Guild Wars 2

I know that the LifeSiphon skill (from Gw1) is imrpoved by it b/c the wiki sez…..

• Life Siphon heals for 202 per tick at Lvl 80, and increases by 1 per 25 Healing Power (approx.)

But what about lifesteal in general? Does anything improve it?
I feel like we’re right back to where we originally were early in GW1’s release where the entire Blood line was utter CRAP in PvE for a long time …. And worse… what it actually Buffs (our Healing Stats mostly)… is really only of assistance to MINION-MASTERS.

WTH?
Plz tell me I’m wrong?
I just wanna be a speedy bloodzerker here, not an plodding MM …

Healing Power does NOT effect your life siphon.

Unfortunately, no.

Technically, with the latest patch, life siphoning (from the Vampiric trait) now scales with Healing Power.

The scaling, though, is a joke; just 6 extra points of life siphoning max. I haven’t bothered to test how much Healing Power is required to receive those extra 6 points of life siphoning because, frankly, the sacrifices required to maximize Healing Power wouldn’t be worth what you’re gaining in return.

I fully accept that – if life siphoning is going to scale – it should do so through Healing Power. I also accept the trade-offs this implies. What’s unacceptable is the absolute insult to blood necromancers this “improvement” represents. A measly +6 life siphoning? Are you kidding me?!?!

“Blood necros; still waiting for the GW2 beta to end.”

Yeh, +Heal Power on every pice of gear get’s you a massive 6 heals per hit.

As long as you also trait Bloodthirst + Vampiric Precision, and have 100% crit chance, you almost do exactly half of a Ele using Signet of Restoration, with 0 heal power.
(As long as your not in DeathShroud)

No one is bringing healing power just for this, but if you are already using healing power in your build, then this is a decent buff.

Since we’re talking about vampire necros anyway, I’m working on a hybrid crit/condition build and I was thinking of putting 10 points into blood to get Vampiric Precision. Assuming I don’t invest too heavily in healing power and I’m using a dagger for maximum chances to crit, would the life siphon from just that trait even be worth it?

You can do the math for how much HP/s you’ll actually get out of it, look at that compared to whatever trait you are giving up and see if you think its worth it.

I haven’t tested anything other than the scaling values, but from what I have seen the only place that the change to siphoning could be impactful is in a wierd super tanky melee bruiser that lives on Dagger MH pretty much at all times and does very little damage. There might be some combination of PvE Gear that makes that practical in some bizzarre PvE scenario, but for tPvP with the amulet system and the nature of combat I couldn’t even see a way to make it functional.

I don’t know why not … there’s plenty of other classes that are allowed to ‘live forever’ in PvE combat (as long as they aren’t spiked/1hit) with their niches of health replenishment. In Gw1 we saw Dervishes doing it in FA vs 5 man teams

With Vampiric they made Damage scale with power and Healing with healing power but as mentioned already it’s so ridiculous that no Necro in their right mind would sacrifice trait points to spec on them when there is so much better now since the patch.

I’m really glad the Vampiric mechanic has been fixed but it really needs a buff if it hopes to make it worth at least those 10 points into it.

Note as well that siphoning isnt triggered in Death Shroud so siphon on crit doesnt benefit from the Deathly Perception trait.

aeneq.1760:

Note as well that siphoning isnt triggered in Death Shroud so siphon on crit doesnt benefit from the Deathly Perception trait.

The siphons are still triggered (You can see the extra damage number) but no healing is granted, since you can’t heal while in Death Shroud. Just pointing this out because it’s still adding damage.

Also, because I didn’t see it spelled out here: only Vampiric gained scaling with power / healing power. Everything else is entirely static.

Life Siphon (Dagger 2) and the Vampiric Trait are affected by HP, other forms of siphoning are not.

Wells and Staff Marks (AoE) are where it would benefit most. The 6 extra hp per vampiric hit from high healing power is a 24% increase in vampiric healing. That adds up to an extra 300 health on WoB, 180 on WoS and 150 per one of your other wells (if you hit 5+ targets over the course of their durations, per pulse). 450, 270 and 225 extra healing respectfully if you have bloodthirst on. All AoE attacks heal up to 30 extra health per 5 targets hit. It looks mediocre in the grand scheme of things and nothing game changing, but over say 10 AoE attacks, that extra 300+ health on top of your base 25 vampiric gain, normal attacks etc. could be the difference from being dead or whatever you’re fighting being dead. Wells can be turned into 900 range self heals for about 1800-5500 extra healing per well, depending on their durations.

Of course what good is that healing if you can’t actually kill your target(s). That’s why I like going Apothecary over Clerics for such a build, since you still get great use out of Wells (WoB, WoP, WoC and WoD if you don’t take epidemic), while being able to do mass attrition damage (bleeds, torment + epidemic keeps DPS up, able to exploit MoB/MoE for healing and bleeds) in addition to your mass damage mitigation/healing ability.

mistermoo.6720:

Life Siphon (Dagger 2) and the Vampiric Trait are affected by HP, other forms of siphoning are not.

Missed Deadly Feast (Spear #3) and Signet of the Locust.