something actually happened, so could Not gague it’s value from simple experience.

Runes, Sigils, and food are good.

Traits are crap outside of Vampiric Master.

It’s not bad, but it requires an investment in a tree that is good for little else other than wells. The numbers are low and you have to take like 2 traits for it to really do anything. Furthermore, it conflicts with Death Shroud because you cannot heal while in DS and thus if you heavily use DS, a lot of it would be wasted.

The best life siphon build is a minionmancer build with axe. Minion hits will siphon life as long as you take the vampiric trait and ghastly claws hits multiple times.

The Ascii well build also has good sustain with it. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Ascii-s-WvW-Wellomancer-Build/first

For practical use, it’s probably the best build if you want to have some life steal.

The best full siphon/healing build is going to be Cleric’s MM with A/F D/WH with some kind of healing rune (vampirism, dolyak, or one of the healing power ones), sigils of leeching/renewal on each set, and 20 into Blood Magic. Heals for days.

Outside of MM however, siphoning is never a full build, you can never fully commit to it. You are always a power build with siphoning on the side, or a condi build with siphoning, or a bunker with some siphoning; it is always a small secondary function, and the only time it works is with a significant investment in other sources of tankiness and healing.

As for what individual siphons are worthwhile to constitute a build? Sigils and runes are both universally good. Vampiric Master is good, in an MM build. Vampiric is fine, assuming you had sufficient reason to go that deep into Blood Magic already. Vampiric Precision/Vampiric Rituals are both really subpar and should only ever be used in a build which has a crapton of other healing sources.

Also note that these tend to get much better the more you have. For example sigil of leeching is decent on its own, but it is still only 975 damage/healing, which probably won’t get you to another rotation of anything to keep you alive. However, with one on each set, plus sigils of renewal, plus siphoning minions, plus vampiric, plus dagger 2, plus some healing runes, topped off with healing power, your healing sources actually carry you to another rotation of healing sources, which then carry you to others and so on. So while each proc might be small, the sum of the procs allows you to stay alive long enough for even more proc’ing.

My vimpire well build eats minion mancers for breakfast. Makes me verry tanky and has decent burst. Axe/horn/focus.
Verry fun and takes some strategy to play well.

Any sort of cc completely negates a vamp build. I’ve tried them an played them for a little while now, my heart jumped a little when I saw signet of.vampirism then it was… disappointing . If your not attacking your not healing.

I want to thank you all for your replies. Now that Respeccing is free I can drop traits easilly… and see what works for me. So far I use th heal minion, the scorpion looking one, and flesh golem, along with 2 wells. I do see that to really make it work I need the " wells do damage" trait, but it does seem to be working… was soloing 3 or 4 risen Nobles, and adepts In orr pretty well. I do Not do sPvP or WvW yet. I am sure I’ll have to adjust it if I ever try for it :-)