Guild Wars 2

I’m level 64 now, and this is my highest character. I am PVE only so far.

I took the advice of you guys ankitten ow using Lich Form or Plague for those “big fight” moments. But I’d like to try to avoid needing them at all if possible.

Right now I have 30 Spite (with + Axe damage/cooldown), 10 Curses (for ground targeting of wells – good for champions), and 14 Blood (with + health on crit). At 15 Blood every hit that I do will gain me a small amount of health. I have Power + Precision gear and sigils, so my crit rate is around 50% at all times. At 20 points in Blood I think my Well pulses will give me additional health (and be on lower cooldowns), and at 30 in Blood I do an additional 5% damage when above 90% health.

My “theory” is that by using abilities that have a lot of hits I can heal a lot more, like Axe 1 (two hits) Axe 2 (8 hits), Axe 3 (up to 5 enemies I think) + Warhorn 5 (locusts that pulse every second, potentially hitting lots of enemies each pulse) + Wells healing on every pulse. About half of these hits will also crit (if I understand the process correctly), which results in additional healing. Is this correct? Keep in mind that I also get 5 seconds of Regen once I drop below 90% health. I’m also considering the healing well instead of consume conditions, as it heals allies too, AND I could get the cooldown to 32 seconds instead of 40. And of course, with 30 points in blood I’d have another 300 healing power and 300 vitality, so better heals and more health. I also read that the next update might help Necros who use the Blood line?

Anyway, will this setup serve me well at level 80 in roaming PVE content, or do enemies just hit way too hard at that level? I’d still have Lich and Plague in reserve of course, but I’d rather not rely on those so much to keep me alive.

If I ever run Dungeons, WvW or PVP instead, 0 in Blood and 30 in the Death Shroud line seems to be more popular. Is this correct?

Please keep in mind I am a “newish” player, so if this all a dumb idea, please be gentle Thanks for your help.

I use a similar build inPvE for levelling. While I really enjoy this build (Especially since it becomes stronger with more mobs around), it isn’t viable in dungeons or PvP. There is simply too much burst in those aspects of the game for this build to be on par with the others. The October 15 patch may fix this, because they clams they are revamping the blood magic trait line. I for one am anxiously waiting to be able to play a “vampiric necro”.

I think 30 in Blood is quite viable in open-world PVE.

As Axyl says, the Vampiric traits are ok, but should be much better for the cost of taking 30 in Blood. As it is now, I think it is the case that regeneration provides more health per sec than vampirics with 30 in Blood, even with 5 foes in a well.

Consider taking the 10 pts from Curses and moving them to Death for Ritual of Protection (-33% damage taken for x seconds with each well). That is a huge reduction in incoming damage and reduces the need for alot of investment in vampirics, and provides nice team support.

Or you could just take life steal food which is cheap and gives you ballpark more heal than 30 points of traits do and any class can take. This frees up your trait points to give yourself some more power and condition damage and also get that critical major spectator armor trait.

Is 30 bad for PvE? No. Is it good though? No. I use 15 atm because I run a full glass cannon build and the life siphoning that I get over time is worth it, compared to the extra 15 in either death magic (no point), or soul reaping (no point).

But in general you don’t need all the healing over time that dropping all of 30 points into BM will get you, and it will hurt your DPS, which right now is king of all things.

The vampiric healing should be improved in October. Right now it is weak. You may not notice how weak until you get smacked repeatedly by high damage opponents.

Blood Magic has vampiric minions at the master level which provide much better healing than your steal on crit. However, minions can be wiped by bosses and should be traited in at least two lines.

Wells do not need to be targeted in open world PvE. Either you or the mob will want to be close. Instead, trait wells cool-down in Blood Magic if you run wells. Wells siphon is at 30 BM and I do not recommend using it at this time. Traiting staff cool down in the Death Magic line or something in Soul Reaping will be more useful.

If you go that deep, make sure to either have Transfusion or Dinvigoration slotted in to help allies when you do dungeons all the time (transfusion if you can melee/fights are stacked, DE if from range spamming marks and Life Blast or in perma kite mode), going wells with dagger/warhorn and knights (prec, power, vit) gear you should be very sustained and given enough free room to learn the ins and outs of a necro.

Honestly, I’ve run a 15/25/0/30/0 build that’s worked rather well. Better uptime on Locust Swarm, gets all the benefit of Curses 25 trait, higher crit chance = more Vampiric Precision procs and food procs, etc. Additionally, the Well-Siphon trait makes even non-damaging Wells work for siphons. E.g. Well of Blood does damage.

It’s proven to be viable, too. The sustain of the full well-burst is impressively substantial. Damage ain’t bad, either.

I tried to make it work, for a long time.
It seemed best with wells, for more a bust support. (10 in soul reaping 15% faster DS #4 + transfusion from Blood, work nice together for dungeon group, as it’s a rather sexy heal in AoE burst situations, tho sadly doesn’t heal or help you.)

At the end of the day, my support guard, is arguably as much help to the group on average just Akitteng with the group, though it’s passive help.
Particularly with Putrid Mark being buggy and not removing Condi’s from Allies.

Anyway, as people say, it’s not broken bad. It’s just not the best use of traits. It can be a fairly good ‘allrounder’ tho.
Were all hoping that the next big patch, fix’s blood magic, minions, and condi’s in PvE…

It’s terrible because you cannot heal in Death Shroud, meaning that if you want to press f1, most of the time it doesn’t even help anyways not to mention the large cooldown of wells.

The only good thing it’s for is going afk during big zerg events in wvw and pve. For actually fighting enemies, you’re better off putting points anywhere else. I mean it works and the heal isn’t insignificant. ; but it’s a waste of points for just healing yourself.

If you really want to try out 30 blood magic, I’d go with a minion siphon build and that draw conditions trait @ 30 blood magic. That would actually help other people.

Currently, most necros only pick up siphon because it’s in the way of better traits, like Ritual Mastery.

Blood is terrible. Broken nobody takes it/joke terrible

1. You can’t heal in shroud.

You have this healing line and it doesn’t even work with your class mechanic.

2. Healing power Affect few skills and scales poorly.

Some Abilities like transfusion don’t scale with healing power at all.

3. Necromancer weapons are really slow and siphons are really small.

This is a bad combination.

4. Food will get you as much siphoning as 30 points in Blood (so why not spend those points elsewhere

5. Necromancer low toughness and good condition removal means you typically need burst heals not sustained low heals.

6. Terrible, build specific 30 point traits. Wells or Minions.

But no necromancer builds used by actual players in wvw, sPvP or dungeons tend to use 4 wells or 4 minions. How about for 30 points you get something awesome that every build wants, like a transfusion that heals you too?

7. Low damage.

I loaded up all my life steals and tried many times to kill Liadri with siphons before she went into please 2. Liadri wasn’t a very high health boss but I typically could only get her to 40% health before failing when the timer ran out with this method.